NOVEDGE blog

Interview with James Coleman: "What started as a result of not being able to move more than a few meters a day has ended being in a very strong position teaching one of the most powerful 3D/CAD render engines in the world."

I discovered James Coleman's work on Twitter and invited him to talk about being a student in England and becoming a certified instructor of Maxwell Render. Little did I know James had needed all his determination to study and work while battling a rare disease.

Novedge: Tell us about yourself and what you do.

James Coleman: I am a student of product design, currently in my last year at the University of Brighton. I also teach fellow students at the University and I have my own YouTube channel with tutorials on Maxwell Render.

 

I studied physics, electronics and maths (pure & mechanics) at college when I was 17, and chose to study mechanical engineering in university. Then something happened that would, for better or worse, shape the rest of my education forever. In 2007 it was discovered that I had a condition called chronic hypersensitivity that affects 300,000 in the UK, and the root cause is still unknown, as is a cure. The recovery period is approximately half the patient's age, in other words, I still have 5 years of recovery ahead of me, but at least I now have a diagnosis and I am receiving treatment.

Once I found out about my condition, I started to use my spare time to make 3D models of spaceships in SketchUp and decided to change my course to Product Design Bsc.

Novedge: How did you get into teaching? 

James Coleman: Whilst in my second year, my renders kept garnering attention, and I started showing groups of students how I made them. Then I setup some lectures in the afternoon. The first was hugely successful and I became the official Maxwell Render Mentor at the University of Brighton Center for Design Technology. When Next Limit announced their certification program I signed up immediately!

In the summer of 2012, I set up my Youtube channel and started recording basic tutorials, things like resolution and focal length, with the occasional overview of certain setup techniques. I also upload tutorials based on the questions my students asked me most frequently.

Then one day I was looking for inspiration for a new tutorial and I saw that VizPeople had released a free model of a DeLorean DMC12, which has always been one of my favourite cars. By coincidence, Maground had also recently released a free HDRI set with environment and backplates on hdri4u.com. I decided to strike while the iron was hot, and I made a series of tutorials involving setting up the model and then rendering it in a variety of different environments. The DeLorean Series got the attention of cadjunkie.com, which I was already a fan of. I ended up producing 10 free and 6 premium tutorials for them, Studio Lighting Techniques In Maxwell Render. The series went on to great acclaim, and like the DeLorean tutorial, continues to be one of the most popular videos on my channel.

 

Currently I am working on the tutorial series’ Maxwell Render Hot Tips and What Not To Render. There’s currently a new video in each playlist every week and there will be until April.

Novedge: Your university didn't have instructors to teach you how to render using Maxwell Render. How did you learn?

James Coleman: I learned by doing: I spent my time using the program, looking for answers in online forums and  watching online tutorials. 

Novedge: What software do you use? 

James Coleman: I started out with SketchUp all those years ago for one very simple reason: it was free. I can’t remember exactly where I first heard about it, but I do remember using it with friends and learning from each other. It was also really helpful that SketchUp didn’t have high system requirements, the interface and the “sketchy” style made it approachable, and although it was designed for architecture, we used it for whatever we liked.

After I became frustrated with the limited modeling tools in SketchUp, I started searching for a more advanced alternatives. 3ds Max has a huge reputation on the web, but is only available on Windows, and I use a Mac. I heard about Cinema 4D and downloaded the demo. I loved it’s interface and I understood the basics almost immediately. The tutorials available online were extensive and it wasn’t difficult to find an answer to a problem. I decided to keep it and I’ve never regretted it. I still use it today when making quick drafts, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone starting out in product design, but plenty of other students on my course use it for animations, and for times when they need to make a model quickly and easily. 3ds Max is also popular with Windows users as an alternative to CAD centric software.

The CAD software we use at the university is less a matter of choice and more a matter of logic. SolidWorks is practically a requirement on CVs at the moment. Rhino is also available. When I started the course, I found Rhino to be more similar to Cinema 4D and hence I preferred it at the time. But now that I’ve used both for years, I always open SolidWorks before Rhino when I need to make a prototype, even for models with complex curves.

When I first became interested in photorealistic rendering, V-Ray was very appealing to me, but once I actually had V-Ray for Cinema 4D, I realized that I didn’t want to spend a lot of time adjusting settings, I wanted to spend more time designing and modeling. A few internet searches later and I found Maxwell Render. When I first tried it, it was still version 1, and it won me over in terms of ease of use and quality. One of the first images I ever made showed the model casting a shadow on the floor, when the only lighting in the scene was an HDRI. I’d never seen that before and it was enough to make a lasting impression. I dabbled between Cinema 4D’s own render engine, V-Ray and Maxwell Render for a while, but when Maxwell Render 2 was released I didn’t look back. For me it still delivers fantastic results, whether the image is complicated or simple, very easily. 

And something I wish someone had told me when I started: whenever you see a render that really impresses you, 10-25% of all the work that went into making that image came from Photoshop, which is why it is also another vital tool in my arsenal of software. Alien Skin Exposure is a plug-in for Photoshop that I couldn’t work without, it mimics the effect of certain types of photographic film, but with a lot more control and subtlety than Instagram.

Novedge: What is a recent project that you worked on?


James Coleman: The most surprising thing about my product design course is that we focus on teaching communication, technology, professionalism, history, etc. It’s a doctrine that actually I agree with. Not just because it follows Dieter Rams’ principles, but also because we have the rest of our lives to design, so we might as well use the time now to make sure we know how to do it right, and then later on we can be eccentric if we like. Very often in product design, designers can get too caught up in the aesthetics of a product and forget about ergonomics, engineering, or any other topic. That’s not what’s taught in Brighton, and that's what makes it stand out from other, more “arts” based courses.

One project I enjoyed was making a “Revolutionary” product, with the tag-line of “It doesn’t look like a “X”, but it does what a “X” does”. I was inspired by one of my favorite ideas in product design, “the new application of an existing technology”, and because we were so pressured to design something that would be completely revolutionary, I decided to include some technologies that were theoretically possible but not available yet. I based the project on audio loudspeakers, because the technology in them hasn’t really changed for nearly 150 years, they’re still as electrodynamic as they were when they were first invented. The end result is the Levitating Superconducting Speakers concept. 

After starting to use Maxwell Render 2, one of my projects was to identify a product which exhibited evolutionary design, and to continue that design onto its next generation. For my project I chose the Kodak Brownie, despite being out of production since the 1970’s, its design when it was discontinued was very similar to when it was originally conceived at the beginning of the century. Kodak would often make special edition cameras for major events and I immediately themed the project around the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games. The project was small and it only took a few weeks to complete, but it went on to be featured on Yanko Design, and after that it was very popular on the web, I still see the occasional tweet about it! I put the amount of public interest in the project down to the quality of the renders. I approached Kodak to see if they would be interested in taking the project further, and although they weren’t interested at the time, they invited me to contact them about employment upon my graduation.

Novedge: What innovations do you see in your field (now or in the future)?


James Coleman: I think predicting the future has never really involved specific technologies, but instead looking at habits, lifestyles and routines, and then the technology is left to catch up. Touch screen technology, for example, was mostly a gimmick that had little real world value, until you could touch simultaneously in more than one place at once, and it was applied to a mobile phone. In hindsight it seems obvious that that’s how it should be used. So predicting specific technologies that will be developed, find a niche, and become cheap enough to be in common use, is much more difficult than imagining overall work flows and customs. My Levitating Speakers involved several different technologies that are not commonplace yet, or do not exist at all, including superdiamagnetic levitation, wireless power transfer, and flexible screens. It is certain that these technologies will develop over time, in fact when the project was completed, wireless speakers were still revolutionary, but now AirPlay is commonplace. The question is, will there be a benefit to having Levitating Speakers?

3D printing has got a lot of press lately regarding its potential. I agree that one day we may have 3D printers in every home, and in one end you would put waste, and then products, food and other luxuries will come tumbling out of the other. I think that one day, we will have “Star Trek” style replicators, powered by electricity which will probably come from fusion reactors. But not within my lifetime. At the moment, 3D printing and rapid prototyping often seem limited to making spare components when objects break. Even then they have to come from 3D files made by a professional. Consumers will want to be able to print complete objects, like kettles, laptops or phones. Even though 3D printers which are capable of making multi-coloured objects, and printing multiple components connected together have existed for some time, as someone who has worked with 3D printers for many years, I think we still have some way to go. But when we are there, they will change the world in ways which no one has yet imagined, and copyright and piracy laws will once again be brought into question.

In my particular area of interest (medical design), there are plenty of issues which are commonplace and well known. Drug resistant infections, obesity related complications, and aging population are the three problems which I expect to encounter in my design career. In much less than a century, certain bacteria have evolved to become almost immune to many typical antibiotics. If this trend continues, product design will have to play a major role in increasing the hygiene of hospital environments. Anti-microbial materials such as copper are already seeing a comeback, and although cloth bedsheets interwoven with silver (again for its anti-microbial properties) is a hugely expensive concept at present, if it becomes cheaper than treating patients, it will become a reality. 

Despite being prepared for these trends, I don’t think there is anything that can or will prepare me for the problem of ageing population. There are practical, medical, and ethical issues where product design will be called upon to help. These issues are nothing new, but will be exaggerated in the future. With higher demand, and larger markets, products specifically for the elderly will become more commonplace, and inclusive design will have more influence over everyone. This effect is visible now, for example with non-step access to buildings being a legal requirement, and this trend shows no sign of stopping.

Novedge: What are your plans after graduation?

James Coleman: My ideal job would be a product designer at a company specializing in the medical industry. My overall impression of the purpose of product design is to make our lives more efficient, where is that more important than when well being, potentially lives, are at stake? Medical staff are often overworked and underpaid, and then they have to use equipment made by the lowest bidder. Then this equipment will not be updated unless it breaks or is recalled (the standard that dictates the design of an IV drip stand is nearly 50 years old, and has never been updated). And with humans living longer and getting fatter, the market is just going to get bigger (some pun intended).

My family is a big reason I feel this way. Three generations have in some way or another worked in the medical industry. I’m not brave enough to be on the front line like they are, but I wouldn’t mind sitting back at a comfortable distance and making the equipment that they use everyday a little bit more efficient. 

Most of all, though, I’m going to recover from the condition that has practically dictated my life for the past 5 years. It’ll take another 5 years to be completely rid of it, but I’m looking forward to being able to walk to places without running the risk of being housebound the next day. I’m looking forward to working to improve the services that have served me for so long.

Interview with Josh Mings and Adam O'Hern: "Your brain is full of ideas, most of them very bad"

Here at Novedge, we are big fans of Engineer Vs. Designer, Josh Mings and Adam O'Hern's joint podcast on product design. While they are taking a break from their series (and working on new projects), I asked Adam and Josh to share a bit about themselves, the software they use and the innovations of the future. 

True to their style, they sent me this awesome recording. So here it is, enjoy!

 

EngineerVsDesigner: Novedge Interview from EvD Media on Vimeo.

 

Catch up on Engineer Vs. Designer on its website and on Twitter.

Adam O'Hern is the founder of Cadjunkie, join the community and find him on Twitter.

Josh Mings is the man behind SolidSmack and you can read his latest tweets here.

Interview with Chris Anderson: "Technology is not important. What's important is participation"

I recently had the pleasure of talking to Chris Anderson over the phone, for Novedge's series of interviews with artists and innovators. I am a big fan of Chris's books and Novedge fits perfectly in his Long Tail business model . For those of you not familiar with Anderson, he is a writer and the founder and chairman of 3DRobotics, a robotic manufacturing company. He was also the editor of Wired from 2001 to 2012.

Novedge: I'm a huge fan of your books and really enjoyed Makers. My first question for you is: How would you define yourself? You're an entrepreneur, you're a writer. How do you describe what you do and who you are professionally?

Chris Anderson: I try to avoid that question (laughter) I do a lot of things. I try not to come up with any single label. I'm a CEO. I'm a boss

Novedge: One thing I'm curious about is how you became passionate about writing about trends and the future. What lead you to it?

Chris Anderson: I have been very lucky to be around people who were kind of doing the same thing. I was lucky to grow up with a family who encouraged kids to be thoughtful about where this is going and where you should go, and to be exposed to a kind of analytical culture in my family. Then I was lucky to work in places that encouraged that first at Nature and Science and then at Wired. Wired is a publication very much about ideas and trends, from science to future technology.

Novedge: How did you first come into contact with 3D printing?

Chris Anderson: I heard about Makerbot and I happened to be in New York shortly after they started. I asked to get a tour, went to Brooklyn and walked through the facilities. I ended up buying their 3D printer on the spot. I bought #380 and that was mind blowing. I put it together and it didn't really work very well but the next one I got worked great. And the rest is history.

Novedge: What's the favorite thing that you printed on your Makerbot?

Chris Anderson: I wrote about it in Makers. We printed a lot of things but the thing I actually like the most was furniture, you know, items that I do with my daughters. The things I design myself are pretty cool but I'm not a very good designer, so the things that we download from Thingiverse and print out, those are the ones that print so well. So, yeah, I like the furniture the best.

Novedge: Let's talk about how hard it is to use the printer and the software. Do you see regular people learning how to use the software or do you see more people downloading the designs and printing them at home? How hard do you think it is to use this technology, if you don't already work in a tech field?

Chris Anderson: It used to be very hard and now it's getting incredibly easy. So now my children do this. They don't need me anymore. They use Tinkercad on the web, which is super easy for kids, but also very powerful. So, by and large, it's not really any harder for them that using Word software and printing paper. It seems very natural to them. Again, three years ago this was super hard but now it's literally like regular printing.

Novedge: Apart from Tinkercad, is there any other software that you would recommend or that you love to use?

Chris Anderson: It really depends on how sophisticated you want to get. The kids use Tinkercad and I actually prefer it for most of my stuff. When I want to get a little more complex, I switch to Autodesk 123D and then in the office, professionally, we use AutoDesk Inventor.

Novedge: There are companies out there, like Shapeways, where you can get a design or you can order something already 3D printed. Is there one you like the best? Do you wish they did something different?

Chris Anderson: We use Shapeways all the time. About every week we send them something. What we use Shapeways for is the material that we can't touch at home, like metals. Shapeways's printing service is very easy to use, but it takes quite a long time, it can take a month for something to arrive. Ideally it's a little bit less than that. So you have to wait. But when it shows up, it's absolutely beautiful. We actually don't use designs that are already on Shapeways. I don't know why but we don't. We tend to use or create our own designs or download them from Thingiverse and then send them to Shapeways.

Novedge: What do you like the most about Thingiverse?

Chris Anderson: I just love the variety. My favorite designer there goes by the name of Pretty Small Things. She's a theatrical set designer on Broadway but as well as designing sets she puts these designs on Thingiverse and they're beautiful. So yeah, I just like the variety, I like the creativity. It's just there's always something new and cool there.

Novedge: I read your book Makers and  you talk about being an inventor vs. being an entrepreneur, how before it was hard to be an inventor and an entrepreneur and now things have become a little bit easier.

Chris Anderson: The process to go from invention to market is a two-part step. The first was to go from idea to prototype, and that used to require skills, machine skills, manufacturing skills, fabrication skills. And the second was to go from prototype to production and that required understanding, having access to mass production capacities and all of that. Both of those have now gotten much, much easier. Obviously a 3D printer is a great way to go from idea to prototype and likewise for a laser cutter or any of these technologies. So you don't need machine skills to go from idea to prototype. And then to go from prototype to production is increasingly easy as well because of so-called cloud manufacturing. Those same files that you design on screen and send to your 3D printer, you can upload online.  Manufacturing companies will take those files and mass produce products for you any way that you want. It's sometimes a little more complicated than that, depending on the product. But fundamentally, regular people have access to both prototyping and manufacturing, which was not the case when my grandfather was inventing things.

Novedge: Are we all entrepreneurs? Are we all inventors?

Chris Anderson: No, no, I don't think so. And that's fine. I think we are all creators in some way, but I don't think it's necessarily in everyone to become an entrepreneur. I think that one percent of people could design and innovate and everybody could start playing with their creations. Let's say most people do nothing but print other people's designs or distribute them, or customize them. Let's say most people do nothing creative with it: but one percent do have their own ideas or do invent something, or innovate. And let's say one percent of them decide they want to become an entrepreneur. That's one out of a thousand.

Would you say that that's a failure? You know, only one out of every thousand of these people becomes an entrepreneur. There are 300 million people in this country - that's when you realize that 0.1 percent is a very large number. It means you've got thousands or tens of thousands of new entrepreneurs, new manufacturers, new product categories, new products themselves that are entering the market that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And that feels very much like the Web, which basically gave everybody the power to publish and, you know, lots of people did nothing more than update their Facebook page but some people created Facebook. The lesson of the web is that the most innovative ideas, the most energetic entrepreneurs, typically come from outside the traditional industry. This is the first time that has been allowed to extend to manufacturing as well.

Novedge: I like the comparison that you made between the internet and 3D printing, this revolution in manufacturing. What are the advantages of actually having more people participate in making products? What are the benefits to society?

Chris Anderson: What we're talking about is what is called democratization. Personal computers democratized computing, the internet democratized communications and now we're democratizing manufacturing. Any time you democratize, you're basically bringing more diversity, more people, more ideas, more contexts to development. What you find is that typically most people are "amateurs", they're not professionally trained and they don't have credentials, they don't have work experience, they don't work for companies that are in the space. And yet, when you look at everything exciting on the web it was all created by people who were initially amateurs. When you look at the biggest web companies today, they were all started by people in colleges, more or less. And they weren't working for IBM when they created these products. They were working for themselves, or maybe not working at all. They were students or they were just users and they had ideas. Now, maybe they were only one out of a thousand or whatever, just a tiny fraction of people have those skills, but because democratization increases the pool of participants so hugely, that small fraction of geniuses creates a huge new pool of talent that wouldn't otherwise have been tapped. So it's simply that geniuses are hard to find. Great ideas are hard to predict, and the best way to do it is to increase the pool of participation so much that the geniuses will emerge.

Novedge: Would you say that it also equalizes the playing field a little bit? We are removing barriers to education and access to capital.

Chris Anderson: Yeah, very much. I think the combination of these tools and these web services and sites like Kickstarter, which brings access to capital to everybody with a good idea, are all leveling the playing field and lowering the barriers to entry. That's exactly what the web and open source software did and it works. Every important trend in technology over the last three decades has been essentially to lower the barrier to entry to participate. Some of the barriers were cost, some of the barriers were permission, some of the barriers were complexity, some of the barriers were community. As all of those things fall, people suddenly start doing stuff. They start acting. They start creating products and companies. People think that technology is important. Technology is not important. What's important is participation. When technologies work it is because they make it easier for people to participate. And I don't have to predict this any more. It's 2013. We are 40 years into the personal computer era. We are 20 years into the internet era. We are seeing what's happening and this is just the next chapter in that story.

Novedge: Companies are starting to hire differently, they're starting to have a different culture inside. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Chris Anderson: 3DRobotics is an open source community and also a company and so we are a traditional company in one respect, where we have employees who have roles and responsibilities and we create products. But we are also a community in the sense that we have an open platform that allows tens of thousands of people to participate and volunteer and create. Traditional companies do it all themselves and we share the function between professionals and amateurs, between employees and amateurs and engineers, between the closed and the open. So that's my company, that's the way we're structured. I wouldn't say that all companies should be structured that way. I'm sure most companies aren't structured this way but it is certainly one of the lessons from the open source movement that this sort of cross sourcing in a process can create the kind of sophisticated product that people thought could only be created by traditional companies. Turns out that a well-constructed community can be a powerful innovation driver. That's something I think all companies need to pay attention to, but it might not be appropriate for everybody.

Novedge: How different is it now to finance your project? Can you say something about Kickstarter and the impact it is having on the industry?

Chris Anderson: I think Kickstarter is really the final element that completes the industrial revolution of the maker movement. It lowers the last barrier, which is the access to capital. It does three miraculous things. The first is that it moves money forward in time. It moves money from the end of the process, when people buy a product, to the beginning of the process, when you actually need to invest in R&D and production tooling. So simply the act of taking presales and getting the customers to fund the product is terrific because the customers are ultimately the decider of whether it will be a success. The second thing it does is that it builds a community around the product so that lots of people pre-order something and they become invested in the success of the product. They want to promote it, by social media or otherwise, and they want to participate in its design and give feedback.The community is a very important marketing tool, to say nothing of a feedback tool, and using that tool improves the product before it comes to market. And finally, Kickstarter does market research. If the product fails on Kickstarter it probably wouldn't have survived in the market. Move on to something else. In a sense it "de-risks" a product. That's one of the hardest things to do in traditional industries and it's what Kickstarter was designed to do. Anybody can do it. And I think that's the last barrier. A bunch of other sites are doing the same thing and it's not perfect. We are seeing that some people are realistic about what it takes to get a product from prototype to production, and some aren't. But by and large it is less risky than traditional startups. So, I'm really enthusiastic about it.

Novedge: In Makers, you talk about the "happiness economy". You write that basically, once we achieve a certain standard of living, we are not motivated by more money necessarily, we look for more meaning.

Chris Anderson: I did talk about that. That's not my specialty. There are many other people who know way more about it than I do, but when I look at communities where the participation is open like our own, they are rarely driven by money. They are mostly driven by passion, by what we call scratching your own itch. Paychecks ? That's great but it turns out people are doing amazing things as volunteers, driven by passion.  And what you give them is a platform and opportunity to act on that. To take the passion and turn it into something that's shared, something that's a tribute to something bigger than themselves and inspire other people to follow their path. My previous book Free was all about that, about the non monetary economy. Meaning is another word, passion is another word. Connection. These are all forces that drive us to do things and when you think about it, most of our interactions with people are not done for money. Most of what we do is driven by non-monetary forces and to be able to turn those powerful social forces into an economic force just by harnessing passion, that's the opportunity here. So I think that the more control we have over our lives, the happier we are. That's kind of the big lessons. Fundamentally what people want is a sense of knowledge and meaning and certainty and all the things that come with it. To the extent that we can extend that to the products all around us, the sense that we can be more involved in their creation and use, the happier we are. Take food for example: wanting to have a connection to something as important as the food you eat makes you less of a passive consumer and more of an active participant . When you look at the people who are going to Farmer's Markets and buying local, there's a reason why what they want to know about the origins of these products. They want to have a connection to the community. They want to feel that there's more than just a product they're consuming, that there's a movement they're supporting or a story that they believe in or a value that they share. And that relationship with our goods is something that you are seeing across the board. It's just one of those things that emerges out of developed economies and I think that we now have the potential to take that beyond food and textiles to more sophisticated manufacturing goods around.

Novedge: Do you think the same will happen in manufacturing?

Chris Anderson: Yeah, I'm speaking to you in my office in Berkeley, which is next to a furniture design company, called Swerve. We're here in California but California is not a low cost labour market. And yet, they're making furniture. How do they keep on making furniture? The reason that people buy it, and pay more for this furniture, is that they feel that it's a superior design. And the reason they feel it is a superior design is that they see the designers. They talk to the creatives. They understand the process and they value the culture that this design came from, because it's their culture. It's shared.

Novedge: I have one last question. What advice would you give our readers about moving forward with the democratization of manufacturing?

Chris Anderson: It's hard for me to give advice to your readers because they already know a lot of this stuff. My breakthrough was not so much doing it myself but doing it with my children. When we brought a 3D printer home and started showing the children how it worked and using the tools, their own creativity emerged and that really encouraged me: if children could do it, anybody could do it. A lot of your readers probably have 3D printers at work. I would encourage them to consider a 3D printer at home. If they have children, a child growing up in a house with a 3D printer is a child that can imagine something and then can make it for real. And that's a powerful lesson. Some of them are going to become the adults who are the designers of tomorrow. It's an inspiration that my generation grew up with a home computer and we created, you know that generation created our web. This generation may grow up with a 3D printer and this generation can create the new industrial revolution

 

To learn more about Chris Anderson, visits DIY Drones and keep in touch with him on Twitter.

Makers by Chris Anderson is Novedge's Book of the Month.

Novedge Pulse Pushes the Limits of Social Media for CAD

Blogs are an important source of information. We all know this. Most of us started bookmarking one CAD blog and going back every day to read the new posts. It was a nice way to stay updated while drinking a morning coffee. Soon, we found our attention and time split among a set of cross-referenced blogs. Gradually we realized that going through all this interesting stuff would take up a good slice of our morning, more than we could afford. This was the moment when we switched to an RSS reader. In the beginning, the RSS reader worked perfectly. It reduced the time we dedicated to blogs and news with minimal compromises. But before we knew it, the amount of blogs and news exceeded the time budgeted. At this point the more adventurous of us began experimenting with Digg and Delicios, and found, unfortunately, that they didn't work. Digg and Delicios are general tools that can't be customized to focus on our specific areas of interest. At this point I realized I could create something new, something that would take the best of available technologies and rescue CAD users and professionals, giving back the pleasure of the morning coffee-CAD news ritual.

take the best of available technologies giving back the pleasure of the morning coffee-CAD news ritual

Today Novedge Pulse processes the feed of about 350 different sources, matching each post and news with a database of over 550 authors. Each author is clearly recognizable by his picture, and fully traceable with a link to his LinkedIn profile and his Twitter page. Posts and news are grouped together on a daily base. Readers vote on each item with a click of the mouse -- either promoting it with a heart beat or demoting it with a heart burn. The collective preferences of Novedge readers dynamically creates a list of the most interesting and relevant posts as they appear on the Internet.

Novedge Pulse processes about 350 different sources, matching each post and news with a db of over 550 authors

I receive feedback from Pulse users almost every day. My goal is to improve usability, adding a few select features while keeping Pulse as simple as possible. I recently released a new version of Novedge Pulse with some important improvements and tuning. Now I have additional reasons to believe that Novedge Pulse is the most advanced source of information in the CAD and 3D graphics online world. Here are the reasons for my statement:

• Novedge Pulse collects information from about 350 sources and matches each news item with a database of over 550 authors.
• All news and blog posts are gathered and published on Pulse in real-time.
• Readers can easily vote on every single item with just a click. This simple rating system lets the best posts and most interesting news of the day quickly emerge at the top of the page, while pushing the less important items towards the bottom.
• Novedge Pulse contextualizes each news and blog post. Based on the type of information and availability, each item shows a link to the author profile on LinkedIn, the author page on Twitter, the source RSS feed, and for companies, a link to the corresponding Yahoo! Finance pages. This is valuable for readers who want to be able to quickly verify employers, affiliations, and resumes of every blogger.
• Novedge Pulse can be browsed by date and by author, selecting different levels of detail. The page will remember your preferences the next time you come back, without requiring a login.
• Each news or blog post can be easily identified and linked by a permalink. Text and video comments are also enabled on every item page as way to complement the comments on the original blog page.
• All news and blog posts on Novedge Pulse can be easily republished thanks to a public RSS feed. Publishers don't have to worry about annoying ads. Pulse is free and the RSS feed is ads free.

The number of visitors to Novedge Pulse is constantly growing, pushing Novedge to improve the service and allocate more resources to guarantee a better and more reliable service. We are committed to support and extend Novedge Pulse. Make Novedge Pulse your first website in the morning!

Franco Folini

Interview with Daniel Ha, DisqUs Founder and CEO

Novedge recently added a section at the bottom of each page of its website providing a space where visitors and customers can leave comments sharing their opinions and experiences. The tools that allowed us to implement this service are provided by Disqus, a new startup located in San Francisco, just a few blocks from Novedge headquarters. Disqus has been deployed on over 38,000 blogs and is hosting the comments of over 70,000 users. After only a week from the introduction of this feature on our website we started seeing the first comments appear on our pages. While many visitors post comments about products, some use this space simply to ask Novedge technical questions or to find out more information about prices. I'm getting very excited about this technology, and its future developments and implications. In order to satisfy my growing interest, I went directly to the founder and CEO of Disqus to get a first hand opinion on this topic. Daniel Ha, who is still in his early twenties, promptly accepted my invitation for an interview and almost in real-time answered all of my questions. Here is the text of the interview.

Daniel, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I founded Disqus with my friend Jason Yan toward the beginning of 2007. At the end of 2006, we decided to work on a web project together while we were in school (studying computer science). Discussion was an area most familiar to us and we began working on tools for forums, group discussion, and community building. Today's Disqus evolved from this as the blog feature of our project became popular amongst our earliest testers. We both participated in Y Combinator, which gave us some money and a lot of guidance and connections. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was enough for us to leave school and work on our project (which became our company) full time.

We benefitted heavily from enthusiastic bloggers

After launching publicly at the end of 2007, we raised some more money and began expanding the service as fast as we could. We benefitted heavily from enthusiastic bloggers and commenters are naturally vocal with their opinions. Today, Disqus is the leading comment system and management tool for all sorts of sites.

Disqus is quietly introducing a Copernican revolution for the net. While in the past users had to bring content to their social network websites, with Disqus the social network goes where the content is. What are the implications of this paradigm shift?

I think most implications are yet to be seen. What we've witnessed thus far is that people are more willing to contribute to websites when they feel they are rewarded or have control over their comments. If I know that my comments are claimed by me, and they're not just attached to a single site, I'm more wiling to contribute and develop my online persona.

people are more willing to contribute to websites when they feel they are rewarded or have control over their comments

One issue that is brought up often is the fragmentation and overall messiness of discussion. People tend to use their content aggregator or discussion tool of choice, and the discussion may stray far from the original content. I think Disqus will play a pivotal role, moving forward, in bridging all of this together. We certainly think this is one of the most interesting things about what we do.

Disqus is starting to face competition from some big names. How will users react to a proliferation of commenting systems?

We've always had a smattering of competition here and there. The way we will be the best is to continually innovate in providing a great commenting experience. If we can deliver on this promise better than our competitors, then I think we'll do well.

If we can deliver on this promise better than our competitors, then I think we'll do well

For users, I think it's great that they have choice. On the flip side, it may be confusing to have so many different channels for discussion -- our job is to make sure their choice doesn't negatively affect them. We want to be compatible; our network of commenters and publishers shouldn't be closed and we're working to be more open.

Another big challenge Disqus is facing is the recent establishment of login systems independent from the content provider (Facebook Connect, OpenID, etc.). Disqus promptly embraced this trend by implementing Facebook Connect. What is your strategy in this specific area?

Our strategy is to play nice. We're not going to be a login service. We do the discussion part well because we focus on that only. Our own login system is necessary for how things work, but we'll openly embrace the best technologies that will benefit the most people on the web.

Our strategy is to play nice

Facebook Connect has been working well for us so far and we're going to be adding more functionality that will allow people to take advantage of what Facebook has available in their platform.

How much interaction with Disqus is happening on the Disqus website and how much on the content hosting websites (blogs, newspapers, etc.)? How do you plan to promote the social features of your system?

The majority of interactions is on the publisher partners. That's how we want it -- we provide a service and I don't think we really need to see much traffic on our sites. Most of the interactions on our site is from the administration and profiles.

Novedge, among the first of e-commerce websites, just implemented Disqus across its entire main website. What can we expect as far as reactions from the users and benefits for them?

The first benefit I hope you'll see is an increase in engagement from your users. Novedge is exposed to a greater community of commenters, with social features that ideally encourages contributions.
Users should find it easier to leave comments and find more value in doing this. The overall experience should be more enjoyable as well.

I would like to thank Daniel for taking the time to answer my questions. A special thanks also to Giannii, Disqus Community Manager, for his generous contribution to the Disqus users' community and for connecting me and Daniel. If you have any questions for Daniel or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer. The Disqus commenting system is available on every product and brand page of the Novedge website.

Franco Folini

For more information on this topic, take a look at this foldier sPression, an online collection of the most interesting articles on the new wave of commenting technology and its players.

Interview with Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Owner of Architosh

Creative professionals have always had a fascination with Apple products and the Mac personal computer in particular. While Mac was one of the first personal computers to have a graphic user-interface, the connection seems to goes beyond that -- and to continue even after the GUI became a standard. One of the first websites who endorsed the partnership of Architecture and Mac was Architosh. This website survived the collapse of the dot-com bubble and still today brings fresh news from the computer graphics and architectural field, high-quality interviews, product reviews, and offers a public forum where Mac fans can exchange opinions and share experiences. The person that makes this possible with his daily work and dedication is Anthony Frausto-Robledo.

Anthony, can you tell us a bit about yourself?

Sure. I'm a design person by nature, not a tech person and I think that gives me a slightly different perspective about tech in design fields.
I have a bachelor's of architecture degree. I have worked in architecture firms since I was in high school. I was always very good at art. Because I am old enough to have experienced the architecture firm prior to the computer I remember the predominant feeling of a typical pre-computer firm. It felt like a studio. The spectrum of focus was unbroken. When computers came into practice there was this mental shift that occurred. The spectrum of focus within the creative firm got split, like an axe splitting a log. This interrupted the combination of energy and calm that I normally felt and associated with an architect's office.

I'm a design person by nature, not a tech person and I think that gives me a slightly different perspective

When I graduated from architecture school I went to work for Fred Koetter of Koetter Kim & Associates, in Boston. Fred was dean of architecture at Yale at the time -- he's an absolute brilliant architect -- and he was my primary architectural hero. Anyway, his office had the same focus of the pre-computer office yet it had computers everywhere. And they were Macs. What I learned was this office did amazing things with these Macs, with great efficiency and simplicity, and that these computers calmly fit into the backdrop of the office. In other words, they never got in our way. And because of this there was no need for the spectrum of focus to be split. The Macs simply "served us."

Did you really feel that strongly about technology interfering with the design process? When did Architosh start?

Yes and no. I could see that some people were not as affected by the disposition between the machine and their craft. But for me it just really interfered and affected me more. When I am working at my highest level, creatively, I can't have any kind of major interruptions. But the personal computer is full of potential disaster and disruption. At this point in the late 90's I decided I needed to get a hold of technology for myself. I needed, in other words, to figure out how to get technology to simply serve, serve really well... and without interruptions. I needed to ensure that tech in practice would be a lot more like R2D2 in Star Wars versus his always yacking robot companion C3PO. So I started a consultancy in 1998 and launched Architosh.com in February of 1999.

I launched Architosh.com in February of 1999

When it launched it was simply a listing of my research on Mac software for CAD, 3D and AEC. I was just exploring back then, but I soon found I had a very large global audience. At that time the Net was all the rage and so I began to look at it differently. Within two years I realized I loved the journalism challenge and opportunities it presented.

As a long time Mac user can you explain the reciprocal fascination between the graphic world and the Mac world?

The relationship you speak of centers on just a particular body of creative people -- and not just in the graphics world. I think they see a reflection of themselves in the way the Macintosh computer is conceived as a whole. In other words, there is a shared sense of design values.

there is a shared sense of design values [between Mac and creative people]

The fascination part comes in because the personal computer by nature is an enchanting device -- like the TV was back in the 50's -- except that you interact with it. When you meet someone who shares the same values as you, sees the world the way you do, you feel affirmed and that mutual affirmation sponsors a bond. In a sense the Mac has a powerful way of affirming one's sense of values as they relate to being who they are -- as creative individuals.

Architects seems to be particularly attracted to the Mac platform. What are the specific features of the Mac that are more important to architects?

Well... architects are creatives like painters, photographers and other graphic artists. It makes even more sense that they would like the Mac because they often have large philosophical views about the world and they design and conceive at very large urban scales. The more important they hold their values the more likely they are going to want to surround themselves with same or supporting values. Apple's products speak with a crystal clear voice about the values behind them.

Apple's products speak with a crystal clear voice about the values behind them

This makes them ideal models for creation. I can't say that there are particular features of the Mac or any Apple product that make them more popular with architects. I would be speculating if I did that. What I can say is that Apple's products lead the world in the areas of ease-of-use, product and service integration, and that Apple's products are generally more beautiful, by both critical and popular agreement, than any competitor's products out there.

There is a large community of users that orbits around your website. What kind of interaction is there between the community and the sponsoring companies or companies that are simply the topic of discussions?

Architosh is somewhat famous -- at least in the Mac news world -- for its executive level interview articles. These are very popular with a company's end users. They get a chance to hear what might be coming down the pike, where a company's values lie, and what to look forward to.

[Architosh users] get a chance to hear what might be coming down the pike, where a company's values lie, and what to look forward to

However, company's now use Blogs to do a lot of this, but that medium cannot authenticate a neutrality around larger issues -- which is the primary value in independent journalism. Architosh will be launching a new site this Fall that will be building in more interaction capabilities into its journalism.

The business rules on the Internet are always changing. Your website has been able to adjust and adapt to new trends and users' expectations. How do you manage to thrive in this ever changing environment?

There is a lot of writing about companies being nimble and flexible in order to survive and thrive, but I think that publications work more around issues of trust. In this case, discussions about be adaptive are a little different. Architosh is here because of a strategic long-term bet I made personally about Apple a decade ago. What we write about today is more relevant than ever. But what is more key now is that we have built up trust, respect, and reliability by doing this back when nobody else was interested in writing about Apple.

we have built up trust, respect, and reliability

So I think what I'm saying is, we have taken the long-view approach and have stuck to our guns. But doing that is not enough to win or be right. One only needs to look at US foreign policy to understand that. What you really need with the long-view approach is to be able to read the situation correctly at the beginning.

You contribute to your website content with high quality, professionally written interviews and articles. What are the limits of user-generated content and how much space is left for editors and journalists like you?

When the new Architosh launches this Fall there will be even more possibilities for user-generated content. Right now, this is mostly contained within the Architosh forums, but this will grow both in the Fall and next year. As for space for editors and journalists?

Anybody can contribute an article for publication, and many user-readers have

We have an open policy. Anybody can contribute an article for publication, and many user-readers have. In general, our product reviews are only written by knowledgeable and experienced product review writers.

The Mac has popularized the concept of no barrier between the desktop and the cloud (Internet). How will this approach affect architects and their work process?

We have been writing about this for quite some time now. We do quite a bit in the cloud internally with Architosh and have been for more than three years.

The Architosh team is globally dispersed, from Germany to Perth, Australia

The Architosh team is globally dispersed, from Germany to Perth, Australia. What cloud computing will do -- for not just architects but all businesses -- will enable them to globalize their reach for talent and services. I believe that doing this will allow them to strengthen their competitive position relative to their peers.

I would like to thank Anthony Frausto-Robledo for taking the time to answer my questions. If you have any questions for Anthony or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini

Measuring the Pulse of the CAD Community

A lot of information is available over the Internet for professionals like you and me working with CAD, CAM, AEC, and DCC systems and technologies: blogs, Press Releases, tutorials, comments, product reviews, etc. In order to access this wealth of information one option is to subscribe to hundreds of newsletters, activate all sorts of Google notifications, and spend most of the day digging in an overcrowded e-mail inbox.

A reasonable alternative is to organize some of the information sources into an RSS reader such as the one offered for free by Google (Google Reader).  However, a lot of interesting stuff is not available as RSS feed.  Another downside is that RSS Readers are intended as personal tools and thus lack access to others' opinions and ratings.

Wouldn’t it be great to have all this information well organized in a single place, already sorted by relevance and quality based on the opinion of other users with similar interests? What about without annoying ads?

This place now exists, and it's called Novedge Pulse. It’s a new free area of the Novedge website where blog posts, Press Releases, tutorials, and other pertinent information is collected, organized, and presented in a simple and clear way.  At Novedge Pulse, you can also vote for each item with a simple and effective thumb-up, thumb-down system.

I would recommend giving it a try. Feel free to express your opinion by voting for the items you judge most interesting or boring. And if you have a blog, Press Release, product review, or tutorial you would like included in Novedge Pulse, just send an e-mail to pulse@novedge.com

Franco Folini

An Interview with Tim Westergren, Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer

Tim Westergren is the founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Pandora. Pandora is a personalized online radio based on a sophisticated music classification system called the Music Genome Project. The idea is pretty simple from the user point of view: you start your own online radio station by selecting one song or one artist. Pandora Radio will start playing songs similar to your selection, offering you the option to "approve" or "disapprove" of each song. Over time the proposed songs align more and more with your taste and mood.

The Music Genome Project (MGP), at the core of Pandora, is the system that defines the similarity between songs. On the MGP each song is classified and ranked by human musical experts according to more than one hundred parameters or genes. The result is a continuous stream of music, from well known pieces to totally unknown and therefore enjoyably fresh songs. Be aware that Pandora can be addictive: after configuring a few Pandora radio stations you will not be able to go back to your car radio. While driving to work in the mornings, I find myself looking for the "skip" or "more like this" buttons on my car stereo.

I'm fascinated by Pandora not only for the pleasure of discovering new songs and artists, but also because I see a sophisticated and powerful technology made available (for free) in a simple, user-friendly yet effective way. I wish more hi-tech companies would take a look at Pandora and get inspired. Tim (profile) is the man behind Pandora and I had the pleasure to meet him personally and to interview him.

Tim, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your company?

I played in rock bands and I was also a composer

I'm a musician. Prior to founding this company I played in rock bands and I was also a composer for a while, so I wrote music for movies. I've lived in California for a long time and I was living here in California in the late '90s when the idea for the Music Genome Project came to me largely arriving out of my own musical experiences. What I really wanted to do was create a company that would help musicians more easily find their audiences by connecting things musicological. Pandora, or the Music Genome Project which powers Pandora, was begun in the very end of 1999. We didn't actually initially intend to launch this as a radio service -- that came later -- but it has become now a sort of personalized radio service.

The codification of a musical piece within the “Music Genome Project” is mostly a human (expert) based activity and therefore expensive. According to Chris Anderson's book, in order to be a profitable long tail business, unit cost (per product) should be close to zero. How do you manage these limitations?

the only way to help people discover songs that they've never heard before is to understand the intrinsic qualities of that piece of music

In our world in web-casting when it comes to performance fees and royalties etc. we operate under some statutes, sort of a one-size-fits-all compulsory license and so there's actually no difference in cost for us for streaming an icon versus a lesser well-known artist. I think that in theory what Chris said is true, if we were actually getting direct licenses from artist we could probably command a lower license fee from somebody that was less well-known and needs the exposure more. But the reality for us is that the cost, both for analyzing a song -- because it takes just as much time to analyze an individual track from any artist -- as well as the cost of streaming is the same, regardless of the popularity. So as for your question about how to overcome codification -- our belief is that if you want good music, if you want to help people discover songs that they've never heard before and songs that nobody else has every gotten to know very well so there's no kind of data around the music -- the only way to do that is to understand the intrinsic qualities of that piece of music, and that's what allows us to recommend music regardless of whether anybody knows it or not.

How would you compare the human-experts’ approach of Pandora with other selection and recommendation technologies such as the purely algorithmic or the collaborative-social?

one thing that does stand out about what we do is our ability to really pluck out music that is really unknown and effectively promote it

I think they're just different. I don't think scientifically you can say one is necessarily better from the other. I think the only way to really determine that is based on how listeners respond. And I think different people like different things so there are some people who much prefer to discover and explore music based on either well known critics than sort of shape makers or those who like to explore based on their peer group or other people that they consider themselves to be like are enjoying, and that's a different approach. I think though that one thing that does stand out about what we do is our ability to really pluck out music that is really unknown and effectively promote it. I think that's a distinct advantage of the Music Genome approach.

Do you think that the Pandora and the Music Genome Project experience could be successfully exported in some other field? Do you know anything about those companies?

there are already some companies working on the Wine Genome and the Art Genome Project

I think there are already some companies working on the Wine Genome and the Art Genome Project. I'm afraid I don't actually know anything about those companies; they're kind of in stealth actually. Nobody knows, I don't know they exist, I don't know anything about them, no.

Personally I perceive listening to a Pandora radio as a “pleasant continuous musical stimulation” opposed to the “reassuring comfort zone” of the iPod. Do you think the two approaches are complementary or alternatives?

one phenomenon that I think is common among a lot of iPod owners is iPod fatigue

I think they're complimentary. I think that people want different things at different times. There are times when you really want to hear something specific, or when you want to hear a whole album, or you want to hear something that you know, or a playlist you've built. And that's a particular frame of mind. But then there are times when I think that gets tiring. One phenomenon that I think is common among a lot of iPod owners is iPod fatigue, where they get tired of what they own and they want to learn more. I think that discovery and serendipity and a fresh supply of new music is critical for a long term love affair with music.

One of the most exciting aspects of Pandora is that it puts an extremely sophisticated and powerful system under the full control of the end user with an amazingly simple interface. Does it frustrate you, in your daily life, having to interact with great technologies by means of poorly designed and unnecessary complex interfaces?

a lot of products that are made in technology are made by people for themselves

I do think that one of the biggest problems with technology is how complex it is, and how difficult things are to use. And I think that a lot of products that are made in technology are made by people for themselves. So you know people who make music services or music playing devices often times make them in a way that they, as a really sophisticated user of technology, or a sophisticated consumer of music would like and that is not what the larger audience is prepared for. And I think that one of the real advantages of Apple is that they've managed to really keep things simple and elegant. That runs throughout their products and is something that it's interesting other companies have just not been able to replicate. Simplicity is one of the hardest things to accomplish. It seems easy when you do it right but it's very hard to get right.

Can you tell us anything about Classical Music coming to Pandora radio?

Absolutely, we're coming up on that. We've been working on it for a couple of years now and we're going to be launching it soon, so we're very excited about that.

I would like to thank Tim Westergren for sharing his time to do this interview. If you have any questions for Tim or for Novedge, please leave a comment below and we will be glad to answer.

Franco Folini