Free Google SketchUp?

That's right for those users who have heard the buzz about SketchUp now you can try this for free.

From the SketchUp site:
I'm pretty sure that the first part of this won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Google. In keeping with our "3D for Everyone" mission, and in an effort to let everybody and her grandmother find out about our software... (can you hear the drum-roll?) we're releasing a free version of SketchUp.

Right now the free download is only available for the Windows platform, but the Mac version is coming soon. More information about the free Google SketchUp can be found on the FAQ.

happy sketching up...

ADT 2007 - PSD Visibility & Order

Of the many features within ADT 2007 there are some overlooked gems that can make a large improvement in your workflow. For those taking advantage of Property Set Definitions and scheduling the list of items shown can be overwhelming. In the past we have had to use creative ways to shorten this list and sort it into a logical order, all of which were work arounds...

Until now... Introducing the PSD "Visible" & "Order" options:

What can this really do for you? Good question. Instead of having a list that looks like this:

You can have it shortened to have your users only see the following sorted as desired:

This gives us a much shorter list to choose from and using an ordering system that we choose to use. To get the shortened version above we needed to check/uncheck the visibility option and then for the sorting order we used the Order option and simply entered a #1 for the start then continued as desired (ex. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5):

That was the good, now for the minor issue to take note of:

When checking the PSD visibility option you cannot select multiple boxes to check on/off quickly. :(

So far I have just been sorting by the column header to help with this, minor irritation but what this tool can help with outweighs the irritation. :)

Having the ability to keep the property set definitions available but not visible to the end user has a number of advantages and the sorting order only compliments this, especially as changes occur to your setup later.

April Fools - Google Earth

http://www.jarnot.com/mt/archives/2006/04/they_come_in_pe.php

Found this an interesting dose of fun in Google Earth. :)

enjoy and happy April fools day...

-b

Of course the other google april fools ones are funny too:
http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

http://www.google.com/mentalplex/

http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html

http://www.google.com/googlegulp/