iNODE

Earlier today we (well, mostly Shane, really) upgraded our MARS installation—moving from 1.4.1 to 1.4.2. Admittedly a small version jump but when upgrading DSpace a simple(?) dot-point release is something you approach carefully.

The upgrade went smoothly and soon I hope to complete phase two (moving from the Apple default Tomcat/JBoss configuration to a Tomcat-only install). DSpace runs well with the default OS X Tomcat/JBoss tandem but there are at least two gotchas: 1) RSS feeds just don’t work in that environment and 2) Manakin will require Tomcat 5.5—not the 4.x version currently shipping with Mac OS X Server. While we’re not ready to move to a Manakin-driven interface, we want to keep it as an available option.

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Xena 4.0 has just been released and although the SourceForge site suggests it only runs on Windows or Linux, it does just fine on OSX as well (after all, it’s a java application).

Xena performs two tasks: it attempts to identify the format of a digital object and then converts the object into a more open format for preservation. Designed by the National Archives of Australia, Xena will convert these objects into an ASCII repesentation containing XML metadata, using Base64 encoding. The name Xena is itself an acronym for the process: Xml Electronic Normalizing of Archives.

I grabbed a copy of Xena and installed it, hoping I had a sort of Swiss Army knife I could use for file conversions but (unfortunately) that’s not what Xena’s about.

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I came across this “bootcamp” being run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation on October 10th (in Palo Alto). The class is pitched to Web 2.0 company staff but reading over the short preview, it seems like a perfect fit for campus multimedia labs, classrooms, and libraries. I’d really like to have a group like EFF (that is, one with an attitude that focuses on rights and less on permission) develop something like this on the East coast for higher education…

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I have to do a presentation in a week or so which means I’m spending some time with the new features in Keynote ‘08 and trying once again to improve my pretty dismal public speaking skills. The first half of the project is going really well—Keynote ‘08 has some really useful new tools.

For the second half (improving my delivery), I have found a few tips that I thought I’d gather and post here—so they’ll be handy the next time this comes up. If you’re looking for more than just a few tips, let me suggest you spend some time over at Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen site.

Let’s start with the obvious—Powerpoint.

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Not a lot to say about this but it’s an amazing story for anyone who ever watched one of Scott McNealy’s rants about Microsoft. Read the full story over on ArsTechnica:

Sun to sell Windows Server boxes

photo credit: Bill Murray

This is a test post—you can safely skip it (unless you’re interested in getting the “preview” viewer in MarsEdit to mimic the look and feel of your WordPress 2.x blog). After registering my copy of MarsEdit, I decided to post a note on the support forum:

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A year or so ago, I posted a note comparing Ecto and MarsEdit (two offline Blog editors for Mac OS X), giving the final nod to Ecto. After using MarsEdit 2.0 (newly released this week), I’m ready to say that Ecto is still my offline editor but only because despite its many improvements, MarsEdit is not able send a “draft” post. I can’t imagine why this is difficult to implement (Ecto’s done it for years), but for me that’s a dealbreaker.

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