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Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, OpenOffice.org, Open Source

Go-OO: Stick a fork in it

screenie

Since before the dawn of time, open source projects have forked more often than Lindsay Lohan cheked into rehab. The Mozilla browser is a great example of a successful fork, it was once based on Netscape, but evolved on its own and eventually rendered classic Netscape obsolete. Many -- if not most -- forks disappear into obscurity. We aren't so sure this one will go so quietly.

Go-OO is a fork of OpenOffice that has quite a few impressive features which really ought to be in official OO, but for some reason or another aren't, such as support for OpenXML, better Microsoft Binary support, and Word Perfect Graphics support. It also boasts significantly better start times -- at least on our poorly equipped test machine.

Long story short, this is a fast, lean beast of an office suite with great compatibilty with Microsoft Office. The price is right at $0.00, but as with any community project you are both welcome and encouraged to donate to the developers for their efforts.

Filed under: Business, Utilities, Windows, Office, OpenOffice.org

OpenXML Translator launched

openxml translator launchedVersion 1.0 of the OpenXML document translator launched this past Friday. This initiative translates native document formats into OpenOffice and Microsoft Office. The translator will work between Microsoft's OpenXML, and OpenOffice's OpenDocument formats. The project took eight months to complete and ensure it met a high quality and standards level. So far, over 8,000 copies of the translator have been downloaded on SourceForge. Although the translator is not being shipped within Office products, Microsoft said that it has tested it with Office 2007-2003, and Office XP. The next version of OpenOffice will carry the translator, which is currently available on SourceForge. The decision for Microsoft to be involved with the translator has stemmed from customer demand. Support for both Excel and PowerPoint documents are scheduled for November 2007.

Filed under: Business, Internet, Windows, Microsoft, OpenOffice.org, Open Source, Social Software

Microsoft has decided to join the Open Document movement

microsoft open documentIn a move to join the massive open document communities, and to grab some additional business, Microsoft has announced support for the ODF formats through plug-ins and translators.

Microsoft will create tools that will work to enable the communication between Microsoft Office Open XML formats and Open Document formats. The tools in question will be free to download, and licensed as open source software by the end of 2006. Support for Excel and PowerPoint are to be expected sometime in 2007.

Microsoft has stated that its Open XML document format is superior, and compromises to this format, will require customer disclosures as a necessary portion of the translation between the two document formats.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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