1001webs

5 Ways to Win at Website Localization

2011-12-23T21:43:00.000-08:00

A post from Robert Laing at Mashable on the topic of website localization.

In the screenshot above, notice how Zynga Japan, the company behind Farmville and Cityville, incorporates the Japanese flag into its homepage banner.

Let’s compare the English and Japanese websites of Rakuten, the company behind the largest online shopping mall in Japan.

Notice that the Rakuten USA website (above) is simple and clean when compared to the Rakuten Japan website (below). Of course, know that Japanese websites can oftentimes appear overly busy to the non-native eye.

With the help of the Internet, expanding into new markets continues to become easier than ever before.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, tumpikuja

Source:
5 Ways to Win at Website Localization

Sitefinity and Beyond

2011-02-07T03:32:00.000-08:00

Version 4.0 of Sitefinity has been finally released in mid-January after a lengthy upgrade cycle that included a complete rewrite from the ground up, according to Telerik.

The new version features a new ASP.NET architecture with widgets based on ASP.NET controls, an enhanced interface and support for .NET Framework 4 and the revamped Windows Workflow. Earlier versions of .NET are not supported. More than 100 Telerik RADControls for Silverlight and ASP.NET AJAX, and the OpenAccess ORM are included with the CMS.

Telerik acquired Mallsoft, an ecommerce technology company, and has plans to integrate an ecommerce module. The acquisition lays the groundwork for the integration of advanced e-commerce functionality and a robust system for handling online stores within the Sitefinity platform.

“This is the culmination of many years of real-world experience, extensive time and resources invested in product R&D, and in gathering customer feedback. Additionally, with new frameworks supporting Mallsoft’s e-commerce technologies, users have the ability to fully manage all aspects of their online business, from corporate websites to intranets to online stores. Sitefinity 4.0 has matured into one of the market’s most powerful, comprehensive, and highest quality content management solutions being shipped today,” said Martin Kirov, executive vice president of Sitefinity at Telerik. “By minimizing complexities while providing robust tools and innovative features addressing every aspect of the site building and management experience, Sitefinity 4.0 enables users to quickly, easily, and efficiently optimize their web presence.”

More information:

The Internet Running Out of IP Addresses

2011-01-24T19:30:00.000-08:00

According to several measures by experts, the IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority), an ICANN-operated organization which administers the Internet's IP address infrastructure and root servers, has run out of IPv4 address blocks to assign to RIRs (Regional Internet Registries). We are close to that point, but the situation is more complicated than it may seem.

What happens then? The future is very uncertain. There's IPv6, but the roblem is that IPv6 isn’t backwards compatible with IPv4, which means that everybody will need to upgrade the software on their computers and networking equipment and, in some cases, buy completely new hardware, which is going to be very expensive, and in any case, it's difficult to imagine how all that can happen in just a few weeks.

However, although upfront costs of moving to the new protocol will be high, any further delays would push costs even higher. In June, Vint Cerf, appeared in an online video urging ISPs to do more to transition to IPv6.

Read More:

Top Web Scams of the Decade

2010-09-05T09:28:00.000-07:00

It is a jungle out there and you can never take enough precautions to avoid being eaten alive (yes it has happened), or at least avoid being scammed or just plain, old ripped off.

The best way of protecting yourself is by knowing your enemy and being aware of the scamster's techniques. A good place worth visiting to start with would be PandaLabs, that has just released a ranking of the most widespread scams on the Web from the past 10 years. As advised by Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs,

“As with all the classic scams that predate the Internet, many of the numerous users that fall for these tricks and lose their money are reticent to report the crime. If recovering the stolen money was difficult in the old days, it is even harder now because criminals’ tracks are often lost across the Web. The best defense is to learn how to identify these scams and avoid taking the bait.”

Typically, these scams follow a similar pattern: Cybercriminals make initial contact with their victim through e-mail or on a social network. The intended victim is then asked to respond by e-mail, telephone, fax or some other channel. Once the user takes the bait, the criminals will attempt to gain their victim’s trust, finding an excuse to ask for money.

Below are the most frequent scams identified by PandaLabs over the last 10 years, based on their distribution and the frequency:

Nigerian Scam: This was the first type of scam to appear on the Internet and continues to be widely used by cybercriminals today. This scam typically begins with receiving an e-mail claiming to be from someone who needs to get a very large sum of money out of a country, often Nigeria. Targeted victims are promised a substantial reward if they offer help. However, if they take the bait they will be asked to forward an initial sum to help pay bank fees, often to the tune of $1,000. Once they've sent the sum, their contact disappears and their money is long gone.

Lotteries: This is similar to the Nigerian scam. An e-mail arrives claiming that an individual won the lottery, and asking for their details in order to transfer the substantial winnings. As with the previous scam, victims are asked up front for $1,000 or a similar sum to cover bank fees and related expenses.

The Girlfriend Ploy: Lurking on-line for a date is a beautiful girl, often from Russia, who wants to get to know her victim. She will always be young and desperate to visit the victim in his home country. She wants to come immediately, but at the last moment there is a problem and she needs money for her flight ticket or other travel expenses. Unsurprisingly, after she receives the money, she vanishes.

Job Offers: This time victims receive a message from a foreign company looking for financial agents in your country. The work is easy, they can do it from home and earn up to $3,000 working just three or four hours a day. If victims accept the offer, they'll be asked for their bank account details. In this case they will be used to help steal money from people whose bank account information has been stolen by cyber-criminals. The money will be transferred directly to the victim's account, and they will then be asked to forward the money via Western Union. Victims then become “money mules,” and when the police investigate the theft, they will be seen as an accomplice.

Facebook / Hotmail: Criminals obtain details to access an account on Facebook, Hotmail or a similar site. They then change the login credentials so that the real user can no longer access the account, and send a message to all contacts saying that the account holder is on holiday, often to London, and has been robbed just before coming home. They still have flight tickets but need between $500 and $1,000 for the hotel.

Compensation: This more recent ruse originates from the Nigerian scam. The e-mail claims that a fund has been set up to compensate victims of the Nigerian scam, and that their address is listed as among those possibly affected. Victims are offered compensation, often to the tune of $1 million. Naturally, as in the original scam, they will need to pay an advance sum of around $1,000.

The Mistake: This has become very popular in recent months, fueled by the financial crisis and the difficulty people are having selling their homes and other high-value goods. The criminal contacts someone who has published a classified ad on a site such as Craigslist who is selling a house or other high-cost item. With great enthusiasm, the scammers agree to buy whatever it is and quickly send a check, but for an incorrect amount that is always more than the agreed sum. The seller will be asked to return the difference. The check will bounce and the victim will lose any money they transferred to the criminal.

About PandaLabs Collective Intelligence

PandaLabs uses an innovative automated system that analyzes and classifies thousands of new samples a day and returns automatic verdicts (malware or goodware). This system is the basis of Collective Intelligence, Panda Security’s new security model which can even detect malware that has evaded other security solutions.

Currently, 99.4 percent of malware detected by PandaLabs is analyzed through this system of Collective Intelligence. This is complemented through the effort of several teams, each specialized in a specific type of malware (viruses, worms, Trojans, spyware, phishing, spam, etc), working 24/7 to provide global coverage.

For more information please visit http://www.pandalabs.com

Fending off SPAM with reCAPTCHA

2010-08-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers, magazines and all kinds of old publications that can only be found on a printed medium.

The term CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, and is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to ensure that the response is generated by a human being. The process involves the use of software that displays some challenging inquiry that computers are unable to decipher. Or at least, that’s the goal. The most common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type letters or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen.

However, computers are getting smarter by the day and it’s gotten to the point where the images are being correctly guessed by newly developed software. To counteract these advancements CAPTCHAS are being made even more difficult to read, with the end result of humans having a hard time trying to guess the correct answer, while spambot software is simply evolving and outperforming any effort to outsmart them by the very humans who designed them in the first place.

The line between what was readable to humans and unreadable to computers was about to be crossed in the wrong directions, when a new CAPTCHA approach named reCAPTCHA emerged from the work of Guatemalan computer scientist Luis von Ahn. An early CAPTCHA developer, von Ahn realized that “he had unwittingly created a system that was frittering away, in ten-second increments, millions of hours of a most precious resource: human brain cycles.”

About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds of human time are being spent. Individually, that’s not a lot of time, but in aggregate these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort? reCAPTCHA does exactly that by channeling the effort spent solving CAPTCHAs online into “reading” books.

Talk is Cheap. Not Talking is Expensive.

2010-05-06T08:33:00.000-07:00

Work is a relationship — a relationship with your customers and with your employees. Businesses will have whole departments dedicated to communicating with the public, but sometimes forget the art of communicating with their own workers.

Recently oDesk interviewed Nick Krym, the outsourcing guru behind Pragmatic Outsourcing. He's a technology professional with over two decades in the IT industry, and he’s been outsourcing to offshore teams for more than 15 years. And he says it's all about communication

"Just because I say something to you doesn’t mean we have an understanding," Krym said, before giving away some solid advice:

Have a single point of contact on each side and be clear, clean and concise in your communication.
The buyer must take ownership in the project — including communicating the job requirements. Don’t expect the provider to understand what you need without context.
Divide jobs into multiple, tangible milestones, not just status reports.
Review the job progress regularly and adjust the plan as soon as you notice potential roadblocks.

Even well-prepared, well-communicated assignments hit bumps in the road sometimes. "That’s life," Krym says. "You correct the mistakes, you communicate in a clearer way, and you get better results at the next milestone."

Read the full chat with Krym in an interview posted to oDesk's blog.

Beta version of WordPress 3.0 released

2010-04-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

WordPress 3.0 Beta 1 is available for download at the following link:
http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.0-beta1.zip

This is an early beta version, which means that it is the first version released outside the WordPress organization and prone to have a few undiscovered bugs. Beta testers willing to test the software for free should be aware that there are many new features available in 3.0. Check the lists below for reference.

Things you should be aware of:

The custom menus system (Appearance > Menus) is not quite finished. In Beta 2, the layout will be different and a bunch of the functionality will be improved, but the WordPress team didn’t want to hold things up for this one screen. You can play with making custom menus, and report bugs if you find them, but this is not how the final screen will look/work, so don’t get attached to it.
WordPress and WordPress MU (MultiUser) have merged. Still, that doesn't mean that you can all of a sudden start adding a bunch of new blogs from within your regular WordPress Dashboard. If you’re interested in testing the Super Admin stuff associated with multiple sites, you’ll need some simple directions to get started.
There are a few small things in the UI that need to be beautified, such as implementing a new icon for the Super Admin section.

Things that need to be tested:

The new default theme, Twenty Ten, including the custom background and header options.
Custom Post Type functionality has been beefed up. It’s really easy to add new types, so go ahead and test it.
WordPress MU users should test the multiple sites functionality to make sure nothing broke during the merge.

Testers are advised to use the wp-testers mailing list to discuss bugs you encounter.

If you already have a test install that you want to switch over to the beta, you can try the WordPress Beta Tester plugin.

Once you enable the plug-in it will by default switch your blog to the “Point release” stream and if you want to switch to the “Bleeding edge” stream then you will need to go to Tools -> Beta Testing page and configure the plugin there:

The administration panel for the WordPress Beta Tester plugin

Please note: Once you have switched your blog to one of these beta versions of software it will not always be possible to downgrade as the database structure maybe updated during the development of a major release.

Interview with Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

2010-04-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia speaks about global positioning software and how the web is loosening copyright practices on the Digital Giants series as part of the SuperPower Season on BBC.

In 2001, together with Larry Sanger and others, Wales helped launch Wikipedia, a free, open content encyclopedia which enjoyed rapid growth and popularity. As Wikipedia's public profile grew, Wales became the project's promoter and spokesman.

Wikipedia was formally launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger using the concept and technology of a wiki pioneered by Ward Cunningham. Initially Wikipedia was created as a complement and "feeder" to Nupedia, an expert-written online encyclopedia project, in order to provide an additional source of draft articles and ideas. It quickly overtook Nupedia, growing to become a large global project in multiple languages, and originating a wide range of additional reference projects.

Today Wikipedia includes 15 million freely usable articles in over two hundred languages worldwide, and content from a million registered user accounts and countless anonymous contributors.

Jimmy Wales is a self-avowed "Objectivist to the core"; Objectivism being an individualist philosophy developed by writer Ayn Rand in the 20th century. Wales first encountered the philosophy through reading Rand's novel The Fountainhead while an undergraduate, and in 1992 founded an electronic mailing list devoted to "Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy". Though he has stated that the philosophy "colours everything I do and think", he has said "I think I do a better job—than a lot of people who self-identify as Objectivists—of not pushing my point of view on other people." When asked about Rand's influence by Brian Lamb in his appearance on C-SPAN's Q&A in September 2005, Wales cited integrity and "the virtue of independence" as important to him personally. When asked if he could trace "the Ayn Rand connection" to having a political philosophy at the time of the interview, Wales reluctantly labeled himself a libertarian, qualifying his remark by referring to the United States Libertarian Party as "lunatics" and citing "freedom, liberty, basically individual rights, that idea of dealing with other people in a matter that is not initiating force against them" as his guiding principles.

Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich von Hayek's essay "The Use of Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate, as "central" to his thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project". Hayek argued that information is decentralised – that each individual only knows a small fraction of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority.

Wales reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened [his] eyes to the possibilities of mass collaboration".

From his background in finance and working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia. He has rejected the notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as "sacrificing your own values for others", stating "that participating in a benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values makes no sense to me".

Digital Giants is a series of monologues in which the digital world's top thinkers share their visions of the future with the BBC from 8 to 19 March, online, on tv and on radio.

SuperPower is a season of programmes across online, radio and television, investigating how the internet affects lives and has become the catalyst for a fundamental change in societies around the world.

Find more SuperPower content at:
www.bbc.com/superpower

What is the Google Affiliate Network?

2010-02-20T18:13:00.000-08:00

When Google acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, it also acquired its affiliate ad network program called Performics, the first full-service affiliate network founded in 1998 and that in turn had been acquired by DoubleClick in 2004. Google has now further developed and rebranded Performic as the Google Affiliate Network.

The Google Affiliate Network works like any ordinary affiliate ad network, by enabling advertising relationships between publishers and advertisers, whereby publishers get paid for every successful sale transactions that their site brings to advertisers.

As a Google Affiliate Network publisher, you can add an advertiser's banner or text link on your site. When a transaction, such as a sign-up or purchase, occurs through one of these affiliate links, Google Affiliate Network will track the sale and pay you a commission or bounty.

Someone clicks the ad on your site...

...buys the advertised product...

...and you receive a commission on the sale

The Google Affiliate Network has been integrated into Google AdSense. All Google Affiliate Network publishers must accept AdSense terms. Additionally, all earnings are distributed through AdSense.
But being a Google AdSense publisher does not make you automatically a publisher in Google Affiliate Network. You must complete a separate application for Google Affiliate Network.
In order to join the program, you need to apply to their network in two steps:
Step 1: Link to or apply for a Google AdSense account.
Step 2: Tell Google about your site and promotional methods.

Each application is reviewed by the Google Affiliate Network quality team which will check some requirements, such as being a site that attracts a desirable audience for the products offered, able to test advertising offers and nurture the most productive relationships, being an expert in driving and converting visitor traffic and adhere strictly to Google Affiliate Network quality standards and advertiser policies.
In addition Google states that,

we've found that Google Affiliate Network tends to yield greater benefits to publishers who create niche content, manage loyalty and rewards programs, aggregate coupons and promotions, or manage social media.

Payments are processed on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, typically as a revenue share or fixed bounty for a lead or other action. Google Affiliate Network earnings will be posted to your Google AdSense account approximately 30 days after the end of every month.

More Info:

Document Management a Priority in Asia/Pacific CMS Market

2009-12-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

Demand for document management and record management software is set to grow by over 7% every year for the next five years in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region, according to new research by IT market research company IDC (news, site).

"In India, Singapore, China, and Australia, managing content published on the Web is the top role played by CM software," said Ridhi Sawhney, market analyst of Asia/Pacific Software Research at IDC. "Managing content with ever-increasing volumes of information, mounting regulatory pressure, and disparate applications with isolated data repositories, remains a big challenge. There is continuous demand for content management software from legacy businesses and developing countries as organizations endeavor to transition from manual overlay systems to automated systems.

Collectively, the top five vendors that include IBM, EMC, HP, Oracle and Interwoven, represent approximately 58 percent of the CM market in the region, said IDC, adding that local vendors like Newgen Software and Cyberdime are also growing strong and are among the top 10 in the region.

Risk and compliance continue to drive the demand for records management and is basically used for regulatory requirements and business processes, said IDC.

The demand for Web CM is driven more by the desire to enhance and reinforce brand, build customer loyalty, accelerate delivery of new products and services, and create competitive advantage, the analyst firm added.

IDC said that findings of IDC’s Asia/Pacific Software Adoption Survey conducted in first half of 2009 suggest that spending intentions for CM software are generally promising.

Most respondents indicated that they are planning to increase spending on CM software currently deployed and that ranges from 27.7 percent to 37.9 percent of respondents, depending on the type of CM software, IDC noted.

The survey also reveals that India and China are the leading countries that are currently using records and document management and will increase their spending in the next 18 months, the research house noted.

Whereas, Australia is one country with a high percentage of respondents that are using document management (15.2 percent), digital and Aasset Management (17.1 percent) and capture & image management (26.6 percent) now but intend to decrease such spending over the next 18 months or so, IDC said.

Despite a generally flat world economy, it seems that the content management systems market is buzzing even in the APEJ region with a predicted annual spend of US$ 308.42 million by 2013.

The research only confirms trends already identified in the US earlier with reports from both Forrester and AIIM showing that a considerable majority of firmswere planning major investments in IT, and in particular in document and records management software.

Asia-Pacific or Apac is that part of the world in or near the Western Pacific Ocean. The area includes much of East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australasia and Oceania). Sometimes the term Asia-Pacific includes South Asia though India and its neighbours are on or near the Indian Ocean rather than the Pacific Ocean.

Although an imprecise geographical descriptor, the term Asia-Pacific became popular from the late 1980s as the economies within the heterogeneous region flourished due to increased regional capital flow, trade and other forms of economic and political interaction.

In some contexts, the region may extend further to include major Asian countries, as well as those around the Pacific Rim, stretching from Oceania, up to Russia
The Asia-Pacific region generally includes:

Australia
Brunei
Cambodia
People's Republic of China
- Hong Kong
- Macau
Taiwan
Fiji
India
Indonesia
Japan
Kiribati
North Korea

Most Popular Open Source CMS 2009

2009-10-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

Below you can read the second annual 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report from Water & Stone, an APAC-based interactive agency in colaboration with CMS Wire.

The free 90+ page report reveals:

The 20 open source market leaders you should consider.
Key trends in open source content management.
Critical information about how the market is changing.
Vendor/project summary and contact information to get you started.

The Criteria

The authors of the 2009 Open Source CMS Market Share Report made efforts this year refine the selected CMS's over last year's choices — both in terms of including a broader range of programming languages (.NET and Java-based CMS's as well as PHP), and ensuring that those projects chosen are similar enough that they can be compared apples to apples (all Web CMS's) rather than spreading out to too many different types of tools (this time social networking systems and wikis were not included).

In particular, the report's authors point out that this report in no way represents which system is best, the most full-featured or the most powerful. Its focus is strictly on market share and brand strength. The content management systems considered were:

Alfresco
CMS Made Simple
DotNetNuke
Drupal
e107
eZ Publish
Jahia
Joomla
Liferay
MODx
OpenCms
phpWebSite
Plone
SilverStripe
Textpattern
TikiWiki
Typo3
Umbraco
WordPress
Xoops

Changes in Methodology Generate Meaningful Numbers

For the 2008 report, data was gathered through Twitter mentions and social bookmarking statistics. This year, water & stone teamed up with CMSWire to present a survey to their readers. Doing so gave the authors targeted data to interpret from more than 600-1200 people (depending on the question asked). Don't expect to see comparative metrics in the 2009 report for these numbers, as there's nothing from 2008 to compare them against.
According to the survey results, the typical participant is a 35 to 44-year-old male in North America, with a graduate degree or higher. He's worked in IT for 10 to 15 years and still works in the computer, software, or technology fields. His annual household income is between US$51,000 and US$100,000, he works for a small organization of 1 to 5 people.
Areas considered were rate of adoption and brand strength.

Pros and Cons of the Methodology

While there were survey results to deal with, it's helpful to get data through other avenues as well, to both correct for any bias in your survey sample and in general get a broader picture of the world you're exploring.
The problem is that with survey results, you've designed the questions so that you can get some sensible measurements out of them. With real-world data, this desire doesn't come so easily. For example, in measuring the rate of adoption through looking at download metrics, the authors ran into a number of hairy issues. These issues are detailed in the report.
To summarize:

You can't get data on the number of downloads for every project
Even when you can get the data, the time scales the data covers differ wildly

For some projects the number of downloads are counted from the beginning of time. With others, they may be counted just for a particular major version or point release. Some don't give you any idea of what the time scale is at all.
Once you deal with these two issues, you also have to face:

Mirrored download sites where statistics aren't automatically aggregated
Skewed weekly averages since download rates are highest when a new version is released and taper off until the next release
Excluding installation packages such as cPanel, Plesk, Fantastico, and Linux distribution package managers
Having access only to the download numbers for the free, open source/community edition versions of those projects that also have commercial versions

In other cases, attempting to find hard and fast numbers can limit you to sources that themselves introduce bias. For example, consider needing to measure the number of third parties offering services and support around an open source project. The authors chose here to look at two classes of service providers: developers offering services around the projects, and publishers releasing books about the projects.
Here you have to make a choice on where you get your numbers. To determine developer support, the authors consulted two sites for finding freelance technology professionals: Elance and Guru. Choosing these two sites skews the results toward the types of small-scale and one-person shops that use them. It would have been interesting to see similar results through the survey as well, to see if they were the same or quite different.
Also, given that some of these projects are more customizable than others (though anything's customizable with the right programmers) it's hard in some ways to quantify market share with just these numbers. CMS Made Simple is one of the lowest for development services offering, but what percentage of its users heavily customize it?
When it comes to publishers, it's important to note that only books in English were included for this section. Given that some of the projects have their biggest fan bases in Europe, Asia, or other areas that aren't primarily English-speaking, this factor might highly skew the results. Also, this data comes exclusively from Amazon.com, so if the book isn't sold or listed there for some reason, it wouldn't be included.
Always consider the methods for each section when evaluating such reports and deciding how much weight you want to rely on each section.

The Report's Conclusions

Overwhelmingly, the results were dominated by WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal, though they swapped order here and there. On top of this, there was usually a large drop after these three, showing that the open source Web CMS space is heavily dominated by these key players.

Joomla! Wins the Popularity Prize

The authors point out that while last year the three had similar market share, this year Joomla! has taken the lead in a few key metrics, such as how many survey respondents said they're currently using it, and areas such as brand recognition. For this reason they've named Joomla! the most popular open source web CMS.
However, they also point out that Joomla! had a higher level of negative brand sentiments, and it lags in social media prominence. So the Joomla! camp shouldn't get too cocky.

WordPress' Dominates Brand Strength Category

When it came purely to brand names, WordPress is the winner, however. The report partially attributes this finding to the fact that there are two products with the same name: the WordPress hosted blog service and the WordPress CMS project. From there, the authors postulate that the WordPress hosted service is seeding the market for the installed software by getting people started with turnkey solutions and then inspiring them to run their own sites. Will the same happen for Drupal with Drupal Gardens? Only time will tell.
It's also hard to miss that PHP-based CMS's still dominated the open source CMS field. DotNetNuke is the clear leader in the open source .NET CMS space, while Jahia lagged badly behind the other Java-based offerings.

The authors close with a list of projects to watch and those that need to watch out. In particular, they identify Alfresco, Liferay, and MODx as gathering strength and market share. DotNetNuke, Plone, and Xoops are all identified as struggling to maintain their market share. Those they identify as being at risk of total irrelevance are phpWebSite, Textpattern and TikiWiki.
For more detailed information, download the report for free and read it for yourself.

Zend Server

2009-02-19T19:47:00.000-08:00

Zend Server is a complete, enterprise-ready Web Application Server for running and managing PHP applications that require a high level of reliability, performance and security.

Business-grade PHP – An up-to-date, tested and supported PHP stack ensures high reliability, enhances security and increases staff productivity
Deployment with confidence – A complete and consistent environment used in development, testing and production eliminates many of the problems encountered during deployment
Rapid response to problems – Advanced application monitoring and diagnostics enable early problem detection and quick root cause analysis
Top application performance – Built-in optimization and acceleration ensures high performance and low resource utilization

The free community edition of Zend Server enables you to set up a complete PHP environment in minutes, and run non-critical PHP applications in development, testing and production.

Zend Server Community Edition includes:

All-in-one native installers for Linux, Windows and Mac OS:

A certified PHP distribution
Zend Framework
Apache (or IIS integration)
MySQL (on Windows)

Out-of-the-box connectivity to all common databases
Java code connectivity
Web-based PHP administrator console
Basic application performance optimization

About Zend

Businesses utilizing PHP know Zend as the place to go for PHP expertise and sound technology solutions. Zend's founders Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski are key contributors to PHP and the creators of the core PHP scripting engine, the Zend Engine. Because of their internationally recognized expertise, the company continues to provide important leadership for PHP and other open source communities, and plays a central role in the explosive growth of PHP.

http://www.zend.com

And the Winner is ... Google

2008-10-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

On Feb. 1 Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $31 per share, a deal that was valued at $44.6 billion, in an attempt to acquire assets that would allow MSN to become a real competitor to Google's supremacy on the Internet.

Microsoft justified its interest in acquiring Yahoo! explaining that:

“The industry will be well served by having more than one strong player, offering more value and real choice to advertisers, publishers and consumers.”

Yahoo! would certainly add some very valuable assets to Microsoft's Internet Division, such as an audience of more than 500 million people per month in sites devoted to news, finance and sports, or Yahoo Mail (the most widely used consumer e-mail service on the Internet) or web banner ads used by corporate brand advertisers.
Although the price was a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008, it was only about a quarter of what Yahoo was worth in 2000, and the company's board finally rejected the offer two weeks ago because they felt they were being undervalued at $31 a share. Or at least that's what they said.

At a conference at the Interactive Advertising Bureau on Monday, Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang had the chance to provide their own version of the story.
Yang broke the ice with a “Before you start, let me guess what your first question is. Does it start with an M and end with a T?”
However he did not elaborate much further:

“Everyone has read what we are doing, so there is not much to report. We’re taking the proposal that Microsoft has given to us seriously. It’s been a galvanizing event for everyone at Yahoo. Our board is spending a lot of time thinking about all the alternatives. It’s something that we need to think through carefully.”

But Microsoft is not be put off so easily and has recently hired a proxy firm to try to oust Yahoo’s board.
Last Friday, Microsoft released an internal memo from Kevin Johnson, President of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division, in which he actually sees the deal going through:

"While Yahoo! has issued a press release rejecting our proposal, we continue to believe we have a full and fair proposal on the table. We look forward to a constructive dialogue with Yahoo!’s Board, management, shareholders, and employees on the value of this combination and its strategic and financial merits.
If and when Yahoo! agrees to proceed with the proposed transaction, we will go through the process to receive regulatory approval, and expect that this transaction will close in the 2nd half of calendar year 2008. Until this proposal is accepted and receives regulatory approval, we must continue to operate our business as we do today and compete in this rapidly changing online services and advertising marketplace.
It is important to note that once Yahoo! and Microsoft agree on a transaction, we can begin the integration planning process in parallel with the regulatory review. We can create the integration plan but we cannot begin to implement it until we have formal regulatory approval and have closed the transaction. Because the integration process will be critical to our success as a combined company, we are taking this very seriously. "

On the other hand, Google is not standing idle among other obvious reasons because it owes one to Microsoft from when the latter interfered with Google's purchase of DoubleClick last year.
Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, wrote in the The Official Google Blog:

"Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft -- despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses -- to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet? In addition, Microsoft plus Yahoo! equals an overwhelming share of instant messaging and web email accounts. And between them, the two companies operate the two most heavily trafficked portals on the Internet. Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors' email, IM, and web-based services? Policymakers around the world need to ask these questions -- and consumers deserve satisfying answers."

In any case, it remains unclear how the situation will develop and where it will lead to. Google probably can't stop the deal, but it can delay it considerably, and the delay will certainly act in Google's interests.

"In the interim, we foresee disarray at Microsoft and Yahoo, We believe the deal has distracted the engineers and should benefit Google over the next 18 to 24 months, providing with a major opportunity to advance in branded advertising."

as foreseen by analyst Marianne Wolk of Susquehanna Financial Group.
According to Wolk,

"If instead Microsoft is forced to acquire Yahoo via a proxy fight, it would mean a more protracted closing process, then the transaction will not close until early 2009, when it would begin the complex integration of Yahoo's 14,300 employees, multiple advertising platforms, technology infrastructures, content sites, culture, etc.
Google may not face a more competitive Microsoft-Yahoo until 2010."

By then, she said, Google could "extend its lead in search monetization" and grab a "major lead in emerging growth areas, such as video advertising, mobile and local advertising."
Wolk also pointed out that Google would likely find it easier to hire top engineers from Microsoft and Yahoo "as they fear for their jobs in a consolidation."

My personal opinion is that even if the deal goes ahead and Microsoft pours in huge loads of money and resources, it won't work.
And it won't because Microsoft will try to apply the same tactics that it has applied to gain dominance over the PC market, i.e. trying to force every user to use their software.

The Internet is totally different. You can't force people to use your staff. You have to convince them to use it. And in order to do that you have to provide a superior product. Neither MSN nor Yahoo! come even closer to what Google delivers in terms of search results and applications designed for the web.

Much needs to be improved in both MSN and Yahoo! in order to be able to compete with Google.
In the case of Yahoo is a technical issue. I have recently switched from Google to Yahoo's search engine just to see how accurate the results were and I had to switch back because the difference with Google's is abysmal, both in accuracy and quality of results.
I kind of feel sorry for Yahoo! because I've been a long time user of their services and I can see it going down the gutter, no matter what the final result of the acquisition will be. They have some top-quality services such as Yahoo! Mail or Yahoo! Finance and in many countries in Asia Yahoo! is a real competitor to Google, but they need to innovate so much that I doubt they will ever revert the downward trend.
They are moving in the right direction now with Web 2.0, but I'm afraid that it might be too late.
They have recently announced that they are opening up their Search to third party so that everybody can collaborate in building their search results:

"This open search platform enables 3rd parties to build and present the next generation of search results. There are a number of layers and capabilities that we have built into the platform, but our intent is clear -- present users with richer, more useful search results so that they can complete their tasks more efficiently and get from "to do" to "done."

Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners -- big or small -- an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in
websites -- ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data -- directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.

We believe that combining a free, open platform with structured, semantic content from across the Web is a clear win for all parties involved -- site owners, Yahoo! and most importantly, our users."

Let's wait and see.
You can see the details at the following links:

And MSN simply doesn't get it. They're trying to apply the same centralized tactics that made them so successful in the PC market, but it is evident that they won't work on the Internet.

By combining both companies you'll only get a much more cumbersome monster and the Internet is about just the opposite, decentralization and agility.

Many people attribute the initial success of Google to the quality of the search results. That is true today but it wasn't so in the beginning when they started to draw users from other search engines. The main reason why most of the people made Google their home page is because it was simple. No advertising or fancy graphics, just a search box and a menu where the rest of services are listed on a page that loads very fast.

By trying to push users into using your services and bloating your front page with advertising, you are actually driving them away.
To be fair Yahoo! does have a version of their home page that is designed that way:
http://search.yahoo.com/
Had they made it to be their front page many years ago, they'd still be game.

Another feature that convinced me to switch to Google many years ago was that they give you the opportunity to try your search terms on different search engines with just one click, with the:
"Try your search on Yahoo, Ask, AllTheWeb, Live, Lycos, Technorati, Feedster, Wikipedia, Bloglines, Altavista, A9"
that appears on every search results page.

By creating an extremely simple entrance to an environment open to everybody, including their most direct competitors, they have succeeded in being the most popular home page on the Internet.
The KISS approach ("Keep It Simple, Stupid") is what they used.
Keep It Simple and Open. Stupid.

Contact 1001 Webs

2008-08-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

<p>Loading...</p>

Smeego

2008-05-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

We have just received an e-mail from Francisco Burzi, former PHP-Nuke creator, informing us that:

I'm writting to you because you were or you are user of PHP-Nuke and for me is important to inform the community that PHP-Nuke has been sold on past October 2007.
I need to inform you about this because the new owner failed to meet the agreement we had to inform the public at a certain date and this is starting to negatively affect me.

After I sold the project I wanted to start another activity but soon I realized that programming is my life. Few days ago I opened another web site and started a new Content Management System or Portal System that is initialy based on the latest version of PHP-Nuke.

The new project name is Smeego and you can find its official website at http://smeego.com

I want to give to Smeego another focus. The first version is already available for download and I fixed lot of stuff, did some code cleanup and changed all the default themes including some that are very nice.

Smeego open a new market if you are a developer. You can code modules, themes and blocks for it and offer them to the users community.

The system and the website itself are more open that PHP-Nuke. For example, the commercial license is gone, the sell of the latest version is gone as well and the software is totaly free of any charge. The site isn't overloaded with ads, comments are open for registered users... etc...

Being the first version I have lot of interest that people start using it, suggesting ideas and features, send fixes if they find bugs on the code, etc...

Smeego will focus on the intelligence of the system and the graphic design. Smeego is released under the terms of the GNU/GPL license as well.

I want to cordialy invite you to check the official site at http://smeego.com and leave your opinion and if you like what you see I'll be more than happy if you use this new code on your commercial or non-commercial website.
Many cool stuff will come in the future for Smeego!

Check it out and enjoy it.
Thanks for your time,

Francisco Burzi

Over the past few years we have used PHP-Nuke in a number of installations that had been requested at our portal ( www.1001webs.net ) and we didn't know it had changed hands.

We definitely will take a look at Smeego and most likely we'll replace PHP-Nuke with it.

Pakistan removed from the Internet

2008-02-25T13:35:00.000-08:00

Pakistan removed from the Internet by ZDNet's Richard Stiennon -- 4:30 PM Eastern (US).

The telecom company that carries most of Pakistan’s traffic, PCCW (one of the largest communications provider in Asia), has found it necessary to shut Pakistan off from the Internet while they filter out the malicious routes that a Pakistani ISP, PieNet, announced earlier today.

Evidently PieNet took this step to enforce a decree from the Pakistani government that ISP’s must block access to YouTube because it was a source of "blasphemous content, videos and documents".

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority sent this e-mail to their customers:

Dear Valued Customer:
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has directed all ISPs of the country to block access to www.youtube.com web site for containing blasphemous web content/movies.
The site would remain blocked till further orders from PTA. Meanwhile, Internet users can write to youtube.com to remove the objectionable webcontent/movies because this removal would enablethe authorities to order un-blocking of this website.
We're sorry for any inconvenience.
Best Regards
Manager Technical Assistance Center Micronet Broadband Pvt. Ltd. Islamabad

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a movie trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release an anti-Koran movie portraying the religion as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

In the past twenty five years Geert Wilders has visited Israel about forty times, where he has met with, among others, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. Furthermore, he claims to have tight connections with the Mossad and to love Israel:

"The past years I have visited many interesting countries, from Tunisia to Turkey and from Cyprus to Iran, but nowhere I have that special feeling of solidarity that I always get if I set foot on the Israeli Goerion-airport."

Geert Wilders caused an uproar by writting at the Volkskrant that:

"The Koran is a facist book which incites violence. That is why this book, just like Mein Kampf, must be banned."

The Government of Pakistan is also keen on banning and censors all internet traffic by means of routing all connections through a central exchange which is administered by the Internet Exchange.
Furthermore Pakistani ISPs are also under orders to block certain websites on their own routers.

A common target by major ISPs in Pakistan was the weblogs hosted at blogspot.com among other important social networking websites.

More Info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Pakistan

DotAsia Organisation announces that .asia domain names are now available to everybody

2008-02-22T03:26:00.000-08:00

DotAsia Organisation, the first global “top-level domain” in Asia, officially launched “Landrush” for the ".asia" Internet domain on February 20th 2008, open for registrations by anyone around the world.
".asia" is expected to become a platform for growth for Asia, and a gateway to reach the largest Internet marketplace in the world.

Over 30,000 applications had been filed for ".asia" domain names since October, compared with around 330,000 at the same point in the launch of the .eu domain name in April 2006, due to the fact that its registration had been restricted exclusively to applications from governments and organizations.

Domain name registrar NetNames warned that opening ".asia" to the general public means that businesses are now at risk of losing online trademarks to competitors or cyber-squatters.

"The alarm bells should be ringing for any company which has yet to secure its trademarks in ".asia""

said Jonathan Robinson, chief operating officer at NetNames.

"As of today, there is far less protection for company trademarks and it is open season on the .asia domain name for cyber-squatters, online speculators and competitors."

Robinson added that demand for .asia has been understated, which means that many businesses are likely to miss out.

"As the first ".asia" sites go live we are sure to see a number of high-profile, costly disputes which could so easily have been avoided,"

Applications for the new domain were staggered over three time periods in an attempt to avoid the confusion and chaos surrounding the .eu domain launch.

The first period began on 9 October for government bodies and companies with registered trademarks.
The second period began on 13 November when registration opened to those companies with an official presence in Asia, regardless of trademarks. Organisations which had already secured registered trademarks could then secure additional domain names related specifically to their line of business.
The third and final period has now begun with registrations open to the general public.

A total of 266,663 applications were received by the registry within the first 24 hours, demonstrating great interest from around the world to stake claims in the most prestigious cyber real estate in Asia.
Any domain names with more than one application will be auctioned off to the highest bidder before .asia goes live on 26 March.
Domains with only one application will be allocated directly without auction.
You can keep updated on the ".asia" Domain Auction process at the DotAsia Domain Auctions page:
www.dotasia.org/about/auctions.html

You must apply during the Landrush period (Feb 20 – Mar 12, 2008) in order to be eligible to participate in the domain auctions.
To register a ".asia" domain name, you must go to an Accredited Registrar or their authorized resellers and affiliates.
1001webs.net offers registration of ".asia" Domain names through their Domain registration page at:
http://www.1001webs.net/en/domainsearch_en.html

1001webs.net is associated with Dotster.com, an ICANN Accredited Registrar, to offer through our registration pages all major top-level domains (TLDs) and many country-code extensions (ccTLDs).
We provide through our website secure and fast Domain Name Registration on the Internet, for the following international TLDs and country-specific ccTLDs.
For a list of all ICANN Accredited Registrars for ".asia" domain names., please refer to: http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Right-to-left direction languages for Blogger

2008-02-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

Blogger has added three new Right-to-left direction languages to its blogging platform.
Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew are all written from right to left and are the first of its kind to be made available in Blogger.

They have also localized the Blogger interface with new toolbar buttons for bi-directional text editing in the post editor and added right-to-left templates that have been rearranged to read more logically from right to left.

The Blogger interface can be changed to one of these languages by using the menu on the Dashboard, from where the default language on Blogger’s homepage can be changed as well. This option is also available via the “Language” link in the footer of most pages and will instruct Blogger to use by default the new language choice from then on to create all new blogs.

Text direction can also be switched on a per paragraph basis from the editor by clicking on the inverted paragraph buttons that will set the paragraph being currently edited to either right-to-left or left-to-right mode.
This way it is possible to write mixed bidirectional posts in different languages.

Source:
Blogger Buzz: Three new languages and a whole new direction for Blogger

Zen Cart

2008-02-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

We have included the Zen Cart package in our website as part of the e-commerce offer.

Zen Cart is an Open Source Shopping Cart software developed with user-friendlyness in mind by a group of shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants, who put the merchants and shoppers requirements as the first priority.

Zen Cart is a spin-off from osCommerce that has become a separate project. It has been extended to utilize a template system to implement system extensions.

Features:

Multiple customer modes
Unlimited category depth
Multiple sales and discounts
Multiple display mode
XHTML template system
Multiple shipping options
Multiple payment options
Newsletter manager
Discount coupons
Gift certificates
Featured products
Quantity discounts
etc ..

PHP 5 Power Programming

2008-02-06T15:06:00.000-08:00

Free electronic copy of PHP 5 Power Programming from:
http://www.computer-books.us

Computer-Books.us makes available for free download some of the highest quality computer books.
The author / publisher has generously allowed them to be available for free online.
They are constantly adding new titles so check them back often.

The book is an introduction to the advanced features new to PHP 5 and is intended for PHP programmers who are migrating to PHP 5.
Web developers with programming experience will also find this tutorial very useful in order to begin working effectively with PHP 5.

Within the last few years, PHP has grown to be the most widespread web platform in the world, operational in more than a third of the web servers across the globe. PHP's growth is not only quantitative but also qualitative. More and more companies, including Fortune companies, rely on PHP to run their business- critical applications, which creates new jobs and increases the demand for PHP developers. Version 5, due to be released in the very near future, holds
an even greater promise.
While the complexity of starting off with PHP remains unchanged and very low, the features offered by PHP today enable developers to reach far beyond simple HTML applications. The revised object model allows for largescale projects to be written efficiently, using standard object-oriented methodologies.
New XML support makes PHP the best language available for processing XML and, coupled with new SOAP support, an ideal platform for creating and using Web Services.
This book, written by my colleague, Andi Gutmans, and two very prominent PHP developers, Stig Bakken and Derick Rethans, holds the key to unlocking the riches of PHP 5. It thoroughly covers all of the features of the new version, and is a must-have for all PHP developers who are interested in exploring PHP 5's advanced features.

Zeev Suraski

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Chapter 1, “What Is New in PHP 5?” discusses the new features in PHP 5. Most of these new features deal with new object-oriented features, including small examples for each feature. It also gives an overview of the new extensions in PHP 5. Most of the topics mentioned in this chapter are explained in more detail in later chapters.

Chapter 2, “PHP 5 Basic Language,” introduces the PHP syntax to those readers not familiar with PHP. All basic language constructs and variable types are explained along with simple examples to give the reader the necessary building blocks to build real scripts.

Chapter 3, “PHP 5 OO Language,” continues exploring PHP 5's syntax, focusing on its object-oriented functionality. This chapter covers basics, such as properties and methods, and progresses to more complicated subjects, such as polymorphism, interfaces, exceptions, and lots more.

Using the previous chapter as a foundation, Chapter 4, “PHP 5 Advanced OOP and Design Patterns,” covers some of the most advanced features of PHP 5’s object model. After learning these features, including four commonly used design patterns and PHP’s reflection capabilities, you will soon become an OO wizard.

Now that you are familiar with the syntax and language features of PHP, Chapter 5, “How to Write a Web Application with PHP,” introduces you to the world of writing web applications. The authors show you basics, such as handling input through form variables and safety techniques, but this chapter also includes more advanced topics, such as handling sessions with cookies and PHP's session extension. You also find a few tips on laying out your source code for your web applications.

Chapter 6, “Databases with PHP 5,” introduces using MySQL, SQLite, and Oracle from PHP, but focuses primarily on the PHP 5-specific details of database access. For each database, you learn about some of its strong and weak points, as well as the types of applications at which each excels. And of course, you learn how to interface with them using PHP's native functions or using PEAR DB. All scripts can throw errors, but of course you do not want them to show up on your web site once your application has passed its development state.

Chapter 7, “Error Handling,” deals with different types of errors that exist, how to handle those errors with PHP, and how to handle errors with PEAR. As one of the important new features in PHP 5 is its renewed XML support, a chapter on XML features in PHP 5 could not be missed.

Chapter 8, “XML with PHP 5,” talks about the different strategies of parsing XML and converting XML to other formats with XSLT. XML-RPC and SOAP are introduced to show you how to implement web services with both techniques. Although not specifically for PHP 5, the five mainstream extensions that

Chapter 9,“Mainstream Extensions,” covers are important enough to deserve a place in this book. The first section, “Files and Streams,” explains about handling files and network streams. A stream is nothing more than a way to access external data, such as a file, remote URL, or compressed file. The second section, “Regular Expressions,” explains the syntax of a regular expression engine (PCRE) that PHP uses with numerous examples to show you how these expressions can make your life easier. In “Date Handling,” we explain the different functions used to parse and format date and time strings. In “Graphics Manipulation with GD,” we show you through two real-life scenarios the basic functions of creating and manipulating graphics with PHP. The last section in this chapter, “Multibyte Strings and Character Sets,” explains the different character sets and the functions to convert and handle different ones, including multi-byte strings used in Asian languages.

Chapter 10, “Using PEAR,” introduces PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository. Starting with concepts and installation, the chapter shows how to use PEAR and maintain the local installed packages. This chapter also includes a tour of the PEAR web site.

Chapter 11, “Important PEAR Packages,” gives an overview of the most important PEAR packages, along with examples. Packages covered include Template Systems, the Auth package to do authentication, form handling with the HTML_QuickForm package, and a package used to simplify caching.

Chapter 12, “Building PEAR Components,” explains how to create your own PEAR package. The PEAR Coding Standard and package.xml package definition format, together with tips on including files and package layout, get you on your way to completing your first PEAR package.

Chapter 13, “Making the Move,” deals with the few backward-incompatible changes that were introduced between PHP 4 and PHP 5. This chapter tells you which things you need to take care of when making your application work on PHP 5, and provides workarounds wherever possible.

Chapter 14, “Performance,” shows you how to make your scripts perform better. The chapter offers tips on standard PHP usage, the use of external utilities (APD and Xdebug) to find problems in your scripts, and PHP accelerators like APC and Zend Performance Suite.

Chapter 15, “An Introduction to Writing PHP Extensions,” explains how to write your own custom PHP extension. We use a simple example to explain the most important things like parameter parsing and resource management.

Chapter 16, “PHP Shell Scripting,” shows you how to write shell scripts in PHP, because PHP is useful for more than just web applications. We carefully explain the differences between the CLI and CGI executables in which PHP comes, including command-line parameter parsing and process control. This book also includes three appendices. Appendix A, “PEAR and PECL Package Index,” provides an overview of all important packages, with descriptions and dependencies on other packages. Appendix B, “phpDocument Format Reference,” explains the syntax as understood by the PHP Documenter tool to generate API documentation from source code. Appendix C, “Zend Studio Quick Start,” is an introduction to working in the Zend Studio IDE.

The Rebirth of osTicket

2008-01-14T07:02:00.000-08:00

After more than two years of inactivity, an update of osTicket has been released.

osTicket Downloads

Download the latest release and patches.

osTicket v1.6 RC2	Jan-01-2008
osTicket_1.6.rc2.zip
osTicket_1.6.rc2.tar.gz
v1.6 RC1-to-RC2 patch package (»upgrade guide)

osTicket is a Support Tickets System prepared for the management of Trouble Tickets.
It has been designed to help administrators to automate repetitive management tasks and organize the team of Operators.

osTicket supports aliases with perl gateway, pop3 login, handles unlimited emails, email intervals to prevent auto responder loops etc.,
Administrations features include deleting tickets from database, creating categories and representatives, defining groups, setting up e-mail alerts compatible for pager, allowing users to login with email and any ticket assigned to them and much more.

osTicket's Screenshots:

Many users had questioned the viability of osTicket given the duration of inactivity. There's a good reason for that. The developers are located in the gulf cost region that was devastated by hurricane Katrina causing some of them to understandably loose focus.
However, with some normalcy returning; exciting things are on the osTicket horizon.

The new release, version 1.6, comes with new and improved features using v2.0 code base and acts as a bridge to that long-awaited version..

osTicket team is also committing to frequent releases and providing dependable support to all users through free online resources and a full range of commercial support and professional services.

osTicket forums is a great place to get assistance, guidance and be part of osTicket community.

In addition to the forums, osTicket wiki provides useful collection of educational materials, documentation, and notes from the community at large.

Source:

http://www.1001webs.net

Open-Realty 2.4.3

2008-01-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

Open-Realty® 2.4.3 has been released.
Requires:
PHP 4.3.0 or higher
PHP GD Support or Imagemagik is required for thumbnail creation.
MySQL (4.0.2 or higher) or PostgreSQL 7 (may work with older versions but is not tested)

Download Open-Realty® latest version here:
http://www.open-realty.org/download.html

As of Open-Realty® 2.1.4 the Xinha or FCKEditor WYSIWYG page editors are not included with the Open-Realty core download.
If this is a first time install, you will also need to download these packages and upload the contents to your install, to be able to use the WYSIWYG page editors in open-realty.
Download Xinha WYSIWYG Page Editor for Open-Realty® ( Zip from here)
Download FCKEditor WYSIWYG Page Editor for Open-Realty® ( Zip from here)
Download TinyMCE WYSIWYG Page Editor for Open-Realty® (Zip from here)

To upgrade from any previous 2.x.x stable release, upload all files except the common.php file, you need to leave your common.php file intact. Then run the installer and select the "Upgrade from Open-Realty® 2.x.x" option.

Please note that some addons for 2.0.x will not be compatible, this upgrade removes the "type" field from all listings and replace it with the new class system.

Open Realty's Screenshots:

As for translations, you can get a Spanish translation and instructions at this thread:
http://support.open-realty.org/showthread.php?t=3024

Also check the release of the U.M.P. - Unofficial Multilingual Patch for Open-Realty.
You can see a working demo here (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish):
http://www.or-templates.com/demo/
You can download the complete install package for free here:
http://www.or-templates.com/download/ump_or243.zip

More Info:

Official WebSite:
open-realty.org
Open-Realty's Official Forum
http://support.open-realty.org
Addons:
http://support.open-realty.org/forumdisplay
Reviews:
http://wiki.open-realty.org/index.php/Faq

phpBB3

2007-12-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

phpBB™, the leading open source forum and online collaboration system, has announced the availability of phpBB3.

This release includes enhanced collaboration features, better security and delegated administration features, extended support for open source and commercial database management systems, and optimisation for mobile devices and search engines. phpBB is available at no cost, released under the GNU General Public License.

Online discussion forums and user-generated content represent the largest source of new information on the Internet. phpBB is used throughout the world by commercial and non-commercial companies to share documents, collaborate and encourage peer-to-peer resolution of issues to reduce the cost of product and/or technical support.

"phpBB is a highly scalable, feature rich environment that can be easily deployed and integrated into any Web site or online application," says Bob Norton of HREnhancement. "phpBB version 3 represents a huge milestone and we continue to be amazed by this project and its community."

phpBB is easy-to-use with an intuitive administration system and extensive customisation capabilities. It is capable of supporting hundreds of millions of discussions in any language and boasts some of the largest forum communities on the Internet. phpBB is developed by six core developers, more than forty team members and is supported by a community of almost 300,000 users and developers. Among the new features announced today, phpBB has been specifically optimised for the mobile market.

"With the enhanced search engine optimisation of phpBB, we see a huge opportunity for companies to deploy more customer self-service and collaboration features for their customers," says William Leake, Chief Executive Officer of Apogee Search. "The mobile Web is a key component for every 2008 Web strategy and phpBB is a perfect fit for the growing mobile collaboration market."

The phpBB community, comprised of users, Web developers and designers, have produced more than 5,000 add-ons and 400 styles for phpBB2 making it easy for Website owners to customise the system to their needs. The phpBB community has already made nearly 500 enhancements, modifications and extensions for phpBB version 3.0, even before final release.

Organisations can quickly build advanced social and peer networking communities using phpBB and it can be deployed with "one-click" through cPanel, Plesk, Ensim, DirectAdmin and Fantastico. Hosting providers such as GoDaddy, The Planet, and 1and1 provide phpBB with many standard hosting packages.

"phpBB version 3 represents over five years of development from some of the most talented developers in the world. As the project continues to grow, we hope to serve our community better and deliver innovative software that is released under the GPL. Our sincere thanks go to our users, developers, team members and partners." Says Meik Sievertsen, Lead Developer of the phpBB project. With phpBB version 3, detailed source code analysis and penetration testing has also been performed to proactively make steps toward improved enterprise security.

For developers who want to quickly and inexpensively integrate collaboration and forum capabilities into their own Web applications, phpBB provides a flexible framework, documented Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), customisable themes, and extensions. phpBB can quickly integrate into almost any content management system (CMS) or static Website.

About phpBB
phpBB™ ("PHP Bulletin Board") is the world's leading Open Source forum software. Distributed under the GNU General Public License, phpBB is free software, developed by volunteers from around the world. phpBB is used on over 2.4 million commercial, non-profit, social networking and community websites in over sixty languages. For more information and to learn how you can contribute, please visit http://www.phpbb.com

Download latest phpBB3 release

DOWNLOAD LATEST RELEASE: Version 3.0.0
Released 2007-12-13; Why upgrade? • Compare solutions

Trackback URL: http://www.prweb.com/pingpr.php/U2luZy1Ib3JyLUhvcnItU3VtbS1UaGlyLVplcm8=

Hindi Partners at 1001webs.net

2007-11-02T03:51:00.000-07:00

We are now in the process of selecting suitable candidates to manage the Hindi versions of 1001webs.
We are currently looking for Hindi NATIVE partners ONLY.

Basically, the way we deal with our international associates is that we provide the hosting and promotion, and in return 1001webs keeps a 4% commission of all orders coming through.

Each associate is made fully responsible for managing its site.
That includes translating into their language and maintaining their section at 1001webs.
Every order placed in their respective languages is routed exclusively to each associate, who must keep in touch with the client, negotiate orders and develop websites based in the CMS systems we offer.
Billing is also responsibility of each associate, except for Domain Registrations, Hosting, and the Template section, which are fully automated.

The bulk of our business is CMS implementation, and we typically charge 800 Euros for the setup, customization and 1 year maintenance of every CMS, but each associate is free to charge whatever they find appropriate.

Each Associate will also be allowed to generate income by using its own AdSense code and Template code in its own section.

Please, understand that this is a Partnership offer, NOT a paid job.

Only native speakers of Hindi need to apply.

Job Type:

Drupal
osCommerce
ZenCart
Joomla
WordPress
PHP
Project Management
Translation
Web Promotion

Database: MySQL

Operating system: Linux, Mac, Windows

Misc: cPanel, phpMyAdmin

Please contact us at:
http://1001webs.blogspot.com/2009/12/contact-1001-webs.html

Thank you.

1001webs - इंटरनेट सेवा

Chinese and Japanese Partners at 1001webs.net

2007-10-24T02:11:00.001-07:00

We are now in the process of selecting suitable candidates to manage the Chinese and Japanese versions of 1001webs..
We are currently looking for Chinese and Japanese NATIVE partners ONLY.

Basically, the way we deal with our international associates is that we provide the hosting and promotion, and in return 1001webs keeps a 4% commission of all orders coming through.

Each associate is made fully responsible for managing its site.
That includes translating into their language and maintaining their section at 1001webs..
Every order placed in their respective languages is routed exclusively to each associate, who must keep in touch with the client, negotiate orders and develop websites based in the CMS systems we offer.
Billing is also responsibility of each associate, except for Domain Registrations, Hosting, and the Template section, which are fully automated.

The bulk of our business is CMS implementation, and we typically charge 800 Euros for the setup, customization and 1 year maintenance of every CMS, but each associate is free to charge whatever they find appropriate.

Each Associate will also be allowed to generate income by using its own AdSense code and Template code in its own section.

Please, understand that this is a Partnership offer, NOT a paid job.

Only native speakers of Chinese and Japanese need to apply.

Job Type:

Drupal
osCommerce
ZenCart
Joomla
WordPress
PHP
Project Management
Translation
Web Promotion

Database: MySQL

Operating system: Linux,

Misc: cPanel, phpMyAdmin

Please contact us at:
http://1001webs.blogspot.com/2009/12/contact-1001-webs.html

Thank you.