LIghtning/Sunbird 0.8 has been released and I wanted to try it out, since it has great potential but didn't really work for me last time (probably because I don't really have a life to calendarise?

I kept getting error messages for calendars that were installed in previous versions of lightning that I couldn't access, so I couldn't remove it.

Short answer:

Storage.sdb

The calendar information seems to be stored in a file called storage.sdb and since I was starting from scratch, it was just a matter of deleting the file to get a working Thunderbird/Lightning again (well, actually it was working previously but with too many annoying error messages.)

Now I have to get the kids calendar back online et. al.

We can sometimes get ahead of ourselves, as techno-geebs. The solutions people generally want rarely needs new flashing lights with special coolant, our priorities should be solving problems, not installing new technologies.

Re: [OT] Pursuing Management to adopt OpenBSD

Chris wrote:

> I been trying (rather unsuccessfully) to convince various clients and
> employers to adopt OpenBSD. Most people, I find, are resistant to
> change and would not use anything they are not familiar with. Others
> would say that if I leave the job, it would be hard to find people who
> can use (or even heard of) OpenBSD and in some places Management never
> heard of OpenBSD and have very little clue as to how good or bad it is
> compared to Linux/ Solaris and Windows thus they will just knock off
> the proposal in 2 seconds.
>
> Is there any way I could convince these people to make the move to
> OpenBSD? Suggestions, tips and tricks along with real life examples
> would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Had an external reason to be reviewing my knowledge/status information on Multilingual CMS and it was timely to note the blog entry Tom Lazar over at tomster.org

The state of the Union^WLinguaPlone

How well does Plone 3 support multi-lingual content at the moment.

use Plone >= 3.0.6

install plone.browserlayer

use LinguaPlone 2.1/svn

use PloneLanguageTool >= 2.1

don't use the default Language selector portlet provided by Plone

LinguaPlone has come a long way to tackle a truly ambitious problem and I'm very sure, as of today, that Plone will prove to be one of the best solutions for managing multi-lingual content on the web. Again.

Definitely have to get my hands on a new machine that can start hosting something.

www.centrelink.gov.au

Looks like one of the fields in the centrelink claim forms doesn't filter input correctly.

I try putting in 'Ofa for my wife's fist name, and I get errors messages for some other part of the form until I get rid of that leading single-quote. That's so 1990's!!!

Imagine if I had no idea about database query problems and use of quotes and single-quotes (read: that would mean I would be for ever confused about why I can't fill the form in). Or worse yet, what would happen if I was malicious and tried to wipe the database back-end with some sad query 'DROP DATABASE *'

It doesn't help that the website doesn't respond to centrelink.gov.au. Ahhhhhh, the joys of being online.

Got a message from Google (you know, those guys that do the search thing on the INTERNET) and they're letting people set up their websites using Google's services (well, we've known this for a while but they've added a few more services.)

Services that Nomoa.com are making use through Google include:

Start Page  http://partnerpage.google.com/nomoa.com

The Start Page lets you create a unique, dynamic place to preview your @nomoa.com Gmail inbox, your Google Docs files and your Google Calendar, collect relevant information from your organization, and search the web. You can customize the layout and content, choosing from thousands of handy Google gadgets.

Chat / GTalk

Google Talk provides a free and simple way to connect instantly with your contacts with instant messaging and free PC-to-PC voice calls anywhere in the world. You can even exchange files with your contacts using Google Talk, with no file size restrictions.

Chat with colleagues from within your start page Now you can chat with colleagues and friends from right within your Google Apps start page. The new Google Talk gadget also allows for multi-person chat, so you can schedule a meeting or get input from multiple people without switching back and forth between chat tabs. If your administrator has activated the start page, add the gadget by clicking on the "Add stuff" link on the top left corner of your homepage, open the 'Google Apps' category of gadgets, and click 'add it now.'

Web Pages http://web.nomoa.com

Sites http://sites.nomoa.com

Google Sites is the easiest way to make information accessible to people who need quick, up-to-date access. People can work together on a Site to add file attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content. Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world. The Google Sites web application is accessible from any internet connected computer.

Email http://mail.nomoa.com

Email with up to 6 GB of storage per email address, mail search tools and integrated chat, powerful search to find messages as fast as you can search the web, and instant messaging built right in. The Gmail web application is accessible from anywhere, and you can even sign in from your mobile phone. Or if you prefer, you can access email from your favorite mail client like Outlook or Thunderbird using POP or IMAP at no additional cost.

Straight Google GMail, but using @nomoa.com as your base address

Calendar http://calendar.nomoa.com

Google Calendar helps individuals and whole organizations manage their time. Not only can you organize your personal calendar, invite others to meetings and events, and keep track of RSVPs, but you can also create shared calendars that multiple people can view or edit. You always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publicize events to the world. The Google Calendar web application is accessible from anywhere, and you can even sign in from your mobile phone.

Google Calendar gallery Many organizations and individuals choose to share their calendars publicly through Google Calendar. Now Google Calendar users can access these calendars through an easy-to-browse gallery. You can find all sorts of interesting public calendars that you can overlay on top of your school or business calendar, so you can keep track of your favorite basketball team's schedule, know when your favorite TV show is a repeat, or follow your favorite band's concert tour. To see the gallery, click the 'Add' button at the top of your list of calendars and choose 'Add a public calendar'

Docs http://docs.nomoa.com

Google Docs makes creating and collaborating on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations simple. Not only can you create and edit your own docs, but you can also have multiple people view or edit together. With Google Docs, you don't have to manage multiple versions of the same attachment from different people. You always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish docs to the world. The Google Docs web application is accessible from anywhere, and you can even sign in and view docs from your mobile phone.

Localisation?

And, what does this all have to do with Talanoa Oceania 2008? Well, you can now go to a new Talanoa site @ Google specifically for the event http://sites.google.com/a/nomoa.com/talanoa/Home . The simplest URL is the generic Nomoa.com sites hosted by Google at http://sites.nomoa.com

Talanoa Oceania 2008 - http://sites.google.com/a/nomoa.com/talanoa/Home

Talanoa Calendar of Events - http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/nomoa.com/render

Of course, you're not going to see anything on the Calendar until you page through to September ~ October.

I'll try to keep the Talanoa Calendar and Talanoa Details/Site up to date. When the event goes, we'll hopefully have some interesting information (videos?) we can put up on the 'NET for the rest of the world to see.

Had the need, and wandered the Ether to find Mail PassView

Mail PassView v1.42 - Recover lost mail passwords
Copyright (c) 2003 - 2007 Nir Sofer

Mail PassView is a small password-recovery tool that reveals the passwords and other account details for the following email clients:

It saved a phone call to customer support, which is another whole story of its own.

Thanks Nir for a great, working, product.

The regular problems taking for ever and a day to resolve happened again when I tried upgrading (due to security warnings) to a more current version of Gallery2.

Unfortunately, the upgrade coincided with Tonfon deciding to give me a hard time with Internet connections.

Clear problems from the upgrade.

FailedLoginsMap

Login fails due to a missing table row, unfortunately the error message isn't too intuitive unless you've been bashing Gallery2 code. The error is apparently caused by a failure in the following query:

select g_info from nomoa_gallery.g2_Schema where g_name='FailedLoginsMap';

If you install Gallery2 and have a login failure with an error message referencing FailedLoginsMap, then try the above query on your database. If you get an empty result, then you probably need the solution I found (from someone else's backup which was indexed through google.

INSERT INTO `g2_Schema` (`g_name`, `g_major`, `g_minor`, `g_createSql`, `g_pluginId`, `g_type`, `g_info`) VALUES
('FailedLoginsMap', 1, 0, 'CREATE TABLE DB_TABLE_PREFIXFailedLoginsMap(n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXuserName varchar(32) NOT NULL,n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXcount int(11) NOT NULL,n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXlastAttempt int(11) NOT NULL,n PRIMARY KEY(DB_COLUMN_PREFIXuserName)n) DB_TABLE_TYPEn/*!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */;nnINSERT INTO DB_TABLE_PREFIXSchema (n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXname,n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXmajor,n DB_COLUMN_PREFIXminorn) VALUES(''FailedLoginsMap'', 1, 0);nn', 'core', 'map', 'a:1:{s:15:"FailedLoginsMap";a:3:{s:8:"userName";a:3:{s:4:"type";i:2;s:4:"size";i:1;s:7:"notNull";b:1;}s:5:"count";a:3:{s:4:"type";i:1;s:4:"size";i:2;s:7:"notNull";b:1;}s:11:"lastAttempt";a:3:{s:4:"type";i:1;s:4:"size";i:2;s:7:"notNull";b:1;}}}');

Image Block.

Got upgraded during the install as well, so you have to specifically 'upgrade' the plugin as administrator.

Image Thumbnails

For some reason, new thumbnails weren't getting created correctly. And I obviously just had to rebuild all the thumbnails to verify (i.e. now the whole gallery had no thumbnails.)

I checked my Graphics Toolkits and they all had the correct references (i.e. toolkits point to the right files on disk) and all tests from the forms worked out ok.

I think I resolved this by just reallocating things around, but that shouldn't(?) have been a solution?

Open Workbench is touted as the "Open-Source Project Scheduling for Windows"

Open Workbench is an open source desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality. Already the scheduling standard for more than 100,000 project managers worldwide, Open Workbench is a free and powerful alternative to Microsoft Project.

Released in December 2005, Open Workbench 1.1.4 provides significant new enhancements and bug fixes. For more information on version 1.1.4, please review the Open Workbench 1.1.4 Release Notes. The source code for Open Workbench 1.1.4 is also available on SourceForge.

Open Workbench provides all the functionality and benefits that project managers expect in a world-class scheduling application:

• Open Workbench can be used and distributed free of charge throughout an enterprise.
• Open Workbench is a stand-alone desktop application that provides robust project scheduling functionality.
• Open Workbench provides the unique ability to generate project schedules based on resource constraints.
• Open source developers will find a ready-made community of business users interested in their enhancements and extensions. The source code and other developer information are available on SourceForge.
• The open source distribution and community development model will now bring quality, innovation and cost advantages to the project management world.
• Open Workbench can also be used in a fully integrated fashion with CA's Clarity solution. Please visit www.niku.com/go/owb for more details.

The only difficulty with the above project is it seems that since it differs in some philosophical approaches to Microsoft's Project Management software, a full use of the system kind of indicates a choice of philosophy. One either chooses the OW way or the MS way.

It also seems that the software was released in 2005, and no clear indication on the website whether it has been updated. Sourceforge file release is December 19, 2005. Documentation files are dated 2005.

Nonetheless, if you want no money software, and you don't want to go the piracy way, then this could be an alternative.

Always good to know information.

Universities With the Best Free Online Courses

No tuition money? No problem! There are many top universities that offer free courses online. This list ranks some of the best free university courses for people who want to enhance personal knowledge or advance in their current field.

I've spent a number of hours listening and viewing a few of the courses over at UC Berkley, and there are definite merits for users.

The University of Southern Queensland is actually on the list, which is interesting since I've recently read a paper on some of their IT Governance and Management efforts.

They even have an online course that should be relevant to many Governments in the Pacific:

Communications, Technology and Policy

Technological change has had major impacts upon the modes of transmission, processing and storage of information and electronic forms of communication. This course explores the social and policy implications of the digitisation of Australian (and international) telecommunications and broadcasting. Specific policy and technology themes and debates will be selected to illustrate the choices facing the information society. The course will also examine media discourses of communication technology.

Course objectives

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1. explain how the means of communication are shaped by complex social factors;
2. understand the impact of communication technologies on government policy and planning;
3. understand the impacts of contemporary means of communication on politics, culture and the economy
4. analyse the changing nature of media and communication institutions from a number of theoretical perspectives;
5. engage critically with media discourses of communication and information technology.

Too bad I don't have any major downloads at the moment.

I'm still having problems with DNS and Tonfon.

This time, instead of just failing for a few websites (like commbank.com.au) it is now failing to let me browse any website by using their name (e.g. google.com.) I can only see a website, if I use their IP Address (e.g. www.nomoa.com's is currently: 72.215.205.147)

Simple Windows solutions? (phase 1) reboot (if that fails) reinstall (if that fails) install new hardware (if that fails - blame it on the customer)

Being as this problem continues for me, I of course am not overly enthusiastic about our Internet service at Tonfon.

Oh, I can of course go to Tonfon's website. Like, now that everyone else's website fails, I really have a keen interest in reading my ISPs pages that says they are beautiful and not the cause of world hunger. 8<

Why is this an issue?

E-mail.

Well, not only is my web browsing effected, but now I can't get my email and I am not sure whether email destined for me is coming to Tonga or is in limbo, or worse, just eaten up by the cyber-sphere.

Transactions.

If you use the Internet for anything other than just browsing (i.e. you might be a big BEBO player) then you really need to have these foundations things working at the ISP.

Prayer is a conversation? When's the last time you listened while you were praying?

Finding the freedom within; A prison prayer program strives to give inmates a new outlook on what it means to be free.

"We've been taught that prayer involves talking to God," White said. "It's also important to pay attention to the other side of the conversation, which is listening to God. There are a number of passages in the Bible in which Jesus pulled away from the busyness of the day to go commune in silence."

Maybe Sister Mary White's message needs a little preaching, ooops, listening to here in Tonga?

The devils in the details.

We finished last-weeks yap rounds with an evening of drinks at the Dupinisia Restaurant and Bar. As I recall, I was soo late that the entrees were already finished, and there wasn't anything after that except liquids.

It's a good thing we had a BBQ going at the house, even if I missed out on that one as well. This isn't looking so good.

Briefing

Subject: National ICT Strategy Development to Augment National Development

The National ICT Strategic Planning workshop brought together stakeholders from Government, Civil Society and the Private Sector. Workshop delegates assessed and initiated various policies, programmes, project proposals which they have committed to refining over the next four months. Likewise, Government is ensuring a minimal number of these projects are fully functional, at the launch of the National ICT direction scheduled for mid 2008.

Government having finalised our National Strategic Plan in 2006, have embedded significant ICT within capacity development, service development, and provisioning. In recognition of the interdependency between ICT and National Development, the Government of Tonga has long sought and accepted assistance for various ICT initiatives including the recent SOPAC sponsored e-Readiness Assessment, and the National ICT Strategic Planning workshops held with the assistance of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Commitments from the Prime Minister and senior Government officials to workshop delegates have strengthened their resolve to pursue refinements of ICT Strategies for National Development. Although various Ministers continue pushing ICT as a significant enabler of National Development, the statements from the Prime Minister at the workshop was the first public direction to stakeholders

Participants have clearly identified human capacity retention and development as a core requirement for engaging the benefits of ICT. Several options are being investigated within the working groups targeting both long-term policies and short-term projects.

Augmenting the National Strategic Plan through ICT, six Working Groups have been formed from the workshop to refine ICT plans for: Education, e-Government, Homes and Communities, Industry, Legislation, Technology and Infrastructure.

“To ensure greater involvement of Civil Society and the Private Sector, Government must be a catalyst in the ICT arena.” says Alfred Soakai of the Department of Communications. “Government recognises and promotes long term economic growth must be led by Civil Society and the Private Sector, this Workshop is one of the initiatives of Government in the ICT field to move us all forward. We can do more, and bringing together all stake holders is an important beginning.”

The Department of Communications, again with assistance from the Commonwealth Secretariat continue to support and direct discourse.

Where to Now ?

Interested individuals and organisations are invited to participate in online discourse at the following addresses:

http://groups.google.com/group/tg-educ/ Education Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-egov/ e-Government Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-home/ Homes and Communities Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-indus/ Industry Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-legis/ Legislation Working Group
http://groups.google.com/group/tg-tech/ Technology and Infrastructure Working Group
The discussions are public, including various documents, directions related to each group.

Endnotes:

The Tonga Strategic Development Plan is available online at http://www.tonga-now.to/Article.aspx?ID=600

The Working Groups currently meet online using GoogleGroups.

Walked into one of the local mobile phone vendors to get an update (my youngest daughter killed my phone.)

I picked up a cheap TOP$150 Nokia unit although they had a batch of cheap refurbished units. Geez those refurbished units looked real bad.

Who knows how many phones i've bought in the past couple of years, but I think I know the value I get out of the phones and at the moment I don't need a smart phone just so long as it has good reception (it's raining badly at the moment so I don't know whether the bad reception is the phone or the network.)

A little edged black box was in the glass cage so I asked the 'Initia, "do you sell any?" and was I not ready for the answer.

"Ohhh, you wouldn't BELIEVE how well it sells. I bought 65 and there's only a few left. At one time it was the only thing people wanted to see. Now, I sell about two or three a week."

Me: "Wow, that's good for you."

'Initia: "Arghhh, the margin's pretty bad"

Me: "But what good is it without the Internet access?"

'Initia: "I can do that for you. And on all these phones here " (waving his hand over a Nokia N95, iPhone, and other TOP$1500+ phones) "I can get you on the Internet."

Me: flabbergasted and feeling I must have slept when Tonga's mobile phone providers started offering 3G or Data.

Me: confused "but how ...?"

'Initia: "Simple, you just need to have broadband at your house, and you get this little thing ..."

Me: (mind lights up) "Oh wifi, no thanks" [WIFI is setting up a wireless network.]

No thanks, if I'm stuck at home or in the office to use the Internet I might as well jump onto a computer with a large screen.

Anyhow, you can buy your iPhone at Lord's Mobile or Narrottam's and be with the latest hippest people in Tonga. Or, you can be a has-been dork like myself and just get a friggin phone with good reception.

Met up with someone who got a phone that can activate 2 SIM Cards at the same time. Now, that would be a practical telephone for Tonga.

We're meeting this week at the Basilica to try and thrash out some concerted direction for ICT in Tonga.

Knowing in the back of my mind/back, that we went through something like this before, it was only a matter of time for Google to reveal our previous effort "Facilitating National Information and Communication Technology Development Strategies - Tonga National Workshop Report. (PDF report)" Back in 2002.

As with all things relegated to the organic membranes for storage, things got fuzzy over time so it was good to finally see the actual document and to reconcile some of the things we thought we remembered. No, we didn't specify a strategy, yes we specified a number of directions for the approach and YES the whole process bogged down on the one area of conflict highlighted in the report.

Nonetheless, looking back at that 2002 report (seems aeons ago though) some significant progress has been achieved independently of a directed national strategy. The private sector services for ICT has not only grown/expanded, but it has also shown resilience and significant viability. Likewise, the second carrier (data/voice) Tonfon, has also shown viability.

Six working groups came out of that 2002 workshop.

• Public Awareness Task Group did quite a lot of work but floundered after about 12 ~ 18 months.
• Legislation Task Group didn't seem to ever find themselves.
• Upgrade qualifications and skills Task Group followed the Legislation Task Group
• Public Infrastructure Group performed their reporting efforts admirably, but then splintered greatly with some of  the other tasks.
• Government Infrastructure Task Group pursued most of their action items
• Telecentres Task Group (today's Community Centers?) didn't seem to do anything
• ICT Co-ordination Task Force don't seem to have recovered from that final heated break-up of the workshop.

Weird to look back and find that the most effective of the work-groups happened to be the most controversial (at the meeting) of the groups, but coincidentally also the only group that did not have communications costs with external entities.

One thing is clear, the high level bodies within a workshop is not indicative of that workshop being a success. One of the sectors with most senior attendance was education, and they were the worst performing of all the working groups (from my revisionist history.) The most one-sided was Government Infrastructure, and whether the results were successes, seemed to be most effective at pursuing tasks.

I believe the most difficult of the groups was Public Awareness as it required significant communications costs  as well as a broader(?) skillset ?

Quickly lessons from the results of 2002 ?

• Senior leadership (not your average champions) required.
• Motivation factors need to be maintained
• We may do better with smaller or fewer working groups but they definitely need sponsorship
• Communications costs are high for outsourcing, and their high in disparate working groups too.
• National reviews (possibly tied to motivation?)

Weird things happen in the Pacific, consider that Tonga was appointed chair of the regional ICT Taskforce (and I don't think anyone from that leadership group is actually active during these deliberations.)

 

Tonga Leads Regional ICT Taskforce

Tonga was appointed Chair of a regional ICT Taskforce at the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat (PIFS) ICT Policy and Ministerial Meeting held in Wellington NZ last week. The meeting was attended by Pacific Island Communication Ministers’, senior government officials and regional non-government organisations.

The taskforce consists of Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Fiji, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea and Tonga. It was established as part of the meeting to investigate and report on pertinent ICT matters within the region and implement the Digital Strategy formulated by PIFS.

What do you think ?

Someone was foolish enough to ask me to come over to Vava'u for today and tomorrow and I am supposed to be brain dumping for some people from the Commonwealth Secretariat, yadda yadda yadda.

I must be losing my touch if people still invite me to these things.

Man, I was really surprised at how good the hosting facilities are. The place isn't five star, but it is functioning well in key areas such as clean rooms, clean bathrooms, good taste decor (which isn't really saying anything since 'Ofa thinks/knows I have horrible taste in too many things, it's a man thing.)

Anyhow, I thought when I walked in. Geez 'Ofa, you should have come along for the week-end and asked your sister to look after the kids.

Anyhow, back to the Conference. There's some cool people to meet here, like me??? ha ha ha.

I'm meeting up with the real people (who can make a difference) and the real people as in the bodies trying hard to not get in the way in Ha'apai and Vava'u as we trample over them with our policy making in Tongatapu.

Oh yeah, we're here for the Commonwealth Secretariat program Commonwealth Connects (url) (I still am not too keyed up on all these meta organisations sprouting from various government todo lists.)

The blogosphere seems awash with forwarded discussions that Gmail is offering IMAP for some of its/their clients.

Wow!!

I just checked and I'm one of the fortunates who have IMAP enabled for their accounts.

IMAP - Problems for Tonga

Unfortunately, for "remote" locations  like Tonga where Internet connectivity is relatively slow, Gmail connectivity through POP3/SMTP is already precarious. I know IMAP is not going to solve that particular problem. Here in Tonga, you get disconnections and timeouts from various overseas sites, including Google's GMAIL, Microsoft's MSN/Live services (Hotmail, messaging.) Using IMAP in this environment increases your communications requirements, increasing failures and poor service.

IMAP from the US is not a good solution in Tonga, (for now.)

Over the past couple of months as 'broadband' users have increased in Tonga, most people I have talked to are beginning to meet with more and more disconnection errors (such as not being able to log into your Instant Messaging whether it is with Yahoo Talk or GTalk or Windows/Live Messenger. More people are having problems even connecting to Web Mail services such as GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail.

IMAP - Promised benefits

The benefits of Gmail's IMAP (or setting up your own IMAP enabled mail-server) is when you want to deal with email on multiple machines. ('Ofa's already into that situation.) In our situation, we have too many people in our household who want to use computers, have email accounts compared to the available machines. And, this is only going to get worse as the kids grow up and want to spend more time doing 'stuff' on the computer(s).

The solution for 'Ofa's problems for checking her email, is to install our IMAP Client (Thunderbird) on multiple machines connected to her GMail account. This means that which ever machine is available, she can whomp down on that chair and have access to the current state of her email activities.

IMAP let's her see all her email from any machine, but at a faster pace than using a web e-mail (Internet browser) interface. One clear example of how mail is faster using Thunderbird than Internet Explorer is when you want to send pictures. Being the gloating/doting parents, we are always sending photos through email. Using Thunderbird to send and view photos is A LOT FASTER and A LOT SIMPLER than using an Internet browser.

A related scenario of the advantages of IMAP enabled mail servers is why we have it installed IMAP by default at various school sites in Tonga:

1. allows the whole school to have email, even if you have few machines
2. much faster access than having local users accessing email through the slow Internet connection
3. allows the use of web mail front ends
4. everyone can check their email on any of the connected machines
5. no hassle with configuring clients (everyone uses an Internet browser)
6. no hassle with upgrades when clients upgrade or when the server needs to upgrade

For the techno-dweeb, you can either read Comparing Two Approaches to Remote Mailbox Access: IMAP vs. POP or just install your own server.

POP was designed to support "offline" mail processing...

IMAP can also do offline processing, but its special strength is in online and disconnected operation...

The essential point is that with the online paradigm, one's incoming and archive message folders are stored on a server and may be accessed uniformly from different computers at different times, ... This is not an important goal for those who always use the same computer to access their email, but it is a very important one for those who use multiple computers.

For schools/workspaces where few computers exist, but multiple people need email IMAP is an important email tool.

For you with the laptop to take around, and a desktop machine (whether at work or at home) IMAP gives you the option to compose/read email on your laptop or your desktop. You can now continue correspondence/work related to email on any of the machines you have connected.

Haven't had much time to try this out myself, and my kids are not yet old enough to look at it, but the below listed software seems interesting for Schools to review using, or parents with High School kids?

GeoGebra is a dynamic mathematics software for education in secondary schools that joins geometry, algebra and calculus.

On the one hand, GeoGebra is a dynamic geometry system. You can do constructions with points, vectors, segments, lines, conic sections as well as functions and change them dynamically afterwards.

On the other hand, equations and coordinates can be entered directly. Thus, GeoGebra has the ability to deal with variables for numbers, vectors and points, finds derivatives and integrals of functions and offers commands like Root or Extremum.

These two views are characteristic of GeoGebra: an expression in the algebra window corresponds to an object in the geometry window and vice versa.

Had to spend 2 days getting email working on a friends server because he failed to adequately test his installation. It seems that after the mail server was installed, back in 2006 our friend has continued to make improvements to his mail server that eventually had bits of it non-functional without his knowing. 2 years of ad-hoc updates can do those things to your system.

The key lesson I got out of making sure email could work on that system is there are two things you want (NEED) to know when looking at any system.

1. Where the logs are kept, and how to enable them
2. What are the diagnostics, testing tools

Recap: We want to use this email server, we can read our emails but we can't send emails.

Since most of the people using the email server tend to be using the webmail client (like using gmail or hotmail) it seems no one has ever encountered that sending mail from a desktop client doesn't work.

Normally, desktop email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook, Windows Live Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird) will send email through a specified "port" called smtp. The documented "port" for clients to use is called submission.

Weird tangents in time ? This laptop hard-drive just couldn't be resurrected anymore (three trips to the refrigerator worked fine, but sooner than later it wasn't going to work anymore.)

I took the machine in to the shop for the guys to replace the hard-drive, they couldn't ghost the hard-drive, so they reinstalled all the base software which included Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft Office 2003.

As some one who has dutifully been 'beta-testing' Open Office since version pre-1.0 and have recently downloaded the current 2.30 release I was just arriving at the stage to reinstall my Office Productivity Software.

I subscribe to Planet OpenOffice's News Feed and this morning caught up with some sad indicators of where Open Office is not heading.

Michael Meeks- 2007-10-02- Tuesday 

Very disappointed to read Kohei's blog. Sun re-writing a contributor's code because they refuse to accept the licensing terms they give to other people: the LGPL; saddening. Sun chooses the licensing for OO.o; why choose a license they won't accept themselves ?

...

What we don't like is the insistence that all and any contributed code, shipped at OpenOffice.org must end up being owned by Sun. In this case, the solver is a nicely separated, individual shared library UNO component and completely de-coupled from OO.o. I'm personally a fan of the LGPL, and OO.o (and StarOffice) contains lots of non-Sun owned modules including several LGPL modules, in it's core: eg. Daniel Velliard's nice libxml2 library. Due to static linking, there is even pure LGPL code floating outside the 'external' project. So - why is Kohei's nicely separated, working, specified, UNO component not acceptable purely under the project's license: the LGPL ?

and then

Kohei Yoshida- History of Calc Solver

I’ve been trying to avoid writing a piece like this simply because if I wrote one, there would be a lot of bitterness involved, and I don’t like to put a blame on anybody. But when I saw a lot of confusion over the state of my Calc Solver in Barcelona (not the least of which is Louis’ announcement on Calc Solver for 3.0 during his keynote speech, which was truly a bad surprise for me), as well as this statement by Stefan Taxhet (st) in the issue page outlining Sun’s intention to duplicate the entire work I did (for free), I felt like it was time for me to explain what actually happened surrounding my effort to write an Optimization Solver for Calc.

...

But I’d love to be proven wrong. I’d love to be proven that Sun still are willing to work with us, to make OO.o truly a wonderful product as well as a project attractive to prospective code contributors. But there is nothing I, as a single insignificant mere mortal can do to influence the behemoth that is Sun. It’s impossible to make an even slightest change in how the project is run, even after countless hours of coding and more than 10,000 lines of code generation (which I received no compensation for and involved quite a lot of personal sacrifice). In the end, I made no difference at all. Sad, truly sad.

To make a long story short, OpenOffice as a project is starting to find holes in the facade of its openness.

IBM Support for OpenOffice

IBM currently ships what is almost effectively FREE Office Productivity Suite called IBM Lotus SmartSuite (being that sometimes you can get it in OEM bundles for very little.) This suite in 1999 handled tables in wordprocessing documents a lot better than OpenOffice in 2007 (that's not comforting.)

When IBM recently announced that they were going to contribute code to OpenOffice it made me smile, just like they contributed code to Lotus Notes and took the premier Messaging, Groupware product to being unknown overnight, or their contribution to Lotus 123 a fully functional spreadsheet numerical analysis tool that historians recall having somewhere hidden in the IBM hallways. There was once a competitive word-processing program at IBM DisplayWrite which as I recall was second only to WordPerfect at one time. Sadly, it now only sells for their MVS/CICS platforms?

Lotus bought the 1st Windows WordProcessor Ami Pro --> Word Pro at its time, this was a superior word processor to Microsoft's Windows Word 1.x 2.x.

IBM in PC Software is just weird, and with a very poor track record. I would not use their involvement as a great measure of success, but potential danger of causing a software system to fail. If you remember OS/2 and Tangent/PINK, they are very huge PC Software developments that lauded success and IBM can share significant blame for their failures.

Microsoft Office

The weird thing about the reinstallation of this laptop, and the disaster that is unfolding with the mechanics of servicing OpenOffice non-Sun developers, is that I was already being pushed to use Microsoft Office anyway.

OOXML and ODF is a waste of time for me, for the foreseeable future all my friends are on Microsoft Office and conversion tools are coming along to convert documents to the 'next(tm)' format.

Microsoft Word works for me, Office Write is a struggle to do what I want to do on a daily basis (inserting tables from the spreadsheet is a major dysfunctional event with Open Office.) I deplore users of Powerpoint, but have no real preference between it and OO Impress.

Firefox, Thunderbird, GTalk, WL Messenger, WL Writer are my communications packages, and they are not dependent on OO nor MSO, although 3 of 2 are dependent on MS Windows.

Conclusion

I'll most likely try out OO again when 3.0 release candidates come out, but by then I'll probably be embedded in Microsoft Office 2010 to much care.

An aside question, since mostly we're all standardised on Times New Roman, Arial but what happens if someone on our various desktops decides to install something other than Microsoft Windows ? Egads, do not say .... Or, worse again, they publish things on the Internet or send email without coming through some translator between Desktop X and Windows?

http://unifont.org hosts a guide to a number of high quality UNICODE fonts that are freely available for use by you and yours. If this were the days of Windows 95, I would demand that we all move to this site and standardise on better fonts.

http://unifont.org  This web site provides information about Unicode fonts, Unicode-enabled software, internationalization, and Unicode usability issues on free/libre/open source (FLOSS) operating systems.

(Un)Fortunately, Windows 2000+ standardised on Unicode fonts and so those funny looking "tolois" are actually available on your Windows box, it's just not that simple getting it up. One major advantage of everyone standardising on UNICODE fonts is so we all have at least the "smart" double quotes in the same place.

Curly Quotes

But on the Mac, the opening curved-double-quote character is represented internally by the decimal number 210. And on Windows, at least in some applications, it’s represented by the number 147.

So if you create a document in Windows that uses curved quotation marks, and you send me that document, and I view it on my Mac, the Mac translates the number 147 into a different character altogether. It doesn’t look like a quotation mark at all. (See illustrations below.) And vice versa; if I create a document that uses double quotes on the Mac and you view it on a Windows machine, you’ll see some other non-quotation-mark character.

...

At any rate, the point is that if you’ve written a story with smart quotes turned on, then all your quotation marks and apostrophes are curved, and if you want to submit your story to us, we’d like you to change that before submitting.

A good example of this problem is when you come across websites and things look weird, and you get square blocks instead of text. Double Quotes, or smart quotes are a leading contender for font differences that do not translate well on the HTML. The above and below links have further information.

Other references:

On the use of some Microsoft Windows characters in HTML. 

Dan's Web Tips | Character Sets - ASCII and ye shall receive...