Existing users, 
This is great that they've created this, but it's sort of rewarding bad behavior. First of all, it kind of annoys me that the U.S. government is contracting the whole thing to a Canadian firm when I'm sure there are many, many capable developers in the U.S., but that's really beside the point.
The point is that the U.S. government is starting to get heat for this... the news was even on the front page of Yahoo today, which means that the story is out for the general population. What if they see this and then just decide that there's no use in paying to get the proper work done, since somebody already went and picked up their slack?
I hope that's not the case.
Grants.gov
package to use Grants.gov Citrix server solution
Version: 1.0.3
good, but...
Feedback Type: Commentary
Contributed by: freshy ill Tuesday, February 14 2006 @ 07:01 AM PST
Product Platform: MacOSX
Used Product For: Have Not Tried
Recommend Product: YES
Comments
good, but... - gallagher.ron
FYI: PureEdge Solutions has been bought out by IBM, so no need to complain about outsourcing. PureEdge is also said to be working on a fix.Thursday, February 16 2006 @ 09:04 AM PST
good, but... - das@doit.wisc.edu
Well, the central Citrix solution (which became available in December 2005) was in response to the fact they knew there wouldn't be a Mac-compatible version of PureEdge (now IBM Workplace Forms) until at least November 2006. In the meantime, a central, free solution that doesn't require Mac users to buy anything or maintain local infrastructure is the best possible interim solution.The only problem was that Grants.gov's instructions and downloads for their own Citrix solution don't work - and this has been communicated to them several times - in addition to being quite cumbersome even if they did work, and also had some implementation problems, such as the default window size being set to 800x600 which is almost unusable for Grants.gov. Most users didn't know how to get the Citrix solution to work.
So we put together this package that would be a single, easy to use download to access the Citrix interim solution. I'm actually quite surprised that between Grants.gov, HHS, the $22B Northrop Grumman contract to manage Grants.gov, and all of the outcry that's been going on for about a year about this, that they didn't manage to do something sooner.
This package doesn't change anything:
- There still won't be a native Mac solution until at least November 2006, and there isn't really any way to speed that up (some might say IBM/PureEdge could work more quickly, but that is unlikely as this is a relatively complex product and there are other factors)
- The Citrix solution is an acceptable workaround in the meantime, and was already available
- Mac users still need some way to submit grant packages to Grants.gov without finding a PC or buying Virtual PC for $250
Hopefully this helps people in this interim period.
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Tuesday, February 14 2006 @ 09:32 AM PST