Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Another win for the good guys in the pursuit of open standards and formats for office documents. Reuters is reporting that Microsoft

will offer free software that will allow Word, Excel and PowerPoint to handle documents in rival technology formats. The translation tools will be developed and licensed as open source software, and will be offered as downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the Redmond, Washington-based company said.”

Now let’s just hope the release of this software doesn’t take as long as Vista. But once it is, everyone can expect that I will be sending out documents in ODF format only. No more .doc files!

read more

Well, I can’t say I’m surprised: Adobe has decided to get ugly at Microsoft for trying to incorporate a “Save as PDF” function into its latest Office Suite. Yeah, I know for Microsoft haters this must seem like fried SPAM with honey (delicious, btw), but it just goes to show that you really can’t trust any “open” standard controlled by a corporation. Adobe’s attitude here is pure poison for the PDF as a universal format. I wrote about this subject in my dissertation and was lambasted for my comments about Adobe, who I warned was no more interested in “open” standards than Microsoft or Apple.

read more

Over on fadtastic, Andrew Whitacre notes that Times New Roman has been removed as the default font in Office 2007 betas in favor of a new MS san serif font, Calibri (read about the new fonts in Office 2007).

Whitacre also raises some good questions about this change:

But what will happen to Times New Roman? In ten years, will it be just another term-paper alternative? Will instructors’ syllabi accept Calibri, or will they stand firm with Times because so many Word documents are still printed out to be read? Would you ever write a paper in Calibri because it’s easier to read on a screen, and then change it to Times at the last moment for your print reader? What about Phil’s theory about The Secret Lives of Fonts—is Calibri so pretty that universities will experience a round of aesthetics-inspired grade-inflation?

The good: with this change, students will need to be taught to make conscious choices about font use depending on whether the document is meant for reading primarily in print or on the screen, something that visual rhetoric and new media theory already encourages us to teach.

The bad: they may not often make the choice even after we teach them to in writing classes (sigh).

More important: I’m wondering if this isn’t a trend toward the word processing document becoming primarily a text to be read online? If I think about all of the word processing documents I have received and created over the last year, the majority were not meant primarily to be printed out by others or I did not print them out myself. Part of this is influenced by collaboration and feedback. So many of the word processing docs I get or create are drafts that are shared electronically. Writing teachers regularly make use of Words commenting feature, a revision tool which is designed for screen use. In what other ways have word processing docs become screen texts and how does this influence the teaching of writing?

read more

One more step closer to having ODF (the open standard used by OpenOffice) replace MS Office’s file formats as the ubiquitous file format used. Groklaw reports that the OpenDocument Foundation has offered the State of Massachusetts an ODF plugin for MS Office. This would allow MS Office users to save and open ODF files in any version

of MS Office dating back to MS Office 97. The ODF Plugin installs on the file menu as a natural and transparent part of the open, save, and save as sequences. As far as end users and other application add-ons are concerned, ODF plugin renders ODF documents as if it were native to MS Office.

As far as I’m concerned, once this plugin is available, no one will be getting .doc files from me any more. If everyone can get used to having to download Flash plugins, Quicktime, and Adobe Reader, they can certainly be expected to use the non-proprietary file format standard.

read more

I’m sure that everyone has heard about Apple’s new BootCamp dual-boot system for Intel-based Macs by now. The reason I’ve been trying to learn more about it is that I’m naturally skeptical of the miracles I’ve been hearing about this product. I’ve been surfing for awhile trying to get the “lowdown” on Boot Camp, but all I can seem to find are pro-Mac reviews that seem more concerned about the benefits Boot Camp poses to formerly restricted Mac machines. Yeah, I’m sure Boot Camp is great if you’ve been restricted to Mac software and, suddenly, you can play Doom 3 and Quake IV on your iMac. What I’m trying to figure out, though, is whether it’s better to have a dedicated PC if you intend to run Windows software. I understand the dual-boot system, but I’m not so sure about the hardware question. I’ve heard a few reports that some Apple peripherals won’t work in Windows even with Boot Camp, for instance–but what about the other way round?

I’m sure that everyone has heard about Apple’s new BootCamp dual-boot system for Intel-based Macs by now. The reason I’ve been trying to learn more about it is that I’m naturally skeptical of the miracles I’ve been hearing about this product. I’ve been surfing for awhile trying to get the “lowdown” on Boot Camp, but all I can seem to find are pro-Mac reviews that seem more concerned about the benefits Boot Camp poses to formerly restricted Mac machines. Yeah, I’m sure Boot Camp is great if you’ve been restricted to Mac software and, suddenly, you can play Doom 3 and Quake IV on your iMac. What I’m trying to figure out, though, is whether it’s better to have a dedicated PC if you intend to run Windows software. I understand the dual-boot system, but I’m not so sure about the hardware question. I’ve heard a few reports that some Apple peripherals won’t work in Windows even with Boot Camp, for instance–but what about the other way round?

read more

I’ve been using Google’s gmail and reader apps for some time now. They’re easy to use and very reliable. So, I’m very happy to see that Google has done it again with a Calendar App. I just learned about this on Slashdot a few minutes ago, so I haven’t been able to fully test it, but it appears to have an easy MS Outlook import feature and gmail integration. I’m sure I’ll be putting this thing to good use, because I don’t have Outlook at home (and it’s a pain juggling those appoi

Microsoft has launched the beta for their Windows Live Academic search engine, a Microsoft version of the popular Google Scholar. For those that are just learning about this, check out Jinfo’s quick review.

I’ve got tons of PC software. While I might be interested in switching to a Mac, the cost of replacing all of the PC software is the biggest issue. Until now. ArsTechnica reports that Apple has officially provided the means for installing Windows XP on Intel-based Macs. Using Boot Camp, users can choose at startup to run Windows or Mac OS X on their computer. Nice!

Well, the news is out–Sun has finally released Open Office 2.0. I’m using a torrent to download it now, and will hopefully be able to discuss its comment/track changes and autotext features (with an eye towards migrating from Word) shortly. At any rate, 2.0 is sure to be much better than 1.x, and I’m really hoping they’ve managed to improve the speed. I’ll also be taking a critical look at Impress, OO’s “PowerPoint” equivalent. Maybe–just maybe–this product will be of sufficient quality to allow me to final

NewsForge | Sharing files between OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office

Bruce Byfield of Newsforge has published an article that anyone playing the Microsoft Office/Open Office conversion game will want to print and keep next to the computer. According to Byfield, the key to successful conversions is the preparation you do beforehand. This means selecting the right filter, ensuring you are using compatible fonts, and making sure you have all the Microsoft Office options open in Open Office. It also helps to format documents with character and paragraph styles rather than manually (the way I’ve always done..argh!)

Asa Dotzler (Firefox/Thunderbird) has put up a piece about why regular folks won’t switch to Linux. He identifies four reasons: Migration, Stability, Simplicity, and Comfort. As someone who is ethically drawn to GNU/Linux but keeps running Windows anyway, I was shouting “AMEN” as I read Dotzler’s piece. I don’t run GNU/Linux even though I should, but I do run Firefox even though I think in some ways Explorer is a better browser (it’s definitely faster, at least on my machine, and syncs better with Office). Nevertheless, as Dotzler points out, it was easy to switch to Firefox. Plus, I find it more stable (fewer crashes and pop up/spyware hell) and comfortable than IE.