Those of you who have walked by my office when I am working on a presentation have likely heard my frustration. So, who would have thought I'd be blogging a plug for *Office?

First off, I must admit, I am lucky enough to have had engineers visiting from Hamburg come to my office and help me with my personal productivity. Not everyone has their own *Office SWAT team. And they are a great team doing their best to deliver an office suite at low cost, or even no cost. Recently they picked up the open-source-doesn't-have-to-mean-no-revenue gauntlet, doing some very interesting things in the process. There is a pipeline of add-ons, plug-ins and extensions in the works, maybe even including an .odf plug-in for the Seattle crowd (if you guys do it, I would love to get a mobile version of it – hint, hint).

The first to be released is what I am using at this very moment, a blogging tool embedded within *Office. Not being much of a techie, I am the perfect person to test it. I have only started blogging and therefore am not up to speed on making my blog cool looking like my good friend  Hinkmond (and if i knew how to do it I would highlight his name to send you straight to his blog – I've linked him in the right hand column, but I am sure I will get instructions from some kind soul on the proper way to do this). So, here we go, Knopoff is testing the blogging tool.

Test 1: Downloading and installing was a breeze – that's a good sign.

Test 2:  I want to add a cool picture, something I don't know how to do on the blog site (probably easy, but there ya go, I still don't know). OK here goes...

Picture of the Sun – seemed appropriate.

Test 3: Add something moving – how about a video clip? I've inserted a JavaOne video. Shows up looking like a sound clip – I'm guessing it will break this thing.

So, yeah, it broke it.

Test 4: But look!  I linked to Hinkmond's blog off his name. 

Not bad for my first try - and all I had to do was work in the text document, hit a button and there it is on my blog.  Now all I need are my Hamburg friends to tell me all the other stuff I could be doing with it.  But try it -  you can get it here:  http://globalspecials.sun.com/