RELEASE: WINTER
Frog's Leap
The frog portfolio reads like a what's what of commercial design: The company has shaped everything from the Mac and Disney Cruise Lines to SAP R3 user interfaces and Wine.com. Now the Deutsche-Amerikanische powerhouse is making a splash in the software business by selling the workflow tools it's been perfecting for more than 30 years. The platform, i2 TradeMatrix Design Collaboration Solution, enables any design firm and its clients to do it froggy-style by jointly and seamlessly developing new products across far-flung offices and multiple firewalls. Its partner in the venture is Dallas-based i2 Technologies, a B2B big shot that knows how to build multisite extranets.
Although general-purpose platforms like Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server can also share work securely, they lack templates and timelines dedicated to product design. And while Web-based services like Autodesk's Buzzsaw.com organize projects once blueprints are in hand, they ignore the early conceptual phases, which take the most time and yield the most expensive mistakes. In contrast, Design Collaboration drives the process end-to-end, enforcing frog's Bauhaus-like doctrine that designers, engineers, manufacturers, and consumers participate in every stage of the game. When frog client Micron PC adapted this methodology, its product development cycle dropped from 21 months to 4.
Design Collaboration users can also subscribe to ideawerk, frog's online clearinghouse for design. The site combines timely information from industry experts and design editors at frog (i2 is not involved), with message boards and an inspired eBay-like area that allows people to float design ideas and look for buyers.
By making its once closely guarded methodology available to competitors in a design-centric marketplace of ideas, frog has found a clever way to reinvent itself. To reflect the shift, it's changing its identity from the limiting "frogdesign." Whatever werks.
frog werk: +1 (408) 734 5800, www.frogwerk.com.
i2 Technologies: (800) 800 3288, www.i2.com.
RELEASE: WINTER
Massive Attack
Some people adore elves and wizards. Anarchy Online is a massively multiplayer role-playing game for the rest of us. On the Dune-like planet Rubi-Ka Y30K, native life forms, colonists, robots, and runaway nanotech experiments interact in a world that promises to appeal to both hardcore competitors and players who only hang out at Rubi-Ka's disco. Whatever your citizenship, your character will be affected by a four-year story arc involving the struggle against corporate superpower Omni-Tek.
Funcom: +47 (22) 42 0102, www.funcom.com.
RELEASE: JANUARY
Remote Possibilities
You're neck-deep in Mr. Bubble and want to crank "Rubber Ducky" one more time? Don't get up. Acer's $49.99 Phaser lets any IR remote control work through the walls. Replace one of your remote's batteries with an AA- or AAA-size Phaser battery/transmitter. The little tube detects the natural RF byproduct given off by the remote's infrared diode and reproduces the pattern as a UHF signal. This travels to the small receiver unit near your stereo, which converts it back to the IR your components understand.
Acer NeWeb: +1 (408) 383 2789, www.acerneweb.com.
RELEASE: JANUARY
High Time
A touchscreen wristwatch may sound pretty geeky, but the T-Touch - with its analog face and steel case - is capital-C Class. Tap the transparent, touch-sensitive electrodes around the perimeter of the crystal, and altimeter, thermo-meter, barometer, and compass readings appear on an LCD discreetly placed at 6 o'clock. The $400 multifunction watch is water-resistant to 100 feet.
Tissot: (800) 284 7768, www.tissot.ch.
RELEASE: DECEMBER
Cruise Director
With Snap-to-Map service, a cell phone gives you turn-by-turn driving directions by voice or text - without GPS. The system tracks your phone's signal using the same location services deployed to assist emergency crews with 911 calls. By referring to detailed map data and assuming that you're on a road, the system pinpoints your whereabouts to within 100 feet. Snap-to-Map then sends the directions to your handset and continuously updates them as you drive. The service debuts through Verizon and other providers in Baltimore and Washington, DC, with more cities to follow.
Televigation: +1 (408) 245 0196, www.televigation.com.
STREET CRED
Bomb Squad
Behind the Green Doerr
Roll Call
Diverting the Audio Stream
Sole of a New Machine
On-Line Skating
(Re)Seeing Digital
ReadMe
Music
The Eyes Have It
Lost in the Scramble
Young, Fast, and Genetically Damaged
Just Outta Beta
Megatuneage
Bloggin' On
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