Shaping Thoughts

Some Star Wars Lego fun

You’re gonna love this…if you are into Star Wars and Lego.

Via Luis Suarez on Twitter.

Technorati tags: Star Wars, Lego, Fun

Comment | posted Dec 10, 10:54 pm on Dec 10, 2007 | category: Toys

Sony and Lego into Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds like Second Life are popping up everywhere these days. First there was that ultra-smart move of Lego. And today Sony with its virtual world called Home for the PS3. Check out the nice report on the 3pointD weblog.

Related: all my Second Life articles

Technorati tag(s): Second Life, PS3, Sony, Lego, Virtual World

Comment | posted Mar 8, 12:12 am on Mar 08, 2007 | category: Second Life / Toys

Lego goes 2.0

Today I read an interesting article on Lego in the magazine Wired.

The article presents a case of getting core customers involved in product development for the Mindstorms product range in order to end up with better (selling) products.

Lego put together a group of 4 core users (Mindstorms User Panel) that was asked to come up with idea’s and innovations in a very early stage of development of the new Mindstorm next generation robotics toolset. So, a lot of things were actually still to decide. The Wired article provides some nice details in what is coming this fall when the new product hits the shelves.

It is interesting to evaluate this initiative both from the perspective of the user, as well as from that of the company.

To quote one of the eager users that were involved:

They’re going to talk to us about Legos, and they’re going to pay us with Legos? They actually want our opinion? It doesn’t get much better than that.

showing the willingness of fans to co-operate.

For the company, tapping into these fans could be very lucrative:

Inviting customers to innovate isn’t just about building better products. Opening the process engenders goodwill and creates a buzz among the zealots, a critical asset for products like Mindstorms that rely on word-of-mouth evangelism. In his book Democratizing Innovation, MIT professor Eric von Hippel says that “the joy and the learning associated with membership in creative communities” drives people to generously share their time.

Lego meets Web 2.0
But Lego has even bigger plans:

Søren Lund (the director of Mindstorms; MdR) wants every NXT customer to be able to have an effect on how Mindstorms is used and designed. His plans include a Lego-hosted Web site where brickheads can upload scripts for robot behaviours or peruse blogs detailing the building of a Mindstorms typewriter or pinball machine. Imagine Flickr for robotics, says Lund, who admires the photography site for how it has made image-sharing accessible and, in turn, spurred demand for digital cameras.

Sounds exciting. Personally, I cannot wait to see my sons play with this stuff and, of course, me “helping” them a little.

Nice Wired cover too! I really love Lego characters being used, even for non-Lego subjects. I remind one guy having made several Bible scenes using a “Lego cast”. Then there is also that interesting lego computer game.

Comment | posted Jan 30, 11:05 pm on Jan 30, 2006 | category: Toys