News (128)

South African government adopts ODF

The South African government said on Tuesday that it is to adopt Open Document Format as its preferred standard for software interoperability. Read more »

IBM barred from US government contracts

IBM has been indefinitely barred from entering into new contracts with the US federal government. Read more »

OOXML result: Will it matter in Australia?

Microsoft's OOXML document format has accrued enough votes for recognition as an international standard, but one observer believes the change will make little difference to users in Australia. Read more »

Australia abstains on final OOXML vote

Standards Australia has maintained its "abstain" vote on Microsoft's attempt to attain international standard status for its Office Open XML file format. Read more »

NZ Ministry of Justice: We want open source

The New Zealand Ministry for Justice believes that open source software is a more stable, supportable, and cost-effective choice compared to proprietary solutions. Read more »

Government backs renegade open source licence

The federal government's recently-launched open-source content management system does not meet industry standards, local software developers and a leading IT lawyer claim. Read more »

Aust government signs agreement to see Windows code

The Australian government is to gain access to the source code underlying Microsoft's Windows operating system after signing an agreement with the software heavyweight in Canberra yesterday. Read more »

Centrelink puts open source commitment in writing

Centrelink is authoring a formal open-source policy document and investing heavily in open-source systems to anchor an improved identity management regime that's hoped to help recover up to AU$50 million in losses to fraud annually, infrastructure planner David Oram told attendees at the AUUG 2004 conference in Melbourne. Read more »

Microsoft to standardise Office formats

Microsoft intends to submit file formats for its new Office 12 applications to the European standards body ECMA International. The company hopes this will allay concern about its level of control over document formats. Read more »

AU government commissions open source procurement guide

The federal government has commissioned a sourcing guide designed to give departments and agencies an improved understanding of the procurement processes involved for open source software and solutions. Read more »

Features (53)

Is government switched on?

E-business can do a lot for improving government and health services, but is Australia taking advantage? Read more »

Labor should promise the kids XO, not XP

Should Labor get into power at the federal election next month, its promised "education revolution" rebate would be better spent on the world's largest single order for Negroponte's XO laptop instead of being a boon for traditional PC retailers and a certain software vendor from Redmond. Read more »

Open source: More than just free beer

In response to a recent article questioning the motives of governments that use open source technology, Australian commentator Con Zymaris hits back at Andrew Parsons' anti-open source stance. Read more »

New Indian government a threat to offshoring?

What do the results of the recent Indian election mean to companies looking to offshore IT services there? Author Paul Davies explains. Read more »

Generate development documentation with the inclusion by reference method

One technique for generating software development documentation which deserves more attention is the idea of including documentation by reference. Read more »

Inside the San Fran network lockout

A strange sort of techno-drama is playing out in the city of San Francisco, California right now. The blame for the fiasco may not be as easily assigned as it at first appears. Read more »

Effective and affordable User testing

At the recent Web Directions South UX conference in Melbourne, Lisa Herrod, the Principal Usability consultant at Scenario Seven offered advice on usability testing with her presentation -- "User testing for the rest of Us". Read more »

Microsoft plays open but patent jaws still have teeth

Despite Microsoft's claim it will not sue developers that build free open source software on Microsoft platforms, a caveat leaves a yawning space for its legal teeth to gnash those that commercialise the software. Read more »

Agile Modelling with IBM's Scott Ambler

You may already be doing agile modelling and not realise it according to Scott Ambler, head of Agile Development at Rational Software. Read more »

Assessment uncovers a consultant's incompetence

When one firm orders a business assessment, this consulting firm discovers a troubling history. Here's how the consulting firm tracked down the problems, including an IT consultant's blatant disregard for good business practices. Read more »

Blog (3)

Samba gets an inside look at Microsoft documentation

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- A complicated third-party arrangement means that the open-source Samba project will be able to make use of proprietary documents describing Microsoft file-sharing software. Read more »

Q&A with EditMe: A wiki for non-geeks

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Finally, a wiki CMS solution that you can safely give to your clients to use. But sshhhh... don't call it a wiki... Read more »

Enterprise Architecture has failed in a big way

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Most EA initiatives failed. My guess is that more than 90% never really resulted in anything useful. Read more »

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  • Staff Apple to developer: Fart jokes aren't funny

    When Apple announced it would be vetting every application submitted for inclusion in the App Store, this was just the kind of question that entered many a mind: just how arbitrary would the company be in wielding that veto power? Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Staff Chrome is just another browser

    Hands up if you missed the Chrome release -- didn't think anyone did. Google's browser arrived with all the fanfare and hype that only Google can produce. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Renai LeMay 2Vouch refers well

    Melbourne-based Web start-up 2Vouch yesterday launched the first public beta of what it dubs its "social recruiting platform". Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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