2008 has seen the rise of yet more interactive applications and websites online as the web creeps closer and closer to having sites as interactive as desktop applications. Here’s my top 10 websites that I have been visiting and using over the past 12 months.
bbc.co.uk:
The redesign of the BBC’s website was probably the most talked about redesign of the year and with good reason. The BBC had not redesigned their wesite homepage for the previous 5 years and what a difference it has made. Now a fully interactive and customisable homepage, along with the iPlayer’s website it has become one of my most visited sites of the year and my number one source for news.
nettuts.com:
For me the best resource for online tutorials on the web. There are a huge number of tutorials taking you from the basics of the web up to more advanced techniques and tutorials. The diverse range of quality material on this site combined with updated which are nearly daily makes it my number one choice for tutorials on the web.
css-tricks.com:
CSS Tricks and CSS for Lunch (a close second) are my two favourite CSS sites of the year for 2008. CSS Tricks wins this one because of the quantity of content. Run by Chris Coyier, a web designer from Madison, Wisconsin who works for Chatman Design.
smashing magazine:
Smashing magazine is a great resource for inspiration. Subscribe to their feed and you’ll find a one stop shop for the best resources, designs, lists of tutorials and inspiration online.
last.fm:
Last.fm has been one of my top sites for a few years now. With a new design and ever growing community and content the site has now developed into something special. For me the main use of the site is not actually for finding new music. Instead I use it to find out events that are on in my area from recommendations that last.fm makes based on the music both myself and my neighbours have listened to.
facebook.com
I’m not the biggest user of Facebook but the redesign put the site back on track. For a time it was looking like going down the road of such sites as MySpace and Bebo with content and design all over the place. Fortunately, for now, Facebook has managed to keep this in check.
boagworld.com
The longest running webdesign podcast and the first web design podcast I started listening to, Boagworld has become an inspirational resource for many web designers. Run by Paul Boag, the site has recently won an award for the best Podcast from .Net Magazine. A quick look at the forums on the site will show how strong the community in the site has become.
wordpress.com
Now not only a leader in open source blogging software but also contending as a content management application Wordpress has just released version 2.7 which is a fully polished blogging platform now with, in my opinion, the most usable content management interface open source platform.
themeforest.net:
A new site online this year is Themeforest. Run by the Envato network (the same network as nettuts), Theme Forest has an array of templates for websites, blogs and content management systems.
99designs.com:
Another money making site for designers is 99designs.com. Someone will post a design brief online as a competition for designers to submit their work. After the contest is over the winning designer will be paid the prize money.
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Showing posts with label open source application. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open source application. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Open-Source Uru is Coming
As for the announcement itself, I’m elated but not necessarily surprised. Given the pre-announcement, it seemed impossible for it to be truly bad news (i.e. “Uru’s dead, we’re keeping the body. Shoo”). It seemed equally impossible for it to be radically good news (i.e.”Valve has hired us to produce the next few Portal games as well as the rest of the Half Life series, Cyan’s set for life and Uru will return with all the ponies you can imagine”). Given the push for and interest in open-source, it’s good to see Cyan taking the initiative (relatively. Only a few months since it was first talked about often on the forums compared to the years it took for UCC to take hold).
It will not be easy. People will and do have wildly different expectations. Some see it as the paradise they’ve wanted. A place where no one needs to feel sidelined because there will be a place for everyone. Some see it as a failure of their dreams. A place which will likely have no Cyan content, at least for now. Still others see it as just a place to gather and have fun. I think those people will be the ones who see the greatest benefit from this new Uru. It won’t be those who are elated but likely over-estimating Cyan’s open-ness. It won’t be those fearing a shattered community. Those two sides, as well as many others, will likely fight. Particularly if we try to make the Uru we like THE Uru. No, the ones who will have the most fun will be the people who just gather, no matter where they are.
Read more...
It will not be easy. People will and do have wildly different expectations. Some see it as the paradise they’ve wanted. A place where no one needs to feel sidelined because there will be a place for everyone. Some see it as a failure of their dreams. A place which will likely have no Cyan content, at least for now. Still others see it as just a place to gather and have fun. I think those people will be the ones who see the greatest benefit from this new Uru. It won’t be those who are elated but likely over-estimating Cyan’s open-ness. It won’t be those fearing a shattered community. Those two sides, as well as many others, will likely fight. Particularly if we try to make the Uru we like THE Uru. No, the ones who will have the most fun will be the people who just gather, no matter where they are.
Read more...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
What’s the opposite of open source hacking?
To effectively teach Open Source, it’s necessary to move each student into the role of contributor. At first blush this appears straightforward, but it ultimately proves to be an enormous challenge because Open Source is as much a social movement as a technical one and because many Open Source practices are the exact opposite of traditional development practices.
I like this paragraph, but something struck me as not quite right about it. Open Source practices don’t really feel like the opposite of traditional development practices to me. What I think they’re the opposite of, actually, is homework.
If your programming experience is limited to homework assignments, working on a real-world software project is going to be overwhelming for you, whether it’s open source or proprietary—and for the same reasons. You’re used to writing small programs, individually, completely from scratch. The software companies I’ve worked for all had teams of developers working cooperatively on a large, existing codebase, with version control, complex build systems, not enough tests, bug trackers, thousands of known bugs, good code, bad code, and way too much of the stuff for any one person to understand.
Did I mention working cooperatively? Traditional software development really is supposed to be done that way, I promise. Well, maybe it depends on where you work.
Read More...
I like this paragraph, but something struck me as not quite right about it. Open Source practices don’t really feel like the opposite of traditional development practices to me. What I think they’re the opposite of, actually, is homework.
If your programming experience is limited to homework assignments, working on a real-world software project is going to be overwhelming for you, whether it’s open source or proprietary—and for the same reasons. You’re used to writing small programs, individually, completely from scratch. The software companies I’ve worked for all had teams of developers working cooperatively on a large, existing codebase, with version control, complex build systems, not enough tests, bug trackers, thousands of known bugs, good code, bad code, and way too much of the stuff for any one person to understand.
Did I mention working cooperatively? Traditional software development really is supposed to be done that way, I promise. Well, maybe it depends on where you work.
Read More...
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Joomla 1.5.8 Released
The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.8 [Wohnaiki]. This release contains a number of bug fixes and two moderate-level security fixes. It has been around two months since Joomla 1.5.7 was released on September 9, 2008. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Adobe wants to bridge gap between PCs and cloud
Microsoft’s power with programmers is tethered to desktops and laptops, the vast majority of which run Windows. Google is trying to dominate what it believes is the new frontier, cloud computing, where applications run on the Web. Adobe, though, is trying to run down the middle with a strategy that touches on both domains.
“It’s a balance of the client and cloud together that makes for the most effective applications and the best development,” said Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, who’s planning to speak on the subject in a keynote speech Monday at the company’s Max conference in San Francisco.
Since Adobe’s $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005, programming technology has been rising in importance within a company that got its start with publishing software such as Photoshop. The technology that brought the two companies together, Flash, will hog the spotlight at the conference.
Flash got its start as a way to give Web pages animations and basic applications such as games, but it’s grown up since then. The Flex technology has given developers a more mature programming model, and the addition of video-streaming abilities to the Flash Player that’s plugged into the vast majority of Web browsers has given Adobe’s technology incumbent status. Who can live online without YouTube?
Adobe is still working on Flash, releasing Flash Player 10, aka Astro, in October. At Max, though, a Flash cousin called AIR–the Adobe Integrated Runtime–will share the stage with the release of version 1.5.
Read More...
“It’s a balance of the client and cloud together that makes for the most effective applications and the best development,” said Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch, who’s planning to speak on the subject in a keynote speech Monday at the company’s Max conference in San Francisco.
Since Adobe’s $3.4 billion Macromedia acquisition in 2005, programming technology has been rising in importance within a company that got its start with publishing software such as Photoshop. The technology that brought the two companies together, Flash, will hog the spotlight at the conference.
Flash got its start as a way to give Web pages animations and basic applications such as games, but it’s grown up since then. The Flex technology has given developers a more mature programming model, and the addition of video-streaming abilities to the Flash Player that’s plugged into the vast majority of Web browsers has given Adobe’s technology incumbent status. Who can live online without YouTube?
Adobe is still working on Flash, releasing Flash Player 10, aka Astro, in October. At Max, though, a Flash cousin called AIR–the Adobe Integrated Runtime–will share the stage with the release of version 1.5.
Read More...
Friday, November 14, 2008
Taking productivity lessons from open source
Even if your organization doesn’t produce software or work with open source development, you can still take some lessons from open source communities — in particular, how to get work done with fewer meetings and less real-time.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols covers some of the things that outsourcing companies can learn from open source, but this really applies to any organization — whether it has remote locations or not. But they’re particularly useful for organizations with a distributed workforce with non-English speakers. In particular:
* Don’t have a meeting when an email will do. Coordinating schedules is an often unnecessary headache when an email exchange would provide the same information.
* Any method with an “audit trail” is better than a phone call or face to face meeting for those who may need to catch up later. (It’s also far better for remembering who has what action items, and what has been decided.”
* As Vaughan-Nichols writes, “E-mail and Web communication make it far easier for a non-English speaker to read or translate e-mail and Web text than to understand several English speakers chatting on the phone.” (Frankly, this is also true when all of the participants are English speakers, too. Trying to understand five people on a conference call, with several huddled around a speaker-phone, is usually less than pleasant even if they are all speaking the same language…)
Read More..
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols covers some of the things that outsourcing companies can learn from open source, but this really applies to any organization — whether it has remote locations or not. But they’re particularly useful for organizations with a distributed workforce with non-English speakers. In particular:
* Don’t have a meeting when an email will do. Coordinating schedules is an often unnecessary headache when an email exchange would provide the same information.
* Any method with an “audit trail” is better than a phone call or face to face meeting for those who may need to catch up later. (It’s also far better for remembering who has what action items, and what has been decided.”
* As Vaughan-Nichols writes, “E-mail and Web communication make it far easier for a non-English speaker to read or translate e-mail and Web text than to understand several English speakers chatting on the phone.” (Frankly, this is also true when all of the participants are English speakers, too. Trying to understand five people on a conference call, with several huddled around a speaker-phone, is usually less than pleasant even if they are all speaking the same language…)
Read More..
Thursday, November 13, 2008
13 useful graphing solutions for web developers
Many a web application can be enhanced with a decent graph to show data. Unfortunately out of the programming languages / frameworks that we have available to us, none seem to be very forthcoming with decent graph components, and it is left up to third party solutions to provide the necessary. From my hunts around the web the following showcases some of the better options. I’ve tried to keep these limited to the open source / free options.
LibChart
Libchart is a simple PHP charting component, and it is totally free free free! The project is an ongoing one - with the last release in April 2008. If you are a PHP coder, you’ll love its simplicity.
Currently supports:
* Bar charts (horizontal or vertical).
* Line charts.
* Pie charts.
* Single or multiple data sets.
* Compatibility with PHP 5.
PlotKit
Primarily for Barcharts and Piecharts, plotkit uses some fancy Javascript, SVG and Canvas to do some wonderous things. Both these formats are gaining traction in the javascript community, and with implementations in major browser engines, we are deffo going to see more useful javascript drawing libraries cropping up over time.
FusionCharts Free
Fusioncharts offer some of the best animated flash charting components on the web, and luckily for us they also offer free components. Not only are they used commercial with clients such as Oracle, Microsoft and Dell amongst others, so you’d be in good company. FusionCharts Free can be distributed for free with your free or commercial softwares, irrespective of whether they’re open source or closed source. Hurray!
Read More..
LibChart
Libchart is a simple PHP charting component, and it is totally free free free! The project is an ongoing one - with the last release in April 2008. If you are a PHP coder, you’ll love its simplicity.
Currently supports:
* Bar charts (horizontal or vertical).
* Line charts.
* Pie charts.
* Single or multiple data sets.
* Compatibility with PHP 5.
PlotKit
Primarily for Barcharts and Piecharts, plotkit uses some fancy Javascript, SVG and Canvas to do some wonderous things. Both these formats are gaining traction in the javascript community, and with implementations in major browser engines, we are deffo going to see more useful javascript drawing libraries cropping up over time.
FusionCharts Free
Fusioncharts offer some of the best animated flash charting components on the web, and luckily for us they also offer free components. Not only are they used commercial with clients such as Oracle, Microsoft and Dell amongst others, so you’d be in good company. FusionCharts Free can be distributed for free with your free or commercial softwares, irrespective of whether they’re open source or closed source. Hurray!
Read More..
Monday, November 10, 2008
Open Source App Suites: Try the Individual Components
Even if you only favor some of the adjunct applications in them, they may complement your main applications very well.
We’ve written about the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite before, which is out in a new version 3.0. It’s not perfect, and not perfectly compatible with Microsoft Office, but has its attractions. If you’ve avoided trying it because you already have core productivity applications such as a word processor and a database that you favor, you may still want to look into the other free applications that come with the suite.
Draw is a Microsoft Visio-like diagram drawing application in OpenOffice, Math is a tool for creating and working with mathematical formulas, and Impress is for building presentations. You can launch any or all of these applications on their own, and you may find they complement your core applications.
Today on the OStatic blog, we covered a fork of OpenOffice called Go-oo, which is for Windows and Linux. It’s a lighter, faster version of the suite, but has the same programs. There are also some attractions to the Go-oo versions that are not found in OpenOffice.
For example, the Calc spreadsheet in Go-oo supports VBA macros very smoothly, so you may find that an Excel spreadsheet macro that chokes in OpenOffice will run smoothly with Go-oo. Go-oo also has under-the-hood extras such as improved support for Microsoft binary files. The best way to get a feel for its compatibility with Microsoft Office files is to simply import a number of them. The biggest benefit to Go-oo over OpenOffice, though, is speed, especially at loading applications.
It’s a mistake to assume that the attraction of a software suite is necessarily the whole suite–the sum of all the parts. For diagrams, math, compatibility with Excel, and more reasons, some of the parts in these open source suites may benefit you.
Read More..
We’ve written about the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite before, which is out in a new version 3.0. It’s not perfect, and not perfectly compatible with Microsoft Office, but has its attractions. If you’ve avoided trying it because you already have core productivity applications such as a word processor and a database that you favor, you may still want to look into the other free applications that come with the suite.
Draw is a Microsoft Visio-like diagram drawing application in OpenOffice, Math is a tool for creating and working with mathematical formulas, and Impress is for building presentations. You can launch any or all of these applications on their own, and you may find they complement your core applications.
Today on the OStatic blog, we covered a fork of OpenOffice called Go-oo, which is for Windows and Linux. It’s a lighter, faster version of the suite, but has the same programs. There are also some attractions to the Go-oo versions that are not found in OpenOffice.
For example, the Calc spreadsheet in Go-oo supports VBA macros very smoothly, so you may find that an Excel spreadsheet macro that chokes in OpenOffice will run smoothly with Go-oo. Go-oo also has under-the-hood extras such as improved support for Microsoft binary files. The best way to get a feel for its compatibility with Microsoft Office files is to simply import a number of them. The biggest benefit to Go-oo over OpenOffice, though, is speed, especially at loading applications.
It’s a mistake to assume that the attraction of a software suite is necessarily the whole suite–the sum of all the parts. For diagrams, math, compatibility with Excel, and more reasons, some of the parts in these open source suites may benefit you.
Read More..
PHP Shopping Cart
Purchasing a good shopping cart solution could be an overwhelming task. ASP, PHP, Cold Fusion or Flash? There are so many acronyms flying around that it is fairly impossible for those who are not in the thick of it to decide what shopping cart to choose. Of course, as far as business owners are concerned, options, features and ease of use are the main criteria for choosing the software platform. They are only bothered by concerns like inventory control, discount coupons, secure transactions and custom product options. It is true that most buyers are supremely unaware of the stuff that their cart is made of; yet, it is this that makes their cart work!
The backbone of any shopping cart solution is the scripting language in which it is written. The most common languages used are PHP and ASP. Using different scripting languages has definite implications on the power of your shopping cart software.
ASP or Active Server Pages is from Microsoft’s treasure trove of programming languages. It is used in conjunction with IIS (Internet Information Server) which runs only on Microsoft servers. ASP is popular because it fits in snugly with Windows based servers and other Microsoft programs. But, one of its greatest limitations is its exclusivity; it is supported only on Microsoft servers. Of course, there are 3rd party applications that can force compatibility with other servers; but these are workarounds. ASP is also rather hard for newcomers to pick up from scratch.
PHP or Personal Home Page was originally developed by three independent programmers who wanted to create a programming language that was easy to understand, flexible and highly versatile. Before long, PHP’s powerful scripting engine had hundreds of programmers working with it and developing it. Ultimately, PHP became one of the largest and most versatile open source scripting languages to be used on the web.
Read More..
The backbone of any shopping cart solution is the scripting language in which it is written. The most common languages used are PHP and ASP. Using different scripting languages has definite implications on the power of your shopping cart software.
ASP or Active Server Pages is from Microsoft’s treasure trove of programming languages. It is used in conjunction with IIS (Internet Information Server) which runs only on Microsoft servers. ASP is popular because it fits in snugly with Windows based servers and other Microsoft programs. But, one of its greatest limitations is its exclusivity; it is supported only on Microsoft servers. Of course, there are 3rd party applications that can force compatibility with other servers; but these are workarounds. ASP is also rather hard for newcomers to pick up from scratch.
PHP or Personal Home Page was originally developed by three independent programmers who wanted to create a programming language that was easy to understand, flexible and highly versatile. Before long, PHP’s powerful scripting engine had hundreds of programmers working with it and developing it. Ultimately, PHP became one of the largest and most versatile open source scripting languages to be used on the web.
Read More..
Thursday, November 6, 2008
What Outsourcers Can Learn from Open-Source Communities
Out-sourcing development and open-source development may at first appear to be about as far apart as baseball and football. Both use a ball in a game, but that’s about it. Yet a closer look from open-source software developers and industry analysts reveals that enterprises using outsourcing for their programming needs could stand to learn some management and process techniques from the open-source community.
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Sun, IBM launch ODF tools initiative
Sun and IBM are expected Wednesday to announce the Open Document Format Toolkit Union, an open-source project aimed at making it easier for developers to use ODF.
Sun is contributing an initial set of code that API developers can use to work with ODF files without having to know the ins and outs of the technical specification, the companies said.
The joint announcement follows the launch last year of an initial ODF Toolkit project on the OpenOffice.org project site.
"We're going to have a call to action to other folks," said Sun spokeswoman Terri Molini. "We're welcoming everybody from Microsoft to whomever. That's our goal here, to get out and do some outreach."
Read More..
Sun is contributing an initial set of code that API developers can use to work with ODF files without having to know the ins and outs of the technical specification, the companies said.
The joint announcement follows the launch last year of an initial ODF Toolkit project on the OpenOffice.org project site.
"We're going to have a call to action to other folks," said Sun spokeswoman Terri Molini. "We're welcoming everybody from Microsoft to whomever. That's our goal here, to get out and do some outreach."
Read More..
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Using Eclipse for RCP Application Development
Eclipse is free and open-source software that people use to write Java code and develop Java-based programs called Rich Client Platform (RCP) applications. Eclipse is an excellent, if not the best, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Java development. My goal of this article it to help anyone who is interested in creating computer applications, even if they never wrote a single line of code in their life before, to decide if Eclipse is right for them.
One popular application created with Eclipse is Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, a BitTorrent client shown at right. A Rich Client Application can be a full-blown program with a menu, icons, toolbars, status bars. It can have tabs, tables, buttons, charts, text boxes, wizards, preferences, dialog boxes, and more. It can be multi-threaded and there are virtually no limitations to your creativity. You could create your own Adobe Photoshop or just simple a program that plays your favorite song when you open it up. Anything is possible.
If you ever used Microsoft's Visual Studio for developing Windows applications with C#, Eclipse is like Java's version of an application used to develop other applications. I started using Microsoft Visual Studio back in 2005, but have since switched to Eclipse. Eclipse matches my programming philosophy and meets my needs much better than VS for the following reasons.
* With Eclipse, you can develop your application once, and create exports for Windows, Mac, and Linux no matter what operating system (OS) you use as your development computer.
* I found that creating an exported product with icons and everything to be much easier and intuitive with Eclipse.
* Eclipse is free and open-source. Microsoft makes you pay for the IDE if you want the full-blown professional version. I like open-source.
I also think VS has its strengths over Eclipse:
* The learning curve in creating your first application is much steeper with Eclipse. Getting used to the Eclipse IDE can be frustrating because it has many quirks, that until you figure out, you spend a lot of time banging your head against the wall. I also found the classes used to simplify the layout of your GUI widgets (i.e. buttons, text boxes, graphics) were better designed in VS.
* Online documentation and available quality books is much better for VS and programming Windows applications in C#.
Read More..
One popular application created with Eclipse is Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, a BitTorrent client shown at right. A Rich Client Application can be a full-blown program with a menu, icons, toolbars, status bars. It can have tabs, tables, buttons, charts, text boxes, wizards, preferences, dialog boxes, and more. It can be multi-threaded and there are virtually no limitations to your creativity. You could create your own Adobe Photoshop or just simple a program that plays your favorite song when you open it up. Anything is possible.
If you ever used Microsoft's Visual Studio for developing Windows applications with C#, Eclipse is like Java's version of an application used to develop other applications. I started using Microsoft Visual Studio back in 2005, but have since switched to Eclipse. Eclipse matches my programming philosophy and meets my needs much better than VS for the following reasons.
* With Eclipse, you can develop your application once, and create exports for Windows, Mac, and Linux no matter what operating system (OS) you use as your development computer.
* I found that creating an exported product with icons and everything to be much easier and intuitive with Eclipse.
* Eclipse is free and open-source. Microsoft makes you pay for the IDE if you want the full-blown professional version. I like open-source.
I also think VS has its strengths over Eclipse:
* The learning curve in creating your first application is much steeper with Eclipse. Getting used to the Eclipse IDE can be frustrating because it has many quirks, that until you figure out, you spend a lot of time banging your head against the wall. I also found the classes used to simplify the layout of your GUI widgets (i.e. buttons, text boxes, graphics) were better designed in VS.
* Online documentation and available quality books is much better for VS and programming Windows applications in C#.
Read More..
Monday, November 3, 2008
Seven Essential Ways to Cut Your Tech Costs
Whether your business has just two people or two hundred, these tips can help you cut costs, save money, and let you focus on what's really important: the bottom line.
1. Use Open Source and Free Software
Let's face it--when you're trying to keep your business afloat, plunking down lots of cash for off-the-shelf software hurts like getting a cavity filled without Novocain. Thankfully, freeware and low-cost software can be a pleasant surprise in terms of robustness and functionality.
While not as polished as Microsoft's Office suite (but not as much of a memory or resource hog), OpenOffice.org is a free, open-source alternative with a full suite of applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases that are compatible with Microsoft Office. Though OpenOffice apps let you do nearly anything you can do in Microsoft Office, interoperability between the two suites isn't seamless. For example, if you use Word's Track Changes feature, it can be difficult to later delete or modify your edits when you use the document in OpenOffice, and vice versa.
Google Docs is another viable and free alternative to Microsoft Office--and has no software to download or install. Though it's not nearly as full-featured as either Office or OpenOffice, its basic functionality and streamlined interface may be all you'll ever need.
Creating PDF files may be crucial for business, but spending $450 on Adobe's Acrobat Professional is not. CutePDF is a free program that simply exports files to PDF. Just download and install it; from the target file, choose File, Print, and select CutePDF from the printer menu. (If you're using OpenOffice or Google Docs, you won't even need to install CutePDF--both let you export to PDF directly.)
2. Telecommute
Gartner Research predicts that by 2009, more than 25 percent of the U.S. workforce will telecommute. Telecommuting lets you save on gas costs, but you can also remain just as productive when working at home, thanks to tools that make it easy to connect and collaborate (almost as if you were in the office).
Wikis make it simple to post text or documents so that a group can make comments or changes. Some wikis are free and public, while others are more enterprise-focused, with more robust security features. PBwiki offers three flavors: Business, Academic, and Personal. The site includes WSIWYG editing tools, storage space, SSL encryption, automatic notifications via e-mail or RSS, and controls on access. It also offers reasonable business pricing--it's free for one to three users, $8 per month per user for 4 to 99 users, and $6 a month per user for 1000 to 4999 users.
The aforementioned Google Docs is also telecommuter-friendly, offering an affordable and easy way to share files (and to keep tabs on changes). Once you've created a file in Google Docs, simply invite others to collaborate online. When you're done, you can export the file to Word, Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint.
If you cringe at the thought of setting up a VPN (virtual private network), services like LogMeIn Hamachi may just be your ticket to headache-free remote VPN access. LogMeIn Hamachi promises easy setup using peer-to-peer technology to let off-site employees access files. The service works within your firewall and costs just $5 a month for one user license.
If your company doesn't have, and doesn't need, a centralized server, Central Desktop is a way to share documents online with virtually no setup. The site lets large or small groups easily share files, keep track of who's checked out which files (or modified them), and set up separate desktops for multiple groups of users.
Read More...
1. Use Open Source and Free Software
Let's face it--when you're trying to keep your business afloat, plunking down lots of cash for off-the-shelf software hurts like getting a cavity filled without Novocain. Thankfully, freeware and low-cost software can be a pleasant surprise in terms of robustness and functionality.
While not as polished as Microsoft's Office suite (but not as much of a memory or resource hog), OpenOffice.org is a free, open-source alternative with a full suite of applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and databases that are compatible with Microsoft Office. Though OpenOffice apps let you do nearly anything you can do in Microsoft Office, interoperability between the two suites isn't seamless. For example, if you use Word's Track Changes feature, it can be difficult to later delete or modify your edits when you use the document in OpenOffice, and vice versa.
Google Docs is another viable and free alternative to Microsoft Office--and has no software to download or install. Though it's not nearly as full-featured as either Office or OpenOffice, its basic functionality and streamlined interface may be all you'll ever need.
Creating PDF files may be crucial for business, but spending $450 on Adobe's Acrobat Professional is not. CutePDF is a free program that simply exports files to PDF. Just download and install it; from the target file, choose File, Print, and select CutePDF from the printer menu. (If you're using OpenOffice or Google Docs, you won't even need to install CutePDF--both let you export to PDF directly.)
2. Telecommute
Gartner Research predicts that by 2009, more than 25 percent of the U.S. workforce will telecommute. Telecommuting lets you save on gas costs, but you can also remain just as productive when working at home, thanks to tools that make it easy to connect and collaborate (almost as if you were in the office).
Wikis make it simple to post text or documents so that a group can make comments or changes. Some wikis are free and public, while others are more enterprise-focused, with more robust security features. PBwiki offers three flavors: Business, Academic, and Personal. The site includes WSIWYG editing tools, storage space, SSL encryption, automatic notifications via e-mail or RSS, and controls on access. It also offers reasonable business pricing--it's free for one to three users, $8 per month per user for 4 to 99 users, and $6 a month per user for 1000 to 4999 users.
The aforementioned Google Docs is also telecommuter-friendly, offering an affordable and easy way to share files (and to keep tabs on changes). Once you've created a file in Google Docs, simply invite others to collaborate online. When you're done, you can export the file to Word, Excel, PDF, or PowerPoint.
If you cringe at the thought of setting up a VPN (virtual private network), services like LogMeIn Hamachi may just be your ticket to headache-free remote VPN access. LogMeIn Hamachi promises easy setup using peer-to-peer technology to let off-site employees access files. The service works within your firewall and costs just $5 a month for one user license.
If your company doesn't have, and doesn't need, a centralized server, Central Desktop is a way to share documents online with virtually no setup. The site lets large or small groups easily share files, keep track of who's checked out which files (or modified them), and set up separate desktops for multiple groups of users.
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Friday, October 31, 2008
Open source begins to beat brand in business
OPEN source software, which holds a central place with computer programming enthusiasts who oppose proprietary control over software code, has quietly been winning recognition in Australia's enterprise sector.
Surveys of Australian open source development companies indicate that the software, which is developed co-operatively under non-proprietary licensing schemes, supports an industry worth $500 million and is becoming better understood.
Marc Englaro, general manager of open source software company Fonality, said companies had developed a good grasp of the open source model.
"Three years ago there would have been expectations that open source meant free, whereas now open source means more cost-effective but not necessarily free," he said.
Technology managers no longer were so anxious about using open source software in preference to proprietary systems, he said.
"The fundamentals of whether you're an established organisation with a track record apply whether you're open-source or not, but the fact that you use open source doesn't on its own carry a negative connotation," Mr Englaro said.
Earlier this year, open-source software consultancy Waugh Partners surveyed 129 companies ranging from multinationals to small enterprises and found that the group generated about $500 million from open source activity.
More than half that revenue was directly generated from working with open source software, Waugh Partners found.
It also found that open source software developers were likely to be more highly paid than their colleagues working with proprietary software.
Waugh Partners director Jeff Waugh said open source software was most strongly represented in financial institutions and government organisations, and companies that were naturally positioned close to advanced technology, including internet service providers.
"Finance companies have always been on the leading edge of technology.
Read More...
Surveys of Australian open source development companies indicate that the software, which is developed co-operatively under non-proprietary licensing schemes, supports an industry worth $500 million and is becoming better understood.
Marc Englaro, general manager of open source software company Fonality, said companies had developed a good grasp of the open source model.
"Three years ago there would have been expectations that open source meant free, whereas now open source means more cost-effective but not necessarily free," he said.
Technology managers no longer were so anxious about using open source software in preference to proprietary systems, he said.
"The fundamentals of whether you're an established organisation with a track record apply whether you're open-source or not, but the fact that you use open source doesn't on its own carry a negative connotation," Mr Englaro said.
Earlier this year, open-source software consultancy Waugh Partners surveyed 129 companies ranging from multinationals to small enterprises and found that the group generated about $500 million from open source activity.
More than half that revenue was directly generated from working with open source software, Waugh Partners found.
It also found that open source software developers were likely to be more highly paid than their colleagues working with proprietary software.
Waugh Partners director Jeff Waugh said open source software was most strongly represented in financial institutions and government organisations, and companies that were naturally positioned close to advanced technology, including internet service providers.
"Finance companies have always been on the leading edge of technology.
Read More...
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Open Source State Machine Compiler
SMC uses the state pattern to its fullest extent. In the real world, events don’t always happen when they should. Dealing with unexpected events is a must for a robust application. By combining virtual methods with the state pattern, SMC allows you to define “Default” transitions - transitions which allow your objects to handle unexpected events, recover and continue providing service (rather than crashing, burning and getting you into trouble).
SMC is written in Java but it can generates code for the following object-oriented programming languages:
C
C++
C#
[incr Tcl]
Groovy
Java
Lua
Objective-C
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
VB.net
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SMC is written in Java but it can generates code for the following object-oriented programming languages:
C
C++
C#
[incr Tcl]
Groovy
Java
Lua
Objective-C
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala
VB.net
Read More...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Open Source .NET Enterprise Application Framework
Habanero is an open source Enterprise Application Framework for .Net that provides the tools to produce an agile application from the data layer through to the front-end. Released for free under the LGPL license, it persists data to and from the database using object relational mapping (ORM), manages business objects to support a rich domain model, and generates user interfaces to display and edit the mapped data.
* Support multiple database vendors
* No more database coding
* Multiple data sources, in-memory DB
* Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
* Rich domain model
* Validation and business rules
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* Support multiple database vendors
* No more database coding
* Multiple data sources, in-memory DB
* Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
* Rich domain model
* Validation and business rules
Read More...
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