OStatic

OpenOffice.org is a terrific suite of office applications in its own right, but it's out of this world when paired with extensions that add extra functionality. There are plenty of extensions to choose from, but let's take a look at a few that will really make your productivity soar.

Writer's Tools - You don't have to be a professional writer to appreciate this extension packed with loads of handy utilities. In fact, there are too many to mention, but here's a glimpse: Remote Backup lets you quickly shoot a backup copy of a working document to an FTP server, Quick Converter helps you perform metric-to-imperial system conversions on the fly, and the Lookup Tool checks word definitions from multiple online sources all at once.

The skyrocketing success of Apple's App Store and the recent launch for Research In Motion's (RIM) App World for BlackBerry is clear proof that people want third-party apps for their mobile phones. Unfortunately, developers with a brilliant idea for the next blockbuster app typically have to decide which platform to choose before they write their first bit of code -- iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, etc.

The creators of PhoneGap think it's nonsense that developers have to write the same app in several different programming languages to reach the widest swath of mobile phone customers, so they developed an open source, cross-platorm framework that bridges the gaps among them.

If the terms next action , someday/maybe list , and tickler file mean something to you then you know about David Allen and his popular productivity how-to book, Getting Things Done (GTD). Predictably, the book has spawned loads of computer-based applications to help you organize your life based on Allen's methods and principles.

Thinking Rock is a great open source app for implementing the GTD system. Licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), it works on Linux, Windows, and Mac -- perfect if you run different operating systems at work and home. Once you set up your contexts (@home, @work, @market), it's dead simple to process your actionable items and create to-do lists. A large empty window helps you collect your thoughts and ideas, then plug them into the correct lists via a drop-down menu.

Last week, Net Applications reported Microsoft's operating system share had fallen below the 90 percent mark on the 40,000 or so websites where it gathers its traffic statistics. InternetNews is reporting that Net Applications made another interesting, if puzzling, discovery.

It seems the statistics gathered from Google.com (this only includes Google employees -- not the public using the search engine) were showing that a third of these users were accessing sites with an unknown operating system. It's more interesting when you consider that proxy servers block all identifying information, but the Google.com unknown systems only had the operating system information obscured.

Theories abound, of course, as to what Google might have up its sleeve. There's the Google is bringing Android to the PC school of thought, and the networking application infrastructure development theory.

If you've hung on to your BlackBerry smartphone in the hopes that you'll one day see an open source version of it's code, you're in for a long wait.

Speaking at the BlackBerry Developer Conference hosted by Research In Motion (RIM), RIM Senior Software Developer Cassidy Gentle said, I would expect some of our Eclipse or Mobile Tools for Java could be made available on an open source basis, but as for our APIs or other softwareﾗthat's a pretty big leap.