CNet News has a slideshow up showing some of the different celebrity Mii’s that people have created. Fabjectory is mentioned on slide 6 and Dave Curry’s Zach Braff Mii is on slide 5.

Today the Technology Section of the New York Times has a great story about the growing market for 3D Printers (”Beam it Down from the Web, Scotty“), Fabjectory is linked to in the Related section of the article and mentioned as a company doing entrepreneurial work in the consumer 3D Space.

A somewhat altered version of the story by the same author, Saul Hansell, ran in yesterday’s LA Daily News which makes a bigger mention, but no link, to Fabjectory as well.

[Updated] Fixed the last sentence of the first paragraph as I didn’t realize at first (they didn’t have a link directly in the text) that they mentioned us in the body of the article as well.

As part of the previously mentioned ITE Expo that happened this past weekend in SecondLife, I was interviewed by the people of SLCN.TV.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but they did a great job of producing and editing the video. I’ve embedded the video below. It’s become apparent that I really need to practice speaking without the “ums” as it appears to have moved from a mild nervous tic to full borne um every um other um word um.

I added a Media page to the site, to highlight some of the places that have been nice enough to write about the Fabjectory service and the work we’re trying to do to bring rapid prototyping tools into the consumer area.

[UPDATE 4-18-2007] - Fixed the links to the Paper and Presentation below.

W.J. Proctor is a graduate student doing research into using Virtual Worlds as prototypes for real business. Fabjectory is mentioned in the context of a business breaking down the virtual to real world product barriers.

Random Interesting Statistics:

• 43% of people didn’t think they’d ever take part part in a virtual world
• 42% of respondents would go and purchase a real world representation of product they bought in a virtual world
• People who thought they may use a virtual world at some point in their life appeared to be under the impression that they would have a wider range of products in a virtual world.
• People who thought they would never use a virtual world thought the total opposite and that there would be a wider product range available for them in the real world.

Full paper and presentation:

Paper - Doc Format

Presentation - PowerPoint Format

technorati tags:Virtual, Worlds, Research, SecondLife, Fabjectory

Kevin Zucker is an artist who combines painting with computer drawing. I found out about him as his latest artists statement has a link to Fabjectory under the “Some Perils of Translation” section.

This is amusing to me for several reasons:

1. I’m apparently culturally illiterate enough to not know that such a thing as an “artists statement” existed.

2. The other links in the “Perils of Translation” block are fascinating: automated joke making, computer programs writing new Chopin, and I’m pretty sure my small efforts aren’t in the same league.

3. I’m still stumped as to what “Peril” the Fabjectory service is putting people through. I suppose if you hold to the notion that having a photograph taken of you could steal your soul, that having a 3d representation of your soul put into a virtual world and then ripped out and fabbed on a machine probably wouldn’t meet with your approval either.

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Ian Hughes and his SecondLife “ePredator” avatar were on the BBC program NewsNight discussing “Virtual Death”. Ian’s written up a little about the experience.

You view the segment online if you live in the UK. Long live Fabjectory figures and their virtual death experiences.

UPDATE

Seems the messages I got about the video only being available in the UK were faulty. With some encouragement from Mark Wallace I was able to get it going.

Screenshots of Ian and his Fabjectory Figure:

Ilya Vedrashko who runs the MIT Adverlab site, has a nice summary of a recent presentation he gave on SecondLife and the return on investment for companies entering it. Ilya was nice enough to mention Fabjectory as an example of the types of things happening in this space.