“The simpler it is to make, the less likely it is to break,” Easton said. “We used SolidWorks to design a simply constructed and aesthetically pleasing turbine that can fit into a residential or small business area.” The MicroWind turbine produces around 50 to 75 percent of the electricity an average home uses in a year.

Scottish residential turbine developer Windsave, another SolidWorks user, is developing a similar small turbine that homeowners can bolt onto their house. Like MicroWind’s, the Windsave turbine is designed for efficient, quiet, and vibration-free operation.

Magenn approaches the issue of fickle winds from a different angle. Instead of waiting for wind to come to it, Magenn’s MARS (Magenn Air Rotor System) turbine goes to the wind. It is a 50-x-120-foot lighter-than-air device that floats 600 to 1,000 feet above the ground to catch the jet stream currents present almost everywhere. MARS rotates to generate up to 100 kilowatts per hour, then feeds it down a tether to a grid or a battery array.

“Traditional fixed turbines work in 15 percent of the world. We’re the solution for the other 85 percent,” said Mac Brown, Magenn’s chief operating officer. “SolidWorks helps us experiment with different turbine configurations, compare their power outputs, and save thousands that we used to spend on outsourced simulation work.”

In addition to its popularity with emerging wind power companies, SolidWorks has a strong presence with established wind technology companies. Dutch offshore turbine developer Darwind is using SolidWorks to design offshore wind turbines with a patented magnet configuration that reduces up-front and maintenance costs. The British division of Ramboll Oil & Gas has used SolidWorks to design the foundations that support half of the world’s offshore wind power capacity.

SolidWorks Student Edition 2009-2010 is available at a student discount price of $129.

How many? 300, you say? In fact there were exactly 179 people in the choir. The reason I know is that I use Photoshop’s Count tool to put a number on the head of every member of the choir to get a precise count of the number of singers on the risers. No ambiguity; not a cell of indecision: 179, pure and simple.

Originally designed to help cytologists to count cells in microphotos, the Count tool puts a readable number down on the photo each time you click your mouse on a subject. It’s very valuable for determining things like how many white cells are in a blood sample, how many trees in a forest photo… or how many singers are in a choir photo.

Photoshop CS4 Extended is available at an academic discount price of $299.

Photoshop CS4 Extended College Student Edition is available at a student discount price of $199.

Swift 3D v6 is available at an education discount price of $172.

PDF to Book has arrived! We know many of you have been clamoring for the ability to make books using the design tool of your choice, and upload directly to Blurb. We got the message, and after a herculean effort from the team, PDF to Book is all yours, bringing you complete creative control in the application of your choice.

Here’s how this works: we provide you with our pre-made templates for Adobe® InDesign®, or you can use our pre-determined guidelines and specs for all our book sizes and cover types. Design your book from cover to cover in CMYK and use any native file formats (TIFF, EPS, PNG, etc) for stunning text and image quality. With PDF to Book you can also wrap your cover image, or add an image, to the spine of your book. Did we mention this is complete creative control? Rich colors, sharp text, full flexibility – PDF to Book is unlike anything Blurb has offered before.

Create PDF documents from any application with Acrobat 9 Professional - $95 Education Discount Special!

InDesign CS4 is available at an education discount price of $199.

With a focus on rendering and animation enhancements, modo 401 delivers a wealth of new features and innovative workflows, which enable users to easily model on top of existing geometry, see changes in their scene immediately from the radically improved Preview renderer and efficiently re-use assets throughout the content creation process. These new features benefit customers in a broad array of disciplines such as architectural visualization, product design, game development and advertising image production.

modo 401 Mac/Windows 1-year license (download version) is available at an education discount price of $139.

modo 401 Mac/Windows 1-year license (download version, lab floating license) is available at an education discount price of $169.

In handing CINEMA 4D a third Macworld award, the magazine drew attention to CINEMA 4D’s leading support for the Macintosh platform, full range of features, and arguably the app’s greatest weapon: its superior ease of use.

Macworld said: “CINEMA 4D is now a fully cocoa-native app and one of the few apps available that can take full advantage of Apple’s 64-bit operating system. This allows you to render hugely complicated scenes in a single pass and we must say that it works well without a hint of drama.”

“Not forgetting that CINEMA 4D still boasts the awesome MoGraph module, a feature-packed character animation toolset, and hair and cloth simulation, we doubt that there’s an easier-to-use, better-integrated and feature-rich 3D toolset out there.”

Cinema 4D R11 (includes BodyPaint 3D R4) is available at an academic discount price of $195.

Since Adobe Systems relaunched its AIR marketplace, I’ve been spending some considerable time there. There are so many great apps, it’s hard to pick just a handful worth talking about. But after taking some time to sift through all my apps, I’ve selected my favorites.

Adobe Media Player If you’re a Photoshop, Premiere, or Dreamweaver user, the Adobe Media Player will come in handy. The app lets you watch a slew of videos that train you how to use Adobe’s applications.

Although there are videos for advanced users, there are quite a few videos that help Photoshop novices find their way around the sophisticated program. You can also save your favorite videos and go step-by-step during instruction. It’s a great app for anyone who wants to be creative.

Don Reisinger also reviews 9 other apps including TweetDeck, Desktop iPhone, and DeskTube.

Mind maps solve all these problems. I can capture ideas from an interview or a design for a book in a mind map, and I don’t feel frustrated or fatigued. Going from a linear view to two-dimensional space allows me to move around quickly and put an idea in the right place in the hierarchy by sailing right there with my mouse, expanding and contracting the level of detail as needed. Because this is quick and easy, I capture more ideas and restructure them faster, meaning my mind map better reflects my understanding.

When I return to a mind map, the context of my latest thinking is quickly restored; nothing is missing or lost. I don’t get that feeling of dread. Mind maps can be large and complex, and to control the depth, you expand or contract branches. I often use mind maps to organize and analyze information stored somewhere else, like all of the opportunities I am working on in Salesforce.com.

I use MindJet MindManager, which has a shareable version of maps called MindJet Connect. Shareable mind maps can be viewed and changed by many people at once. It is a wonderful feeling to work quickly on a shareable space to capture ideas and trade thoughts. Free Mind is a popular open-source mind-mapping tool (a step down in usability from MindManager, but it will give you the idea), and many other commercial and open-source tools are available as well.

MindManager 8 for Windows is available at an academic discount price of $149.