Confused about what she wants…

Ok so my gf tells me she miss me. She tells me that she can’t live without me and that she wants to talkt to me. Yet, I wanted to get her to talk to me since Sunday and …. nothing happened.

She came somewhere and told me to wait 5 minutes…. that was 2 days ago.

So all this makes me wonder what’s going on. Why she tells me that if she don’t do it. I will agree that had something came up and she couldn’t which is pretty much her usual story. But the fact that she doesn’t let me know, she got email, she got sms, she got skype and instant messaging, wireless, laptop, desktop…. what else could happened?

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Python all over the OOo Development

Python has starting to boom around the OpenOffice.org application. Currently I have done some googling and found out that the scripts of PyUNO has started to blossom.

I found 4 important python scripts which I put on my GUL page.

The first one was a PyUNO-Server based on the XML-RPC technology which reading it seems to make a conection with a server and then work as a service that will push the uno API for interaction

The other is a Server of PDF through PyUNO where you can actually put a web-app that will generate PDF from a web service.

Finally I found the OOoBlogger which is a smart hack to call on the Blogger API and input the XML-to-html. I would have loved to have xhtml but the XSLT still very rough on the edges for primetime.

Finally some blogs have started talking on the blogsphere.

Being a Mentor

So about a year ago I was being a trainee in some company in the middle of europe. Now I will be the mentor trainning this couple of high school students in our neighborhood.

The trainees seem quite alright, I think they get bored to soon, but I guess thats normal since I didnt got anything prepared for them. Anyway so far they did a great job and I think they will be enjoying their time here.

Plus we went through a lot of material today, we did some computer building, also OS building and finally some presentation and templates. I do think they could have done more on the presentation (they just did 3 slides) but I guess it was good enough.

At the end of the day I think they will get their INGOT batch and we will be able to do have a great example of not just the power of INGOTs trainning but also about the hability of adoption of Open Soruce.

This kids easily installed and browse throught the Linux OS with no previous experience.

The no easy answer

Lately I have been haunted and somehow pressured by my girl, the dawnting question with no easy answer. When will be able to meet again? This question is present with me 24/7. My life is great, yet I really feel is incomplete, I have builted so attached to her that now my feelings are somehow lost.

I concentrate on work and yeah, I am getting mayor breakthroughs but…but… Why I am so glad that I am here yet I am desperately wishing i was somewhere else.

I wish I was with my gf yet I dont want to go back, I need to keep moving on. But there is just things I’ll rather keep, my memories, my feelings, my love.

Somehow I wonder if I will ever meet her, I tend to think that is a no brainner and that I will meet her. However I keep asking myself when, and that is the million dollar question, when will I see her face again, and when will I be able to tell her how much I love her, directly to her face.

Next time I will be in Spain, next time in Japan, then in new york and the world will keep moving on, and me with in. But my feelings will always remain in one place and in one person. This hurt, but this is the pain of not letting go, and not letting go is the prove that will make my life balance out. Yes life is good, and life sucks, and I love life and I hate life and tomorrow I will be able to come back to where it all begin and finally be able to touch her.

How companies promote their suite

It seems the web-dev are starting to post again, as they get ready for the egg shell cracking of OOo 2.0. The new OOo seems exciting and almost ready for prime time, just few days and we will all see the gull-suite take off.

But from a web-dev point of view, this is actually a hard task since we need to get more and more into the actual launch. Marketing, art, feedback, tryouts, templates, and everything in the spectrum between R-G-B are fliying all over the mailing list.

Taking a step back I would like to see how other Office suties companies promote their products, here is a comprenhensive study of the different sites promoting their products and how do they compare:

Microsoft Office is one of the most resourceful office suites, the content is massive and should aim all target markets, not just the new users but also the very sophisticate ones. Their site isn’t really a selling site but mostly like an e-Zine site.

The content is dynamic and it has a heavy rotation, they keep current with the events happening right now. For example they have articles about Halloween and how the Suite validates it’s existance as a solution for Halloween.

Lotus is the other big, corporate office suite which is also popular on the enterprise. The site also needs to provides massive ammount of content and is also somehow hard to follow. Since their product is really connected with more than itself it provides external links and are aiming at the collaboration services. So this is really an entry to their collaboration and messaging services.

The site is not event driven like microsoft but product driven by whatever IBM plugs with the suite. On the design angle of things they provide many options which are hidden somehow by tabs but stil make a similar layout as the microsoft site triying to put eyes on the middle of the screen.

Apple iWorks definetly aiming at end users which are triying to survive on a MS world. However they seem to have the same approach as all of their products. They aim the content at the product and not at the enviroment. They hightlight the key advantages of their product and they offer tours to get a sense about it.

The site drives to a semantic, a feeling more than the actual product, so big images, large fonts and very space-like deisng make the iworks site a site for presentation of the product more than information cluttering.

StarOffice the sister project of OpenOffice.org also have an aim towards the enterprise on a similar fashion to IBM. They provide a lot of content with aims about product description. They do mantain it more on the feeling side of things, rather than the actual product. They don’t provide any screenshot of the actual product (similar to Office and Lotus) and is basically a big fact sheet with the eyes drawing people to an abstract image.

EasyOffice I like this site, actually one of my favorites, the difference between this one and the rest is that the site is made exclusively for the office suite. So it doesn’t have to respect a higher template to promote related products. This site focus everyhing on new users, so the product is the most important highlighting the key aspects of it.

They have a clean design with big fonts small reading and easy to browse. The site is builded like a tour site itself since it brings the users to the different enviroments of the suite without being too extensive.
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Overal all this sites have a good design, the pocket sites for office suites have a less professional builted sites. I think that OpenOffice.org varies on the quality of the website, the front page however do succeed on some key aspects.

Promotes the ‘feeling’ of the product, have direct links on the front page, have a nice design and a overal good feeling to it.

The fallout is the consistency of the site, they look like what it is, a site desinged by many people and not all of them have the same way of presenting content, nor do they have the right icon-set.

The features of the products are not so visible and even if the frontpage is presented mainly on one page a product page might not be as condensed.

An OpenOffice.org Box might help users to be more confortable, cereal boxes play magic on end users. Even if that box isn’t actually real, they feel that the software at least has a physical backup on the retial store and is not an internet scam.

My thoughts and suggestions for OOo site is, keep it simple, make the site with big fonts, avoid menu’s and use descriptive bulletpoints.

Make a tour or a screenshot of key features like, PDF export, Stylist, Navigation, improved interface, wordcount, etc. OpenDocument compliant.

Aim to the feelings, this is more an end user software than a mature corporate tool. So for that reason we should aim at the family pointing out the ease of use.

I would like to see some blender experts design the pictures, 3D pictures are appealing to users, a 3D box is too and also because blender is open source we could reach out the community to get involved.

OpenDocument Fellowship Announcement

OpenDocument Fellowship finally went live and with full force of 50+ members is ready to take on the OpenDocument representation. Even thought I need to say I would have been more keen in seeing more actual developers taking part of this more than non-developers.

Anyway in FLOSS everybody is politiKin, ranting, raving, making drama and noise. Isn’t this life beautiful, except for the ones that have little time actually developing this things to yelling to the world that they exist.

Lazy Sunday

I just woke up, today is a laizy sunday, I wanted to see my girl but unfortunately she is not online yet. However I still got some stuff to do — work related.

Right now I am looking some videos on MTV Base, I think I am getting addicted to this channel. I do have started to hate the heavy rotation, usually there are more hip hop videos but at least I can’t complain about the channel yet since they put a lot of hip hop shows including nick cannon, produced by etc.

I am kinda missing not go out that much, the unfortunate reaon is that there are not many places to go out. However a trip to Birminham early one day just to hang up and down the street might not be that bad.

Architecting a mature community

As a leader, you are expected to innovate, nobody will expect to do things on his own and many look at you. Unfortunately this also reduce the flexibility of any organization. No matter how much the leader emphasize on a flat organization, everyone think he is the one with the last word.

The open culture seems to be hard to manifest for people who doesn’t understand that the community is builted by the people in it. With sub-leaders they are usually percieved as second to the actual leaders.

However enough with the ranting, the topic itself is about how can we get this open culture and moularization happened.

About a year ago, I’ve tried to bring some of the most competent members to the table. Interestingly enough they shy away once they were on the spotlight. This seems to be very sensitive situations when a leader is pushing his generals to the front line, the stress level rises and sometiems they just ran and hide right behind the leader.

This maybe didn’t happened but just felt that way. So a new way to make the move to a more flat organizations new techniques need to be addressed.

Right now I thik I will spread thin with new activities, from coding workgroups, to monthly meetings on IRC and Podcasting.

This will make the group participate more and improve communication, then hopefully they will be more keen into actually participating and taking leadership.

It is a gamble but I believe the community should step up more in the game and take control of the OOo brand and product.

What Linux is best for me?

It seems that now I am getting a more proactive role in community newscenters. Most recenntly I had been asked to start writting a column about technology in La Jornada, a place where it will start to shade new mainstream content about… well technology.

However, there are some content providers that deal with something else than written content and that is podcasting. So I came into a mutual unspoked agreement with Ulfix to start producing columns and he will give me 2Gb of bandwith for my Podcasting project.

I hope this help me get my podcast of the ground and I hope I start developing my podcast like it should. Today is friday and hopefully I will start podcasting again.

Streets dreams fading out

Is pretty late, 4:00am in the morning is nothing nice when you woking extra hours to tweak your system. I also listening to some podcasting until I actually found out what I have download that day.

As I found the track street dreams by nas and r.kelly. All of a sudden… puff… flashbacks started comming to my mind…. philly on my mind when I used to listen to that song.

Is interesting reflecting it has been a while, still listening to the same artists for a while. Nasir escobar, to the R, I have been listening to this niggaz for a while now and still not tired to listening to them. Not even that but I also get the actual message of being cold in philadelphia, walking through venango and G-Town. Black girls looking at me, giving me the eyes that say something more than an innocent smile. Being 17 and having live street dreams as I walk by the snow getting to my crib and listening to high boombox across my ears and then I was on my bed imagining about havnig golden chain and phat booty girls.

Back at the school everything was cool, sex was alright, everyone got their own thing going on. Didn’t really expect much except triying to get that money. Nas and R and Biggie and Pac, even Boyz II Men was on my black 5 dls. T-Shirts, I got my blue camouflage as I got the red chicago bulls sweater and play basketball with ice on the concrete floor. I swear you can feel god when I tried to steal that ball. Cold as hell through the philly cloudy sky.

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Definetly street dreams look like a far cry from right now, being in the suburbs so many miles and year away from those days. Still I feel it so close as I hear that Sweet Dreams track.