Maya, Free for non-commercial uses

Alias Products & Services

From the site:
Maya Personal Learning Edition now available for Maya Complete 5

Maya Personal Learning Edition is a special version of MayaÆ software, which provides free access to Maya for non-commercial use. It will give 3D graphics and animation students, industry professionals, and those interested in breaking into the world of computer graphics (CG) an opportunity to explore all aspects of the award winning Maya Complete%u2122 software in a non-commercial capacity.

New Windows based Media Server

Unreal Media Server overview

From the site:
Efficient multimedia delivery over public networks is a challenge for modern technology. Insufficient bandwidth, network latency, paranoid firewall restrictions and many more obstacles make it very difficult to transfer streaming content to end users, especially in real-time. Existing Media servers, such as Microsoft and Real Networks ones, only partially cover growing demand for streaming quality.

The product presented on this site – Unreal media server – is a Media server for Windows operating systems, that dares to compete with above mentioned servers from the standpoint of quality and performance.

Apple Releases a new iTunes for Mac and PC

Apple – iTunes

Unfortunately I can not give this a trial run as of yet because I am told that it installs a new version of QuickTime (6.4) and QuickTime for Java that is incompatable with some of my current development work.
…
From http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/qtjava/index.html

Support for Java 1.4.1 in QuickTime for Java is being delivered as part of QuickTime 6.4 on Windows and Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther). Support for QTJava with J2SE 1.4.1 on Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) is coming soon.

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Waiting for more information.

The Urban Divers

TheUrbanDivers

A very interesting looking organization..

From the site:
Founded in 1998, The Urban Divers is a registered non-profit grassroots environmental organization of volunteer scientific divers, waterway stewards and monitors committed in the active participation for the restoration, conservation, protection and education of our rivers, oceans, and marine wildlife, with a special focus on the restoration of NY/NJ Harbor Estuary.

How ridiculous can the Bush administration get?

U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species (washingtonpost.com)

From the article:
The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries.

This would be funny if it wasn’t so utterly devastating..