Red Hat warily hopeful about Microsoft's Open Technologies Inc

Linux leader Red Hat today applauded Microsoft’s recent launch of an open technologies subsidiary but is clearly taking a wait and see attitude.

Naturally. In the past, Microsoft described Linux and open source as a “cancer” on the software industry. Red Hat pointed out that the path to openness was not without opposition. With that it mind, Red Hat today penned a warily hopeful response to the news.

Microsoft launches into crowdsourcing

Even Microsoft embraced crowdsourcing as a business model. Task Market, a new crowdsourcing platform has been launched by Microsoft. The new service is aimed at businesses, and specifically buyers and suppliers of business-oriented services such as design, copywriting, website development etc.

The way it works is that buyers outsource a task to the crowd by way of posting a brief online. This, along with a price guide showing how much they are willing to pay, provides the call to action for potential suppliers.

The idea isn’t new, neither is the way the service has been designed, ie Software-as-a-Service. But we’ve a feeling that with the might of Microsoft behind it, we may be hearing about it more and more.

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Twitter for Blog Promotion

Twittering, or using the twitter.com social networking site, isn’t just for fun (although it is terribly addictive). It’s also a great way to promote your blog. You can do that in a few simple and short steps:

Find like-minded people and follow them. Look in particular for people with terms related to your blog in their bio or name. You’ll have to be pretty general here since people don’t get much space on Twitter. Once you follow enough people like you, you should start getting people interested in your topic following you.

Encourage people who visit your blog to follow you on Twitter. This isn’t the only way to get return visitation (RSS feeds and use of sites like Feedburner are great!). But if you have a blog visitor who’s a Twitter junkie and likes your blog, they probably will click your Twitter badge and follow you.

When you have a new blog post, Twitter it. You won’t have room for much, but you can simply post your post header and the link.

Keep an eye on your referrals and see how effective Twittering is. If you find you’re getting even a few visits a day, it’s probably worth the effort. If you’ve actively sought out people who might be interested in your niche or topic, those are probably high-quality visitors who will visit your site again and might even comment.

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Wordpress could face serious competition - from Microsoft

Now before you begin laughing your asses off at me take a deep breath and get your Wordpress love back where it belongs. Calmed down? Good, now let’s get on with the info shall we.

According to Ed Bott Microsoft has entered the field of blogging platform software with it’s first generation release of Oxite. Of course folks will be quick to point out the fallacies of going with any first generation Microsoft anything. However this release of Oxite must be fairly stable since they are using it to power the MIX Online site.

From what I read on the Learn More About Oxite page the platform appears to be covering all the bases when it comes to a feature list. From being able to have seperate pages as well as your blog entries right up to supporting multi-author setups right out of the box.

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Microsoft squeezes out Oxite 'open source' blogger platform

Microsoft has released alpha code for an "open source" blogging platform dubbed Oxite.

Redmond will be hoping the platform – which sounds like a spotty teen's best friend to us – will compete with the likes of market big boys Wordpress and Google’s Blogger.

But many will argue that now is an odd time for the firm to be developing its own blogging platform. However, Microsoft is on its somewhat kamikaze mission to become a force in the Web 2.0 world – whatever the cost.

The company’s developer evangelist Jeff Sandquist claimed that “Oxite, is an open source, standards compliant, and highly extensible content management platform that can run anything from blogs to big web sites.”

But, as we’ve previously reported, Microsoft’s CodePlex site, where the code was published, hasn’t exactly fared well when scrutinised about its open source claims.

Just last month Microsoft said its CodePlex site would be revised before the year's out to signpost genuinely open source projects, after the company got itself in hot water.

Sandquist said the code, which was built using ASP.NET Model View Controller, currently on offer is merely a “lightweight sample” for developers to play with.

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Microsoft launches open-source blogging platform

On Monday, Microsoft launched Oxite, an open-source blogging platform.

However, the software maker was quick to underline that the product is aimed at developers and not intended to directly compete with popular blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Microsoft posted the Oxite code on its CodePlex Web site on Friday and made an official announcement on Monday. The software, described as an alpha release, is available under the Microsoft Public License, one of Microsoft’s OSI-certified open-source licenses.

Oxite is a standards-compliant, extensible content-management system designed to support either blogs or larger Web sites, Microsoft said. The platform includes support for features such as pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting, gravatars (globally recognized avatars), and RSS feeds at any page level, the company said.

Users can create and edit a set of pages on a site, add customized HTML into pages, and support multiple blogs on a single site.

Oxite is also able to integrate with Microsoft developer software such as ASP.Net MVC, Visual Studio Team Suite, and Background Services Architecture. The project began as a way of demonstrating the capabilities of ASP.Net MVC to developers, Microsoft said.

The Web site for Mix Online was built using Oxite, and Microsoft is providing the Mix Online Web site code for developers to learn from. Mix Online is the online community centered on Microsoft’s Mix Web developer conference.

Oxite is not a direct competitor to existing, established blogging systems, nor is it intended to challenge Microsoft’s own SharePoint, which includes content-management-system capabilities, according to Oxite project coordinator Erik Porter.

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Magento is a new open-source eCommerce platform

Magento is a new open-source eCommerce platform that has a main goal of providing webmasters or online store owners with a remarkably wide range of customization and fine-tuning capabilities.

The requirement for every enterprise in implementing e-commerce solutions is so diverse that flexibility and scalability play a very important role and Magento is a platform, which offers flexibility and unprecedented control

Looking for magento developer? You have found the right place.
We have team expert magento developers who keep themselves updated with upcoming features in magento and guarantees to serve with their technological expertise.

Our Magento e Commerce Customization services include:

Magento e Commerce Design & Development
Magento Themes Design
Customized Magento Themes Design & Integration
Magento Themes Development based on existing design
Website Development / Online Store Development using Magento
Marketing Promotion
Search Engine Optimization for Online Store using Magento
Custom Landing Page Design
Buttons, Widgets and Special Effects
Payment Gateway Integration
Shipping Methods
CMS pages
Magneto Skinning
Magento Store Management Training
Magento Backend Training

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Ultra Light Startups: Open Source Content Management Systems

"The cost of launching a tech venture is continually falling, due to a large number of interrelated technical, social, and financial factors." - The statement couldn't be more true, it's simply becoming easier and less expensive to build and launch a startup compared to 5 years ago, or even last year. It's part of the reason why there are more startups founded in undergraduate universities, business grad schools, and by young entrepreneurs who have small savings, if any, to seed their ideas. At the same time, some of these early stage companies create very viable and attractive investment opportunities for venture capitalists. Earlier this week, I spoke with Bijan Sabet, General Partner at Spark Capital who not only agrees that "students make for great investments", but also invests in those young entrepreneurs. He's led investments in Tumblr, which was started by David Karp when he was 19, and Twitter.

The notion that startups could be started with little startup capital spurred Graham Lawlor (currently studying for his masters at NYU), to found the Ultra Light Startups group. (I was fortunate to meet Graham a short while back at the Web 2.0 conference in New York City. We kept in touch because our common interests and that our two projects have a lot in common.) Graham describes Ultra Light Startups as "a group of entrepreneurs who explore these perpetually evolving factors and refine techniques to launch technology ventures - minimizing cost and time associated with testing ideas in the marketplace." I absolutely love the idea and have given thought to helping him start one in Boston, but I just haven't had time to give it as much attention as I would like.

The startup group meets once a month and hosts on average 30-50 tech entrepreneurs who come to actively share ideas, network, and participate in discussions that focus on a particular "ultra light startup" technique. Last month, they ran one on SEO and SEM. On December 4th, they'll have a panel and forum discussing open source content management systems, such as Drupal, Joomla, and Wordpress, and how you can utilize them for your startup. Part of my job at Acquia is to discuss prospects' web initiatives and how Drupal can help them build their websites, whether its a large media site, social network, or application. I have talked to a large number of startups who are using Drupal not only because it saves them time and money, but because it is a very extensible and powerful open source platform. Open source strategies have proven to be critical underpinnings of some of todays most successful companies...Google leverages OS and many applications on the web are built off PHP, just look at Facebook.

What are the characteristics of an Ultra Light Startup?

* Low permanent headcount, low overhead, low budget
* The use of outsourcing, offshoring and outsourcing marketplaces (e.g. Guru.com, Elance, oDesk)
* Use of off-the-shelf and open source software and platforms (e.g. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, MediaWiki) and their ecosystems
* Minimizing hardware costs and maximizing flexibility with cloud/network computing
* Leveraging infrastructure and communities provided by the diverse set of existing and social platforms and devices
* Viral/guerilla/social marketing
* Any other low-cost, high-flexibility techniques

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7 Reasons to Use Ubercart!

1) Big names are using it
Prominent companies such as AOL and Warner Brothers Records has been using Ubercart for a while. More recently, Lullabot launched an Ubercart site for their conference registration.

2) Stable release for Drupal 5, significant progress on Drupal 6 version
Ubercart for Drupal 5 has been at a stable 1.x branch since the beginning of June. While it’s not yet stable, there is a dev version out for Drupal 6, and I know of at least one brave soul using it on a live site already. This is a testament to the active development community of Ubercart.

3) Ubercart is highly represented at Drupal events
There have been sessions on Ubercart at the last three Drupalcons, numerous local Drupal camps, FrOScon, etc. Ubercart even held their own Ubercamp this summer, for developers and interested parties to get together for a weekend of coding and planning.

4) Very active community
Dozens of new forum posts a day from its 3500 registered users, numerous code commits every week, and several community-contributed modules added or updated each week. The support time for issues and forum posts is very quick.

5) High visibility outside of the Drupalsphere
This is nearly unheard of for Drupal modules, but given Ubercart’s high visibility, it’s actually been a big draw for users coming into Drupal itself for the first time. They also recently had a mention in PC Magazine.

6) Full time developers with commercial backing
While the Drupal project itself has been proof that full time, funded developers aren’t needed to create a great product, in the world of e-commerce, it’s certainly helped. There are currently two (soon to be three) full time Ubercart developers, and an estimated dozen or so more from other organizations who also do only Ubercart development.

7) Focus on being user friendly
The Ubercart developers don’t want you to have to be a developer to set up an online store. There are a million settings and configuration possibilities for creating an online store, but they’ve put a strong focus on the UI, simple checkout, and intelligent defaults. This goes a long way in deploying a site right the first time, that looks great.

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How to Use the PHP Include Statement

Saving time on a web design project is going to do two things. First, it is going to make for a happier client since the job is completed faster. Second, the web designer saves time and maximizes their earnings per hour as a result. One of these time-saving measures we use is the include construct.

The include construct in PHP is actually a lot like a function, but we call it a language construct simply because we view it as a piece of the PHP language. The include construct in particular is going to enable a web developer to include a remote file into the currently running application. It may seem unexciting, but this is a very big time saver.

The PHP include is going to save us time by allowing us to edit multiple files through a single file. If we had a navigation bar that needed changed, we would normally have to go to every page and change it if we were using HTML. But with PHP we can just reference a remote file, and dynamically change each and every page.

The average “neat freak” will also see benefit from the PHP include statement. PHP includes save many lines of code for those who use them properly. By saving lines of code, it should not be thought that performance is increasing- if anything, it is decreasing. All we are doing is taking out the nonsense code and focusing on other parts of the current application.

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Welcome Bug Fixes In Joomla 1.5.8

On November 10th just 2 months after the release of Joomla 1.5.7 the Joomla development team (Development Working Group’s) released the new version (1.5.8) of one of the most popular content management systems. The release is composed of bug fixes and 2 moderate-level security resolutions and does not offer any other additions. Its codename of is Wohnaiki. Let’s see more of Joomla 1.5.8.

What’s new?

There are two moderate level security fixes in 1.5.8. Both involve com_… XSS issues.

Com_weblinks XSS Vulnerability: It allows raw HTML to be placed in the title and description tags for weblink submissions.

Com_content XSS Vulnerability: This fix allows entry of dangerous HTML in the default article submission. It however affects only users with Author access or above and in cases if there are no filters set up in com_content configuration.

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Piwik plugin for Drupal

If you are using Drupal to power your website, you may be interested by the Piwik Integration for Drupal plugin.

The module automatically adds the Piwik tracking code in your drupal website, as well as providing the following features:

- Selectively track certain users, roles and pages
- Monitor what files are downloaded from your pages
- Cache the Piwik code on your local server for improved page loading times
- Direct access to statistics in reports section (D6+) using Piwik widgets and API

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Singularity: Microsoft's Open Source Operating System

The Singularity project was started in 2003 as a fundamental redesign of how operating systems work. From the ground up everything is based on the concepts of isolation and verifiability.

Processes are highly isolated from one-another. Communication is done strictly via type-safe channels, shared memory of any form is not allowed. Processes are "sealed", meaning they cannot dynamically load or generate code. This has the advantage of making virus injection virtually impossible, at the cost of not being able to use dynamic link libraries or meta-programming techniques.

Other than a small part of the kernel, the bulk of Singularity is written in the type-safe language Sing#. Instead of platform specific assembly languages, Singularity uses .NET's IL as the lowest common denominator. Singularity will not even try to load unmanaged applications.

The first 2.0 release includes the full source code tree and a bootable CD image. A Virtual PC file is also available in this release.

In an unusual move by Microsoft, Singularity is soliciting patches and offering full developer rights on CodePlex.

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