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SAP announced that its on demand enterprise suite Business ByDesign roll out is moving slower than previously expected.

The company said that it would take 12 to 18 months longer than the original target of 2010 to reach $1 billion in revenue and touch 10,000 customers in the mid-market globally. For 2008, SAP expects to have less than 1,000 customers across six countries.

SAP wants to make sure it doesn't flub Business ByDesign, which represents the future of the company. The company pioneered client/server ERP software, but has been slow to enter the rapidly growing on demand arena. SAP has said that it has deployed 2,500 engineers over the last four or five years to create Business ByDesign, which the company touts as the most complete on-demand suite across applications and industries.

(Credit: SAP)

SAP's plan is to provide 2,100 service interfaces in Business ByDesign, which will mesh with each other but will not be customizable, according SAP founder Hasso Plattner.

NetSuite has been working on its on-demand suite for ten years, coming out with new versions yearly. And, salesforce.com is expanding its platform to include ERP capabilities, such as CODA's financial applications built on the Force.com platform.

Plattner differentiates Business ByDesign from salesforce.com by virtue of the completeness of the SAP suite. For SAP, software is about serving larger businesses with a complete, integrated suite of applications with "wall-to-wall functionality," Plattner said.

At a recent debate, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff challenged SAP founder Hasso Plattner.

Plattner was asked by Benioff if he would consider buying Salesforce.com. "It always makes sense to look into something. If the Apex platform (the Salesforce.com platform) is really as good a he thinks it is, we should look even more," he said.

Plattner also had some advice for Benioff. "We have many things in common. Let me give you some advice, but you might not take it because you are younger: don't overestimate your platform."

Perhaps SAP has been overestimating its ability to deliver an on-demand solution. JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens contends that Business ByDesign doesn't have a single data model, but instead different workstations in silos, and is now working to rectify that situation. So far, SAP isn't talking.

SAP has stumbled in earlier attempts to move its business applications online. The company's initial foray into hosted applications was marked by shifting product plans and murky delivery schedules. SAP eventually launched a hybrid approach with CRM, with a product designed to work the same, whether used on-demand or on-premise.

In the meantime, Microsoft, Salesforce.com and others have evolved their on demand applications. Salesforce, in particular, is moving ahead aggressively in the market with plans for an on demand platform service, in addition to expanding its business applications lineup.

See also:

Larry Dignan's coverage of SAP's quarterly results.

SAP's Peter Zencke: Inside Business ByDesign

(Credit: Walt Disney Co.)

We asked Chris Heatherly, vice president of technology and innovation, Disney Consumer Products, The Walt Disney Co., to answer a set of questions--and he took the time to dive a little deeper.

How do you define "innovation"?
My favorite quote about innovation is one where Steve Jobs was asked how they systematize innovation at Apple and he said "We don't. We hire good people." I think a lot of talk about innovation amounts to a lot of dancing about architecture. People get caught up in trying to have an innovative "process" instead of having their values where they should be--making great product. To borrow from James Carville, "It's the product, stupid!" Who cares what your process is? It's what you put out there that matters.

If you want to make great products, you have to have high standards and absolutely insist on those standards. There's a great story about Pixar and the making of Toy Story 2. They completed most of the movie and then decided they didn't like how it was coming out. So they scraped it and started from scratch. How many companies have the guts to do that? Not many.

But I haven't answered your question. I think innovation is understanding people and what they need and giving them the most perfect solution you can to their problem even if they might not know they have it yet. It's giving people something new that they haven't seen before or making them re-experience something familiar in a totally new and better way. Everyone talks about Apple. The reason we all worship Apple is that there is no detail too small for them to sweat out. They don't stop at trying to make a great product. Look at the packaging. They work to reduce materials, to improve communications, to reduce shipping costs, to have better environmentally friendly materials, to create a great out-of-box experience, and on and on. Once you live and breathe these principles, you can't compartmentalize. You have to make everything as great as it can be. It becomes a way of life.

I think too many people confuse innovation and technology. I have seen a lot of designers try to make a mediocre concept innovative by putting Bluetooth or some other whiz-bang technology du jour in it. That's not innovation. It's cheating. Innovation is about solving problems for people. As I write this, I am at the New York Toy Fair. I am always so impressed and humbled by the incredible cleverness and simple innovation in small things that toy designers and inventors do every day. I think the technology business could learn a lot from these guys. The toy business has to work with very cheap stuff so they can't fall back on expensive technology. They really have to make the magic trick out of Popsicle sticks and rubber bands, if you take my meaning.

Yesterday, I saw a company that makes bubbles that you can't spill. Brilliant! I bet a lot of people have looked at bubbles and said "How can you innovate bubbles? There's nothing you can do. They're just bubbles." But this guy did and now he has a huge business because it turns out that parents don't buy as many bubbles for their kids as they might because they are afraid they will spill them and make a mess. To me, that's real innovation. A simple, clever idea well executed that makes things better for people.

What are the most important areas of innovation in your organization (product, process, IP, marketing, etc.)?

To be a creative company, you have to have a creative core, whatever that means for your company. For Disney, that's people like storytellers, animators, and Imagineers. For a company like Apple, it's designers and engineers. The people at the core of what you do have to be the heart that pumps innovation through the vessels of the organization. You can't live without your heart. But the other parts of the organization have just as important a role in innovation. Take technology, for example. Pixar is very clear that it is about telling stories and that everyone who is there is there for that purpose. Technology plays a really important role for them. They like to say that "art challenges technology and technology inspires art." They don't look at technology as being a second-class citizen to their artists. It's a respected peer. There are lots of other parts of the organization that have to be part of an innovative mission.

Here's one people don't put in a sentence with innovation very often--legal. Look at Google. They are constantly doing things with search and indexing and now with YouTube that challenge the legal status quo. If they had a legal team whose only role was to keep the company from getting sued, they would never do those things. If you want to be innovative, everyone has to be on board for the mission. Everyone has a role to play.

But one of the keys to innovation is having management that expects and drives innovation. You can have the best designers in the world and the worst management and nothing good will come of it. You have to have leaders who believe and have guts and support innovative work. You have to have leaders who hire the best talent and weed out the people who have the wrong values and intentions, but who at the same time are extremely tolerant of good people making mistakes or failing sometimes. If you manage quarter by quarter or have no tolerance for failure, you won't ever have innovation, no matter how creative your people are. You have to be willing to lose.

What would you consider your most successful innovation? How did you "find" it?
I'm very critical and I always think we can do better than we have done in the past. My favorite stuff--no matter when you ask me--is in the future and stuff I normally can't talk about it publicly.

My recent favorite innovation is a new technology called Clickables that we are launching in connection to our new Disney Fairies virtual world. It's a way for kids to take their online world experience into the real world. The core of it is a magical bracelet. By simply clicking their bracelets together, girls become friends in the online environment. And it's safer too because if you had to physically click with your friend that means they were in physical proximity to you, you saw them, and you know who they are. They aren't some random person online. Also, it allows kids to download virtual objects from their inventory and trade with their friends, which is another complicated thing we made simple. Most online worlds don't let you trade because it's hard to authenticate. We made that simple and seamless.

(Credit: Gearlog)

How did we find the idea? We knew that online worlds were going to be a big deal and so we got about 50 of our smartest people together from different divisions and of different job types--marketing people, technology people, designers, even finance people and lawyers--and we had a big brainstorm. We have a great process for brainstorms that's led by our head of creative Len Mazzocco. He's like the Michael Jordan of brainstorming. We came up with probably a few hundred ideas but narrowed it down to 75 really good ones from the two days. Then we narrowed it down to our top 10 and top 5 and in there was the nugget of the Clickables concept. Then we decided that this was such an important area that we would create a dedicated team around it, called our Toymorrow team that would be a little SWAT team focused on technology in the toy space. We moved really aggressively to find partners who shared our vision and had applicable technology. Speed is of the essence in these things. Len always says that "God gives everyone the same ideas at the same time." If you don't move fast, someone else will have your idea and do it before you can get it to market.

My other favorite recent product is a digital camera we made for preschoolers called Disney Pix Jr. I love it because it is so simple and so rugged and just does what it says it will do. I threw one myself down a flight of concrete stairs 20 times and couldn't break it. And the interface is so simple. We even got rid of the on button! And we have a fun feature on it called PhotoFriends that lets you pose with a Disney character in your picture. Kids are having a lot of fun with that. But for me, that is a great product because it meets the need and does what it says it's going to do. It doesn't read your mind or have Wi-Fi or cure cancer or any of that. It's just a great camera for kids. It is what it's supposed to be. Not a lot of products, especially technology products, can say that.

Which innovation "failure" did you learn the most from, and why?
That's easy. The Disney Dream Desk PC. We had all the right ideas in the beginning. We wanted to make an inexpensive computer without all the doodads in a small form factor about twice the size of the Mac Mini (you couldn't make it smaller back then because the processor was so hot) with a creative software suite a la iLife but for kids and with robust parental controls. I am proud of the way the software and Internet filtering came out. But the PC grew from this small inexpensive thing to this almost full-sized PC that was not as kid-like as we wanted and was much more expensive than we originally planned.

If we had kept with our original idea, we would have had the OLPC four years before Negroponte. That was the hardest project of my life, and I can't say I didn't fight hard. But our partner didn't share our vision. They thought it was imperative that it have all the slots and expansion and all the stuff parents probably don't really care about when they buy a kid a PC but that geeks care about a great deal. I thought we could change them, that we would convince them. But I felt compelled to launch, and I wound up compromising in some areas I didn't want to. I learned from that. Your partners need to share your vision or you will never get the result you want. I believe it's Louis Armstrong that said "There's some people, if they don't listen, you can't tell them." You have to stick to principles. If the people you work with don't want to do the project right, it's not worth doing.

What lessons can you pass on to others from how your organization has changed to make itself more innovation driven?
Anyone who reads a newspaper knows that Disney has had some major changes in the past few years with a new CEO--Bob Iger--and the acquisition of Pixar. We are getting back to our roots. Focusing on quality, incredible storytelling, and the magic people expect of us. Bob's really focused on bringing the company together as a team and put quality and innovation at the forefront of the company's agenda. What he's done is create a great collaborative environment for innovation and the rest has taken care of itself. You can see the whole company flourishing right now.

In your opinion, what are the biggest barriers and challenges that stand in the way of organizations becoming more innovative?
The organizations are their own biggest barriers. A lot of things that big companies do that they think are conservative and prudent are actually very foolhardy and dangerous. It's said that cynicism is ignorance masquerading as wisdom. Business is very simple. You have to offer a product that is better than your competition and you have to keep your customers happy. A lot of big companies get caught up in other things. Managing a P&L is important, and money keeps the lights on. But if people don't like the product or service you are putting out there, it doesn't really matter how clever you were about saving costs here and there. When you're dead, it doesn't really matter why. You can't cut your way to glory. Look at Apple. In the last recession, everyone else laid people off and cut back on R&D. Apple said "We are going to innovate our way out of this." And look what happened for them. You can't stop innovating.

Beyond your organization, who do you admire for risk-taking innovation, and what do you think makes them successful?
Apple is too obvious, so I'll say Target. At a time when everyone was trying to follow Wal-Mart into the bargain bin, Target had a vision that everyone deserved nicely designed products. A lot of people thought they were talking over their audiences' heads or they were full of themselves. In fact, everyone else was underestimating the intelligence and taste of their guests, and Target saw something no one else did. But Target innovated in a lot less obvious ways too. Take queue lines. At a lot of big-box stores, you could spend 20 minutes waiting to check out. At Target, you will wait less than 5 minutes most of the time. If the register is stacked up more than 3 people deep, they will open another one. That's customer service. Today, Target is beating all of their competitors' comps and doing more business per door than anyone else. Not everything has worked for Target. Remember the short-lived Philippe Starck line? But they keep trying and more often than not, they succeed.

What innovation are you still waiting for?
I think the single most important innovation we all need is low-cost green energy. Energy is the United States' #1 trade issue, #1 security, #1 economic issue, and #1 environmental issue. Green energy will have a more transformative effect on the world than the Internet, it's that big. Outside of this, I am working a lot with robotics these days and I'm very excited about all this smart technology that will make its way into lots of products. I live in LA and we are (in)famous for our traffic. I would love us all to have robotic cars that could figure out traffic flow, so I never have to sit through a traffic jam again.

The other day I heard a radio commercial claim that more than half of all health-related Web sites are fronts for law firms trolling for potential malpractice-suit clients. I immediately doubted the ad's claim. First, it didn't cite a source for the high percentage of illegitimate health sites it stated. Second, it was an ad itself (for a law firm trolling for potential malpractice-suit clients, of all things). And third, it glossed over the actual name of the firm, but repeated its toll-free number over and over.

Still, the ad got me thinking about all the bogus Web sites out there, and how people can protect themselves in the absence of any third-party monitoring of Web information. There are some controls in place for making safe Web purchases, principal among them are Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, which are designed to ensure the security of Web servers. When you visit an SSL server, it places a small lock icon in the bottom-right corner of the browser window, and the URL in the address bar begins with "https:". Even these can be spoofed, however, so they shouldn't be your only consideration when deciding whether to trust a site with your credit card numbers.

Ultimately, when it comes to verifying any site's trustworthiness, you're on your own. Here are some tips and resources to help you decide for yourself which sites you can believe.

Start with the URL
Before you follow a link returned by a search engine or posted on some other site, mouse over it and look at the status bar at the bottom of the browser window for hints about the site. If you don't see this information, click View > Status Bar in either IE or Firefox.

The text between the double slashes and the first single slash is the server ID. If it's an ISP's name, such as "aol" or "geocities," the site is a personal page. (The server ID will usually be followed by a tilde or other character, and then a user name.) This doesn't mean the page is untrustworthy, just that the person or organization hasn't purchased their own domain name.

Check the server ID in your browser's status bar for an indication of the type of page prior to opening it.

Unfortunately, you can't tell much from the domain extension, or top-level domain. The popular .com and .net extensions are used by commercial and non-commercial entities, as are .org--which was intended solely for nonprofits--and the various country codes, such as .ca for Canada and .de for Germany. The first three are unsponsored, as are the newer domains .biz, .info, and .name. There are also several sponsored TLDs, which are "controlled" by a third party. These include .aero, .asia, .coop, .mobi, .museum, .pro, and .travel. Of these only .mobi has gained traction among Web developers eager to attract mobile-phone users.

Once you're on the site, look for an About or Biography page, which should give you a clear indication of the site's purpose and intended audience, as well as the qualifications of its authors. Also check for a Contact page that includes a physical address and/or toll-free telephone number. Keep in mind that these site elements are also easy to spoof. Two other early indications of a site's validity are the presence of a date on the page, and the inclusion of links to information relevant to the subject at hand, and not simply some Ajax widget that displays headlines from some other site automatically, or (more likely) a list of unrelated text ads.

Check the site's links
It's not uncommon for sites to fill their pages with links to other popular sites in hopes of raising their profile among search-engine spiders. To view a list of sites that link to the site in question, type link: followed by its URL in Google's search box, and press Enter. You can also enter the URL at Alexa.com, if it's one of the top 100,000 sites on the Web, to get a snapshot of its traffic, as well as what sites link to it.

View a snapshot of a Web site's traffic, and a list of sites linking to it, at Alexa.com.

Look for the site in a Web directory
There are some credible third-party Web directories that help you find topic-specific sites you can trust. The Librarian's Index is a bit dated, and it doesn't include some of my favorite technology resources, but it covers a range of topics almost as broad as the Web itself. A consortium of college and university librarians led by the University of California at Riverside created Infomine for their students and staff, but it lists many reliable Web sources in non-scholarly areas as well. One of the best consumer-focused Web directories is at About.com.

The ring-of-truth test
Even information on sites with reputations for reliability can be suspect, as shown by recent revelations about bogus postings on Wikipedia. The more important the information, the more sources you should use to corroborate it.

Along with a clear and consistent statement of purpose, a site should be grounded in the real world, with a physical address, a URL that matches its name, and references for its authors. It should also be easy to use, clearly laid out, and bereft of typos and broken links. And that old maxim is as valid on the Web as anywhere else: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Friday: convert any Office file to PDF for free.

Nokia and the University of Cambridge are showing off a new stretchable and flexible mobile device of the future called Morph.

(Credit: Nokia)

The new concept phone is part of an online display presented in conjunction with the "Design and the Elastic Mind" exhibition underway through May 12 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The device, which is made using nanotechnology, is intended to demonstrate how cell phones in the future could be stretched and bent into different shapes, allowing users to "morph" their devices into whatever shape they want. Think Stretch Armstrong for cell phones. Want to wear your cell phone as a bracelet? No problem, just bend it around your wrist.

Nokia says the concept device demonstrates handset features that nanotechnology might be capable of delivering, including flexible materials, transparent electronics, and self-cleaning surfaces.

(Credit: Nokia)

"Nokia Research Center is looking at ways to reinvent the form and function of mobile devices," Bob Iannucci, chief technology officer for Nokia, said in a statement. "The Morph concept shows what might be possible."

Even though Morph is still in early development, Nokia believes that certain elements of the device could be used in high-end Nokia devices within the next seven years. And as the technology matures, nanotechnology could eventually be incorporated into Nokia's entire line of products to help lower manufacturing costs.

(Credit: Seattle Post Intelligencer)

Is Apple's PR wearing thin?

Sure, there was the MacBook Air and the buzz around "thinnovation." But wasn't that--pun intended--too "thin" for a big media splash, especially compared with past years? Now that MacWorld is over, pundits are reviewing Apple's PR efforts, and when the expectations are so high (and a company is so good at it), it is not too surprising that some are disappointed with what they've seen this year. Frank Shaw, a PR professional at Waggener Edstrom, Microsoft's lead PR agency, is one of them, and you have to give him credit for being so vocal in public despite his affiliation with the Apple rival. (It would be easy to dismiss his criticism as just a Microsoft cabal.) Shaw is wondering whether Apple's shock and awe, event-focused product launch PR philosophy has lost its relevance in a time of always-on communications:

"The concept of holding news, building expectations, and then unveiling a massive surprise has been super effective, and no more so than last year with the iPhone. It was a tour de force from a communications standpoint. This recent Macworld? Not so much."

He refers to the Feiler Faster Thesis, which states that people's ability to retain and process information has accelerated, resulting in significantly faster news cycles:

"So in this world, is a twice a year news bang sufficient? The answer could be yes--but there is little room for events like today in that world. Apple stepped to the plate today, IMHO, and hit...a single. The company won't be up to bat again for a while...if you are only up a few times a year, you better hit some home runs."

He admits that he's a proponent of "small ball" rather than "home run ball," and it's hard to judge whether that makes him old-school or PR avant-garde:

"I've never been a big fan of 'giving up control of the message' or 'information wants to be free' or 'user generated content will rule the world' or 'it's all about the conversation.' But I'm a huge believer in the value of ongoing communication, to the right audiences, about the topics they care most about, in a regular, sustained way."

iPhone guilt

But Apple products raise more than just PR questions. On the O'Reilly blog, Dale Dougherty takes Apple's 1984 slogan "The computer for the rest of us" as a starting point to meditate on the "rest of the rest of us"--those excluded from our high-tech frenzy and without the means to participate in the Apple universe of godly gadgets. He does so because he feels "iPhone guilt":

"Taking the iPhone out of my pocket in a public place makes me uncomfortable. Some people ask nicely about it: 'How do you like it?' But I'm keenly aware that others don't have what I have and they notice it. The iPhone is a great phone but I'm conscious that it's helping to define 'the rest of us versus them.'"

Dougherty's moral treatise poses some uncomfortable questions:

"Is the high-tech world indifferent to the problems of the poor? Do we have any competence that matters in helping them find a better life? Or are we just making 'the happy few' that much happier? What is a social network if the people facing the toughest problems are not part of it? They don't need more signs that tell them that they are on their own. The have-nots don't do networking. It doesn't get them anywhere."

"Whether it's the latest from Web 2.0 or Apple Computer, do we need to ask what it means for those who aren't able to take part? Does it help them catch up or put them further behind? That calculation is part of the social cost of any new technology. We might think of it like we're starting to think about our oversized carbon footprint and its impact on the physical world. Is there any way to offset the negative social impact of the technology that we're so busily developing?"

"It's a challenge for the 'best of us' to address."

Omni were showing off their new OmniFocus application, for those who are fans of the GTD approach to task management.

They were also showing (in beta) version 5 of their oddly-named but wonderful application OmniGraffle. This is usually described as diagramming application similar to Visio, but this does its wide range of applications an injustice. I use OmniGraffle all the time for all manner of activities, from resource tracking to brainstorming to creating quick and dirty websites. At frog design (where Tim and I work), it is used by many folks for more traditional information design and taskflow analysis.

Version 5 fixes some of the small niggles from the previous rev, like how the automatic hierarchical tree building works (think org charts). But it also introduces new features like true beziers, improved master pages, a dramatically improved stencil management palette, and an overall streamlined interface that should make working in it significantly faster, especially if on a laptop (goodbye floating palettes).

Belkin Ceylon Bag

(Credit: Belkin)

Here's something blasphemous: My favorite booth at Macworld was not Apple's, but Belkin's. It knocked my socks off.

Think back a few years: Belkin was a ho-hum manufacturer of unsexy cables and nondescript PC accessories. Then came the iPod, and the company recognized a good thing when it saw one. Belkin jumped on the iPod shooting star and produced a nice line of interesting, well-conceived accessories. But essentially, the company outsourced its aesthetic to the iPod, piggybacking visually as well as functionally on that core device.

Now, Belkin is turning into a design and innovation powerhouse in its own right.

At its attractive booth, the company was showing an amazingly wide array of products, including a hip messenger bag, an HD TV "beamer", a Skype phone, and Podcast Studio. All were interesting, stylish, and well-made. The company has an emerging aesthetic that, while not totally unique, is starting to create a strong Belkin personality.

One item that caught my eye because of its genuine innovation in a totally boring product was its Conserve Surge Protector. It is a thin eight-outlet surge protector (stifled yawn)...with a remote control. Huh?

Belkin Conserve power strip

(Credit: Adam Richardson)

Actually it's brilliant: You use the remote to turn off the powerstrip when you don't want it sucking vampire energy. The remote can be used to control one or multiple strips (they have selectable RF channels), so conceivably you could turn off a whole bunch of them in one go in an office or house.

There are two nonswitched outlets so you can turn off your energy-sucking plasma and leave your TV on to record The Colbert Report. Ironically, the power strip itself becomes a source of vampire energy, but it is far less than what is connected to it.

Lastly, the remote looks like a giant on-off switch, about the size of a playing card. It can be attached to a wall-mount, so you don't have to worry about losing it:

Power strip remote on the wall

(Credit: Adam Richardson)

Let's hope Belkin can keep up this pace. My hat is off to the company.

(Credit: Hem.com)

Europe loves the VW Beetle, the Renault Twingo, and the Smart. The U.S. has the Mini and will finally get the Smart, too. And recently India proudly presented the spiritual successor to all of these--the $2,500 Tata Nano, a "people's car" that is widely gushed about, not only for its surprisingly slick design but also for its innovations.

In recent years, ecoconcerns, design savvy, and an (urban) willingness to quest for practicality have fostered the trend toward specialized cars that are as small as the niches they serve. While the idea of a small car is not new, in the case of the Nano, and that's an interesting addendum, the miniaturization of the product goes along with a miniaturization of price, development process, and distribution model. The Nano is the world's new "cheapest car," it was developed and designed by an off-site micro-organization, and it operates with a decentralized distribution model that allows the suppliers who assemble the car to also sell and service it directly to the consumers. What you can learn from Tata: shrink the product, shrink the feature list (no frills!), shrink the development team (no red tape!), shrink the price (ultra low cost!), and shrink (localize!) assembly and distribution. Think small, score big.

In fact, nano is the new big. Language is always a good indicator of cultural shifts. There is talk of the "Nano-effect," of "nano-sphere," and the magazine Nanowerk observes that, "Over the course of the last 12 months, the LexisNexis database of newspaper articles records 239 stories referring to nanotechnology in the British press. In the same period there have been 239 stories referring to 'iPod' and 'nano'."

India's Economic Times even proclaims the "coming Nano Age:"

"Small is getting a big play. Part of the push is coming from companies eager to stuff cell phones with value add-ons and another is about demonstrating technology that is smart, simple, small and beautiful. (...)Nanotech products or small, nifty gadgets may not be cheap, as the emphasis is not on price cutting but efficiency at a small scale. Though it remains to be seen whether, the Tata Nano, a nanotech medical device or a pocket printer, will set the cash counters ringing."

Everyone wants to be a designer. That's the value proposition of JuJups.com, a new online service claiming it will allow consumers to design their own personalized and customized 3D content. 3D printing, as the underlying technology is called, is a form of rapid prototyping that builds up three-dimensional objects by "printing" successive layers of materials (polymer, cells, sugar, etc.) on top of each other.

(Credit: George Hart)

As a recent Wired story points out, 3D-printing technology has been around for a while, mostly used by professional design firms and design-intensive businesses such as automakers, handset makers, and aerospace companies. Recent advancements have enabled the technology to "print out" fully functional finished products, leading to a remarkable boom in equipment sales: according to market research firm Wohlers Associates, 8,000 machines, or 36 percent of the industry's two-decade worldwide sales total of 22,000, have been sold in the past two years alone.

Multi-material 3D printers, capable of producing 3D parts and assemblies made from different materials in a single build, are hitting the market, and companies like Freedom of Creation (FOC) are paving the way for making rapid manufacturing technologies accessible for consumers.

In addition, a steady drop in the price of printers has spawned many new businesses trying to push 3D printing into the consumer market: 3D Outlook Corporation is selling 3D models of mountains and other topographic 3D maps for prices below $100, catering to hikers, resorts, and real estate firms.

Companies such as Fabjectory and FigurePrints produce 3D models of virtual characters (from virtual worlds or games). SolidWorks, a U.S. unit of Dassault Systemes SA, a French maker of design software, has launched Cosmic Modelz, a site that lets kids use 3D printing technology to create their own customized action-figures. And now JuJups wants to step aggressively into the emerging market with a Web-based 3D-printing service for everyone.

The JuJups site, however, currently only offers customized designs of photo frames, which it then prints out on 3D color printing machines and ships to customers. Although the company says it plans to expand its printing capacity to support the growing demand for customized objects including giftware, memorabilia, toys, etc., it is a little odd that it put out a bold announcement (for immediate release) of an offering that is apparently not quite ready for prime time at this point.

The JuJups example shows that there's still a gap between hype and reality when it comes to 3D printing for consumers. Trendwatching, and other trend-spotting media (Times Online, Post-Gazette, Make) have long propagated "MIY" (make it yourself) culture as a key trend.

Terry Wohlers, president of Wohlers Associates, says 3D printing is the fastest-growing part of the rapid prototyping industry. Wired believes it is witnessing a design revolution. Earlier this year, Glen Emerson Morris, a technology consultant, predicted in the Advertising and Marketing Review that 3D printing (or desktop manufacturing, as he calls it) would hit the consumer market big time: "It will likely have an impact on society, politics, and business as great or greater than the Internet. So, fasten your seatbelts. This is going to be a really wild ride."

Morris argued that "one of the reasons consumer use of home 3D printing, better described as desktop manufacturing, is likely to take off quickly is that there is very little manufacturing being done in America anymore. As a result, there will be very little pressure by manufacturing special interests against it."

And yet, we're still sitting here with our seatbelts fastened--but the wild ride has yet to occur. Aside from the above-mentioned niche sites, the big mainstream push from Generation C (C = content) to Generation 3D has been lost somewhere along the way. When will big retailers start to add 3D printing features to their sites? Where are the powerful brands or smart start-ups embracing the model? When will see the YouTube of 3D printing?