I can’t say it any better than the Mindstorms FAQ:

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is a robotics toolset that provides endless opportunities for armchair inventors, robotics fanatics and LEGO builders ages 10 and older to build and program robots that do what they want.

Lego Mindstorms allows you to build machines using Lego’s classic TECHNIC bricks, but adds the ability to easily program your robot to respond to its own environment. You can build a robot, then using Lego’s development environment and programmable ‘brick’ microcontroller, teach it how to follow a path, avoid obstacles, pick up and move objects or any other number of actions. Lego is leveraging its fan base in developing new projects and applications for the system, and has a website set up for sharing new projects. Many schools, from high school all the way up to the top engineering schools in the world already use Mindstorms in their curriculum, so in addition to being a low-cost hardware prototyping system build on standard components, a generation of engineering students is being trained with the system and is becoming very facile with it.

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ComicLife enables users to create comic strips by simply dragging and dropping their own images onto comic templates, to which they can add captions, titles, speech and thought bubbles. The result is a crisp-looking comic-book layout.

ComicLife’s popularity has exploded, thanks to its ease-of use, integration with iPhoto and other usability features. The software is incredibly easy to use out-of-the-box, but has powerful features which allow a user to customize their creations endlessly. This software isn’t limited to creating family photo albums, it could easily be used to help in the creation of professional storyboards, user scenarios or quick one-off portfolio pages. ComicLife empowers you to quickly assemble a story on paper.

Check out this photostream, where a flickr user used ComicLife to create a media studies textbook/polemic reminiscent of the tract style of Scott McCloud or Quentin Fiore’s design for the work of Marshall McLuhan, or this page, where a World of Warcraft player narrates his mmorpg adventures.

Google has announced the purchase of @Last Software, makers of SketchUp, a 3D modelling and rendering application. SketchUp, whose tagline is ‘3D for everyone,’ is designed to be an intuitive tool for creating 3D mockups and sketches.

@Last Software had created a plugin for Google Earth that allows SketchUp users to add their own models to a Google Earth application. Like the models shown above, this means that anyone could place their 3D design into the Google Earth application and users who subscribed to that ‘layer’ of data could see your building on their desktop.

This could be for architects and designers what Google’s purchase of Blogger was to writers. Google continues to expand the average person’s ability to create and share content. Of course, it could also mean endless 3D blogging of peoples’ doghouses, office buildings and summer homes, but some good may come of it regardless.

@Last Software

Link to Post

Update: This guy has a catalogue of notable real, imagined or proposed buildings that have been modelled and placed in Google Earth. A good indication of things to come.