Desktop Engineering has posted word that UGS (the big CAD/PLM software company) is joining with Adobe (you know who they are) to get 3D files out and about via their PDF format. From the UGS press release:

PLANO, Texas and SAN JOSE, Calif. – UGS Corp., a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, and Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced a technology partnership to enable manufacturing organizations worldwide to tap into the industry’s vast reservoir of 3D digital product models – stored in the widely adopted JT data format – and publish them as Adobe® PDF files.

“Widely adopted JT data format”? Maybe in some industries, but I don’t often hear of it. Guess I need to investigate this a little more, because I know how often people use the .pdf format to communicate long distance. Interesting development.

Would I ever have loved to have seen the presentation Bruce Sterling mentions in his latest blog entry. The wizards working within the Tangible Media Group apparently expanded a few minds at the current Art Futura 2005 exhibition showing off their latest efforts to redefine human-machine interfaces. Considering some of the stuff they were doing earlier (you can see/read about some of those things here), I can hardly wait to see more coverage of what they’ve just shown.

The above “reThink/reDesign/reCycle” competition entry may have received second place, but it’s my favorite. Check out the write-ups on inhabitat, archrecord2, and the competition site itself (future versions of which will undoubtedly have “/reBang” in that list somewhere!).

via inhabitat

{Image Source: AIA Chicago}

While lagging heavily in Second Life yesterday, an acquaintance informed me that the virtual world There is now free. It appears they were forced to respond to Linden Lab’s recent move to make basic Second Life accounts free. Anyway, while posting my previous entry I was reminded of this – which is curious, actually. Why haven’t I read about this already?

Turns out the good folks at There appear to be having problems getting their story straight… which is probably keeping it out of the press (or at least the bits I read). So they’ve posted this “Clarification“:

Despite our best intentions, it’s apparent that our announcements and posts about “Free There” have been confusing, and in some cases, contradictory. To clear things up, we’ve removed all of the old posts on this topic by There and it’s employees, and are replacing it with what we hope is one simple explanation. I apologize if you find the language that follows a bit terse, but we are aiming for clarity here.

During this test, ALL prior memberships plans are replaced with two lifetime plans, with the exception of Beta Lifetime Memberships. The two plans are:

* A FREE Basic membership, which includes the Music pack. This plan is FREE, and it is a lifetime plan
* A Premium membership, which includes Voice, the Explorer pack, and Music pack. This plan costs $9.95 and is a lifetime plan.

I always enjoy Regina Lynn’s column over on Wired. But today’s article, “Coming Soon: Online Sex Games“, has me wondering if she’s been in There or Second Life. The closest she gets to either, as far as I can tell, is when she uses the catch-all MMPORG. Does anyone know? Because this specific distinction of creating “games” has me as confused as when I asked why anyone would bother with Virtual Eve. Maybe someone just needs to create a “game” inside Second Life.