Who knew that good old GE was into developing Web2.0 applications? Well, I suspect they’re not, but they have created this awesome online collaboration tool. You can use it with others to work on designs, and it is incredibly nifty, my favourite feature being the chat function that goes with it. This means you can chat at the same time you’re creating something on the workscreen. Try it out, preferably with a friend so you can see the full thing in action. Doodling… I love it! Now, if they only add functionality so you can import images, that would make this a supertool.
Tag Archive for 'Design'
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BusinessWeek’s section “Innovation” features a report on architectural wonders around the world. You now may wonder what Design has to do with business? Well, increasingly “design thinking” (user-centred approach) is becoming the centre of stage to evolve the customer experience. Even during the last World Economic Forum designers were invited to emphasise on the connection between business and design.
Here a short overview of the architectural wonders as highlighted by BusinessWeek:
The prospect of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games have created an explosion of new buildings and dynamic renovations in The City of London.
From times immemorial, Italy is know from its innovative structures, built during ancient times, whose design still inspires plenty of architects. Currently, many high-profile architects are turning their sight on Italy which results in new contemporary architectures across Italy.
As oil reserves are shrinking, Dubai is shifting its focus from an Oil power to a hot spot for tourism. To become a highly attractive tourist destination Dubai is building new breathtakingly architectural tour the forces. Including many world’s first seen architecture as well, such as an underwater luxury resort.
As China climbs up the economic ladder and the Being 2008 Olympics and the 2010 World Expo are in foresight it is steadily working on its appearance before the global audience tunes in during these two events.
More information on business in relation to design is written in the article “The Power of Design” by the FastCompany and “The Creative Corporation” by BusinessWeek. A podcast on this topic can be found here. For now, keep in mind that “design” goes far beyond letterhead.
Guess the function of this architectonic building…..? It’s the world first round Railway Station, construction will end this year! Billed as the biggest round station in the world, the new design featuring a glass and steel arch that covers 50,000 square meters in Minhang District.
Read more on this webpage!
America is the world’ s biggest market for cars and General Motors (GM) is the world’s biggest car manufacturer. In a few years, Toyota’s relentless growth is likely to render this statement only half true.
After several recent pieces of bad news and a share price languishing at a ten-year low, GM has revealed how it intends to keep itself at the top, at least for the moment. On Monday April 4th, Rick Wagoner, the firm’s chairman and chief executive, said that he would assume direct responsibility for GM’s North American operations in an attempt to reverse the company’s decline. But it is unlikely that GM and Detroit’s two other car making giants, Ford and Chrysler (the Detroit-based arm of DaimlerChrysler), will be able to keep Toyota and the rest of Japan’s high-revving carmakers at bay for long.
Is there anything US car suppliers haven’t tried to counteract the enormous purchasing power of the handful of car manufacturer that make up their customer base? As the suppliers’s profit margins have been squeezed again and again, they have responded with an array of strategic initiatives, including diversifying their customer base, going global, positioning themselves further upstream in the value chain, and actively helping to design components in hopes of capturing more value than they could by simply bending metal. In the 1990s, the industry also went through an M&A wave that many hoped would deliver the heft needed to push back against the car manufacturers.
Currently, facts speak for themselves, dwindling market share in the face of fierce competition from Japan has forced General Motors to shake up its management. Ford faces similar problems. DaimlerChrysler’s American arm is taking advantage of their misfortune but may be held back by problems at the group’s European operations. Detroit has bounced back before. Can it do so again?
The winning car suppliers of the future won’t try to fight size with size to gain an advantage against their big customers’s purchasing power. Only a restructuring that focuses on excellent processes as well as excellent products will provide the precision-targeted leverage suppliers need to fight back effectively and to preserve the long-term health of their industry.
According to Interbrand<, a consultancy, Samsung has moved quickly and spectacularly from a typical OEM to manufacturing high-tech products, focusing on design and consumer growth. Samsung’s mission is to associate its brand in consumers’ minds with products that are beautiful, avant-garde and user-friendly.
In the past five years, Samsung has rebounded from the Asian financial crisis that devastated South Korea to emerge as a consumer-electronics giant with one of the world’s most-admired brands. As its mobile phones, LCD televisions and other consumer devices have grown increasingly popular, the Samsung name has simultaneously managed to make young consumers feel cool and leave executives of its rivals-even at giants like Sony-quaking with fear.
More on the Interbrand’s profile of Samsung can be found here.
Apple’s lead in digital music is growing even as an army of corporate powerhouses – Dell, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony among them – spends hundreds of millions of dollars to grab a slice of the business. And the financial transformation driven by Apple’s storming of the music stage has been profound: On its knees when Steve Jobs (chairman) retook control in 1997, Apple is coming off a year in which revenue rose 33 percent and profits quadrupled. Its stock, not surprisingly, has been on a tear, up more than sixfold in the past two years and now hovering around $42 a share.
It has become a parlor game in some quarters to try to divine where Apple is going and how it intends to get there – and not just at the dozens of blogs that traffic in Apple rumors. Recently, Microsoft quietly hired a former Apple design executive whose mission is to help Bill Gates’s baby behave more like Steve Jobs’s. Business 2.0 has lay-down some interesting future designs of Apple products which are listed below, to make sure this are not offical announced future Apple products.
PODWATCH
A wrist-worn iPod would keep time and play music, using Bluetooth to wirelessly beam tunes to earbuds or headphones.
WIRELESS iPOD
A portable player would utilize Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and enable users to remotely connect to the iTunes store or the music kept on their computers. The dark color distinguishes it from today’s iPods, which require wired connections to download or listen to songs.
vPOD
A digital image/iPod combo would feature a camera for still photos and video and would wirelessly sync with iPhoto, iMovie, and iTunes. A low-power color screen would serve as a viewfinder when the vPod is closed and as a larger display when it’s open.
iHOME
This Wi-Fi-based home network and media server would be the ultimate digital appliance, managing everything from music and photos to TV recording and office tasks. Shown here are the system’s hub, an IP handset for Web-based calls, an iSight device for videoconferencing, and a single iRemote to control it all.
iPHONE
A simplified wireless phone married to an iPod would feature Apple’s signature scroll wheel for navigation and a slide-out keypad.
In many ways, for the first time in more than a decade, Apple has a chance to become a commercially powerful company – not just a very cool place with a superstar CEO and brilliant designers, but a leader in new markets that are exponentially bigger than the very computer industry it pioneered.
As I will visit Shanghai this summer I was reading upon an article which reflects the China’s current architecture evolvement.
Shanghai, China’s commercial capital is starting to take on the chic of Paris, the sophistication of New York and the futuristic vibes of Tokyo. It already boasts the world’s fastest train (the Maglev that takes eight minutes to run the 30 km from Pudong airport into the city), the longest underwater pedestrian tunnel (under the Huangpu river) and the world’s tallest hotel-the 88-storey Grand Hyatt, complete with the world’s highest swimming pool and longest laundry chute.
Most interesting, it has Xintiandi, a two-hectare (nine-acre) complex of hip restaurants, bars and shops in an open, elegant, low-rise style that cost $170m to develop and is one of the first examples of China preserving its own architecture. Xintiandi’s houses are traditional shikumen (literally “stone gate”) built along narrow alleys that middle-class professionals flocked to for a sense of community and safety, and which made up 60% of the city’s residential housing between the 1880s and the 1940s.
Chinese architecture has rarely been this confident. In the old days, it was strictly governed by the emperor, who imposed restrictions on height, colour and design. Now China has the money and the talent-foreign architects who are now begging to work there, returning Chinese and home-grown graduates-to be different.
It is a huge opportunity. The current political system can still command huge resources; for those with government backing, there are few planning restrictions; and given the scale of internal migration-one-third of all Chinese will move into a new home over the next decade-China will be building whole new cities in the coming years. As long as it makes commercial sense, Mr Lo hazards that the mainland may well tear down a lot of the ugly buildings it has thrown up during the past 20 years and start again-which is exactly what happened in Hong Kong. And as their new model, China’s architects could proudly take Shanghai.
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