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Design

Erik Hersman’s “How texting and GoogleMaps helped Kenyans survive crisis” talk at TED

Erik Hersman presents the remarkable story of Ushahidi, a Google Maps mashup that allowed Kenyans to report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections, and has evolved to continue saving lives in other countries […]

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Design Software

Autodesk Launches Online Site for AutoCAD Users to Interact and Learn from Each Other

Autodesk announced recently the AutoCAD Exchange, an online destination for AutoCAD users to connect and learn from experts, provide feedback to the product developers, and access professional tools that can help them do their jobs better. The online community is rich with original multimedia content, including an entertaining video series about “working for the man”, eLearning tools and aggregated CAD information from Web-based resources. Visitors can also create profiles to personalize their experience and share their own tips, scripts and applications, projects and experiences with the global community of AutoCAD users […]

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Design

Rives’s “3-minute story of mixed emoticons” at TED

Rives — star of the Bravo special Ironic Iconic America — tells a typographical fairy tale that’s short and bittersweet. Flat pages can’t contain Rives’ storytelling, even when paper is his medium. The pop-up books he creates for children unfold with surprise: The Christmas Pop-Up Present expands to reveal moving parts, hidden areas and miniature booklets inside. On stage, his poems burst in many directions, too, exposing multiple layers and unexpected treats: childhood memories, grown-up humor, notions of love and lust, of what is lost forever and of what’s still out there waiting to unfold.

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Design

Autodesk Brings Historic Designs to Life in New Discovery Channel Series “Doing DaVinci”

The team of 21st century builders, engineers and historians tasked with recreating Leonardo daVinci’s inventions for the new Discovery Channel series Doing daVinci are using Autodesk Inventor 3D design and engineering software to virtually test the renowned inventor’s designs.

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Information Technology Innovation Software

Marvin Minsky’s “Health, population and the human mind” talk at TED

Listen closely — Marvin Minsky’s arch, eclectic, charmingly offhand talk on health, overpopulation and the human mind is packed with subtlety: wit, wisdom and just an ounce of wily, is-he-joking? advice […]

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Design Information Technology Innovation Software

Autodesk Shows New Versions of Visual Effects Systems for Film and TV and to Launch Flare-Hot Addition to the Product Line-up at NAB2009

Autodesk has announced the 2010 releases of Autodesk Flame and Autodesk Inferno software for visual effects systems, and the launch of the new Flame and Inferno creative companion, Autodesk Flare software. The releases are being showcased at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show in Las Vegas, April 20-23, 2009, at the Autodesk booth SL2120 […]

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Design Innovation Inspiration

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Creativity, fulfillment and flow” talk at TED

Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi asks, “What makes a life worth living?” Noting that money cannot make us happy, he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities that bring about a state of flow.

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Information Technology Innovation Software

Sustainable Minds, Autodesk Develop Environmental Tools For Designers

Why wait until you’re trying to construct a product before figuring out the environmental impact of what’s going into it? Why indeed? That’s the motivation behind a new development partnership between Sustainable Minds and Autodesk. The goal is to provide industrial designers and engineers the knowledge to understand the environmental impacts of a new product. An on-demand software and information suite will help designers estimate a product’s life cycle impact. This life cycle assessment software will complement Autodesk product for three-dimensional digital prototyping, Autodesk Inventor

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China Innovation

Intellectual Property: “China to strengthen protection of intellectual property rights”, says Wen Jiabao

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said recently that the Chinese government would increase efforts to protect intellectual property rights (IPR). Wen was speaking in a meeting with Francis Gurry, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) […]

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Design

Design, Technology & Urban Planning: Silos of Technology, Interoperability, and Digital Cities

There’s an interesting article by Rob Colman in Green Business who chatted with Dan Campbell of the City of Vancouver and Geoff Zeiss about digital cities and how by enabling interoperability between architecture, engineering and construction design models such as BIM, telecom and public works network design, and gaming engines for video games, we can model cities holistically by creating 3D urban models that not only look good but offer the depth of information required to make real decisions […]