John L. Dilbeck's Ramblings
JohnDilbeck.com
Last update: 11/28/01; 09:25:58.
Thoughts and ideas as they occur to me.
Archives: 2000 2001
Wednesday, November 28, 2001
TECSoft, an Apple Solution Experts and FileMaker Solutions Alliance member, is offering a CD and seminar to help participants learn AppleScript and how to create software automation solutions.
9:21:22 AM
The company's new Workflow Automation with AppleScript Training CD is an interactive training CD that costs US$99.
Considering an alternative to Microsoft's Office?
ConsultingTimes downloaded and installed the StarOffice 6 beta and found -- much to their surprise -- a rather full feature office suite, based on open standards, with the best Microsoft Office compatibility to date. In their opinion, on a purely subjective level, StarOffice 6 looks great, and appears to be a serious contender for both the home and enterprise desktops. The Star Office 6 beta also includes some of the best document filters for converting between Star Office's native XML storage and Microsoft's formats. They present an exclusive interview with Iyer Venkatesan, the StarOffice product manager. He gives an inside look at how Sun is positioning StarOffice, the target audience, key development goals, and other issues that are sure to be of interest.
Unfortunately, at this time, Sun is not working on a port for Macintosh OS X, but they did forward their development work to OpenOffice.org and developments in porting a native Mac OS X version of Star Office will be announced there.
Are network security firms helping the FBI to put a 'Magic Lantern' backdoor on computers?
From a Wired news article by Declan McCullagh: The flap started last week, when news reports began to appear about an FBI project code-named "Magic Lantern." Details are sketchy, but Magic Lantern reportedly works by masquerading as an innocent e-mail attachment that will insert FBI spyware inside your computer.
If you're skeptical about governments searching for increasingly sophisticated ways to spy on us, you may find this related article interesting.
Google has been testing a web page voting system that will let users rank sites.
AbiWord 0.9.5 has been released with XDarwin binary. Progress has been made towards a native Mac OS X version. Several new features are included in this pre-release beta.
The Linux Journal has announced their 2001 Editors' Choice Awards. Several of these programs are being ported for Mac OS X.
Super Get Info 1.0.5 is a powerful, elegant alternative to the Mac OS X Finder's Show Info command and offers several improvements. You can download it for a 14 day trial. The purchase price is around $20, and registered customers of a previous version can download the updater at no cost.
© Copyright 2001 John L. Dilbeck, jd@johndilbeck.com.
