A great day for 3D
Last month Google purchased @Last Software for an undisclosed sum of money.
Yesterday they released Google SketchUp, a free version of their 3D modeling software, which makes Google’s long-time vision of making 3D accessible to everyone a reality.
According to a Google report they’re still offering SketchUp Pro 5 for design professionals like architects, designers, builders, art directors and game developers. Both Google SketchUp and SketchUp Pro 5 enable you to place models in Google Earth; Pro users get some additional features.
The best part about Google SketchUp? It’s free for personal use and no registration is required.
Thanks Google for another cool development tool!
Word of the Day
Equipoise: A state of being equally balanced; equilibrium; - as of moral, political, or social interests or forces.
Net Neutrality Amendment Dies
Net Neutrality Amendment Dies, Supporters Continue Battle
A congressional committee drew rapid fire Wednesday after killing an amendment to preserve network neutrality.
A coalition that drew together the Gun Owners of America, the Democratic-leaning organization MoveOn, and several of the country’s top technology CEOs, blasted the committee with a news statement announcing, “House Ignores Public, Sells Out the Internet.”
Source: Techweb. Check out the full story.
Linux XP Professional
Gas Price Map
I just came across a website with a really cool mapping feature that allows you to see gas prices from across the nation. You can zoom in and drag it around similar to Google maps. It gives you a pretty good feel of what others pay for gas.
The only good thing about high gas prices for me is my car gets 33 MPG on average and at $3.09 a gallon for the low grade, I get a little bit of a break. I wish the prices of gas would come down. The cost of living is already really high.
View the map here.
Visual Studio 2005 Express
Visual Studio 2005 Express joins SQL Server Express in Microsoft’s portfolio of entry-level free, lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools.
Intended for hobbyist, novice, and student developers, the Express editions have limited functionally and streamlined user interfaces.
However, their licenses do allow commercial deployment.
Something that caught my eye was all of the Visual Studio Express programming-language varieties are included in the download package: Visual Basic 2005 Express, Visual C# 2005 Express, Visual C++ 2005 Express and Visual J# 2005 Express.
Visual Basic 2005 Express is available for download at Microsoft’s Web site.