The Sept. 19 issue of the NZ Herald quotes me as saying “Email has won”. It’s not actually my quote, or anything to do with lottery scams. It’s the reason that we’re doing OnlineGroups.Net and GroupServer. Email is the tool that is most used in people’s attempt to collaborate online, but it sucks for many to many messaging and file-sharing. The main problem is that email has no shared entitity for a group, and that’s what we provide. With GroupServer and OnlineGroups.Net, the group has a name, a url and an email address. Its messages, files, membership information are all visible online, to authorised users. People can participate in group conversations and file-sharing using both email and the Web. And all this can take place on a website that has regular pages and custom presentation. Sounds simple, yes? Well it’s taken us nearly four years but we’re nearly ready for prime time. Rebuilding registration is our last nasty task before we’ll be ready for tens of thousands of users. We’re also rebuilding the way groups are displayed, and adding a CMS/wiki-equivalent module. With plans for a release before Christmas, and to attract new site administrators to OnlineGroups.Net, you should be hearing a bit more from us online.
Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category
Open Source IM Clients
Tuesday, July 5th, 2005I have been happily using Gaim for some time. An alternative is Miranda. Both are multi-protocol. Both are GPL. Gaim runs on Linux, BSD, MacOS X, and Windows. Miranda runs on Windows only. Both my kids happily use Gaim to chat with their MSIM friends.
Which do you prefer?
Which others should be compared with these?
SchoolTool
Tuesday, July 5th, 2005I have been hearing about SchoolTool more often, lately.
They have a big vision: “a common information systems platform for school administration from California to Calcutta, via Cape Town! We hope to provide a single tool that will be readily adapted to the specific regulatory requirements and practices of different countries and regions, but that retains enough common functionality to make a shared development effort worthwhile.”
This makes sense to me as an ideal application for an Open Source approach. SchoolTool (like GroupServer) uses Zope and Python. It has a standards-based calendar module called SchoolBell.
Is anyone using SchoolTool in Aotearoa/NZ?
FreeMind
Tuesday, January 25th, 2005I want to note some of the useful tools that I find here.
Top of the list is FreeMind, an open source mind-mapper. I am using it almost every time I want to take some notes or record and organise some ideas. I use it for my “to do list” and for planning various projects.
The real test for me: I am using it instead of grabbing a piece of scrap paper.
It uses Java so it runs equally well on Windows and Linux.
Moodle Conference happening in Feb 2005 in Rotorua
Monday, November 1st, 2004Open Source eLearning Content Management System Moodle is gaining a strong user base in NZ. It has its own hosting and consulting company moodle.co.nz and is the focus of the Moodle Moot conference.
Useful RSS Reader: Sage
Monday, September 6th, 2004It took me about five minutes to be converted to Sage. The first four minutes were the time it took me to download, install and configure it. An extension to Firefox (it works in Mozilla), Sage creates a panel to the left of the browser that lists RSS feeds and the titles of recent items in them. Click a feed on the left and the browser displays recent items with intros. Click an item title and browse the entire item. Such a simple way to provide four levels of detail.