February 13th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The Standards Blog reports that Sun has released an MSO to ODF plugin, to save Microsoft Office-generated documents in the open standard ODF format.
Sun’s plugin page offers more info and a placeholder for the download, which will be available soon: “The converter is easy to setup and use, the conversion happens transparently and the additional memory footprint is minimal. Microsoft Office users now have seamless two-way conversion of Microsoft Office documents to ODF.”
This plugin is already being used by Massachusetts to meet its new ODF requirement, without migrating all of its existing legacy MS Office systems to OpenOffice.org or other ODF-compatible applications (yet).
Microsoft has also sponsored a plugin of its own; however, the Microsoft plugin only functions with MS Office 2007, which is not very useful! Sun’s plugin works with Office 2003 (and possibly earlier versions), which means there’s no need to buy new software licenses to use it. Obviously, that’s going to be the better choice for users.
Posted in ODF, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Sun Releases ODF Plugin
February 5th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
OSAlt.com (“Open Source as Alternative”) helps computer users find the open source alternatives to proprietary software programs they already know. Enter the name of the proprietary software, and OSAlt lists the best FOSS equivalents.
It also displays the top ten most requested apps on both the Open Source and proprietary sides, for quick reference. Overall, a handy tool.
Posted in Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on OSAlt.com Helps Users Find Open Source Alternatives
February 2nd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
At the intersection of environmental sustainability (via low electricity consumption), and economic/political sustainability (via support of open source software), Tech Networks of Boston has introduced green PCs that offer low power consumption and OpenOffice.org preinstalled.
While smaller OEMs seem to be offering OpenOffice more and more frequently, we’re still waiting on the big ones (in the USA anyway), to catch up with the program. OEM pre-installation has an enormous impact on marketshare and could help to make OOo the default choice, if and when it occurs.
The Earth PCs offered by Tech Networks have the additional advantage of greater energy efficiency, which has been a feature of Macs for years, but may now start to catch on more broadly across the PC sector.
Posted in OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on “Earth PCs” with OpenOffice
January 30th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
I’d better post these before they get stale!
Chris Duckett writes Will OLPC Change Linux?
He examines the OLPC project’s ability to rethink a lot of entrenched computing paradigms, because it’s a new platform without legacy dependencies:
“The OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) project is in the enviable position at the moment of being able to change technologies and directions as they choose, with no rollouts and a lot of the work still to be done software wise. Free of the inertia that an existing product presents, OLPC can be fresh in its thinking and be a trend setter…
Another interesting choice was that of using application bundles, like OS X, and not a standard Linux packaging system. The reasons for this were that it is easy to install and delete, it is easy to share, there is no need for dependencies (because it is all in the bundle) and has an added benefit of removing the need for a centralized repository. If you think about children trying to use apt-get in the sub-Sahara, it makes sense to choose an application style that is decentralized and simple to use.”
Some very interesting thinking here!
Meanwhile, O’Reilly reports Groklaw Team Exposes Serious Flaws in Microsoft’s OOXML Specification. The original Groklaw analysis can be found here, carefully cataloging a long list of errors in the Microsoft spec. This analysis is an impressive piece of work.
Posted in GNU/Linux, OLPC, Uncategorized | Comments Off on OLPC’s Paradigm Shift, and OOXML’s Flaws
January 23rd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Wikis have been one of my key interests for more than four years now, because they bring a new level of interactivity to websites and web-based communities.
My own hands-on project in the world of wikis is Wikipages, a wiki-based local business directory that currently focuses on New York City.
Over the past year, Wikipages traffic has grown steadily as it has been linked to by bloggers and bookmarking sites. Its listings have grown to include hundreds of businesses in the city, with a preponderance of restaurants and bars, but also realtors, chiropractors, photo labs, and even the occasional copy shop. But we’re also happy to list parks and museums and to include neighborhoods and special districts like Stone Street, at the heart of downtown Manhattan.
Wikipages should grow very quickly in 2007, and more contributors are always welcome!
Posted in Announcements, Free Culture, Uncategorized, Wiki | Comments Off on Introducing Wikipages.com
January 10th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
In Pictures launched a line of free computer application tutorials, prominently featuring OpenOffice.org.
The press release announces, “The tutorials were developed as part of a U.S. Department of Education study, to make it easier for people with learning disabilities to learn computer subjects. When the study was completed in 2006, it showed that the illustration-based tutorials worked well for everyone, not just those with special needs.”
The free tutorials are supported by ads on each page, and the collection is intended to be the equivalent to a complete software guide book.
This new training product is another valuable addition to the collection of products and materials being developed around the platform of OpenOffice.org. As its community of users continues to grow, we’ll see more and more services and tools provided to complement OOo. That this startup would feature OOo as prominently as MSO is a sign of its increasing importance to the education, government, and business worlds. (And that the screenshots were taken in Linspire also shows the growing importance of Linux, as well.)
Posted in GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
January 5th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
It’s not a standard, argues Rob Weir, because it is carefully designed to favor Microsoft Office to the exclusion of other programs.
MSOOXML, the company’s new office document format, was created to deliberately confuse the marketplace that is starting to gravitate toward OpenDocument Format, which is a true open file format. By calling their closed format “open,” Microsoft clearly hopes to siphon away support from ODF. And by MS’ pretending it is open, those who don’t watch closely (most everybody), will fall into the trap, where they’ll be locked into a new generation of expensive proprietary programs.
Weir spells it out: “This is a running criticism I have of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML). It has been narrowly crafted to accommodate a single vendor’s applications. Its extreme length (over 6,000 pages) stems from it having detailed every wart of MS Office in an inextensible, inflexible manner. This is not a specification; this is a DNA sequence.”
The problem is that in many instances the spec for MSOOXML reads along the lines of “do this like Word 95 did it,” without explaining how Word 95 did it!
Weir writes, “So I’d argue that these legacy tags are some of the most important ones in the specification. But they remain undefined, and by this ruse Microsoft has arranged things so that their lock on legacy documents extends to even when those legacy documents are converted to OOXML. We are ruled by the dead hand of the past.”
The solution is straightforward–don’t use this fake standard, use ODF instead.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Microsoft’s Document “Standard” Isn’t
December 29th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Zimbio has launched an OpenOffice portal and group blog, which they classify as a “People’s Guide.”
The portal consists of a group blog, news, video and blog search trackers, links, feeds and a forum. It looks like a nice foundation that could grow into a sustainable community!
Let’s see if I can get SolidOffice added to one of their feeds…
Posted in OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on New OpenOffice Group Blog/Portal
December 18th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Solveig Haugland’s OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook is now available for purchase.
She announces it on her blog:
“I am delighted to announce that my OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook has been published!
More specifically, I have gotten the rights back and have self-published it.
The OpenOffice.org 2 Guidebook replaces the OpenOffice.org 2.x Resource Kit on Amazon, which is never coming out.”
Posted in OpenOffice.org, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Solveig’s OpenOffice.org 2.0 Book is Here
December 11th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
The Inquirer reports on a survey that shows Europe-wide use of Firefox has hit 23.2%, with one country (Slovenia) at 40.5%.
Finland is at 39.3%, Poland at 33.6%, Germany at 33%, and France at 20.7%.
What’s the global situation? Pretty good, for our band of freedom-fighters:
“Worldwide, Europe – at 23.2 per cent – is just behind Australasia (23.4%) in its use of the foxy browser. According to Xiti, 14.5 per cent of North American surfers use Firefox. Its smallest market share is in South America, where it accounts for just 11.1 per cent of active browsers.”
Posted in Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Firefox Keeps Booming in Europe