2011-11-29

Report: Microsoft To Bring Office To iPad In 2012 | TechCrunch

Report: Microsoft To Bring Office To iPad In 2012 | TechCrunch

It's a little depressing, not because it's MSFT (sigh) but because it's not a full implementation of the ODF. MSFT, with help from plugin, "support" ODF--on Win. Not on OS X, let alone, right now, on iOS.

So, what does it take to get companies and developers to band together to make a minimal--yes, minimal--ODF editor for tablets? (of whatever OS, even via HTML5)? Money and the promise that what you do today will be rewarded tomorrow. (Foss, in this scheme, is an investment strategy as much as a discursive arrangement of peers.) I don't mean a big company only must be our Angel. It could be a foundation sponsored by a bevy of interested parties, only some of which are bigger than Mom and Pop. But it does need realisable interest, as the work is not really trivial--to build an editor enterprises and students and faculty, too, would like to use--and it is not likely to be completed in a weekend.

But clearly, it is a doing worth something.

2011-11-15

InfoQ - Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community

InfoQ - Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community

(not sure if this will come out properly)

In the last year or so there has been a veritable explosion of sites tracking what I'll call the New Technology: Web services, Clouds, mobiles, and the making of the software that they use, esp. Foss, and the distribution of these devices, esp. in the developing world.

So, as a result, there is now an overabundance of sites that, alas, pretty much recycle the same news. Sometimes there is something new, and usually that something new is boring. But not always; and more to the point, the idea is to stitch the patches of reported activity together to make patterns of meaning leading to action.

But I'm curious: what sites then do you, reader (in the singular, I suppose) read, use, follow? Or are you, like the rest of us, becoming Twitterphilies? If so, how is Twitter for most of us not unlike hearsay?