Doodle3D, not to be confused with 3Doodler, is a tool that transforms any simple sketch into an object that can be created on a 3D printer. It removes the learning barrier by taking care of all the complicated steps in the software and focusing solely on creativity.

Doodle3D is obviously not a replacement for traditional 3D printing software, but it’s a great tool that lets anybody just start creating with a 3D printer instead of learning how to use design software. The software then sends the file to the Doodle3D Wi-Fi box that connects to a 3D printer.

The Doodle3D Wi-Fi box was available for $88, but the initial allotment of 100 boxes have already sold out. The box is now available for $99. The project has just started, and it has already raised over $16,000 of the $50,000 requested.

[h/t: Engadget]

Eloqua provides cloud-based marketing automation and revenue performance management solutions, and Oracle says its “modern marketing cloud” ensures that “every component of marketing” helps to drive revenue more efficiently.

Oracle says the combination of the two companies will create a comprehensive “Customer Experience Cloud”.

“Modern marketing practices are driving revenue growth and is a critical area of investment for companies today,” said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President, Oracle Development. “Eloqua’s leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud and is an important addition to the Oracle Customer Experience offering, which includes the Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Commerce Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Content Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud.”

Eloqua Chairman and CEO Joe Payne said, “Exceptional customer experience starts with knowing your customer’s preferences and delivering a highly personalized buying experience. Together with Oracle, we expect to accelerate the pace of the modern marketing revolution and help our customers transform the way they market, sell, support and serve their customers.”

Oracle expects the deal to close in the first half of next year. It’s already been approved by Eloqua’s board, though it’s still subject to stockholder approval.

Earlier this week, Oracle posted its earnings for its second fiscal quarter ended November 30, beating analysts expectations, and showing “a growing acceptance” of the Cloud, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“We are excited to join the Microsoft team,” says MarketingPilot CEO Ken Kornbluh. “We think it will be great for MarketingPilot users and the broader marketing community. The acquisition will enable us to more fully realize our vision to create powerful and innovative integrated marketing management solutions. The acquisition by Microsoft should enable us to accelerate our pace and deliver even more innovation to marketers.”

“MarketingPilot provides Integrated Marketing Management solutions that enable marketing organizations to better understand customers, manage and streamline marketing operations and create automated multi-channel marketing campaigns,” says Microsoft Dynamics CRM Corporate Vice President Bob Stutz. “MarketingPilot has a comprehensive vision for Integrated Marketing solutions that aligns closely to our vision. In addition, they have a talented management team and an innovative product suite built on Microsoft technologies available both in the Cloud and On-premises. We are committed to taking care of MarketingPilot customers, and we welcome them to the Microsoft family. We will be communicating directly with individual customers over the coming days and weeks.”

He also writes on the Microsoft Dyanmics blog:

Microsoft, along with our partners, has been helping marketing organizations for several years now. Customers like Volvo Construction Equipment and the Portland Trailblazers are using Microsoft Dynamics CRM today to better attract and retain their customers. We are committed to helping marketers plan, execute, monitor and optimize customer interactions across digital, social and traditional channels and measure the impact on revenue. With this acquisition, we believe we will be well positioned to deliver highly valuable marketing automation solutions to new and existing customers.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

This follows an announcement from Microsoft that it has acquired CiS solutions provider StorSimple.

Starting today, gamers and creative types alike can purchase creativity software through Steam. At launch, there are there are six creativity software suites (excluding Source Filmmaker) that users can purchase. The titles include – GameMaker: Studio, 3D-Coat, ArtRage Studio Pro, 3DMark Vantage, 3D Mark 11 and CameraBag 2. The initial selection is pretty fantastic, but it gets better.

Some of the software has been integrated into Steamworks to allow users to save their creations on the cloud, import their creations into games, and much more. One of more interesting applications is 3D Coat which allows users to import their 3D models directly into Team Fortress 2.

The best use of Steamworks so far, however, goes to GameMaker: Studio. Creators can upload the games they’ve made with the software up to the Steam Workshop for other creators to download and rate. It’s a great way to get instant feedback on a game without having to look across various Web sites for the latest build.

Like most software, the products you’ll find on Steam are a bit on the pricey side. The entire GameMaker: Studio suite will set you back $500. It’s only $450 this week, however, as all software has been marked down 10 percent until Thursday in celebration of the launch.

The best part about Valve’s entry into the creativity software market is that it might drive prices down across the industry. Valve’s beloved sales could see software hitting all new low prices that will drive the adoption of software up. If it’s cheap enough, gamers will make impulse purchases. An impulse purchase of GameMaker: Studio could encourage a regular gamer to start making games. From there, the sky’s the limit.

Purdue University professor Bedrich Benes knows how fragile some 3D printed objects can be. He claims to have a “zoo” of broken 3D printed objects strewn about his office. His newest project aims to create new 3D printing software that can find points of stress in an object before it heads to the 3D printer. The software is being co-developed by Benes and Adobe’s Advanced Technology Labs.

The new software isn’t only about making 3D printed structures stronger. Benes says that his software can cut down on weight and cost by 80 percent. It does, however, have one caveat – precision. The software’s main focus is structural stability. Benes says that 3D printing can sacrifice precision in the name of stability. Your 3D printed object can have a precise shape, but it’s still worthless if it falls apart.

For now, the software can only detect grip points on an object and strengthen those parts. I can see this software evolving in the future alongside other 3D printing projects, like housing. It could detect stress points on a house and fix them in the planning stages before the construction begins.

3D printing is becoming more prominent in all of our lives. We need to have software like this to make sure things don’t break where we need them most. A small plastic figurine is fine if it breaks, but it would be a problem if a 3D printed satellite were to break.

Pixar has decided to open source their Subd evaluation code. It’s called Open SubDiv and it’s “a set of open source libraries that implement high performance subdivision surface evaluation on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures.” With the release, Pixar hopes to “encourage high performance accurate subdiv drawing by giving away the “good stuff”.”

This is a huge deal for both Pixar and the development scene as a whole. By making their software open source, Pixar opens the doors to programmers of all backgrounds to help improve it and change the software.

It’s also big news for hobbyist animators and programmers because Pixar has released the code under the Microsoft Public License. Animators and programmers can release work made with Pixar’s code for non-commercial and commercial use. It wasn’t just enough that Pixar released their code, but they’re letting people make money off of it too.

The software is currently in beta, but Pixar will keep putting out new updates over time. The source code is available to all at GitHub. I can’t wait to see what amateur animators do with the software. If this release goes over well, they might start to release other software as well.

[h/t: The Register]

Many thanks to Vincent for correcting a few errors.

Valve announced today that Steam is going to begin selling non-game software. By that, they mean that Steam will soon be a place where you can pick up software like Adobe’s Creative Suite. No software titles have been announced yet, but I can dream that Adobe will be at launch.

Here’s what Valve had to say on the matter:

The Software titles coming to Steam range from creativity to productivity. Many of the launch titles will take advantage of popular Steamworks features, such as easy installation, automatic updating, and the ability to save your work to your personal Steam Cloud space so your files may travel with you.

More Software titles will be added in an ongoing fashion following the September 5th launch, and developers will be welcome to submit Software titles via Steam Greenlight.

“The 40 million gamers frequenting Steam are interested in more than playing games,” said Mark Richardson at Valve. “They have told us they would like to have more of their software on Steam, so this expansion is in response to those customer requests.”

The addition of Steam Greenlight is especially interesting. The system was initially put into place so that indie game developers could have their games placed on Steam without having to go through Steam’s regular approval process. Regular software developers will be able to place their apps on Steam Greenlight for the world to see and approve.

It will be interesting to see how Steam changes in the following months after this announcement. There’s no doubt that Steam is still going to be primarily used for games, but software might change things up. The idea of a Steam software sale is enough to get me excited. Seventy-five percent off Adobe Creative Suite 6? Yes please!

Fortunately, our friends across the pond in Europe are no longer held back by EULAs that state users can’t resell their digitally downloaded software, whether that be games or other software like Photoshop. In a recent ruling, the European Court of Justice did away with companies’ ability to stop people from selling used software.

Here’s the lowdown on the case: Oracle was a tad bit angry that a company called UsedSoft was selling used licenses for Oracle software. They took UsedSoft to court seeking the termination of their activities. The crux of the case was whether or not a company still held exclusive distribution rights to software after they sold a digital download to a user. Here’s the court’s ruling:

Where the copyright holder makes available to his customer a copy – tangible or intangible – and at the same time concludes, in return form payment of a fee, a licence agreement granting the customer the right to use that copy for an unlimited period, that right holder sells the copy to the customer and thus exhausts his exclusive distribution right. Such a transaction involves a transfer of the right of ownership of the copy. Therefore, even if the licence agreement prohibits a further transfer, the rightholder can no longer oppose the resale of that copy.

The ruling will obviously make software developers mad. The companies that put out this kind of software, including game developers, see digital distribution as the future since people can’t resell those purchases. The EULA in software strictly states that you do not own the software, you merely own a license that allows you to use the software.

The ruling from the EU Court of Justice flies in the face of those EULAs by saying that the consumer owns the copy they have on their hard drive and they can do with it as they please. Sure, the case deals with the idea of selling used digital copies of software, but it has massive ramifications for digital software everywhere.

Those same EULAs said that due to the consumer only having the license, they couldn’t crack or modify the software in any way. Now that the court says that consumers own said software, they can do whatever they want with it.

There are some caveats to be had in this ruling though. You still can’t make copies of software, including games, and distribute them among your friends. If you want to resell a copy of a digitally downloaded game, you have to remove it from your computer first. The court said that keeping a copy for yourself after resale would violate the copyright holder’s exclusive right of reproduction.

There are a few other wonderful tidbits in the bill as well. If a consumer buys used software from a digital reseller, the original creator of the software must provide the person who bought the used copy an avenue to download the latest version of the software they bought.

It’s important to note that this ruling only affects Europe. Don’t expect anything like this to fly in the U.S. anytime soon. That being said, we have our own case involving the sale of digital items currently going through the courts. ReDigi is in a similar situation as they are being sued by EMI for copyright violations. The company runs a business that scans computers for legitimately acquired MP3s, transfers them to their servers and then deletes them off the source computer. The user can then resell these MP3s to other users.

If ReDigi was in Europe, this court ruling would put them in the clear as they are doing the same thing that UsedSoft did. Of course, the court ruling applied to software, but who’s to say that it wouldn’t apply to digitally downloaded MP3s or movies as long as the original work is removed from the source computer during resale.

This is an utterly fascinating twist in the world of online distribution. If people can sell their previously downloaded software to others, it would send a shockwave among the software developers who relied upon digital distribution to avoid used sales.

Since I began the story with it, I’ll end it here as well – this ruling will have a major impact on gaming. Games are the driving force behind digital distribution adoption and being able to resell digital purchases will make a lot of publisher execs pretty sour.

[h/t: Lo-Ping]

Arvind Krishna, general manager of Information Management at IBM Software Group comments on the acquisition of Vivisimo:

“Game-changing insights are locked inside big data and clients want an easier way to unlock their full potential,”

“This acquisition of Vivisimo will help clients uncover new data and combine it with existing information assets for analysis that leads to smarter business decisions. No other vendor provides this depth and breadth of information management and analytics for big data.”

John Kealey, Chief Executive Officer at Vivisimo comments on the powerful new relationship with IBM:

“Businesses need a faster and more accurate way to discover and navigate big data for analysis”

“As part of IBM, we can bring clients the quickest and most accurate access to information necessary to drive growth initiatives that increase customer satisfaction, streamline processes, and boost sales.”

Vivisimo bring with it over 140 customers in government, life sciences, manufacturing, electronics, consumer goods and financial services. They have worked with Noteworthy organizations like the US Air Force, the US Navy, the US Social Security Administration, LexisNexis, and Proctor&Gamble. IBM will continue to sell and market Vivisimo products separately, but also offer them alongside IBM’s current enterprise solutions.

“So one of the secrets of Google is that rather than employing these mainframe machines, this heavy iron, big iron kind of stuff, if you were to go into a Google data center and look at an example rack, it would look a lot like a PC,” says Cutts. “So there’s commodity PC parts. It’s the sort of thing where you’d recognize a lot of the stuff from having opened up your own computer,and what’s interesting is rather than have like special Googlebot web crawling servers, we tend to say, OK, build a whole bunch of different servers that can be used interchangeably for things like Googlebot, or web serving, or indexing. And then we have this fleet, this armada of machines, and you can deploy it on different types of tasks and different types of processing.”

“So hardware wise, they’re not exactly the same, but they look a lot like regular commodity PCs,” he adds. “And there’s no difference between Googlebot servers versus regular servers at Google. You might have differences in RAM or hard disk, but in general, it’s the same sorts of stuff.”

On the software side, Google of course builds everything itself, as to not have to rely on third-parties. Cutts says there’s a running joke at Google along the lines of “we don’t just build the cars oursevles, and we don’t just build the tires ourselves. We actually vulcanize the rubber on the tires ourselves.”

“We tend to look at everything all the way down to the metal,” Cutts explains. “I mean, if you think about it, there’s data center efficiency. There’s power efficiency on the motherboards. And so if you can sort of keep an eye on everything all the way down, you can make your stuff a lot more efficient, a lot more powerful. You’re not wasting things because you use some outside vendor and it’s black box.”

A couple months ago, Google put out a blog post discussing its data center efficiency, indicating that they are getting even more efficient.

“In the same way that you might examine your electricity bill and then tweak the thermostat, we constantly track our energy consumption and use that data to make improvements to our infrastructure. As a result, our data centers use 50 percent less energy than the typical data center,” wrote Joe Kava, Senior Director, data center construction and operations at Google.

Cutts says Google uses a lot of Linux-based machines and Linux-based servers.

“We’ve got a lot of Linux kernel hackers,” he says. “And we tend to have software that we’ve built pretty much from the ground up to do all the different specialized tasks. So even to the point of our web servers. We don’t use Apache. We don’t use IIS. We use something called GWS, which stands for the Google Web Server.”

“So by having our own binaries that we’ve built from our own stuff and building that stack all the way up, it really unlocks a lot of efficiency,” he adds. “It makes sure that there’s nothing that you can’t go in and tweak to get performance gains or to fix if you find bugs.”

If you’re interested in how Google really works, you should watch this video too:

Google says the average search query travels as much as 1,500 miles.