The company's cheapest Quadra board is just $99. The updated drivers are available free from the nVidia Web site.

Source.

In the months/years to come, I expect we can see more of AutoCAD's functions handled by the Quadro board and its CUDA processor.

Another 2010 product, Visio, was announced this week. This site has 10 screen grabs, showing Visio as we remember it, just with the ribbon UI and other modernities.

• Teens don’t want to pay for music, and certainly not CDs. They’ll either download it illegally or going on streaming sites to listen to what they want, when they want. 

The issue is not paying; the issue is access. When they hear of a song they like (through friends, in a movie, or a music-conscious tv show like The OC), they want a copy now.

They will buy CDs, if they feel the disc provides good value. But music stores are shutting down or cutting back on selection, eliminating sales. 

Another flaw in the system is that record companies have ensured that music is now everywhere; it no longer is the rare commodity it was 50-100 years ago. The lack of scarcity makes the value of each song < $0.01.

As for music sharing, teens see no difference between hearing songs on radio for free, sharing an iPod (one earbud each for two people), sharing by copying, or downloading. In fact, teens see free downloading as wise, since it saves them money -- no different than getting 80% off a new piece of clothing.

Here in Canada, downloading is legal (only uploading is illegal).

• Radio is dead to teenagers.

Mine will listen to radio in the car, but will frantically switch between stations to hear songs they like. If stations play more than one song they don't like, the radio goes off.

• Teens hates intrusive advertising.

Doesn't everyone?

• Teens spend money going to the movie theatre because it’s a social activity. 

Movie theatres seem to have replaced other forms of location entertainment: rock concerts are too expensive, symphony concerts too boring, theater plays to stuffy, museums too rare, local street festivals too corny...

•  Print media is irrelevant to them.

Not at all. My son gets car magazines; my girls get girl magazines. They will scan the front page of our local paper.

• Teens don’t use Twitter because no one is reading their tweets.

Mine don't use Twitter, because it makes no sense to them. My youngest has several times asked how it works; that "anyone" can read her Tweets is meaningless to them. 

• Teens use Facebook.

Mine will sit on the couch with friends, and use Facebook to text message the person sitting next to them. Heck, my daughter has done that with me. 

Facebook makes sense, because it defines their group of friends, the people to whom they need to show off. "Look at the clever words I wrote." "Look at my latest photos of myself."

• Teens don’t watch live TV anymore, preferring to watch content online.

Almost true. My teens want to watch shows at times that suit them, not at times that suit networks. They still watch live TV of special shows (Olympics) or when it is a shared family experience, such as The Office.

• Sony Ericsson phones are seen as being high-end.

True. Both my son and one daughter have this brand. My son is on his 3rd one. He doesn't understand why everyone doesn't have one. OTOH, I think he likes being "the only one" with a Sony Ericsson, making him stand out.

• Well-to-do teens listen to music on the iPod, less well-off teens use their cellphone.

I disagree. Snobby teens listen to iPods; all others use anything but an iPod. Go into an electronics store, and watch the battle between mom (wants to pay for the "jsut as good" cheaper model) and the daughter (wants the overpriced white or pink iPod).

My youngest uses an iPod; she cares about looks. My middle one cares about the music, not the playback device; she uses a gray SanDisk. My oldest cares about the convenience factor (Sony Ericsson cell phone with music player, hi-res camera, Internet browser -- all in one). Me, I care about small size and user interface, so I use a Sony Walkman MP3 player.

What Else Teens Want

This list is necessarily media oriented. What gets left out is what teens really want:

Their parents. Both of them. Together.

- - -

*) This version of the list  from Nicholas Deleon at CrunchGear.

To contribute, go to the MS150 website; $5,135 has been raised to date. Autodesk employees have their $50-$500 donations matched by the company.

Roopinder Tara of TenLinks has previously cycled across the USA for charity.

Source.

Source.

As an editor says, "Keep repeating to myself: I will not comment on this... I will not comment on this... I will not comment on this..."

Virtual reality cults? Scandinavian gods made human? Judge for yourself: minimoys.3ds.com/

I had enjoyed the first book of Tom Peter's "Essentials Series," Design. I looked forward to learning how to recognize, analyze, and capitalize on trends. But Trends let me down. The book's title does not describe its content.

Instead, the book should be called "Big, Hidden Markets," for Tom Peters and co-author Martha Barletta describe the two biggest consumer markets in the Western world: women and retired people. Forget the whining that women don't earn as much as men, says Mr Peters; statistics show that women account for 80% of spending in US households. 

Of the remaining 20%, women are often in the background making the final choice. Consider car buying. I tend to pick out a few models based on our current needs and my expectations for quality. But its my wife who makes the final decision as to the specific model, color, and some of the features. Then I go in to make the purchase.

Now, I tend to avoid malls, but I do venture into grocery stores, electronics stores, and the occasional clothing store. I am self-employed, so I go any time of day, and it has always stuck me how women make up the majority of customers. Equal rights are not reaching the supermarket aisle.

Along the way, Ms Barletta describes the female mindset in making purchasing decisions -- useful for males to understand the frustrating habit of picking out things to buy, and then placing them back. Whereas a guy usually figures this pair of pants is good enough for covering up his legs, the woman asks, "Are these slacks the best?" -- the best for a variety of parameters, such as quality, value, fit, length, color... 

The final 1/3 of the Trends book describes the other big hidden market, empty nesters. With the daily expense of children reduced, parents have much more income to spend on other things. And with age comes a greater demand for convenience; at 53, I no longer care about the "best" points program; I now chose the airline that provides the most comfort for the price of an economy seat. (Currently, that would be Air Canada for international flights; WestJet for flights within Canada.)

Part way through this book, I was disappointed that I wasn't going to learn how recognize, analyze, and capitalize on trends in the CAD industry. Instead, this book is for consumer goods firms who need to understand that the 18-35 range is the worst to be marketing to, since they have the least disposable income.

Published in 2005 by Dorling Kindersley Limited
160 pp.
ISBN: 0-7566-1057-5

You can purchase this book through Amazon.com: Trends: Recognize, Analyze, Capitalize

I couldn't find an explanation for in with the help files provided by Autodesk with AutoCAD 2010. I googled for it, but only found references to another kind of Cui-related "group" -- partial CUI files loaded with the CuiLoad command. A few moments worth of tinkering found that Cui's Group Name is not related to the names of Cui groups.

I reread the Cui dialog box's description for Group Name:

Specifies the group name for the command when grouping is enabled for a drop-down.

It appeared to be related to drop-downs, Autodesk's new name for flyouts. I searched through the Cui file to see if Autodesk used this Group Name feature anywhere. It didn't appear to.

Then I found that flyouts (sorry, drop-downs) have a different property for groups: Grouping can be Yes or No. The dialog box's description for this option is:

Specifies whether commands under a drop-down are grouped together using their assigned group name (Yes or No).

Things that make you go, "Hmmm..." I knew that buttons in flyouts are listed by the order in which they appear in the Cui file. I wondered if Grouping grouped the buttons by user-defined names specified by Group Name.

I randomly assigned the names "jim" and "bob" to the buttons in the Circle flyout, and then tested it. My hunch was right, as the following figure illustrates:

The grouping option allows you to segregate flyout buttons into user-named groups.

There is no way to specify the order of the user-defined names. Because I gave the first button the group name of "jim," jim got listed first.

- - -

As for Tailoring AutoCAD CUI 2010, I hope to have it ready for purchase by early next week.

Siemens PLM Systems (nee UGS) is the only big CAD vendor with Mac experience. They found that Mac types tend to be creative types, which is why Siemens has not ported their engineering analysis software to Mac. 

Autodesk makes a similar statement:

But based on our data, and talking to a lot of customers over the years, we believe roughly 30% of creative professionals prefer the Mac platform over Windows.

The key word is "creative." 

So, the key to marketing CAD to Macheads is to position it as creative-aided design software. 

Source.

Source.

But Lawyers Unhappy

Shareholders Foundation is hoping to cash in on the sale by declaring the price too low. The...

...deal appears to be unfair, given the fact that ... as recently as October 2008, was trading above $10.25 a share, substantially higher than the current offer.

Solution? Sue 'em -- the surefire way of making unhappy lawyers happy again.

Source.

The Open Design Alliance was subpoenaed by Autodesk, Inc. last month for deposition in the civil case Autodesk filed against SolidWorks Corporation for, among other things, trademark infringement, including use of the term DWG in product names. 

Arnold van der Weide, President of the ODA, stated, “I am disappointed that the ODA has once again been summoned to deposition. It puts an unnecessary burden on the Open Design Alliance, especially since lawyers at Autodesk are asking for the same information they asked for before during their petition for cancellation of the ODA’s OpenDWG trademark.”

Source.

Once in a while you read of a new author getting a book deal because of his/her blog writings. This is one of them. The OpenCAD book came about when the president and chief technical officer of Open Design Alliance approached Deelip Menezes. From the writings at his www.deelip.com blog, they knew he had the right combination of being able to write and to program. 

In about two weeks, Mr Menezes churned out this 84-page book that shows you how to write your own CAD program in two steps: construct a DWG viewer, and then extend it to edit CAD entities. In addition to the steps needed to compile code, he covers the extras that should be in any CAD program: pressing Enter to repeat the last command; checking that only valid command text is entered; adding rubberbands for visual feedback; and so on.

I gave this book two experienced CAD programmers for their reactions. One felt the book was not useful, because it merely repeated what he already knew about programming with MFC. The other agreed, but felt the book would have been a great help in his early days, struggling to figure out which steps to take. Myself, I am no MFC programmer, but I found the book interestingly written so that I could follow the process that CAD programmers engage in every day. 

Compared to the price of AutoCAD, the do-it-yourself approach is cheaper: $100 for the book, $250 for the lowest level membership to ODA (needed to get the "free" APIs), and whatever hundreds Microsoft charges for its programming environment. Plus, your time.

Published in 2009 by SYCODE
vi+84 pp.
ISBN: 978-0-557-05592-0

You can purchase this book through SYCODE: OpenCAD 

For the next two years, Siemens is banned from doing business with the World Bank, and must pay $100 million to anti-corruption agencies -- albeit, over 15 years. 

Source.

He told us he was offered a multi-million-dollar touch-screen computer system to replace [the existing manual system]. His answer? How do I fix it in the Persian Gulf under attack, or during a typhoon?

Today, Canada celebrates its birthday, being nearly three times "older" than Germany at 142 years. To celebrate, here are some self-deprecating Canadian jokes:

Q1: How do you get a Canadian to apologize?

Q2: How to you get a pool full of Canadians to get out the water?

Answers below.

Not that our politicians don't like to have fun. My home province of British Columbia found excuses to hold 100th-birthday celebrations several times: 1958, 1967 (Canada's 100th), 1971. We school kids got to know the word "centennial" pretty well, as politicians spent our parents' money throwing parties. It's just that we grew up thinking centennial was Canadian for birthday.

A1: By stepping on his foot.

A2: By announcing, "All Canadians leave the pool."

I think it will be a hybrid between the two, partial cloud delivery and partial traditional desktop software. The design element would be on the desktop with the heavy calculations being done in the cloud.

How to make revenues from cloudy software? Mr Hanspal figures on charging customers pay-as-you-go or an ad-like model, where suppliers are charged to participate in the software. 

The latest monster release of Creative Suite has been a sales dud, coming as it did last fall. Customers were faced with the dual dilemma of (a) buying upgrades at the start of what looked to be a very scary recession; and (b) upgrading to questionably-useful features.

Source.

Source.

And then the Internet shifted us away from paper-based products, and we now have digital magazines, email and Web-based newsletters, ebooks, blogs, online forums...

The original editors and writers are retiring or (sadder to say) dying. The current group of core editors have one-to-two decades of experience, and are still working hard even as thoughts of retirement flicker through.

I sometimes wonder, "Who will take over?" Which is why I am thrilled to see strong voices emerging from the blog scene, names like Matt Lombard, Deelip Menezes, Steve Johnson, and numerous others. While some of them have been in the CAD biz for a decade or more, it is blogging that lets them speak up in a way never before possible. 

None of these guys are parrots, as are too many casual bloggers; their experience lets them think deeply about issues, become outraged at injustices, and pontificate on how CAD software could become better. Over the last couple of years, I've watched with pleasure as their writing improved and became more sure-footed. 

What's not for freedom-of-the-press lovers to like about headlines like these?

• 3D Connexion Space Pilot review and abuse of superlatives
• Inventor Fusion Is Finally Out, But...
• A touch of Tehran taints the AUGI Special Election

"Users come first" was the mantra Lionel Johnston had when he launched his fledgling CADalyst magazine in the Kootneys, and it's terrific to see decades later his vision carry on through today's writers.

For some, there is no kneeling at the feet of CAD vendors*.

---

*) What's that supposed to mean? Here's an example: the media kit of a competitor to CADalyst magazine offered vendors four pages of editorial for $10,000. Similar practices continue today.