A nice little article in Computerworld covering the Matapuna Dictionary Writing System.
The new online Maori dictionary mentioned is available at http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/ and the prototype New Zealand Sign Language dictionary is at http://homepages.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~pondy/nzsl/.

As many people will now be aware, RMS is visting NZ between August 6th and 20th and a series of talks in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch is being arranged. His itinerary is not 100% confirmed but it is getting closer.

Simon Bridge is doing most of the co-ordination of the trip and getting help from people like Peter Lambrechtsen in Wellington. Simon is keeping an up-to-date calendar of events at http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~corwin/rms08.html.

Came across this article on Computerworld today. It's nice to see industry pundits finally admitting that the Open Source software development model is of significant benefit to business...

Well, actually they didn't say that at all in the article itself, but the points that they raised, which are all quite valid, are perfectly addressed by the Open Source model.

After introducing our "free as in beer membership" option last year we have noticed a drop off in paid up members. As a society we run on a very low level of funds, 99.9% of the work we carry out is voluntary. However, there are times when having funds are useful. An example would be trying to help pay for flights for visiting speakers such as Richard Stallman, who will be in NZ next month.

So, this is an appeal to those of you who may not have paid your annual subscription. Please go ahead and do so. Details of how to renew financial membership are here:

Christchurch-based OnlineGroups.Net have just reached a major milestone, the first release of their impressive email+web collaboration open source web services application: GroupServer. Here's the scoop from OnlineGroups.Net's founder and director, Dan Randow:

After five years in development, our software-as-a-service at OnlineGroups.Net is out of beta, and we have released as open source GroupServer 1.0α, the software that powers it.

The 2008 AGM of the New Zealand Open Source Society has now ended.

Many thanks to all those who took the time to attend. We very much appreciate your continued support.

The 2008 AGM of the New Zealand Open Source Society will be held on:

Sunday the 22th of June starting at 2pm.

The meeting will be conducted primarily via an IRC channel
chat.freenode.net #nzoss

Voting, if required, will be conducted online via the main NZOSS website. You must be a registered and current financial member and be logged in to vote on the website.

The State Services Commission contracted local companies to develop the Broadband Map and have released the underlying code under an Open Source license according to this Computerworld article. The Broadband Map is part of the overall Digital Strategy and is designed to visually show demand areas by sector to encourage network infrastructure development. It has apparently been used with some success in Australia and the US so here's hoping.

Oh, and local companies ProjectX andSilverStripe both get plugs as well!!

This Computerworld story is about the mainly New Zealand developed Open Source eLearning XHTML editor (eXe). This is an excellent effort and demonstrates yet again the power that the Open Source collaborative development model has in benefiting and supporting society.

There is also reference to how well eXe perfomed in a live test of a load into a Learning Management System. The test used a format called the "Common Cartridge" which is designed to allow compliant learning modules to be loaded into any complaint LMS, thus giving the end users the choice that standards are supposed to bring...

A nice little read in this Computerworld article. One OLPC on it's own is a nice machine but two or more together and you can immediately see some really spectacular stuff.

Number three at 22% according to this Computerworld article.

Come on people... we can do better than that! Download and distribute your favourite Open Source package today!!!

Need more ideas? Try our Getting Started page.