Martin @ Blog

A new version 2.3 of OpenOffice.org has been released. I have not yet tried the new version, so I’m not sure if it is really a n improvement over the previous version. Recently, there was some good news for the OpenOffice.org development progress, since IBM has announced to support OpenOffice.org development. According to various developers in the OpenOffice.org community, the lack of developers is the main problem of OpenOffice.org. I wonder if this is also the cause of the fact that usability-wise, OpenOffice.org is in some area’s worse than what Microsoft provides with its office suite.

I’m not a very frequent user of OpenOffice.org, so I’m not really an expert in OpenOffice.org, but I think the development team missed an opportunity to beat Microsoft by just doing things the right way and make it more user friendly than Microsoft Office. For example, it is very hard to select another language than the default for a document. For some odd reason, this has to be done in the settings for a paragraph, but there are also language dropdowns in the spell checker and the ‘options’ menu. Such an essential task should be more easy to be done.
Apple has done a better job with its iWorks suite. It seems they really tought about the usability and did not start with the ‘standard way’ office suites implement their interfaces. This resulted in a different userinterface compared to the competition, but definately an improvement over its competitors. Maybe, in the feature we will see this kind of improvements also in the open source office suites. It seems that office suite developers are starting to understand this problem, since the latest release of Microsoft Office shows an entirely different user interface which – on some points – is definitely an improvement over the previous version. However, it should be noted that I’m not an Microsoft Office user, so I’m not sure if it is also an improvement in daily use.

Since I now own a Macbook for work, I’m a little bit more an Apple fan than before. While I still like Linux as a desktop operating system, Mac OS X is also really nice and the systems of Apple ‘just work’ and are nice to look at. Today, Apple introduced a new iMac, and I think I will buy such an iMac in the near future. They are thinner than before and have an aluminium enclosure which looks really nice in my opinion.

Apple introduced also a new version of iWorks, which now also contains a spreadsheet application. I think Apple did what open source developers could have done in order to gain market share and ‘beat’ Microsoft in the Office market. The usability of iWorks is far better than Microsoft’s Office Suite and of course also better than OpenOffice.org (because that’s more a MS Office-clone than a innovative product). AbiWord was doing a good job as an alternative word processor, but lacked on innovation (I think). Apple did some thinking before implementing a new office suite, which lead to another interface than the traditionial office suite interface. I don’t use it however, because it is not open source and it is another vendor lock-in, but I really could use it if I had a large pile of money and wasn’t a supporter of the open source movement (but I shouldn’t use an Apple to begin with, but appearantly I’m not that fundamental).

Because I now use a Macbook for development, I had to install some stuff I needed for development. Unfortunately, Mac OS X does not provide a convenient method to install all the stuff using a single tool (such as apt-get/Synaptic on Ubuntu), but installing some basic stuff is not very difficult. After some research, I choose to install the following packages:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• PHP 5
• Eclipse

Read on for the location of the packages I used Read the rest of this entry »

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the battle against buttons at Apple which is lead by CEO Steve Jobs. The article explains why he thinks buttons are evil and how various important people in the history of Apple think about this issue. For example Bruce Tognazzini, who worked with Norman and Nielsen, mentions in the article that Jobs did not want arrow keys on the keyboard for the Apple II computer in order to stimulate software developers to support the Apple mouse instead of relying on keyboard navigation. Other obvious examples of the ‘battle against buttons’ designs are obviously the iPod and the recently introduced iPhone. Very intresting article, and I think this ‘vision’ is one of the key factors for the user friendliness of the Apple products. Although some people do not agree with this statement…

Yesterday, I had a nice letter of the Centraal Justitieel Incassobureau (CJIB), the Dutch organization which is responsible for collecting the money for tickets given by the police and other governmental organizations. The letter announced that I was a ‘suspect of a crime’, which makes me a bit scary. Further reading reveiled that I had received a speeding ticket which was rather high. In my opinion, it is a little bit unfair to give me such a high fine (of course) considering the time and location where I drove too fast. Read the rest of this entry »

Currently, I’m already working for one and a half week at my new job at Finalist. Thus far, it has been a pleasant experience. Obviously, I met a large number of new people. Last week, there was a quarterly meeting of the company which included a wild water raft experience which was very nice.

Mieke, still in China, is now halfway her internship, so only six and a half week to go before she returns to the Netherlands. I’m very looking forward to this, because it is quite lonely without her. The trip to China, from which I returned one and a half week ago, was very nice. I will write about this (probably in Dutch) later and put the photos online. Mieke has already uploaded some pictures to her gallery.

In my free time, I’m renovating my bicycle. Currently, the bike is completly stripped and I’m planning to paint the frame this weekend if the weather allows it. Then I can put the bike toghether again and replace the parts which can not be refurbished, such as the breaks and the rear mudguard.

Tim Berners-Lee, one of the founders of the Internet and chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium, is interviewed by ITworld.com. It is an intersting read, about various subjects. Berners-Lee believes very much in the so-called semantic web, of which he is one of the initial creators. Read the rest of this entry »

Today my TU/e laptop, a Nec Versa P520, broke down. I think this is the tenth time the laptop is broken in the four years I own the device. Fortunately, while I’ve finished my study, I’m still officially a student. So the laptop is repaired under warranty. Currently, I’m starting the preparations for my trip to China, for which I’m leaving this Thursday. I will fly at 17:35 in the evening and arrive Friday at 8:55 in Beijing. I’m looking forward to it!

This week for my new Job at Finalist I had to choose a laptop. I could choose between a Dell and a Apple, which was not a very hard choice. If everything is ok, a black MacBook with 2GB memory and 160GB harddisk is ordered right now!

This morning I had the final presentation of my Master’s project. The presentation was not perfect, but it was sufficient to graduate according to the assesment committee. While it is not official (the board of examination has to approve the administrative part) I am now almost Master of Science 🙂

Yesterday I also bought a new used mountainbike. It is an Intersens with full Shimano Deore LX group and a Shimano XTR rear derrailleur. The front is a Rockshox Pilot spring. I’m very happy with it considering the price I paid for it. A picture (not taken by me) is below:

Today I booked a flight to China in June. Mieke is going to do an internship at a Chinese company in Beijing, called PER-Design. Since I’m graduating in May (if everything goes according to plan), I have some free time in June, which I will use to travel two weeks to China to visit her. I’ve never been to a country outside of Europe, so I’m looking forward to the trip. Obviously, I will take my camera with me to make some pictures.
During my visit, Mieke will hopefully have a few days off, so we can travel around. If anybody knows some interesting locations to visit in Beijing, please let me know. When I’m back, which is on the 30th of June, I have to visit the concert of Genesis in the Amsterdam Arena. Since I was planning to go with Mieke, I will have to find someone else to go with, because it is a bit of a waste to throw the extra ticket away…
The next day, monday the 2nd of July, I will start with my new job…