Video Overview
Technology can be a disrupter or an enabler depending which side of the fence you are on. Understanding the delicate balance between the leading edge and bleeding edge of technology is key to survival for many information content companies. Leveraging technology to extend products or services has never been easier, but truly understanding the implications of embracing one technology over the other is a challenge. This panel explores what technology is hot, what technology is passé, and what technologies are on the horizon that will be the future enablers or disrupters.
Moderator
John Patrick: Author, consultant, corporate director, President, Attitude LLC and former VP – Internet Technology at IBM
Panelists
Jason Calacanis: Blogger and CEO, Weblogs, Inc.
Jeff Pulver: Chairman and Founder, pulver.com, Inc.
Chris Shipley: Co-Founder & Editorial Director, Guidewire Group, LLC
Dr. Robert Sutor: VP – Standards, IBM Corporation
The word “open” has taken on many connotations over the years. It can suggest a willingness to try new things or act as a nice, safe euphemism when trying to determine if someone at a bar is a hooker.
And, for the last several years, “open” has also begun to mean “free” (not to mention “better”) due in large part to OpenOffice.org (OOo for short).
In a bare knuckle match, OOo could easily go toe-to-toe with Microsoft Office. From heavy hitters like Word and PowerPoint to even the lowly, enfeebled Access, OOo has its own easy-to-use, highly functional counterpart. Best of all, OOo is free and has to stay that way. Unlike a beta version of, say, WordPerfect Lightning, OOo, in accordance with the license it was released under, can never not be free. Moreover, it supports Open Document Format (ODF), a file format that can be used by any office application.
“By opting for ODF,” says Louis Suárez-Potts, OpenOffice.org Community Manager, “one can then promote the best implementation and also couple it with proprietary applications that may do what you want better. For instance, say one chooses OOo for public kiosks (libraries, etc.) and Corel’s WordPerfect for some things–presuming WP adopts the ODF, as it has periodically claimed it would–and StarOffice for others, and IBM’s Workplace for yet others, and everyone uses Google Apps because it’s cool. All these applications can work together because they all can use the ODF.”
And not only does OOo get rid of irritating doc files, you can customize the applications too. Sort of.
“We have, like Firefox, a stream of free extensions that add new features to the application all the time,” says Suárez-Potts. “That’s fantastic.”
Unfortunately, OOo has no where near the number of extensions that Firefox does, but the ones they do have certainly make already-efficient applications even handier and somewhat dandier.
For example, users can download the LanguageTool extension that acts as a grammar and style checker in English as well as German, Dutch, and, why not, Polish. For musicians, there is also LilyPond, which makes music notation all the simpler. Also, for anyone too lazy to be bothered with Googling, the QuasiWiki extension gives users the option to access Wikipedia with a simple right-click of the mouse.
While OOo gradually gets its open sourcing foot in the door here in the States, John McCreesh, OOo Marketing Project Lead, predicts that the glaring lack of a price tag will have Americans welcoming OOo with open arms.
“US corporations and government agencies will find it increasingly hard to explain to their stockholders and voters why they are throwing away money on something they could get for free,” says McCreesh.
And just because most of us are still using the edition of Microsoft Office that came out before shoes ever had to be X-rayed by airport security, don’t think that OOo isn’t already overhauling the way people create information and communicate.
From Slovakia to Madagascar, OOo is spreading. “In today’s world, access to high quality software in your native language is a pre-requisite for being taken seriously, whether you’re presenting your personal cover letter, lobbying governments, saving the rainforest, whatever,” says McCreesh.
“OpenOffice.org is a world leader in breaking down the ‘digital divide’ between the rich and powerful who can afford commercial software prices, and the vast majority of the world’s population for whom licenses are simply unaffordable.”
On the other hand, OOo isn’t all sugar and spice.
“We may be altruistic, but we still want to give the world ‘the leading international office suite,’” says McCreesh.
Adding to that notion, Suárez-Potts explains, “It’s about working together on common problems and with common objectives… With open source, everyone materially gains.”
Finally, in a show of good sportsmanship and dedication to innovation, OOo’s developers welcome any challengers. “I would be very depressed if ten years from now, no one had come up with a better set of tools for office workers,” says McCreesh.
