OpenOffice

By Jeff Zbar
www.homeofficehighway.com

To meteorologists and remote workers alike, The Cloud is a beautiful thing.

One makes his living off cloud formations. The other has discovered a mobility, flexibility and an untethered experience working in the cloud. These include teleworkers, telecommuters, road warriors and others released from place-based work.

For those not clear, the "cloud" — according to Wikipedia — "is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the cloud that supports them." In other words, all your applications — and even your documents, if you want — are stored and hosted via a computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser.Read more

By Jeff Zbar
www.chiefhomeofficer.com

I was on a cruise this past week. With a ton of writing to be done, and little motivation to do it, replicating the home office on the high seas would be a challenge.

But even if I was motivated, I was stymied. My HP Tablet laptop had no CD drive, so I hadn’t installed Microsoft Office before leaving (sure, I could have logged on and downloaded it, but at nearly half a gig for the whole app, who has the time or needs the hassle?).

And do you know what it’s like to write completely in Notepad or Wordpad? Talk about laborious…

But then I had an epiphany. What about installing Sun Microsystem’s OpenOffice 3.0? Free and open, it’s another example of spry guys sticking it to The Machine. I’m not alone. According to the OOo “Thermometer,” the app has had five million downloads from Oct. 13-25. Even Pamela Anderson doesn’t have that many downloads! Read more