Microsoft Office for Free

1
An Open Source Cloud Solution

I have a Google alert set up for "openoffice outlook" in case there is some interesting development in how people are getting around OpenOffice.org's lack of an integrated email/calendaring app.[1]

This story on Microsoft.com, however, gave a very interesting solution to a different problem - working with OpenOffice in the cloud.

How is MS Office free? I can work with Microsoft Office formats locally using OpenOffice and sync with Microsoft SkyDrive in the cloud. That means I don't need a copy of MS Office for offline use; instead, I can use OpenOffice to edit locally and SkyDrive syncs for cloud storage. SkyDrive is free with limited storage and the cloud GUI provides most of the tools most people will need. No, you can't replace an entire corporate office suite, but it's fine for the 47% of us that don't work or pay taxes.)[2]

(Libre Office, a fork of OpenOffice, is supposed to work even better with MS Office formats.)

[2012-09-05]

2
The first casualty of tight marketing deadlines is...
... tight copy.

[2012-09-16]

3
Story Idea

Scene 1
Outside a shop window. Some years ago, on a busy street, during the holidays. It's nighttime. Snow is lightly falling. Christmas music is playing. The only light is from street lamps and the shop window; in the window there are toys from yesteryear. Children crowd around the window, nudging each other to get closer. Their eyes are wide as they imagine playing with:

* GI Joe and Barbie
* Major Matt Mason
* A scale model of a Saturn V rocket
* Monopoly, Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Rook[3], and Yahtzee
* Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators mysteries for young readers
* A Star Trek phaser
* A record player and record albums of the Jackson 5, the Osmonds, the Partridge Family, and Bobby Sherman.
* A wooden recorder
* A cap gun[4]

Scene 2
Inside the shop. It's dark. The only light comes in from the outside. Children peer in, amazed, but there are no toys in the window as seen from the inside. The shop is empty. There is no color except within the window, which frames children backlit by sepia street lights; all else is grays and blacks. Broken glass crunches under slow-moving feet. Glinting cobwebs move slightly. Elderly men and women crowd around the window and nudge each other for a view of the children and imagine being young again.

[2012-09-23]

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[1]
I use Thunderbird with the Lightning plugin to poll a dozen or so addresses I work with, but like a lot of folks, I've come to rely on Gmail and Google Calendar for most of my hour-to-hour needs.

[2]
Someone once made fun of me for using Gimp for image editing. If you prefer fancy schmancy and top flight software with a matching to price tag, this idea's not for you. Writers have modest needs. Fancy doesn't equal better; in fact, it often means the writer is compensating for inadequacies elsewhere.

[3]
Also known, if I recall correctly, as "Baptist 500"; they were "Christian" playing cards. We were not allowed to have playing cards in our house when I was a boy. I think that was a carryover from the rules in Dad's home when he was a boy.

[4]
A cap gun was fed by a perforated roll of paper that held small blisters of gunpowder; when the toy gun hammer fell, the gunpowder ignited and made a loud pop. It had a very distinctive burnt paper smell to it. Children up through age 7 or so were very good at clearing and reloading cap guns.

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