Courtesy of Marino Marcich, ODF Alliance

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ODF TO BE OBLIGATORY IN NORWEGIAN PUBLIC SECTOR

Beginning on January 1, 2011 it will be obligatory to use ODF or PDF when exchanging documents as e-mail attachments between government institutions and users in Norway. ODF and PDF were included in the government's so-called Reference Catalog and is the second step in a long-term effort by the Ministry of Government Administration and Reform to establish recommended and obligatory IT standards to be used by public institutions and enterprises.

http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/fad/press-cent...

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HUNGARY, MALAYSIA APPROVE ODF AS A NATIONAL STANDARD

ODF has officially become a government recommended Hungarian National Standard (MSZ ISO/IEC 26300) as of June 1, 2009. ODF was also approved by the Malaysian national standards body, SIRIM. Hungary and Malaysia now join, Brazil, Croatia, Ecuador, Italy, South Korea, South Africa, and Sweden as countries whose national standards bodies have formally approved ODF. Taiwan's approval of ODF by its Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection (BSMI) was announced 21 January 2009.

http://mszt.hu/angol/general.htm

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ODF WORKSHOP CONCLUDES WITH SIGNING OF BRASILIA PROTOCOL

Brazil’s approach to putting ODF policy into practice took another major step forward with the signing of the Brasilia Protocol at the margins of the 3rd International ODF User Workshop, which concluded August 26 in Brasilia. Major government institutions across Brazil formally signed what is in effect a commitment, which will proceed in phases, obligating signatories to begin using ODF internally, with each other, and ultimately in their electronic interaction with third parties and the public. The protocol was also opened to private-sector entities for signature. The workshop – organized by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, SERPRO (Federal Service for Data Processing - Ministry of Finance, Brazil) and Caixa Econômica Federal, in collaboration with the ODF Alliance – brought together government officials from twelve countries that have already made the move to ODF or are actively considering such a move. Workshop participants expressed a strong interest in “internationalizing” the approach taken in the Brasilia Protocol.

http://www.odfworkshop.org/home_en.html

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2ND ODF 'PLUGFEST' NOV 2-3 IN ORVIETO, ITALY

The second in a series of events bringing together ODF implementers to fine-tune their interoperability capabilities and develop test scenarios, recommendations and best practices will take place November 2-3, 2009, in the Italian city of Orvieto. The ultimate aim of the “plugfest” is to achieve full seamless interoperability for the entire feature set of ODF across all suppliers, platforms and supported technologies. All implementers of ODF are invited to participate. The event is organized by the Dutch government program Netherlands in Open Connection and the OpenDoc Society together with the OASIS ODF TC, OASIS ODF OIC TC and ODF Adoption TC. The first plugfest held in The Hague in June of this year under the aegis of the Netherlands government attracted sixty-five participants from forty companies, open source projects and governments.

http://plugtest.opendocsociety.org/dok...

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NEW OR IMPROVED ODF APPLICATIONS SUPPORT

GMV Solutions' atlas GMV lets you open ODF files on your Blackberry smartphone. http://www.gmv.com/e-mailing/atlas_gmv/atlas.pdf

FileAid 1.3, the latest version of the file manager and viewer for your iPhone and iPod Touch, now allows you to view ODF text, presentations, and spreadsheets. http://www.digidna.net/fileaid/

Serif PagePlus X4 desktop publishing software now imports ODF files. http://www.serif.com/pageplus/

The ODF Toolkit Union's ODFDOM 0.7, an open source Java toolkit for programmatically reading, writing and manipulating ODF documents, is now available. http://odftoolkit.org/projects/odfdom/downloads/dire...

The new release of GemBox.Spreadsheet, a .NET component which provides a way to write, read or convert native Microsoft Excel files without the need for Microsoft Excel on either the developer or client machine, now fully supports ODF for spreadsheets (.ods files). http://www.gemboxsoftware.com/GBSpreadshe...

Office-o-tron is a web application that accepts ODF packages and validates the XML within, returning a summary report. http://code.google.com/p/officeotron/

FastReport.net, which allows you to create application-independent reports, can now edit, print or convert to multiple formats including ODF. http://www.fast-report.com/en/products/FastRepor...

SlideBoom, a slide-sharing platform, now supports ODF presentation files. http://blog.slideboom.com/index.php/2009/05/07...

The Sun ODF Plugin 3.1 for Microsoft Office has been released giving users of Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint the ability to read, edit and save to ODF. http://www.sun.com/software/star/odf_plugin/

JDBReport is used for generation, viewing and a print of reports in ODF and other formats. http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract...

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NEW ALLIANCE MEMBERS

Please welcome the following new ODF Alliance members: Instituto Federal de Pernambuco - Campus Ipojuca (Brazil); Prefeitura Municipal de Silva Jardim (Brazil); Gnutech (Brazil); Ledger Consulting (USA); Done Deal ICT (Saudi Arabia); OUR Technology, LLC. (Azerbaijan); The SFL Audio Visual Group (UK); SOLAR Software Libre Argentina; Activistas por el Software Libre (Venezuela) : carolus-it EDV-Dienstleistungen und Software (Germany); Laboratório de Documentos Digitais/CCSH (Brazil); JSS Academy Ltd Mauritius; Cooperateva Tecnológica (Venezuela); SOLVE - Asociación Civil Software Libre de Venezuela; EQ Soft Consultoría y Soporte EIRL (Peru); ecology foundation еко.com (Bulgaria); Infogrid Pacific Pte. Ltd. (Singapore); Opentelematics Internacional (Bolivia) ; Technology Initiatives (USA); Banco do Brasil (Brazil); Spotlight Cameroun (Cameroon); International Open Source Network (IOSN) – ASEAN+3 (The Philippines); Alsyrinx Tecnologia (Brazil); Asociación de Software Libre del Ecuador; TreeO Technology (USA); Inovis (UK); and Revista Espírito Livre (Brazil).

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ODF IN THE NEWS

Report says IBM is switching from Microsoft Office to Lotus Symphony [The H Open] http://www.h-online.com/open/Report-says-IB...

Microsoft focuses on 'pragmatic interoperability' [David Worthington, SD Times] http://www.sdtimes.com/link/33574

"Productive" OpenDocument Plugfest [The H Open] http://www.h-online.com/open/Productive-Open-...

ODF and the Art of Interoperability [Glyn Moody, ComputerWorld UK] http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/in...

ODF Interoperability: Rough Consensus and Running Code [Roberto Galoppini, Commercial Open Source Software] http://robertogaloppini.net/2009/06/22/odf-interoperabil...

Office Shots for Confirmed ODF Interchange Fidelity [orcmid, nfo Works: Pursuing Harmony] http://nfoworks.org/diary/2009/06/office-shots-for-co...