Plan-B for Software Documentation

The recent GNOME 3 hackfest in the UK got me thinking of my ideal desktop design - task oriented and controlling interrrupts

Here would be my vision of this:

• Have separate desktops for each task (open documents, web pages, chat sessions, e-mails, contacts, bookmarks, browser/search history, …) and that persists across login sessions (under a name) and ideally across machines (web sync like Mozilla Weave)
• When I start a task I might want to start with the desktop of another task (snapshot) or a blank slate
• Have a system to do fast task switching (like the multi screen desktops, but not limited to the number of those) and also a system that notifies me of activities that belong to other tasks (like chat responses, mail replies, etc.) Ideally filtered by a priority/importance level of the task intruding (or filter by the planned work - stuff relevant to tasks that I have planned to work on today or tomorrow –> scheduling)
• Make task contexts such as personal/work/hobby/moonlighting (or even sub contexts like projects) and allow me to switch between those and filter notifications with different filters for disruptions in those. For example notify me of the important private reply at work, but not of the important reply on hobby. But while in hobby notify me of anything that is important.
• Allow to set availability levels for IM with switching contexts (tasks with different priorities and task contexts) automatically. Sometimes even separate profiles.
• Allow the kind of scheduling that is indicated with the Task popper and within the time buckets a simple order/ranking to make a plan
• Give me desktop search with clear priority for task local results over global results.
• All tasks are archived, the waste basked is only task specific. May be have a Shredder to really delete things across tasks?

In simple terms give me a desktop per task (where I can have the relevant documents, contacts, e-mails, etc. just persistent around, even if they may be shared across tasks) that I can switch between easily and a virtual room that I can control what communication comes through the walls to intrude with the tasks that I’m at.

And I don’t start talking about sharing resources/documents across users for collaboration. That would be the ultimate virtual room/desktop, although who loves someone else rearranging one’s desktop, so I probably wanted my private view

For over 8 months I have been working on a Mac Pro now. Let me share some of my experience with the you.

First I ran the beast with Windows XP on it. And this machine is a beast! It’s quad core server type processors are fast and the box in itself is put together in a way that it deserves the “Pro” for professional in its name. After realizing that memory under Windows XP was limited to 2 GB for some reason and we could not get it to even accept 3 GB of the 6 that it was configured with, I decided to switch to its native Mac OS X.

Let me share a few of my impressions to use a Mac OS X for programming, lots of reading/browsing, e-mail and Office work:

• It does use memory economical. I can run way more apps at the same time than on my Windows XP laptop with the same amount of RAM (only 4 GB of the 6 GB it originally had). Not to mention that is stays responsive even with my usual 20 - 30 tabs in Firefox.
• It is rock solid. It runs weeks w/o reboot, unless I start Windows in Parallels. The Windows VM does bring the machine to a crawls after a day or two. Don’t know if it is Windows or Mac OS X.

More in my next post.

Today, I re-checked to see if the BBBOnline website is still unsecured.

The good news is, the expired SSL Certificate is gone. Instead the online form which asks all kind of confidential business and personal information is completely unsecured (http:// instead of https://).

Apparently they BBB is not willing to invest $50-$200 in a SSL Certificate to secure my data I submit to them. Way to go Better Business Bureau!

My trust in the Better Business Bureau® just got shattered. I always thought of it as a useful and trustworthy institution. Here is why I don’t think of them highly anymore.

I was researching good practices in privacy policies for websites and came across a terrific page by BBBOnline.org How to craft your privacy policy. It is really well written and I found it very helpful. So I decided to learn more about their BBBOnline Seal program. So far so good.

It hit me in the face, when I did click on the little “Apply now” button at the bottom of the page. The SSL certificate of this terrific site is expired over a month ago.

An expired SSL certificate is more than a glitch, especially expired five and a half weeks. The very company that tries to dispense trust on the Internet can’t manage its trust certificate for a secure transaction? Shame on the webmaster of bbbonline.org and shame on the business leaders that have no control mechanism to detect such a vital issue.

This week, Ingots, a group dedicated to teach IT skills based on open source, has published “Introduction to OpenOffice.org for Windows and Linux” (Use “Login as a guest”, to view the material).

I like the concept and the content of the course. However, I’m curious how it compares to the innovative approach of “Plan-B for OpenOffice.org. What is your opinion?

Do you prefer a traditional course offering like the one from Ingot or do you prefer the video based Software manuals from Plan-B?

Would you like to have course material with demo documents and quizzes on Plan-B for OpenOffice.org?

Please leave your comments about innovation in software manuals.

OpenOffice.org Release 2.4 is now available for free download.

Curious about what changed?

Release 2.4 has improved

• Ease of use for setting languages for selected text in multi language documents
• The chart module with
  • improved label formatting and positioning,
  • regression charts,
  • and inverted axis
• The presentation application (Impress) has added
  • 3d slide transitions
  • Pictures as slide background
• The spreadsheet application (Calc) has added
  • Splitting text into separate columns
  • Start formula entry with “+” for faster data entry from the numeric key pad
  • Better flow when entering rows of data
  • Drag and drop cells and columns to move them
  • Performance for loading large spreadsheets
• The word processor application (Writer) has added
  • more powerful regular expressions for find and replace
• Update notification for application and extensions
• Performance in general
• Improved localization and spell checking for 10+ languages.

OpenOffice.org Ninja has an excellent introduction to new features in Open Office 2.4. Screencasts about the new features are coming soon.

According to InfoWorld, Walmart discontinued selling its $200 gPC from Everex in stores.

The $200 PC loaded with Google applications will continue to be available at the Walmart.com website.

As reason, Walmart’s spokes person, O’Brien said “The idea was to see if shoppers in our stores would respond as they do online to the offering. The answer is that customers did not respond to expectations, so we decided not to restock.” This is an interesting contrast to the many reports that the low cost, low energy PC has sold out in some stores and Walmarts pride to be able to manage inventory best. Also, Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex, says “The sell-through [at Walmart stores] was brisk, I am surprised at the decision,” said Paul Kim, director of marketing at Everex.

Interestingly, O’Brian felt compelled to say “We did not ‘pull’ Linux from our shelves or make any kind of ‘announcement’ on this,” she said.

At ZDNet, Christopher Dawson compares NeoOffice vs. OpenOffice vs. Office 2008 vs. iWork. He obviously comprares them on Mac OS X, as GeoOffice or iWork and Office 2008 are special releases for the Apple Mac platform.

His report is influenced by his experience managing the IT for a school in Western Massachusetts. Chris concludes:

iWork is very slick and integrates well brilliantly with iLife. It’s easy to use, but powerful enough for serious users. However, it’s lack of compatibility with open file formats is of concern. Office 2008 is also slick and highly functional but not nearly as effortless to navigate. Even with academic pricing (iWork is priced around $10/license academic versus almost $70/license for Office), Office is a bit pricey and hard to justify when cheaper or free alternatives exist. OpenOffice for the Mac really isn’t worth a second look right now given its lack of integration and compatibility. NeoOffice has its niggles, but is generally a solid, easy to use office suite. Even if you choose iWork of Office, it should be installed on all of your users’ machines to ensure compatibility with their students. It could certainly stand alone, as well, but the relatively inexpensive iWork is a hard bit of kit to pass up.

This weekend something amazing happened to the traffic at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org. It doubled!

Why? Someone discovered the Open Office Calc video table of content page using the StumbledUpon Toolbar and must have shared it with her friends. And the crowd was really interested. Visitors that came from Stumbledupon stayed 35% longer than average visitors and their bounce rate was half of the usual average.

We at Plan-B for OpenOffice.org do love feedback from our users. On average, about 50% send us back a thank you for our answers to their OpenOffice questions. Some of the best we publish on our testimonials pages.

Dear users and readers keep them coming. We love your feedback and appreciate a thank you any time. It is so rewarding!