Owner: Teaching software - one screencast at a time URL:http://blog.conficio.com Join Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:46:27 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: I teach software through screencasts (short videos). My current project is documenting OpenOffice.org Site statistics:Click here
OpenOffice.org Release 2.2 2007-03-30 04:34:49 The OpenOffice
.org community has released their latest version today.
The new release 2.2 has better integration of Microsoft Vista UI elements, as well as improved Apple OS X support, such as smaller installed size and many stability improvements.
On the functional side there are new features in Pivot tables and trigonometric functions for Calc spreadsheets. Spreadsheets also improve interoperability with MS Excel. For the database fan, Base got new “Query in Query” features and improved SQL editing in general. In addition, support for various ODBC drivers has been improved. Impress, the presentation application has improved handling of hidden slides.
All users might see improved character rendering, because the kerning feature, to boost readability of proportional fonts, is now on by default. Making documents look good also touches PDF with improved font handling and added bookmarks. You can now even add form-fields to your PDF.
With the latest update OpenOffice.org has a Read more:Release
ODF Toolkit for .NET in development 2007-03-27 16:48:57 The GullFoss Blog announces the availability of a first version of the ODF Toolkit
for .NET.
The new library is called “An OpenDocument Library” (AODL) and written completely in C#. This library allows .NET project to support ODF documents.
It currently supports only a limited set of functions
Creating new documents in the text and the spreadsheet format.
Loading and manipulating documents in the text and spreadsheet (not complete yet) format.
Export loaded or created documents into the HTML format (text and spreadsheet documents).
Export loaded or created documents into the PDF Format. (this is in an early state of implementation and only available for text documents)
OpenOffice.org vulnerability with WordPerfect documents 2007-03-24 18:40:15 I saw first at the Debian Security website that the WordPerfect
and StarCalc import libraries used by OpenOffice
.org have some vulnerabilities for overflow attacks. Then is spread around the web in all security services.
The flaw allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Affected are users that open WordPerfect documents, a rather small number of users. As far as I know, Word Perfect is used a lot by the legal profession. The work around, is to not open WordPerfect documents before you upgrade to the next version or install a patch.
Debian and SuSE have already issued patches. Read more:vulnerability
Call for papers for OOc Conference 2007 2007-03-24 17:01:10 The OpenOffice.org Conference2007 (OOo Con) will be held in Barcelona, Spain, 19th-21st September.
The organizing committee has put out a call for papers
. If you are working on something that interests the community and would like to present it, by all means end in a proposal and share the topic with all of us. The deadline for submission is 1st June.
OpenOffice release cycles 2007-03-20 17:01:13 OpenOffice.org has lately been on a fairly short release cycle of 3 month. Martin Michlmayr, researcher on the topic of open source development, points out in his journal, that this has not always been this way.
Originally, when Sun made StarOffice open source under the new name OpenOffice.org, it planned for a release cycle of 18 month. The cycle was so long, because it needed to incorporate all changes into StarOffice as well. However, this did not atisfy teh users who had to wait long time for new features and it did not satisfy the developers, who saw the fruits of their work only after years.
After the 2.0 release was delayed by nine month, the OpenOffice community adopted an agile approach of fixed release dates and variable feature sets. The release ar now pegged at every three month. See Martin’s journal entry for details. Read more:OpenOffice
BarCamp Boston 2 - Sunday 2007-03-19 19:03:33 I invited my wife to join me for the second day of BarCamp Boston
2. I wanted her to see Rod Begbie’s presentation on “Powerful Pointed Presentations - How to give kick-ass presentations, and avoid becoming PowerPoint’s bitch.” I knew this would be a highlight of the day and it was. Rod was in his element, when he showed the audience how to reduce the amount of text on a slide, how to focus the attention from time to time and how to make the talk the center of the presentation and use the slides for illustration and not as a distraction. The lesson that stuck in my head, is “Be nice to your audience and finish early.” It leaves some time to contemplate the presentation rather than racing to the next event or catching up with the inevitable urgencies of the day.
Following Rod I attempted to captivate an audience for “How to organize a Meetup”. I only attracted a handful of participants but we did discuss the topic at length. I shared my ex Read more:Sunday
BarCamp Boston 2 - Saturday 2007-03-19 17:43:47 Last summer I went to the first BarCamp Boston
. I had a great time there and did not want to miss BarCamp Boston 2 this past weekend.
BarCamp Boston 2 was held at MIT Stata Center, the famous building by architect Frank O. Gehry.
The rules for a BarCamp an unconference of geeks are simple. Every participant can chair a session, discussion or provide a lightning talk. The organizers have set aside a few appropriate meeting rooms and a schedule on a blackboard where one can read the program and add one self to the offering. In addition the organizers and sponsors did provide us with food and refreshments.
The first session I attended was “JavaScript Encryption” by Alan Taylor. Alan presented a self contained HTML document that included encrypted content which could only be revealed with the correct password. He calls his project Message Vault. His experience with making the application secure was very interesting. His biggest challenge was to embed an encrypted form of the p Read more:Saturday
OpenOffice.org Novell Edition for Windows 2007-03-14 04:25:36 Ted Haeger lets us know that Novell
just released its own edition of OpenOffice
.org.
Thanks to Ted I now know why Novell is cooking its own version. Novell feels that the open source model is a good one. They follow the intention of open source to solve one’s own problems and contribute back to the community. In Novell’s case they solve the issues of their Linux customers and benefit all others too. All Novell additions are factored into the main stream OpenOffice.org eventually. While the community does absorb the contributions, Novell does enjoy the benefits of an advanced version that makes their brand of Linux more competitive. That sounds like a fair deal to me.
Now the Novell developers even released a version of Novell Edition
OpenOffice.org for Windows
. Why? Because they learned from their own experience that it sometimes takes a few baby steps until you are ready to switch from Windows to Linux. Switching from MS Office to OpenOffice.org is such a baby step. Lets
OpenOffice.org writes to Michael Dell 2007-03-14 03:36:04 The OpenOffice
.org community has written a letter to Michael
Dell, CEO and founder of Dell Computers to offer help in making the wishes of their customers happen. Dell Computers recently opened DellIdeaStorm, a website to solicit customer ideas and wishes. One of the top items with over 24,000 votes in two days was OpenOffice.org pre-installed on Dell computers.
The OpenOffice.org community offers in the letter help to make this happen. They are proud that their product is desired by so many of Dell’s customers and want to work with Dell to offer the open source office suite pre-installed as standard or an option.
As of today “Pre-Installed OpenOffice | alternative to MS Works & MS Office” is the second most popular request on DellIdeaStorm with over 75,000 votes. Read more:Michael Dell
California state wants ODF 2007-03-06 23:46:49 Californian Democrat Mark Leno introduced a bill that requires the Californian government be equipped to store and exchange documents in an open, XML-based format. This legislation would stipulate this requirement starting 2008.
Massachusetts was the first state that recognized how important it is to store and archive office documents in a format that can be guaranteed to be readable in 30 or 50 years from now. Software that reads proprietary document types can vanish with the company that produces it and the support from rivals to support this format will vanish shortly thereafter. This can leave you with a heap of bits, perfectly preserved on tape or other storage media which is not reproducible for the human eye. And after all that is the purpose of all document archiving. There response was to include a similar mandate in the id term IT plan, requiring storage and archiving of documents in ODF or PDF.
We will see how this proposed bill will work out and what it’s effects are. Read more:California
, wants
Dell computers calls for customer feedback. 2007-02-23 03:36:05 Dell computers
the widely popular manufacturer of computers for home and business, has lately done not so well. Now they have a new idea, listening to their customers and customers to be. Dell opened a website soliciting ideas how to make better Dell PCs. the site is called Dell Idea Storm and allows user participation in form of posts, comments and voting on other people’s proposals.
Interestingly, the most prominent ideas are not about competing with Apple on design or with IBM/Lenovo on ruggedness. The most popular ideas are “pre-installed Linux”, “pre-installed OpenOffice.org” and computers with no software at all. The most popular anti request after a few days is an option of “NO EXTRA SOFTWARE OPTION”, leaving out AOL or Earthlink offers.
I have offered a few ideas myself, such as “Recessed USB bay” and “No glaring screens for Laptops”. While I certainly welcome a company listening to their customers, I’m not Read more:calls
Coffee with Michael - “Authentic Voice” 2007-01-27 00:40:00 I just received a nice New Year’s surprise gift (I’m still struggling with writing ‘07 dates).
Michael
Katz, a local e-newsletter marketing consultant, just published the recording of his audio seminar - &ldquo
;FINDING (AND USING) YOUR AUTHENTIC VOICE“. He usually sells his recordings, but decided to make it a free download this month.
Michael has a really authentic voice in e-newsletter marketing and he teaches his clients to be themselves in their writing. He has started a series of “Coffee
with Michael“. This month he invited Lissa Bergin-Boles, a life coach from Toronto. I trust him to know something about this topic.
If you got 20 minutes and are interested in finding your authentic voice and using it in newsletters, articles or blogs, listen in. Read more:Authentic
, Voice
, rdquo
Need Fuzzi Math? 2007-01-23 15:05:00 Are you in need of Fuzzy math. I do not mean the political rhetoric, but rather the mathematical concept of fuzzy logic and fuzzy math.
Now you can calculate with fuzzy math in OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheets, thanks to the new InrecoLAN FuzzyMath component.
The component allows to use uncertain or approximate values in OpenOffice.org Calc. It means you can perform ordinary arithmetic operations and use ordinary mathematical and financial functions with uncertain values as if they are standard, or crisp, numbers. The component allows you to create and edit fuzzy numbers, use fuzzy numbers in formulas. You can also display the graphs from the fuzzy numbers and results of calculations.
Fuzzy math has strong mathematical basis. This component enhances all mathematical and financial OpenOffice.org Calc functions for which fuzziness might be reasonable.
InrecoLAN FuzzyMath is distributed under GNU General Public Licese (GPL). Source code and the newest versions of the component are availab
New OpenOffice.org tutorials 2007-01-16 20:09:00 ZDNet blogger Dana Blankenhorn points to new tutorials for OpenOffice
.org by InPics.
InPictures covers several OpenOffice.org applications, such as Writer, Base and Impress.
While the tutorials are basic they are certainly helpful. Interesting is that Dana reports these have been made available with funding from the US Department of Education.
OpenOffice.org releases 2.1.0, includes presentation mode for Impress 2006-12-20 21:13:00 OpenOffice.org got me an early Christmas present this year. They released version 2.1.0 and included the feature I wanted most, presentation
mode in Impress
. Some call it multi monitor support for Impress, either way it is most practical for giving a presentation. It allows you to use your laptop and show on the external monitor, or projector, the slides, while you can see on your screen the slides plus your own notes and more. Thank You Santa, eh OpenOffice.org team!
Before I forget, OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 also includes the following:
Improved HTML export in OpenOffice.org Calc
Enhanced Microsoft Access® support for OpenOffice.org Base
Even more supported languages
Automatic notification of available updates
More extensions
Read more:OpenOffice
Drawing Shapes for OpenOffice.org 2006-12-04 17:15:00 Do you need some drawing templates for OpenOffice
.org Draw or Impress? I found this small but growing collection by Mark Lautman. Mark has created collections for Computer and Network Symbols, Home Entertainment, Office Layout, Furniture and more.
Mark’s Drawings are easy to use. Just download the documents he offers and click on a shape, copy, paste and use it as you need. These come in handy if you are illustrating your Impress presentation.
Way to go Mark.
Office collaboration server O3Spaces 2006-11-22 22:50:00 Dutch firm O3Spaces B.V. of a program that lets OpenOffice and StarOffice users collaborate on office documents. O3Spaces is fully integrated in OpenOffice.org, so users do not need to leave OpenOffice to perform most functions. This is equivalent to MS SharePoint for MS Office.
O3Spaces is a cross platform collaboration server
with integration in the desktop, OpenOffice.org and a browser interface. In this environment a team stores their documents, if ODF or MS Office format, on a central server and creates versions with every change saved. users can receive notifications if any document they have in their workspace changes.
With O3spaces users can share documents on different OS platforms, such as Linux, Windows or Mac OS X. In addition the server provides shared calendars for scheduling meetings. A workflow engine can route documents to different users for review or approval.
All documents are secured by access rights so only authorized users can access them. The user management can
Plan-B for OpenOffice.org - support for non-technical users 2006-11-21 23:39:00 On November 14th, Conficio (my company) released “Plan-B for OpenOffice
.org” a support website for non-technical users
. The release is a public beta test and a major milestone in our work.
In our press release titled “Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org - The innovative support service for non-technichal users - starts public beta test” we write:
Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org is the first website that creates a comprehensive documentation of the application suite based on visual instructions. Kaj Kandler, founder of Conficio, is convinced “Non-technical users learn better with visual instructions like short videos.” He says, “We are very excited to offer this new technology to the fast growing user base of OpenOffice.org, the free open source office suite. Plan-B™ for OpenOffice.org especially benefits users who migrate from other office suites.” This service, with its easy to understand help topics, supports the on demand needs of users at all
IDC, launches OpenOffice.org survey 2006-11-17 14:42:00 IDC and OpenOffice
.org have launched a survey to better understand the usage of Openoffice.org (now closed). IDC is a leading IT market analysis firm. This survey will analyze who is using the Openoffice.org suite and how.
IDC and OpenOffice.org will share the results of the survey with the public 3 month after conclusion. I think the OpenOffice.org community will welcome the feedback and use it to define the future direction of the productivity suite.
To attract more participants, IDC enters everybody into a raffle of 5 x $100 prizes. I’d encourage all my readers to take the survey right now (It’s too late, now).
And the Winner is - OpenOffice.org 2006-11-11 12:27:00 Linux Journal, has announced it 2006 Editors’ choice awards. In three categories OpenOffice
.org won the top choice.
OpenOpffice.org wins in the category office suite. “OpenOffice.org delivers just the right combination of openness, power and similarity to Microsoft Office that it provides the features and familiarity people want in an office suite without the drawbacks of proprietary document format or proprietary code.” write the editors of Linux Journal. They also note it is by far the most popular office suite behind MS Office.
OpenOffice.org Calc wind the category spreadsheet. They write “if you’re really serious about doing spreadsheet work, your best bet is with OpenOffice.org Calc.” Honorable mention in this category goes to EIOffice and KSpread. Interestingly they don’t mention neither Google nor other web based applications. Well they are probably not close enough to Linux.
The third category win goes to OpenOffice.org Impress as edi
Writing sheet music with OpenOffice.org 2006-11-04 19:43:00 Are you a musician or a music teacher? Do you have the need to write some sheet
music? why not use OpenOffice
.org?
Did you know there is a simplified notation for music, called LilyPond. It is a simple system to describe the notes and also a program to typeset the notes as sheet music. Thanks to Dave Philips from LinuxJournal I now know how to write sheet music with OpenOffice.org.
Dave demonstrates the use of Samual Hartman’s open source project OOoLilyPond.
Sam’s project is a set of macros that integrate LilyPond into OpenOffice.org and is tested with OOo 2.0.2 and 2.0.4.
Thanks Dave and Sam!
All or Nothing with Vista? 2006-11-04 16:38:00 I just received a nice message from Intuit about “Decisions ahead on Vista
Operating System”. It states “Only QuickBooks 2007 will run on the Vista Operating System, as prior versions of QuickBooks were developed on pre-Vista technology and will not run properly on Vista.”
That is rather surprising to me for two reasons. Isn’t Microsoft the save bet that invests heavily in backward compatibility? Did Microsoft abandon this principle with Vista? The other reason is that using QuickBooks means I get constant updates. This is even true with my version that is a couple of years old now. So if Microsoft usually does preserve backward compatibility and Intuit has the software update process refined. What can be the reason for only a new version running on a new Version of Windows?
As a matter of fact they are serious that you need to upgrade “We know as a practical matter that many of you are supporting clients on previous versions of QuickBooks. For now t Read more:Nothing
OpenOffice.org in Colleges and Universities 2006-10-26 17:46:00 OpenOffice.org is a popular office suite. As it is open source and available for free it is very attractive to institutions that want to save some money. This is especially true for institutions of higher education, that also want to save some money for students.
How popular is OpenOffice.org at the nations colleges and universities? That question has been researched by Benjamin Horst a NY based open source advocate. If your college uses OpenOffice and it is not on the list, drop Ben a comment.
Also, Digg this story so more people read about it and we get an even better list. Read more:OpenOffice
, Universities
OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 released 2006-10-13 21:35:00 Highly anticipated, the next minor release of OpenOffice
.org is out officially today. You can download release 2.0.4 here.
It is mostly a bug fix release. However it brings support for several new local data such as Namibian Afrikaans, Tigrigina Eritrea, Amharic Ethiopia, Tajik Tajikistan, Kirghiz, and Farsi Iran. OpenOffice.org is now capable to format locale dependent information such as date and time in these languages.
Release 2.0.4 improves the integration with KDE, using now system wide parameters correctly. Apple OS X users will like the better integration of native fonts into applications.
Calc became a function “INFO” that allows to ask for system data and makes spreadsheets more compatible with Microsoft Excel. An improve HTML import makes is more likely for Calc to read HTML formatted tables correctly.
Impress got a new feature to save shapes as images directly from the context menu.
OpenOffice.org can now also import LaTeX formatted files. Also this release lay
Speed is essential for OpenOffice.org 2006-10-13 03:55:00 Apparently speed is a major concern for the development team of OpenOffice
.org. They were not satisfied with the time it takes to load large spreadsheets from Excel into OpenOffice.org Calc. So they improved Calc to load large spreadsheets faster by a factor of 15+.
When they say large spreadsheet, they mean really large, 25 megabytes, 100 sheets, 1 million cells and hundred thousand formulas. A change in the algorithm used brought down the times from ~39 minutes to 2:37 on a 1.8 MHz Pentium IV. On a Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 275 with more memory, the time reduced from ~28 minutes to 43 seconds, almost a gain of factor 40.
Unfortunately, the improvements will only be included in Release 2.1, targeted for end of the year. Hope for a nice Christmas present. Read more:Speed
OpenOffice.org annonces Business Intelligence 2007-04-20 23:59:04 Sun and the OpenOffice
.org community found an agreement Pentaho to integrate business intelligence features into the next release of OpenOffice.org. Pentaho has recently integrated formerly separate open source projects JFreeReport, Mondrian, Kettle, and Weka to a powerful business intelligence server complete with reporting, analysis and OLAP capabilities.
The project offers a J2EE compliant reporting server, that can connect to many data sources and integrates workflow to create and distribute important report information to the authorized people in an enterprise. The project also offers a powerful report designer based on Eclipse and is modular so it can be integrated into other applications.
Apparently, Sun has decided it will build a Report designer of its own that defines reports in Pentaho’s formats. These reports will draw data from the Pentaho business intelligence server as well as from other sources.
If you want to see how example the integration of OLAP features i Read more:Business
Michael Dell uses OpenOffice.org 2007-04-20 15:47:52 Looks like Michael
Dell, the iconic oner of Dell Computers, is looking deeper into Linux on Dell computers. According to the corporate Biography Michael uses a Laptop with OpenOffice
.org on Ubuntu Linux.
I guess Michael did receive the letter from the OpenOffice.org community offering to satisfy the apparent demand for OpenOffice.org on Dell Computers. May be this prompted him to check it out himself.
Dear Michael,
if you need a help with OpenOffice.org, you are very welcome to join Plan-B for OpenOffice.org where we answer questions and demonstrate the features of OpenOffice.org with screencasts.
Truly Yours,
Kaj Read more:Michael Dell
The PayPal that remembers 2007-04-20 14:56:47 I’m going off topic for this post about PayPal
.
I just completed a change of e-mail address at Phil Taylor’s website for Joomla components. Phil has an unusual security scheme, asking for any purchase date to verify my identity. Well, I bought his components 2-3 years ago and his page reminded me that I must have payed with PayPal. But I could hardly remember what day I bought the component.
So, I went to PayPal to see if I still could find the transaction in the archives. It turns out, PayPal is doing a really good job here. The site allows you access to all back transactions, even years ago. Wow! That is much better than most banks that cut you off after 3, 6, or 12 month.
It came to me as a shock how many transactions I have made with through PayPal over time. I thought I used them really only occasionally, but over the years it adds up.
Thanks PayPal, you saved my day!
Palo Spreadsheet Server for OpenOffice.org? 2007-01-20 22:44:56 Jedox, the company behind the Palo Spreadsheet
server has started to seek sponsors for supporting OpenOffice
.org Calc. In an interesting marriage of open source and commercial project sponsorship, they have found pledges from an Australian Winery and some German engineering firms. However, at this point the tally stands at 6500 Euro, which is not much for a medium size software project.
The idea behind this effort is to store spread sheet data on a server and offer OLAP capability to create sophisticated reports, that can be aggregated among many dimensions, such as sales data by month, quarter, year, sales person, region, customer size, promotional costs, support costs or any combination of these. This kind of application gears towards enterprise customers who need analytical aggregation of data to support decision processes.
Palo server is an open source project and is currently only available for Microsoft Excel.
OpenOffice.org can rescue corrupt MS Office documents 2007-05-09 14:17:07 The Office Letter, publishes in its May 7th issue a readers tip, how to use OpenOffice
.org the free open source office suite to read and rescue corrupt Microsoft Office documents.
Paul Denize, the author of the tip writes “It appears that Word was saving files that it would later not be able to open or recover. When I closed the document, Word would not reopen them, saying they were corrupt.”
He recommends “Open Office did not complain when opening the so-called corrupt document, and managed to saved it back out. Then I could return to MS Word and open it successfully again. All I had lost was a few formatting items — some images were a different size and some grey lines were now black. I could live with that.”
Not that Paul argues to change to OpenOffice.org outright. But he seems to finds it a useful tool to rescue his corrupted Word document.
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