The Mozilla team has announced that Fiirefox 3.1 will come with native support for Theora and Vorbis media. So, this means that:

1. open source media can become a bit more mainstream (finally moving away the proprietary mp3 monopoly);
2. no longer will we have to install Firefox plugins to see embedded audio and video files (as long as they’re in .ogg format)

The code is already out, available in Firefox’s nightly builds releases for large scale testing.

Workrave is a Windows and Linux only program that can help prevent dreaded repetitive strain injuries. Unfortunately techies are quite familiar with RSI.

Once installed, Workrave runs silently in the background monitoring how much time you’re using the computer. In pre-set times of activity, the program gives you alerts on when breaks are needed. You’ll see three types of alarms:

• Micro-Pause of 30 seconds;
• Rest break of 20 minutes;
• Daily limit (to turn off the computer).

The times established for each alarm can be modified according to your preferences or, better yet, you can leave everything as standard.

Our favorite office app, OpenOffice has just released the OOo 3.0 beta version. My review can be summed up in two words: it rocks! Ok, now you can go back to your other activities.

Just kiddin, let’s dig a bit deeper. First, since this isn’t a stable release you might not want to install this version yet as your main office application. But, so far the tests I’ve done were without crashes.

Taskjuggler is an interesting option for project managers using Linux. The program seems to be pretty complete with all the bells and whistles to keep track of tasks, time, resources, and costs.

From the site, here is a couple of its features:

• Automatic resource leveling, tasks conflict resolutions, and task filtering
• Comprehensive and flexible views and reports so you can find the information you need when you need it
• Built-in templates to get you started
• Unlimited number of scenarios (baselines) of the same project for what-if analysis
• CSV data export for exchange with Office Suites
• Risk analysis
• Flexible working hours and vacation handling
• Multiple time zone support
• Generation of iCal files for data exchange with standard productivity tools

While OpenOffice is a pretty handy office suite in itself, you can add even more functionality to it with different plug-ins. Some of my favorites are:

• OoGdocsIntegrator or OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs: both will download and upload documents to Google Docs. The first also being able to integrate with Zoho.
• Writer’s Tools: adds a lot of functionality such as dictionary, translation, and map search, backup to email, a timer, and more.
• Sun Weblog Publisher (not-free): submits blog posts directly from OpenOffice.

I’ll also keep an eye on Writer to Palm and see how it performs.

OpenOffice.org has just released OpenOffice version 2.4.0. At this moment, mysteriously there is no information coming from the main website, but you can download it through Filehippo. Sorry, no change log yet, no information as to what is new, and on my Linux distro OpenOffice still is showing as the most recent version so I’m assuming version 2.4 is Windows only.

[Update (03/27): here is the press release, the new features list, and the direct download page, it works on Linux!!]

Not too long ago I searched through several accounting / money managing software and GnuCash was the best open source software program I could find for the job. To start, I really like it because it works on several different OS such as Windows, Linux, BSD, and MacOS X.

At first the program is a bit complicated to get used to because it uses the double-entry accounting principle where you always have to list where the money is coming from and going to. But, this system was very useful for me to track my money with quite a bit of details of where everything was going to.

A desktop publishing (DTP) software is mainly used to produce documents such as brochures, newsletters, newspapers, and even books. If you’ve heard or worked with Adobe’s PageMaker you’ll probably be happy to know there is an open source “alternative” project called Scribus.

Although Scribus doesn’t work with the file formats created by the other proprietary programs (ie. Adobe’s InDesign), it can work between these softwares through svg, eps, or pdf file formats.

Now it is time to say goodbye to MS Outlook, MS Outlook Express and start giving your email a fresh new home free from constraints. Mozilla’s Thunderbird is extremely handy to organize your email, contacts, and even appointments.

Thunderbird can handle well the task of managing your emails with POP and IMAP accounts. For those who don’t know by the way, IMAP is used to synchronize your email account directly from the server. This means that the email will be viewed through your program but also be stored on the server, not downloaded entirely to your computer, a good thing if you check your email from several locations.

This is one of the most popular, and most essential, open source projects currently available. OpenOffice.org, or just OpenOffice, or simply OOo, is your multi-platform alternative to MS Office.

For the basic and intermediate users, OpenOffice will suffice as an office suite. Don’t think you’ll be loosing productivity if you used OpenOffice, it has a lot of the same features that the proprietary solutions. When you start using OpenOffice, you will spend a bit of time to find where the functions are, but don’t worry, you’ll find them.