With Kahootz 3 out around town and freeware like Blender 2.46 kicking around too, there has never been a better time to get into 3D if your a school student. The 3D and CG industry is booming worldwide. And not just for games - in industry too. In WA 3D companies are commanding high prices for their immersive works.

Version 2.46 of Blender supports a new particle system with hair and fur combing tools, fast and optimal fur rendering, a mesh deformation system for advanced character rigging, cloth simulation, fast Ambient Occlusion, a new Image browser, and that’s just the beginning. Check the extensive list of features here … have fun!

I am having a hard time using a digital projector on an iMac running Tiger. I can make it work on the OSX side but I can not make the projector connect on the Windows side. Any ideas? Thanks! Kris

Here are links to the tools I did a show n’ tell on today - I’d just like to remind you that some of them are still in beta

Pixelmator, the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editor for Mac OS X has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images. (Update: this software is in locked beta - thanks Brett and Steve)
Pixen is an innovative graphics editor for the Mac. Pixen is like a very powerful MSPaint or a simpler, more agile Photoshop. And best of all, it’s Free!

Kahootz is an eduational Software application that allows students aged 5-18 to create their own 3d content. Share designs with schools around the world.

PhotoPresenter offers many gorgeous styles to create animated slideshows with amazing effects.

Jing: the concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

Virtue Desktops allows you to achieve similar to what Apple Spaces will do when Leopard arrives in October.

Skitch is the Internet age’s Camera and it Rocks! The best screenshot tool in the world from the team that brought you ComicLife.

Pixadex is to icons, what Apple’s iPhoto is to images. Pixadex lets you import, organize and search huge numbers of icons quickly and easily.

MacSaber uses your Mac’s sudden motion sensor to detect movements, fast and slow. As you move your laptop, MacSaber plays varying levels of Light Saber sound effects, from a waving sound to exciting saber crashes.
If you’d like a beta invite to test Skitch contact me here:
http://paulreid.id.au/

This would have been a great way to broadcast interviews with the creators of the “world music” themed tunes in between the tracks.

Radiologik is a set of two programs that seeks to address the specific needs of radio broadcasting in an accessible and focused way.

It is being developed for LPFMs, online streaming radio stations, and school radio stations and it should grow to support commercial operations over the next year.

The DJ portion is ready for prime-time now and along with the scheduler (now in public beta testing) you can have a fully-automated station.

ReelBean is a movie converter and player offering many features that are normally only available in expensive pro video applications. Most of ReelBean’s features are available for free.

ReelBean allows you to export your videos to many different video and audio formats, edit videos, extract sections of audio and video into separate files, and displays detailed video information and properties panels. It can be used to extract the audio from a movie and export it directly into iTunes. Individual frames or image sequences from movies can also be saved as image files.

1. Quick screen-cap and draw function has the most immediately obvious use in an educational setting.
2. The UI offers many neat features like not having to select the text tool - just start typing.
3. Web-sharing across schools and annotating resources and user-guides.
4. Using iSight to capture live video shots that one can scribble and jot on.
5. Re-size and crop by simply dragging a corner + all sketches are vector and scaleable.
6. All images are saved in history.
7. Web upload in two clicks to mySkitch or Flickr or .Mac school server.

Skitch is currently Mac only and has the potential to be just as popular with students as ComicLife has been. There is demo video from Plasq available. The guys from Plasq are an interesting bunch. Based in Melbourne with a team of programmers in Tassie, Portland, San Francisco and Norway, they are geographically disparate . The web-based sharing tools of Skitch prompt me to postulate that necessity has been the mother of invention in making Skitch. Being able to quickly share notes on screen-caps is a gap in the software market. A TUAW video interview with a Comic Life’s Chris Pearson here gives some background on Plasq too. Fellow blogger Kim Flintoff has been playing with ComicLife and SecondLife together - neat. I’ve used Kahootz in a similar way in a primary school setting - the 3D worlds facilitate a really quick way of capturing detailed pictures to support plot - Skitch could be used to do the screen caps too.

Just a reminder that the 7th annual ‘Dream A Better World’ Film Festival for Australian Primary Schools is on again in 2007 - 2nd December at Dreamworld.

Just enter a 3 min film made by your class, with some teacher guidance, on an environmental or humanitarian theme and enter it in the festival.

Great prizes on offer from our sponsors and also a great way to showcase your kids skills and talents. All levels of “experience” welcome. By the way most entries are made on macs.

More details and entry forms at
http://www.coomerass.eq.edu.au/filmfestival.htm

Here’s what we’re looking for. Modest Mouse want a video for their new single “Missed The Boat”. They know there are tons of talented fans and video directors out there who have what it takes to put it together. So that’s where you come in.

Thanks to http://applemacs.edublogs.org/ for the hot tip.