Cool,clear and beautiful today. Alex was up early to prep for his Physics examination. Kitty and Thea were up bright and early to get on the bus to get to Ithaca to watch a friend give his final presentation of a project. I got the trash and recycling to the curb—trying to make some sense of the trash room which was essentially “trashed”. Its nice to have that done.
I wanted to share this interesting link with you….which you may be interested in (or not) but I think its cool, kind of a celebration of our digital age, the digital cottage from whence the digital cottage industries happen. To wheel this back a bit, I love where the world is these days. One can, if inspired, start a business, sell stuff online, and create a job, a business, create a salary without having to pander to “The Man” and all that entails. So, the paradigm of going out to “get a job” may become more staying put, and creating a niche for yourself. Etsy is a model for that…but anyone with a website can/could be in business. One step further, anyone with a computer can be a small manufacturer. What with the amazing stuff that is created for scrapbooking, one can do limited edition vinyl, paper, plastic laser cutting combined with the lovely Epson printers (large scale) that can print paper, fabric, material etc. Laser cutters like Cricut, The Silhouette, or the Klik-n-Kut (CNC cutters) that work with standard purchases along with VECTOR Graphics (hello! this is my world!!). Companies like Spoonflower allow us the opportunity to create patterns and custom fabrics for ourselves and for sale. Klic-N Print allows you to print on ribbons, stickers. There are all sorts of inexpensive on-demand and conventional printers out there online that I cannot say enough about. And there is this new site I have discovered, Ponoko, part of the “personal factory movement”. This is what Ponoko says to explain the business they are in:
Welcome to the world’s easiest making system.
Ponoko is an online marketplace for everyone to click to make real things.
It’s where creators, digital fabricators, materials suppliers and buyers meet to make (almost) anything.
We kicked off at TechCrunch40 at the end of 2007 with a vision to reinvent how goods are designed, made and distributed worldwide.
The core of this vision is the trade in product designs – kinda like the trade in music (iTunes), photos (Flickr), movies (YouTube) and software apps (iPhone) before us.
We host tens of thousands of user generated product designs, ready to be customized and made into real things with the click of a mouse.
But hosting designs is only a part of the puzzle. Importantly, we also provide the world’s first digital making system that means these product designs can be priced instantly online and made locally, as close to the point of consumption as possible.
It means goods can be made in the greenest way. Making on demand reduces warehousing and wastage. Plus, making locally emphasizes digital transportation of goods instead of the traditional shipping of physical products.
Check it out. Isnt it great we have so much within a mouseclick away? Think of all you could do and make.