OpenOffice, the free opensource office suite, released OpenOffice 3.0 Beta yesterday. This latest release now runs on Mac OS X without requiring X11 to be running as well. And there are versions for Windows and Linux obviously.
There are a host of new features like ODF Support, Office 2007/8 import/export and support for up to 1024 columns on the spreadsheet app to name but a few.
With the killer combination of Google Docs (Google’s great hosted office app), OpenOffice and OOo2GD (an app to synch between OpenOffice and Google Docs), the justification for spending any amount of money on Office software has just disappeared!
Download it, try it out. If you are worried that it will be a big change in UI from Microsoft Office - wait until you see the Office 2007 UI!!! And did I mention OpenOffice is free?
What does Twitterfone do? Not much! It does one thing and it does it well. It allows you to dial a local number, leave a short message, the message is then transcribed and posted to your Twitter account along with a link to the audio file in case the transcription doesn’t quite come out.
The best use case for this is in your car when you shouldn’t can’t browse!
I have no idea how well it works if you are outside your own country but Pat being the king of roaming, I imagine he is all over that.
Just how good is it? Well I just left a message saying “@patphelan looks like everyone is looking for a twitterfone invite” and got the following Tweet posted:
ask Pat Phelan looks like everyone is lookig for a twitterfone invoice
It obviously had issues with my enunciation (although listening back, the quality of the line left a lot to be desired).
A couple of things Pat will need to add to improve it (and I assume Pat has already thought of these):
Support for Twitter commands - @, and d particularly and
OpenID support - it still amazes me that people build their own proprietary login systems when they can leverage OpenID and facilitate single sign-on for their users
Well done to Pat and the rest of the team for getting this up. I look forward to watching its evolution.
If you are getting tired of Facebook, you will appreciate this (and even if you are not getting tired of Facebook, watch this and you might start to see why it has become really annoying!).
I had a couple of hours today so I decided to check out the local Electronics stores. When I went into the Circuit City store I was approached by a member of staff who informed me that I “needed to leave my rucksack with customer service near the front of the store”!
I resent being told that. I resent the implication that because I have a rucksack, I am a thief. My rucksack contained my laptop and several other items of value to me. If Circuit City don’t trust me with their valuables, why should I trust them with mine?
I said nothing and simply walked out of the store fuming and into the Best Buy which is conveniently placed next door (as you can almost see in the picture below!).
The staff in Best Buy had absolutely no problem with my having a rucksack. I browsed the store for about 45 minutes, had several interactions with various staff members, all of whom were very helpful, and I left Best Buy having purchased some electronics goodies I have been looking for for sometime. Goodies which I have no doubt Circuit City also stock.
Are Circuit City always so insulting to potential patrons? And if so, how are they still in business?
This year’s Startup 2.0, a European competition for Web 2.0 startups, was launched the other day.
Submissions are accepted for blogs, wikis, social networks or any other website which makes a high use of Web 2.0 components, such as tags, RSS, collaboration or Ajax. Companies and people from any European country willing to present their projects just have to submit them.
Entries are judged not only the quality of the website but also the business model and the creativity of their video presentation. Internet users and a jury will select 10 projects to be presented in Barcelona on May 21st, where they will compete for online advertising and infrastructure prizes for their project. Last year’s winners won 5 days advertising on the front page of TechCrunch.com as far as I recall amongst other prizes.
The contest is organized by Alianzo and La Caixa bank as a non-profit initiative, supported by Microsoft and Sun Microsystems and sponsored by 22@Barcelona.
I am one of the 10 jury members who will be judging the entries along with MartÃn Varsavsky, Loic Le Meur, Daniel Waterhouse, Ouriel Ohayon, Nicole Simon, Bernardo Hernández, Luca Conti and Yaron Orenstein.
If you want your startup to be entered for this competition, register on the site before April 30th.
Simon from Attentio pinged me yesterday to let me know about their latest offering, Trendpedia. In Simon’s own words Trendpedia:
is in essence a European Blog search with a lovely trend function.
We have some more cool stuff to come, will keep you in the loop.
In the example above I looked for mentions of my name along with the terms Apple, Microsoft and Energy. I was surprised by the high showing of Microsoft vs. Apple and interested to note the upward trend of the term Energy since I started my LowerFootprint.com blog.
I can see lots of ways this can be improved (can anyone say widget?) but for a simple first off offering, I like what it does. Well done guys.
Tom Raftery IT
Unit 60, The Crescent, Rushbrook Links, Cobh, Co. Cork, Ireland.
E tom@tomrafteryit.net
Tel +353-21-490 8485
Mob +353-86-3840828
Skype/Gizmo: tomraftery
Twitter: twitter.com/tomraftery
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