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A small but growing collection of free and open-source, @font-face ready fonts. Join the web font revolution.

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by Dave Klein

In Part 1 of my series, An easy way to bring 3D content into your Adobe Flash projects, I walked you through how to use FreeSpin3D to import a 3D model into a project we created with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and apply interactive behaviors with just a few settings.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to use FreeSpin3D to create 3D geometry directly inside Flash CS4 Professional, and then apply an interactive texture that will act as a navigation system to launch product pages on the Adobe website. You can see a working example of the finished project on the FreeSpin website.

If you missed Part 1, I encourage you to review it to get a better understanding of FreeSpin3D basics. FreeSpin3D is a tightly integrated 3D extension for Flash software that provides a visual workflow easy enough for beginning Flash designers to understand. It also provides an ActionScript API that enables advanced developers to create more complex 3D projects.

In this tutorial, I use a FreeSpin3D SpinUp. SpinUps extend the core functionality of FreeSpin3D and act as building blocks for creating more advanced 3D projects.

Go to Adobe Edge and try it for your self

Graphics.com is a participant in the first Mediabistro Logo Awards competition, which is open to graphic designers, studios, agencies, clients and students. Below are some recent entries that caught our eye.

• Designer: Christine Martino “Todd Thomas is an American Baritone of critical acclaim, with a rich, resonating vocal range.
  I wanted to illustrate his vocal range and professional flair with an elegant Baritone-Bass Clef.”
• Designer: Tom Crawshaw “Branding for The Listening Centre, a registered charity based in Oxford, England. They offer a counselling service to people on limited income, who would otherwise be unable to afford the services of a private counsellor.”
• Designer: Bryan McCloskey “Green Calgary is a dynamic, non-profit urban environmental organization with a mission to empower Calgarians to create healthy homes and communities through environmental education, products, and services.”

Visit the Mediabistro Logo Awards >

• Adobe

  The name came from the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock. Thanks to: Dennis Massey, Brand Master, Logo Creator, IDEAZDEN

• Apache

  It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA’s httpd daemon. The result was ‘A PAtCHy’ server – thus, the name Apache.

• Apple Computers

  Favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn’t
  suggest a better name by 5 o’clock.

• Cisco

  The name is not an acronym but an abbreviation of San Francisco . The company’s logo reflects its San Francisco name heritage. It represents a stylized Golden Gate Bridge .

• Google

  The name started as a jockey boast about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named ‘Googol’, a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders – Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page presented their project to an angel investor, they received a cheque made out to ‘Google

• Hewlett-Packard

  Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.

• Hotmail

  Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing email via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters "html" – the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casings.

• Intel

  Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ‘ Moore Noyce’ but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain, so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.

• Lotus

  Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from the lotus position or ‘padmasana.’ Kapor used to be a teacher of Transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

• Microsoft

  It was coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-’ was removed later on.

• Motorola

  Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.

• Oracle

  Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or something such).

• Red Hat

  Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!

• SAP

  "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by four ex-IBM employees who used to work in the ‘Systems/Applications/Projects’ group of IBM.

• Sun Microsystems

  Founded by four Stanford University buddies, Sun is the acronym for Stanford University Network.

• Sony

  From the Latin word ’sonus’ meaning sound, and ’sonny’ a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.

• Xerox

  The Greek root "xer" means dry. The inventor, Chestor Carlson , named his product Xerox as it was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying.

• Yahoo!

  The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver’s Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

http://www.monoclops Upload a photo of yourself or a friend and transform it into a hideous cyclops. Mildly amusing.

http://www.rgbstock.com A new free member-driven stock photo collection that seems to be primarily the work of former contributors to the SXC site.

http://www.rollip.com This new site lets you choose from 40 effects to apply to your uploaded photo, with smaller images processed free.