Creative 3D has a comparative review of Swift 3D and Illustrate! 5.

3D Nature unveils Visual Nature Studio, a GIS visualization package based on World Construction Set's landscape visualization technology. Visual Nature Studio will continue the tradition of realistic visualization while providing new tools to control visualization directly from GIS data, simplifying and automating the process. (more...)

3D-worXX has an article on creating QuicktimeVR panoramas and objects from within 3ds max. (German)

Snoswell Design invites you to join an open Beta program for their ACT muscle and skinning software. Email mark@cgCharacter.com with subject ACT-Beta to get on the beta program. Include your full contact details in your mail. This will be a short, active beta. To stay on you will have to make at least one post a week (no trivial teapots either).
Read the details at ACT's website.

The first animations done with Snoswell Design's skin deformation by muscles plugin have been posted at Digimation's Beta Site.

The Art of Seeing (perceiving and portraying details: edges, contrast and chiaroscuro)
Techniques on using the Solidify plugin and meshsmooth for beveling
Advanced Water using Fresnel and depth fog
Simulation of a Rocket flight using Max dynamics
Max 4 History-Independent IK
Subdivision Surface Modeling 101 (Beginner)

According to the UK's Independent Digital, Motorola's innovation allows silicon to be combined with higher performance compound semiconductors, which are expensive but faster and able to receive and emit light. Optical circuits transmit information at the speed of light, so the new chips could run at more than 70Ghz, compared with the 2Ghz speed of current chips. Real-time GI rendering on your desktop PC? Read the whole news report.

Greg Hess has posted brief report at 3DLuVr.com on some of the major hardware vendors' offerings at this year's Siggraph.