Making the Dream

In this Technology of Business video, BBC reporter Ian Hardy evaluates how modern technologies are making waves in manufacturing methods.

At the Worksman Cycle factory in Queens, New York City, they have been assembling specialty bicycle and tricycles for more than 100 years. The company’s president, Wayne Sosin, says he likes the old-fashioned way of sourcing cycle parts from his worldwide suppliers. Like many business owners, he is not ready to embrace technology just for the sake of it. Computers and 3D printers have to make his cycles cheaper whilst maintaining the highest quality. Only then will he take a second look.

At the other end of the spectrum, two friends from Long Island City in New York have taken their simple concept and turned it into something tangible, just in time for Christmas. Dan Provost and Tom Gerhardt realised that Apple’s iPhone 4 with its improved camera technology deserved its own tripod mount. So they invented The Glif, which also doubles as a multi-directional prop for holding the iPhone at various angles during video calls and movie watching sessions.

The Glif was designed in less than three weeks using just a laptop and a full-featured three-dimensional (3D) design software program, although anybody can now design almost anything using free software such as Google’s Sketchup.