Work: August 2008 Archives

We often keep hearing about some PHP integration at some level or the other in all the major open source IDEs. But frankly, none of them seemed much useful to me. I somehow never liked PDT from Eclipse (and for some reason I don't like Eclipse at all :S). Now the latest milestone release of Netbeans has a cool addition: PHP Integration that really kicks! Just to mention a few highlights: great intellisense for both the builtin library functions as well as our own, full support for class browsing and intellisense for object oriented PHP as well, integrated debugger, live error checking and much much more. Do check out if you are a PHP developer! You might no longer need the expensive Zend studio to have a smooooth PHP development experience.

Below is a screen shot with some of the candies demonstrated, click to enlarge:

CutePDF is a software that lets you convert any printable document into a PDF file - and that too very easily. You simple have to select 'File > Print' and select the CutePDF option.

You can find the details here. I've been using it for a long time now and I really find it useful - it puts no ads, and it keeps the original formatting intact - which is so nice I'd say.

TrueSpace, one of the popular 3d production systems in the market - is now free. Here is a piece of art produced using TrueSpace:


It used to sell at a price around $600 before Microsoft acquired the parent company Caligari some time back.

TrueSpace, which is now actually a Microsoft product, is available for download at www.caligari.com (free registration required).

Different people have come up with different opinions about this relatively surprising news - to set free a $600 product. But the general opinion is that Microsoft has taken this step to compete with Google's SketchUp - which is also available for free - and allows you to upload content to Google Earth directly.

Here is an excerpt from the official blog posting:

As you'll recall, several months ago we acquired Caligari because of their advanced 3D toolset - trueSpace (among other assets). I've always felt sketchy about other 3D freeware, so starting today trueSpace 7.6 is now available for download.....FOR FREE! And, there is a direct connection into Live Search Maps so you can create SUPER high resolution 3D models using trueSpace, then right from the environment upload the model into Live Search Maps as a collection item. Once you've created your collection, you can import your collection into your Virtual Earth application and BAM you have your own custom 3D models in your Virtual Earth application. We'll host the models right in our 3D collections cloud! This is going to be a long post - get some coffee and make it diesel.

TrueSpace is way ahead in terms of features and power when it comes to comparison with SketchUp - so time will tell how the audience react to this.

I personally use Blender 3D, but choice is always good.