Sun Presentation Minimizer for StarOffice and OpenOffice

The Sun Presentation Minimizer is a great OpenOffice.org extension to reduce the file size of an Impress presentation. It does so by

• cropping images according to their visibility

• reducing image quality (e.g. 50% JPEG at 150 dpi)

• removing hidden slides

• removing notes

etc.

And – quite important – it gives you a summary of what it is about to remove or modify and also an estimate on the gain (new vs. old filesize). The default setting is for a copy of the file to be created, which is good, since this is the safe path...

I have tried it on one of my recent presentations, and could reduce it from 7MB to 2.3MB... quite impressive for the default options. And (on screen) the presentation looked exactly the same... which should not be too surprising, since you really do not need 300dpi for some supporting images and graphics.

Great tool. Get it here at the OpenOffice.org extensions repository.

Dopplr speaks Flickr

Dopplr - the travel social network - now integrates with flickr.
As usual with flickr meshups, you provide the "link" to flickr within Dopplr, and then ...




Dopplr will show photos that were taken during the trips registered in Dopplr ... clever, eh ?

OpenID According to Dave

Nice and simple (too simple, actually) introduction to OpenId:

Gmail inbox is just a label ??

Just noticed that tiny little "icon" next to a mail in my inbox in Gmail... and the hover help for it.

So "Inbox" is just a "label" ? Wow...
Then again, it makes sense.

XING becomes more dynamic

Xing - the "European Linkedin" or former OpenBC - just got more dynamic.

The "What's new in my network" feature automatically "pushes" information about changes of your contacts to your start page (and you can subscribe via RSS to it). From the help text:

In the "What's new in my network" infobox, you can see the latest updates and changes to the profiles of your direct contacts. You can choose which information you wish to allow your direct contacts to see in your privacy settings.

Helpful. And more linkedin / plaxo-pulse like.

Google Reader: recommendations and drag-and-drop

Two cool new features, reported by the Google Reader Blog and tested by your's truly:

1. Recommendations

   you'll see quite a few feeds that we think you may find interesting. "Interesting" here is determined by what other feeds you subscribe to, as well as your Web History data, all taken into account in an automated, anonymized fashion. (To learn more about how our recommendations work, see our help article about them).



2. drag & drop interface in the "folder pane"...
   (not sure Google calls it folder pane, but in all other programs with the same kind of UI it is called that)
   

My reading habits

This is what Google Reader trends says about my reading habits and thereby about my daily routines ...

Enterprise Identity Trends

I have been working with/in/for enterprise (!) identity management (IdM) for the past 4 years or so. What I noticed from recent developments and discussions with partners and customers is:

1. The market is now moving from a vendors to consultants and integrators. They finally got it. And the enterprises as well. We are no longer discussing whether Sun or Novell or Oracle are better, and which to deploy, but customers now first try to identify what their organizational needs are and pick a tool afterwards.
2. The focus is moving (right now) from pure user provisioning to a more full identity management including role management. See the recent acquisitions from Sun (Vaau) and Oracle (Bridgestream)
3. This means that the tool market will become “ commoditized”:
   Customers can now (see bullet 1.) focus on the higher layers first, while having the confidence that later they will be able to implement that on any on the top tools (Sun, Novell, Oracle, ...).

Well, my 0.02€ at least.

(For the sake of full disclosure: I work for Sun Microsystems)

Announcing 2008 TED Prize winners

From TEDBlog the 2008 TED prize winners are:

• Neil Turok
• Dave Eggers (who's book "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" I just love)
• Karen Armstrong

Flickr introduces Places

Flickr now does more with geotagged photos.

Flickr: Places:

"The Places project is our way of saying thank you to all our members who’ve taken the time to put their gorgeous photos on a map. Browse the whole globe, from your hometown to your favorite place, or places you’ve never even heard of..."

I think of it as a place's portal into flickr, check Vienna for example... here's the full URL which says a lot about the concept of places as well:

http://flickr.com/places/austria/vienna

ze frank on "privacy"

Ze Frank is back (not the full show, though, but still...), and I love it.

Here's what he has to say on privacy...
ze's page :: zefrank.com: "privacy"

thank you, ze

A Career in Engineering

Yesterday's dilbert... via Dilbert Comic Strip Archive - Dilbert.com - The Official Dilbert Website by Scott Adams - Dilbert, Dogbert and Coworkers!

nothing to add.

5 Gmail features

They guys at the Official Gmail Blog were so nice to post 5 little-known Gmail features you may not yet know about:

5. "Archive and next" shortcut
4. Share mail searches with friends
3. Browser navigation and history
2. Bookmark emails
1. "Filter messages like this"

And for the last week or two I have the impression it is significantly faster now... (but maybe it's just an impression).

So, thank you, Official Gmail Blog, for the tips...

"Service provider" starts with "Service"

What does a "service provider" actually think, when they have a planned (!) mail outage for about 12 hours without prior announcement?

And then, why can't they configure the IMAP servers properly for that period of time, so that the do not complain about my password but just say that the service is down (which they can)?

And - while we are at it - what can they possibly mean with "Web 2.0 user interface" ?

So clueless...

Sun to acquire Vaau

So, Sun decided to broaden their Identity portfolio by acquriring Vaau... finally we will see some decent role management capabilities in the Sun portfolio.
Actually, this is a must, after Oracle bought Bridgestream this summer...

If you are into corporate press-releases then you might want to endure this: Sun Microsystems Strengthens Market-Leading Identity Management Portfolio with Intent to Acquire Vaau

(In the interest of full disclosure: I am a Sun Microsystems employee)

More Flickr Love

Flickr now lets me export my flickr group subscriptions as OPML.

How cool is that ?

Is it Christmas?

In case you wonder... check here at isitchristmas.com

The best part: comes with a cosy RSS feed, so you can stay up-to-date.

Bye bye "Thinkpad"

Lenovo ditches ThinkPad early | The Register: "Lenovo ditches ThinkPad early"

Book: Core Memory

A computer coffee table book ? Yes, in a way.

"Core Memory" is an illustrated book full of great photos of vintage computers, like the french minitel, the Apple II, Cray I (with all the cabling), Zuse Z3, good old IBMs, etc, etc.

IMAP for Gmail is finally really here.

Yes, now it does work. As the gmail blog pointed out it would take a couple of days for everyone to have it.

Since this night I have IMAP, too. And against my belief, I discovered it through configuring a Gmail account with IMAP in Thunderbird and wait for the error message to vanish.

So here's the proof:



And I also found the confirmation on the gmail blog here.

You actually get each Gmail tag as an IMAP folder, and the default/system and a special folder/view called "Gmail" with the

• All Mail
• Drafts
• Sent Mail
• Spam
• Starred

views in it. Looks like this in thunderbird.

Nice.