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Microsoft to seek ISO standardization for Office 12 formats

By on November 22, 2005 in Microsoft, OpenSource, Technology

InfoWorld: Top News reports “Update: Microsoft to open Office document format. (InfoWorld) – Microsoftæon Monday said it will offer its Word, Excel, and PowerPoint document formats as open standards, a move that could spark a war with technology rivals over standard document formats.”

Interesting. I wonder if ISO standardization will really change the basic positioning. Will use of Microsoft’s mis-named “Open XML” be free from RAND licensing fees, patent encumberances, or the onerous licensing terms that made it inaccessible from GPL software?

Unpatched IE Javascript exploit published.

By on November 21, 2005 in Microsoft, Security

InfoWorld: Top News: Hackers publish code for critical IE bug. InfoWorld) – Security experts are warning Internet users to be careful where they click, thanks to a nasty unpatched bug in the way Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer browser handles the JavaScript computer language. The bug is of particular concern because security researchers in the U.K. have now published “proof of concept” code showing how hackers could exploit the problem and possibly take over a Windows system.By Robert_McMillan@idg.com (Robert McMillan).

Just to review: never browse with an untrustworthy browser.

UPDATE: Details at the Internet Storm Center, raising their InfoCon level from green to yellow. ISC is labeling it a zero-day exploit. It’s certainly the potential for one.

Cringely: Google-Mart

By on November 20, 2005 in Home Page

Cringely, on the other hand, posting at I, Cringely @ PBS.org, posits a different future, with a Google brand internet-on-top-of-the-internet emulating a disturbing model: “Sam Walton Taught Google More About How to Dominate the Internet Than Microsoft Ever Did” Time will tell.

Adam Green: Web Explosion in 2006

By on November 20, 2005 in Technology

Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer points to Adam Green’s blog. Yes, dBASE fans, that Adam Green, Check out Adam’s blog and bio link for an update on what he’s been up to. Dave says “Adam Green says that 2006 is the year the web will explode. Interesting theory, hope it’s not true, because when Google tries to host my content, how much you want to bet they’ll also change what I say by adding links to things they like (for example ads) and removing unnecssary links (for example, the ones I put there). And maybe if I write a post that talks about Eric Schmidt’s hometown (I think it’s Atherton) that somehow magically that post won’t appear. Or, perhaps my site won’t be included at all, by some mysterious algorithm (like Google News) not deemed worthy of inclusion. Hey it’s just one guy writing it, after all. This would be a very bad development, so bad it should be made illegal, quickly, before they actually do it.”

Personalizing your PowerBook… with a tarsier

By on November 20, 2005 in Apple Macintosh OS X, Technology

Slashdot post: Laser Etching a Laptop. ptorrone writes “I didn’t really plan using a $20,000 laser cutter on my 17” Powerbook to etch a 19th-century engraving of a tarsier, a nocturnal mammal related to the lemur (also the vi book cover), but it seemed like it had to done. The results are stunning…”

Very cool hack. Personalizing a PowerBook like this makes it a lot easier to identify, too…

Viewing OpenDocument Files in FireFox

By on November 16, 2005 in OpenSource, Technology

OSNews posts an exclusive article, *Why Browsers Should Be Able to Display OpenDocument*. “OpenDocument got a lot of publicity lately. StarOffice 8 and OpenOffice.org 2.0 finally arrived, and all the other makers of office suites (with the notable exception of Microsoft) have started implementing the new standard into their programs. Massachusetts recently decided to use OpenDocument as the standard file format, effectively locking out MS Office as soon as January 1st, 2007. Other countries are on their way to do the same. Also, OpenDocument recently got submitted to become an ISO standard.”

An interesting tidbit I picked up from the article: you can view OpenDocument files in FireFox! If you have both FireFox and OpenOffice.org 2 installed on your machine, start OpenOffice.org and navigate the usual menu/dialog/treeview to Tools | Options, Internet, Mozilla Plug-In, and check the Enable checkbox. Shut down and restart Firefox. Now, you can open OpenDocument documents for viewing in the browser! A toolbar appears that allows editing (opening the doc in OpenOffice.org), direct printing, direct export to PDF, searching and more. Pretty cool stuff.

Doc: Saving the Net

By on November 16, 2005 in Technology

Doc’s at it again. Years ago, he pointed out that the ClueTrain was leaving the station, this time he posts a call to arms in Saving the Net. Required Reading.

“I’ve spent much of the last two weeks writing an essay that just went up at Linux Journal: Saving the Net: How to Keep the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes. It’s probably the longest post I’ve ever put up on the Web. It’s certainly the most important. And not just to me.”

Read the (both now-Internet-Archived) entire post-about-the-post here: Saving the Net from the pipeholders.

Bricklin’s WikiCalc: Very Cool

By on November 16, 2005 in Home Page

Andrew MacNeill – AKSEL Solutions posts “Just saw this over on zdNet but then wanted to try it out.

I think David may be right when he talks about the potential of what this could do.

Wikis aren’t just for group blogging or information – now you’ve got a live application for it as well.”

Wikis are a great way for collaborative effort at building up knowledge online. Witness the mother-of-all wikis at WikiPedia. But each of the hundreds of wiki software packages out there has its own markup language, or worse, no language at all. With Dan Bricklin’s WikiCalc, we have a demonstration of a rich client app that can lock, read, edit and write formatted material and then publish it to a web site. The software is at version zero-point-one alpha stage, but the concepts are cool. Check it out.

All Your Base Are Belong To… Google?

By on November 16, 2005 in Technology

The ever calm, fair and balanced Slashdot reports Google Base Launches. An anonymous reader writes “As announced on the Google Blog, Google Base has finally launched. According to Google, Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We’ll host the items and make them searchable for free.”

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