By Russ Henke on 12/28/2007 1:35 PM

New-home sales in the US fell 9% in November from October to a seasonally-adjusted annual sales pace of 647,000, the US Commerce Department reported December 28, 2007. Economists were predicting November 2007 new-home sales to decline by only 1.8%. Over the last 12 months, new-home sales in the US have plunged by more than 34%, the biggest annual drop since 1991 (i.e. under Bush 41).

"I think you can classify what we are seeing in the housing market as a crash," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, according to the AP. "Sales and home prices are in a free fall. The downturn is intensifying."

Fed by the persistent lack of federal regulation in the mortgage market, the housing debacle has significantly increased the odds that the US economy will soon fall into a recession, the second one under Bush 43. We recall that his daddy presided over only one recession.

By Russ Henke on 12/19/2007 8:07 AM

The five-person Federal Communications Commission approved a controversial new rule to allow broadcasters in the twenty largest US media markets to also own a newspaper. The existing ban against this practice had been in place for thirty-two years. The White House has already pledged to veto any congressional action that seeks to change the decision.

Read More »

By Brian Seitz on 12/15/2007 8:40 PM

Despite all the applied computational power applied to the problem of product design the process has only had incremental improvement during the past three decades or dare one say just automation of the tasks. What is needed is a fundamental reexamination of the problem and possibly a reengineering of the process to create a breakthrough in how products will be designed in the future.

Read More »

By Russ Henke on 12/9/2007 6:59 AM

The November 2007 jobs report was “the clearest sign yet that the American economy was headed for a substantial slowdown.” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, said that the November job creation numbers are “indicative of a very fragile US economy that will come undone unless conditions improve soon.” Meanwhile, the average hourly wages among rank-and-file US workers (i.e. the vast majority of us Americans) was just $17.63 last month, simply emphasizing the long-term erosion of spending power for most American workers in the last seven years.

Read More »

By Brad Holtz on 12/9/2007

I just read Bill Buxton’s “Sketching User Experiences” (Morgan Kaufmann 2007).  Highly recommended. It has had a significant impact on my thinking of the process of innovation.  Buxton does an excellent job of delineating the role of sketching and leads the reader by example.  One key point is that while we all know how sketching is a learned art, improved by practice, the reading and interpretation of sketching is also a learned art. While the book seems to focus on traditional sketching, it does a very effective job of bringing the reader to understand the nature of “user experiences” and the context of sketching those experiences. Very enlightening. http://www.amazon.com/Sketching-User-Experiences-Interactive-Technologies/dp/0123740371/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1197241433&sr=1-1...

Read More »

By Brad Holtz on 12/6/2007

Bruce Sterling was not at COFES just to give the keynote. He was actively engaged in absorbing the essence of COFES. The result of his immersion into COFES is a mind-expanding short story that is full of detail that every COFES attendee will immediately recognize. The story was published by MIT's Technology Review and can be seen at: technologyreview.com

Enjoy! 

By Joel Orr on 12/4/2007

From Ralph Grabowski's upFront eZine:

Research and Markets finds that high-end MCAD is in its death spiral, at least in Europe: "The mid range segment, that has already clearly overrun the value of the High-end segment, representing more than half of the whole MCAD market, is growing at +20% annually, leaving behind the high-end segment with an annual decrease of 5%." The details'll cost you e1950 (about US$2,900) at this site.

Cyon Research's white paper examining the structure of the MCAD market has other thoughts about what used to be called "high-end" MCAD, and it's free.

By Jack Ring on 12/3/2007

The current era of CAD may be augmented upstream with computer-aided invention or creativity and will be augmented downstream with computer-aided innovation. The need exists, the money is there, the technology is here. Only one ingredient missing. I like David G. Ullman’s definition of design, “Elaboration of information punctuated by decision.” The current era of CAD helps designers once their decisions are made and it is time to record the results.

Current CAD also helps evaluate decision options, also called tradeoffs. The forthcoming era of computer-aided creativity or computer-aided invention will help designers much earlier in a project. The Three P’s are one way to think about this: possibilities, probabilities, and pursuits. Possibilities are the kinds of ideas produced by brainstorming, nominal group technique, idea writing and similar methods. Probabilities are the possibilities that survive analysis and assessment. Pursuits are the elaborations of the one to three more promising design options,...

Read More »