http://www.ofaolain.com daily 1 2009-08-01T01:16:33Z http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/second-look-at-postfix-and-dovecot-on-ubuntu-9.10 it would be an understatement to say that I am a relative newbie on Linux and Ubuntu. There are a couple of servers and applications that I feel very comfortable with but most of my experience with the operating system and environment is through trial and error until I reach a stable plateau. Once I hit that sweet spot, I tend to stop. Part of reaching that point is finding relatively easy solutions to my needs, one of which is a solid e-mail server that supports Web mail. I have documented my experiences before on this site, looking at full e-mail servers like Axigen, Mailtraq, and Surgemail, which I am currently running. It is clear, though, that I am sidestepping a "come to Jesus" moment when I need to buckle down and figure out how to use Postfix and Dovecot. This is where I am now. No publisher david Evolution Surgemail Mailtraq Server Axigen E-mail Ubuntu E-mail management 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/looking-up-looking-down What do job competencies and the 2010 Paraprofessional of the Year have to do with each other? Timing, mostly. I was reading with interest about Allison Sloan and her impact in Massachusetts, and the "paralibrarian" title. Then I was attending a session on competencies for senior library management at the Ontario Library Association's 2010 conference. Both reflect the two ends of the seemingly-limitless fascination the librarian world has with who is a librarian. No publisher david Competencies Libraries Management Special libraries Law Library 2010-03-03T20:10:44Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/favorite-google-chrome-extensions I was reading the Web4lib discussion list and saw a request for favorite Google Chrome extensions, qualified by the suggestion that perhaps it was too early for anyone to have favorites! Not too early for me, as I have shifted completely to Google Chrome in both Windows and Ubuntu Linux environments, eliminating my use of Mozilla Firefox and using Microsoft Internet Explorer (8) only when I have to. The extensions that have emerged since Google 4 came out are making it a powerful research tool. No publisher david Google Chrome Browser Tools Extensions Web Browser 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/goose-your-koala-alternative-look-on-ubuntu-netbook The Human theme on Ubuntu is nice although I typically switch it to clearlooks. But I was looking around for ways to enhance my netbook look, in part because I am still fine-tuning my interface. No publisher david Configuration Netbook Ubuntu 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/ubuntu-9.10-access-windows-files-in-dual-boot-system I am straddling two universes at the moment, using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and Windows XP on the same machine. I had assumed that I would be rebooting if I needed to grab something from my XP machine that I hadn't dumped out to a server somewhere. You can imagine my surprise when I went into my Places menu in Ubuntu, clicked on Desktop, and in the new window, saw an icon for my computer right next to my File System. No publisher david File system Windows XP Ubuntu 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/ubuntu-netbook-must-have-apps That is a bit of a ridiculous title, since what one person "must have" is useless to someone else. The lack of a couple of apps was critical to my withdrawal from Ubuntu 8.04 when I first got my Dell Mini, and ended up with me going back to Windows XP But I was always a bit wistful about what might have been, and now there are some apps that I would recommend to any current Microsoft Windows user thinking about dual booting or completing migrating to Ubuntu. No publisher david Google Firefox Microsoft Word Mozilla Truecrypt E-mail Extensions Migration Linux Internet Explorer Microsoft Netbook 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/ubuntu-netbook-remix-blinking-screen-problem-launcher I recently added Karmic Koala (Ubuntu 9.10) and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) to my Dell Mini 9. I had tried using Ubuntu 8.04 direct from Dell and it was good but not great. I ended up tweaking a lot of features to make it tolerable but it was still shy of what I could do in Microsoft Windows. Ubuntu 9.10 is much more promising and, in the meantime, there are a number of applications for Linux that I have been using heavily on Windows. But there were some new bugs that I had to work out, almost as soon as I had finished installing my updated software. No publisher david Launcher Ubuntu Netbook Linux Configuration Display Metacity 2010-03-03T03:47:04Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/news/best-of-aba-techshow-2009.-twice The American Bar Association Techshow 2010 is generating a bit of interest as it gears up, and they are highlighting presentations from the 2009 conference. The two sessions I did with Catherine Sanders Reach were selected and the Techshow blog is linking to free copies of our papers on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cost-effective legal research. No publisher david American Bar Association Legal research Legal technology SaaS 2010-03-03T01:44:00Z News Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/knowledge-and-the-librarian Larry Prusak's interview in the most recent Special Libraries Association (SLA) Information Outlook jumped out at me for a number of reasons. For one, I loved a book he wrote on social capital. It has had a long term impact on how I think about my role in whatever organization I am in. It has helped me to look past the "what" that I do and think about who I interact with and how I can extend that reach. For another, the role of the librarian is fluid and the shift to a knowledge environment and away from a strictly information world is a current issue. His thoughts on how we might make that shift are worth thinking about. No publisher david Special Libraries Association Management Law Librarian Marketing Profession Legal research Future Law Library American Library Association 2010-03-03T03:47:03Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/news/risk-management-outside-the-office Foreign lawyers who are new to Ontario have to complete a 3 day course prior to their being permitted to practice. I was asked to participate and talk about risks lawyers may face when leaving their offices with client data on electronic devices. This presentation was the slide deck I used for my piece of the course. No publisher david Law Firm Encryption Law Society of Upper Canada Virtual network computing Mobile technology Law practice management Legal technology Altavista Security 2010-03-03T01:44:00Z News Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/news/do-we-still-need-e-mail That was the general question I asked in my first posting on the pan-Canadian law and information blog known as Slaw. I'll be contributing a column under the title "Working Tech" every two months. This first one included a number of ideas I've had floating around in the back of my head, not least of which was how or why would I want to use a technology like Twitter? No publisher david Blogs Twitter Law practice management E-mail Legal technology E-mail management 2010-03-03T01:44:00Z News Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/free-e-mail-and-web-server-on-ubuntu I am a bit fickle when it comes to e-mail servers. IMAP has enabled me to download and get off one server and on to another very quickly. Since mine is the only account to worry about, migration can be a very simple process. I have written about my tests of free e-mail servers before, so here is the latest run down of some applications that are available and which one I chose. No publisher david E-mail Server Ubuntu Linux 2010-03-03T03:47:03Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/loving-readability I spend a lot of time reading on the Web. Unlike Nicholas Carr and others who decry diminishing reading and blame it on the Internet, I find reading online is different but not necessarily worse or better than reading offline. I am a ravenous print consumer (although no newspapers and few magazines) but have read books on my Palm T|X device and read lots of blogs, Web sites, and other electronic texts. There is still room for plenty of improvement, and the Readability project seems to be a huge step forward. No publisher david Reading Browser Tools 2010-03-03T03:47:03Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/weblog/upgrade-to-ubuntu-9.1-karmic-koala A hardware failure finally pushed me to move my nearly 10 year old "server" to more modern equipment. It had been both my workhorse for serving Apache and Plone, but had also hosted a variety of Web mail applications and a couple of Joomla CMS sites. But the Dell Optiplex finally had repetitive motherboard failures [Poke] and while I was refreshing the hardware, I took the opportunity to refresh the software as well. Here are some notes on my transition from Debian Etch (4) up to Ubuntu 9.1. No publisher david Ubuntu Debian Windows XP Home Linux 2010-03-03T03:47:03Z DBlog Item http://www.ofaolain.com/Members/david/news/innovation-and-small-law-libraries County law libraries are an endangered species, with many of the strongest libraries facing funding shortfalls or outright closure. Those that are not funded by government are supported by membership dues and other creative financing schemes. A constant is that they are all facing financial challenges as print and electronic legal research materials get more expensive, the scope of library services broadens, and they try to adapt to modern law practice and research attitudes. I took a look at 5 law association libraries in Ontario in an article published in the November 2009 AALL Spectrum. No publisher david Innovation American Association of Law Libraries County law libraries 2010-03-03T01:44:00Z News Item