April 10th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Dimdim (maybe not the best name, but it is memorable) has announced its public beta today. Dimdim is a free, GPL-licensed web meeting software/service that offers screen sharing, slideshow broadcasting, text and voice chat, and video broadcasting capabilities.
From an email they sent to private beta testers yesterday, “Since we launched our private beta program in September, Dimdim has been used in 165 countries by over 350,000 people. And thanks to your feedback we have upgraded our service to provide better screen sharing, dramatically enhanced our video and audio chat and introduced the MyDimdim meeting portal where you can host, schedule and search your meetings.
“We thought you would like to know that tomorrow, April 10, we will open our Dimdim public beta to the rest of the world. Now anyone will be able to host their own Dimdim Web Meetings for free.”
Web Worker Daily reviewed Dimdim last week and was impressed: “While he was on a PC using Internet Explorer and I was on a Mac using Firefox, as soon as I clicked the attend link in his email, it just worked. Fast. No fuss, no muss. None of the death by lag or weird color shifts I’ve been tormented with by other web collaboration services. DimDim takes care of the plumbing so you can actually spend your time collaborating, or reviewing, or learning.”
Free conference sessions can have up to 20 attendees, while the Pro service, at $99/year, allows up to 100. And since it’s open source, it can theoretically be integrated with online learning tools like Moodle (that would be awesome for remote learning!), CMSs like Drupal, and other collaborative online tools.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 8th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Geek.com has a great article titled “Hacking the XO Laptop.” They cover both hardware and software hacks, building and using cool new external devices, installing new software applications and making use of online services like XOChat.org that have been set up by others. Full of pictures, screenshots and detailed instructions, this is a great, informative post.
Author Joel Evans writes, “I took advantage of the G1G1 program and have had one for a while now and recently had a “geek” session with Brian Jepson of HackZine and O’Reilly. Brian is a seasoned geek and a quality Linux hacker, so we had a good time playing around with the XO. I should also mention that we generated some interest in our local Panera as we completely took over an area by a fireplace and had some strange gadgetry flying high.”
Posted in Free Culture, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on Hacking the XO Laptop
April 3rd, 2008 Benjamin Horst
MIT’s Technology Review discusses the largest project implementation to date: Peru rolls out 400,000 OLPC XOs to 6,000 schools.
“Success of OLPC now depends largely on frontline teachers and, of course, parents and kids. Peru’s effort, if successful, would be a model for other nations. In the training now under way, teachers must become versed not only in how to operate and maintain the laptops, but also in how to do their jobs within a newly laptop-centric educational model. The laptops will contain some 115 books, including textbooks, novels, and poetry, as well as art and music programs, cameras, and other goodies.”
The majority of sites will not have internet access, so teachers will update content the old-fashioned way.
“In these villages, any updated content will be delivered to the machines by what OLPC president Walter Bender calls “sneaker-net.” Each month, when the teachers visit regional education offices to pick up their paychecks, they will have the ability to tap Internet connections to load new content onto thumb drives and bring them back to their classrooms.”
What an exciting implementation this will be!
Posted in Free Culture, OLPC | Comments Off on 400,000 OLPC XOs for Peru
April 1st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Okay, I missed it, even though I’d been part of an email conversation about the first annual Document Freedom Day, which took place on March 26.
Document Freedom Day is a global project to promote an open document format (the real one, ODF) and to help users adopt applications that support ODF.
“ODF leaves space for all present and future vendors to implement it and makes sure that end users won’t suffer from any sort of vendor lock-in. In contrast to earlier used binary formats which were cryptic and difficult to process, ODF’s use of XML makes accessing the document content simple.”
I’m looking forward to an even bigger Document Freedom Day next year!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Document Freedom Day
March 28th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OOo Ninja’s got a screenshot-full post on new features in OpenOffice.org 2.4, which was released yesterday.
See the official 2.4 feature notes at OpenOffice.org (check out more screenshots) and the Slashdot release announcement:
“The multiplatform, multilingual office suite OpenOffice.org has announced the release of version 2.4. New features include 5 PDF export enhancements, text to columns in Calc, rectangular selection in Writer, bug fixes, performance improvements, improvements supporting the growing library of extensions such as 3D OpenGL transitions in Impress, and much more. Downloads are available either direct or P2P. In September, OpenOffice.org 3.0 will add PDF import, Microsoft Office 2007 file format support, and ODF 1.2.”
Also, the OpenOffice website user interface was updated and it looks great.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice 2.4 Released
March 26th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Northxsouth, a small company of web developers with offices in San Francisco and Sao Paulo, Brazil, represents a new global archetype that has shaped, and been shaped by, the methods of open source software.
In their own words, “Many of us are also involved in open source and free software projects. We were using online collaboration tools as a part of our day-to-day work for open source projects where no two people involved lived in the same city. Being accustomed to secure messaging, voice-over-ip and groupware, we gained a unique edge. Our network of opportunities and trusted talent expanded beyond the Bay Area and we started working on free software projects in Latin America as open source gained momentum there.”
The Northxsouth blog has kept track of interesting developments in the world of Free Software, including a recent survey titled “Free Software Becoming Entrenched in Brazil,” where they report “As time goes on, free software is becoming institutionalized within Latin American businesses, public sector systems, non-profits and NGOs.”
There had been much press a few years ago during the announcements of migration plans to open source, but not a lot of news since. This indicates that much has been happening during this time. (The FOSS adoption survey itself is here.)
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Northxsouth
March 25th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Contrary to what was recorded in September, Cuba also intends to reject MSOOXML, announces Groklaw.
“The Cuban National Bureau of Standards has reportedly sent an email to the three names NBs are supposed to notify at ISO, Toshiko Kimura, Keith Brannon, and Martine Gaillen, reporting that Cuba votes to disapprove OOXML.
“But the startling news is that the email claims that Cuba voted no in September but that its vote was miscounted.”
If true, this is an example of an extraordinary abuse of the process. Hopefully Cuba can record the vote they feel is right before the final tally is recorded.
Posted in Free Culture | Comments Off on Cuba Also Rejects MSOOXML
March 24th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
India’s rejection of Microsoft OOXML is definite and consistent with its previous ballot, Groklaw announces:
“I’m very happy to report that despite all the pressure to get India to change its vote, India has stalwartly voted No once again to OOXML. That will, I hope, encourage others to vote what they truly believe is right.”
An even more positive development is that Poland appears prepared to reject MSOOXML in its bid to become an ISO standard, a reversal from its original vote. (The only qualifier here is that a bewildering array of new rules have suddenly been implemented, and cautious observers are concerned a technicality could be used to disqualify Poland’s change of vote.)
“There is a report by Borys Musielak of PolishLinux.org that Poland met to vote on OOXML on Thursday. Of 45 members of the committee eligible to vote, 24 showed up to vote, and it split almost down the middle, with 12 for, 10 against and 2 abstaining. This is extraordinary, since Poland voted yes in September, despite the technical committee being opposed. I call that progress.”
Note that consensus is required, not a simple majority vote, hence the rejection.
Posted in Free Culture | Comments Off on India and Poland to Reject MSOOXML
March 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
For the past few years, Malaysia has been on the forefront of the ODF-MSOOXML struggle as well as the OpenOffice.org-Microsoft Office competition. However, bit by bit they have been moving in the direction of the open source camp.
A recent press release informs us that a Malaysian government agency has chosen to migrate to OpenOffice, in “MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org.”
Quoting the entire short press release:
“The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and interoperability.
“From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created. ODF, the ISO open standard for electronic documents, is also the default format for OpenOffice.org. The agency will also uninstall all copies of Microsoft Office by the end of 2008.
“To ensure a smooth migration, presently over 80 agency staff have been trained by the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Additional staff will then be trained internally by the IT department, which will also provide support for OpenOffice.org.”
Combined with a strong presence in Singapore and the Philippines, and a recent 20,000-seat government migration in Vietnam, it appears that Southeast Asia is quickly becoming a major stronghold of the OpenDocument Format and OpenOffice.org itself.
Edit: The Open Malaysia blog covers this story with greater detail.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Adoption in Malaysia
March 19th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
The Open Social Web blog has written a Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web, outlining fundamental principals they feel should be respected by all providers of social networking tools and services.
These rights include an individual’s ownership of his or her personal information, control of how that information is shared with others (other individuals and advertisers, of course), and the ability to grant persistent access to personal information to trusted external sites such as aggregators and other services.
It’s a great project, but the blog only has one post. They provide links to other affiliated blogs, information, and events, but I’d like to see more activity taking place on this site. Creating an open social web is an important project to help maintain the ideals of the internet and world wide web, so I hope to see a strong community of supporters, advocates and developers form in this area.
Posted in Free Culture | Comments Off on Open Social Web Bill of Rights