Last year long about November, Microsoft purchased a small Hong Kong-based software firm named Creature House. One of their principal products was a vector graphics editing program called Expressions 3. Primarily a Mac product, they also had a Windows version; both versions received very positive reviews.

Microsoft's disposition of the developmental version of Expressions 3.3 is totally unexpected. They are currently giving away both the Mac and the Windows versions for free! Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/ and go to the download page. They require a Microsoft Passport to download it, but hey, you have to have one to get to your Hotmail account anyway, right? On the Expressions 3 site, there is is a tour page which explains the features of the program, a vector gallery and a links page linking to a very active community of users. There is a very nice Expressions portal page, Studio E3 run by Annie Ford, and Microsoft claims that they will continue to develop this product.

Expressions uses strokes with a great deal of user control, allowing creation of vector artwork that has the look and feel of drawing or painting. It is quite distinctive and allows the creation of much more painterly illustration than other vector tools.

This is very interesting, because Microsoft already had one of the best vector graphics programs going--Microsoft Photodraw 2000, a component of Office 2000, which they discontinued. If it was so good, why did they discontinue it? The product appears to have been used as leverage against Corel, who at the time was actively developing their own commercial version of Linux. With both WordPerfect and CorelDraw being actively ported to Linux, Corel's commercially packaged version of Linux posed a serious OS threat to Microsoft. Microsoft in turn released Photodraw as a serious threat against CorelDraw, which for many, many years had been the dominant vector graphics program on the PC. Three things happened sometime between Office 2000 and the release of Office XP: Corel dropped their Linux development, and Microsoft discontinued Photodraw and invested $50 million dollars in Corel (chump change for Microsoft but a heck of a lot of money for Corel). Intriguing, nes pas?

So now Microsoft has another vector graphics tool in their stable. My advice: grab Creature House Expressions 3.3 while you can!
[From Decent Downloads]

Like almost every other thinking person in America, I have some thoughts on the election I would like to share. I have been writing and rewriting in my head since Sunday and when I have time I'll get put it down here. I think I have some fresh perspective on what some view as pivotal issues of the elective and I hope I can get my ducks in a row to present it with the impact I think it should have. For right now, I'll just say: watch this space.

I would hope everyone is aware that Firefox version 1.0 has been released. This represents the first “smooth”, finished version of the browser. Installation went like silk on my system and all of my extensions installed under the 1.0 Release Candidate work without a hitch. To all the Firefox team: BRAVO!

The other big release of the week is Novell Linux Desktop, which Novell is wisely giving away for free with thirty days support (and as far as I can see it will continue to run after that, just without support). I'm installing it in Virtual PC right now to evaluate it. I'll let you know what I think.