To keep up with the latest upgrades to the programs on the Mission Disk we’re releasing Version 1.1 of the project with the following updated software versions:

• 7zip 4.57
• Firefox 3.0
• Gimp 2.4.6
• InfraRecorder 0.45
• Open Office 2.4.1
• Paint.NET 3.31
• PDFCreator  0.9.5
• Scribus 1.3.3.12
• SumatraPDF  0.8.1
• Thunderbird 2.0.0.14
• VLC 0.8.6h

We’re particularly excited about the release of Firefox 3 — an even faster and more secure web browsing solution.

Jamie’s job has taken him to parts unknown for the next six months working as a military contractor for the Air Force. We wish him all the best and he will be sorely missed on this project.

In the meantime, please direct any inquiries or suggestions to me either through this blog or write to darrellcdow@gmail.com

Darrell (with a lot of help from Jamie) has put together an installer package for the Mission Disk project so that folks can avoid having the burn the project to CD before using it.

Hopefully this will help people who just want a quick peek at the project to be able to look at more easily. You’ll also notice that the link to “Download the CD” is now called “Download the Mission Disk” in honor of this change.

Enjoy!

We’ve removed the Online Software Links page and replaced it with a Resources page filled with a lot more content.

Here you can get links to software that we may not include on the CD but is worth checking out anyway. You can also find links to free fonts, clipart, online manuals for software and a whole lot more.

If anyone has suggestions for content on this page please drop us a line!

To start off with we’d like to say that we’re aware that the PDF Creator does not work on Windows Vista. It’s a known issue that the authors are trying their best to overcome. We’re hoping to hear good things from that project shortly.

There’s also a new version out of Paint.Net that we’ll include in our next release. Progress marches on.

Some good news from our initial release is that there’s been great feedback from a couple of forums that will lead to ongoing improvements in the project. You can read and contribute to the ongoing conversations Here and Here. If anyone has ideas for other forums, blogs, or elsewhere (anywhere, really!) that we could spread the word, feel free to let us know.

Things have been a little slow lately. Darrell has just completed a move to Georgia and Jamie is right in the middle of transitioning to a new job. So there hasn’t been a huge amount of progress in the past few weeks. But that being said, we have managed to get some work done.

Yesterday Darrell set up a new survey that should allow us to get some feedback on the most recent version of the CD as well as give us some direction on what people might need in the future. So if you haven’t yet checked it out, please download the CD and then tell us what you think in the survey.

In other news, Amick Cutler, of Elohim Clothing, created an amazing new banner for the website. As soon as we have a little time Jamie will be redesigning the site to use the new banner and a complimentary color scheme. Meanwhile, you can take a look at the banner by clicking the thumbnail image below.

Here’s what’s going on: Darrell is in the process of moving to Columbus, GA and Jamie has been fighting a flu bug for the past week. Suffice it to say, not a whole lot was done on the project recently.

Nevertheless, we’re going to start gearing back up again this week and lay out the next steps to take going forward.

We are looking for some victi…er…testers. We would love for more people to download the project, and give us some feedback. If for some reason you can’t get the download, let us know and we’ll see if we can work out another way to get the software to you.

Before we run madly off in all directions we’d like to make sure that there’s some method to our madness.

Sorry about the slow update, but both Darrell and I have been more than a little busy this week. But bear with me, we did get a good bit accomplished this past weekend.
Darrell hunted down and researched free templates for Open Office. He was able to gather templates for everything from label printing to business cards and presentation templates.
I went ahead and created a download page for the first version of our CD. So now you can easily download it by going to our download page and following the instructions. The first version only contains the software we are distributing. The next version should also contain documentation and tutorials.

Both of us in starting to write documentation have realized that we are nowhere near as familiar with Open Office as we should be. So Darrell and I are attempting to learn the ins and outs of Open Office a little better before we start writing tutorials and help documents.

This weekend was a good weekend for the project.

Darrell and I sat down for about two hours on Friday and hammered out the documentation needs and requirements. Now that the documentation is a little more defined, progress on writing it should go a lot faster. We also went through the software on the cd and weeded out some of the more unnecessary programs to make more room. Current size of the cd is running about 250mb. So there is plenty of room for documentation and templates.

I want to say thanks to Rachel Ochs. She sent me a whole bundle of prayer letters and missionary updates. Using those, I was able to start on a do’s and dont’s document and the first of what will be many prayer letter templates. Hopefully having a variety of simple and elegantly designed templates will make it easy for missionaries to write prayer letters. That way missionaries can concentrate on their main goals.

As for website stuff, Darrell started organizing our links page. He posted a partial list of online resources and links that should be useful to missionaries and pastors alike. The list is not at all complete, but it should grow as we both get more time to post to it. We also got a forum set up for discussions and to help out with the organization and administration of the project.

So all in all, this has been a productive weekend. A lot of good progress and a lot of work done.

Well, this weekend was a bit busy for me. So I didn’t really accomplish much on the project. But I wanted to post an update introducing the new members of the project. Andrew Flanagan and Darrell Dow have both agreed to join the project and help out with the CD.

Andrew has agreed to begin work on creating an installer for OSX. Since I’m not really a Macintosh guy, and have no real access to the hardware, I was largely ignoring mac users in this project. Andrew, seeing the need volunteered to help take up some of the slack on that front.

I work with Darrell, and we often take lunch together. Over lunch last week, I was describing the project to him, and we started brainstorming the documentation needs while we ate. So after lunch, Darrell graciously agreed to help out in the writing and design of the documentation. Darrell grew up on the mission field. So he has a lot of experience with missions and the computing needs of missionaries. So I expect his input into this project will be invaluable.