December 8th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Eric Bachard has been capably leading the rebirth of the OpenOffice.org Education Project, signing up universities in North America and Europe to teach programming and project collaboration by participating directly in OpenOffice itself. His most recent success has been to bring Ecole Centrale Nantes onboard.
Becoming an integral part of university curricula is a sure way to guarantee OOo development over the longest timeframe. In addition to contributing directly to development, universities are a good place for further adoption of the software. As they participate more, the code will evolve to better serve their needs, while the profile of OpenOffice will increase within the universities, and they’ll naturally begin to use it in departments across campus. Students will become comfortable with it, and bring it into the workplace after they graduate.
Strategically, this effort is of the utmost importance, and we wish Eric and the Education Project team great success!
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Focus on OpenOffice.org’s Education Project
December 4th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
So far, OpenOffice.org 3.0 for Mac has been limited to Intel machines only. However, plenty of Mac users are still running PPC machines and would like to use the latest OOo on their computers as well.
Fortunately, Nakata Maho has been working on builds for PPC Macs, and with a little help from other developers, has overcome several issues in delivering a PPC version of OpenOffice 3.0.
Current versions available for download are developer builds, so you may encounter lots of bugs. And new versions may be released superseding those linked here. Try this page and look for the latest directory to see if newer builds are available. (As of this writing, the most recent is “Dev_DEV300_m36“).
Posted in Mac, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
December 2nd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Recently, I’ve been in contact with an Ohio school district through an educational technology mailing list. The district has migrated to NeoOffice on all its computers (Macs, of course), but did not implement training or documentation for the new users. Thus, they have had some frustrations with the migration.
I sent the following in an email to give them the resources they need to get comfortable with their new software, and I’m posting it here in case it is useful for others in a similar situation:
I’m happy to help you find the NeoOffice (and related OpenOffice) online communities. Without participating in these, or without any training to accompany the switch, I can see why you and your colleagues would be frustrated! I hope I can help you all cross over the transition period to smooth sailing beyond.
For manuals, I suggest Solveig Haugland’s and the OOoAuthors Project’s manuals.
Solveig’s blog offers useful tips every day: http://www.openoffice.blogs.com/
Her book is called “OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook” and is the definitive reference on the software: http://openoffice.blogs.com/bookresources/
OOoAuthors is a group of volunteers who have written a plethora of great books on the OpenOffice component applications. You can download any of them free as PDFs, or you can purchase the printed books from Lulu.com for a reasonable price. Links to all of these can be found on the site’s homepage: http://oooauthors.org/en
For online resources, NeoOffice maintains a user forum and a wiki where you can ask specific questions of the many users and volunteers who participate there.
NeoOffice Forums: http://trinity.neooffice.org/modules.php?name=Forums
NeoOffice Wiki: http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Main_Page
OpenOffice has its own official forum as well. Since the two programs are very similar in most functionality, you can also ask questions of the site users there:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/
In reviewing it just now, I came across the following thread that should be particularly useful for you: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11660
The books above should provide the step-by-step instructions for specific tasks. If you need more, then any book about OpenOffice should suffice, and you can also look into The INGOTS online training and certification program, at www.theingots.org, for online training materials (accredited in the UK, but quite useful here in the USA too).
Good luck, and let me know if you have further questions!
Posted in Free Culture, Mac, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 2 Comments »
December 1st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OpenOffice’s Extensions are getting a lot of attention lately. Several articles in the latest Linux Identity special issue describe extensions, including my own (The Top OOo Extensions, second from last in the list).
In addition to these, MakeUseOf.com’s Damien Oh writes 9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions, which offers another take on some of the best. Among his favorites are the Sun PDF Import Extension, Professional Template Pack II, OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs, Writer’s Tools, LanguageTool, and several more.
Posted in Extensions, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on “9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions”
November 25th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The government of Norway has committed $285,000 to encourage and implement OpenOffice.org in government offices, reports OStatic:
“Minister of Government Adminstration and Reform Heidi Grande Roeys is granting 2 million kroner ($285,000) to the national center for free software, and the terms of the deal are interesting. Instead of general promotion of open source software, the funds are specifically earmarked for adopting and promoting use of the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications in government offices.”
The longterm goal is to increase competition in the office productivity suite space. This grant’s purpose is to fill the gaps in connecting OOo with third-party applications, so that it can compete head-to-head with the Norwegian government’s current deployment of Microsoft Office. Further, by displacing the need to purchase as many licenses for MS Office, this grant will pay for itself in a short time.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
November 20th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
For the past few weeks I’ve been developing an idea to extend OpenOffice.org 3.0’s Welcome Screen into a more complete Dashboard concept. The idea sprung from Google Chrome‘s new tab screen, Spicebird‘s Home screen, and the social software ideas being developed as KDE’s Open Collaboration Services.
Yesterday I uploaded (well, Alexandro did it for me) a mockup to the OOo Wiki in order to share my OpenOffice.org Dashboard concept for further discussion. I have some plans to improve the current mockup, and will attach an ODG to the page to make it easier for others to illustrate ideas to build on top of what I have started.
If you’re interested, please check out the page and provide some feedback.
I think this Dashboard idea fits well with our plans to make OpenOffice feel more modern, configurable, and social, so let’s see what the community can do with this!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Social Software | 2 Comments »
November 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
ODF@WWW, Kay Ramme’s wiki project built on OpenOffice and ODF, has been accepted as an official incubator project, Ramme announces.
He presented it at the recently-concluded OpenOffice.org Conference in Beijing and writes, “Since last week ODF@WWW is an Official Incubator Project 🙂 You find it’s home page at http://odf-at-www.openoffice.org.”
Integration with and adoption of Web 2.0 concepts has been an important development strategy for OOo, and this is a strong adaptation of wiki concepts into the familiar word processor paradigm. Its growth should be interesting to observe and groundbreaking in many ways.
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | Comments Off on ODF@WWW Wiki Becomes an Official Incubator Project
November 13th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Ian Lynch, a longtime OOo community member and founder of The INGOTs project, recently returned from Malaysia, where he studied the government’s strategy to adopt open source. He describes his experience in “Malaysian Government’s World Leading Open Source Strategy“:
“My recent trip to Malaysia at the invitation of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI) provided a great insight into the Malaysian Government’s strategy to move all public administration to Open Source software. The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) and the Open Source Competency Center (OSCC) published implementation guidelines in August 2008. In contrast with political strategies that are more about presentation and spin, this publication is a refreshing object lesson in planning for change, taking into account the existing position and infrastructure.”
Malaysia has been talking about migrating to open source for several years now. Unlike some other countries, however, Malaysia has also taken concrete steps in the form of pilot projects. It has reached some very positive conclusions:
“In 5 pilots across 4 ministries, savings reported were
- 80% on software licensing costs
- 58% in development and consultancy
- 7% in software support
- 31% overall.”
Lynch concludes “Malaysia shows that… putting the needs of the tax payer before those of shareholders of private companies is a responsibility governments ought to be taking more seriously.” He describes Malaysia’s growth toward a technology leadership position in Southeast Asia, and how open source has played a key role in that process.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Ian Lynch on Malaysia’s Open Source Strategy
November 11th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
An OpenOffice.org press release on PRWeb announces, “The OpenOffice.org Community passed the ten million downloads mark for the latest version of its software, just four weeks after the launch on October 13th.”
John McCreesh elaborates: “We were delighted to hit a million downloads in the first two days. Four weeks later, we have hit ten million, and we are still seeing an amazing 250,000 – 350,000 downloads a day. For a community with no advertising budget, this is an astonishing level of product awareness around the world.”
This is the fastest download rate of any version of OpenOffice to date, and has probably only been exceeded by Firefox 3 among all open source software downloads. (See more download statistics here.)
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org 3.0 Achieves 10 Million Downloads
November 10th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Adrian Try has launched a new blog, Using a Different Office, to document his experiences with new office suite options, particularly focused on OpenOffice.org and Google Docs.
On using both OOo and Google Docs, Try describes his typical use pattern:
“At this point in time there is definitely a place for both installed and online office suites. I use both OpenOffice.org and Google Docs on a daily basis.
“Whenever I am creating a document that will ultimately be printed, I tend to use OpenOffice.org. Especially if the formatting is tricky or complicated…
“I use Google mainly for documents that are for information and reference. Its excellent search is very suitable for finding information stored in reference documents. I also use it for documents that are going to be used in email newsletters, web pages and blog posts (like this one). And I definitely use Google Docs whenever I want to collaborate with others on a document. I think this is Google Docs’ greatest strength.
“I often move the information I have been storing for reference into OpenOffice.org for consolidating, formatting and printing. I find by doing this I am helping me develop the valuable habit of separating content from formatting.”
In another interesting anecdote, Try describes how he migrated a small business from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org in one day without any advanced planning. It was a risky approach, but he was constrained when he learned the company already was running more copies of MS Office than they owned in licenses, and the management wanted to resolve that issue pronto:
“Despite the uncertainty of using unfamiliar software, and being thrown in the deep end, the staff handled the change well. Much better than I expected. On the second day one of the staff had a question about something that worked a little differently. The question was easily answered, and there were no more questions. Some staff preferred some of the differences.”
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »