Unlike most services that were created to solve a specific problem/problems, Google Wave seems to be searching for a problem to solve.  In the past few months I have been reading a multitude of sources to see how others have found problems to solve with Google Wave.  This year at SolidWorks World, I have been taking notes with my friends and colleagues in order to ensure that the detail accuracy is high.  Collaborative notes seems to be one of the many use cases that I think everyone could benefit from.

One of the major problems early on with a public-facing wave was the lack of control a wave creator had for access to the participants.  Now that Google has rolled out the abiltiy to control Read/Write acess, now public waves can be controlled and the mess of too many editors can be avoided.

For those of you on Google Wave and want to get some of the notes you can go to the search and type in "with:public + tag:sww10" and see the waves I have started that are public.  Finding the waves, as you can see, are not friendly but we are all engineers and so are the designers of Wave.  Here are the short links for the waves I have started:

- SolidWorks World 2010 - What Sheet Metal Manufacturers Wish You Knew:

- SolidWorks World 2010 - 10 Administration Essentials for all SolidWorks Users:

- SWW10: SolidWorks 2011 Sneak Peak: (will be only on the notes for 2011 on Wednesday)

- SolidWorks World 2010 - SolidWorks Graphics Performance Analysis & Tuning:

There will be about 5 or 6 of us taking notes and you will all be able to see the notes come together live or come back after and see the results of our madness! ~Lou

Stump the Chumps Take 2:

This podcast is a roundtable discussion with a few of the "Chumps" from this years breakout session called "Stump the Chumps".  Today we talk with Jeff Mirisola, Phil Sluder and Charles Culp.  Topics covered:

- What the "Stump the Chumps" session is all about

- Members of the panel

- Method behind getting questions

- Layout of the session and live question handling

- Other miscellaneous SWW10 discussions

After a one year hiatius, the Stump the Chumps session is back at SolidWorks World 2010 and this year it is a much bigger panel.  The panel is filled with users, bloggers and even some of SolidWorks' own to take on the tough questions that the masses have asked.

This will be a fun, and I am sure amusing, session but more importantly there will be answers given and problems solved.  Hope to see you all there!

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

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SolidWorks World 2010 Coverage:

This podcast covers the SolidWorks World 2010 coverage options from SolidWorks, the "Blog Squad" and SolidWorks:HEARD!  Topics covered:

SolidWorks Corporate:

- SolidWorks World Website Community News

- SolidWorks Blog

- SolidWorks World 2010 Flickr Group

- SolidWorks on Twitter @solidworks and @solidworksworld

- SolidWorks World Twitter - #sww10

SolidWorks:HEARD:

- Live Coverage Page

- Live Blogs for General Sessions (embedded on Live Coverage page)

- SolidWorks:HEARD Tv (embedded on Live Coverage page)

- THE HEaRD Live Stream

- Twitter (@gol10dr or @solidworksheard)

- SolidWorks World Tip Stream - #swwtips

- Facebook Page

SolidWorks Blogs: (list of most active blogs)

- SolidSmack.com (@solidsmack) - Josh Mings

- RickyJordan.com (@rickyordan) - Ricky Jordan

- CADFanatic.com (@skrythe) - Brian McElyea

- RockSolidPerspective.com (@jraak) - Jason Raak

- GabiJack.com (@avephoenix) - Gabi Jack

- Dezignstuff.com/blog (@Matt_Lombard) - Matt Lombard

- SolidWorks Legion (@fcsuper) - Matt Lorono

SolidWorks World 2010 is only a week away and I know many of you will not be attending due to a number of reasons.  The good news is there are many of us that will be there broadcasting everything possible including blogs, podcasts, photos, video, updates and anything else you would want out of the conference remotely.

For those that will be at SolidWorks World, I hope to see you there and for those that can't, hopefully this podcast can give you some intel on where to go to get the most out of the conference from where you are. Feedback is key so please check out the User Agenda and let me know what sessions are of interest and we will try to bring you coverage of those breakouts.  Anaheim or Bust!  ~Lou

Remember to check out the SolidWorks: Heard! Blog and to follow me on Twitter, Facebook and THE HEaRD!

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CES, CAD Style:

This podcast was an overview of technologies I thought were important to those of us in the CAD industry.  This year CES was focused on 3D displays, touch enabled "Slates" and powerhouse mini laptops.  Topics Covered.

- Laptops and computers

- Input devices

- Displays

- USB 3.0

CES is a monster show and I find that there are so many people covering it that the best stuff typically floats to the tops of the media string through blogs, podcasts, videos and of course, Twitter.  Since not everyone cares about CAD or we engineers, the goal of this show was to talk about some of the technologies that caught my eye as a CAD user and overall techie.  With the introduction of so many touch enabled devices over the past few years, CES made it known to the world that 2010 will be the year of the touch screen.  PC manufacturers were coming out left and right with touch screen, netbook-like hardware that would run Windows 7 and well as Linux.

Personally, I am not so sure about the gesture-based interaction with CAD like that of Project Natal by Microsoft (due out Holiday Season 2010), but the thought of having a CAD system similar to the one shown in Iron Man keeps my interest near. ~Lou

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