If Dr. Evil wanted a rockin' axe he would no doubt turn to Dagmar Custom Guitars to build it. Why? Because a Dagmar comes with frickin' laser beams—that's why. 

Ontario luthier Pete Swanson launched his custom-built guitar business only a couple of years ago and yet he's causing a stir in the guitar world with his beautifully rendered masterpieces. Inspired by Roman architecture, a Dagmar is a hybrid of traditional luthier artistry and state-of-the-art technique that integrates the strength of an arch's keystone into the body of a one-of-a-kind musical instrument. 

Each guitar is hand built, utilizing a unique manufacturing process that eschews steam or forms for math where the instruments body is made up of hundreds of precision cut segments that are glued together. Swanson applies a layer of carbon fiber to the interior of the frame and then machines the exterior surface to be mere millimetres of thickness. The result is a thin yet super strong harmonically resonant sound chamber.

Unlike a solid-body electric guitar, Dagmar's standard (non laser) setup deploys piezoelectric pickups to register the instrument's sound. Piezoelectric pickups register the vibration of the guitar's soundboard (the face of the guitar) rather than the vibration of the string. The result is a richer tone than a standard electric pickup. In 2009, Swanson was invited to participate in The Montreal Guitar Show - a world class event for both exhibiting luthiers and guitar enthusiast.

"I feel honored to have received the invite to debut at this prestigious show," said Swanson. "The venue is a wonderland filled with the highest caliber forms of the lutherie art where people are encouraged to become interactive with the builders and to test out their wares." 

Dagmar's unique manufacturing process also caught the ear of Dr. Hans-Peter Loock, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Queen's University. Loock and his team were researching the benefits of using fiber-optic gratings as chemical sensors when he heard about Dagmar Custom Guitars. 

"Fiber optic gratings are used in monitoring of vibrations of, say, bridges, buildings, airplane wings, blades of wind turbines, etc.," said Loock. "Eventually we put 'acoustic detection' and 'vibration monitoring' together and wondered whether they can act as pickups for musical instruments." Eureka!

Loock's photonic pickup works by "tuning a small laser to the maximum of the reflection spectrum and monitoring the intensity of the reflected light as the grating period stretches and compresses with the vibration of the sound board," said Dr. Loock. "The fiber-optic pickup has a nearly flat frequency response from infrasound (< 10Hz) to at least the edge of human hearing (20kHz). It is also very light (micrograms), transparent and small. You can therefore put many of these pickups into your instrument, without altering the sound or the looks."

To hear what a photonic pickup sounds like click here.

Loock commissioned Swanson to create a laser-ready guitar that features seven fiber optic sensors that are directly embedded into the wood grain of the instrument and protected by a layer of varnish. Sound is captured with a standard photodetector used by telecom engineers to measure the quality of fiber optic cable and it is fed directly into an amp. The audio signal can also be sampled using a standard USB connection.

This innovative new technology isn't just the stuff of research. Loock says he has commercialization plans and has been in touch with Paul Langlois of The Tragically Hip. "The gearheads seem to be quite open minded," said Loock. "I expect it to be used first by recording studios and only then by professional or serious amateur musicians." Though Loock's photonic pickup is currently under the radar of most manufactures he plans to demo the technology at an upcoming music industry exhibit and hopefully launch it to market in a few year's time.

Other applications could include traditionally miked instruments such cellos and violins. "There are a lot of musicians and sound engineers who will not consider anything but a high quality microphone for a studio recording. On the other hand the same people are frequently forced to use pickups when recording or amplifying instruments that are played on stage. In this case, I think, the fiber optic pickups may form an alternative technology," said Loock. "The biggest problem in retrofitting existing instruments is to route the fiber optic cables, but that usually is not much of an issue. Aside from that, we can tape our sensors on any vibrating instrument that you give us."

Swanson's photonic guitar not only looks beautiful but Loock says "it sounds great..!" Loock's custom built Dagmar guitar features seven fiber sensors and two piezoelectric pickups in the same instrument. The fiber pickups "produces a sound comparable to that of a piezo pickup," he said. 

Swanson plans to keep building guitars with or without Loock's integrated photonic pickups but he feels the photonic pickup represents the future. "Traditional minded people think that magnetic induction pickups are the end of the line because everyone wants to sound like Hendrix," says Swanson. "The Photonic pickup proves that we are not done developing amplification and recording gear for the acoustics industry. Ask any acoustic freak about a piezo system and most will comment on at least one area where it could be improved like sound clipping, feedback, distortion and lesser sustain at higher volumes. The Photonic system may very well solve some if not all of these problems as it is developed."

Swanson's next project is apply his building technique to produce a ukulele. You can follow the evolution of his craft on his blog. 

Do you remember that thrilling moment when you first started using the internet? I don't either. OK, I have a vague recollection of sending my first email and experiencing internet addiction first hand after playing a multi-user dungeon (MUD) game in university for three straight days when I really should have been studying for finals. But, I don't remember which website I visited first. In all likelihood it was probably Microsoft, since I think I used an early version of IE for Mac as my first web browser.

What I do remember is the dichotomous relationship between promise and practice. The early days of the internet were wild, as in feral, yet it was fueled by the dream and promise of what it could become. Finding sites online started with a physical library-style search for urls. My source material was magazines, newspapers, television and other websites that mentioned a rare .com address. Yahoo was embryonic and Google had yet to launch.

Though there may have been a lot of information available online it was hard going trying to find anything of use until Google came along and everyone shouted "thank you!" many hundreds of times a day. I still find myself thanking Google for delivering some really amazing online experiences (Maps, Streetview, Google Docs come to mind).

Since Google took off circa 2000 I have relied almost exclusively on a search architecture to navigate and find what I'm looking for online. However, I'm increasingly discovering websites and other online fantastic-ness through my social network. I hear about breaking events and news through Twitter. I bone-up on the latest meme through Facebook and learn about new business opportunities through LinkedIn.

Social media has shifted our understanding and use of the internet, and consequently of branding, from a professionally managed top-down exercise to a community-driven one. In case you hadn't heard, you don't own your brand anymore—we do. It's as close as we're going to get to corporate nationalization. A company's website used to be the primary touchpoint for a corporate or product brand, but that isn't necessarily the case today.

If you don't believe me, read about Nestlé's recent run in with a Greenpeace-powered social media campaign that attacked the company's activities in Indonesia, and Halifax's own Sons of Maxwell's viral send-up of United Air's baggage handling misadventures.

In Nestlé's case, the company initially fought the social media mockery with old school tactics (cease and desist letters, etc.) but eventually conceded that there was perhaps some merit to the criticism. Nestlé issued a mea culpa once the campaign started to have a harmful impact on its brand and is now working hard to turn the situation around.

The "United Breaks Guitars" song has more than 8.5 million YouTube views, which is quite impressive considering it represents just over 10% of the number of actual passengers the airline carried in 2009.

I often find that my first impressions of brands are formed through the recommendations and opinions of members of my social network. With so many innovative and ground-breaking technologies launching daily it's impossible to keep track of everything that is happening in the world. For instance, I first heard of Mozy, an online backup software utility, through Twitter and it was only after I read my colleague's impression of the software/service on the Smallbox blog that I visited the company's website to see what they had to say.

All the major search engines now include social network data as featured content in search results. If Google and Bing think it's worthwhile to include live data from the social network conversations happening on Facebook and Twitter then I say it's time to start paying attention to all those tweets.

Keeping track of and making sense of all this data is adding value to company's brand, and is no doubt one of the reasons why Twitter recently purchased Vancouver-based Smallthough Systems, makers of DabbleDB and Trendly.

A product of all this chatter is a new metric for measuring the impact of social conversations. Twitter tracks the Tweets per Second (TPS) a particular trending topic generates. For instance, when the Lakers won the 2010 NBA championships Twitter users were tweeting at the rate of 3,085 TPS. Normal TPS volume for Twitter chatter is closer to 750 TPS. It can't be long before marketers and managers start referring to TPS as a measurement of a successful event or campaign.

If you're interested in how you can incorporate a social architecture in your web design you can view a recent presentation I gave to RGD members on the subject.

Social network. Social navigation. Social architecture.

I love year-end lists. They are a good reminder of how much information passes past my eyes and ears during 52 weeks of web browsing, reading, listening and watching. Of course not all of it sticks, in fact most of it slips quietly by with hardly a synaptic nod. When year-end lists start to land I’m always amazed at how long lost details emerge from the depths of my murky memory.

One of my favourite year-end-in-review lists is the Guardian’s 100 Essential Websites. It’s the UK news organization’s take on what’s interesting and au courant, and its perspective offers a refreshing take on internet culture.

The 100 Essential Websites breaks down into categories such as blogging, browsers, celebrity gossip (who can’t live without it?), gaming, geek culture, music, photography, etc., and includes the editors’ picks for the most relevant sites for each section. A quick read will give you a good sense of what’s hot online around the English speaking planet.

Vancouver-based Dabble DB - has made the list for the second consecutive year. If you’re not familiar with Dabble DB you should be. The online app helps you create databases to manage, share and explore data. It offers an intuitive interface and enables users to easily manipulate spreadsheet/database data.

I had a chance to speak with Dabble DB Co-CEO Avi Bryant earlier today and he was genuinely excited about making the list again this year.

“We've always designed Dabble DB for a wide audience, rather than just for the tech-blog-reading early adopter crowd. Getting coverage in a mainstream news outlet like the Guardian is great because it lets us reach those who we're most excited to have as customers.” 

Dabble offers a free and paid version of its service and has customers the world over. While coverage like the Guardian’s is great for profile and presumably business, the attention also motivates the company to make constant improvements to its user experience. “Users expect richer, more responsive interfaces now than they did even a couple of years ago, and we're always excited to push the boundaries of what we can offer.”

Bryant suspects his company is listed because Guardian staff have used his product and loved it. “The Guardian has a strong technical team, and I know some of them have used Dabble DB for internal projects.” For example they used Dabble “to visualize electoral maps,” as this Guardian story confirms. Guardian staff were able to reduce hours of tedious number crunching into a 30-second exercise using DabbleDB.

Looking forward, Dabble DB’s parent company Smallthought Systems has just released a new product called Trendly - an online application that helps Google Analytics users keep track and visualize their data. Trendly offers “some quite sophisticated processing of web analytics data to alert you to changes you should be paying attention to.” The attached graphic shows the impact the Guardian story had on referral traffic to Dabble’s website when they made last year’s list.

It’s great to see innovative Canadian/Vancouver companies on the list. Congratulations to Dabble DB. Keep it coming.