Thursday, December 7, 2006

Printer Creates Three-Dimensional Product Prototypes. 3D Printer to Become More Affordable in 10 Years

4:16 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

The era of desktop manufacturing is upon us, thanks to advances in 3D printing technology. Just as laser printers in the 1980s moved from service bureaus into homes, sparking the desktop publishing revolution, 3D printers - which render computer files in three-dimensional plaster - are poised to reshape how many products are designed and made.

“I definitely think we’re really near that tipping point. Machine prices are going down and output quality is going up. For architects, their whole world is visualization. If they show a blueprint drawing, the client looks at them like a deer in headlights. When they can give the client something to hold in their hands, turn around, see how everything is placed, then the client finally gets it,” says Dina Braun, vice president at Alchemy Models, a company that makes architectural models.

TechWeb writes that Alchemy uses the Z Corp. Spectrum Z510, which can print in color at 600dpi resolution. At $49 900, the Spectrum is not quite priced as a stocking stuffer, but 3D printing is becoming more affordable every year and over the next 10 years it is likely to follow the same cost curve as color laser printers and other computing devices. The Z Corp. 310 Plus costs a mere $19 900.

While 3D printing has been used for prototyping products, it is increasingly being used for finished products, especially in architecture and medicine.

“If you’re doing some type of facial reconstruction where you might need to have fixture plates to realign the patient’s bone structure. If you don’t have a physical model to plan this on, doctors will take off-the-shelf metal plates and, once the patient is open on the table, they will try to fit that plate to the patient, during the surgical procedure,” says Roger Kelesoglu, director of customer development for Z Corp.

• TechWeb: Your Next House May Come From a Printer.

One Laptop per Child to Cost $150 – Analysis. OLPC Gets Higher Price, Faces More Critics

4:12 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

When some computer industry executives heard about a plan to build a $100 laptop for the developing world’s children, they generally ridiculed the idea, considering the cost of screen alone at around $100. Moreover, Intel’s Craig Barrett called the potential device “a gadget” rather than a personal computer (PC). Now that the $100 laptop seems to have got the shape, it also have got a price and it may be not exactly $100.

The decrease prime cost allowed One Laptop Per Child initiative to win over many skeptics over the last two and a half years. The New York Times writes that five countries - Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria and Thailand – have made tentative commitments to put the computers into the hands of millions of students, with production in Taiwan expected to begin by mid-2007.

“The laptop does not come with a Microsoft Windows operating system or even a hard drive, and the screen is small. And the cost is now closer to $150 than $100. But the price tag, even compared with low-end $500 laptops now widely available, transforms the economic equation for developing countries,” reports The New York Times.

That has not prevented the effort, conceived by Nicholas Negroponte, a prominent computer researcher, from becoming the focal point of a debate over the value of computers to both learning and economic development.

“The detractors include two computer industry giants, Intel and Microsoft, pushing alternative approaches. Intel has developed a $400 laptop aimed at schools as well as an education program that focuses on teachers instead of students. And Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman and a leading philanthropist for the third world, has questioned whether the concept is ‘just taking what we do in the rich world’ and assuming that that is something good for the developing world, too,” continues the article.

• The New York Times: For $150, Third-World Laptop Stirs a Big Debate.

Companies Must Keep E-Mails, Other Correspondence of Employees - Federal Court. Update Regulations of Internet Correspondence

3:55 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

As of December the 1^st, the U.S. companies will need to know more about where they store e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees in the event they are sued, thanks to changes in federal rules that took effect last Friday.

Associated Press reports that the changes, approved by the Supreme Court’s administrative arm in April after a five-year review, require companies and other parties involved in federal litigation to produce “electronically stored information” as part of discovery, the process by which both sides share evidence before a trial.

Federal and state courts have increasingly been requiring the production of such evidence in individual cases. The new rules clarify that the data will be required in federal cases.

“Under the new rules, an information technology employee who routinely copies over a backup computer tape could be committing “virtual shredding” once a lawsuit has been filed,” said Alvin F. Lindsay, a partner at Hogan & Hartson LLP and expert on technology and litigation.

The new rules make it more important for companies to know what electronic information they have and where, especially because of a provision that requires lawyers to provide information much earlier than before on where their clients’ data are stored and how accessible they are.

“Large companies are likely to face higher costs from organizing their data in order to meet those deadlines. Besides e-mail, companies also will need to know about things more difficult to track, like digital photos of work sites on employee cell phones and information on removable memory cards,” said James Wright, director of electronic discovery at Halliburton Co..

There are hundreds of “e-discovery vendors” and these businesses raked in approximately $1.6 billion in 2006 and the figure is expected to double in 2007.

• Associated Press: Companies Face New Rules on E-mails.

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