Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Opendocument but still Windows Office in Massachussets

This is good news. The most important is that governments and libraries goes for the Opendocument Format, it is not so important how they create their document. See more at this link.

Interesting e-book reader coming soon with Linux

It can read PDF and HTLM files and would be great for all those that want to read much but dont want to print it up on paper. See this link.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Take control over your news!

I didnt know it was possible to use the Google Reader on your mobile phone. I have not tested it because I dont use mobile phones.

Here is a interesting list over taking control over news.

One of the most interesting things with these feeds is that you know that everyone that has your feed will be notified automatically when they use their own RSS reader.

Nimbuzz

This is a new service that make it possible to use the mobile phone very cheap all over the world, and connect the pc and the mobile phone users throug instant messaging, voicemail and so on. Se an interesting review here.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

The Textbook authors

It will always be a conflict between private incentives and public virtues, but sometimes the world development just makes traditional solutions ridiculous. I wrote an email to the Department of research and education one day and asked if they had any plans for funding a free internet course in Norwegian language with a lot of language games, video-cast, podcast and so on, free available for everyone. They had no such plans. This is a bad policy. There must be a lot of youths, women, men and children out there that of many reasons cant go to the Norwegian courses, but have the possibility to study home, especially if it was free. This could work well for integration. I bought a good computer for a while ago for 900 kroner, and pays little more than 200 kroner for broadband. With this, plus www.ubuntu.com software that is 100 percent free, I am able to read, download and learn a lot more than was possible for even an extremely rich person for just a few years ago. And if the Norwegian state could fund a good site for learning the language, then it would be no problem for new Norwegians to learn the language.

In the last years it has been a public focus on the math education too, and why not the national library fund and administrate basic courses in math?

"Math hasn't changed since Isaac Newton," declares Scott McNealy. So why, he asks, is California paying some $400 million annually to "update" grade-school textbooks?

The private market need competition from the state, and the state has to act in business-like manner sometimes, just like Statoil. That benefit the owners (that is the citizens). Just compare the smart way the Norwegian oil industry is organized compared to the Danish one. Because of this, the Norwegian oil companies has expanded to engineering service operating all over the world.

Shebaa Farms

A few days ago I found an article about the Shebaa Farms in Wikipedia. Here is another good article about this territory that first nobody wanted, and then everybody want it. A strange story that shows that in the Middle-East, territory is sometimes a proxy for other kind of battles: http://www.worldpoliticswatch.com/article.aspx?id=119