OwnCloud- An Open Source Cloud

Owncloud holds the idea that everyone likes personal cloud services, like Apple’s iCloud, Google Music, and Dropbox. But, many of aren’t crazy about the fact that our files, music, and whatever are sitting on someone else’s servers without our control. OwnCloud is an open-source cloud program. You use it to set up your own cloud server for file-sharing, music-streaming, and calendar, contact, and bookmark sharing project. As a server program it’s not that easy to set up. OpenSUSE, with its Mirall installation program and desktop client makes it easier to set up your own personal ownCloud, but it’s still not a simple operation. That’s going to change.

According to ownCloud’s business crew, “OwnCloud offers the ease-of-use and cost effectiveness of Dropbox and box.net with a more secure, better managed offering that, because it’s open source, offers greater flexibility and no vendor lock in. This makes it perfect for business use. OwnCloud users can run file sync and share services on their own hardware and storage or use popular public hosting and storage offerings.” I’ve tried it myself and while setting it up is still mildly painful, once up ownCloud works well.

OwnCloud enables universal access to files through a Web browser or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to easily view and sync contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all devices and enables basic editing right on the Web. Programmers will be able to add features to it via its open application programming interface (API).

OwnCloud is going to become an easy to run and use personal, private cloud thanks to a new commercial company that’s going to take ownCloud from interesting open-source project to end-user friendly program. This new company will be headed by former SUSE/Novell executive Markus Rex. Rex, who I’ve known for years and is both a business and technology wizard, will serve as both CEO and CTO. Frank Karlitschek, founder of the ownCloud project, will be staying.

5 Most Expected Android Apps of 2012

We have already seen great Android apps.But 2012, which is just around the corner, has some great apps in store for the open-source mobile platform. From amazing 3D games to ports of popular apps from other platforms, these are applications that users have been waiting for a long time. Let us have a look on some of the most anticipated Android apps for 2012.

Instagram: Instagram, which started as a photo-sharing application, has quickly become an internet sensation. This app allows users to take photos, apply filters, and then share those photos on popular social-networking sites. Even though Instagram is available only on iOS, it has more than ten million users worldwide. So, there is very little doubt that there’s a huge chunk of Android users eagerly waiting for the day Instagram arrives in the Marketplace.
Keeping in mind the huge demand for Instagram on Android, the startup has already started working on an Android app. According to Techland, the company’s CEO Kevin Systrom has confirmed that the team is already working on an Android app.So, since the app is still a work in progress, we can expect it to arrive anytime in 2012. Till then, you’ll have to make do with popular Instagram alternatives like Streamzoo or Lightbox.

VLC Media Player for Android: VLC is perhaps the most popular open-source media application around. Its simplicity, and the sheer number of powerful features it comes packed with, have made it the best cross-platform media player around. Come 2012, the VLC team will be bringing the same experience to your Android phone. Even though not much is known about the in-progress app yet, one can expect it to top the Marketplace charts soon after its release. The VLC brand name already has a huge amount of following, making it one of the most awaited apps of 2012.The Android application, which is in heavy development, is still in pre-alpha stage; however, if you’re itching to get your hands on it, you can always try out the early builds from XDA forums.

Firefox 10: Firefox’s mobile version will also get an update next year. Slated for an early 2012 release, Firefox 10 will come out with a slew of interesting features. One of the major updates in this release will be the addition of support for the recently killed Adobe Flash Player. Also, the update adds some essential security features like an antimalware/phishing frontend and a safebrowsing frontend.
On the performance front, expect a faster and smoother Firefox, as the release will include support for hardware acceleration using OpenGL ES. Overall, Firefox 10 brings an important set of features – except for the annoying Flash of course – that might finally give the open-source browser a much needed boost on this platform.

More High Quality, Tegra-based Games: When it comes to the infamous Android-iOS battle, gaming has been an area where Apple has repeatedly outshone the open-source mobile platform. However, recently, when a little-known game called Shadowgun appeared in the Android Marketplace, all eyes suddenly turned to the untapped prowess of Tegra devices. Soon, many developers started working on games that will run on Tegra 3 tablets and phones. Though some of the games have already come out, many are still under heavy development. Included in this highly coveted list of games are big titles like GTA 3 10th anniversary edition, Max Payne, Lost Planet 2, and more. Not only will these games give gaming on Android a much needed boost, they’ll also take the iOS-Android battle to the next level.

Jolicloud: Jolicloud, the popular cloud-computing operating system is planning on an Android application. According to the service’s blog, Jolicloud will be available as an Android app in the ‘future’. And, even though there’s no confirmed date as to when the app will come out, one can easily expect it to come out in 2012.Jolicloud has received a huge following not only among netbook users, but also among Linux users who are looking for a cloud-based Ubuntu alternative. Bringing the web app to Android means that JoliOS users will be able to access their data from anywhere.

Apple’s lossless audio format goes open source

Apple made its lossless audio format open source this week, allowing for others to view and change the code for use in their own software and tools.

As Daring Fireball notes, the format–which goes by the name, Apple Lossless Audio Codec (or ALAC)–adopted the Apache license yesterday.

ALAC was first introduced to Apple’s
Mac OS X Core Audio framework in 2004, where most users saw it as part of iTunes 4.5. It let users rip a CD into smaller compressed files without reduction in quality. Still, the resulting files are considerably larger than the more ubiquitous MP3, AAC and WMA formats, which compress music tracks even further at the expense of lower fidelity.

It also rivals the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), another lossless codec, that’s been open and royalty-free from the start, but is not supported on Apple’s portable devices.

ALAC-formatted audio tracks can be played back on software and hardware that support it, which for Apple included things like iTunes and QuickTime, along with the company’s
iPod–and later iOS–products, and AirPort Express hardware through AirPlay.

As Ars Technica notes, it took developers about a year to reverse engineer the technology to add support for ALAC files in their own software. That includes audio playback software like VLC, Boxee, and TapeDeck, which are now able to make use of the official code.

Top 10 benefits of DRUPAL

Drupal is an open-source rich with several resources that make it incrediblybest alternative amongst all available open source CMS (content management systems) applications. It makes the mission of web application development so unproblematic and picturesque that you can build Drupal based lovely website on your own. You even don’t need to be professionally solid for web designing or development.

Below are the top 10 benefits of Drupal:

1. Drupal Is An Open Source: Being an open source means Drupal doesn’t requireany license for selling any kind of development work made in Drupal neither it needs any royalty. Anyone can get into to the source-code of an application or program designed in Drupal. It doesn’t confine any program from being used in a firm or personal use.

2. User Friendly Content Management System: Drupal doesn’t require any mechanical dexterity for coding (like html coding). If you are not usual with programming and coding, even then you can make a website in drupal without problems. If you have entry to the admin panel you can create any kind of transforms on your website by simply using a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) without problems. You can even copy and paste matter from MsWord or any other text editor as it is. As soon as you become familier with it you will be able to handle every module and node according to your requirement.

3. Search Engine‘s Favourite: It is designed completely from the purpose of search engine crawling and ranking. It endows with the modules for title tag, meta description tag, meta keywords tag, head tag, etc. Where you can put in content and text optimized for search engines. You can even epitomize a dynamic URL of your website’s page as a static one. That is why search engines adore the websites created in Drupal.

4. Market Capture: Drupal has incarcerated a immense market in web development. You can see thousands of well knownand fashionable websites have been designed in drupal. Such as:The White House’s website, Britney Spears’ website, Popular Science website, etc.

5. High Elasticity: Modules in Drupal such as: user administration, publishing workflow, news aggregation, meta-data functionality, etc. are fully ready for all vital future requirements. Extra resources like blogs, forums, e-commerce and calendars can undoubtedly be put into action any time in the future. Additionally, multitudes of third party modules can be selected from to enlarge Drupal.

6. Amazing Themes: Whether it is personal interest or a big transnational website Drupal based themes are rage at the present time. Drupal presentsthousands thematic default website templates absolutely for free. Additionally, you can get thousands of paid and free templates with Drupal theme by doing a easy search online. You can even use up a modified one into Drupal theme.

7. Incredible Worth: Drupal adds ab Incredible Worth to your website with thousands of sections, modules, mambots, etc. You can make any mode of website with Drupal, there are no boundaries. You can make from a unfussy static website, personal homepage to firm website, dating website, weblog, Myspace-like website, all depends on your vision and requirement.

8. Basic Quality: Drupal endows with astonishing flexibility because of which it is extremely congruent with PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL, etc. Its largeattuned ability with jQuery, LAMP, mature API libraries and complete choice of modules are swiftly making it a great requirement for the core functionality of a framework.

9. Cross-Browser Comparision: Drupal is also very much congruent with most of the all fashionable browsers like; Mozzila, IE, Chrome, Safari and many more. It allows a website’s design and functionality to perform in the same way on all the browsers.

10. Fantastic Support: This is an open-source CMS so you will get plentiful experienced and connoisseur Drupal themers and developers out there on the internet. They are always keen to assist youfrom installation to accomplishment of a module. So you are never going to stuck with Drupal.

Microsoft announces Open source based cloud services

We see press releases go by all the time and most of them deserve the yawn they get. But, one caught my interest yesterday. At the PASS Summit conference Microsoft Vice President Ted Kummert announced that Microsoft will be offering a big data solution based upon Hadoop as part of SQL Azure. From the Microsoft press release, “Kummert also announced new investments to help customers manage big data, including an Apache Hadoop-based distribution for Windows Server and Windows Azure and a strategic partnership with Hortonworks Inc.”

Clearly this is a major win for the early startup Hortonworks. Hortonworks is a spin out of Yahoo! and includes many of the core contributors to the Apache Hadoop distribution: Hortonwoks Taking Hadoop to Next Level.

This announcement is also a big win for the MapReduce processing model. First invented at Google and published in MapReduce: Simplified Data Processing on Large Clusters. The Apache Hadoop distribution is an open source implementation of MapReduce. Hadoop is incredibly widely used with Yahoo! running more than 40,000 nodes of Hadoop with their biggest single cluster now at 4,500 servers. Facebook runs a 1,100 node cluster and a second 300 node cluster. Linked in runs many clusters including deployments of 1,200, 580, and 120 nodes. See the Hadoop Powered By Page for many more examples.

In the cloud, AWS began offering Elastic MapReduce back in early 2009 and has been expanding the features supported by this offering steadily over the last couple of years adding support for Reserved Instances, Spot Instances, and Cluster Compute instances (on a 10Gb non-oversubscribed network – MapReduces just loves high bandwidth inter-node connectivity)and support for more regions with EMR available in Northern Virginia, Northern California, Ireland, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Microsoft expects to have a pre-production (what they refer to as a "community technology Preview") version of a Hadoop service available by the “end of 2011”. This is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, its more evidence of the broad acceptance and applicability of the MapReduce model. What is even more surprising is that Microsoft has decided in this case to base their MapReduce offering upon open source Hadoop rather than the Microsoft internally developed MapReduce service called Cosmos which is used heavily by the Bing search and advertising teams. The What is Dryad blog entry provides a good description of Cosmos and some of the infrastructure build upon the Cosmos core including Dryad, DryadLINQ, and SCOPE.

As surprising as it is to see Microsoft planning to offer MapReduce based upon open source rather than upon the internally developed and heavily used Cosmos platform, it’s even more surprising that they hope to contribute changes back to the open source community saying “Microsoft will work closely with the Hadoop community and propose contributions back to the Apache Software Foundation and the Hadoop project.”

Samsung Bada To enter Open source world in 2012

Samsung has announced that it plans to open its proprietary mobile operating system – Bada – to third party developers and device manufacturers in 2012, or in other words, make it an open-source platform, like Google’s Android operating system.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Samsung may have another trick up its sleeve to give Bada a boost: making the operating system open source. What the Journal posted is anything but a confirmation, however. It’s based on a tip from a “source close to the situation.”

The move could make sense, and it’s the kind of move that the high profile open source blog OStatic mused might be a good move for HTC to make. It’s probably an even better move for Samsung to make, since they already have their own OS to open source.

Doing so could help spark additional developer interest, and that’s a critical component of mobile OS success. With the iOS and Android app stores already teeming with quality apps and Windows Phone quickly catching up, Samsung could find the going tough if it can’t find a way to get outside developers to show Bada some love.

Open sourcing the OS could certainly help, but we’ll have to wait for someone in the company to confirm whether or not that’s in the cards.

Samsung, the world's largest technology company by revenue, is traditionally strongest in hardware development. By opening the Bada platform to external developers, Samsung is taking a similar route as Google, which allows software engineers outside the company to adapt and modify the source code for Android for free.
Samsung launched Bada in late 2009 and the platform is used on the company's cheaper smartphones in Europe and emerging markets. The company doesn't disclose sales figures for Bada and Android-based phones. According to market research firm Gartner, Bada was on 1.9% of smartphones sold in the second quarter, with just over two million units sold, while Android had a 43.4% market share, with 46.8 million units sold.

Other global handset makers such as Nokia have had challenges in growing the market for their own operating systems. Nokia, which sells phones using its Symbian operating software, opted to partner with Microsoft Corp. this year to make phones using the U.S. company's Windows software.
Analysts say Samsung has to increase support for alternative platforms in the high-end smartphone and tablet markets, at least in the short term, to lighten its heavy reliance on Android. Last week, Samsung unveiled its 11.6-inch tablet device powered by a new version of Microsoft's Windows software.

Best 9 useful open source web developer PHP editor

PHP formulates to as Hypertext Preprocessor. It mostly for the server s lettering form; which users create vigorously brought out interactive web pages.

PHP editors are mainly used by people who are working on Linux platform or by bloggers as well as webmaster too. These PHP editors are freely available and can be used by anyone for free to progress and performance improvement. There are many PHP editors out of which some of the best are as follows:


Syn – Open source text and code editor

It has scripts encoded and marked up. Syn is highly programmable text form. The program gives a neat way of open source texts. It supports active scripting which means you can extend the functionality with writing a script. It has many ways or features to check or replace. In addition syn supports projects, does multiple import/export features.

Bluefish PHP editor

It relates to producing dynamic formats. Provides many type of support for HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, PHP, C, JavaScript, Java, SQL, Perl, ColdFusion, JSP, Python, Ruby and shell. It is available on most platforms such as Mac OS X, and Windows. It is developed using languages which are c or gtk. It has many options for creation of websites and other scripts.Features of this editor:

 1 Lightweight
 2  Fast
 3 A What You See Is What You Need interface
 4 Multiple document interface, easily opens 500+ documents
 5  Project support, enables you to work efficiently on multiple projects
 6 Multiple encodings support, can convert between different character sets, supports multibyte characters,  unicode, UTF8 etc.
7 Nice wizards for startup, tables, frames, and othe
8 User-customizable toolbar for quick access to often used functions
9 Fully featured image insert dialog
10 Complete translations in Brasilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Tamil. Some other languages are partially supported.
11 User customizable integration of many programs, including weblint, tidy, make, javac etc. etc.
12 Auto tag closing for HTML and XML documents
13 Escape functions for HTML and XML documents

 PHPEdit


PHP Edit was developed by the French company WaterProof SARL. It is works with the help of Delphi and computes in Microsoft Windows operating system, and is designed primarily for the PHP language, and even  supports many languages such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, INI, PHPEditScript, XML,etc. it contains all type of tools to work out for your wishes. Features of this editor :
1 It offers multiple tools like breakpoints,watches,profiler,configuration assistant that help in easy debuuging of our projects.
2 It has advanced code editor.
3 It offers various tools for code generation
4 It supports many languages.
5 It provides deployment on remote servers with FTP and SFTP
6 It provides SQL / Database support

 HTML-Kit – full-featured editor


This is a type of HTML editor. Mostly supported within Microsoft windows. Mostly used for creating, checking and validating forms or scripts built within languages such as XML, HTML. HTML kit is available at a certain cost to the users. Experts can save time spent on using integrated developed things. This gives controlling features of many languages such as html, Ajax, xml, and others. There is much software which is being handled upon by it.Features of ths editor are :

1 It has Project features.
2 It provides clean installation with portability
3 It provides with navigation of tags and scripts
4 Hiding of lines can be done with code folding
5 Paste plus provides formatting feature
6 It provides incremental Search and Go


 PHP Coder

PHP coder is an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) primarily designed for PHP programmers. Through joins of the PHP interpreter and official documentation, even local servers can be tested through this coder and it really saves precious time for the users. When scripts written within languages such as xml or others, coloring effects can be brought upon the snippet form in to beatify to make the user have easiest way to read in. except from other features provided above, it can bring upon nice forms relatively.

Win32Pad


It is a type of pads where added on filters can be done according to users choice. Many types of functionalities are been missing within WordPad; and it provides such functions. Editor is mostly installed and can be used easily. Files can be put on it through the within folders. Even here are some types of functions produced and enhances users with it. It is free within browsers.Features of this are:

 1 Filesize is limited to the available memory. (not 64k)
 2 Recent Files list.
 3 32k executable size. (C & win32 api)
 4 Auto-indent & Tab Size (2..8) support.
 5 Standard toolbar and statusbar. (You can show/hide each)
 6 Supports WIN (default) and UNIX file formats (read/write).
 7 Line Numbers.
 8 File change notification.
 9 Find/Replace
10 Goto Line # (Under Search Menu)
11 Revert feature. (Re-read the file from disk)
12 Full Intellimouse support.(Tested on Win95/98/NT4.0/2000)
13 Shows current location, # of lines and editing mode (Insert/Overwrite).
14 Open files by Dropping them from Windows Explorer.
15  Minimize Win32Pad to the System Tray.

 Komodo Edit – cross platform editor

This is a mixture of lot of platforms and with several languages for editing’s and other related technologies like that of asynchronous java and xml. It also includes PHP, Python, Ruby and Tcl. provides support for snippets for the browser part which include JavaScript, CSS, HTML and XML. The background snippet form even has certain features which can check codes and catch the errors within the lines if present. Mostly Mac OS X and Linux software support this software. XPI extensions allow the user to create his own types of plugins related to browsers.Features of this editor:

1 Multi-language editor
2 Standard editing features
3 Syntax checking
4 Multilingual Input Method Editor support
5 Code folding
6 Muti-document editing

 Context Editor


This endow with graphical supports for the developing controller context trees and the description of data flowing between as passages through certain web entities. This is used to construct good forms of context matters. It really comprises of two parts: the first area is an edition area where it relates to the beginning of contexts and other matters. This context editing can replace and even make deletion within the context areas.

 PHP Designer

This comprises of a free Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for editing PHP for the learners as well those trained users. It is consider bringing upon such works which enhances in removing errors, analysis and bringing on applications and search engines through by the PHP and other web languages. This tool is a productive tool as it saves out time for the users. This tool really pertains to as gaining access to its functions, variables, and other related functioned tabs. This tool been brought up is increasingly in demands for the learners and well trainees.

Steps to set up photoblog using WORDPRESS

Using the excellent WordPress blogging software, you can have a photoblog up and running in no time.

1 Install WordPress 


 Before you grab and install WordPress on your server or hosted Web space, make sure you have the required components: the Apache Web server, PHP, and the MySQL database server. Also, you need to create a MySQL database for use with WordPress. Once you’ve done that, download the latest release of WordPress. Unpack the downloaded archive and rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php. Open the wp-config.php file in a text editor and specify the required database connection info. Save the file and move the contents of the wordpress directory to the document root of your server. Point your browser tohttp://127.0.0.1/wp-admin/install.php (replace 127.0.0.1 with the actual IP address of your server) and complete the installation. For a more detailed description of installing WordPress, visithttp://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress. Finally, create the wp-content/uploads directory and make it writable by the server. This directory will be used for uploading and storing your photos. Log in to your WordPress installation, switch to the administrative interface, and tweak the blog’s settings to your liking.

2. Install a Photoblogging Theme

Next, you should install a photoblog-friendly WordPress theme. You can find dozens of free and commercial WordPress themes on the Web, but for starters, you might want to try the Cleanr theme. To install the theme, download and unpack it, then move the resulting cleanr folder to the wp-content/themes directory. In the administrative interface of your blog, switch to the Appearance | Themes section and activate the newly-added theme.

3. Install Plugins
The official WordPress plugin repository features hundreds of nifty modules which you can use to extend your photoblog’s default functionality. For example, the Flickr Photos plugin allows you to pull photos from your Flickr photostream and display them on your photoblog. And if you want to display your latest tweets from your Twitter account, you can do so using the Twitter Widget plugin. No matter which plugins you choose to add to your photoblog, the installation and activation procedure is the same. Download and unpack the desired plugin, then move the resulting folder to the wp-content/plugins

4  Install the WordPress App
The WordPress app for Android and iPhone/iPod can come in handy not only when you need to tweak your photoblog’s settings, but also when you want to publish a photo while on the move. If you are using an Android device, publishing a photo on your blog using WordPress couldn’t be easier. Assuming that the app is installed and configured on your device, find the photo you want to publish (you can use the built-in Gallery app or a third-party file manager for that), choose Share and select the WordPress item. This creates a new blog post with the photo attached to it. Add a title, description, and tags, select Publish from the Status drop-down list, and press the Upload Now button to publish the photo.

Best CMS- WordPress

All three CMS systems provide developers and users with a platform that makes both creating and customizing their websites for dynamic interaction with their customers and clients very simple. Styling and updating the look and feel of a website is notably easy to do with hundreds of different themes available many for free but also a number of supported commercial designs. And posting to the websites is simplified with WYSIWYG editors and version control along with various role based access for different contributors. Finally, all three CMS have been delivering App-like plugin functionality for at least half a dozen years [well ahead of Apple and the mobile smartphone gang]. So it is possible to make your Drupal CMS or Joomla  WordPress blog into a great project management tool or very capable Design magazine or a real eCommerce seller site. All of the CMS do these basic chores equally well. However,  WordPress stands out and the following points show that:


1)WordPress has made upgrading/updating the CMS for security fixes and/or major feature extensions very simple and easy to do. This not only saves time but also  has the benefit of keeping the CMS reliable and secure as well as  helping to prevent the splitting up of  the CMS into 2 or 3 increasingly incompatible versions [themes and or plugins/modules don't work, features and usage are no longer identical, etc.]

2)After garnering a shaky security and/or  reliability reputation in 2005-2006, WordPress developers have completely turned that reputation around. Now WordPress has one of the best security and reliability records in the CMS world. NYTimes has over 60blogs that are WordPress based.

3)WordPress make administering its sites very easy to do. It is is easy not only to preview a new Theme but then to change the sidebar and widgets and even the underlying CSS and styling coding. And trying out a new plugin is almost one button press and done, again with a solid search and preview feature like for themes. This is important for designers and developers who can show clients live some of the possible changes that can be made with new themes and/or plugins[but be sure to rigorously test those plugins before final commitment

4)WordPress is fast. And optimizations are available to make it even faster.

5)WordPress has adopted agile development. This means there are notable upgrades to WordPress every 4-6 months. Because upgrading is so easy [caveat to  those that have added specific changes to the Open Source WordPress code modules, upgrade here with caution because some of the calls and APIs you use may change from time to time] – users can take advantage of these upgrades very quickly. In contrast, both Joomla and Drupal tend to follow a major upgrade cycle of one to two years – stretching out major feature upgrades.

Features of a good CMS

A Content Management System is a Web application that makes content authoring and delivery easy. It enables users to quickly and efficiently build, deploy, and maintain content-rich web sites by streamlining the web publishing process.
Content Management Systems can reduce the need for costly site maintenance and thus empower users to manage their own content.

1- Basic Functionality: Basic functionality of a CMS includes functions like creating, deleting, adding, editing and organizing web pages. There are some CMS solutions which allow you to create the content of the web pages but set them as their default setting. While other CMS give you the opportunity to organize the content according to your consent.

2- WYSIWYG Editors: It let you edit your website image, content, header, footer, sidebar and all other important editing which you could not have done otherwise, without the proper knowledge of HTML coding. Moreover, you can also mark up headings, lists, links and other elements on a web page without providing any specifications about their appearance.

3- Management: Management of content, images, images in between the content, and all other things must have an efficient and easy solution. There must be basic tools such as cropping of images, adding ALT tag to the images (for crawlers to recognize the image), adding link to the image, rotating the image etc.

4- Customization: The CMS must be easy to customize and friendly to the changes brought, according to the needs. The changes to your CMS must not be obligatory to the knowledge of any technical expertise. Content and data must be separated so that any changes can be brought easily without being lost into the maze of HTML coding.


5- User Interaction: Suppose you have a community, forum or a platform, where readers or visitors discuss their opinions and share their views then your CMS should be able to aggregate their feedback or let any third party plug-in to play the role. Your CMS should have the provision to include features such as chat, comments, ratings and other user interaction tools. It should allow users to post their feedback and responses.

6- Different Roles: There could be a possibility that your website need the access of multiple account holders. Suppose, in your company website HR needs to update CAREER page or your Marketing Manager needs to publish a blog about latest updates in the company. In that case your CMS must be able to control the authority of each account holder. The CMS must be robust enough to limit the access, as well flexible enough to give the content contributors enough independence to update the content according to their will. Thus the CMS should support permissions that allow specifications about what users can edit what pages and what sections of the website.

Cinepaint

CinePaint is an open source computer program for painting and retouching bitmap frames of films. It is a fork of version 1.0.4 of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP). It enjoyed some success as one of the earliest open source tools developed for feature motion picture visual effects and animation work. The main reason for this adoption over mainline gimp was its support for high bit depths (greater than 8-bits per channel) which can be required for film work. The mainline gimp plans to add (but has not yet added) these features . It is free software under the GNU General Public License.

CinePaint has been in use for many years in feature motion pictures. CinePaint was used by studio Rhythm & Hues for Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Cats & Dogs, Dr. Dolittle 2, Little Nicky, Grinch, Sixth Day, Stuart Little, and Planet of the Apes. Sony Pictures Imageworks used CinePaint for Stuart Little II. Hammerhead Productions used it for Showtime and Blue Crush, and will use it for The Fast and the Furious II.

Supported file format:

 BMP,
CIN,
DPX,
EXR,
GIF,
JPEG,
OpenEXR,
PNG,
TIFF,
XCF.

Features of CinePaint:

CinePrint has vast dynamic range : 16-bits per channel (64-bit RGBA)

• that’s more range that can be displayed on a computer monitor,since the computer monitors are 24-bit RGB, and it is important when working with a film.It helps to prevent loss while editing.

Still Photographers and CinePaint

• With 35mm support it helps still photographers too. Still photographers can think of CinePaint as having many more F-stops of range .CinePaint also handles 8-bit, 16-bit linear, and 16-bit float images.
• CinePaint features the support for loss less formats such as TIFF,RLE,Cineon, and EXR, this helps the photographers to preserve the details of their photos without any loss, remember some of these formats are not even supported by Photoshop Gimp or other tools.

Other Main Features

• Frame Manager
• Onion Skinning support
• 16-bit floating point support for HDR and 16-bit colour managed work flow for photographers and printers
• Available in the following platforms: Linux, Mac Native, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Windows XP (Windows version is however broken now, a new version is in progress.)

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free software raster graphics editor. It is primarily employed as an image retouching and editing tool and is freely available in versions tailored for most popular operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X and GNU/Linux.

Its Features  :
  

Customizable Interface:

Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. Pressing the tab key will toggle them hidden.
GIMP features a great fullscreen mode allowing you to not only preview your artwork but also do editing work while using the most of your screen estate.
  

Photo Enhancement:

Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. Pressing the tab key will toggle them hidden.
GIMP features a great fullscreen mode allowing you to not only preview your artwork but also do editing work while using the most of your screen estate.

Digital Retouching:

GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.

Hardware Support:

GIMP includes a very unique support for various input devices out of the box. Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers. You can bind often-used actions to device events such as rotating a USB wheel or moving a MIDI controller's slider. Change the size, angle or opacity of a brush while you paint, bind your favorite scripts to buttons. Speed up your workflow!

File Formats:

The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in. You can find some rare format support in the GIMP plugin registry.Thanks to the transparent virtual file system, it is possible to load and save files to from remote locations using protocols such as FTP, HTTP or even SMB (MS Windows shares) and SFTP/SSH.
To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.

 

Blender

Blender is a free open source  3D graphics  application, available under the GNU general public license  for the Linux, MAC OS X, FreeBSD , OpenBSD and Microsoft Windows  operating systems.

Features - 

Interface -

• Non-overlapping and non-blocking UI delivers unsurpassed workflow
• Flexible and fully configurable window layout with as many screen setups as you prefer
• Undo support on all levels
• Anti-aliased fonts with international translation support
• Any window space can be easily switched to any window type (curve editor, NLA, 3D view etc)
  
• Built-in text editor for annotations and editing Python scripts
• Graphical user interface for Python scripts
• Fully scriptable UI with custom themes
• Consistent interface across all platforms

Modeling-

• A range of 3D object types including polygon meshes, NURBS surfaces, bezier and B-spline curves, metaballs, vector fonts (TrueType, PostScript, OpenType)
• Very fast Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces with optimal iso-lines display and sharpness editing
• Full multiresolution sculpting capabilities with 2D bitmap/3D procedural brushes (Paint, Smooth, Pinch, Inflate, Grab) supporting symmetry
• Modifier stack deformers such as Lattice, Curve, Armature or Displace
• Mirror modifier with middle vertices clipping and automatic deletion of inner faces
• Non destructive real time Boolean and Array modifiers
• Mesh modeling based on vertex, edge and/or face selection
• Smooth soft selection editing tools for organic modeling
• Python scripting access for custom tools

 Rigging-

• Fast skeleton creation mode
• Interactive 3D paint for vertex weighting
• Fast envelope based skinning
• Automatic Skinning that really works (heat equilibrium based)
• Mirror editing (bone creation and weight painting)
• Double Quaternion deformation reduces shrinking and other bone deformation errors
• Volume deformer uses a mesh cage to deform complex meshes with great results
• Bone layers and colored groups for better rig organization
• B-spline interpolated bones; forget about elbow twists
• Constraint stack for IK solver setup and other constraints
• PyConstraints; if you need something not yet implemented code it in python with real time feed back, no compiling needed

Rendring-

• Fast inbuilt raytracer
• Oversampling, motion blur, post-production effects, fields, non-square pixels
• Tile-based and fully threaded
• Render layers and passes
• Render baking to UV maps and object to object baking (full render, ambient occlusion, normals, textures)
• Render engine tightly integrated with the node compositor
• Halo, lens flares and fog effects
• Vector motion-blur post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Realistic defocus (DOF) post-process effect (using node compositor)
• Edge rendering for toon shading
• Interactive preview rendering panel in any 3d view
• Ambient Occlusion
• Approximate Global Illumunination
• Export scripts available for external renderers such as Renderman, Povray, Virtualight, Lux, Indigo and V-Ray - See Resources for a full list.

Animation-

• Armature (skeleton) deformation with forward/inverse kinematics with pole target support
• Auto IK allows posing FK chains easily
• Non-linear animation editor for mixing individual actions created in Action editor
• Automated walkcycles along paths
• Animated constraint system
• Vertex key framing for morphing, with controlling sliders
• Edit and create new blendshapes from existing targets
• Character animation pose editor
• 'Ipo' system integrates both motion curve and traditional key-frame editing
• Audio playback, mixing and editing support for sound synchronisation
• Timeline offers fast acces to many playback functions, autokey, help markers
• Python scripting access for custom and procedural animation effects

Shading-

• Diffuse shaders such as Lambert, Minnaert, Toon, Oren-Nayar, Lambert
• Specular shaders such as WardIso, Toon, Blinn, Phong, CookTorr
• Node editor for creating and mixing complex materials
• PyNodes: write your own Python shaders with realtime feedback, no need to compile
• Material previews rendered by main render engine
• Fast, realistic subsurface scattering
• Blurry reflections and refractions
• Tangent shading to give any shader an anisotropic effect
• Versatile procedural textures system
• Reflection maps
• Normal, displacement and bump maps

Realtime 3D/ Game creation -

• Graphical logic editor for defining interactive behavior without programming
• Collision detection and dynamics simulation now support Bullet Physics Library. Bullet is an open source collision detection and rigid body dynamics library developed for Play Station 3
• Shape types: Convex polyhedron, box, sphere, cone, cylinder, capsule, compound, and static triangle mesh with auto deactivation mode
• Discrete collision detection for RigidBody simulation
• Support for in-game activation of dynamic constraints
• Full support for vehicle dynamics, including spring reactions, stiffness, damping, tyre friction etc
• Python scripting API for sophisticated control and AI, fully defined advanced game logic
• Support all OpenGL^TM lighting modes, including transparencies, Animated and reflection-mapped textures
• Support for multimaterials, multitexture and texture blending modes, per-pixel lighting, dynamic lighting, mapping modes, GLSL vertexPaint texture blending, toon shading, animated materials, support for Normal Maping and Parallax Mapping
• Playback of games and interactive 3D content without compiling or preprocessing
• Audio, using the SDL toolkit
• Multi-layering of Scenes for overlay interfaces

Open Source Examples- JOOMLA

 

Open Source Projects are getting a rapid boost these days. They're encouraged a lot, mainly because of it's great advantages. In this article, I'm going to explain about one of the most famous Open Source Projects worldwide - Joomla.

What is Joomla?

Joomla is a web Content Management System written completely in PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor, one of the most used web languages.) For those readers who don't know..  Web Content Management Systems (abbreviated as CMS) are an easy way of developing websites without having to go through the complete hectic process of hand-coding the whole website. There are many CMSes out there, like Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla etc. But my top choice remains Joomla due to many reasons.

It's Origin

It was developed in August 2005, by the developers of Mambo (another web CMS out of which Joomla originated) Its developers believed that Open Source Projects were a great initiative, and they supported it greatly. They started a website that dealt with open source issues and it is said that idea of Joomla originated from that website. Till today it has been making numerous achievements, and has won many awards, too.

Features

It has many great features.   First of all, it is very easy to use - its installation is fairly easy (although not as easy as some other's like Wordpress') and anyone with basic knowledge of Internet and Computers can do it - all the user needs to do is upload the files to the webserver and configure the MySQL databases. It's User Interface, at website administration is totally easy as well. The Admin can add pages, configure, upload or delete Addons (plugins, components and templates), delete pages, monitor the visitors' IPs (and even ban any), manage banners etc'. The major reason why Joomla is the most famous CMS, I believe, is because of its versatility - anyone who is familiar with PHP coding can code Joomla-compatible Components, plugins and Templates. And for those who don't know PHP coding - they can still get tons of advantages via this feature..as, there are many free components/extensions on the web. Most of them are open source, but there are few which are sharewares. Either way, it is still the major reason for it's grand success. There are extensions for almost anything that we can imagine on web. 

Hosting Issues

Joomla doesn't consume much of the Server CPU's resources, but as a matter of fact, it still is critcised by some as sometimes, if the databases are too big, its speed can slow down drastically, and the php code's Just-In-Time compilation (of the php code) can get slow. But it usually works fine with average Server specifications'. And there are many web-hostings (free as well as paid) that offer pre-installation of Joomla (even cPanels like VistaPanel also have it in their "script installation" feature.

Websites Developed with Joomla

http://www.joomla.org  (The Official Joomla site (also uses Joomla, of course)
http://www.porsche.com.br   (A truly awesome example of how we can use Joomla to the best)
http://www.aghnation.com/ (A great combination of the worlds of Multimedia and Joomla)

Examples Of Open Source

• Apache HTTP Server (web server)
• Blender (3D graphics and animation package)
• DSpace  (digital repository)
• EPrints (digital repository)
• The GIMP (image editor),
• GNOME  (Linux desktop environment)
• GNU Compiler Collection  (GCC, a suite of compilation tools for C, C++, etc)
• KDE  (Linux desktop environment)
• LORLS  (reading lists management system)
• Mailman  (mailing list manager)
• Moodle (virtual learning system)
• Mozilla (web browser and email client) 
• Firefox (web browser based on Mozilla 
• Thunderbird (mail client based on Mozilla code)
• MySQL  (database)
• OpenOffice.org  (office suite, including word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software)
• PHP (web development)
• Perl  (programming/scripting language)
• Plone (content management system)
• PostgreSQL  (database)
• Python (programming/scripting language)
• Sakai (learning management system)
• Samba  (file and print server)
• SSL-Explorer: Community Edition  (browser-based SSL VPN solution)
• TeX (typesetting language)
• WUBS (resource booking system)
• XFree86  (implementation of the X window system)
• Zope  (web application server)

 

Disadvantages of Open Source

The truth is, there are disadvanteges of Open Source Softwares too. Here are some of them that I could think of -
1) Exploiting bugs - For network security and other security products, Open Source softwares should be discouraged.  This is so, because any user can just check the source code, find any exploitable bug and bypass its protections. That is very easy. But in case of proprietary ones,the user would have to first reverse-engineer using debugging (the machine code, which is not high level and is hard to understand without knowledge of assembly language programming)
2) Destroying Closed Source Industry - This is another fact. If open source industry gets too much common, proprietary softwares and the Closed source industry will collapse - this would lead to problems of unemployment, financial problems, stock markets would fall below zero! And this would destroy the whole economic balance of the world market...
3) Ripping codes from commercial softwares - Some times, in some cases, people reverse engineer properietary softwares and declare the source code that they obtained as open source. This is just too unethical, and it's more like cheating. This way the company that created the software also suffers greatly.
4) Many different Versions of same application - Since the application is open source, programmers keep releasing their modified application, this causes a little disturbance in the balance. Users can't download and install "everything" to see which one they like.
5) No support exists for open source software- Once you decide to use open source software you are on your own. Agreed, that lots of help is available on the Internet and there are many self-motivated forums that can help you install and run open source software, there is no qualified support available. You have to figure out on your own how to install and use applications without sabotaging your data and hardware. For instance, every second kid in the neighborhood exhorts you to ditch Windows and switch to Linux; many have lost their years of data trying to make the shift. No help documents and manuals are made available since the software is being changed every second week.

Benefits of Open source

- Cost savings -: Of course, this is pretty much obvious. Proprietary softwares cost a lot, how can a common man be able to pay so much for each and every software he needs?! For example, Single pc license for Windows 7 ultimate costs around Rs. 9,700
- Choice:  By its very nature, the source code of open source software is available to all, meaning that no one company owns the software. Any company can build upon open source software. It may be operated and maintained by multiple vendors, reducing both barriers to entry and exit. A customer can easily choose another vendor because they are not locked in to one vendor's offering.

- Reliability:  Open source is peer reviewed software, which leads to more reliability. The infrastructure of the Internet is largely composed of open-source programs such as DNS, sendmail, Apache and languages such as HTML and Perl. They have proven to be both reliable and robust under the most strenuous conditions, namely the fast growth of the Internet.Low-cost:  Open source software is often developed through community forums and collaboratives. Developers volunteer their time and expertise, and are coordinated by fewer paid programmers. The lower overhead costs translates into substantial savings, as does the fact that open source software typically does not have a per-seat licensing cost. According to Gartner, open source is even more attractive to businesses during tough economic times. In its 2009 enterprise software spending forecast, the industry analyst predicts that enterprises seeking to cut costs will be drawn to open source software, virtualization technologies and, because of tighter travel budges, unified messaging and collaboration technologies.

-Security:  Open source enables anyone to examine software for security flaws. The continuous and broad peer-review enabled by publicly available source code improves security through the identification and elimination of defects that might otherwise be missed. Gartner for example, recommends the open source Apache Web server as a more secure alternative to closed source Internet Information servers. The availability of source code also facilitates in-depth security reviews and audits by government customers.

- Fast deployment:  With open source software consumers needn't wait years to deploy a solution. Open source software can be “test driven” prior to procurement, and is particularly suitable for inter-agency collaboration, rapid prototyping and experimentation. Both known and unanticipated users can be rapidly provisioned.  

- Your Environment! -Now this may sound crazy, but its true - using open source softwares you can save our environment! You may be wondering how, well the key is simple - proprietary softwares, mostly, are sold in local stores in boxes and CD cases. Whereas, Open Source softwares are downloaded off the internet, millions of CD cases and boxes are created almost every week! If we decrease dependance on proprietary softwares, we can decrease their production, thus saving the environment from degradation.

Monetization of Open Source Projects

Now that we've discussed Open Source in a nutshell, you may be wondering "How do the authors of open source softwares make money?!"
Well, that is a very good question. That was exactly the question that I asked when I first heard of it, too. Actually, it maybe hard to believe but sometimes open source softwares are able to generate more money than even proprietary ones! Following are the major ways how they do so -:
1) Paid Support - Not all, but some (infact, many) open source softwares offer paid support. They offer instant support (via Live chat, e-mail, mailing list etc) to those users who buy various support packages. Many open source coders are able to generate enough revenue this way (e.g. RedHat)
2) Paid CDs and/or DVDs - Open source softwares are available to be downloaded from the Internet for free but some open source softwares are available through CDs, which you'd have to buy. CDs are shipped to user's address when he orders.
3) Marketing - Now this is a very important point. The coders can upload Ads (of CPA networks, PPC campaigns, Traffic Exchange etc) on their product's website(s) and the respective companies whose ads they display, pay them for it.
4) Donations - Yes, donations. Donations are also extremely important and effective way for the coders to earn money. When their software gets famous, many people donate them so that the project may not be closed due to financial reasons. Like, recently the world famous free encyclopedia was able to generate more than 5 million US dollars in just few months, only by donations! (Wikipedia's webscript in PHP & javascript is open source, too.)

Key meaning of term Open Source

- In general, open source refers to any program whose source code is made available for use or modification as users or other developers see fit. Open source software is usually developed as a public collaboration and made freely available.

-  Open Source is a certification mark owned by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).Back in 1997, Bruce Perens, a prominent Linux operating system developer, wrote a document concerning the distribution and development of the Debian Linux distribution. He later removed references to Debian and created what is now known as The Open Source Definition Developers of software that is intended to be freely shared and possibly improved and redistributed by others can use the Open Source trademark if their distribution terms conform to the OSI's Open Source Definition. To summarize, the Definition model of distribution gives four freedoms:

- Freedom to run the program for any purpose

-Freedom to study how the program works , adapt it to your needs

-Freedom to redistribute copies

Freedom to improve the program