June 13th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
A new period of innovation is opening in the world of mobile computing, possibly inspired from ideas boldly implemented by the One Laptop per Child project, and diffusing across the commercial world from there.
In this vein, PC Pro announces the introduction of Asus’ £100 laptop:
“The notebook measures roughly 120 x 100 x 30mm (WDH) and weighs only 900g. We saw the notebook boot in 15 seconds from its solid-state hard disk. The huge auditorium then burst into applause as Shih revealed the astounding price tag. Dubbed the 3ePC, Shih claimed the notebook is the ‘lowest cost and easiest PC to use’. As the crowds rushed the stage, we sneaked off to the Asus stand to take a closer look.
The notebook uses a custom-written Linux operating system, much like the OLPC, though unlike the OLPC, Asus has chosen a more conventional interface. The desktop looked fairly similar to Windows and we saw Firefox running on one 3ePC. A spokesperson from Asus told us that the notebook would come with “an office suite that’s compatible with MS Office”, though he refused to confirm or deny whether that meant OpenOffice.”
Flash-based hard disks are probably going to become standard in a new breed of subnotebooks like this. As will Linux-based operating systems and open source desktop software stacks. Many new uses will be devised for this form factor, and probably an entirely new market will come into existence. Freedom from proprietary software is a strong contributing factor behind this wave of creativity.
Posted in GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Introducing the £100 Laptop!
June 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Linux.com reports Navy CIO ‘recognizes the importance of OSS to the warfighter’:
“John Weathersby, executive director of the Open Source Software Institute, told Linux.com today that, effective immediately, the Department of the Navy has adopted a new policy which requires that open source software must be considered in every software acquisition the Navy makes.”
Posted in Open Source | 1 Comment »
June 7th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Democracy Player 0.9.6 has been released, the last version before the name change to Miro will take place.
Nicholas Reville writes, “We have just released version 0.9.6 of Democracy Player. It is a *big* update, with lots of new features, bug fixes, and improvements. It’s also the last version ever of Democracy Player. The next release from us will be under our new name, Miro.”
I’m looking forward to its new auto-update capability on OS X, among many other new features, and I’m also excited to have found it included in my Ubuntu package repositories for easy access on my Linux boxes (though it isn’t the latest version yet).
Boing Boing first introduced me to Democracy Player sometime last year, and they cover this most recent developmental release too.
In addition, Edward A Robinson blogs about the release from a Linux user’s perspective, and I’m sure there is plenty more blog coverage out there–it’s a great program and platform that deserves a lot of attention!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Democracy Player Updated, to be Renamed Miro
June 4th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Due to an outpouring of popular demand through its IdeaStorm website, Dell came to realize that a large number of people would like to purchase Ubuntu preinstalled on new computers. Breaking its long-held “Windows or die” stance, Dell went forward and made it available. Great work, Dell! (See the page for all IdeaStorm-generated ideas they have implemented.)
Now, there are some caveats. Only a few systems are available, it’s only available in the US right now, and Dell includes some language to dissuade unsavvy users from making the Ubuntu choice. These issues are fine in the short term, though, especially if you consider this a proof of concept experiment for the company.
However, one of the other top ideas on Dell’s IdeaStorm website was to preinstall OpenOffice (and Firefox, and some other FOSS apps) on the Windows boxes Dell sells. From a simple end user standpoint, this option would benefit a larger number of Dell customers: it’s easier for a user to learn new desktop applications than to switch OSes entirely, it would be easier to find on the website when purchasing a new computer, and it’s easier for a user to see that OpenOffice might have a cost of $0 in Dell’s online store, but if he or she chose Microsoft Office from that same dropdown menu, another $150 or more will be added to his or her system’s final price.
Simply put, OpenOffice preinstalls would save more customers more money. It would probably quickly show that most users don’t need Microsoft Office at all. However, there’s at least one company that does not want that to become apparent. I wonder if Microsoft would be above putting pressure on Dell to block this idea? Probably not.
OpenOffice would obviously benefit through marketshare increases if Dell were to offer it as a preinstalled option. But the primary benefit would be to new users–those who don’t even know it exists right now, but will be willing to try it when cost and convenience factors make it easily available to them.
According to the IdeaStorm website, pre-installed OpenOffice is “Under Consideration,” which appears to be just below “Coming Soon” in their hierarchy of possible implementation. Let’s hope it moves to “Already Offered” soon!
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
June 1st, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg talks about what New Zealand can do with the $100 million it will save over ten years since its schools have partially abandoned Microsoft Office.
He’s referring to a post by fellow Sun employee Ken Drachnik, titled New Zealand Rejects Microsoft Office for 25,000 Macs! Drachnik writes, “Today, New Zealand Herald reports that the government of New Zealand rejected the bid from Microsoft to upgrade 25,000 Macs in their education system to the next version of Microsoft Office. Supposedly, the government couldn’t justify the cost of $100 Million over ten years (yes Dr. Evil, that is 100 MILLION) for the Macs! Bully for New Zealand. Go download NeoOffice for free now and upgrade to the OpenOffice.org version for the Mac when it is released in December of this year! Save the taxpayers $100 million and spend it on more books, better hospitals, education for more open source programmers.”
The original article in the Herald seems to take a negative slant on the news, despite the outrageous demands Microsoft made–that New Zealand schools pay for licenses of MS Office they don’t even have!
“Education Minister Steve Maharey said Microsoft insisted the Government pay a licence fee for all Apple Macintoshes in schools to use Microsoft Office.
“But the programs were used on only half the machines.
“The ministry could not justify the extra $2.7 million being given to Microsoft for software that would not be used,” said Mr Maharey.
“He said Apple supplied a program similar to Microsoft Office, and NeoOffice, an open-source program developed by volunteers, was also available.”
Microsoft has long been double-dipping; charging customers for products they don’t use or even own, or charging them twice for the same program. For example, many schools and corporations have site licenses for Windows, so they have paid for each copy of Windows they run. However, each time they buy a new computer with Windows pre-installed, they’re paying separately, and again, for that copy of Windows!
With this in mind, it’s clear that Microsoft’s income is skewed and its marketshare is also probably overcounted. Not to mention that schools and corporations are paying twice for the products they purchase! What a ripoff.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
May 25th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Someday soon we’ll be bored with all these “company X is migrating to Linux” stories. But not yet!
Voicelink Communications, of South Carolina, has found Linux, OpenOffice, and Thunderbird to better suit their needs than their prior platform of all Microsoft applications. Without a formal dictum, they are nevertheless moving bit by bit to open source tools across the company. And it all started, essentially, by chance.
Peter Kaye of Linux.com writes,
“Lee says that “most of the software adoptions came about due to problems we encountered.” Unable to deal with the deluge of email-borne malware designed to take advantage of Outlook, and due to Lakos’ increasing concern with security, Mozilla Thunderbird replaced Outlook as the company’s default mail client. Lee notes that “at the time, I did not recall any major security advisories for Thunderbird, whilst I could reel off half a dozen for Outlook and Outlook Express.” Problems with Windows Software Activation prompted a switch to Ubuntu-based desktop machines; staff members have said that their old machines seem a little snappier under the new OS. Finally, with the move to Linux desktops, the company began using OpenOffice.org as the default office suite. The company now enjoys the benefits of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard internally. Lee says that cross-platform support for ODF was a significant draw for Voicelink and that some of their new customers are also using OpenOffice.org for similar reasons.”
Posted in Open Source | Comments Off on YAFM – “Yet Another FOSS Migration” Story
May 22nd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
This is the second in my series “Wikis at Work.” (See the first, about Christian Einfeldt’s Digital Tipping Point Project, here.)
OpenOffice.org launched its wiki in November 2005, and it has quickly become one of the world’s most-used wikis. (Number 16 on the top-57 wikis list. This is much higher than my Wikipages at the moment, but we are growing fast!)
I recently added a page for Quick and Easy Marketing Additions to help new users find things they can do to help right away. This is an example of how fast and loose editing, wiki-style, can invigorate online projects, and in the case of OOo, it certainly is helping to bring many new, informal collaborators to the project.
In fact, many FOSS projects have come to the same realization, and you’ll find wikis for Apache, Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Java, and many more projects on that list.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | Comments Off on Wikis at Work: The OpenOffice.org Project
May 21st, 2007 Benjamin Horst
As the OpenDocument Format keeps growing in importance and usage-share around the world, and because of its well-written, simple spec for developers to work from, it is providing the data storage foundation for many new and innovative software programs.
Just as ODF supporters have long been predicting, a new wave of innovation is being unleashed before our eyes.
Rick Walker, of Thoughtslinger Corp, got in touch to introduce his new ODF-capable application:
“We’re a small startup and we’ve built a new simultaneous group editor that heavily uses the .odt format. Everyone in a team works on the same document at the same time, and everyone sees what everyone else is doing as they do it.We’re here: http://www.thoughtslinger.com/learn.php
We believe Thoughtslinger is complementary to Writer. A team would collaboratively edit an odt file in Thoughtslinger, then use Writer for final formatting, headers, footers etc. We embraced odt’s because the specification is open and very clean.
We went live with a beta about a week ago. We built it in Java – our first release is a Windows build and we don’t rule out future Mac and Linux builds. If you’re interested, please give me a call and I’ll give you a quick tour.
Regards,
Rick Walker
It looks like a great tool, so check it out! I suggested to Rick that he add it to the Wikipedia page on ODF software, to help others find it too.
Posted in ODF, Open Source | 4 Comments »
May 18th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The Free Software Foundation is launching a new campaign to promote the OGG free media format (especially for Mac and Windows users).
The FSF suggests using VLC for Mac and Windows users to playback OGG on their machines. I would actually suggest Democracy Player, which incorporates VLC code, so it can play back all the same files, but adds some great additional features on top of it. (These include tools for subscribing to and managing video podcasts, managing your local library of video files, and both finding and sharing media content across the net. It’s also a BitTorrent client, and a YouTube browsing and downloading tool.)
OGG’s importance lies in its freedom from patent and license fee encumbrances. FSF explains:
“The use of MP3 is restricted by patents, while OGG is not. Unlike MP3, there are never any licensing costs for using OGG, and you do not have to worry about anyone suing you for using it without a license. You might have heard about Microsoft’s recent loss in a $1.5 billion suit over their use of MP3.
“These patent lawsuits might never affect you directly, but they create a culture where creative and skilled individuals cannot develop multimedia software without fear of being legally attacked. Using OGG is one way to support them in their efforts and to encourage a better culture.”
To help spread the message, you can download or link to campaign buttons, which look like this:
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on FSF on OGG
May 14th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Dmitri Popov writes Extending OpenOffice.org: Must-have OpenOffice.org extensions.
OpenOffice.org introduced extensions, inspired by Firefox, in OOo’s post-2.0 versions. As the community begins to grow, interesting extensions are being developed to extend the suite. Popov’s five favorites covered in this article are the Annotation Tool, SVG Import Filter, OxygenOffice Professional, Tabbed Windows, and OOo.HG, a set of tools for working with vector maps.
These extensions and others are tracked on the OpenOffice.org wiki’s Extensions Repository.
There you’ll find an extension that Popov himself is working on, called QuasiWiki, which adds basic wiki functionality to OpenOffice Writer.
Posted in Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | Comments Off on Top 5 OpenOffice.org Extensions