Software documentation one screencast at a time

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.

Comparing Office Applications in the Trenches

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 05:51:05 -0700

At ZDNet, Christopher Dawson compares NeoOffice vs. OpenOffice vs. Office 2008 vs. iWork. He obviously comprares them on Mac OS X, as GeoOffice or iWork and Office 2008 are special releases for the Apple Mac platform.

His report is influenced by his experience managing the IT for a school in Western Massachusetts. Chris concludes:

iWork is very slick and integrates well brilliantly with iLife. Itâ€™s easy to use, but powerful enough for serious users. However, itâ€™s lack of compatibility with open file formats is of concern. Office 2008 is also slick and highly functional but not nearly as effortless to navigate. Even with academic pricing (iWork is priced around $10/license academic versus almost $70/license for Office), Office is a bit pricey and hard to justify when cheaper or free alternatives exist. OpenOffice for the Mac really isnâ€™t worth a second look right now given its lack of integration and compatibility. NeoOffice has its niggles, but is generally a solid, easy to use office suite. Even if you choose iWork of Office, it should be installed on all of your usersâ€™ machines to ensure compatibility with their students. It could certainly stand alone, as well, but the relatively inexpensive iWork is a hard bit of kit to pass up.

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.

OpenOffice.org Community Challenge

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 13:43:47 -0800

Sun Microsystems wants to encourage more participation in the Open Office community. For that purpose Sun sponsors a contest for contributions to OpenOffice.org offering $175,000 in price money and public acknowledgment of achievement.

The contest asks not just for development contributions, such as source code or extensions. The contest also solicits documentation, artwork, marketing materials and methods, tools to improve the community in areas such as distribution, translation, etc. It even accepts improvements to OpenDocument Format (ODF) and other creative ideas.

There are a few conditions for entry: You must create original work free of other people’s rights and be of legal age. You also must be a member of the OpenOffice.org community (registered at OpenOffice.org). For the cash prizes you need to live or be a legal resident of certain countries and territories. You can enter the contest as an individual or a group.

If you are interested, read the rules carefully. Determine if you are eligible for cash prizes. If you live in Austria or the Philippines, you are out of luck in this category. Also make sure that what you produce does comply with the licenses of OpenOffice.org and can be contributed to the OpenOffice.org project under the Contributer Agreement (different from the licenses). You should also be willing to have Sun Microsystems use your work for publicizing the Contest and the OpenOffice.org software.

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.

New Open Source E-Magazine

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:40:32 -0800

There is a new magazine on the electronic newsstand. It is called o3 magazine and published by Spliced Networks.

The magazine reports on news in the open source world and is distributed as PDF document. The complete magazine is produced using open source tools, namely Open Office for writing articles, Scribus for page layout and Gimp for image production.

I read the recent #9: Open Source Publishing and found it rather unimpressive. The black and white design schema looks rather morbid and the overall layout is not very consistent. My pet peeve is gray text on black background for the table of content. Why make it hard instead of easier for readers to find what is in the magazine?

As to the content, it did not strike me as impressive. One article about publishing images with Gimp, and another one using Scribus, and two articles about OpenOffice, the very same tools that are used in the production of the magazine. The two articles about using OpenOffice are about writing a newsletter and about collaborative writing with the Open Office word processor Writer. Both articles lack a vivid writing style and any usable detail. What I learned from it was “Open Office can do both, collaborative writing and publish a newsletter”, no more. I didn’t learn anything how particular good OOo is at performing the task or how bad, how I actually do it, what steps to take, what pitfalls to avoid or where the programs limits are. Both articles did not even contain one screenshot to dazzle me with a marvelously appealing result.

Live Documents Promises OpenOffice.org Support

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:41:59 -0800

I never cared for Hotmail, the Microsoft online mail account. I always found it not very user friendly. Hotmail was bought by Miscrosoft in 1997 to compete with the then dominant online mail provider Yahoo! Now, Sabeer Bhatia one of Hotmails founders, has launched an new venture in Online Office document software, called Live-Documents.

Mr. Bhatia is Chairman of Bangalore based, InstaColl and wants to compete with Google, Microsoft, Adobe and many others with a browser based application to create, edit and manage office documents. Documents can be shared with anyone who has an e-mail for notification of changes and edited online in a Adobe Flex based application. Live documents also supports off line work on documents through a plugin for MS Office 2003. The company also plans support for Open Office as well as a Flash based local client program from the company itself. Offline documents are synced back to the central service ASAP. The storage server allows light document management services such as permissions to edit or print a document as well as attaching workflow tasks like review and approval.

The new service is available on an invitation only preview basis. The company plans to offer free service for personal use and business use for a fee.

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.

How to Build an Ultra Low Cost PC for $100

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 06:28:45 -0800

While Everex started selling its low cost PC for

LinuxDevices.com has an in depth report about Everex’s plans for its Linux and Google applications based $200 PC. LinuxDevices reports that Everex hopes to sell 50,000 to 60,000 PC’s through WalMart. The main concern for profitability are the support costs, which Everex hopes to keep under $30 per sale.

The developer board comes with the CPU and a DVD containing the ready to install gOS Operating System. According to the article, gOS is an Ubuntu based Linux distribution with the Enlightenment Window manager for the low cost PC is called gOS like in Google OS for its inclusion of all Google online tools available and pre installed. The vision is to use online Google tools for Search, E-Mail, Calendar, Bookmarks, Text Documents, Spreadsheets, and more. If needed local applications, such as the office suite OpenOffice.org are included as well. gOS is also open source and available for download, but it appears the version delivered with the board or the PC is pre configured to the hardware and adds programs for multimedia (playing mp3, DVD, etc.). You can’t expect an abundance of performance from the Via C7 processor, however, it does a good job with web browsing and running basic applications and multi media playback.

Would you Trust a WalMart PC for Under $200?

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:14:53 -0700

Gee, WalMart is becoming a major outlet for Open Source PCs. It just announced a desktop PC for under $200, including mouse and keyboard and even speakers. The machine is rather green than powerful, as it uses a 1.5 Ghz VIA G7 processor, which has enough juice for homework and playing mp3s, and in turn is quite energy efficient. This machine needs just 2 Watt power on average (how ever that is measured) and is almost not to be heard, with 28db noise levels.

The kicker is this is a PC with lots of open source software and w/o MS Windows. It runs a Debian based Linux distribution called gOS, including OpenOffice 2.2 and uses lots of Google, YouTube, Facebook and other web applications pre-installed. Some might see the Google web applications as bloatware, but at last they are not try & buy versions.

You have to buy an extra monitor or use one of those that are discarded in perfect working order. I know a few people who have dumped their nice 19″ tubes for flat screens. So if you have more space than money, ask around their might be a good monitor for free in some garage. Did anybody say Craig’s List?

Surprise, Open Standards are not Free of Business Interest

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:39:31 -0700

OpenDocument Format (ODF), the standard accepted as ISO 26300 norm, has been mired in some controversy. The OpenDocument Foundation, a group formed to promote the standard format across different applications and platforms, has now denounced its support for ODF. The reasons cited is that Sun Microsystems, in control of OpenOffice.org/StarOffice the largest application supporting ODF, does not allow more compatibility to legacy formats such as .doc or MS OOXML. Sun favors supporting legacy document formats in the application, with appropriate import/export filters, while the ODF Foundation thinks it should become part of the format itself.

Recently, Sun has come under scrutiny for its policies surrounding OpenOffice.org and ODF. Some have even speculated if Novel instituted a fork of the OpenOffice.org project. It should come at no surprise that standards, as open as they may be, are a business tool. The ODF standard and the fact that it offers transparency which enables safety in archiving documents and having access centuries into the future forced Microsoft to rethink its own document formats. Now the ODF Foundation is surprised that Sun does want to keep out direct compatibility with the rival format(s).

However, having witnessed the discussions of ODFoundation members on some mailing lists, there also seem to be some strong personalities at work. Or is it the rivalry between MS Office Plug-in developments from the ODFoundation and Sun Microsystems that is causing all the bad blood?

The sad fallout of this is that the ODFoundation wants to morph itself into a CDF Foundation, CDF being another document format proposed by the influential standard body W3C. It will stop developing its MS Office plugin to seemlessly read and write ODF documents.

OpenOffice Release 2.3 well received

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:12:38 -0700

Can 900,000+ users a week be wrong? It appears that nearly a million people download OpenOffice.org since the release of 2.3. Mark Herring, Senior Director, Marketing, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org at Sun Microsystems Inc. reports in details about the uptick in weekly download triggered by the latest release and the publicity of the OOoCon 2007 in Barcelona.

While the numbers are impressive, I think Mark’s speculation of cost for a regular markerting campaign to reach the same results is excessive. I think it is safe to assume that the majority of extra downloads are upgrades by existing users. If this would be a commercial product, one would not need to buy millions of e-mail addresses to reach the existing users. In a traditional proprietary software model, users register their software and with that allow the company to inform them of new releases. So there is no cost of 10c per e-mail to reach the existing user base. And some proprietary products get their users to even download automatically what ever they throw at them. I see this comparison as a bit shaky.