Link via WebMonkey
 VMWare has announced Fusion 2, the latest release of its flagship Mac virtualization app. Like competitor Parallels, Fusion allows Mac users to run Windows applications alongside their normal Mac OS X apps.
Fusion 2 packs in a host a new features and current Fusion users will happy to hear that the upgrade is free. Among the standout new features are an improved “Unity” mode, multi-display support for virtual machines, improved 3-D graphics and easier-to-use “shared” folders for moving documents between your Mac and the guest OS.
The multiple monitor support also means that any Windows-only apps that require more than one display will work without a hitch.
Gamers, Fusion 2 has quite a few features that will make your Windows games a bit faster and more impressive on a Mac. The new version offers full support for 3D video acceleration in games (and other apps) that use DirectX 9.0. There’s also support for 1080p HD video playback and more.
You’ll also find a new virus-fighting feature, AutoProtect, which makes automated snapshots of your Windows install. Should a virus strike (remember, just because you’re running Windows on a Mac doesn’t mean Windows is immune to viruses) you can easily roll things back to a pre-virus snapshot.
But Fusion 2 isn’t just about Windows on your Mac, it allows you to run just about any OS including, Linux distros which now work with Unity 2, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris and some 60 other operating systems.
Fusion 2 is a free upgrade for all owners of VMWare Fusion 1. You can grab the latest version from the VMWare downloads page.
VMware Fusion is available at an academic discount price of $37.
Link via John Nack on Adobe
 In the wake of various sneak peeks, I’m seeing a fair number of questions about what kinds of graphics cards GPUs will be required or recommended for running Photoshop going forward.
We’ll have more to say once the new version is announced, but very generally I can say you’ll want at least 128MB RAM on a card that’s Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 compatible. Of course, more brawn is always welcome, and if you anticipate working with numerous large documents and/or 3D, having 512MB RAM on your card is a good idea.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been demoing by tossing around an enormous image on a 2-year-old ATI Radeon 1600 card 256MB in a MacBook Pro, and it does just fine. If your GPU doesn’t meet Photoshop’s requirements, you won’t lose any features you have today, but certain new things won’t be enabled. As I say, we can get into more details soon.
Photoshop CS3 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via The Mindmap Blog
The Presidential Election in November will be one of the most important in America’s history. Barack Obama was nominated as the Democratic Presidential Nominee last week and John McCain will be nominated as the Republican Presidential Nominee this week.
With all the convention speeches, television ads, and political talk shows it’s easy to get caught up in the emotion of the campaigns.
But given what is at stake for our country, it is important that we not pull the lever in November based solely on emotion. It is important that we understand “what they will do” if elected. That we understand their plans for America.
I’ve created a mindmap to help you decide which candidate to vote for. All of the content and graphics for the mindmap come directly from their respective websites. I have not added or deleted anything with respect to their policy positions. It is taken verbatim from their websites.
This is a historic election for the 300 million citizens of the United States of America. Whoever wins this election will shape our country and the world.
Choose wisely.
To view the detailed policy positions for each candidate, click on the Notes icon next to each policy area.
You will need to download the free MindManager Viewer 7 to make the Notes icons active.
Click here to download mindmap.
MindManager Pro 7 is available at an academic discount price of $149.
Link via PBS.org
During the 2004 presidential election season, I ran a column in Technology Review Online which described the way that average citizens were exploiting their expanded capacity to manipulate and circulate images to create the grassroots equivalent of editorial cartoons. These images often got passed along via e-mail or posted on blogs as a way of enlivening political debates. Like classic editorial cartoons, they paint in broad strokes, trying to forge powerful images or complex sets of associations that encapsulate more complex ideas. In many cases, they aim lower than what we would expect from an established publication and so they are a much blunter measure of how popular consciousness is working through shifts in the political landscape. Many of them explore the borderlands between popular culture and American politics. I called this “Photoshop for Democracy” and the ideas got expanded in the final chapters of Convergence Culture.
I thought back on my arguments there this past week as I’ve begun to search out some of the images being generated in response to John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Given the intense flood of news coverage around this decision, the ways that it has shaken up the terms of the campaign, and the ways that it challenges gender assumptions surrounding the Republican leadership, it is no surprise that it has provoked a range of response. And I thought it might be interesting to dissect some of these images here.
Photoshop CS3 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $295.
The latest Creation Engine Catalog is now available.
Request a free catalog if you’re not on our mailing list.
Download a PDF of the catalog.
Details on the catalog cover.
Link via Adobe Developer Center
Going to university is an amazing experience: getting to the next chapter in your life, finally gaining some independence, and showing up to your 2:30 class in PJs. However, you’ll quickly realize that great schooling is expensive, and you’re going to have to work hard to make the experience worthwhile. I’m here to help, and while I can’t carry your mini-fridge to your dorm or stop your roommate from stealing your food, I can give you a list of 10 apps that should help you survive the next four (or five or six) years of university—apps that’ll help you prepare for exams, apps that’ll help you with your life outside the classroom, and a couple that will make you want to bang your head on a desk for not working on that term paper two months ago.
Link via CGSociety
First Prize
‘Fusion’ by Heiko Klug, (Jesar), GERMANY jesar.cgsociety.org
Heiko creates most of his designs in his free time after work or on weekends. Working in a little design agency in Cologne, his daily projects are more the ‘classical advertising thing’. He creativity extends to some photography, 3ds Max and Photoshop.
“My girlfriend is also a big inspiration to me,” says Heiko. “I think inspiration can be everywhere, you just need to look closer. For the Fusion piece, I shaped the 3D shapes in Max and placed them in Photoshop. I wanted a clean line between the 2D and 3D but overall it should fuse together. I like to place very massive and static elements and bring them into a flow. A friend told me about the Design Fusion competition because I almost use 2D and 3D elements in my work. I had some nice feedback from the community. Thank you so much!”
3ds Max 2009 Student Version (13-month term) is available at an academic discount price of $95.
Photoshop CS3 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $295.
Link via Desktop Engineering
As an industrial designer for more than 10 years, I have come to rely on Photoshop CS3 Extended as the most important component in my process for designing quality products. It links each phase of a design project and ensures that the final product is done right and on time.
To begin any project, I draw a concept sketch using Photoshop on a Wacom Cintiq tablet. This immediately enters the job into a digital pipeline.
Once a design direction is chosen, sketches are imported into Rhino 3D to be used as reference while building the 3D model. This makes capturing the client’s design intent easy. Since the image is right there in the Rhino modeling environment, there is no guessing. Eliminating guesswork or interpretation at this phase makes the difference between getting it right, or just getting it done.
Photoshop CS3 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $295.
The Cintiq 12WX is available at for $999 from Creation Engine.
Rhino 4.0 is available at an academic discount price of $159.
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