Once again we continue the web review roundup where
we take a look back at many of the websites we've featured in past newsletters, with
updates on their current status.
* - Indicates updated link
1/8/01 - SuperFactory
Link: http://www.superfactory.com
Portals come and portals go, but SuperFactory lives on. Comparing
the original review of this site from about two years ago, it's interesting to note how
they've reorganized their content. Links to news items and their online store are now more
prominent and their collections of topic-specific resources, such as lean mfg. and six
sigma, are still there but seem a bit de-emphasized. The communities section in particular
appears to have been reduced from homegrown efforts to just a listing of links to special
interest resources at Yahoo Groups and other community sites. Still, the site is a
worthwhile collection of information for manufacturing professionals, with plenty of links
to helpful outside resources. The site is sponsored by contract manufacturing firm,
Agilonics, but I'm unsure if they were the original underwriter or a more recent addition.
[Read original review]
2/14/01 - MyB2O.com
Link: http://www.myb2o.com (DEFUNCT)
You know that thing that happens when you go to a website and you
get a page that has the correct domain name printed in the upper left but all you see is
what looks like a directory of links not even close to what you were looking for? What
you're seeing is usually the default internet search directory of the ISP who hosted the
site, and yes, a recent hit at myb2o.com did this. If you read the original review (link
below) you will see that we're not that surprised to see that the site's backers did this.
Doing some brief searching to find out what happened, we suspect that they also tried to
eliminate any reference to it on the Internet as some alternate search paths ended up in
some strange dead ends and broken links. [Read original review]
2/14/01 - From ABB to XML: Acronym
Soup
Link: http://www.manufacturingnews.com/acronyms.html
This is a site that has changed very little, but why should it? This
glossary of acronyms from Manufacturing News remains a solid collection of
industry-specific TLAs. If there are any changes to note, it's that the page has grown and
now spilled onto a second page. The original list ended in "XML", but the new
one now ends with "ZEV" for "zero emissions vehicle."
[Read original review]
4/18/01 - Online Time Killers
Link: http://www.sodaplay.com/
This website is presented by UK-based creativity firm, Soda, and
contains a nifty toy for engineers and creative minds called the
"sodaconstructor". The SodaConstructor is hard to describe, basically it's a
digital combination of tinker toys and spirograph where you create a wireframe object with
digital muscles that create movement inside a virtual gravity environment. That sentence
makes it sound a lot more complicated than it really is. The other feature mentioned in
the original view was a flash game, but it has since been replaced by the
"sodarace", where people can enter a race with the entity they've constructed
with the sodaconstructor.
[Read original review]
5/10/01 - Blue-C
Link: http://blue-c.ethz.ch
From the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, this website
represents a 7 year project attempting to create a practical virtual reality environment.
Among the applications they have proposed for the device include virtual surgery
assistance, remote meetings and demonstrations, and what originally caught our eye,
collaborative product development. The site hasn't changed much, but they are still in the
first phase of their long development cycle, and it's unclear if the project will actually
bear fruit, but we hope so, because, well, it's pretty cool. [Read original review]
6/14/01 - Walk, Talk, Repeat
Link: http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/011/recursive.html
One of the most important dynamic tensions within
organizations come from a company's efforts to wrangle it's organic nature with inorganic
discipline. What the heck does that mean? It means trying to succeed on purpose. Many of
life's greatest accomplishments were arrived at after following a long path of accidents.
It makes us very frustrated when we can't reproduce desirable results, and many try to
force it to happen through process discipline or applying software or other technologies
with varying success. The key point made in the article which we linked to above is how
quite often great product development results from rather non-intuitive and non-linear
processes. Read the original review for more enlightenment. [Read original review]
7/19/01 - Inside Intel
Link: http://www.intel.com/research/index.htm
In a bad economy, the smartest companies ramp up their research
projects and market development plans to further their lead while competitors struggle
with short term cash woes. It was recently reported in the Wall St. Journal that elite
forces like Microsoft, Cisco and Dell are flush with liquid assets and are plowing forward
with this exact strategy. Intel is no different. While I'm sure you can't see their
secrets on this website, follow the link above to get an intriguing glimpse into what
areas Intel is playing in, including nanobots, pervasive computing applications and many
other technologies that may create the supercharged economy of the future.
[Read original review]
9/19/01 - Cold War Technology
* Link: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/experience/technology/
In the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, I posted
this web review to take an historical perspective on the impact of war on innovation. As
part of a CNN special on the cold war they created a brief timeline showing how such
modern items like the microwave oven, the hang glider and the smoke detector were all the
result of defense projects, as well as a few other thought-provoking lessons.
[Read original review]
10/26/01 - Virtual Superfactory
Tours
Link: http://www.superfactory.com/Resources/tours.htm
(DEFUNCT)
This feature of the Superfactory website is gone, and it's truly a
shame, as it was an excellent collection of links to online factory tours, giving an
insider's look at how many products are produced. There are a couple of links inside the
original review that are still active. Click the link below and find the live hypertext
that goes to "how Rickenbacker makes guitars" and "Toyota" to see a
couple of examples that still exist on the web.
[Read original review]
11/27/01 - Two Thumbs
Up!
Link #1: "Dance Monkey Boy, Dance!"
(DEFUNCT)
Link #2: "Blue
Screen of Death" starring Bill Gates
To show I don't really have an anti-Apple/Steve Jobs
bias, I put up two links to some videos that show certain Microsoft executives in some
truly embarrassing moments. The first one was entitled "Dance, Monkey Boy,
Dance," and showed a very pit-stained Steve Ballmer exhorting the troops at a company
meeting by jumping all around a stage loudly chanting "Developers! Developers!"
in a really Fellini-esque freak show display of leadership. Sadly, this link is broken and
I don't know where to find another copy of the video. The second one still works, however,
but is not quite as entertaining as it only shows Bill Gates at a live demo of a Microsoft
product when the ominous "blue screen of death" pops up when launching the
application.
[Read original review]
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