So got an email from Brett Roberts @ Microsoft this evening saying he wanted to stick an op-ed piece he did for Computerworld up on the web but he didn't have anywhere to put it. Now usuall I'd be a snarky little bastard and remind Brett that his company has a blogging platform (Live Spaces) which they must have invested oodles into and maybe he should start blogging..... but instead I volunteered to post his piece up here. So herewith the piece that Brett did for Computerworld alongside Don Christie from the NZOSS. The opinions below are not mine (except where I am quoted) but I do share some similar sentiments and I was on the 'Yes please' side of the ledger in the whole OOXML process.

Computerworld Q&A

1.       Why should we care about global standards, or in this case the debate around Open XML?

The Office Open XML format is gaining momentum. There are literally thousands of developers already building applications which utilise or interoperate with the current Ecma 376 standard across a variety of platforms including Linux, Windows, Mac OS and Palm OS. These span the industry from big players like Apple, IBM and Novell to innovative companies in New Zealand like Intergen.

In the past, document formats have been closed and this has caused problems for developers but it’s also been an issue for companies and government organisations who need to retain long-term access to information stored in those documents. Opening up the document formats via a published and freely-available specification is a great step forward. Placing that specification under the stewardship of the International Organisation for Standardization - ISO – is even more significant for the broad IT community because it means the standard is permanently in the public domain and subject to the strict controls and processes of the independent International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

2.       What are the benefits or otherwise of Open XML to New Zealand businesses and the New Zealand public?

The Open XML specification empowers developers to create a host of new innovations for customers.  Chris Auld, Intergen’s Director of Strategy and Innovation says, “having an internationally documented standard such as Office Open XML allows innovative New Zealand companies such as Intergen to reach a global audience.

Demonstrating this, Intergen has announced it groundbreaking new software product TextGlow. A world-first, TextGlow allows users to view Office Open XML Word documents without having to download them, irrespective of whether or not they have Microsoft Word or any other Microsoft Office application installed.

“TextGlow is a unique product combining Office Open XML and Silverlight for the first time,” says Auld. “Microsoft Office documents have traditionally required software to be installed on the local machine. The new XML- based file format, coupled with Silverlight, has allowed us to make documents viewable directly through users’ web browsers. We are already cross platform on Windows and Macintosh and hope to be supporting Linux in the next couple of months.” 

With many organisations storing documents in web based document management systems such as SharePoint products and technologies, a quick preview of documents within the browser will boost productivity significantly.

In addition, a recent blog by Jan van den Beld, former Secretary General of Ecma International in Geneva, http://janvandenbeld.blogspot.com/2008/02/six-benefits-you-can-get-from-isoiec.html  highlights six  key benefits to Open XML. In brief:

1. Transfer of control

2. Transfer stewardship

3. Chance for industry and implementers:

4. Evolution of the standard

5. Interoperability

6. Conformance and interoperability testing

3.       Why is a standard for legacy documents required in light of the fact that Microsoft has just published the specs for those documents?

The rigorous technical review associated with the standards process is making it possible for Open XML to support an ever broadening set of requirements.

OpenXML is built around a small number of really important design goals. Top of the list is the goal of being able to represent existing binary documents in an XML based mark-up. To achieve this you have to have a document standard that fully represents all of the elements that are in those existing binary documents. OpenXML is the only document standard capable of doing this. Other document standards would have to be extended beyond their design goals to provide this capability.

The publishing of the binary file formats is an additional piece of the jigsaw puzzle that ensures the availability of all Microsoft Office documents for generations to come. Providing the capability for developers today to fully understand the Microsoft Office binary files will encourage both a rich array of tools to convert files to the new OpenXML format, and create additional opportunities for a limited subset of customers to just archive existing documents in their current format. This is especially  important to some customer groups, the legal community for example.

To ensure that documents are protected for generations to come organisations like the British Library and the US National Library of Congress have stepped up to act as digital archivists of the binary file format specifications. Sitting side by side with OpenXML as an ISO standard we now have an environment where documents are truly open and access to them can be guaranteed in perpetuity.

4.       If Open XML is rejected as a global standard, what will it mean for businesses and the public?

I don’t think we’ll know initially but over time strong opponents of Office Open XML will lobby governments in particular, to adopt technology procurement preferences which favour ODF-based solutions.

As a taxpayer, I’m not convinced that removing choice will increase innovation, increase competition and therefore lower costs. I suspect the opposite will happen. More concerning is the fact that there are tens of thousands of highly-skilled programmers in New Zealand who build innovative technology solutions and are quickly becoming known in the global marketplace. We should be offering them more opportunities to win export dollars– not less.

5.       Why not just one standard for all?

There are many reasons. Firstly, Office Open XML and ODF were built with very different design goals in mind. The argument that we only need one ISO standard document format makes as much sense as saying we only need one ISO standard programming language.

The “one standard for all” concept makes the assumption that the first standard “out of the starting blocks” will encompass current and future needs. It’s a tenuous argument.

And a report published by the Burton Group in January of this year agrees, stating that ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements...and...libraries and large businesses, faced with storing and using years of Microsoft Office legacy documents, will prefer OOXML, as OOXML can more faithfully recreate the look and metadata (such as spreadsheet formulas) stored in Microsoft’s binary file formats.

6.       Why does open XML not include macros, scripting, OLE serialisation, and leave so much to be "application-defined"?

Competition between Office Automation suites has always been an important factor in driving much of the innovation that we enjoy in the industry and as users today. The process to standardise OpenXML is a process to standardise the data format, not an application. Standardising the full application would remove the ability for different office applications to compete with each other and slow that pace of innovation.

Macros are a great example of this point. They’re an application behaviour that is unique to Microsoft Office. Macros provide the user with a way of telling the Office Suite what to do with information once it is loaded into memory. Standardising the macro language from Microsoft Office as part of the OpenXML process would force any future applications that implemented the data format to also implement the same macro language. In reality other applications may choose to implement a wide array of other macro or development languages that are more relevant to their own target users. 

7.       Should governments adopt OOXML as a document standard?

 Absolutely. Government use the older binary formats today along with Office Open XML, PDF, HTML, RTF and TXT files. Government, like all customers, choose the best tool for the job and Office Open XML offers them another option. Government is also dealing on a daily basis with Office Open XML documents being sent to them by individuals and businesses and it seems to me that adopting it as a standard makes sense from a purely pragmatic perspective.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4513142a10.html

Or just too hot for the frumpy feminist unionist faculty?

"Miss Universe New Zealand contestant Rhonda Grant, who is a Massey science graduate, said yesterday she still finds it hard to believe a picture of her at the beach in a white bikini caused such an uproar."

...

"When it was pulled from the website late last week after Associate Professor Maureen Montgomery complained the picture was inappropriate, Miss Grant found herself in the middle of a media frenzy."

Amazon have added a really cool new service that is paid for Video Downloads.... They have a really broad range of studios supporting this.

It's been a long time coming... but a group of major mobile maufacturers has settled on Mini-USB as the jack of choice on mobile phones. Details here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4217093a28.html

"An industry group containing the five dominant manufacturers - Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, LG and Sony Ericsson - has committed to using a micro-USB plug in all future models. "

Speaking with some of the NZOSS over the lunch break and I referenced a tinyurl and one of the gjys pointed me at a New Zealand site www.urltea.com.

So my good friends Simon 'Skip' Gardiner and Sam Hazledine and I have been working on a new venture called MedRecruit.

We went live with our new look site yesterday.

http://www.medrecruit.com

It's a Medical recruiting company... so if you have any doctor friends then tell them to give use a yell.

Check out this Silverlight Site that shows off some short and sharp how toos for Silverlight and Blend\

http://www.nibblestutorials.net/

It took less than a day for someone to hack Safari.... ouch!

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/06/11/Safari-for-Windows-released-and-hacked-in-a-day_1.html

A couple of goodies from both camps

http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple-getamac-security_480x376.mov

and

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

“I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.”

There is a nasty bot doing the rounds at the moment....

Our mailserver is being hammered by huge volumes of spam (much more than usual) and we're guessing it's this bot in action.

http://www.symantec.com/enterprise/security_response/weblog/2007/01/trojanpeacomm_building_a_peert.html

So I was tagged by Tim Haines a few days ago and wrote a post and then IE lost it... and now Adam has tagged me.

So here goes again

1. I received a New Zealand Music Award back in 2003.... as a no nuts choir boy singing Handels Messiah.... despite now being a card carrying atheist... I still don't mind belting out a bit of 'Zadok the Priest......'
2. I can shear (not share Adam! I'm not sharing with you!) a sheep
3. I was a really bad boy at highschool... I had more punishments in my 7th form (last) year at school than all my p[revious years added up. Most were for 'martyring' myself to the uniform rules..... My brother and sister both went on to be head boy and head girl respectivly of the same school... I was merely head pain in the ass....
4. I have 8 bicycles and about the same number of whitewater or polo kayaks at my house.
5. I was 1st in my 3rd form class for religious studies..... Of curse by 7th form I was asked not to come to religious studies class any more....

I'm tagging..

Casey Chesnut

Bill Ryan

Rowan Simpson

Ivan Towlson

Alex James

Tim has a post up titled 'Trademe Invest in Ruby on Rails'.... which is a bit misleading really.

It's more like 'Trademe invest in Zoomin, who happen to use Ruby on Rails'.

Good on Zoomin for gettig their claws ito Trademe on this one. I thik it's fantastic... but it's pushig it a bit far to note that 'Trade me have 'lauched their first Rails page'. If it were written in PHP they would have launched 'thier first PHP Page' and the same for JSP. Don't think it's too likely that Trademe will be making the move off ASP.NET anytime soon.

When you buy someone elses technology you generally get it as is where is

A funny little example I saw this morning was Sysinternals Process Explorer. Microsoft now own this but there's still a right click menu option to 'Google' a process name.

Will be interesting to see how easy it is for them to Mashup the Zoomin stuff into Trademe though... in particular whether most of the 'mashing' occurs on the Ruby side or the ASP.NET side.

Was grabbing some Sysinternals tools today and they have posted about the fact that they have been acquired by MSFT. Well done guys!

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/2006/07/on-my-way-to-microsoft.html

NicW has just blogged about Te Ara, The Online Encyclopedia of New Zealand.

I personally think the $12 million would have been better spent encouraging/hiring content authors to work on the NZ entries in Wikipedia.

I'm not normally an Open Source kinda guy... but this is an obvious example of where aligning some national $$$ with an *open sourcish* kinda project would have been a good idea.

Stuff has details on the refloating of the fishing vessel Kotuku.

Looking at the photo you can see what looks to be a Liferaft still strapped to the roof. Most vessels have the straps setup with hydrostatic releases so the lifeboat is released automatically if the boat sinkz. I wonder why this one did not.

In a former life (when I actually had a life) I used to pay quite a bit of dance music off records such that the tracks blended togther really nicely*. I played at a few big outh Island parties including Main Stage on NYE @ Alpine Unity...

Anyway... time dictates I'm not doing as much of this any more. As a result I have kinda lost touch with the deep dark vibe that used to drive me. Fear not though as I have discovered www.mixdepot.net which is basically a site for aspiring DJs. It seems to be frequented by a large number of fantastic Progressive House DJs (among other genres) and a lot of them are Ableton Live types which means the mixing is utterly flawles and the mastering is tight as... well, let's just say it's TIGHT!

So I've downloaded a few of the mixes from here already and they are REALLY rather good.

Currently listening to: V - Train / M357 and I highly recommend the download. A number of the trackas are available as Bit Torrents so if any of you Citylinkers are keen for a 100 megabit torrent-a-thon let me know.

*Yes... I know this is called 'DJing' but it's just so cliche to say 'I was a DJ'...

 If You're A Gamer You Need To Watch- especially if you have a wife....

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1329362959167995041

Very cool. No more paging... just one long scrollbar....

I love the new image search too.

I'm just about to become a permanent switcher!

http://www.live.com

Gets really cool around 10min mark

A great wee video- if Microsoft boxed the iPod

Phil will enjoy this!

A few days ago I blogged about Zen Presentation skills.

Here is a GREAT example of it in action. About 15 mins long. I really encourage you all to watch it. Good content too

I've just listened to Adam Cogan on Dot Net Rocks.

Adam talks about his cool rule enforcement applications for VS.Net and SQL.

You also get to find out that he takes his whole team (30 odd people) to a beach house once a year and they all get up and go for runs @ 6:30am..... Now there is an idea! It's a great DNR episode and it gives some great insight into why Adam is able to run such a tight development ship.

Listening on some new headphones that I just got. I find my Sennheiser HD25 muffs a bit uncomfortable for use at the office so I got some cheapish ($120 vs $600 for HD25) Sennheiser phones- HD465. They are open ear designs- i.e. they just sit as flat pads on your ears so REALLY comfortable.

A blog tyhat I had not come across before floated through my inbox this morning. A good post comparing the Zen style of Apple with the somewhat noisy style of MSFT. It's a good post- design and hipness has never been a strong point for MS.

http://presentationzen.blogs.com/presentationzen/2005/11/the_zen_estheti.html

Anyway. A good blog if you are a regular presenter (or are trending toward becoming one...)

The past few months have seen a number of GREAT changes to Nat radio.

Gone, for the most part, are the stuffy old fogies 'music' shows on weekday afternoons. Far more great documentary content.

Was listening today and, AT LAST, they have launched a new website with live streaming and archives of all their shows for at least 7 days.

And they have RSS feeds that you can podcast off

Maaaarvelous!

In case you didn't know I'm originally from New Plymouth and root for my home side.

http://www.tvnz.co.nz/view/page/411749/611894

Hooters is coming to New Zealand.....

I look forward to it being added to his wings tour next time around.

Seems that at east some people read my blog.... I was in the top 10 referrers to DPFs blog this month.

Not sure about others but it's where I go for my NZ news while traveling... Missed the whole PM on the Plane thing last week as I was coming back from BNE at the time.

Does everyone remember Global Plus? BNZs airpoints earning credit card?

Well they've changed their tag line from 'the fastest way to earn airpoints' to 'the fast way to earn airpoints'.... Guess they're not so fast after all

Been watching CNN this morning at my Hotel (hotel review to follow) and it looks like New Orleans is going to get a serious pasting. Details at www.cnn.com

My lovely office admin is blogging.....

She's a BA grad from Otago, wife to one of my tech guys and a generally all around smart cookie- I hired based on her Rubiks Cube ability!

Anyway check it out... they lost 13-0 in social soccer the other night.....

“Today I had a rather bold customer, I don’t know if he does it in other shops or not. He asked about a TV and I said I would go and get him one. Instead he came into the stock room, clearly marked “Staff only” and had a look at it there. Then, later today he came back and said he would like one of the TVs. He then walked into the stock room picked one up and walked out. What the?! Does he go to the supermarket and say, “I’d like some gravy mix, oh none on the shelf? I’ll just pop into the store room and grab a packet.”? Weirdo”

My lovely interior designer cousin cousin, Anna Cuthbert (daughter of the other interior designing Cuthbert ), has just launched a business sourcing top grade fabrics and wallpapers for retail customers.

Anyway- if you want something a bit different or a bit classy Take a look.

Clemens has a GREAT piece on software patents.

I agree with him entirely- there are some strange/insnane patents being awarded. But, we do not need to throw the baby out with the bath water.....

In the final judgements of the current judicial term the Supreme Court (USA) have released a Castle like judgement allowing city authorities to kick people out of their properties to allow commercial development.

[UPDATE]

Jogle provides some good feedback

http://www.freenation.tv/hotellostliberty2.html

Ever developed in Cold Fusion.......????

Check this from the Daily WTF

<a class="user">Logged in as:a> #session.fullname# 
<cfif session.isAdmin EQ "yes">
  (Site Administrator)
<cfelseif session.isAdmin EQ "maybe">
  (Group Administrator)
<cfelse>
  (Member)
cfif>

http://xtramsn.co.nz/entertainment/0,,12253-4449335,00.html

“Welsh singer Charlotte Church has slammed American President George W. Bush as a "proper weirdo" after he mistook Wales for a town. “

”

There’s a lot of “dialogue” between Anakin and Padme that goes like this:

Anakin: I think you’re so beautiful.

Padme: No – you are.

Anakin: No, seriously, baby. You’re hot.

Padme: Oh, Annie.

Anakin: I love you.

Padme: No, I love you.

Anakin: For reals, though, I think you’re so awesome.

Padme: You’re so nice.

Anakin: Obi-Wan is a dickhead.

Padme: Really?

Anakin: Totally.

Padme: No way!

Anakin: Way.

Padme: Wow. I love you.

Anakin: I totally love you more.

[lather, rinse, repeat]”

See more here...

OK. So I'm getting set for a decent chunk of overseas travel over the next month (DUD-CHC-AKL-HKG-PDY-HGH-PDY-HKG-AKL-SIN-AKL-CHC-DUD-AKL-PER-AKL-DUD)... and I ask around the office if anyone has anyting on their list of 'never forget stuff'... and Nick comes back with a link to The Universal Packing List. VERY VERY cool- you just punch in where/when you are going and what you are doing and it builds an instruction list for ya.

Tucking this away in my blog for future reference

http://btefnet.net/

Jeremy Mazner has a post on how they are dealing with WiFi @ PDC this year.

Hopefully I'll be able to get there to try it out....

Hopefully we'll also get decent WiFi @ Sky City this year.... IMHO it's pretty important for a tech conference.

This is how I will announce it.

“Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!!  Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks! “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamahadeen

 Pajamahadeen is a word play on Mujahideen. It was coined during the Killian documents controversy during the U.S. presidential election campaign of 2004, in which webloggers were derided by Jonathan Klein, a former CBS News executive vice-president for vigorously challenging the accuracy of a 60 Minutes story by CBS anchor Dan Rather. Klein is reported as saying, "You couldn't have a starker contrast between the multiple layers of check and balances (at CBS), and a guy sitting in his living room in his pajamas writing." Webloggers who were pursuing the story such as Little Green Footballs [1] (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12526)[2] (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=12615), Power Line (blog) [3] (http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2004_09.php#007770), and Jim Geraghty at National Review Online [4] (http://www.nationalreview.com/kerry/kerry200409221122.asp)[5] (http://www.nationalreview.com/tks/052840.html) took this insult and turned it into a variety of humorous self-deprecating descriptions of their form of online activism. As Andrew Sullivan noted in response to Klein's remarks: "Actually, I'm in sweatpants and a tanktop. But of course, it doesn't matter a jot what a fact-checker is wearing as long as his facts are correct. CBS's apparently aren't." [6]

Hat Tip to Gavin

One of my friends from China, Eddie Liu (MVP Lead for China), MSN'd me a good little itinerary for Shanghai in one day.

Thought I'd post it here so I can find it easily later on.

Guncontrol.org.nz has a good takedown of a recent NZPA guncontrol article.