MS does it again, of course
It is open, free, and certified as an ISO standard, and many people see ODF as the way forward for office document formats.
So of course, Microsoft has to do something else and deviate from an ISO standard in their aim to rule the computer world, and offer MS Office Open XML (OOXML).
Why is it that Microsoft always think themselves above agreed worldwide standards, and push their own formats down everyone’s throats?
Because they can?
Well, one day it will all catch up with them. Sony learnt the hard way – eventually. Let’s hope Microsoft do too, and fall in line and develop open, transparent solutions along with everyone else in the industry. it’s not as if their solutions are generally any better.
Corel Corporation announced today that it will offer support for both ODF and OOXML formats.
Useful Tools
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a big fan of much Microsoft. It took a long time for me to warm at all towards Windows XP, and even now there is much about it to mutter about – not least the rigaramole that sometimes confronts you when upgrading, or when the registry gets corrupted beyond salvation, and no restore point, or registry backup will save you, as Windows refuses to load at all, even in safe mode, and in one recent case, the CD refused to even put a new copy of Windows on the drive as it kept finding the old, corrupted one, and stopping with a BSOD.
Anyway, a slight redemption comes with Windows Live Writer. I am using it now, and it is a very easy and useful tool for blogging. Simply add the Blog URL, your username and password, and it goes off and finds your blogm downloads the template, and you’re ready to blog! If you can use WordPad you can use, Live Writer, it’s that easy! You can even drag and drop pictures off your desktop or explorer into it whilst you type, and set margins around them; add live links; add tags.
A brand new tool I have jsut (in the last hour) downloaded, is Diigo – yes that not mispelt. IT looks to be a useful bookmark saving type tool, much like del.icio.us – I’ll write more in this when I’ve played around with it for a while. I’m going to be trying out it’s daily posting facility at The Eye
Microformat
What is a microformat?
Microformats are markup that allows semantics to be expressed in an HTML page. For example many readers may be used adding XFN data to the link in a WordPress blog.
This data tells others what relationship the link has to your blog (if any). For example it could be another of your sites, or a friends, co-worker, or if it is geographically near you.
Tags can also be considered microformats, and indeed sites such as Technorati makes use of them, and so you Yahoo.
Adding contact details is another use of microformats
WP: Microsoft shifts emphasis to Web – washingtonpost.com Highlights – MSNBC.com
Read about how the sleeping giant is slowly waking up to the outside world
Link to WP: Microsoft shifts emphasis to Web – washingtonpost.com Highlights – MSNBC.com
On This day 16 years ago.
WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project
- To:
- P.G. Innocenti/ECP, G. Kellner/ECP, D.O. Williams/CN
- Cc:
- R. Brun/CN, K. Gieselmann/ECP, R.€ Jones/ECP, T.€ Osborne/CN,
P. Palazzi/ECP, N.€ Pellow/CN, B.€ Pollermann/CN, E.M.€ Rimmer/ECP - From:
- T. Berners-Lee/CN, R. Cailliau/ECP
- Date:
- 12 November 1990
The attached document describes in more detail a Hypertext project.
HyperText is a way to link and access information of various kinds
as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will. It provides
a single user-interface to large classes of information (reports,
notes, data-bases, computer documentation and on-line help). We propose
a simple scheme incorporating servers already available at CERN.
The project has two phases: firstly we make use of existing software
and hardware as well as implementing simple browsers for the user’s
workstations, based on an analysis of the requirements for information
access needs by experiments. Secondly, we extend the application
area by also allowing the users to add new material.
Phase one should take 3 months with the full manpower complement,
phase two a further 3 months, but this phase is more open-ended, and
a review of needs and wishes will be incorporated into it.
The manpower required is 4 software engineers and a programmer, (one
of which could be a Fellow). Each person works on a specific part
(eg. specific platform support).
Each person will require a state-of-the-art workstation , but there
must be one of each of the supported types. These will cost from 10
to 20k each, totalling 50k. In addition, we would like to use commercially
available software as much as possible, and foresee an expense of
30k during development for one-user licences, visits to existing installations
and consultancy.
We will assume that the project can rely on some computing support
at no cost: development file space on existing development systems,
installation and system manager support for daemon software.
powered by performancing firefox
Over at The Eye I’ve been adding some Google Videos I found when surfing. They’re short clips of the low country of SC, and made by a local company. I really like having the Viper’s Videotag plugin there now, as it makes it so easy to add video. This has also spurred me on to get a new digital video camera, and go shoot some of my own. (Stop groaning at the back there).
I’ve still got my ten-year-old hi-8 cam, which doesn’t really get much use these days. it’s a pain in the rear to shoot video, and then have to run it through a TV card, and digitize it, before I can even edit it. It’s all down to time really.
I could take up all my days, doing this kind of stuff, and then writing about it.
What I really need is to find some really compelling stuff to blog about, so I get 10,000 readers a day; I can charge oodles for banner ads; and I can then buy a new lappie, and go sit on the pier at Folly Beach, and blog away to my hearts content, whilst the money rolls into the bank.
Heck we can all dream, can’t we? I’m probably more looking to win the lottery – except I seldom remember to buy a ticket!
Updating Blogs
Working thru all the blogs I own and/or manage and completely updating them. Making sure they’re all running WordPress 2.05, also updating themes where available. Adding Jeromes-Keywords to all of them; adding PodPress to all of them; adding Viper’s Videotags to all of them.
Do you flinch?
I’m looking for a good web site checker to check inbound and outbound, internal and external links. I’ve heard Flinch mentioned. Is this good software, or are there better utilties out there? Any recommendations would be most appreciated.
The Eye @ Wordpress.com 
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