Thursday, October 26, 2006
$5,000 Open Office Template & Clip Art Contest
I guess I'm one of those guys that's too scared to move away from Microsoft Office and try something new (well, new to me at least) because I get scared when I think about the learning curve required to retrain my brain on a new office suite. However, I recently downloaded the beta of MS Office and just the retraining of my brain within it has been a chore. They've completely changed the UI on every application so I'm thinking now is as good a time as any to try something new.Enter Open Office, of course it's not new but it's now 6 years old and has some pretty cool stuff going on. One such project is actually a contest. World Label is sponsoring a template and clip art design contest and has ponied up $5,000 USD in prize money. From the OpenOffice homepage...
"The Documentation Project is holding a competition for templates and clipart, and there is prize money! Worldlabel.com has set aside USD 5,000 for prizes. Everyone is eligible and everyone is encouraged to participate; visit the Documentation Project for more information. The contest end date is 31 October 2006; winners will be announced on 1 December 2006."
When I saw this I thought to myself that I just had to add some commentary, especially in light of some recent events surrounding business productivity. I mean think about it, Google now has Google Docs Spreadsheets (akin to Excel and Word), Basecamp is taking over the project management world (think MS Project with less fluff), Google pages & blogger pretty much own the old FrontPage market, Adobe Flash Paper is an easy replacement for PowerPoint and Microsoft has completely changed their interface for their Office Suite to make it look more user friendly (it just looks like confusion to me).
Due to those events and the fact that a long time ago I wrote an application (circa 2000 AD) for my first web development client that allowed her to store and manage her client contact information online and also allowed her to print mailing labels for each of them directly from her web browser by creating a pdf label template based on Avery labels. So the thing that really stuck out in my mind with this contest is that World Label has created a host of label templates for Open Office versions 1.1x and 2.0 Writer and is giving them away free of charge. I remember what a pain it was making all of the labels print in exactly the right position within the pdf template so I can appreciate the effort the WorldLabel guys put into this project... Not to mention they're really putting their money where their mouth is by also giving away $5 grand.
From WorldLabel's Open Office template page...
Download for free Blank label templates in .stw or .ott file format for Openoffice.org 1.1x and 2.0 version for Writer. Templates include CD and DVD. Avery® cross reference, a large selection of both square cornered and round cornernered labels for mailing, shipping and many other labeling uses. Oval and round labels templates. VHS, Diskette Templates and more. Ooo Writer labels templates will work on Openoffice.org program installed on Linux and other OS including Windows. These documents are XML Open Document Format (ODF).
Congrats to both Open Office and World Label for helping small businesses save money on software licensing and making them more productive all in one fell swoop.
Posted By Jason Dowdell at 09:36 AM
Permanent Link: $5,000 Open Office Template & Clip Art Contest
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