User:conficio on SWiK

Innovation in Software Manuals

Fri, 02 May 2008 07:17:17 -0700

This week, Ingots, a group dedicated to teach IT skills based on open source, has published “Introduction to OpenOffice.org for Windows and Linux” (Use “Login as a guest”, to view the material).

I like the concept and the content of the course. However, I’m curious how it compares to the innovative approach of “Plan-B for OpenOffice.org. What is your opinion?

Do you prefer a traditional course offering like the one from Ingot or do you prefer the video based Software manuals from Plan-B?

Would you like to have course material with demo documents and quizzes on Plan-B for OpenOffice.org?

Please leave your comments about innovation in software manuals.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 released

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 08:53:27 -0700

OpenOffice.org Release 2.4 is now available for free download.

Curious about what changed?

Release 2.4 has improved

Ease of use for setting languages for selected text in multi language documents
The chart module with
- improved label formatting and positioning,
- regression charts,
- and inverted axis
The presentation application (Impress) has added
- 3d slide transitions
- Pictures as slide background
The spreadsheet application (Calc) has added
- Splitting text into separate columns
- Start formula entry with “+” for faster data entry from the numeric key pad
- Better flow when entering rows of data
- Drag and drop cells and columns to move them
- Performance for loading large spreadsheets
The word processor application (Writer) has added
- more powerful regular expressions for find and replace
Update notification for application and extensions
Performance in general
Improved localization and spell checking for 10+ languages.

OpenOffice.org Ninja has an excellent introduction to new features in Open Office 2.4. Screencasts about the new features are coming soon.

Walmart $200 PC only Available Online

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:51:42 -0700

According to InfoWorld, Walmart discontinued selling its $200 gPC from Everex in stores.

The $200 PC loaded with Google applications will continue to be available at the Walmart.com website.

As reason, Walmart’s spokes person, O’Brien said “The idea was to see if shoppers in our stores would respond as they do online to the offering. The answer is that customers did not respond to expectations, so we decided not to restock.” This is an interesting contrast to the many reports that the low cost, low energy PC has sold out in some stores and Walmarts pride to be able to manage inventory best. Also, Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex, says “The sell-through [at Walmart stores] was brisk, I am surprised at the decision,” said Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex.

Interestingly, O’Brian felt compelled to say “We did not ‘pull’ Linux from our shelves or make any kind of ‘announcement’ on this,” she said.

Stumbledupon Plan-B for OpenOffice.org

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:37:35 -0800

This weekend something amazing happened to the traffic at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org. It doubled!

Why? Someone discovered the Open Office Calc video table of content page using the StumbledUpon Toolbar and must have shared it with her friends. And the crowd was really interested. Visitors that came from Stumbledupon stayed 35% longer than average visitors and their bounce rate was half of the usual average.

Don’t you love feedback for your work?

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:44:31 -0800

We at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org do love feedback from our users. On average, about 50% send us back a thank you for our answers to their OpenOffice questions. Some of the best we publish on our testimonials pages.

Dear users and readers keep them coming. We love your feedback and appreciate a thank you any time. It is so rewarding!

OpenOffice goes wireless

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:44:23 -0800

I just stumbled upon this quote

The design uses the same hardware platform as existing WiMax base stations, bearing out assertions from Airspan and others, that a WiMax base station can be sold as an LTE base station, using a different software load. “It’s just like a PC that can run either OpenOffice or MS Office,” said Baines. “We can build a card with the same hardware and run either WiMax or LTE.”

about OpenOffice in an unusual place. It is part of a report about 4th generation wireless equipment. Thanks Mr. Baines, you made my day!

Can’t wait for Native Mac OS X Open Office?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:43:49 -0800

If you are an Apple MAC fan and want to use OpenOffice, you are stuck with a version that needs X Windows, which is reportedly slow and looks and works like an alien in NY. Your alternative is NeoOffice, which has a more integrated look and feel but still is reportedly slow.

However, there is hope. The Open Office community has started a project to port the program to Mac OS X and do the work required to integrate the Aqua UI and other Mac OS X goodies. The bad news is that this work will only be included in Release 3.0, scheduled for the fall of 2008. But I found developer snapshots of native Open Office for Mac OS X and reportedly the version “OOH680_m4″ is quite stable and does its work surprisingly fast.

Consider migrating to OpenOffice.org!

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:43:46 -0800

Solveig Haugland, one of the best known trainers and consultants for OpenOffice.org offers free presentations about migrating to Open Office, to organizations that are interested in such a task.

Solveig is the author of many books, teaching Open Office software. Her latest book is “OpenOffice.org 2.0 Guidebook“, which you can also order from Amazon.

Is there still Gold in Montana?

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:43:01 -0800

I just discovered Tomahawk Gold from Native Winds of Montana. It looks like an attractive software package to print booklets from a variety of formats such as ODF, OOXML, txt, RTF, and XML.

This application does include its own editor to correct potential import glitches and reformatted files ready for printing in various formats, such as 1up, 2up (booklet) and 4up so proof your layout while saving paper. It allows you as well to produce PDF files directly for electronic distribution and printing by the end-user. The product sells for $36, download only.

The same company also produces a document converter from MS-OOXML or ODF to RTF. This is a freeware program, just to download from their website. Freeware Genius thinks the Converter is worth its money

Portable OpenOffice Release 2.3.1 is out

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 10:29:40 -0800

My dialog from yesterday, regarding am OpenOffice.org document viewer for presentations, did continue today. The user explained to me "The need [for an OOo Impress viewer] arises when you prepare a presentation using OO and take it on a flash drive to client site where there is no OO already installed. Hence the need!"

I believe this is a case for OpenOffice.org Portable, a build in the Open Office Eco System that allows to run the full application set from a portable drive, such as a USB Stick or USB hard drive.

Incidentally, the PortableApps team has released the latest OpenOffice.org version 2.3.1 a couple of weeks ago.

Do you need an OOo Player?

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 13:22:19 -0800

Over the holidays, one of the users of Plan-B for OpenOffice.org asked me “Is there something equivalent to Powerpoint [Viewer]?” so you do not need to own the software to receive and view ODF files.

To the best of my knowledge there is not. Actually I would think there is not need. As anybody can download Open Office for free and install the full package it is about as much work as downloading the free MS Office PowerPoint Viewer.

One could argue that this is not equivalent, because you want to only install the viewer for presentations and not the whole application. However you can install only Impress the Open Office application for presentations and the difference in file size is minimal. You even get as a goody the presenter mode, allowing you to not only view the presentation but also present it on an external monitor. Free open source has its benefits I guess.

Why You Should Update Before the Holidays

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 05:54:13 -0800

OpenOffice.org has released a bug fix release 2.3.1 for its popular Open Office productivity suite.

If you are using the product you should upgrade, especially if you use and exchange OOo Base database applications. Because up to release 2.3 the internal database application has a security risk that allows an attacker to execute raw Java code within the database. Basically he can do anything with it, from destroying your data to sending a copy to himself over the Internet.

So, do it quick, do it now and update OpenOffice.org to release 2.3.1.

Is OpenSoical the new spamming platform?

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:43:07 -0800

Today I had to read a proud account of Plaxo that its new Plaxo Pulse Web 2.0 networking platform has seen a traffic surge since it announced to offer the OpenSocial API.

My personal experience with Plaxo Stream is rather negative. For several weeks now Thomas Power, Chairman at Ecademy and Owner, Ecademy.com sends to my Plaxo account and my Inbox messages reading:

Thomas Power shared something with the Jon… Network group.

You can view it here: http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/events/…/

Thanks!
The Plaxo team

I don’t find this funny in any way. It is plain and simple spam. I don’t know the guy and as a spammer I will certainly not network with him.

Plaxo, fix your spamming issue and while you are at it fix your broken plugin for Thunderbird, which produces duplicates, if you want to do some good for your services.

OpenOffice Improvements from the Central Kingdom

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:07:56 -0700

While OpenOffice.org Release 2.3 is just out the door, Developers like Carsten Driesner, Liang Weike and the OpenOffice team from RedFlag 2000, prepare new features for Open Office Release 2.4

One feature is the ability to create and store your permanant image list, which can be used to change the icons of the appliction w/o going through the build process. In combination with the OOo extensions I expect this to become the facility for different skins for Open Office.

The other feature mentioned is an enhanced help tip text for the print button in the standard toolbar. The new feature shows the name of the printer in the help tip text, just to remind you where your document will be printed. Sounds rather useful in an office environment, where multiple printers are available.

Liang Weike works for RedFlag 2000 the project that adapts OpenOffice for the Chineese market and helps develop new features as well.

The other OpenOffice from Siemens

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:07:54 -0700

Siemens jsut annouced its latest offering in small business VOIP solutions and called it “HiPath OpenOffice ME”.

This has abolutely nothing to do with the free open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite for individuals, small and larg businesses as well as education or government.

Students don’t Mind to Pay for Office Software

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:23:51 -0700

… unless they can get it for free.

A marketing study at the Univeristy of Arizona asks the question what makes students pay for office suite software and are free open source alternatives like Open Office an alternative to pirated copies of the market leading MS Office?

The research looked at how much students would be willing to pay for a legal copy if the consequences woudl be the two choices. It turns out that $98 is the media price students were willing to pay to own a legal license. And that registration was a wee more effective than the publication that the software is not registered with every document that is produced and shared with others.

Interestingly, a group of students that was educated of the free open source alternative Open Office did not show less incline to pay for the MS Office suite. The researchers conclude that stability of the product and logevity of the maker are more important than the price to pay. Also an important factor is the convenience of using an application that is already familiar and does not come with the pain of re-training.

* The article cited mentions in the introduction: “Microsoft Office suite claims an impressive 95 percent market share.” Benjamin Horst an Open Office dvocate from NY, pointed out in a discussion about this article that market share numbers are often misleading in the context of free software. Because, market sizes are measured in annual revenue spend for a particular product. However, free products do not generate any revenue, so the basis for comparison is off. By Horst’s estimation, Microsoft claims 400 Million Office installations, and OpenOffibe.org claims 100 Million. Ignoring the rest of the competition, he estimates a 20% market share for Open Office.

Communist Revolution for OpenOffice.org

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:22:09 -0700

According to Vietnam Net, OpenOffice.org gains popularity in Vietnam. One of the leading organizations to switch is the Vietnamees Communist Party, with its 20,000 office PCs around the country. However government agencies and businesses follow suite. The movement is driven, by the international integration of Vietnam with the world economy. Vietnam wants to trade with the world and therefore must respect intellectual property rights.

as the pressure from international integration forces Vietnamese state agencies and businesses to respect software copyrights, the future for open source software seems to be brighter. Some providers of open source software products and support services have appeared

The government pushes its corporations and citizens to use legal copies of software, with full licenses. However, Vietnamese can’t afford the $200 - $500 for a fully equipped MS windows + MS Office business PC. So they switch to increasingly to open source alternatives like Open Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird. The availability of a localized vietnameese version of OpenOffice helps this effort and the nature of open source allows the country to improve on this aspect at will.

Phishing Spam has Reached Skype VOIP?

Tue, 09 Oct 2007 04:54:49 -0700

This morning I was greated by this CHat message on my Skype.
WINDOWS REQUIRES IMMEDIATE ATTENTION =============================


ATTENTION ! Security Center has detected

malware on your computer !
Affected Software:
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation

Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0

Microsoft Windows 2000

Microsoft Windows XP

Microsoft Windows Win98

Microsoft Windows Server 2003
Impact of Vulnerability: Remote Code Execution / Virus Infection /

Unexpected shutdowns
Recommendation: Users running vulnerable version should install a repair

utility immediately

Your system IS affected, download the patch from the address below ! Failure to do so may result in severe computer malfunction.http://www.XXXXXXXXX.org/?q=yyyyyy
I did replace the website and parameter so no one does click accidently on it.

The website linked is registered to a guy in Moscow. I did block this sender from any further communication, off course. I have gotten request to connect from harmless teenagers in China or Rumania before and simply declined. This is a new quality as it goes beyond a request to connect and might catch the unsuspecting user off guard.

Sad that a nother good service is vulnerable to Spam. I guess it is a function of popularity. Beware of any communication that comes from someone you don’t know.

Extension Bzaar for OpenOffice.org

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:14:05 -0700

With the latest release, OpenOffice.org has gained many valuable features useful to extend its functionality.

Matching this growing capability, the Open Office community has rolled out a repository for OpenOffice Extensions.

The site allows to search for extensions by tag, operating system, application or popularity. Off course you can download all available extensions and if you create an account vote for your favorite extensions. Give it a try.

Some find Hope in Symphony

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 14:14:01 -0700

While it emerges slowly that Lotus Symphony, a distribution of OpenOffice is meant to be a beta software and based on three+ year old code, Mathew Newton at PCWorld finds hope in the fact that the IBM engineers did manage to overhaul successfully the user interface and make OpenOffice a copy of Office 2003 rather than Office 97.

I’m not sure if this is the kind of achievemnt I’m looking for? I’d rather have serious functional improvements, stability and performance, than just a nother copy of some proprietary user interface. Not that I wouldn’t welcome a better user interface for OpenOffice.org or even one that is less riddled with bugs. But coming out with an unstable beta of an outdated application with an user interface copied from a program that is about to be replaced with a new version is not the kind of thing I’d celebrate. Especially if the more modern user interface is the main selling point and the version update of the product that has been copied is mostly about the user interface.

How to use all Your Options with Open Source Software

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:23:48 -0700

Matt Asay asks the question “What to do when open source is not good enough?” in his CNET blog.

He argues that he sometimes encounters cases where his choice of open source software does not fulfill his desired feature set and so he resorts to proprietary, closed source, binary only applications. For example, Asay switches from Adium to iChat when he needs video chat capability and from OpenOffice.org Impress to MS PowerPoint, when he needs video embedding. He concludes it is o.k. to use binary only applications in these cases and I would not disagree.

However, I’m not quite sure if Asay asks the right question or answers the question he asks.

Open Source is there so you can improve on the software you got, as opposed to a binary license that does prevent you from even pin pointing (debugging) a problem. The core freedom of open source is being able to add/modify/fix what is “your itch”. That the software is it also “free as in beer” is more of a side effect.

The better answer to Asay’s question is “If open source is not good enough, then improve it.” Sure not everybody is a programmer, but everybody can hire someone to do the job.

That is where it becomes clear that the “free as in beer” is only for making a copy of the software. If you really want to get the best out of it and solve your specific issue, then you have to invest like in anything else. You don’t even have to share (publish) the fruits of your investment. Only when you want to give it to someone else (for money or for free) you have to give that person the same rights you got (under the GPL at least).

So now it is your decision if you want to invest your money/talent/time into proprietary software that does not give you these freedoms or in open source that does. I’m not saying OSS is the only solution, but I’m saying it is equivalent to closed source and even better in some cases.

Ask yourself how would you answer the question “What to do when closed source software is not good enough?” I’ll think you’ll come to the same answer, use a competing application that does do what you want. Now in case of proprietary binary only software, you are at the mercy of “the market.” If you can’t find the app with the features you need, you are out of options and have to start from scratch to build the software you need. In case of open source you can take the package that comes the closest to your needs and add/modify/fix.

It’s all about options, you choose yours.

OpenOffice.org Release 2.3 is out!

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 09:28:32 -0700

The Openoffice.org community released its latest version, called Release 2.3.

It includes a new charting component with much more pleasing default colors, many enhancements that make Open Office extensions more viable and a series of bug fixes, some relevant to security vulnerabilities.

Behind the scenes many configuration options have changed or been added, such as:

Suppressing to save the printer settigns with a document, which in times of roaming Laptop users, might print the document half way around the world.
Improved export of spreadsheets with cotanget functions, such as COT(), ACOT(), COTH(), ACOTH() to MS Office compatible Excel files.
A new Chart Wizard makes it easier to generate charts from spreadsheet data.
A new report writer has expanded the abilities of OOo Base to write complex reports with grouping, sorting or different alignments of fields.
Exporting drawings and presentations to HTML now support .png images.
Exporting a text-document to a MediaWiki (think Wikipedia pages) format is now supported.

Also, don’t forget the smaller memory footprint that this release should include. This will make OpenOffice.org less memory hungry and more responsive as well.

I’m surprised hwo many changes have been made to the look and feel of menus and dialogs. Most of them are to please the extension developer community. I haven’t detailed the changes here, but be prepared to re-learn a few things, especially if you are a power user.

Gerry Singleton passed away

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:56 -0700

Gerry Singleton, a co-lead of the OpenOffice.org documentation project passed away a couple of days ago. He will be missed by the OpenOffice.org community and the software’s users.

Passing time on Singapore Airlines

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:55 -0700

This year’s Java One Conference was held in Australia and some of the sun engineers where in for a surprise. The airplane offered StarOffice in the displays in the back of the seats. StarOffice the commercial version of OpenOffice.org. The application allowed to open and save files from a USB device. Ain’t that cool?

Plan-B adds screencasts for OpenOffice.org Draw

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:54 -0700

I would like to present today some new screencasts for OpenOffice.org Draw, the vector graphics application in the OpenOffice.org suite.

We posted some basic screencasts for OpenOffice.org Draw yesterday.

While these number of screencasts for Draw is still small, the set is already useful. Lets assume you want to create a flow chart. A novice user might create some rectangles, and draw ellipses and connect these with lines. However, this will require careful planning so you position all the boxes first and the draw the lines. If you need to move any of the shapes you also have to adjust the end points of the lines.

You are probably better off to draw shapes from the flow chart menu, which gives you all the elements that are normed for this type of drawing. Then use object connectors to build a flexible mesh of objects and their connections. These connectors stick to the connection port of the objects and do move with the objects.

Finally, you annotate your flow chart with text frames and add potential notes withcallout bubbles.

OpenOffice.org quality is transparent

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:49 -0700

I just stumbled upon this interesting article about the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice quality assuarance efforts. I used to be a QA Manager for 4+ years, so I sympathize with my fellow German Thorsten Ziehm. QA work is not the most creative and sexy task one can do. But it is vitally important for a successful product and it teaches you a lot.

Thanks Thorsten for the work and for the insight (and the great charts)!

Save the forrest(s)

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:47 -0700

Yoon Kit blogs over at Open Malaysia about the physical size of the Microsoft OOXML spec presented to the International and national standardization boards.

You got to see the pictures of the 6039 pages in context. They are really eye popping.

Yoon also argues that this is probably by far the largest spec reviews in such short time. He puts his weight behind the request of various national organization bodies at the International Standardization Organization (ISO) to not fast track this mammoth of a standard specification. But these requests were ignored. This post is a must read!

Plan-B grows 100 screencasts strong

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:45 -0700

Plan-B for OpenOffice.org has grown to 110 screencasts and 157 glossary entires.

This is our Plan-B approach to documenting the popular open source office suite with screencasts (short videos) and smart search technology that helps you find what you are looking for.

If you have not checked it out, please join the other ~150 a day that visit this site teaching OpenOffice.org. If you like it come back like the growing number of repeat visitors. If you love it, register for more benefits to come.

Are you ready for a Retro Office?

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:13:41 -0700

You got two choices for going Retro Office:

You can order some steel furniture for your office
You can download RetroOffice for your Mac OS X

RetroOffice is a tongue in cheek version of NeoOffice. While the NeoOffice project is primarily about integration of the Mac look and feel, NeoOffice has recently jumped the gun and integrated some features of OpenOffice.org Novell Edition as well. RetroOffice is simply the additional features with the X Window system UI or original Open Office on the Mac. RetroOffice is delivered as is and does not enjoy any support. It is for users that need to have the latest and canâ€™t wait until the different contributions are integrated into official releases.

MSOOXML rejected for ISO Standard

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 09:45:03 -0700

Yesterday, the International Standard Organization rejected the wholesale acceptance of MS OOXML also known as ECMA-376 as a new ISO standard.

The relevant comittee did not reach the 2/3 approval rate nor did it stay below the 25% objection threshold. This is not a final decision but a request to study the matter in more detail. The 26% “No” votes of participating committee members have mandatory comments attached and these will be discussed at an assembly February 2008. Presumably then remedies will be worked out and the standard draft will be improved and voted on again.

Approving MS OOXML as a second ISO standard for Office documents, after ODF (ISO 26300) has increased interest in such matters dramatically. Many countries did upgrade their membership in the relevant comittee from observes to participants in oder to have an actual vote. Many obeservers of the process allege that Microsoft is lobbying with such countries as Cote d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Malta, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela to become participating and voting members. Interestingly, all new participating members did vote in Microsoft’s favor for fast tracking the approval.