Credit: Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance
ODF GETS AN UPGRADE IN BRAZIL
On 16 December 2008 the Executive Committee for e-Government of the Brazilian Ministry of Planning released version 4.0 of e-PING, Brazil’s interoperability framework. In this new version, ODF was upgraded from R (Recommended) to A (Adopted) status, meaning ODF’s use is now mandatory in Brazil. This represents another important step in Brazil’s transition from policy adoption to implementation. ePING 4.0 is only available in Portuguese for now, but an English translation is expected in the near future.
https://www.governoeletronico.gov.br/acoes-e-projetos/e-ping-padroes-de-int
ODF THE REQUIRED DOCUMENT FORMAT FOR PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS IN VENEZUELA
ODF is now officially the required file format for the public institutions in Venezuela, according to the Official Gazette of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, No. 39.109 of 29 January 2009. For non-editable files, PDF is required.
http://www.tsj.gov.ve/gaceta/gacetaoficial.asp
ARGENTINA TO ESTABLISH INTEROPERABILITY FRAMEWORK FOR E-GOV
According to a resolution passed on 30 December 2008 by the Secretariat of the Cabinet and Public Management, Argentina’s National Office of Information Technology (ONTI) will propose general guidelines, criteria, and standards for a "General Interoperability Framework for Electronic Government.” International experiences, including the development of the European Interoperability Framework, are cited in the resolution and to be taken into account in the development of Argentina’s own framework. The principal objective is to optimize the information exchange mechanisms managed by the state in order to provide better public services. The scope of the framework includes the national administration, subnational agencies, and non-government organizations that interact with public bodies.
http://www.sgp.gob.ar/contenidos/uci/actividades_realizadas/docs/R
REPORT CHRONICLES MAJOR ODF GAINS WITH GOVERNMENTS, APPLICATIONS SUPPORT
The ranks of governments adopting ODF continued to grow, as did the depth and range of ODF applications, according to the annual report for 2008 published by the ODF Alliance. The comprehensive report highlighted major developments for ODF in 2008: government adoptions, which grew steadily and now include 16 national and 8 provincial governments that have formally recommended or required the use of ODF; a dramatic improvement in both the quality of existing applications support and its expansion into new areas with the emergence of ODF-supporting mobile device and web conferencing applications, document management systems, wiki editors, viewers, converters, accessibility tools (ODT-To-DAISY Digital Talking Book), database software, and programming libraries; public procurement gains; and feature enhancements in ODF v 1.2, which is expected to be considered for approval shortly as an OASIS standard.
http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/Annual-Report-ODF-2008.pdf
AGREEMENT SIGNED ON PROCUREMENT IN SUPPORT OF INTEROPERABILITY, OPEN STANDARDS
The Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS), whose mission is to provide government policy makers and other stakeholders with tools to preserve the current open architecture of the Internet and the World Wide Web, approved and called on like-minded organizations to endorse the Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards. The agreement calls on governments and publicly funded and non-profit institutions to, among other actions, create a policy statement on interoperability and open standards, and, by 2010, agree that procurement of all software should be vendor-neutral and implement open standards.
http://www.keionline.org/blogs/2008/12/06/dcos-agreement-on-procurement-i
ODF OLYMPIAD WINNERS ANNOUNCED IN INDIA, MALAYSIA
Twelve winners of the ODF Olympiad contest were recently recognized at events held in Malaysia and India. Students from throughout the region had submitted presentations in ODF on specific topics organized under four categories that were then evaluated by a jury. The prizes in Malaysia were awarded at the MyGOSSCON 2008 conference, while the prizes in India were presented by Richard Stallman at the Freedom in Computer Technology – 2008 conference organized by the Institute for Open Technology and Applications (IOTA) in Kolkata. Congratulations to the winners and organizers of the ODF Olympiad 2008 for advancing digital inclusion and educational development.
http://www.odfolympiad.org/
NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT
Araxis Merge 2009 lets you check the contents of up to three files in ODF and various other formats, compare their differences, and merge them into one file if desired.
http://www.araxis.com/
Read and write ODF files on your BlackBerry smartphone with RIM's planned support for IBM's Lotus Symphony suite.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/RIM-Now-Supports-IBM-Lotus-Quickr-Lotu
Live Presentations, a new presentation authoring software tool you can use on the desktop or in your browser, online or offline, imports and exports to ODF.
http://www.live-documents.com/live_presentations.html
AbiWord, a multi-platform word processor, includes improvements in its support for ODF with the release of AbiWord v2.6.6.
http://www.abiword.com/release-notes/2.6.6.phtml
IBM's Lotus Sametime Unyte, Version 8.2, which lets workers initiate web conferencing sessions through their browser, now enables publishing of ODF files through IBM's Lotus Symphony productivity suite.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboratio
OpenOffice.org 3.0 Portable lets you take your ODF-supporting productivity suite on the road.
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable
EuroOffice Map Chart Professional is a new chart type integrated into OpenOffice.org Calc that makes it possible to visualize geographically related data.
http://www.multiracio.com/eurooffice/products/eurooffice-map-chart-professional
Zamzar's free online tool converts ODF files to and from PDF.
http://www.zamzar.com/
The Integrated Content Environment (ICE) is a free, ODF-supporting word-processor based web content management system produced by the University of Southern Queensland (Australia) that allows authors to work individually or collaboratively on material for the Web, CD and print.
http://ice.usq.edu.au/
Tables 1.5 for Mac OS X will add additional formatting options as well as an ODF exporter.
http://www.x-tables.eu/more/overview.html
Read your ODF files on Symbian-based devices with NLnet Foundation and Odendahl SEPT-Solutions' OpenDocument Reader for Symbian OS.
http://code.google.com/p/officereader/
Ajax Document Viewer is a free, web based online document viewer of ODF and other file formats that can embedded into any web page or linked from any page.
http://www.ajaxdocumentviewer.com/
Save as Daisy (odt2dtbook) 1.1.0, an OpenOffice.org extension which supports export to the DAISY digital talking book for the visually impaired (DTBook), is now available.
http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/1839
NEW ALLIANCE MEMBERS
Please welcome the following new members: Telugu Books (Sweden); FieldLinx Ltd (New Zealand); Guava Sweden AB; Unitarian Congregation of Pernambuco (Brazil); TechDivision (Germany); Beijing Linux User Group (China); Auyana - Internetagentur München (Germany); and Open Source IT Solutions (South Africa).
EVENTS CALENDAR
SEMIC.EU Interoperability Workshop [2 Feb 2009 – Brussels, Belgium]
http://www.semic.eu/semic/view/snav/Infopool/Workshop.xhtml
FOSDEM 2009 [7-8 February 2009 – Brussels, Belgium]
http://www.fosdem.org/2009/
Netherlands Open in Connection (NOiV) Congress [5 March 2009 – Utrecht, The Netherlands]
http://www.ecp.nl/agenda/id=353/Het_NOiV_jaarcongres_2009.html
GoOpen 2009 [16-17 April 2009 – Oslo, Norway]
http://goopen2009.friprog.no/
Berlin Open 2009 [22-23 June 2009 - Berlin, Germany]
http://www.berlin-open.org/programm.html
ODF IN THE NEWS
Alliance says progress shows ODF will prevail [Elizabeth Montalbano|Computerworld]
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/5A
PL: Mniów district: "Using open source saves public resources" [Gijs Hillenius|OSOR.eu]
http://www.osor.eu/news/pl-mniow-district-using-open-source-saves-public-resources
Companies use Word out of habit, not necessity [Elizabeth Montalbano|IDG News]
http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/272644
Can Microsoft Make Windows for a Small World [Saul Hansell|New York Times]
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/can-microsoft-make-windows-fo
Create tech-friendly U.S. government [Jimmy Wales & Andrea Weckerle|CNN.com]
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/01/07/wales.obama.cto/
Will e-Gov Get Its Day in Obama Administration? [Kenneth Corbin|InternetNews.com]
http://www.internetnews.com/government/article.php/3795471/...
AbiWord projects get funding for ODF improvement [Ryan Paul|Ars Technica]
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2009/01/07/abi
It's the business processes that are bound to MS Office [Gary Edwards|ZDNet]
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,1000001161,392883
The Open Document Format Sweeps Across 16 Governments [Trond-Arne Undheim|Trond's Opening Standard]
http://blogs.oracle.com/trond/2009/01/the_open_document_format_sweep.html
Office 2007 faces competition where it may count the most: pricing [J. Peter Bruzzese|InfoWorld]
http://weblog.infoworld.com/enterprisewindows/archives/
Tech Advice for the New Administration [Walt Hucks|Opportunity Knocks]
http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/tech-advi
EU-Japan Collaboration on Open Standards [Trond-Arne Undheim|Trond's Opening Standard]
http://blogs.oracle.com/trond/2008/12/eujapan_collaboratio
Analysis 2009: Application Services come into their own [Curt Cagle|O'Reilly]
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01/application-services-come-into.html
Open Document Format Has Been Accepted By 16 Governments [Charles Babcock|Information Week]
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/showArticle.
ODF in MS Office 2007: More Details [Walt Hucks|Opportunity Knocks]
http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2009/01/04/odf-in-ms-of
Microsoft's ODF Plans – Business As Usual [I' Been to Ubuntu]
http://blog.ibeentoubuntu.com/2008/12/microsofts-odf-plans-business-as-usual.html
OOXML: Why Is It Bad, and What Can We Do? [Reuven Lerner|OSTATIC]
http://ostatic.com/blog/ooxml-why-is-it-ba
Microsoft's Latest Kiss of Death [Anders Bylund|The Motley Fool]
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2008/12/18/microsofts-latest
Some thoughts on the Microsoft’s implementation of ODF [Charles-H. Schulz]
http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2008/12/17/some-thoughts-on-the-microsoft
Microsoft spits out ODF plans for Office 2007 SP2 [Kelly Fiveash|The Register]
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/16/microsoft_
Beyond Ubuntu, IBM considers other Virtual Desktop environments [Jacqueline Emigh|BetaNews]
http://www.betanews.com/article/Beyond_Ubuntu_IBM_considers_other_V
Review: Open-Source Office Suites Compared [Serdar Yegulalp|Information Week]
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterpriseapps/
No Silver Bullet: Format Best Practices [Jered Floyd|Permabits and Petabytes]
http://permabit.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/...
