It’s really great of Google to be working on this, and I really enjoyed seeing the various models the children had come up with. And really, who doesn’t think a semi truck with teeth is an improvement?

Read more about Project Spectrum here.

On a seperate note, Aidan Chopra has written one of those “For Dummies” reference books on how to use SketchUp. He’s also got over 60 videos on YouTube, which you can use to teach yourself how to be a better SketchUpper, especially if you’re too cheap to buy the book. If you aren’t use this referral link to buy the book at Amazon, currently available for $13-16.

(via Boing Boing)

These champs, who hail from the University of Minnesota, Purdue University, Concordia University, Loyola Campus, Stanford University, Indiana University Purdue University Fort Wayne, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, and Dartmouth College, will now get to spend three days at the Googleplex.  Their work will also be added to Google Earth’s 3D layer.  Pretty cool, right?

“We couldn’t help but be impressed with the effort put forth by the many teams and individuals who participated,” said the contest’s judges in an official statement.  “The selection of finalists was the result of a lively discussion and a careful model review; ultimately, the top teams’ entries bubbled to the top.”

You can view those entries for yourself at the contest’s official website, yet some are much larger than others, and as Frank Taylor of the Google Earth Blog notes, “it is a slow process loading up hundreds of building models this way.  I’ll let you know when the models are in the layers.”

As Taylor’s statement may have led you to notice, this competition has benefited Google, as well as those winning teams; Google Earth and Google SketchUp have gotten quite a bit of publicity out of it.  They’ve received free data from some very talented people, as well.  This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just that, as usual, Google has proven itself a master of PR.

A slate of features that make SketchUp Pro 5 an enticing buy for commercial developers won’t appear in the Google SketchUp that has been made available for personal work. But it has quite enough for those who want to try out the package on some smaller scale projects.

Google purchased SketchUp in March 2006 for an undisclosed sum. Both the Pro 5 and free versions work with Google Earth; a plug-in is needed for Pro 5 and can be downloaded from the SketchUp site.

Google and SketchUp are even employing something of a social media model with a presence called 3D Warehouse. ZDNet’s Googling Google blogger Garett Rogers noted Google registered Google3DWarehouse.com and .net, .org, and .info version of that domain name earlier this week.

The 3D Warehouse offers a place where SketchUp users can find and share models for use on their creations. ” Notice that there aren’t many toasters yet?” SketchUp’s Aidan Chopra asked. “Build one, upload it to the Warehouse, and revel in altruism the next time you see it in someone else’s SketchUp kitchen.”

Chopra also listed a few tricks SketchUp users can try, varying in skill level from beginning to advanced. The intermediate technique resembles the flip-book metaphor for making an object appear to be animated. Users will likely discover and share more; that could be a frightening concept.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.