Tech Soup is running an in depth comparative review of the open source and free Open Office compared to Microsoft Office. See also the Mac version of Open Office, NeoOffice. I’m going to be interviewing a man from Open Office as soon as I can get myself together enough to make it happen. It’ll be in the Net Squared interviews section. Did you know that Open Office has an estimated 40 million users and 60 language projects underway?

Maybe it’s naughty and I ought to just forge headfirst into the open source world, but I feel like I need compatibility with Microsoft format every once in awhile at least. In that spirit I’m going to check out ThinkFree Office Online. See also AJAXwrite (thanks Noka for pointing that one out).

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Word, OpenOffice, FOSS, excell, powerpoint, ThinkFree

Anybody know a good solution to the problem of wanting more than one (like personal and work) social bookmarking accounts? If you’re logged into one, you’ve pretty much got to log out of it and log into the other if you want to switch. This is totally counterintuitive to the river of content that is web 2.0. Workflow or tech solutions anyone? The best I can think of is to just use two different systems. Save work in Spurl.net and personal in del.icio.us, for example. Really no fun, though. And it complicates the use of otherwise fantastic tools like OnlyWire.

Maybe if I link to Identity Woman she’ll come save the day and help us out with some ideas or perspective.

Grazr is one of apparently several mini OPML browsers, but it’s the one I’ve used so far and I like it. If you haven’t seen it in action, check out the “my favorites” box in my sidebar. I think there are lots of different and interesting ways that this kind of tool could be used, so here’s a list of ideas I’ve come up with so far (please feel free to add more).

1. When you create an OPML file to share with people, give them a way to look inside it by posting a Grazr box next to your write up of the file.
2. Have a blogroll on the side of your site? Save space and display more information by displaying your blogroll in a Grazr box. (I have.)
3. Planning an event someplace? Pack a whole lot of information about the event, its participants and its location all into one OPML file displayed in a box.
4. Going to a conference and want to share info with your loved ones? You could set up a box to display your flight schedule’s RSS feed, your blog posts, flickr photos tagged for the conference, etc.
5. Have a project that you want to discuss that has multiple subsections with subsections therein? Put it into outline form and display it with one of these groovy boxes.
6. Create a list and let readers click through to the most recent photos, audio or text regarding each item in the list.
7. Schedule tasks with progressively more granular descriptions or instructions. Some people will only click through to see that Jane is working at 2:00, others may click through to see that she’s calling Joe on the phone to talk about subjects A, B and C.

This list has infinite potential, but I’ve run out of time. You get the idea. Working with OPML outlines is going to get easier and easier and this new way of displaying them is a key step. Heck, this list could be elaborated on, have lots of details added, and work great inside one of these dynamic boxes itself.

Check out the awesome new Explore feature over at the mapping service Community Walk. Not only increasingly functional but professional looking too. Search, tag clouds and so much more. I should write up a comparative review of these different mapping services. I said I was going to awhile ago, but the head of Community Walk told me I should wait a bit for their redesign. Now I can see why!

It must be the NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network) conference coming up in Seattle next month, all of the sudden I’m adding myself to peoples’ Frapr friends maps. We’ll see if that sticks. Frapr is very useful for events organizing, see for example the NTEN map of attendees. You’ll notice that it’s very East Coast dominated. Hint hint, if you are interested in non profit technologies and are on the west coast you should think about coming. And think fast cause the early registration period ends next week I think, maybe this week. Here’s a handy do-da of images conference attendees have uploaded.

When the Net Squared conference registration opens, we’ll be using another system to map out the locations of attendees, called (forgive me, maybe it’s a joke) Attendr. See, for example, this well used Attendr map of the recent MashupCamp. Its a very smooth system, easy to use. The one concern I have about it is the “people this user would like to meet/people who would like to meet this user” feature. Specifically, I worry about some people being very in demand and some people not. I know this is how it works in real life, but I don’t know how helpful it will be for online event organizing. Maybe its the middle of that continuum where it will make the most sense.

Hope this post was useful to folks interested in easy to use mapping systems and conferences.

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In response to a question from some one in the education technology field asking what some good feeds to subscribe to, here’s an OPML file of some of the best/ my favorites. eLearningFeeds

If you’re unfamiliar with OPML, check out this post on the basics.

The file contains:

• Cool Cat Teacher Blog
• EdTechTalk.com
• elearnspace
• Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ OLDaily RSS 2.0
• Weblogg-ed News: The Read/Write Web in the Classroom

I’m having so much fun putting these lists together that I’m fantasizing about starting a separate blog just for cool research OPML files, to try and help fill the space with more than just tech feeds. I should probably learn how to build the files more elegantly first, but it sure would be fun.

Are readers digging these OPML resources?

TagCentral Tags: eLearning, education, RSS, OPML, podcasts, feeds, news

I’ve been wanting to put together some good OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) files all week, inspired by Anne Zelenka’s giant Blogher file and the conversation I had with legal blogger Dennis Kennedy about the incredible potential for this medium.

An OPML file is, in this case, a single file you can use to subscribe to a number of RSS (definition) feeds all at once. This means that with one link you are subscribed to all future content from selected sources. I think that selecting a handful of key feeds in certain topic areas and offering those to other people is going to be a powerful way that information-overload gatekeepers help the rest of the world find and easily subscribe to the best news sources available. In this sense everyone who puts together OPML files is like an editor of anthologies; only the authors that the editor selects provide ongoing, dynamic contributions.

Without further theoretical ado, I’ll tell you how to use these files and then tell you what I’ve put in them.
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