Flightsofideas, you have a interesting evaluation, I would have liked to have seen your cube puzzle though – it would have been neat but I guess you ran out of time to produce it. 10 days sure isn’t a lot of time and I look forward to the next contest when I have 10 days to really produce something absolutely amazing.

Jon

Made me snigger.

I’m sure that that will one day be a common phrase in school. – Like remembering to look before crossing the road.

Good luck all.

The only issue: it’s not meshing as nicely as I like. Kids, remember to always increase your outlines to compensate for the laser’s width. I keep forgetting that lesson.

http://buzvia.com/4WXFJ

Jon

Kate, I’ve emailed you so you just need to get back to me with a new picture and we can replace it for you.

I haven’t heard anything and the 30th is coming pretty quick!! Marble Madness has 56 pieces!! :-O

You should be able to update the pictures for your puzzle.

You’re not last place. They are in chronological order, I believe. =]

That image, btw, was taken at 11:57pm on the night of the deadline. Ah, such memories of college

-Kate, creator of the last-place Gear puzzle.

I agree about the voting — it does seem strange, especially when you read some of the early comments above, where the commenters don’t even seem to know what this blog is. And the final designs aren’t even posted yet. Why open the voting now? Although I have favorites already, I’ll wait to vote.

I started writing a longer response here and then realized I should just blog about it and put a link here, so I wrote about my three entries, and commented on the finalists as well as some non-finalists that I liked. Some comments are negative, but I think they’re all respectful. And, yes, I realize that by critiquing, I’m opening myself up to criticism. But I do welcome any feedback on my own designs. To read the post, go to http://www.thistangent.com

In any event, like badweasel plans to do with his binary dominoes, I’m planning to make up some WIM sets on Ponoko. I had been thinking of trying to produce a run of the game for a while, but it didn’t seem practical. The cost per set is higher here, but I don’t have to make up 100 or 1000. Ponoko’s contest pushed me to take it to the next step and I’m looking forward to seeing how they turn out. And, even though none of my designs made it to the finals, that’s still an OK outcome.

Feel free to contact me if you’re interested in WIM or Puzzle Coasters.

As David points out the voting is only for one part of the awards. There is judging for the others. So surely it’s best of both worlds?

If anyone’s really concerned about missing out on the voting award then should go stick up posters, tell their neighbors, friends, spam everyone in their address book, whoever, however. Good on them.

I voted for a design from someone I do not know and will probably never meet. It’s cool to think they’ve spent their time and energy on something which is now here for me to see and give them some ’support’.

If others did the same then that must have some effect on balancing the whole ‘whoever has the most friends wins’ view? They weren’t standing anywhere telling me to buy anything. I liked their idea and execution of their design so I clicked a button, then I made a cup of coffee…

Jon
ps: I agree with Bock, a good product sells itself but HOW a person perceives the end-use of a product is up to the consumer, not the designer (puzzle or otherwise).

My designs where originally geared towards woodworkers but thanks to Ponoko, I can soon enter a far larger marketplace for those not blessed with tools. This is where the puzzle aspect of my designs can now take shape. I have a lot of work still left to do converting all my designs to follow Ponoko’s parameters. Rest assured Leo, I will be heavily revising my own site and information on Ponoko once I am done over the next few weeks to include their “puzzle” aspect.

Jon

Wij hebben natuurlijk ook een stem uitgebracht voor jou.
Wat weer een prachtig stukje werk!
We zijn apetrots.
dikke kus Martin Liesbet Alan en Aron.

I’m a puzzle nut and I could totally consider buying puzzles like these if I saw them in a store.

For the first design challenge people complained about who was chosen. So….second time around the folks at Ponoko decide to add a voting component for “The People’s Choice Award” hoping THAT might make people happy. Not only that, instead of choosing 15 as they originally stated, instead they end up choosing 17 and people are STILL complaining??? We should be grateful that they hold these competitions at all!!

I am certain that when choosing the finalists, the staff at Ponoko tried to pick a broad range of items to illustrate what is possible using their service; to get people thinking and expand their horizons. No one can deny that this sort of thing gets people thinking and motivates great designs. You may not think the right ones got chosen but deal with it.

And as for the voting…..they are still using judges. Voting is just for the “People’s Choice Award”. I think they are brilliant really. How many new people have now heard of Ponoko? It’s advertising for them.

The gang @ Ponoko have consistently shown that they listen, and care about their users. They are trying to build a community AND a successful business. I would like to congratulate them for their efforts and hope they don’t get frustrated by these few complainers that won’t be happy no matter what they do.

A puzzle can defined at its most basic level as a mental challenge, as for my designs, they are geared towards a younger age group then the others entered within this competition.

Jon
ps: we plan on having these (and many more) for sale once the competition is over – we are just optimizing designs at the moment.