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MacEdition Pro News : May 16, 2002: Offices, T-shirts, Mac fly-buys, and get-well-soons

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As previously noted, we’re working through a backlog of blurbs. The last ProNews segment was loosely based around the theme of Mac OS X utilities. This one can best be summarised as “random miscellany”, some almost silly and others quite sombre.

The “other office” comes to OS X

Nope, were not talking about StarOffice or Corel’s WordPerfect suite (both now Windows only, grrr!), but a new initiative called OpenOffice, who have just announced their first successful Mac OS X port of the OpenOffice suite.

May 7, 2002 - The Openoffice.org community (http://www.openoffice.org) today announced the availability of the first milestone build of the Mac OS X port of the OpenOffice productivity suite. This build uses the X11 Windowing System from XFree86.org to run on either Mac OS X or Darwin, and is available today for developers interested in helping finish the port.

[...]

The code for the Mac OS X port of OpenOffice.org has been in development by the community since April 2001, when the code base was released by Sun Microsystems, Inc. The current release, a pre-alpha release is targeted to developers familiar with developing for the Mac OS X platform.

[...]

The Max OS X build is currently available as an alpha release in English only, although the OpenOffice.org 1.0 is currently available in more than 25 languages. It is only a matter of time, once this port is completed, that the OpenOffice.org community will implement the localizations.

Developers interested in contributing to making this exciting port a part of the standard OpenOffice.org suite offering can find the tools and resources on the OpenOffice.org site. The next step, now that the port has advanced to this stage, is to create a beta release using the Aqua interface for end users to help finalize. And the OpenOffice.org community is willing to make it happen.

Now this is strictly an “early-adopters-and-developers-only” initiative. It’s a “pre-alpha” release, a little bit like the Mac OS public beta (oooh! that’s perhaps a little unfair).

So, if you’re a Mac OS X code-monkey keen for a challenge, why not lend them a hand? While their chances aren’t great, we do wish OpenOffice.org all the best in their efforts to break open the “iron hegemony” that Microsoft Office currently has.

For more information, check out: http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/index.html

Get your EV Nova t-shirts

Escape Velocity Nova is, by all accounts, an absolutely boffo game. Sadly, the MacEdition staff haven’t had time to put it through its paces, so we’ll just have to take the legion of the EV Nova fans’ word for for it. For those hardcore fans though, the folks at Ambrosia have announced a new avenue for proudly displaying your fanaticism - the official EV Nova t-shirt.

These high quality 100% cotton, “Made in the USA” black fitted t-shirts are emblazoned with the Escape Velocity: NOVA logo on the front, a small evnova.com url on the back, and a tasteful Ambrosia logo on the left sleeve.

The price? US$22 (inc. shipping). Further details can be found at http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/games/evn/tshirts.html

Have Mac, will fly?

Ever since Steve Jobs started flitting around in his Gulfstream, it was only a matter of time until someone connected buying Macs with frequent-flyer points. One Mac reseller, ExperCom, has now combined the two whenever you conduct your “retail therapy” at their new online store

Logan, Utah, May 7, 2002. A new website, flymilesmicro.com, now allows shoppers to earn frequent flyer miles on the purchase of all Apple products and more than 60,000 other computers and peripherals.

[...]

Through relationships with American Airlines’ AAdvantage and United Airlines’ MileagePlus, flymilesmicro allows travel opportunities through over 45 airline partners, including Delta Air Lines, Lufthansa, Alaskan Airlines, EL AL, British Airways, and others.

... By simply entering their frequent flyer account number during login to flymilesmicro.com, customers earn one mile for every dollar spent. If customers don’t have a frequent flyer account with an airline yet, they can instantly enroll from a link at the flymilesmicro.com website. Customers who use an AAdvantage or MileagePlus credit card can take advantage of miles from both flymilesmicro and their credit card.

We don’t normally promote a particular reseller over any other (hey, that’s what ad-banners are for!) but we’ll make an exception here on the grounds of novelty value.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

The Mac community is a creative one, and many creative types should know this name: Forrest J. Ackerman. He’s recently been hospitalized and, according to Locus Online, is in need of visitors. Here’s the scoop according to Locus.

For those who can’t get out to the full version, basically he has “suffered either a stroke or a heart attack, is improving and, at least mentally, doing quite well”.

We wish the man a speedy recovery.

Looking for old ProNews segments? Check out our index at www.macedition.com/news/. Do you have news releases or tidbits of interest to the Macintosh professional? Send them to pronewsnotes@macedition.com.

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