Capturing Objects with Autodesk 123D Catch

Autodesk 123D is slowly replacing FreeCad as my favourite place to create 3D models for printing. This is because I’m spending ages trying to get my head around how to use it. Turns out that designing things in 3D is much harder than 2D. Who’d have thought?

Of course the perfect way to make a 3D model of something would be to wave a camera at it and then have something crunch all the images and then drop out a design. That’s what Autodesk claim to have done with their 123D Catch application for iPhone and iPad. I’ve not had a chance to try this yet (the lack of an iPhone is slowing me down a bit here), but if you’ve got one you might like to give it a whirl. You should be able to convert the resulting scans into stl files and then get them printed.

This, of course, brings along lots of new and scary issues. If I go to an art gallery or shop and scan all the things I find interesting I can then go home and make my own versions. Basically, copyright problems are now moving into the third dimension…

2012 Paralympics in London

We were lucky enough to snag some tickets to the last day of competition in the London 2012 Paralympics. Of course I took the cameras…..

Heading into the stadium.

The stadium is a very impressive piece of engineering

Especially from the inside.

Well, does he clear the bar or not?

Going for the win.

This is Oscar Pistorius (I wonder if he is any relation to our VC – Calie Pistorius?) winning in the very last stadium event of London 2012, by a pretty impressive margin.

Heading home.

Charlie Kindel on the Future of Mobile

Charlie Kindel is one of the people who helped bring Windows Phone together. A long standing Microsoft veteran he was part of the team that got a working device out of the door in record time and built the solid foundations for things like the spiffy new Windows 8 phones that Nokia announced earlier this week (I want a yellow Lumia 920).

A year or so ago Charlie couldn’t resist the temptation to find out what life was like outside Microsoft and now develops his own products and works with startups. He has a blog that is well worth reading.  A few weeks ago he gave a presentation on the future of mobile computing. I watched it over a lunch break and I reckon you should to. It give a nice insight into how the mobile business works, but it is also worth watching for the insights into how all technology products get sold and how you need to think about the ecosystem when you make anything.

Platform Expos–from Clouds to Liability

Today’s Platform Expos debate was well worth the trip up town. Even more so because a bunch of our students had managed to make it as well. They, like the rest of us, found the conversation very interesting as he panel moved from Cloud Gaming, to networks (some really interesting opportunities coming to Hull with the rollout of fibre optic cables right to people’s houses and the coming of 4G to the mobile space) to, of all things, insurance and liability.

I’d never really considered the insurance issues relating to games that run in the cloud, but as soon as you start letting players buy content in the game, using the so called “Freemium” model a whole bunch of liabilities suddenly appear. What if customers change their mind? What if you lose their content? What if someone “steals” content from another player. What if you inadvertently release sensitive data about your players? I’m not sure we have all the answers to these questions now, but one thing I am sure about is that if I was moving into that space I’d take some advice about it.

One other thing I took away from the session was that as soon as you start selling stuff, even if it is 79 pence for a copy of CheeseLander, you are running a business. If there are a bunch of you working together you need to agree on who owns the intellectual property in the game you are selling (or how you are sharing it) and how you will share out the earnings. In fact, after the talk I approached Rob from Andrew Jackson solicitors and asked him if he would be willing to come and give a chat to our student about this. I’m very pleased that he reckoned he could sort something out. Next semester I’m going to be running some “Rather Useful Seminars” about stuff it is good to know and that is one subject that we’ll now be covering.

After the hard nosed business talk we were able to have a go with Assassins Creed 3, which looks lovely. The demo was set on a pirate ship with a beautifully rendered environment and some lovely looking water.

Cloud Gaming Debate at Platform Expo

If you’re around and about Hull tomorrow and interested in the games industry you might like to drop into the Cloud Gaming debate organised by Platform Expos. They’ve got Chris Deering, Founder of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Nick Thopmpson from KC, Mike Hewitt from O2 and Jiveen Lal from Hiscox insurance, who are also sponsoring the event. Also Ubisoft are bringing along a playable demo of Assassin's Creed 3 which will be well worth a look.

If you want to go along send an email to ian.archibald@wtchumber.com and he will sort you out a ticket.