Blogs

I am curious to find out how many departments are using Google Docs on all three campuses? There seems to be an increase in popularity, so let's do a quick informal survey. If you are using it, please reply to this thread and let me know how you utilize it. Thanks!

Join the group today! http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=278343838643&ref=ts

Very interesting and insightful documentary last night called Google World. It should be available online today or tomorrow. http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/

From Slashdot.org:

This marks the tenth anniversary year of the office suite, with over three hundred million downloads recorded in total. The new features include faster start up times; improved compatibility with open standard (ODF) and proprietary file formats; improvements to all components, particularly the Calc spreadsheet, with over a dozen new or enhanced features; and the Chart module (usable throughout OpenOffice.org) has had a usability makeover as well as offering new chart types."

http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/3.2/

Literally hours after its release, the Free Software Foundation already released their statement re: their general dissatisfaction with the inclusion of "digital rights management" controls in Apple's iPad operating system. They've made similar statements in the past (and then some) about the iPod touch and the iPhone platforms.

Note that "digital restrictions management" is FSF's creative misnomer of the proper term "digital rights management". Very creative indeed.

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/ipad

Please have a quick read of the information regarding an volunteer opportunity to support the response efforts in Haiti, consider helping out if you can and please send this information on to others that may be interested. I am affiliated with a volunteer group that develops free open source software for disaster management called Sahana http://www.sahana.lk/node/12 . It is used by NGO's and governments such as Sri Lanka (Tsunami) and China (earthquake), also now Haiti.

Staying safe online has never been more complicated -- with attacks getting better and looking more and more like legitimate sites every day, any tool we can use is helpful. All browsers have had to adapt to this new reality by adding better defenses and becoming more secure. But even this is not enough...

It looks like WIND mobile is finally here. Value-wise, they actually seem to be competitive with the rest of the "contract-free" crowd (namely low-end telcos like Fido, Koodo, PC Mobile, Virgin and others). By being "actually competitive" I mean offering more than a choice of "with telco X you get feature X included, and with telco Y you get feature Y included". WIND seems to give you either a choice between X and Y that won't cost you any of your appendages... or they just throw both in.

Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0 is out!

This release of the T-bird integrates tabbing for emails, calendar, search, composing, reading and other functions, reducing desktop footprint and improving navigation.

Search has vastly improved, especially speed for large collections of emails.

Simplified configuration of email accounts (with lookups), and a large collection of loadable plug-ins for various purposes.

Enjoy the goodness!

http://en-us.www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/

The Fedora Users and Developers Conference (FUDCon) is being held in Toronto this weekend! This is the first time a North American FUDCon has been held outside of the USA.