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OpenOffice v3.0 sets download record, 80% by Windows users

The newest version of OpenOffice, version 3.0, has set a download record in its first week of availability.  Most surprising is the fact that over 80% of downloads were from Windows users.

PC World is reporting that over 3 million downloads were recorded in the first week alone.  The demand was so heavy that the download servers were temporarily overwhelmed.  With these numbers, OpenOffice is closer to its goal of winning 40 percent of the market share for office software.

While you would think OpenOffice would be most popular among Linux users, the demand for Windows users came as a surprise to many people.  The numbers are skewed however, because many Linux users receive their updates from Linux distributors rather than the website.  Still, it shows that Microsoft’s Office software is slowly losing its market dominance now that there are suitable alternatives available.

Microsoft isn’t taking the threat of OpenOffice lightly, however, stating that “Microsoft Office is well integrated, well supported and up-to-date with modern workforce requirements like collaboration, which is not always the case with open source alternatives. As a result, most customers will continue to seek the productivity improvements they can get from Office.”  In reality, Microsoft really has nothing to worry about- Office is installed on nearly 550 million units.  What the future holds is up for discussion.

Some marked improvements with the newest version of OpenOffice include compatibility with Mac OS X, which accounted for some 320,000 downloads in its first week, as well as continued compatibility with many Office extensions.  One of the only extensions that cannot be saved natively are OOXML files.

I’ve used OpenOffice for a long time, primarily because I refuse to pay the hefty price just to have Microsoft Office.  In the past, it’s always been included on my computers which is fine, but when it comes to a choice between almost identical software, the price was my determining factor.

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Firefox Geode: Web sites know where you are

As expected, Mozilla Labs released a Firefox plug-in Tuesday called Geode that lets Web sites figure out a person's approximate geographic location and use it in online services--as long as you grant the software permission to access the information.

Geode, a preview of technology to arrive in Firefox 3.1, taps into technology called Loki from Skyhook that deduces a computer's location from the signals of nearby wireless networks, according to a Mozilla Labs blog post on Geode.

To show the technology off, Mozilla shared an application called Food Finder that shows the user's approximate location and nearby dining establishments. Others that work with the technology are Pownce, a microblogging site that can record users' locations as they post notes or photos, and Yahoo's Fire Eagle, which lets users govern which applications get access to their location information.

There's one thing I find interesting about the general thrust of this technology. The Internet has broken down geographic barriers, letting people stay in touch with high school buddies, tap into a global market for used books, and find comrades with shared interests such as speaking Latin or photographing mating insects.

But a lot of new work on the Net is trying to unlock the location information. After all, people often need to keep from getting lost or to find their friends at the concert. And of course, plenty of advertisers would like to target ads at people who are likely to walk past a storefront.

Although Geode today uses Skyhook's service, Firefox 3.1 will be configurable to select other options as well, such as a GPS device, Mozilla said.

The Food Finder demonstration application showed my location, almost, with a blue dot, and nearby pastry shops listed at Yelp.

(Credit: CNET News)

Mozilla envisions more than just more intelligent online maps. Its other examples: local news based on where a person actually is located, a Web site log-in process that only works if a person is at a specific location, and an RSS feed reader that changes what subscriptions it shows users depending on whether they're at work or home.

Web designers who want to take advantage of the feature can use the W3C's Geolocation Specification, currently in draft form.

Geode asks permission before letting a Web site use your geographic information.

BitSmash Launches BitTorrent Statistics Tool

BitSmash is a new service that aims to provide statistics on all BitTorrent downloads. The site allows users to search from keywords, just like the average BitTorrent site, and sort the results in various ways. For every torrent, it also shows graphs of changes in various statistics over time.

BitSmash will be launched officially on October 15th, but the website is already fully operational. The project looks promising, and might prove to be a great tool for those who are interested in BitTorrent trends, including ourselves. One of the major downsides at the moment, however, is the accuracy of some of the statistics that are reported by BitSmash.

We’ve gone through the data, and it seems that BitSmash is off on the numbers of seeds and peers. One of the top downloads according to the service is The Incredible Hulk, with 414 peers and 139 seeders. However, Mininova and several other BitTorrent sites report that the torrent has more than 15,000 peers, and a manual scrape of one of the trackers returned close to 18,000 peers.

The service is of course still being developed, so these numbers might be corrected later. Smash, the founder of the project told us: “I’m going to stand by our numbers,” but said he will take a look at the inconsistencies. He encourages everyone to submit feedback while the site is in Beta.

Interestingly, BitSmash has decided to include a link to the .torrent files on their detail pages, which basically makes it a meta-search engine as well. The anti-piracy lobby might not be too happy about that. A few days ago we reported on the Swedish news site Nyheter24, that was criticized for linking to torrents on The Pirate Bay.

The service will officially launch October 15th, and later this year there will also be an API available for other services and websites to access, who can use the data for other purposes. Overall we think that BitSmash could develop into a great research tool. It’s worth checking out.

Motorola's Linux strategy evolves with Android

Reports have emerged indicating that Motorola is hiring developers with Java and Android expertise in preparation for launching a major mobile initiative on top of Google's software platform. This move reflects a new stage n the expansion of Motorola's mobile software strategy, which increasingly emphasizes the open source Linux operating system.

Related Stories

• Motorola reveals new Linux-based mobile platform
• App developers grow impatient with lack of Android updates
• 23% of smartphone market to be Linux-powered by 2013
• Qualcomm and Google prepare iPhone competitor

Motorola was one of the first major handset makers to embrace the Linux platform. Its earliest Linux-based phones were popular in China, enabling the company to sell over 5 million of the penguin-powered devices by 2006. Following that initial victory, Motorola brought its Linux phones to the US with its global launch of the Razr2 in 2007. Motorola's current Linux lineup features eight LiMo-compatible handsets and the company boasts that its total sales of Linux-based phones has exceeded 14 million as of this year.

Motorola VP of software Christy Wyatt talked about the company's commitment to Linux last month during a keynote presentation at the Open Source in Mobile conference in Berlin. She says that Motorola is betting big on Linux because the open platform reduces costs and provides a very high level of flexibility. The rapid pace at which the smartphone market is evolving has forced Motorola and its competitors to look for technologies that can shorten their development cycles. Wyatt says that Linux facilitates that kind of agile development and can help device makers stay ahead of the curve.

Motorola has been attempting to cultivate a third-party developer ecosystem around its LiMo-compatible MOTOMAGX platform, which was first unveiled last year. The handset maker's recently-launched MOTODEV SDK is very promising, but still has a long way to go, according to some early reviews by open source enthusiasts who have experience with other Linux mobile platforms.

Diversity or sharpened focus? 

The revelation that Motorola is investing in Android development has gotten a lot of attention in the past week from pundits and industry analysts. Some are wondering if Motorola will leave LiMo behind as it embraces Google's Android platform. That is certainly a possibility, but I think that the question itself extends from a misconception. Contrary to what many seem to assume, each handset maker and mobile carrier isn't necessarily going to choose only one Linux-based mobile platform.

Android and MOTOMAGX are very different kinds of platforms—they aren't redundant—and it's entirely conceivable that Motorola will want to use Android on one kind of device and MOTOMAGX on another. For instance, Motorola's current MOTOMAGX phones strongly focus on multimedia capabilities and don't really compete with the conventional business smartphone market, so it would make sense for the company to continue using MOTOMAGX in that context while adopting Android for new high-end smartphones with touch screens and keyboards.

A glance across all of Motorola's product lines reveals that it already exhibits a very high degree of platform diversity. Practically every major mobile platform, including Windows Mobile on the Moto Q devices, is represented somewhere in Motorola's product landscape. With that in mind, it seems only natural that Motorola would adopt more than one Linux platform, as the company increases its commitment to Linux.

Looking at Motorola's affiliations practically confirms that view. Motorola is a founding member of all three major open-platform initiatives: the LiMo Foundation, the Open Handset Alliance, and the Symbian Foundation. Motorola will likely use all three platforms to help meet consumer demand for different kind of devices and mobile experiences in different markets and regions.

During the OSiM keynote, Wyatt forcefully argued for the importance of diversity in the mobile software industry. Motorola doesn't want to see the emergence of a single dominant mobile software vendor. The challenge, however, is balancing the need for diversity against the cost of fragmentation. To enable development of software applications that can span across a multitude of platforms, she sees web technologies as a potential solution.

Motorola has already taken the first steps in that direction with WebUI, an application runtime for MOTOMAGX devices that is built on top of WebKit and allows application developers to product programs with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. It exposes a lot of handset functionality up through the JavaScript layer, including APIs for location, multimedia, and phonebook technologies.

Motorola is clearly expanding its commitment to Linux and appears to be pursuing a strategy around multiple Linux-based platforms. Motorola hasn't enjoyed a major breakout success with any single product in the handset market since the original RAZR, and the company has been struggling to regain some of its former glory. Producing a diverse range of handsets and experimenting with different platforms could help Motorola find another combination that works.

Shareaza 2.4 Released

First stable release to provide IRC support and the TorrentWizard for easier BitTorrent downloading.

Shareaza is a P2P file-sharing client which supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2, eDonkey Network, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP network protocols and handles magnet links, ed2k links, Piolet links, and the now deprecated Gnutella links.

Released by developer Michael Stokes into the open source community on June 1, 2004, Shareaza 2.4 celebrates more than 4 years of freedom by presenting almost 900 changes from the previous release. It contains numerous bug fixes and major changes to provide better stability of the client. It is also the first stable release to provide IRC support.

Windows 98/Me support has been discontinued -and Vista enhanced- with multi-generation upgrades in underlying platforms. TorrentWizard is now bundled, new IRC Chat provides easy support and community, and countless new and improved features are both subtly throughout and unseen (ChangeLog).

This latest stable release was done in 9 months of solid dedication under difficult circumstances. If you recall, it was on December 19th, 2007 of last year that the the project's domain name, Shareaza.com, was hijacked and redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of a client known as ShareazaV4. As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.

Note: Upgrading from any prior version is safe, however downgrading from 2.4 back to prior releases may lose active downloads. A clean install should clear up any unusual behaviors.

DOWNLOAD SHAREAZA 2.4

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Yahoo has high hopes for calendar makeover

Yahoo has high hopes for calendar makeover

Different colors represent entries from different calendars.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo plans to begin a beta test of a major overhaul of its online calendar Wednesday, a redesign that brings new advertising and social-networking possibilities.

The new site brings a more polished Web 2.0 interface, with drag-and-drop abilities, color-coded entries, Flickr image backdrops, and a slick "zoom" feature that expands a single day's schedule to a usefully large size when browsing in the monthly view. And picking up an ability from No. 2 rival Google Calendar, the new design finally moves beyond the narrow single-user calendar idea of the earlier design.

For example, people can subscribe to others' calendars, such as schedules for sports teams or college courses, and to share calendars publicly or with others who've been invited, said Scott Dietzen, who took over Yahoo's mail and communications business in June.

And through a later upgrade, Yahoo will build in access to the company's Upcoming service to share and find events, he added. This sidebar will show popular local events and--through the "vitality" information Yahoo users can share as part of the Yahoo Open Strategy--the events on the calendars of a person's top social contacts, Dietzen said.

Yahoo Mail is used by about 278 million people each month, but Yahoo Calendar is relatively unknown with 8 million users, according to ComScore's August statistics. If the company is successful with its calendar push, the calendar will narrow that usage gap, making scheduling a more active and useful part of people's online lives.

Usage has been "relatively flat," he said, but "We think we're going to see some very nice growth...I think it's poised to go mainstream. It's the combination of mobile devices and collaborative authoring in terms of publish and subscribe."

The new Yahoo calendar site lets users zoom into a day's events from the monthly view. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Yahoo)

Of course, Yahoo doesn't just want to be useful to people: it's under financial pressure, and calendars provide at least in theory a better way to make money. Today's calendar shows ordinary banner advertisements, but the new design offers space on the lower left for advertising promotions. Clicking the link can add an event to the user's calendar, and the advertiser will be able to gauge more precisely how successful the ad campaign is.

"With sponsored events in the calendar, you can do very, very narrow targeting," Dietzen said. "We're trying to strive for ways that help Yahoo monetize, but that enhance the user experience as opposed to detract."

The new beta will be available to a gradually larger subset of subscribers in the United States, United Kingdom, India, Taiwan, and Brazil, though users can sign up at the Yahoo Calendar switch site. The company plans to have the beta version in use globally by the end of the year, but Dietzen wouldn't share when it expects to release the final version.

The new Yahoo Calendar is based on the calendar technology of Zimbra, the open-source e-mail, contacts, and calendar start-up Yahoo acquired in 2007. "This is the first wide-scale deployment of Zimbra technology for Yahoo consumer technology. It won't be the last," Dietzen said.

One benefit of the Zimbra technology is the ability to synchronize with calendars stored with Microsoft's Outlook software, though that won't come until a future version, he added. Also coming is iPhone synchronization, he said.

The new Yahoo Calendar can show Flickr images as a background, though not yet a user's own shots. That's planned for a future version. (Click to enlarge.)

(Credit: Yahoo)

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