Wikicalc deserves some props for being a groovy open source spreadsheet wiki that's very decent for it's price, and works through some crucial bits of excel, so as to retain basic formulas and such.
With jot.com going to google.com last week there's another bunch of kids in the same playgroundsure to bring good attention to the arena where more transparent business practices can be developed, standardized, and optimized. Their product is sleek AJAX based and with calendar and location parsing technology built in this is one another slick development for the google folks.
And so that brings it around to the c-village 'hood skool. - charlottesville.jot.com - starting out with some of the non-general stuff, and working towards the line item morsels.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Carnegie Mellon Technology in the Arts
had a great time. Greeted at the entrance of CMU by a talking computer that seemed to recognize my lostness - "Do you need directions" came the metallic max headromesque voice.... I wasn't sure how advanced this computer was and assumed it was referring to direction in the sense of a few meters, as opposed to some greater direction in life....Anyhow, i responded yes about the time a friendly human concierge arrived to get me to the first meeting of the day. Not sure whether the human was controlled by the computer or whether it was of higher elegance... anyhow....
And as it happened the first meeting "Funding Technology Projects" was right down the hall. Met with Mr. Mackie of the Andrew Mellon Foundation - he is the head of Research in Technology Funding. He emphasized open source "if you're looking to spend on proprietary software look elsewhere" (http://www.mellon.org/research_it.html) and also emphasized use of open standards (The Mellon Foundation (along with MIT and others) funded dSpace, which is something we already ascribe to through Greenstone). **** If we're interested in collaborating on a school bus full of digitization equipment this would be the guy to talk to. they are playing with huge sums of money and we should really try to start something with them "if we fund you once we'll probably fund you again" -- in other words they like long term relationships.
Although initially slated to speak on Joomla's content management system (marshallrotc.org Virginia Verified Voting) when I got to looking at the schedule two other presenters wanted to cover Joomla and so I shifted my focus to Greenstone and IBM's analysis of wikipedia showing the underlying stability of the wiki format. Also met with Ellen Arnold, who invited me to be a grant reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). I suspect this is a bit like being invited into the book of the month club, anyhow, I was earnestly flattered and accepted.
Otherwise enjoyed Pittsburgh a fair bit. Solid steel town, and affordable housing - imagine paying under 70K for a *solid* brick house? Went up Washington hill for the view, ate a hoagie, and went to a comic book convention across the street from my lodging. Very glad to be back, however must admit Pittsburgh is a most impressive and down to earth city. I also studied some of the requirements for funding in Pennsylvania, and would be glad to pass on some of that to the folks in Carlisle if they're not already well aware. The Bayer Foundation seemed very interested when I was talking about library->library services.
And as it happened the first meeting "Funding Technology Projects" was right down the hall. Met with Mr. Mackie of the Andrew Mellon Foundation - he is the head of Research in Technology Funding. He emphasized open source "if you're looking to spend on proprietary software look elsewhere" (http://www.mellon.org/research_it.html) and also emphasized use of open standards (The Mellon Foundation (along with MIT and others) funded dSpace, which is something we already ascribe to through Greenstone). **** If we're interested in collaborating on a school bus full of digitization equipment this would be the guy to talk to. they are playing with huge sums of money and we should really try to start something with them "if we fund you once we'll probably fund you again" -- in other words they like long term relationships.
Although initially slated to speak on Joomla's content management system (marshallrotc.org Virginia Verified Voting) when I got to looking at the schedule two other presenters wanted to cover Joomla and so I shifted my focus to Greenstone and IBM's analysis of wikipedia showing the underlying stability of the wiki format. Also met with Ellen Arnold, who invited me to be a grant reviewer for the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). I suspect this is a bit like being invited into the book of the month club, anyhow, I was earnestly flattered and accepted.
Otherwise enjoyed Pittsburgh a fair bit. Solid steel town, and affordable housing - imagine paying under 70K for a *solid* brick house? Went up Washington hill for the view, ate a hoagie, and went to a comic book convention across the street from my lodging. Very glad to be back, however must admit Pittsburgh is a most impressive and down to earth city. I also studied some of the requirements for funding in Pennsylvania, and would be glad to pass on some of that to the folks in Carlisle if they're not already well aware. The Bayer Foundation seemed very interested when I was talking about library->library services.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
sketch-up google earth
'nuf said. great software, fun and easy for architecture, stage, gis, and connected neatly to google earth. more on the projects @ http://www.rockbridgebusiness.com
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Monetizing library records marc, usmarc, marcxml, marc 97 etc with Koha and the Liblime Enhancement
OK - started this a few months ago, and really not totally convinced Koha is gonna do what I need - neverthless it's worth a look if all you've got are a bunch of Marc Records. Greenstone.org's product, however, handles marc and a gajillion other formats....
The Enhanced Koha LibLime style is an amazing piece of code, picking up where the left of the geeksquads in dev land leave off - integrating a functional and user-friendly Amazon.com row into the matrix let's users "buy it now" from amazon while browsing through the collection in Koha gives libraries looking to justify digitizing their collections added incentive.
Getting Koha running can be a bit of work, depending on your operating system. IndexData does most of their work on Debian based systems (think Ubuntu) - and if you're running anything else it may take a few tries to get the whole thing running.
For a better understanding of the install process they have created a wiki and decent documentation.
The Enhanced Koha LibLime style is an amazing piece of code, picking up where the left of the geeksquads in dev land leave off - integrating a functional and user-friendly Amazon.com row into the matrix let's users "buy it now" from amazon while browsing through the collection in Koha gives libraries looking to justify digitizing their collections added incentive.
Getting Koha running can be a bit of work, depending on your operating system. IndexData does most of their work on Debian based systems (think Ubuntu) - and if you're running anything else it may take a few tries to get the whole thing running.
For a better understanding of the install process they have created a wiki and decent documentation.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
webhuddle - online whiteboard, collaboration tool, application desktop sharing, plus voip motherload hits the open source scene
Well it's been something I've been looking for forf a long long time - Webhuddle finally provides an open source VOIP + Desktop Sharing + Whiteboard software tool for the open source community. the developers are cool, and the forum is starting to take off. if this keeps up most websites will wiki+whiteboard their way through development processes plus database meetings and discussions for training. Most excellent. in case you were wondering... yeah - it's on sourceforge
Here's the author's tutorial on uploading content Working with webhuddle
Here's the author's tutorial on uploading content Working with webhuddle
Monday, April 10, 2006
Garlic Mustard / Alliaria petiolata / Alliaire officinale
Garlic Mustard / Alliaria petiolata / Alliaire officinale
A truly excellent friend in the Appalachian Spring and Summer - Garlic Mustard gives salads a bit of extra yum and good for ya too. Another invader - this one from Europe (Hungary and Chechoslovakia). It contains alliarinoside - A unique anti-insectish glucoside, and several other isoflavones. It goes great with kudzu vinegar :)
Monday, April 03, 2006
more microdem + some white_dune
Anyhow, this week is back to 3d rendering in microdem and getting these GEOTIFF files to cooperate... also learning the joys and aches of white_dune - the open source VRML editor
ps for some really sweet Virtual Reality Markup Language (.wrl) files on the natch check out Peter Guth's (Microdem's Author) directory tree. http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/microdem/target3D/Buildings/
VRML Bridges, powerlines, buildings, tanks, aircraft, helicopters etc... totally badass - all in VRML 1.0 specification.
To convert these guys for white_dune (VRML 2 (some folks call it VRML97) you can use a nifty piece of software called Crossroads 3D if that's not doing it for you (it can drop out occasionally on large files) the vrml1 to vrml2 converter is a nice commandline utility that whoops.
Once you've got everything in VRML 2 (VRML 97) you can begin working in white_dune - the biggest challenge their is the preview window and moving objects around in there - if you've got a 3d mouse / joystick you may have more success and simplify your life - otherwise it's not bad.
ps for some really sweet Virtual Reality Markup Language (.wrl) files on the natch check out Peter Guth's (Microdem's Author) directory tree. http://www.usna.edu/Users/oceano/pguth/microdem/target3D/Buildings/
VRML Bridges, powerlines, buildings, tanks, aircraft, helicopters etc... totally badass - all in VRML 1.0 specification.
To convert these guys for white_dune (VRML 2 (some folks call it VRML97) you can use a nifty piece of software called Crossroads 3D if that's not doing it for you (it can drop out occasionally on large files) the vrml1 to vrml2 converter is a nice commandline utility that whoops.
Once you've got everything in VRML 2 (VRML 97) you can begin working in white_dune - the biggest challenge their is the preview window and moving objects around in there - if you've got a 3d mouse / joystick you may have more success and simplify your life - otherwise it's not bad.
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