A Quick Look at OpenOffice.org Writer 3.0 Beta 2

OpenOffice.org 3.0 beta 2 is available in preparation for an official September release. Here are some quick first impressions of the Writer word-processor program.

While I am a die-hard Linux and OO.org user, I must admit that I have been using Microsoft Office 2007 frequently - and I like it. That is, I like its features but dislike its closed nature. After much research, I decided that the best solution for the task of writing my master’s thesis was the combination of Word 2007 and EndNote. The main driver for choosing this combination was management of scientific citations. The Word-EndNote combination has saved me tens of hours of work in this area. The other driver was cost. I was able to obtain the entire Microsoft Office 2007 suite for $37. I would never pay the ridiculous full price that Microsoft demands.

Now, with some fresh Word experience under my belt, I thought I’d give OO.org Writer 3 a look.

While I was hoping that Writer 3 would adopt a Word-like interface, with its tabbed menus, but this is not the case. Although the icons have been updated, the overall look and feel of OO.org is not radically different from its predecessor.

Nevertheless, you can now import Word 2007 documents into OO.org 3, which is critical to its continued success and relevance.

Some other new Writer features include

* The ability to view multiple pages simultaneously
* Support for ODF 1.2 and PDF/A
* Native Mac OS X support

As mentioned above, citation management is a deal-maker or breaker for me. How does Writer 3 stack up there? Unfortunately, citation management in Writer 3 remains deficient for at least three reasons. First, the database fields in the bibliographic database are incomplete and non-standard in relation to how things are done in academia today. Certainly one could spend much time customizing the database fields, but the cost-benefit calculus doesn’t make sense to me. It appears that OO.org folks just whipped up something they thought looks reasonable. Second, when you insert a bibliographic citation, neither does it appear in a format typical for a scientific journal (e.g. “(Smith et al. 2006)”), nor is it editable. Third, Writer will not create a real-time (or any) bibliography at the end of your document as EndNote and other citation-management programs do. You have to create your bibliography by hand. Thus, if I were to start my master’s thesis over today, unfortunately I would skip Writer and choose the Word 2007-EndNote combination once again.

So, is OpenOffice.org Writer 3 worth the upgrade? Given Writer 3’s new features, such as support for Microsoft Office 2007 documents, ODF 1.2 and PDF/A, as well as the ability to view multiple pages simultaneously, the answer is a certain “yes”. However, if you are looking for a quantum-leap upgrade from OO.org 2.4 – or if you need to write a master’s thesis! - this is not a ‘write home to Mom’ release. Version 3.0 is a solid, incremental upgrade from Version 2.4.

Source:linuxjournal.com

Microsoft Small Business News & Events

But when I asked him directly, Blossom surprised me by concluding that it wasn’t the consumer side of search Microsoft was going after, but the enterprise. He sees Powerset as a compliment to Microsoft’s purchase of Fast earlier this year. “Powerset offers Microsoft a new leg up in value-add search applications using semantic analysis to extract content related to a topic. It's most useful application is likely to be in enterprise search, where there are going to be many documents with a structure that would feed well into semantic analysis tools.”

Blossom thinks the open web would be a greater challenge for a semantic search tool because it involves interpreting all of the nuances of the different types of online content through a common filtering system, but he also sees potential for this technology in mobile applications using voice-activated response to natural language queries. “Whichever the application,” Blossom says, “being able to answer questions triggered by natural language queries is becoming increasingly important in content services."

But who is director market intelligence at AIIM, and recently finished a study on the effectiveness of enterprise search (described here in my EContent article AIIM Study Finds Enterprise Search Still Lacking) isn’t so sure that natural language query is really all that. “From a “pure” search experience, people can barely be bothered to enter more than 1-3 search terms – what would make us think that users are going to type in fully formed questions as a query?” He points that in fact, most search engines have trained us *not* to enter fully formed questions.

In any event, Keldsen is simply not impressed with this move. “All the acquisitions or investments (such as into Facebook) that Microsoft has made in the consumer-facing, public web search market - as interesting as the techniques that Powerset uses are (Semantic Web, where art thou?) - this is much ado about nothing. It’s one small, subtle capability that is going to take quite some time (if ever) to make a significant impact on this aspect of the MS search business.”

I’m not so sure I agree completely with Keldsen here. I think the semantic web is the next frontier. People didn’t take Web 2.0 very seriously for a long time. Social networking was for teens, but today it’s on everyone lips. I have the feeling the semantic web or Web 3.0 as it’s been called could change the way we interact with web sites, but I do agree that it’s true potential is likely well into the future.

For now, I think Microsoft was wise to be forward-thinking. I’ve written before that Microsoft has always been a company to stand back and watch, then react to trends. In this case, they are getting ahead of the curve, and even if Keldsen is right and it’s well off into the future, I think Microsoft should be applauded for taking an educated risk. After all, what have they got to lose?