Nicholas Talesfore, owner of ID-3D, shows a Bluetooth iPod Nano watch case his two-person design firm worked on with another company, in San Jose, California.By Steve JohnsonWhile developing an electric bicycle for his San Rafael, California, company, Marcus Hays had planned to insert a battery into one of the bike’s supporting tubes. But then he did an analysis of his concept with three-dimensional computer-aided design software.The technology revealed another way the bike could be built.“We learned that if we changed the shape of the tube slightly, literally by a half an inch in one direction, we were able to reduce the cost of our goods by approximately $350,000 in the first 100 bikes,” said the 53-year-old founder of Pi Mobility.In years past, anyone designing a new product had to laboriously draw their idea on paper and then erase their work or start all over on another sheet if their boss or some customer insisted on a last-minute alteration.But that has changed with the advent of three-dimensional computer-aided design (CAD) software. Used for everything from guitars, cars, toys and furniture to houses, electronic gadgets, candy bars and clothing, 3-D CAD technology allows products to be sketched out and easily modified in stunning displays that can be tilted, spun around, flipped over and viewed in countless ways.As a result, the task of making many products has become more efficient, less expensive and quicker than ever before, according to those who use the technology. Moreover, they say, because of the software’s growing adoption by businesses, store shelves in the future will be filled with an increasing variety of new merchandise.“The consumer will benefit definitely from this,” predicted Nicholas Talesfore, who uses the technology at his Campbell, California, company, ID-3D Design, to help others create items for sale. But “the downside,” he added, is there are going to be a lot of obsolete products, because newer products will come out every six months or three months.”Although 3-D CAD has been around for half a century, its use has exploded as the technology has improved. Just about every type of consumer industry employs it today, from makers of luxury yachts to golf clubs to health products. San Jose, California-based Align Technology, for example, says its technology can create 3-D digital images of patients’ teeth, which then can be turned into veneers, inlays, crowns and bridges.With 3-D software, instead of having to erase or redraw product concepts when adjustments are required, alterations can simply be plugged into the computer, which instantly displays the new version on its screen. That lets designers not only experiment with different colours, textures and shapes, but also substitute parts or add features to the model, and see the changes automatically reflected in every view they look at.With a click of a mouse, they also take a virtual trip inside the proposed product to examine its components in detail, run simulated stress tests to determine how well it would hold up in actual use, and even get color-coded warnings about parts that wouldn’t fit together if the item was built according to its blueprint.The software also enables product designs to be displayed on Internet sites or sent via mobile devices to others in the business for their suggestions. The same approach can be used to lure buyers, since products depicted in 3-D tend to be far more impressive than those shown in a two-dimensional image.Hays of Pi Mobility set up a Web page where potential customers could check out a 3-D representation of his electric bicycle, which sells for $3,995 to $8,995.“It helped enormously,” he said, noting that he’s sold several hundred bikes so far.“It enables you to get a look at a product in the very early design process,” added Anye Spivey, CEO of Lion Hound Technology in Oakland, California, which used the services of ID-3D Design to create a Bluetooth iPod nano watch case that fits on a person’s wrist so they can listen to music while exercising without getting tangled up in headset wires. “And when you are selling an idea to investors, that is a critical component.”In this social media era, soliciting opinions about product designs is bound to become much more common, predicted Keith Perrin, senior manager for manufacturing at Autodesk, a San Rafael company that provided the 3-D CAD software used by Pi Mobility.“In the next couple of years, you are going to see a massive change in the way people share information,” he said. “It’s going to turn into more of a tribal thing, where I ask others, ‘What do you think of my design?’ The younger generation expects that sort of collaboration. — San Jose Mercury News/MCTSmartpen takes handwritten notes into mobile, cloud eraBy Troy Wolverton I may be a tech columnist who spends nearly all his time with digital products, but when it comes to taking notes, I’m often stuck in the analogue age.When meeting with sources in the office or at a conference, I often use a plain old notepad and pen.Unfortunately, I often can write down only a fraction of what’s said and frequently have difficulty reading what I wrote. And to find my notes later, I typically have to search through the stacks of notebooks on my desk.I’ve long been interested in Livescribe’s series of smartpens as a solution to my note-taking problem. When used on special paper, the pens record your every scribble with a built-in camera. Better yet, they can also record audio at the same time and sync that audio with what you write.The Oakland, California, company recently updated its line-up of pens for the cloud-based, mobile computing era. Dubbed Sky, the new smartpens sync with Evernote, the popular Internet-based note-taking and storage service, rather than with the user’s computer. And they typically connect to Evernote directly through their built-in Wi-Fi radios. Assuming users are near a hotspot, their Sky pens will begin syncing their notes as soon as they stop recording them.The big advantage of the new pens is that they — and the notes they record — are no longer tethered to an individual computer. Because users can access Evernote through a Web browser or apps designed for the iPad and all the other major mobile computing platforms, users can much more easily review their notes from non-PC devices.Livescribe worked with Evernote to mesh their combined services. While Evernote limits to 60 megabytes the amount of data users can send for free to its servers each month, Sky pen owners can send up to 500 megabytes of data for free from their smartpens. That’s about 70 hours worth of recordings or 10,000 pages of notes, Livescribe estimates.The two companies have built into Evernote a Livescribe player that allows users to see and hear their notes at the same time. Evernote arranges the notes by page in their notebook, but when you click or tap on the page, the Livescribe player will collect and display all the pages of notes from that particular recording.Once users’ notes are in Evernote, the service scans them for recognisable characters and words so users can search them. The search feature wasn’t able to decipher all of my notes, but it did a decent job of finding words in my chicken scratch.I like a lot of things about the Sky pen. It was great to have my handwritten notes in digital form and great to be able to access them from multiple devices. But it has several shortcomings that bugged me.For one thing, the pen is married to Evernote. You can’t choose to sync your notes with any other service. That’s too bad, because as popular as Evernote is, not everyone uses it. I, for one, would much rather be able to sync with Google Drive, which is where I store all of my typed notes.Another limitation of the Sky pen is that it can be slow to transfer recordings. You can expect that the time needed to upload an audio recording over Wi-Fi will take several times the duration of the actual recording. With one particular story I was working on, that delay was too long; I ended up reviewing my notes the old-fashioned Livescribe way. All Livescribe pens allow users to replay audio recordings by simply tapping their pen on their written notes.The Wi-Fi radio also seems to drain the battery quickly. Livescribe representatives said Sky pens should make it through a full day’s worth of note-taking, audio recording and transmitting data. But I got much less use than that; I managed to burn through the battery on my Sky pen by recording and transmitting less than two hours of written and audio notes.The other thing I dislike about Livescribe’s pens is that you have to use them with company approved paper, which includes special patterns recognisable by the pen’s built-in camera. Livescribe does allow users to print out paper with the patterns on it, but if you want to use a notebook, you have to choose one approved by the company. Those tend to be much more expensive than a typical notebook and come in a more limited range of styles.So I’m on the fence about the Sky. Having a digital, searchable, easily retrievable archive of my notes has a lot of appeal. I just wish it were faster and longer-lasting on a charge — and could work with my $1.50 (paper) notebook. — San Jose Mercury News/MCTGoogle under fire for sending users’ information to developersBy Jessica GuynnSebastian Holst makes yoga mobile applications with his wife, a yoga instructor.The Mobile Yogi is sold in all the major mobile app stores. But when someone buys his app in the Google Play store, Holst automatically gets something he says he didn’t ask for: the buyer’s full name, location and e-mail address.He says consumers are not aware that Google Inc is sharing their personal information with third parties. No other app store transmits users’ personal information to third-party developers when they buy apps, he said. “Google is not taking reasonable steps to ensure that this data is used correctly,” said Holst, whose app has 120,000 users.Google is coming under fire just as regulators in the US and overseas are stepping up their scrutiny of how all the players in the industry — mobile apps, stores, advertising networks and others — handle consumers’ private information. Regulators are pushing for greater transparency of what information is collected by apps and how it’s shared.Google Play has worked differently than Apple Inc’s iTunes since it launched in October 2008. An app developer sets up an account through the mobile payment system Google Wallet, which makes them a merchant in the store. When someone buys his or her app from Google Play, that transaction — and the customer’s information — is sent to the developer. The developer has to comply with rules about what he or she can do with the information.But at Apple, iTunes is the merchant. App developers say they never receive customer information.Google defended how Google Play operates in an e-mailed statement.“Google Wallet shares the information necessary to process a transaction, which is clearly spelled out in the Google Wallet Privacy Notice,” Google said.Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land’s news editor, said he prefers it that way. “I want to be able to service my customers, and yes, they are my customers, not Google’s and not Apple’s customers. They download our products. They call the developer with questions. We provide them the tools and the content. They are our customers,” Schwartz wrote in a blog post. “Apple doesn’t tell us who our customers are, and when we need that information to verify ownership or to give refunds, we are left with blindfolds on. Google, in my opinion, does it right by making the user who downloads the app our customer.”But Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land, said Google should make it clear to consumers that their information is being shared with third-party developers.“Google’s privacy policies don’t make clear this is happening, something Google probably needs to correct,” Sullivan said. “I sure had no idea that Google Play did this.”Nor did Dan Nolan, an Australian app developer. He said he was astonished when he found out that Google was sending him users’ names, e-mail addresses, city and ZIP code. He wrote a blog post last week condemning Google for doing it.Nolan runs a popular app in Australia called the Paul Keating Insult Generator that throws out quips worthy of the former prime minister there.“Under no circumstances should I be able to get the information of the people who are buying my apps unless they opt into it and it’s made crystal clear to them that I’m getting this information,” Nolan said.Privacy watchdogs say consumers are largely in the dark that Google is sending their information to outside developers despite assurances from Google that it tells them when they sign up for Google Wallet. That, they say, is “troublesome.”“The question is: What constitutes meaningful consent?” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “The bottom line is that users are not able to control how their data is being gathered and disclosed.” — Los Angeles Times/MCTWatch out for ‘craplets’ in new computers
By Noah Matthews ‘Craplets’ are shortcuts to software programs or website links that often come with new computers. Typical ones urge you to sign up for Internet bank accounts. Others are equally obnoxious. Computer-makers ought to be ashamed of themselves for adding them to a new PC’s hard drive.So when I got my new Dell PC, I was prepared for dozens of craplets crowding my monitor’s screen, not to mention the hard drive. I figured they were hidden somewhere in Craplet Central, but I couldn’t find any. Could it be that Dell had figured out how much people hate the annoying programs?Just to make certain that they weren’t hiding, only to make themselves known via pop-ups when I got good and comfortable with my new PC, I installed SlimComputer, a slim program from the saints at SlimWare Utilities, who offer their software free to users. SlimComputer searches startup programs, browsers, applications and shortcuts for the offending programs, but found none. The search includes feedback from victims of the Craplet Wars through the years. That feedback tells you whether legitimate features that software you’ve installed are valuable or not. Users also rate the add-ons. If you decide to remove an add-on, such as a toolbar, there’s a fast uninstaller. And if you decide you want to keep the add-on after all, you can restore it.I was almost disappointed that SlimComputer didn’t find any sniplets of craplets. Just for the sake of argument, none came with my new iMac, either. Anyway, Dell gets it, and that should be a model for other computer makers.SlimComputer is a free download at http://www.slimwareutilities.com. It’s user-friendly so that even newbies should not have any trouble running it. FREE ADVICE: If you’re thinking of buying a new iMac, be certain that the 8 gigabytes of RAM that come with it will handle whatever programs you plan to run. Upgrading RAM on the new iMacs is next to impossible. I opted for 16 GB, a steep $200 upgrade. If you’re running Parallels for Mac, you need to allocate at least 4 GB of RAM — you can use more if you’re running the 64-bit version of Windows — to your Windows side. And by the way, Apple tech support continues to be stellar. — MCT