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Content Tagged User:conficio
Innovation in Software Manuals
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Documentation
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tutorials
User:conficio
ingots
OpenOffice.org 2.4 released
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Walmart $200 PC only Available Online
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Stumbledupon Plan-B for OpenOffice.org
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Don’t you love feedback for your work?
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!
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
OpenOffice goes wireless
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!
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Can’t wait for Native Mac OS X Open Office?
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Consider migrating to OpenOffice.org!
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Is there still Gold in Montana?
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
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Portable OpenOffice Release 2.3.1 is out
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Do you need an OOo Player?
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Why You Should Update Before the Holidays
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Is OpenSoical the new spamming platform?
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.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
OpenOffice Improvements from the Central Kingdom
While OpenOffice.org Release 2.3 is just out the door, Developers like Carsten Driesner, Liang Weike and the OpenOffice team from RedFlag 2000, prepare new features for Open Office Release 2.4
One feature is the ability to create and store your permanant image list, which can be used to change the icons of the appliction w/o going through the build process. In combination with the OOo extensions I expect this to become the facility for different skins for Open Office.
The other feature mentioned is an enhanced help tip text for the print button in the standard toolbar. The new feature shows the name of the printer in the help tip text, just to remind you where your document will be printed. Sounds rather useful in an office environment, where multiple printers are available.
Liang Weike works for RedFlag 2000 the project that adapts OpenOffice for the Chineese market and helps develop new features as well.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
The other OpenOffice from Siemens
Siemens jsut annouced its latest offering in small business VOIP solutions and called it “HiPath OpenOffice ME”.
This has abolutely nothing to do with the free open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite for individuals, small and larg businesses as well as education or government.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time
Students don’t Mind to Pay for Office Software
… unless they can get it for free.
A marketing study at the Univeristy of Arizona asks the question what makes students pay for office suite software and are free open source alternatives like Open Office an alternative to pirated copies of the market leading MS Office?
The research looked at how much students would be willing to pay for a legal copy if the consequences woudl be the two choices. It turns out that $98 is the media price students were willing to pay to own a legal license. And that registration was a wee more effective than the publication that the software is not registered with every document that is produced and shared with others.
Interestingly, a group of students that was educated of the free open source alternative Open Office did not show less incline to pay for the MS Office suite. The researchers conclude that stability of the product and logevity of the maker are more important than the price to pay. Also an important factor is the convenience of using an application that is already familiar and does not come with the pain of re-training.
* The article cited mentions in the introduction: “Microsoft Office suite claims an impressive 95 percent market share.” Benjamin Horst an Open Office dvocate from NY, pointed out in a discussion about this article that market share numbers are often misleading in the context of free software. Because, market sizes are measured in annual revenue spend for a particular product. However, free products do not generate any revenue, so the basis for comparison is off. By Horst’s estimation, Microsoft claims 400 Million Office installations, and OpenOffibe.org claims 100 Million. Ignoring the rest of the competition, he estimates a 20% market share for Open Office.
User:conficio: Software documentation one screencast at a time