Dienstag März 29, 2005

New Indic Native-Language Group
"To those who are wondering "what is a native-language group?", it can be summed up as a group of several native-lang projects (see: http://native-lang.openoffice.org) willing to help each others and coordinate their actions. The first native-language group is the Indic Native-Language Group, composed of the following communities:

-the Hindi native-lang project (http://hi.openoffice.org)
-the Tamil native-lang project (http://ta.openoffice.org)
-the Bengali native-lang project (http://bn.openoffice.org)
-the Malayalam native-lang project (http://ml.openoffice.org)
-the Telugu native-lang project (http://te.openoffice.org)
-the Gujarati native-lang project (http://gu.openoffice.org)"

More information can be found here.
( Mrz 29 2005, 10:05:28 AM CEST ) Permalink

Donnerstag März 24, 2005

Next-Generation Robots
I could use a combination of these robots at home. Here is another set. This one is cute, too.

I personally would add a Cooking Robot and a Grocery Shopping Robot. Many of these companies seem to be located in Japan anyway. Wouldn't it be cool to have a Sushi Robot?
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:01:31 PM CET ) Permalink

"Firefox Extensions For Google Users"
"It seems 39% of my website's readers are browsing with Mozilla Firefox, with a dwindling 49% on Internet Explorer. In light of this, I thought it would be useful to list all the Firefox extensions I could find that perform some sort of function relating to Google."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 05:20:47 PM CET ) Permalink

XForms Support now also in Macromedia's ColdFusion
Apparently Macromedia's ColdFusion now also supports the XForms standard (in addition to OpenOffice.org, StarOffice and Mozilla):
"If you're not a Flash lover, you can use XForms instead. ColdFusion will take your form and apply an XML Stylesheet Language Transform (XSLT) skin to it. This gives you immense control over the appearance of your forms, and also makes it very easy to make site-wide changes to form display options."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 02:05:41 PM CET ) Permalink

Adobe Reader 7.0 on the Sun Java Desktop System
"WHILE STILL not officially listed in Adobe's download page, you can get Adobe Reader 7.0 for Linux from the company's FTP server. A link is included at the end of this article for the impatient. I took advantage of this opportunity to get rid of the ugly Acrobat Reader 5.0.9 for Linux, which is included in several Linux distros including my current distro of choice, JDS."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 11:33:23 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

OpenOffice.org at French Ministries
People who can read and understand some French should take a look at this presentation by Christian Hardy from the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry. It talks about the usage of OpenOffice.org at different ministries including deployment numbers.
( Mrz 24 2005, 10:50:10 AM CET ) Permalink

Just switch! - XSLT-based Filters for Microsoft Office and XHTML in StarOffice 8
In case you didn't know, StarOffice 8 comes with XSLT-based filters for Microsoft's XML file formats and XHTML:



With the "XML Filter Settings" tool (under "Tools - XML Filter Settings ...") it is very easy to even add custom XSLT-based filters. In one of my next blog entries I will try to explain how Apache Ant can be used to do some file conversions outside of StarOffice.
( Mrz 24 2005, 10:25:30 AM CET ) Permalink

"Update 1: Review: Programs That Manage Passwords"
"In Internet Explorer, there's no easy way to manage stored passwords, and worse, they're available to anyone with access to your computer, which could include hackers who install hidden programs. The recently released Mozilla Firefox browser improves on this by providing a rudimentary management feature and allowing you to lock your passwords with a master password."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:37:01 AM CET ) Permalink

"Firefox Plugs GIF Security Hole "
"The Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday shipped a new version of its flagship Firefox Web browser to patch a serious security hole that could put users at risk of computer takeover."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:34:57 AM CET ) Permalink

" Banks eye bootable Linux CDs"
"Cybersource has included Mozilla Firefox as the sole browser for Internet banking."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:33:41 AM CET ) Permalink

Interview with Mozilla Foundation Chief Mitchell Baker
"Roblimo: Okay. fm6 asks... let's talk about money for a minute. Money's always good. "What's the significance of Ben Goodger switching his employment from Mozilla Foundation to Google? Is this just a device to offload some of your payroll costs?"

Mitchell: (laughing) Well, the Mozilla project has always had people employed by different employers. It's actually been part of the stated goal for quite some time, so to us that's actually nothing new. You know, there's a chunk of people employed by Netscape for a long time, and Sun, and IBM, and Red Hat all have employed people. Novell employs people and now Google employs people. So it doesn't actually have a significance to us, I think, that it might to other people as well."

The full interview can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:24:21 AM CET ) Permalink

SpikeSource Announces Advisory Board
"SpikeSource, an open source IT services company, today announced the formation of an advisory board that will assist the company in furthering the adoption of open source in the enterprise. Open source community leaders Mitchell Baker, Brian Behlendorf, Dirk Hohndel, Robert "r0ml" Lefkowitz, Marten Mickos, Tim O’Reilly, David Stutz, Larry Rosen and Steve Weber are all members."
The full article can be found here.
( Mrz 24 2005, 07:24:19 AM CET ) Permalink

"First Look: OpenOffice.org 2.0 Looks Good"
Here is another nice endorsement:
"But once the OpenOffice.org developers release a final edition of version 2.0 (there's no firm schedule), it should prompt lots of people to ask themselves why they pay $300 or more for Microsoft Office with such a good, free alternative available."
( Mrz 24 2005, 12:21:53 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Mittwoch März 23, 2005

My first Solaris 10 box
Last night I installed Solaris 10 from the DVD kit that I picked up at CeBIT last week. I installed it on one of my old laptops which I normally use to watch news via video streaming. BTW, video streaming is cool! It allowed my wife and me to watch German news while we lived in the Bay Area (California). It also allowed us to get to know my wife's cousin's girlfriend/partner. She is one of the main news presenters and my wife's cousin met her the first time while we were in the US.

Anyway, since the laptop is almost my TV replacement, I was a bit afraid of trying to install Solaris 10. I did not want to ruin the existing operating system. It turned out that I was afraid for nothing. Now I have a dual-boot machine with Solaris 10 running on one partition!

Today on the train I read different Solaris 10 reviews. I have to admit, I can agree to some of the critical statements. The setup routine could be a little smoother and the desktop system driver support could be slightly better. However, with the Java Desktop System interface it just looks like my Linux box and all the necessary desktop applications are ready to use including StarOffice 7.

The different Solaris 10 reviews made me also curious about all the cool stuff in Solaris 10 like containers/zones, DTrace and the Service Management Framework. Not that I need containers for my day-to-day desktop work, but I want to understand why so many people asked for Solaris DVD's at CeBIT.

Thus, if you have some cool "getting started" documents for me, let me know! In the meantime I will do some digging on www.sun.com and docs.sun.com and take a new look at my old Solaris admin training materials.
( Mrz 23 2005, 06:46:54 PM CET ) Permalink

"Perhaps its most important achievement is the OpenDocument format ..."
Great article about open file formats:

"The OASIS consortium produces open XML standards in all fields of business and computing activity. Perhaps its most important achievement is the OpenDocument format for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, directly derived from the one used in OpenOffice.org and submitted to the International Standard Organization (ISO)."
( Mrz 23 2005, 04:49:11 PM CET ) Permalink