After Orange and Peach, Blender Institute continues with a new open project: Apricot. This time it isn’t a movie but a 3D game! Starting february 1st 2008, a small team of again the best 3D artist and developers will develop a game jointly with the on-line community. The main characters in the game are based on the short 3D animation open movie Peach. At the end of July 2008 the production ends and August is used for DVD and documentation making. Releasing the game at end of August.

The team will work on a cross platform game (at least Linux, Windows, OS X), using Blender for modeling and animation, Crystal Space as 3D engine and delivery platform, and Python for some magic scripting to glue things together. It is not only the purpose to make a compelling 3D game experience, but especially to improve and validate the open source 3D game creation pipeline, with industry-standard conditions. At this moment we only know that the game characters are funny and furry, and the game environment is outdoors in a field and forest. Once the team is together - February 2008 - they will define the game concept and game design.

Swimmer Amanda Beard might be the sexiest and most compassionate U.S. Olympic athlete of all time. Need proof? Check out the anti-fur ad that she did—naked—for PETA.Even with her busy and demanding training schedule, Amanda took the time to bare her skin to help save animals' skins. With the tagline "Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin. Don't Wear Fur," Amanda posed nude to help raise awareness of the cruelty inherent in the fur industry.

We've seen the headlines before, most recently in the Russia/Estonia disputewhich never escalated to armed conflict, but they're coming out again in the fighting between Russia and Georgia over the disputed South Ossetia region.

Most people I know tend to roll their eyes at these reports and consider them fantastic and overblown, a case of doomsayers and reporters looking for something shocking cooking up a whole lot of something out of almost nothing. And it's true, the extent to which any of the articles covering the conflict from the electronic angle can exaggerate is pretty much limited to denial of service attacks and website defacements, which are nothing that your average day on the Internet doesn't include plenty of examples of as it is.

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Bank notes from the Free Banking Era in the United States (1837-1863). During this era the U.S. had no central bank and paper money was issued by a variety of private banks. Some was even issued by manufacturing and retail companies. This money was backed by gold, silver, real estate, stocks, bonds, and a wide variety of other assets. You can no longer cash them in, but they are now worth often substantial sums as collectibles. As you can see below, the note designs were more varied and creative than modern money, and were remarkably free of politicians' faces.