Make:

The future of credit cards, one year later ... It's here: WoW has a VISA rewards card

On Mar 27, 2006 MAKE published an article about the future of credit cards and virtual worlds, one year later World of WarCraft and VISA teamed up and just launched the WoW/VISA rewards card, I guess they read MAKE :) Funny thing is that just a couple weeks ago someone from VISA asked that I remove the VISA logo and any mention of VISA in the article, I removed the logo because I really didn't care (and put a silly logo in) but we refused to edit the article... now I know why. the-inbetween.com has the scoop...

A little over a year ago, Phillip Torrone of Make Magazine wrote The Future of Credit Cards - Earning virtual currency for spending in the real world & other world bridging. He predicted: Very soon, credit card companies and game makers will reward their customers who spend money in the real world using private label "rewards" credit cards. They will use gifts of virtual currency such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft gold and Second Life's Linden dollars. The future is now. Further proof of how big of a cultural force World of Warcraft has become. It's the biggest, hugest, money-making game of the decade... and I don't have a single shred of interest in it. I find the cultural and media impact that it makes far more fascinating than sitting at my desk grinding levels for hours on end.

Here's the World of Warcraft / VISA site - Link. Related: The Future of Credit Cards - Earning virtual currency for spending in the real world & other world bridging - Link. Want to know what else is coming? Check our News from the Future section and sign up for the newsletter.

Read more and comment

---

The Transformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century

This is a really interesting overview of a lot of what's going on (small and large scale) for some makers called The Transformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century by Lawrence J. Rhoades - The new industrial revolution will enable people to live where they like and produce what they need locally. From open source hardware projects, 3D printers, to kits to companies like ETSY - this is good stuff.

The design freedom enabled by constructing objects in thin layers from particles with dimensions in microns will significantly reduce a product's component-parts count. This, in turn, will reduce product weight by eliminating attachment features and fasteners and optimize functionality by eliminating excess material and wasted energy. The particles that are not needed for the part produced can be recycled to become the next--maybe very different--part. The metal in older, no longer useful products can be locally recycled to become metal powder feedstock for tomorrow's production. Thus, inventory carrying costs and risks and transportation costs can be dramatically reduced, increasing savings in energy, materials, and labor. Finally, because these processes are highly automated, the size of the workforce required to produce and deliver manufactured products to the customer will be greatly reduced. Consequently, low-cost, so-called touch labor will lose its competitive advantage in the production of physical objects. The demand for innovative product designs will expand dramatically. And, because ideas will be delivered electronically, designers can be located anywhere. As design for manufacturing becomes less important, and because design superiority will be gained principally through understanding and responding to customers' tastes, designers might want to be located near their customers. Even if products are designed remotely, however, production will be done locally. Physical objects will be produced "at home" or "in the neighborhood" from locally recycled materials. Thus, cities will lose their economic advantage, and urban populations will be dispersed.

The Transformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century - Link. Related: What is open source hardware? - Link.

Read more and comment

---

Beaming Up 3-D Objects on a Budget

The New York Times has a pretty good round up of way to do 3-D printing, some cheap(er) and some expensive... (Pictured here, a LEGO spaceship - Marty Katz for The New York Times)

Over the last few decades, the electronics industry has worked magic with documents by building gadgets that copy, e-mail, print or fax flat images. Now it is building boxes that do something similar with three-dimensional objects. These tools are not news to the industrial designers of the world, who have been able to buy 3-D printers and scanners with prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. But now hobbyists and small businesses are starting to benefit from low-cost versions of the tools. Laser scanners with arrays of cameras can create digital models of objects that encode all the significant bumps, cracks, corners and facets of real things. Computers can enhance, morph or tweak the models before shipping them to 3-D printers that may be halfway around the world. The result is a new version of the thing itself, but built from some resin or starch.

Beaming Up 3-D Objects on a Budget - New York Times - Link. Related:

• Color 3D Prints - "Print" World of Warcraft characters - Link.
• Avatar... in real life (3D printing) - Link.
• Contour Crafting - 3D printing houses - Link.
• Printing out real 3D objects... - Link.
• What a 3D Printer can't do... - Link.

Read more and comment

---

Flying Wind Farms: Harvesting Energy in the Sky

The Economist magazine has a possible solution to using land for power generating windmills ... Put them in the sky!

If it ever seems windy where you live, be thankful you do not live 10km up in the air. At that height, the jet-stream winds blow stronger and more constantly than ground level winds, carrying up to a hundred times more energy. So, just as oil companies are drilling deeper and in more remote locations in search of new reserves, pioneer wind-power engineers are looking higher in the sky for new sources of energy. Conventional turbines will not take them there--the highest to date is just over 200 metres tall. So they are trying to invent a whole new technology for harvesting wind: electricity generators that fly. One of the most ambitious ideas has been developed by Sky WindPower, a company based in San Diego and led by Dave Shepard. Mr Shepard began his career cracking Japanese military codes during the Second World War, then developed machines for reading written text. His work led to the squared-off numbers still seen on bank cards today.

Flying wind farms [via] - Link. Related: Sign up for the News from the Future newsletter here - Link.

Read more and comment

---

Sugar Batteries

This battery tech sounds sweet:

Juicing up your cell phone or iPod may take on a whole new meaning in the future. Researchers at Saint Louis University in Missouri have developed a fuel cell battery that runs on virtually any sugar source -- from soft drinks to tree sap -- and has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium ion batteries, they say. For consumers, that could mean significantly longer time to talk and play music between charges. The new battery, which is also biodegradable, could eventually replace lithium ion batteries in many portable electronic applications, including computers, the scientists say. Their findings were described today at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

'Juiced-up' Sugar-Fueled Battery Could Power Portable Electronics - Link.

Read more and comment

---