Daily Tech Snippet: Tuesday, February 16

• Mattel Unveils ThingMaker, A $300 3D Printer That Lets Kids Make Their Own Toys: Autodesk was tasked with building this app which early testers, including those at Toyland, have already described as “fast,” “easy to navigate” and “ridiculously intuitive.”Called ThingMaker Design, the app includes a variety of built-in character templates and easy-to-use tutorials that help novices get started. But it also allows for designing characters from scratch, once kids get the hang of things. The toys can be customized with different colors and textures, and will bend and twist in the app so you can get a feel for how they’ll work after they’ve been printed. The creations can be saved as images to the mobile device’s Camera Roll, or uploaded to Google Drive or Dropbox. When a design is complete, the app lets you export the STL print files wirelessly to your at-home printer, whether Mattel’s or otherwise. The idea isn’t just to print an object and be done, however – instead, kids will print parts that can be assembled to form larger creations, like dolls, robots, dinosaurs, scorpions, skeletons, bracelets or necklaces, for example. What’s interesting here is the potential for Mattel to tie into other children’s’ brands it already owns or licenses and bring them to life through 3D printing. That’s something the company says is on the roadmap, saying it will launch “additional design content, including branded options” at a later date. No actual brand names were announced, however, but there were hints that brands like Barbie and Hot Wheels were already being planned. The physical parts are printed in batches then assembled through ball-and-socket joints that snap together. This process can take anywhere from 30 minutes for a small item, up to overnight (e.g. 6 6 to 8 hours) for a larger toy.Mattel says its ThingMaker 3D will use a hard PLA filament, but also hasn’t yet announced the colors that will be available. According to reports from the Toy Fair, though, there were some two dozen colors on display. A spokesperson said the company may release other materials in the future.

• India's Snapdeal raises $200 million led by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan:Indian online marketplace Snapdeal has raised $200 million in a fresh funding round led by Canada's Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, the company said. The latest fund-raising follows $500 million raised last August in a round led by Alibaba, SoftBank and Foxconn.

• SoftBank Rises the Most in Seven Years on Record Share Buyback: SoftBank climbed the most in more than seven years after the company said it will spend a record 500 billion yen ($4.4 billion) buying back stock. The stock rose as much as 15 percent to 5,040 yen as of 9:26 a.m. in Tokyo on Tuesday. SoftBank will purchase as many as 167 million shares, or 14.2 percent of its stock, using cash holdings and the proceeds of asset sales, the Tokyo-based company said in a statement Monday. The Japanese wireless carrier saw its shares drop to their lowest since buying Sprint Corp. in 2013 as Chairman Masayoshi Son struggled to persuade investors he can turn around the U.S. company. The shares were down 28 percent this year before the buyback announcement, putting SoftBank’s market value well below that of its own investments in companies including Sprint and Alibaba. “This is a good buyback, considering how low their valuation has fallen,” said Atul Goyal, an analyst at Jefferies Group LLC. “Nothing so bad happened with Sprint and Alibaba to justify the drop in SoftBank shares.”