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With the new phase system on open projects, it is becoming easier to keep track on the discussion and to participate on the development of each project.

On the e.Moped project, I have started to discuss with Piers the points relevant to the Understanding of the world around electric mopeds. In this phase 1, we are defining the general uses and configurations for the moped we are going to build.

You can participate on the discussion on the Project Status Page .

This experiment can turn out to be a new section on the e.Moped project site, It’s my first attempt to use yahoo pipes mashup tool. The pipe you see above can aggregate automatically solidworks+tutorial Tags in the bookmarking service Delicious along with tutorials from the the SWX Design website into an always updating piece of Java Sript code.

The result is what you seen here, a RSS feed capable of being placed into any website. There is a whole range of possibilities with this mashup tool, even combining Flickr, Geo Data Information to Display photos on Google Earth. I see my dream “Skateboard Ramp Mapping Widget” coming soon. Got any ideas for other cool pipes? write on..

This next article seems to Letsevo as a great mark in the collaborative design process. Wikitecture, as the folks from the Wikitecture Studio are calling it, is the first attempt I have seen in order to solve a long anticipated challenge of coming up with a programming language to build CAD constructions in a Wiki-like way. Wikitecture, as demonstrated in this youtube video, is a Secondlife scripting based project, to empower people to build Architecture together just like writing and editing Wikipedia entrances.

Check this youtube video to get the picture of what I am talking about.

This is the birth of a whole new ecology system of Industry, software companies and contributors collaborating to build great things!

Are companies going to ignore that we, the people, can help each other build all the products we want when technologies like Wikitecture become more mature?? Are companies going to react like majority of the Academic field reacted against Wikipedia, rejecting the fact that the wisdom of the crowd could in deed create a Encyclopedia from scratch?

I am a true believer that the things are going to change around here. Maybe it is time to start a new Letsevo project together!! A problem so complex that we would need the help of each other to achieve great results. Something around mobility, an collaborative electric moped? Something so modular, everyone could have its own customized electric moped to cruise around the neighborhood. Seems challenging to me, and fun to work on.

Can we get some companies to “Blend-in” their CAD parts for us to design around it? Batteries, Electric Motors, suspension forks, Disc brakes?

Can we get some brothers that share this dream? Marcello, Piers, Jochen, Nico, Christian, Basti, Peter, Gross….all the creative minds out there…Lets Wikit!?

There has been a lot of hype nowadays around concepts like crowd-sourcing and open-source and user-generated things. Lots of new business are been started and closed everyday trying to grasp this leap of todays way of working. But many of them haven’t achieved great success because business plans for such initiatives are still very difficult to succeed.

There are lots of problems regarding the rewards participation in product development, when in the end, someone is making money out of the ideas generated buy contributors around the globe.

Thats where Kluster gets my consideration and I will explain why. Kluster is a brand new company launched on 18th of February. It is a social network focussed on the development of products (which can be anything, from mp3 players and logos to events) which aims to reward every contribution to projects with some kind of monetary participation of the total value of the project.

More detais of how everything work can be seen in this Techcrunch story on Kluster.

Here is Kluster Demonstration Video in Youtube

I will tell a little bit of my impressions as I (of course) tryed it out.

First, I was amazed by how easy it is to setup everything and to start working on on going projects. The idea is that every project is broken down in phases which have a time stamp and a Reward is good to make complex tasks manageable. If you have an idea (called “spark”) you can contribute right away. If your “Sparks” follows to the next phase you automatically already wins participation on the gains on the end of the project. If you see a “Spark” from someone else, you can them suggest improvents “Amps”, which if are also aproved, you get participation points called “Watts”.

“Watts” are the currency inside of Kluster which can be changed in to Real money like the “Linden dollars” of second Life.

This is where Kluster starts to get real interest and where I think it has its potential. Once you have “watts” and you receive them by contributing to a project or to simply completing your profile you can “Invest” them on the Ideas “Sparks” of others, If there Sparks advance, you also get participation points “watts”. But if they don’t advance, you lose your invested “Watts”. This is a great incentive for people to vote on other ideas, and to vote well, because otherwise, you are using what you invested, your watts, your work hours.

In 45 minutes, I filled my profile, Contributed with “Sparks” for 3 Projects, Invested some “watts” in 3 other “Sparks” and Invited friends to participate and made 2670 “watts”.

Then I questioned my self, how many dollars does one “Watt” gives me?? Maybe some of you can answer this. I just don’t know.

But to finalize this post:

I think Kluster is an amazing experiment in this new world of wikinomics and hope to learn more about it as I try it. Will it survive the real world? Will it empower people to solve more problems? Will companies use it as a tool for developing products?

Here is a view of my profile page in Kluster

I would love to here some comments here at letsevo so I pass the MIC now. Peace

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me if I could tell him about design events that are happening here in Europe since he is planning to spend some months traveling around the old continent.

I sent him a couple of events that I know happen every year and pointed out to him Upcoming.org, one of those clever web 2.0 tools that does the task of organizing shared events from users around the globe. Think Flickr for your calendar, did some thing sparkle in your mind? Well, it sure sparkled in my mind that craves for exploring the potentials of such tools.

Why am I talking about a calendar tool here in letsevo? What does that have to do with product innovation?

Before starting to explain or respond to these two questions I would like you to please take a look at the Sidebar of the Letsevo website, the right sidebar. YEAH YEAH YEAH!!!

I am freaking glad to anounce the brand new Letsevo Collaboration Calendar! Powered by Upcoming.org and some mad artists/designers/scientists/cool-kids/inventors/whatever contributors that want to join the team of letsevo in the task of tagging every event surrounding technology, innovation, design.

Why am I doing this?
Because I want to share the events I know with the developing community and in this away help spreading the news about places to go when you want to exchange ideas, see new things and learn whats going on.
Why collaborativately?
Because I am positive that there are always people that know more then us, and when we do this together we have more power to achieve greater changes.
Why should you participate?
Because its fun to change the world, action by action. But in order to answer this question more accurately I will tell you a small story that happened to me:

I got to know that this year’s Volvo Sportsdesign award theme was EcoDesign through a post in the Design Blog “Design.com.br”, writen by Fernando Galdino. Without Fernando writing it about it in his blog, Letsevo would probably miss the deadline of the Award. We, from theEcosk8 project, sent immediately a prototype of our ecological Skateboard to the Award. And as I wrote here before, we were nominated for the Board equipment category!! If it wasn’t for Fernando Galdino and his love for sharing his knowledge, maybe it would have been too late for us to participate.

I hope Letsevo Calendar helps someone just like Fernando’s post helped the ecosk8 project!

Wanna participate? Logon to the Letsevo Calendar group inside of Upcoming.org and start to change the things around here. Lets evo!!!

I just had to try to build something in 3dvia Shape to see what it can do. I was also curious to test 3dvia`s uploading process. After downloading their Shape sofware, which didn`t take more than a minute, the program prompted me with a screen to login the system. After typing in my 3dvia username and password I could start playing with the functions of the software…there are not many I have to tell… and 3dvia has some video tutorials about using the software which I didn`t check, accept for the one about applying textures.

I was set up to build a 3D modell of skateboard bmx ramp for all the brothers and sisters who like to go big virtually. I just had to do it!

I started out by drawing the side view line and then extruded them to give some volume. After photoshoping a EVO skateboards logo to one off my wood texture files I was prepared to give this ramp a unique look. Pretty simple and not much of novelty in this. Applying the textures was pretty easy so was scaling and rotating it to match the scale of the Ramp. After being pleased how it looked, I just hit the Publish button and I was taken to their website where I could fill some details about the 3d model I was uploading. You can choose publish your model for everyone or to keep it private which means only you or who you want to show/give can see/download (this is nice if you want to keep it hidden before you have everything build or even if you want to collaborate in top secret style with other people) You can set a creative commons license and tags to make your model easily searchable. The modell is added to your profile page and can be at any given time edited again.

Here is a link to a screenshot of the 3d ramp in 3dvia shape

Everything is still pretty ruff, there isn’t much accuracy in building as a product designer would like.Lets hope Dassaut systemes, responsible for the software bring some functionality to the game. I think it only then it could be an awesome tool for collaboration projects like the ecosk8 project that has been happening at Lets Evo since 2006.

Some questions to start a discussion about the impact of such tools into the design process:

What benefits could it bring to companies?
Are user really motivated to participate?
Will 3dvia Shape develop itself into a tool for designers and engineers and users to communicate in real products?
Are we designers going to get used to interacting so early with users about design decisions?

Only time will tell.

Enjoy the 3D ramp!

I am experimenting with the concept of Widgets which lets you take peaces of webcode from PLACE A and embed in PLACE B on the web. A common use of it: An embed youtube video on a Blog makes use of an Widget to do it.

My interest on widgets grew by believing that with the simplification of communication technologies on the web, users are actively reshaping media and forming opinion, more than ever before.

With the growing need of customizing the experience on the internet, a number of services emerged to make it possible for people to personalize their web experience. Netvibes and Igoogle are two examples. With them you can make a personalized Start Page with all the relevant information to you (weather, to do lists, Email Inbox, you name it…)

What is the relevance for open design and development?

In a real-time integrated design platform, widgets enable the flow of information without having to rely on centralized decisions. Widgets make it possible to quickly spread ideas and to communicate project updates through whatever platform or website one wants.

Imagine you have a small bike factory in your garage, and you are developing a new concept for a bike frame and you have chosen to “Open Design it”, like we are doing in the ecosk8 project, you are openly talking about our ideas before they become reality. You came up with new geometry concept that’s going to sweep 3 seconds out every rider’s downhill time a the local Downhill track, and for this frame geometry the special aluminum tubing that can handle the curving of this new geometryis just not available any where you look. A widget could be used, containing information like that, to spread the word for you on different suppliers websites.

Now imagine this same small bike factory and it’s team of 3 Amateur riders. Every one of them having a blog or myspace page where they publish their latest results, photos and tips. Doing the widget thing you could easily embed their blogs onto your factory website and vice-versa. Boom! evolution.

Think of this now:

Every time the rider puts up on his blog, a picture of him, on the podium, wearing your brand’s t-shirt, the picture shines on your website, and he gets a reward! Sponsoring on demand?

Brand, your next factory bike video needs a new sound track!? Boom! Click Click and the whole myspace community knows about it!

Of course Letsevo Lab couldn’t sleep a night to figure out how to have its own Blog widget. I’m no programmer (I wish I was) but looking around I found out that there are some platforms that enable we, the people, to easily create a widget for your Blog. Here are some of them: SpringWidgets, WidgetBox and Yourminis.

Using Widgetbox I made what can be proudly called the Beta Version of Letsevo’s “wherever you want it to be” widget.

Letsevo Widget on my Netvibes Page

Lets Evo Widget on my Igoogle Page

Those brave enough to give it a shot can do so by going to: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/lets-evo-blog
and placing it where ever they want! Feedbacks are welcome!