Well, I'll start by saying that I have not tried to new OpenOffice and I certainly have not read every review written.

But, the reviews I have read have been positive.

I've used prior versions of OpenOffice as my main "office" type software for at least 4 years now. I for one don't really use all of the advanced features that OpenOffice seemed to lack compared to MS Office and OpenOffice had always helped me to do exactly what I wanted it to do.

On my MacBook I've used NeoOffice, which is basically OpenOffice for the Mac (although there was a version of OpenOffice for the Mac, it wasn't flawless). I've used NeoOffice.

According to what I've read, the new OpenOffice works very well with Mac OS... so I'll be trying it out... both on windows and on the Mac.

You can download OpenOffice on the website.
http://www.openoffice.org/

Well.... it didn't really take very long to find some comparisons online.

Google Chrome VS Firefox 3.0 VS IE8 Beta2 VS IE7...

There are some numbers and explanations of the tests as well as some graphs on Adrian Kingsley-Hughes ZDNet blog.

I'm now running Chrome, the new Opera 9.52 and Flock 0.9.1.5... as I write this. I'm posting with Flock.

Well.... today, Google Chrome became available and I (of course) downloaded, installed and have been playing with it for some time.

I've found it to be pretty good... I've checked a few sites out, tried Gmail (which... it has to run well.... because it is family!!!) and Yahoo mail.... also tried it on Facebook. I would give it decent grade so far.

As I write this, I have 2 browsers open... Chrome and IE 8 Beta, which I just installed a couple of days ago.

In IE 8, I have 4 tabs open. In Chrome I have 6 tabs open.

This is not a true comparison between the 2.... since I have different things open in each. But, in IE8, I have

• Google Search
• 2 browser speed comparison sites
• This blog, which I'm writing this in.... it includes fckeditor

In Chrome, I have this open:

• Gmail
• Facebook
• http://habsinsideout.com
• Google Reader
• RDS main page
• RDS Video player (watchin' some habs videos!!)

IE 8 is eating up a bit more RAM then Chrome is.....

This brings me to this link.... I found a comparison of what would be considered the more popular browsers on the web, it is a comparison between them, different versions and etc.

I got to thinking that someone will (I really hope.... anyone listening or better yet reading??) make another such comparison including the new IE8 Beta 2 and Google Chrome Beta. I'd love to see some numbers including Chrome. It (Chrome) seems to run a few things quite fast... and I'd like to see numbers, just incase it's my imagination pushing me to want to crown it as king.

As a side note, I do use Firefox 3 extensively.

Anyways, here is the link mentioned:
http://cybernetnews.com/2008/03/26/cybernotes-browser-performance-comparisons/

And here are links to all of the browsers mentioned.

IE 8 Beta

Google Chrome

Firefox

Revenu from ads on the net is huge.... so so huge.

Some publications available in PDF format that were previously given away may now have a new form of advertising.... Yahoo and Adobe now have "Ads for Adobe PDF".... which can be found here:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/adsforpdf/

Many sites generate tons of $$ through ads on the net (not mine, trust me!).... and being able to add advertising in yet another format is just another way that publishers will be able to pay their bills..... or make huge profits.

Because of the nature of computers (well, user based computers) and the internet..... being that it's all something you "see", or "hear".... you can imagine that advertising will only increase in this medium.

This article shows just how large scale crime can be when dealing with IT systems.

And I'm sure there are many more stories like this one.

Keep your computers updated, get and update anti-virus software and do your best to be cautious.

(Hey Mac and Linux users, don't believe the myth that there are "no viruses" or vulnerabilities for you computers)

(InfoWorld article here)

Apparently, there is quite a serious security flaw in Safari running on Windows systems.m

I've used Safari on windows a fair bit.... I mostly use Firefox but I tend to use between 4-5 browsers when testing stuff.

Here is an article on the  subject.

(InfoWorld article)

I've been using ColdFusion since about ColdFusion 4.5. That's back in 2000/2001.. In the Allaire days...

I remember when New Atlanta put out the first version of BlueDragon. It coincided with my first Linux server setup.

I've been using both pretty much since then. With my small business, with my current day job..... I've always had my hands dirty in CF.

Recently, New Atlanta have released OpenBD (Open BlueDragon) which is a free/Open Source version of their BlueDragon CFML server. (GPLv3 license)

I've been lurking on their google groups list as I'm quite interested in the project. It (the project) seems to have a great steering committee .

This should be a great project, I haven't yet had time to play with it, but I'm watching all the discussions with great interest.

There are some blog posts turning up about the project, configs..etc.

Here is one that I just finished reading..... I might just try the Eclipse config....

http://neilmiddleton.com/2008/05/07/open-bluedragon-makes-cfml-development-easy-again/

If anyone of you reading this runs Vista, Service Pack 1 may block some programs from working or cause some of their functionality to fail.

See this in Microsoft's knowledge base

Vista is an OS that I've had a hard time liking.

Seems as though the update could give problems to anyone working with older versions of Office, Wordperfect....etc.

Read about it here:
@ Slashdot

The microsoft work around (KB 938810)

Through my work, I use a 2 year old Dell laptop that has a Centrino Duo and 2 Gigs of RAM. Still got good old windows xp on it. And I will not consider putting vista on this thing.... no way.

I also use a variety of server OSs...

There's also a PC that I rebuilt (power supply was toast) using the latest release of Ubuntu.

I really like Ubuntu as a desktop.... it has pretty much everything I need for MS Office type functionality with OpenOffice come with it.

Now, I have an older toshiba laptop that's waiting to die and I bought a MacBook last summer.

I've never used the MacBook for anything other than testing websites that I'm building and programming with Eclipse.

Today, I decided to use it for a bit more.. there were some texts I had to type out and I decided to install something on the Mac that better resembled an Office suite type bundle.

So, I googled a bit. Then I found NeoOffice.

NeoOffice is basically OpenOffice, but it's more of a native Mac OpenOffice. To have OpenOffice run on Mac OS X, it requires the installation of X11.

NeoOffice touts having mostly all the OpenOffice functionality and is built for Mac. So I installed it and started typing away. I haven't tried to use it's spread sheet or anything like that... just basically typing some texts. It seems to have many features and it includes my favorite OpenOffice feature of exporting directly to PDF. That was one big selling point for OpenOffice for me way back.

So far so good.

NeoOffice website can be found here.

Peace!