Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice

Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice | TechCrunch: "Google Acquires Mobile Productivity Company Quickoffice

So, will Quickoffice become the long-awaited mobile frontend for Google Docs Drive? The current mobile HTML version just s.cks... So any  proper client is welcome... And Quickoffice is probably the best mobile office pack out there.

Good.

Weird Thunderbird Bug

Since I upgraded my Thunderbird to version 9 if could no longer paste tables from OpenOffice.org Calc to Thunderbird as a table... they always get inserted as graphics.
Paste-without-format would just copy the plain text, but - of course - no format.
The problem has also been reported with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice.

I did not really notice the first couple of times, until co-workers started to complain that they no longer could copy/paste elements from my "tables" because they were images.

Did some searching on the web and found the bug ... indeed introduced in TB9 supposed to be fixed in FB10 (have to test this on a vbox):

The actual problem is when Thunderbird parses the meta-data of the clipboard, it does a locale-specific parse of a decimal number (the version)... but the version string will always contain a dot (.) and never a comma (,), since it is not really a decimal number. So there is a difference between e.g. German and English system(!) locale, i.e. the problem will appear on German windows, but not on English windows.

Changing the decimal symbol to a dot (.) in the Windows system settings will actually "fix" (circumvent) this problem. I just tested this.
Not sure, which system-wide setting I should keep now...

As I noticed in the bug, the fix is to treat the version as a string, not a (decimal) number.... That's better.

Rejoice: Ancient Greek Spell Checker for OpenOffice

So the last reason that kept you guys from using OpenOffice.org is finally gone:

Ancient Greek Spell Checker | OpenOffice.org repository for Extensions:

Spell Checker for Ancient Greek based on Morpheus word list (provided by the Perseus Project).
This is an alpha version.
Known issues:
1. Hyphenation is not yet supported.
2. Apostrophe is considered an 'ignored character'.
3. Retrieval of long words is quite slow.

At least it proves that OpenOffice.org DOES have proper language support...

OpenOffice Reader for S60 smartphones

officereader - Google Code:

"For the first time ever, it is now possible to read your OpenDocument files from OpenOffice.org, KOffice, AbiWord and Lotus Symphony on your Symbian Smartphone using Open Source software"

So there ... I've downloaded it to my Nokia E71 and managed to open various OpenOffice documents (presentation, spreadsheet & text) and it works quite well so far, especially on text and spreadsheets (presentations don't really make a lot of sense on the small display).

So, if you are an OpenOffice.org user (or you work with OpenDocument documents) and have an S60 phone, go an get it here.

Sun ODF Plugin 1.1 now fully working with Microsoft Office 2007

For lack of an MS Office installation I cannot verify it, but this is great news reported by Malte Timmermann

Excel bug

Boy am I glad that I run StarOffice, not MS Office. A new bug was discovered in Excel that runs like this:

850*77,1 = 100.000

instead of 65535.
Of course I immediately tried in StarCalc, and it does it correctly.

Wonder, if Microsoft users consider this an incompatibility between Calc and Excel...

See the explanation and discussion here, and also the explanation by Joel Spolsky.
So, it is a display bug only... and it is (I fully agree) extremely rare and unlikely...

But still fun ...

Thanks to m³ for the pointer.

Correcting false statements by Microsoft

Erwin Tenhumberg corrects a couple of statements Microsoft usually brings forward against ODF as their common ODF/OOo FUD in Erwin's StarOffice Tango.

eWeek reviews Sun ODF Plugin

Sun Plug-in Brings ODF Support to Microsoft Office: "Sun Microsystems' ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office won't usher in an era of universal document interoperability, but eWEEK Labs believes it is the best option currently available for adding Open Document Format support to Office's massive installed base."

Microsoft Office users can now import and export to ODF

StarOffice 8:

"The Sun ODF Plug-in for Microsoft Office allows users of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint the ability to read, edit and save to the ISO-standard Open Document Format. The ODF Plug-in is available as a free download from the Sun Download Center (SDLC). "

Download the ODF Plug-in.

TechCrunch: Google PowerPoint Clone Coming

Mike Arrington reports of sightings of a Google presentation application (Powerpoint, Impress, ...).
I am using Google docs & spreadsheets occasionally, but I'm still a bit conservative regarding a presentation package "just online".

Mostly when you present - especially with a customer - you struggle with the most basic settings at their conference or meeting room.
Just yesterday a colleague of mine did not get his notebook (DELL) to work with the video beamers of two different customer's. I managed to back up with my notebook (IBM, and I'm proud of it) at one location without any problems, but not at the other ... it forced me to switch my resolution down to 800... uargh...

Image that in that situation you also have to struggle with network and internet connectivity. Many of my customers are quite paranoid when it comes to having visitor laptops in their network, and they don't usually have Wifi.
So especially when it comes to presentations I still like to have them strictly offline.

Then again, you might use just and PC provided by the customer... and there's no need to have OpenOffice/StarOffice or PowerPoint installed...
Come to think of it, this really might make sense.

So lets wait and see what Google will have to offer.
Maybe they will provide a nice little offline tool to (just) run your presentation, or save/download it as a PDF to take along...