the transmug report
In the Meantime
By Yves Avérous
The “un-news” of the summer was yet another delay for the release of Microsoft Office 2008, originally scheduled for this past June, it should now arrive on time for Macworld… in January! The official reason is, in essence, “between the new XML format and the brand new Cocoa native code, it’s harder than we thought”… But since the new Office will lose the capacity to work with Wordfast and that we have so many other tools available to do many of its tasks, its release becomes less and less relevant.
In the meantime, Web 2.0 providers haven’t lost a beat. Not unlike Google and its beta GMail, Reader, iGoogle, etc., all sorts of outfits are offering fun new ways to be efficient. You may want to visit www.plaxo.com, www.thinkfree.com, www.tadalist.com, www.logmein.com, www.doodle.ch, for starters. Discover those tools and read more on our blog at www.transmug.com.
On November 3rd, I will be talking about some of these tools during a ninety-minute Web 2.0-centric session at the ATA Conference, covering as much ground as possible from blogging to wikis. Don’t hesitate to come say hello at the end.
For now, I would like to recommend my new favorite browser: Camino. The latest version has the excellent page rendition of Firefox 2 (same Mozilla rendering engine) and carries nice features found in Safari 3 beta and OmniWeb (my previous favorite). My favorite features in Camino are the vertically extensible bookmark bar, the Add Current Tabs as a Tab Group, and the Move Tab to New Window!
There are many more productivity gains afforded to translators who are Mac users, and our former NCTA President, now in charge of ATA’s Language Technology Division; Christine Lemor-Drake, TransMUG co-founder; Catherine Theilen-Burke, moderator; and myself, will be discussing just that on Thursday, November 1st at the Conference in a panel discussion, The Merits of using a Mac in a PC-centric Translation World.
Stay up to date with the latest Mac info at https://transmug.com, at a group meeting (see page 4), and by subscribing to the TransMUG list at https://groups.yahoo.com/group/transmug. Membership in this full-fledged Mac User Group recognized by Apple also offers advantages such as discounts on Mac products, among others. And it’s free!
