February 11th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Yesterday the open source and free culture video player Miro 2.0 was released to the world.
Miro also includes a BitTorrent client, HD video support, and easy connection to major video sharing and streaming sites.
According to the release email, major new features in 2.0 include:
A beautiful, all-new interface
Browse while you watch– pop out any video to an external window (our number one requested feature)
Miro is now faster, more responsive, uses less memory
You can add streaming sites like Hulu to your sidebar
You can add download sites like Archive.org or legaltorrents.com to your sidebar and download to Miro with a single click
Improved playlists
New compact, sortable list view
Better audio support
Visit the Miro Guide for a directory of great video podcasts you may want to watch in Miro.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Miro 2.0 Released
February 6th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Volunteers from the Open Source Schools project presented on using open source software in schools at BETT 2009 (don’t know what the acronym means, but it’s a British educational technology conference in London).
Open Source Schools posted a BETT 2009 follow-up on their site:
The Open Source Schools presentation at BETT on Saturday 17th January was very well received, with good numbers joining the team in the Olympia’s Club Room, despite the early start. Miles Berry introduced the presentation, outlining what open source means as well as exploring some of the advantages which it offers to schools; he also spoke about Moodle and the Open Source Schools community. Michelle Walters talked about OpenOffice and some of the ways which teachers could get started with open source. José Picardo talked about the Audacity audio editor and Doug Belshaw discussed some of the many ways in which he’s using Linux powered netbooks in his school.
Open Source Observatory and Repository Europe also reported on the event with “UK: Open Source is Core to Education.”
It was also described, most extensively, on the Learn 4 Life blog in “Teachers are Heroes just for one day – Open Source Schools @ BETT 2009 – Why you must use Open Source Software.”
Every once in a while you see something that makes you think: ‘Yes this really is going to change education in this country’ and it makes you smile inside because you know what is going to happen further down the line and how revolutionary it will be; it will touch the lives of so many people and transform learning – making it more effective, more engaging, more personal and build a sense of community far beyond the initial event itself.
Each one of the presentations was recorded and can be viewed on Learn 4 Life’s blog linked above.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Open Source Schools at BETT 2009
February 5th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
IBM has been a significant promoter of two of my major interests: wikis (specifically for corporate intranet content management) and OpenOffice.org (specifically, IBM’s “distro” of it called Lotus Symphony).
One place where the two converge is in the Lotus Symphony Wiki, developed as a collaborative space for Symphony-related information.
IBM’s wiki engine has a very strong design architecture and user interface, so I’d like to learn more about it. (I have not seen it in use elsewhere, so I wonder if it’s in-house, or expensive, or targeted only to big enterprises…) Likewise, Symphony itself has been a great citizen of the OpenOffice ecosystem, introducing creative new user interface concepts that I think could be adopted by OOo itself (especially document window tabs and a tools sidebar).
One approach I think Symphony could take that OOo itself has struggled with, is to achieve pre-installation on new computers from OEMs. IBM’s relationship with Lenovo should help convince them to offer Symphony instead of Microsoft Works, at the very least. OEM installations would help introduce Symphony and the ODF format to many new users, helping to further expand its global userbase.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | Comments Off on Lotus Symphony Wiki
February 4th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
The ODF Alliance‘s monthly newsletter has been released for January 2009. (The newsletter is distributed as a PDF, but Boycott Novell’s website shares an HTML version for in-browser reading.)
It was a newsworthy month and year–the 2008 annual report is cited several times, including:
Government adoptions… grew steadily and now include 16 national and 8 provincial governments that have formally recommended or required the use of ODF; a dramatic improvement in both the quality of existing applications support and its expansion into new areas with the emergence of ODF-supporting mobile device and web conferencing applications, document management systems, wiki editors, viewers, converters, accessibility tools (ODT-To-DAISY Digital Talking Book), database software, and programming libraries; public procurement gains; and feature enhancements in ODF v 1.2, which is expected to be considered for approval shortly as an OASIS standard.
Among those governments adopting ODF, a December 3 press release mentions Germany, one of the world’s largest and most dynamic economies.
The ODF Alliance welcomed the decision by the Federal Government of Germany to implement use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) by federal agencies beginning in 2010… According to the plan, German federal agencies will be able to receive, read, send and edit ODF documents beginning no later than 2010. State Secretary Dr. Hans Bernhard Beus, federal government IT officer and chairman of the IT Council, described the decision regarding ODF as “a major step to increase competition among software vendors, promote IT security, and improve interoperability.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on ODF Alliance Newsletter, January 2009
January 31st, 2009 Benjamin Horst
The British opposition has become ever more aggressive in its support of open source software as a means to save money and, perhaps, increase the success rate of government IT projects.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, specifically discusses Linux and the open source philosophy as central to the new paradigms of the information age.
In an article for The Guardian, Osborne expands on the theme:
Looking at cost savings that have been achieved by companies and governments all over the world, it’s estimated that the UK government could reduce its annual IT bill by over £600m a year if more open source software was used as part of an effective procurement strategy. That’s enough to pay for 20,000 extra teachers or 100,000 hip operations.
Additional articles in ZDNet and ComputerWorld UK also discuss the growing calls for open source adoption in government IT projects and for government to model more of its processes on open source, distributed development models.
(Thanks to Alan Lord of the Open Learning Center, for providing these links.)
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, Social Software | Comments Off on British Opposition Talks Up Open Source
January 29th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Mirroring the OpenOffice Extension repository, the project has recently set up a centralized OpenOffice template repository. It’s an easy way for non-programmers to get involved in the OOo project:
This Template Repository is a place for the submission of new templates made by you, the community!
You created a nice template? Submit it, get feedback and help others to be more productive!
Tying the suite in to more online services will continue to make it more and more web-native, and as the community of users and developers continues to focus on these add-on services, the rationale for using OOo will grow ever stronger. It’s a great positive reinforcement loop and a differentiator from competing software applications.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Social Software | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Template Repository
January 28th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
QGIS, the cross-platform open source GIS (Geographic Information System), has released QGIS 1.0.
Gary Sherman, Chair of the QGIS Project Steering Committee, announces:
QGIS began life in February of 2002, with the first release in June of
the same year. The initial goal was to create a viewer for PostGIS data
that ran on Linux. From those humble beginnings, QGIS has become a true
cross-platform application that runs on all major versions of unix,
Linux, as well as Mac and Windows. It supports editing and map
composition as well as integration with GRASS to provide powerful GIS
capability. QGIS has been translated into many languages by a dedicated
internationalization team.
At 1.0 we provide a stable API from which you can develop custom
solutions in Python or C++. Even though 1.0 is fresh, there are a number
of exciting developments underway in both the core application and
plugins. Although it took nearly 7 years to get to version 1.0, I think
you’ll find that this version is the best yet. Thanks for using
QGIS—you, the users, have played a large part in its success.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on QGIS 1.0 Released
January 27th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Open Source Schools (UK) has a discussion thread on the recent announcement that 55,000 laptops pre-installed with OpenOffice.org will be distributed to students in Oise, just north of Paris.
France is no stranger to large deployments of open source software, as it has been adopted by the national police force, parts of the legislative branch of the government, and schools in other Departments:
After USB Key in Ile de France (220,000), and CDs in Auvergne (64,000), this is the third department to provide OOo to their students!
An announcement of the project in French can be found here.
A comment posted to the Open Source Schools discussion points out the efforts of Framasoft, a French non-profit focused on promoting open source software to schools and the public at large. (They also created the Framakey, a USB disk preloaded with portable open source applications, that has been distributed to hundreds of thousands of students in the Paris region and around France.)
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
January 23rd, 2009 Benjamin Horst
Twice before, I’ve noted instances where Barack Obama has mentioned the importance of open standards and open source for a transparent and democratic government.
(See Obama on ODF? and OpenOffice.org for the US Federal Government? — I used question marks in each post title since it was not clear to me how far these exercises might be carried.)
Now CNet reports Obama is asking industry experts for more information on the benefits of open source:
Sun Chairman Scott McNealy… has been asked by President Obama to author a white paper on the benefits the U.S. government can derive from open source.
McNealy is quoted in the BBC’s recent article, Calls for Open Source Government:
The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.
The claim comes from one of Silicon Valley’s most respected business leaders Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Particularly memorable is the BBC article’s discussion of open source as an improved form of government behavior, pioneered during Obama’s campaign:
Errol Louis of the New York Daily News seemed to agree.
He described Mr Obama as “our first open source President, a leader willing to let anybody and everybody figure out how, when and where they want to get involved.”
He noted that the strategy popularised by computer software companies in giving away software to get others to improve on it has now been applied to politics.
Indeed the new Change.gov website is said to be a portal for “interactive government” and “open source democracy.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Obama Investigates Open Source and Open Standards
January 20th, 2009 Benjamin Horst
If you’re wondering about the number of extensions currently available for OpenOffice, look no further than the Content Statistics page of the Extensions Repository.
As of this writing, that number is 270.
The name and basic description of each is available from the above page as well as the overall count.
Posted in Extensions, Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Extension Count