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"The bottoms of toy cars are fascinating because it's a revealing insight into the mind of the toy designer. Generally, you don't really have to do anything at all, but most toy cars have at least some attempt made to have some measure of detail or accuracy. On many models, there is a genuine attempt to get the mechanicals shown below as accurate as possible, and often the results are quite good. You can see corrugated oil pans, suspension arms, mufflers, differentials, driveshafts, and more. It's clear the designer actually looked at the original car. 

Other times, even if the body is accurate, the bottom can be this sort of collage of parts the designer knows should be there– most often propshaft and some kind of exhaust– but the locations and sizes are placed with a certain casual whimsy. I like these as well, as they give a nice view of what someone who may not know much about cars thinks a car underside should look like."

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So, my birthday is in a week, and which one of you is going to get me a bolt of fabric with Brent’s face on it?

[spoonflower.com, via SwissMiss]

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The Daily WTF is a blog dedicated to the stories of IT pros who have to deal with "them" (regular, non-IT people) who keep getting it wrong and destroying things because they don't understand how technology works. 

This story was titled "Caught". Here's an excerpt. 

She spun around the operator and dashed up the steps, ignoring the calls for her to stop. She could see the entire factory floor from the catwalk. She spotted the broken conveyor belt right away-- the last belt in the line, between the blast furnace and the pallet stacker. The conveyor belt had buckled, and the motors were exposed. She could see plenty wrong with it-- but what worried her the most was that she couldn't see what this 'fix' was. And yet, the assembly line was running. A neat pile of engine block casings were stacked at the end of the line, and a new one was rolling fresh out of the blast furnace.

The operator caught up to her, leaning heavily on the hand rail. He stood beside her as she watched. "I'll show you what someone 'not certified on the equipment' can do."

The industrial robot at the head of the broken conveyor belt clamped onto the aluminum casing, and passed it though a series of sensors and cameras, using its machine vision to ensure all dirt and foundry oil had been blasted clean. If the engine block failed inspection, it'd be put on a conveyor belt back into the blast furnace. Otherwise, it'd be put on a different belt-- the broken belt-- and sent down the line for finishing.

All the right lights flashed. The engine had passed.

"How?" she mused. The robot went still, as if in thought, while the pallet robot waited patiently.

"They're using the factory's network to run a program I wrote," the operator happily answered. "Their sensors and machine vision are working out the telemetry data."

"What telemetry data?" she asked, confused.

"The usual. Angle. Velocity. Spin."

Before Amalie could even fathom what those data points meant, the second robot hunched into an abnormal position, and signaled 'ready' back to the inspection bot--

-- which then implemented the data into a trajectory, wound up with a *whirr*, and threw the engine block overhand across the 100' gap.

*whoosh*

The receiver caught it with a *clang*, and calmly put it into the carrier, and waited for the next casing.

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IMG_0176.MOV Watch on Posterous

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The Kids Should See This - An awesome new blog to which I've subscribed that presents cool, real-world things to parents...to show to their kids. Instead of talking down to kids, it shows them something awesome.

From the blog:

There's just so much science, nature, music, arts, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...

But we don't underestimate kids around here.

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via i.imgur.com

The credit union industry feels your pain, Trudy.

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These folks have learned how to make the bitter pill of education and information taste like peanut m&ms, or chips and salsa, or brie en croute, or whatever tickles your fancy.

Want your members to consume what you prepare for them? It needs to taste better.

We, as an industry, have no real excuse for our financial literacy materials, product explanations, or our general voice to be anything less than clear and compelling. Beautiful. Interesting. Meaningful. The only thing holding us back is our own effort.

Show me a marketer who says "I don't have time" or "I don't have a budget" and I'll show you someone who hasn't done a good job of thinking through and prioritizing their time and budget. I'm as guilty as anyone.

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Fast Company's Danielle Sacks did an interview with Amy Cortese, author of Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From It. 

From the interview: 

In your reporting, did you find evidence that communities that invested locally were more resilient during the recession?

Yes, absolutely. One of the best examples is Hardwick, Vermont, where community investing has been unfolding for a decade. It started when the area's new generation of farmers and entrepreneurs began getting together to help each other work through business issues. Many of them, such as Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds and Pete Johnson of Pete's Greens, were experiencing rapid growth and would run into cash flow problems, so they began lending money to each other to get through lean times. Around 2005, Stearns raised $1.1 million from a group of (accredited) local investors, all within 50 miles. Other community investments followed. Claire's Restaurant, which showcases food grown or raised by the area's farmers, sold prepaid "food coupons" to 50 residents for $1,000 apiece, which entitled them to $25 off a meal once a month for four years. It's sort of modern day barn raising. All of this mutual support and reinforcement has attracted more entrepreneurs to Hardwick, like the Vermont Food Venture Center, a shared use facility for food producers and startups, which has relocated to Hardwick from Burlington to be part of the action. In the last three years, while most of the country was struggling with unemployment, Hardwick created 100 food and agriculture-related jobs, increasing local jobs by 25 percent.

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via curiositycounts.com

Dang. Our words are all pricey.

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As it turns out, we have a way to prevent gangs of humans from acting like savage packs of animals. In fact, we've developed entire disciplines based around this goal over thousands of years. We just ignore most of the lessons that have been learned when we create our communities online. But, by simply learning from disciplines like urban planning, zoning regulations, crowd control, effective and humane policing, and the simple practices it takes to stage an effective public event, we can come up with a set of principles to prevent the overwhelming majority of the worst behaviors on the Internet.

from dashes.com via swissmiss

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via readwriteweb.com

"By 2020, there will be 50 billion 'things' connected to the Internet - everything from your body, car, alarm clock and even cows."

This is right in line with a conversation I kicked off in "Uncommon Objects," written for The Financial Brand: What could this mean for financial services?

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