Bruno Lowagie's Online Gazette

I just saw an announcement on LinkedIn about how Apple, iBooks and the iPad Reshapes Education in Maine.
This reminds me how "cutting edge" the talks at the iText Summit were:

As usual, you can find the changelogs on the itextpdf.com site, but let's also describe in words what has changed:

Last Sunday was father's day in Belgium, and this usually more or less coincides with my birth day. I'm not that fond of my birth day. I've done far more interesting things in my life than 'just getting older', but nevertheless I've received plenty of birth day wishes on Facebook (and even some on Twitter).

I've just written 9 pages of a new book. If I succeed in finishing, that will be my third book. It's not about iText for a change. I'm writing a book in Dutch entitled 'Nijlpaard voor Kerstmis' ('A hippopotamus for Christmas'). It's about the year my wife and I spent in the hospital with our son who had cancer. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to finish it because I'm reviving everything that happened whilst writing. And when I do finish it, I'm not sure if I'm going to publish it. It's a very personal story.

We were waiting for this mail to decide whether one or two people from iText Software Belgium would fly to San Francisco for Java One:

Thank you for taking the time to submit a session for consideration for JavaOne 2012. The response to the call for papers was tremendous, with hundreds of submissions, and unfortunately we can only select a small portion of those. We regret to inform you that your session(s) listed below was not selected.

Over and over again, people ask the question: Is iText free or licensed? This is a strange question because of the word or. It's as if people think that 'free software' doesn't come with a license, or that software that comes with a license can't be 'free software'.

Times flies. I've hardly had any time to blog last month. I'm even late with my monthly analytics report:

The heartbeat of iText in May shows some arrhythmia caused by public holidays in different countries: the first of May in Europe, the Ascension and Pentecost in the Christian countries, Memorial day in the US,... It's amazing that these dates can be visualized in the analytics reports of the site of a technical product.

SOMERSET: But you gotta be a hero...you want to be a champion, well let me tell you, people don't want a champion; they want to eat cheeseburgers, play the lotto, and watch television -
MILLS: Hey, how'd you get like this? I wanna know.
SOMERSET: Ahh...it wasn't one thing, I can tell you that...
MILLS: Go on.
SOMERSET: I just don't think I can continue to live in a place that embraces and nurtures apathy as if it was a... virtue.

Saturday is book keeping day. It's the day I check if we have any unpaid invoices at iText Software Belgium, and also if other companies have already paid the invoices we've sent them. Lately, we get plenty of mails (and even phone calls) from offices who go after companies that are in default, so I took a look at the situation at iText Software Belgium (ISB), a company we started in August 2011.