Business

• Disney World Flashback ? Part 3 2 days ago Pass The Torch
  My third installment of our 2005 flashback is a single photo. But it says it all. The other favorite ride of our then six- and eight-year-olds was Buzz Lightyear. (Here is last week’s post.) Um, which one is the kid? It’s a good thing we mastered the FastPass — otherwise, waiting in line for Buzz [...]
  
• Book Review - Planet of the Dogs 3 days ago Pass The Torch
  ***GUEST POST BY 4TH GRADE CRAIG*** In September, when Darla reviewed the excellent book, The Secret of Wellington’s Map, the PR folks for Planet of the Dogs contacted us and asked if Craig would be interested in reviewing it, since he’s the perfect age for the series. This is Craig’s first book review. I [...]
  
• Despite Some Teething Pains, ODF?s Vendor-Neutral Approach The Best Way Forward 3 days ago Opportunity Knocks
  Despite some portions of the standard that appear to be underspecified and the inconsistent implementation I recently wrote about, the vendor-neutral approach offered by the OpenDocument Format remains the best way to achieve the freedom from vendor control that we seek. Other approaches, such as the “this format is based on implementation X” approach, [...]
• ODF Applications? Interchangeability Needs Improvement 6 days ago Opportunity Knocks
  Just a quick note to point out that too often, a document created in OpenOffice.org will have a different appearance in KOffice. This is even without using any scripting (I know zero StarBasic). I have done informal comparisons of both word processor and spreadsheet documents, and in either case, we need to help them improve interoperability, [...]
• Disney World Flashback, Part 2 1 week ago Pass The Torch
  As promised in part one, today I’ll share photos from one of our kids’ favorite rides. It probably isn’t much of a surprise - the classic “Teacup” ride. How I didn’t lose my hat, I’ll never know. Even through the blur you can see Darla’s mouth is full of orthodontic expander. Notice the [...]
  
• Seeding The Market For ODF 1 week ago Opportunity Knocks
  A strategy that Microsoft has always relied upon to spread the use of newer versions of its office suite software is early adopters sending new format files out to the people they correspond and do business with. I have even found a few Office 2007 files coming to the users I support. I recommend a similar [...]
• Vietnam Veteran?s Memorial - Washington DC 1 week ago Pass The Torch
  When we visited Washington DC over Memorial Day weekend, we had the opportunity to visit “the wall” on Memorial Day, a very popular day for veterans to visit as well. The tributes placed along the base of the wall were poignant reminders of so many lost in Vietnam. The Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial is built near the reflecting [...]
  
• General Agenda for the Next President 2 weeks ago Opportunity Knocks
  I hope that our incoming President Obama practices a more ‘open’ technology policy: open standards, open source, open data formats, open competition between vendors, and much less weight on the ‘intellectual property’ rights of large corporations. Open access for Americans to our government files, with a commitment to shred / delete any information that is [...]
• Disney World Flashback 2 weeks ago Pass The Torch
  Our family will visit Disney in a few weeks. We’re all a little excited about the prospect, and when I came across a disk full of photos from the last time we visited (pre-blogging days in 2005,) I though I really ought to share the fun with you. Here’s the first installment of [...]
  
• A Speaker in the Making 2 weeks ago Pass The Torch
  More than a year ago, I wrote a post about my daughter entitled, A Teacher in the Making. At this point in life, Darla sees that as her life’s calling — a third-grade teacher, to be exact. But as she hits her stride, it occurs to me she couldn’t possibly know what she [...]