Random Rumblings

Free Cloud Storage (24 GB)

2012-09-04T17:30:00.001-07:00

It has been so easy now to store your data in cloud using many different services. See below:

www.box.com provides 5 GB free and 25 GB for $9.99/month
www.dropbox.com provides 2 GB free and 100 GB for $10/month
www.sugarsync.com provides 5 GB free and 60 GB for $9.99/month
drive.google.com provides 5 GB free and 200 GB for $9.99/month
windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/home provides 7 GB free and 20 GB for $10/year

It is a challenge to take advantage of all of them at the same time. A new service at http://otixo.com/ allows you to manage multiple cloud services with a single login. As per the website, you can

Search and find your files across many cloud-based services in one simple step.
Copy and Move files from one service to another without downloading to your computer. It's as easy as drag-and-drop!
Share files with your friends and colleagues.

In addition, http://www.yousendit.com/ can be used to send large files.

Free Webinar on MIMO in 4G Wireless

2012-07-25T19:14:00.001-07:00

My friend's company Uspurtek LLC is organizing a free Webinar on MIMO in 4G Wireless.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, July 31st, 2012
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Central Time

For registration:
http://www.uspurtek.com/

Learn from industry experienced and Licensed Professional Engineers, how MIMO is revolutionizing the world of 4G Wireless Broadband Communications. MIMO stands for Multiple Input Multiple Output and this new Antenna Technology allows the wireless communication standards to push up the data rates and reliability of current wireless communication networks.
This 1 hour live and interactive webinar aims to provide an exciting learning experience in the comfort of your desk. Participants will earn 1 Professional Deveopment Hour (PDH) for meeting their learning objectives.

Participants Will:
• Understand the basics of MIMO
• Learn how the benefits from MIMO are realized
• Learn the basics of Antenna Diversity, Beamforming and SDM
• Recognize the applications of MIMO in WiFi, WiMax and LTE
• Appreciate the not so far future of massive MIMO
• Earn 1 Professional Development Hour (PDH)

Who Should Attend:
• Telecom Professionals expecting to expand their understanding of MIMO
• Young Engineers, Recent Graduates and Students with interest in MIMO
• Licensed & Professional Engineers with interest in MIMO
• Technology Sales and Marketing Professionals with interest in MIMO
__________________________________________________________________
Presenter:
• Iqbal Singh Josan
• Licensed Professional Engineer
• Senior Member IEEE
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/iqbalsinghjosan
• Twitter: @uspurtek

Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato

2012-07-25T19:05:00.001-07:00

Natural Science Center, Greensboro has an exhibition of mummies of Guanajuato, Mexico. I went to see them on the very first day. It is very interesting that how these mummies were formed. Only 1 in 100 bodies buried in Guanajuato ever experience the mysterious process of natural mummification. Unlike bodies that are "artificially" mummified through an embalming and wrapping process, accidental mummies form only in certain climates and conditions.
The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato features 30 mummies on loan from the Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato (Museum of The Mummies).
Here is the press release of this exhibition:
http://www.natsci.org/about/newsroom/documents/Accidental%20Mummies%20Press%20Release.pdf

The exhibition will stay open until Dec. 30, 2012.
For more information, please visit Natural Science Center website:
www.natsci.org/

IBM ICA CON - April 20, 2012

2012-04-20T06:45:00.000-07:00

Keynote Speaker: Bala Rajaraman- IBM Distinguished Engineer

Smart Cloud:
Business needs are driving Information technologies.
Cloud builds on and leverages the standards which preceded this market cycle.
Cloud enables innovation while managing change and complexity.
Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC): Open Architecture, Dynamic Interaction, Federated Data, Common Services.
IBM SmartCloud Foundation

IBM Cloud Academy (IBM ICACON) 2012- April 19-20

2012-04-19T07:06:00.000-07:00

I am at IBM Cloud Academy in Raleigh to attend 1st International IBM Cloud Academy conference.

Keynote Speaker: Mike King: VP, IBM Global Education
Usage of Cloud:
- Operational Efficiencies and Effectiveness from Shared Services: Enterprise Risk Management across the University of California system
- Campus Buildings are ripe for improving operational efficiencies with cloud: Many universities are saving money using IBM's building management tools.
- World of R&D 2010: Governments around the world are increasing investment in R&D.
- University of California has 25% of system revenue from funded research.
- Over $60B in research annual funding to US academic institutions, and growing globally.
- North Carolina State University, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, University of Bari, Italy, University of Warwick, UK.

IBM Watson System:
- Understands natural language and human speech.
- Generates and evaluates hypothesis for better outcomes.
- Adapts and learns from user selections and responses.

Q: Can the future of education become a more outcome-focused continuum supporting lifelong learning?
-Technology Immersions- Any device learning
- Personal Learning Paths- Student-centered processes
- Knowledge Skills- Learning communities
- Global Integration- Service specialization
- Economic Alignment- Systemic view of education

IBM Smarter Education Framework integrates analytics with partners, such as Desire2LEarn, to improve student outcomes.
- In Hamilton County, Tennessee's department of Education uses predictive analytics to improve student achievement: County achieved 8% increase in the graduation rate.
- Mobile County Public Schools implemented system for early intervention.
- Alabama State Dept of Education improves strategy decision making and student achievement with integrated data analytics.

Keynote Address: From Computational Thinking to Computational Values

2012-03-02T06:31:00.000-08:00

Hal Abelson, MIT received award for outstanding contribution for computer science education. He delivered the keynote on Mar 3, 2012. He has written a book Structure an Interpretation of Computer Programs. Google has Ngram Viewer, it is like a time machine for word play.

Links:
http://books.google.com/ngrams
An article about it appeared on cnet:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20025979-93.html
A research paper Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books by Jean-Baptise Michel appeared in Science magazine.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2010/12/15/science.1199644

MIT has made very large number of courses ( 2745 as on date) available free under its OCW program.

MITx is a new online tutoring initiative, it will be launched on Mar 5, 2012.

DSpave@MIT is MIT's institutional repository built to save, share, and search MIT's digital research materials including an increasing number of conference papers, images, peer-reviewed scholarly articles, preprints, technical reports, theses, working papers, and more.

There is a book discussing the issues of copyright of academic work, Who Owns Academic Work ?

BOF session: Teaching with App Inventor for Android

2012-03-01T15:21:00.000-08:00

Presenter: Jeff Gray, Univ. of Alabama

App Inventor for Android is a visual blocks language for building mobile apps. Like Scratch, the language’s drag-and-drop blocks interface significantly lowers the barrier to entry. Beginners can immediately build apps that interface with mobile technology (e.g., GPS, Text-to-speech, SMS Texting) and build apps that have a real-world impact. App Inventor has moved to MIT Center for Mobile Learning from Google.

I have used it myself, it took me 30 minutes to create an example app. I did it when it was still hosted at Google App Inventor website.

New link of App Inventor
http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/ This has a lot of useful resources to teach from middle school students to Master level students.

There is a book App Inventor: Create Your Own Android Apps available for sale at amazon.com .

BOF session: Teaching Open Source

2012-03-01T14:49:00.001-08:00

Presenters: Heidi Ellis, Sebastian Dziallas, Mel Chua, Karl Wurst

The session is on how to involve students from a wide range of backgrounds in Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. The notes of discussion can be found at

http://openetherpad.org/tos-bof-sigcse-2012

Teaching open source link (POSSE):
http://teachingopensource.org

Open source projects can be found at the following links:
http://xcitegroup.org/
http://hfoss.org/
www.ohloh.net
www.sourceforge.net

50 ways to be a FOSSer
http://xcitegroup.org/softhum/doku.php?id=f:50ways

Online Collaboration: Classroom Salon

2012-03-01T13:53:00.000-08:00

I found this paper very interesting. The presentation was done by John Barr, Ithaca College and Ananda Gunawardena, Carnegie Mellon. Classroom Salon is an on-line social collaboration tool that allows instructors to create, manage, and analyze social networks (called Salons) to enhance student learning. Students in a Salon can cooperatively create, comment on, and modify documents. Classroom Salon provides tools that allow the instructor to monitor the social networks and gauge both student participation and individual effectiveness.
It is very similar to Facebook, but it has analytic components to allow instructor to see how many comments has been posted by each student.
Link to create your own salon.

http://www.classroomsalon.org/

SIGCSE 2012: Lunch at The Pit Barbecue

2012-03-01T11:23:00.001-08:00

I joined Maureen Biggers (Indiana University), Monika Witoslawski (Michigan State), Chunbo Chu (Franklin University) on lunch at The Pit Authentic Barbecue , close to convention center. Surprisingly, I could find many vegetarian entrees. I ordered their barbecue tofu with fried okra and sweet potato fried, enjoyed eating them. It was a lot of food, I could not have finished this whole plate myself. Interestingly, when the plate arrived, tofu looked like chicken, but I was told that it was made out of raw soya, hence texture looked like chicken.
Website of the restaurant:

http://www.thepit-raleigh.com/

SIGCSE Supporter session by Microsoft

2012-03-01T08:45:00.002-08:00

I am at SIGCSE in Raleigh for next 3 days. Right now, I am sitting is a session on Empowering Students: Teaching Software Development with Windows Phone, being presented by Rob Miles from University of Hull, UK. This is a very interesting session. His website is www.robmiles.com . He has published books on Java, C# and Windows Phone programming. They are available for download from
http://www.csharpcourse.com/
Microsoft has presentations setup at their booth on the following:
TouchDevelop
Pex4fun
Project Hawaii
Kinect for Windows
Try F#
.NET Gadgeteer
XNA Game Studio 4.0
Kodu
Windows Phone
Windows 8
Imagine Cup
Academic Search
Windows Azure
DreamSpark

I will try to find about all these products and how I can use them in my courses. As educator, you can join Microsoft portal for educators at
www.microsoft.com/faculty

Microsoft has another session Creative Uses for Kinect in Teaching.
- Kinect has 4 microphones.
- You can write Kinect applications from C++ or .NET code.
- Kinect can be used from WPF, XNA also.

Cloud Computing

2011-10-11T09:13:00.000-07:00

As per NIST’s draft definition:

“Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. This cloud model promotes availability and is composed of five essential characteristics, three service models, and four deployment models.”

Cloud Computing is different for different people. For a non-technical user, it is about storing your data on an external source, which is accessible from anywhere, but from a technical perspective, it can be viewed from service models:

Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS): Use of applications running on a cloud infrastructure.

Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS): Deploy consumer-created applications on a cloud infrastructure.

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications.

What are the essential characteristics of Cloud Computing?

· On-demand self-service

· Broad network success

· Resource pooling

· Rapid Elasticity

· Measured Service

What are the deployment models?

· Private cloud

· Community cloud

· Public Cloud

· Hybrid Cloud

Cloud Computing has evolved from several different technologies and business approaches over a period of time. Some of them are Utility Computing, Grid Computing, Autonomic Computing, Platform Virtualization, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and such.

Cloud Service Examples:

Salesforce.com

Amazon Web services

EC2 commercial services offered by Amazon to small companies

Microsoft Azure

VMware

Google

Open-source Cloud Platforms:

Eucalyptus: http://open.eucalyptus.com/

Nimbus: http://www.nimbusproject.org/

Enomaly: http://www.enomaly.com/

Abiquo: http://abiquo.com/

Xen: http://www.xen.org/

For more information:

http://csrc.nist.gov

Cloud Security: A comprehensive guide to Secure Cloud Computing, Ronald Krutz, Russell Vines, Wiley.

Snap Circuits: Electronics kits for kids

2011-10-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of time this summer to find some kind of electronic kits for my eight year old. Finally, I found Snap Circuits made by Elenco Electronics. I bought Snap Circuits Jr. 100 Experiments (Model: SC100, $23 on amazon). This model has only 30 parts, but it is possible to build over 100 projects. What I like the most about this kit is that there is nothing to solder, all the components/wires have snap buttons at the end. It is very easy to connect components together for kids. All parts are mounted on plastic modules. Absolutely, no tools are required. The kit also comes with a manual.

Once all the experiments are completed, there are upgrade kits available. I upgraded SC100 to SC 300 using upgrade kit UC30; this makes it possible to complete another 100 experiments. You can upgrade it to SC750, which allows up to 750 experiments. Elenco also manufactures stand-alone kits for musical recorder, FM radio, motion detector, flying saucer, water clock etc. The kits have been priced very reasonably.

Links:

Snap Circuits: http://www.snapcircuits.net/
For complete list of products: http://www.elenco.com/

Comparison: SAN vs NAS

2011-10-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

According to Executive Chairman of Google Eric Schmidt, every two days we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until 2003. It is approximately 5 Exabytes (1 Exabyte = 1024 Petabytes, 1 Petabyte = 1024 Terabytes). Every human being, who has any digital device, is essentially a content creator. Data center managers are facing this arduous task of providing low-cost, high-performance information management solution.

Storage area network (SAN) carries data between servers and storage devices through fibre channel switches. It enables storage consolidation and allows storage to be shared across multiple servers, which are spread geographically. Network attached storage (NAS) is an IP-based single storage device attached to a local area network. Let us compare these two technologies side-by-side:

SAN	NAS
Server class devices that are equipped with SCSI Fibre Channel adapters connect to a SAN.	Almost any machine that connects to a LAN.
Protocols: Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP), which is implementation of serial SCSI-3 over FC.	NAS solutions use TCP/IP and NFS/CIFS/HTTP based networks
A SAN addresses the data by logical block numbers, and transfers the data in (raw) disk blocks.	A NAS identifies the data by file name and byte offset, transfers file data or metadata, and handles security, user authentication, file locking.
File Sharing is operating system dependent, and may not exist for all operating systems that are being used.	A NAS allows greater sharing of information, especially among different operating systems.
The SAN servers manage the file system.	File system is managed by the NAS head unit.
Backups and mirrors require a block by block copy operation. A mirrored system has to be either identical, or greater in capacity (compared to the source).	Backups and mirrors are generated on files, not blocks (this may save bandwidth and time).
SAN uses single-mode or multi-mode fiber cabling depending on the environment.	NAS uses existing IP networks like Gigabit Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, ATM, and Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI).
Connectivity options: point-to-point, FC-AL (Fibre Channel Arbitrated loop), FC-SW (Fibre Channel Switched Fabric).	Gateway NAS, Integrated NAS.
Benefits: Availability, reliability, scalability, performance, manageability, return on information management.	Supports comprehensive access to information, improved efficiency, improved flexibility, centralized storage, simplified management, scalability, high availability, security.

For more information:

How much data is that: http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/tek1/how_big.htm

SAN and NAS Solutions - Introduction, Topology, and Terminology: http://www.fortuitous.com/docs/primers/SAN_NAS_Intro.pdf

Information Storage and Management: Storage, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information. EMC Education Services, Wiley, ISBN: 978-0-470-29421-5

Technical Committee responsible for fibre channel interfaces: http://www.t11.org/index.html

OpenOffice.org: An Alternative to Microsoft Office

2011-09-24T19:43:00.000-07:00

OpenOffice.org is the open source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and many more. It supports the ISO/IEC standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. It is available under Microsoft Windows and Linux platform. The first version was released on April 30^th, 2002; the current release is OpenOffice.org 3. For the current version, minimum system requirements are:

Microsoft Windows

Windows 2000 (Service Pack 2 or higher), Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7
256 Mbytes RAM (512 MB RAM recommended)
At least 650 Mbytes available disk space for a default install (including a JRE) via download.
After installation and deletion of temporary installation files, OpenOffice.org will use approximately 440 Mbytes disk space.
1024 x 768 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

GNU/Linux ("Linux")

Linux kernel version 2.4 or higher, glibc2 version 2.3.2 or higher
256 Mbytes RAM (512 MB recommended)
400 Mbytes available disk space
X-Server with 1024 x 768 or higher resolution with at least 256 colors

OpenOffice.org comprises a collection of applications that work together closely to provide the features commonly included in modern office suites. Many of the components are similar to those available in Microsoft Office. See below:

Writer: a word processor you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book.
Calc: A powerful spreadsheet with all the tools you need to calculate, analyse, and present your data in numerical reports or sizzling graphics.
Impress: The fastest, most powerful way to create effective multimedia presentations.
Base: Lets you manipulate databases seamlessly. Create and modify tables, forms, queries, and reports, all from within OpenOffice.org
Draw: lets you produce everything from simple diagrams to dynamic 3D illustrations.
Math: Lets you create mathematical equations with a graphic user interface or by directly typing your formulas into the equation editor.

So, if you don’t want to spend money on a commercial office productivity tool, OpenOffice.org is the way to go.

Links: http://www.OpenOffice.org

RAID and Beyond

2011-09-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

This post is based on an article titled Alternatives to RAID, written by Marc Staimer, which appeared in June 2010 issue of Storage magazine.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent disks) have been around for more than 20 years to protect data in intelligent storage systems. In case of disk failure, disk data is recreated using parity disk or from its mirror. As we add more hard disk in the storage array, the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) decreases. With the increase in hard disk size, the rebuild also takes longer. There are tradeoffs in each RAID type in terms of write performance, read performance, level of data protection, speed of data rebuilds and the usable storage. RAID 1, 10 provide guaranteed data availability, but at a severe costs. In addition to that, system resources are required for every copy. In RAID 5, the data will be rebuilt on a spare drive. In this process, every sector on every hard disk drive will be used, resulting heavy utilization of the other HDDs in the RAID set and likelihood of another HDD failure. RAID 6 has two parity to protect data even if two hard disks fail at the same time, but this consumes additional usable capacity. The system performance takes a big hit if two disk drives need to be reconstructed.

Due to the above mentioned issues, Other alternatives are becoming available, two of them are:

RAID + Innovation:

IBM’s EVENODD and NetApp’s RAID-DP have enhanced RAID 6 by reducing algorithm overhead while increasing performance. NEC Corp.’s RAID-TM or triple mirror aims to solve RAID 1 data loss risk if both the primary and mirror drive fail or if there’s a non-recoverable read error. RAID-TM writes data simultaneously to three separate HDDs so if two HDDs fail or there are unrecoverable read errors in the same mirror, the app still has access to its data with no degradation in performance even as the drives are rebuilt. The advantage is performance; the disadvantage is far less usable capacity.

RAID-X is an IBM XIV Storage System innovation that uses a wide stripe to reduce RAID tradeoffs of performance and data loss risk. It is a variation of RAID 10 and uses intelligent risk algorithms to randomly distribute block mirrors throughout the entire array. This approach allows XIV to reconstruct the data on very large 2 TB HDDs in less than 30 minutes.

RAID + Transformation:

Self-healing storage and BeyondRAID are two examples of transformation.

In Self- healing, HDD faults are reduced by proactively healing hard disk drives before a fault occurs using HDD reconditioning algorithms. It also uses advanced vibration controls and sealed systems called DataPacs to reduce outside influences from causing HDD faults. Some examples: Atrato Inc.’s Velocity1000 (V1000), DataDirect Networks Inc.’s DDN S2A technology, Panasas Inc.’s ActiveScan technology, 3PAR’s InSpire Architecture.

BeyondRAID chooses RAID sets based on the required data protection at any given point in time. It protects against one or two HDD failures and has built-in automatic data self-healing (not storage self-healing). Data blocks are spread across all of the drives so data reconstruction is very fast. Because the system is “data aware,” it allows for different drive sizes, drive re-ordering and proportional rebuild times.

BeyondRAID Explained (YouTube video)

RAID traditional levels: RAID, 0, 1, 2, 10, 01, 3, 3 double parity, 4, 5, 6, 50, 60

Links:

BeyondRAID:
http://www.drobo.com/resources/beyondraid.php

May2010 Storage Magazine (You may need account to access it):
http://viewer.media.bitpipe.com/1127859972_677/1273085309_971/StoragemagOnlineMay2010.pdf

RAID Levels and types:
http://www.chicago-data-recovery.com/raid-levels.php

How to setup RAID on your PC:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/132877/how_to_set_up_raid_on_your_pc.html

Hitachi is launching 4 TB HDD:
http://www.itproportal.com/2011/09/08/hitachi-launches-4tb-hard-drive/

IBM's Watson: Human Vs Machine

2011-09-05T18:19:00.000-07:00

IBM's Watson Computer System appeared on Jeopardy Game show in three episodes from Feb 14 to Feb 16, 2011 and beat two contestants, the greatest winners of all time. It generated a lot of interest again in the power of artificial intelligence. It has been a ever-lasing wish of scientists to create a machine which can match the power of human intelligence. Well, Watson is one step forward in that direction, but we are nowhere to achieving that. Before this event, Deep Blue has been in news in the last decade of 20th century. Deep Blue won a six-game match against world champion Garry Kasparov. These are the most popular events where machine was pitted against human and it won. It is not too difficult to build a machine, which can beat human in a narrow knowledge domain, but to build a machine, which has to face questions from open ended domain requires immense computing power and very advanced algorithms. Another challenge is to design search and retrieval algorithms to mine the huge data in a meaningful way. The answer to a question has to be represented in human terms. It should be understandable to a human as if it has been answered by another human. Machine has to deliver the precise response and synthesize, integrate, and go through the breadth of knowledge.

Watson came out of IBM’s DeepQA project, whose aim is to illustrate easy accessibility of natural language contents. The project encompasses a range of research topics: Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning, Massively Parallel Computation. The project is led by Dr. David Ferrucci and a team of 25 researchers drawn from various fields of computer science.

An interesting question, people have asked is why we need Watson like machine when all the information is available through a search engine. We have to remind ourselves that web search engines are designed to return ranked results based on search engine’s algorithm. A human has to filter through these answers and select the ones appropriate to the question. This is where Watson beats search engine. Watson had its weird moments; famous one, when it answered, “What is leg?" reference to a clue about an Olympic oddity in which the athlete was missing a leg.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJFtNp2FzdQ

Watson is designed using UIMA (Unstructured Information Management Architecture), which is now open source and available at uima.apache.org. Watson needs only 500 GB to compete on Jeopardy. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but it doesn’t require any image, audio, and video files, just plain text. DeepQA high level architecture is given in AI magazine's Fall 2010 issue [1].

What powers Watson:

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/watson-for-a-smarter-planet/watson-schematic.html

AI Magazine article:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs124/AIMagzine-DeepQA.pdf

Future of Watson (TED webcast):

http://www.ted.com/webcast/archive/event/ibmwatson

FAQ on Watson:

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/faq.shtml#1

Watson Link:

http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/

[1] Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project, David Ferrucci, Eric Brown, Jennifer Chu-Carroll, James Fan, David Gondek, Aditya A. Kalyanpur, Adam Lally, J. William Murdock, Eric Nyberg, John Prager, Nico Schlaefer, Chris Welty, vol. 31, issue 3.

POSSE- 2011 (Professor's Open Source Summer Experience)

2011-07-24T10:12:00.000-07:00

I was in Raleigh from July 23-24 at the Redhat. It was a nice way to spend a weekend to learn about open source. I learned first time how to use IRC, specially if you want to contribute in open source community. Open source has been around for many years, but it has taken a firm root now and has become a development model. At this time, there are a very large number of open source software packages available. It is possible to find a free open source software in almost any area. They are no longer designed to accomplish some minor tasks like transferring files over Internet or creating an address book. We can find the complete software systems like OpenEMR, which is an electronic health records and medical practice management application. Ohloh is a free public directory of open source software, a good place to start whether you want to look for a project as a contributor or just want to download a software for your needs. OpenHatch is another website aiming to bring contributors into open source projects. One misconception is that programming knowledge is a prerequisite to participate in open source projects. This is not true as contributors can work in other, but equally important areas. They can create the documentations, act as project managers, keep a log of bugs, help in marketing campaigns, organized boot camps etc.

I am planning to use open source in my Storage Technology course in the fall 2011. This course provides a comprehensive introduction to data storage technology fundamentals. To incorporate open source, I have come across two open source storage technology tools OpenFiler and FreeNAS. Openfiler is a browser-based network storage software distribution. It delivers file-based NAS (Network Attached Storage) and block-based Storage Area Networking in a single framework. FreeNAS is a NAS server OS based on FreeBSD 8.0. Its most important feature is full support for the ZFS filesystem.
The Passmark Software has many free tools to test system performance and perform certain system tasks like disk cleanup, checking RAM speed, cloning disk images etc. I like their PerformanceTest software for PC speed testing and benchmarking. It has a free 30-day evaluation version. I have also used Iometer in the past, which was originally developed by Intel, but taken over by open source community. I don't see any update after July 27, 2006, but the available version works just fine.

I will update this blog periodically.

Links:
http://teachingopensource.org/
https://fedoraproject.org/
http://www.opensource.com/
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+zfs/whatis