OStatic blogs

Microlocal News Web Site EveryBlock Releases Source Code

Lisa Hoover — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:43:05 -0400

The programming team behind EveryBlock, a location-specific news aggregator, has released the software's source code under the GPLv3 license. This could signal a way for the journalism industry to keep its foot in the door of local news reporting that's increasingly falling into the laps of "citizen journalists."

Since the code is fairly complex, programmers will likely start out using snippets of it to create smaller projects. Though releasing the code makes it technically possible to design all sorts of geolocation apps, St. Pete Times news technologist Matt Waite says, "If you think you just turn it on and put some ads on it and it will make money for you, you're high."

The EveryBlock project was funded by a grant from the Knight News Foundation and led by Adrian Holovaty, creator of Django. Now that the funding has come to an end, the source code is being released as part of the grant's original requirements. The site will continue to operate as a private company

Everything you've ever wanted to know about EveryBlock's code can be found on the new section of the project's Web site, including its publishing system, internal tools, and mapping utilities. O'Reilly Radar's Brady Forrest notes, "the trademark EveryBlock is not available. However, the Everyblock team would not mind being acknowledged if you use their code.

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10 Of OStatic's Most Popular Open Source Educational Resources

Sam Dean — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 12:28:12 -0400

Are you looking for some good open source educational material and perhaps some new applications to try this Fourth of July weekend? At OStatic, we put together regular collections of tips, tutorials, and recommendations designed to add to your open source arsenal. In this post, you'll find ten of these, ranging from resources for Linux users, to top OSS web development tools, to graphics and music gems, to good ways to get more out of Firefox. Dig in:

7 Free Resources for Eye-Popping Graphics and Animation

8 Free, Open Source Tools for Video Playback and Encoding

5 Resources for Digging Into Linux

8 Top Resources for Open Source Project Leaders

OStatic's Firefox Superguide

12 Resources for Free Open Source Tutorials and Tools

More Than Five Top, Free Tools for Web Developers

5 Solid Google Chrome Resources

Over 40 Must-Have Open Source Tools

8 Free Tools for a Better Digital Music Experience

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Three Open Source E-book Readers Worth a Look

Lisa Hoover — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:29:13 -0400

If you're heading to the beach this summer, you might want to take along something good to read. Dead tree books are so last century and e-book readers are all the rage. While Kindles are cool, they're not the only game in town for reading the latest best seller. Try these open source options for mobile devices and netbooks instead.

FBReader - A free reader for Windows, Linux, and Linux-based mobile devices. It supports several formats, including plucker, ePub, and the non-DRM version of Mobipocket. It displays embedded images, supports hyperlinks and footnotes, remembers the last-read positions for multiple books, and more.

Calibre - The grandaddy of open source ebook readers, this cross-platform reader includes format conversion and library management tools, and an integrated ebook viewer. It also converts news feeds into ebooks and syncs easily with e-reader devices, including the iPhone.

Flipbook - This is a beta version of a new ebook reader released by The Internet Archive that reads scanned books stored on Archive.org. It supports books written in right-to-left-languages and can even be embedded in blog posts or digital asset repository pages.

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Come For the Blog, Stay For the Q & A

Lisa Hoover — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:45:44 -0400

Every day on OStatic, we strive to bring you interesting and informative news, commentary, and app reviews -- but that's not all the site has to offer. One of my favorite sections of the site is Questions, where visitors can get answers, trade experiences, and help each other troubleshoot.

Our readers are awfully smart and quick to jump in when a fellow Linux enthusiast needs a hand. When Naman Aggarwal had trouble unzipping 7zip files on a Mac, he turned to the OStatic community for help and people responded with several solutions to try.

Future visitors will have no trouble finding the answers for questions that have already been asked, since all our site content is fully searchable. A sidebar also directs readers to related software, blog posts, and even user reviews.

You can also use Questions to connect with OStatic's staff. For instance, we were happy to offer a peek under the hood when Riyana Singh wanted to know if the site's search facets are a module in Drupal or custom made.

Got something you want to know about open source software or need help solving a problem? Head over to Questions now.

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Firefox 3.5, Portable Edition Arrives

Sam Dean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:51:44 -0400

You may already have the new Firefox 3.5 browser, but now, courtesy of the folks at PortableApps, you can get the portable version of Firefox 3.5 as well. It's downloadable here, and, like the other portable versions of popular open source applications that PortableApps offers, it's perfect as a lightweight app that you can keep on a USB thumb drive or other portable device. It comes bundled with a PortableApps launcher, so you can launch it directly from a USB thumb drive and have Firefox available with your customizations no matter where you are.

We've covered PortableApps a number of times. It provides a bushel of open source applications in one download--good ones, too--and Firefox 3.5 Portable Edition is now one of the applications you get with the suite, or you can download it on its own. The portable version of Firefox 3.5 syncs with your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords so it provides a lightweight facsimile of your normal Firefox setup.

As we've noted, not all extensions work with Firefox 3.5 yet, and that's true for the portable edition, too. You can find installation insctructions and usage tips for Firefox Portable Edition at the bottom of the page here.

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As Symbian Finally Rolls Out its Open Source Platform, Expect a Shakeup

Sam Dean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:23:45 -0400

Yesterday, we covered Juniper Research's findings on the prospects for open source operating systems on smartphones, which it deems to be rosy. Juniper is predicting that open source smartphone shipments will double from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014. In our post yesterday, though, I made the point that the Android operating system isn't even mentioned in Juniper's announcement, while Symbian, LiMo and others are.

When it comes to Symbian, many observers have noted that ever since June 2008, when Nokia announced that the Symbian platform would be open sourced, very little seems to have happened. Symbian owns about 50 percent of the global handheld market. So where is the open source push that everyone was expecting? There are some answers to that question emerging, and Symbian's impact on smartphones could be much bigger than many are predicting.

In a post today, InfoWorld reports that Symbian will soon begin beta testing Symbian 2, a customizable, open source version of the Symbian platform. David Wood, who is futurist and catalyst at the Symbian Foundation, tells InfoWorld that within a few weeks the software will be "functionally complete," and that there will be a Symbian Product Development Kit (PDK), which phone makers will use when building phones based on the operating system.

Wood's comments to InfoWorld follow on the heels of his conversation with Matt Asay, as reported here, where he made the point that Symbian has time to beat Apple's iPhone. While I was beginning to wonder why it was taking Symbian so long to shift to an open source strategy that many people think is promising, it's starting to look like we may see that promise come to fruition soon.

The Symbian platform is on so many smartphones, and comprises a large system of software and extensions, that perhaps it's no surprise it's taken a year for the first signs of an open source version of the platform to emerge. Android, too, prompted many questions about the slow rate of development around it during its early months in the wild, but is showing every sign of becoming a robust, market-leading open source platform--and not just for smartphones. It's going to be very interesting to see how many phones and partnerships Symbian's open source platform gives rise to, and it's way too early to write such a huge player off.

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VMware's Proprietary Virtualization is Still Under Fire

Sam Dean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:48:59 -0400

Last year, I wrote a post on the precipitous share price drop, CEO ouster, and overall malaise that virtualization player VMware has seen as free, open source competition has threatened the company and its proprietary business model. VMware has released an open source virtualization client since then, as well as many other open source tools. Today, Matt Asay and David Cappuccio consider whether there are several analogs between Novell and VMware, and what lies ahead for VMware's proprietary model.

Cappuccio argues that in the face of market-leading, but costly technology, many users will opt for "good enough" alternatives. He points out that in Novell's case, Windows encroached on its market leading network operating system many years ago. He also points to Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization as highly threatening to VMware:

"It will be an integral part of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 7 in 2010. Why should you (or VMware) care? Because like "free networking", or "free SharePoint", Hyper-V will get used..."

It's a good point that Hyper-v being bundled in Windows will give it a leg up over other virtualization tools. After all, that's how Microsoft propelled its inferior browser and many other tools to market dominance.

Still, the case of Internet Explorer is good to consider in this context. It has dominant market share because it's bundled with Windows, but that share is falling. Firefox is far more extensible, Chrome is far faster and more stable, and more.

I'm not sure that I agree completely with Cappuccio that Hyper-V's free distribution, and "good enough" quality will make it a better choice than some of the open source offerings. Xen, VirtualBox, and many other free, open source virtualization offerings have the potential to offer more customization and extensibility options than Hyper-V or VMware offer. One thing's for sure: Microsoft's free offering combined with the free, open source virtualization products still spell big trouble for VMware's proprietary strategy.

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OStatic Buffer Overflow...

Sam Dean — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:30:18 -0400

T-Mobile's next-generation Android phone, myTouch, coming up July 8th. The 3G phone is a big step for Android.

Why Ubuntu has become the flag bearer for Linux. It's not just because of Canonical's investment.

PostgreSQL version 8.4 is now out and available for download. Improvements to the open source database focus on administration and monitoring.

10 awesome features of Krunner in KDE 4. Here's a screenshot-driven tour.

Amarok music player 2.1: One step forward, two steps back. There are several improvements, but also several issues.

With clouds, license arguments become fog. Does it matter if you are using a license out there?

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Vanilla Is a Tasty Discussion Forum CMS

Lisa Hoover — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 09:33:37 -0400

Discussion forums may seem antiquated in a world of 140-character conversations but they're still a vital part of online group communication. If you want to add a place for your Web site visitors to meet and chat, then have a look at the open source discussion forum CMS, Vanilla.

Vanilla has a load of administration features that make managing an online forum a snap, including the ability to change the layout, style, themes, and even change the language of the forum in a few simple steps. It's got built-in spam control and advanced search capabilities that allow you to drill down into forum content via comments, username, or discussion topic.

Several hundred add-ons are available to help customize Vanilla to your liking. Report Comment lets users report comments for moderation, Twitter Feed allows users to display their last five Tweets on their profile page, and TagThis adds tagging capabilities to discussions. Developers are, of course, encouraged to create new add-ons or join the community to help develop the Vanilla project.

Licensed under the GPLv2, Vanilla works on all the major Web browsers and runs on virtually any Web server with more recent versions of PHP and MySQL.

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Getting Used to Firefox 3.5? Try These Resources

Sam Dean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:51:19 -0400

Now that Firefox 3.5 has been released, you may be interested in customizing your experience with it, and learning more about the many new features available in it. Here are over five good resources worth spending some time with if you want to get the most out of what I consider to be the best, most extensible browser.

What's New? In this post, Lisa provides a top-level view of the new features in Firefox 3.5, and I covered many of the under-the-hood features in this post, reviewing a pre-release version.

From Mozilla. In this video, members of the Mozilla team behind Firefox 3.5 explain their favorite new features in the browser.

OStatic's Firefox Superguide. Our Firefox Superguide post presents many useful collections of top extensions for the browser, and quite a few other resources for customizing your experience.

Which Extensions Work With Version 3.5? CNet has a good post up discussing which extensions do and do not work with the new version of Firefox, and a good discussion and slideshow illustrating new features.

Use Gestures. The Mouse Gestures Firefox extension is one of the easiest and fastest ways to become much faster and more efficient with the browser. It works with version 3.5, lets you perform common browser tasks with a quick flick of your mouse hand, and I reviewed it here.

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VirtualBox 3.0 Runs Multiple Operating Systems Concurrently

Sam Dean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:41:04 -0400

As JKOnTheRun reports, Sun Microsystems is out with the third version of its free virtualization software VirtualBox, downloadable here. You can take a screenshot tour here. VirtualBox 3.0 now supports Open GL 2.0 as well as Direct 3D 8/9 in Windows. Also included is the ability for guest operating systems to use up to 32 virtual CPUs. You can view the substantial changelog here. "VirtualBox might not be as glitzy, glamorous or functional for games as solutions from Parallels or VMware, but you can’t beat the price," says the JKOnTheRun post. "It’s definitely a must-see if you want to run multiple operating systems at the same time on a Windows, Mac or Linux machine."

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Report: Open Source Smartphone Shipments to Double By 2014

Sam Dean — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:29:44 -0400

Despite the lagging economy, smartphones remain a hot market, and open source phones are in the spotlight. According to research from Juniper Research telecom consultants, the number of smartphones shipped with open source operating systems will increase from 106 million this year to 223 million by 2014. Juniper's study found that open source operating systems and applications "are playing an increasingly important role in the differentiation of new smartphones and are a key factor in the choice of which handset to choose from by users." Juniper's findings are being echoed by other researchers.

Surprisingly, Juniper's announcement doesn't even mention the Android operating system, which is spreading out to many new handsets and other devices. According to analysts at Strategy Analytics, Android will be the fastest growing smartphone operating system of all in 2009, with an estimated 900 percent growth rate over the course of the year. Strategy Analytics has also forecasted that within two or three years, Google will command most of the smartphone operating system market.

Juniper Research reports the following, and you can get more details in a freely downloadable whitepaper found here:

"The move to open source operating systems has encouraged developers to design new and attractive applications, and with over 60 percent of the OS market now based on open source, and a sizeable pool of software design talent out there, there is a massive opportunity for innovation. However, the real key is not whether the OS is open source but whether it’s easy for a developer to design an application and make money from that effort. The combined changes of Apple’s open route to the market and LiMo, OHA and Symbian’s open source OS approach have generated a tidal wave-like effect which even the economic downturn has been unable to reverse."

I agree with Juniper that "the choice of OS is now critical and market share will, to a large extent, follow application development." Applications, are indeed, the key to platform success. However, I'm betting that Android will outshine Symbian's, LiMo's and other platforms in the long run. There's no question, though, that mobile platforms have become a huge opportunity for open source innovation. And, in the mobile space, Microsoft does not have the dominance that it has on the desktop.

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Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud Services Helps Users Build (and Support) Private Clouds

Kristin Shoemaker — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:14:29 -0400

While it may be a completely philosophical debate whether the universe is turtles all the way down, it's a lot less existential to imagine that the internet is clouds all the way up. In April, Canonical previewed its Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (affectionately known as UEC), a system designed to simplify the creation, optimization, and management of cloud environments for private organizations. The interface and functionality of UEC is similar to the Amazon EC2 infrastructure, uses in-house hardware running Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04, and is powered by Eucalyptus Systems cloud computing tools.

Today Canonical officially launched the UEC service, including generalized tech support, consultancy and deployment services. Although UEC support is a joint offering from Eucalyptus Systems and Canonical, the Canonical team will act as the primary contact point in order to simplify and streamline support transactions.

Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is geared to organizations that would prefer to keep their cloud deployments (and servers) on-site. Canonical also offers a public cloud package, Ubuntu on Amazon EC2. For those who keep their deployments in-house, however, one of the most reassuring aspects of UEC (and indeed, many open source software offerings) is that support services -- and the type of support purchased -- are optional, and won't lock an organization in to a contract that potentially won't always suit its changing business needs.

Those wishing to try UEC on their Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04 machines are encouraged to take a look at the documentation on getting Eucalyptus up and running on both front-end and node boxes.

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SourceForge Gears Up For Community Choice Awards

Lisa Hoover — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:26:09 -0400

SourceForge combed through more than 47,000 nominations to announce which of the open source projects it hosts are finalists in the Fourth Annual Community Choice Awards. Eighty-five projects in 12 categories are in the running and the winners will be announced on July 23, 2009 at OSCON.

Categories run the gamut from technical (Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins) and entertaining (Best Project for Gamers) to "life-changing" (Most Likely to Change the Way You Do Everything). Nominated projects are equally wide-ranging and while there are a number of familiar names like KeePass Password Safe and Audacity, quite a few lesser known projects are being given the opportunity to shine. Avogadro, a cross platform, 3-dimensional molecular editor, is up for Best Project for Academia and microblogging client Choqok has been nominated for Best New Project.

One of the most intriguing nominations is rtmpdump which is up for Best Project in Multimedia. Earlier this year, Adobe issued a DMCA removal request through SourceForge which resulted in a complete shutdown of the project. SourceForge's Director of Community, Ross Turk, says, "...let’s just say that I wholeheartedly appreciate the 'screw the man' sentiment, even if 'the man' includes us this time. The world is not a perfect place quite yet."

At least one project team is already making post-award plans in case they win. Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of Mindtouch says if his project wins an award for Best Commercial Open Source Project, he'll get a robot tattooed on his leg.

Disclosure: Lisa Hoover is the SourceForge Community Blogger but derives no benefit from the company for writing this post.

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Moblin Arrives in Beta 2.0 Version, Works With Netbooks

Sam Dean — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 15:25:29 -0400

Moblin, the open source mobile platform launched by Intel and now overseen by The Linux Foundation, is out in a beta version 2.0. The platform has been gaining a lot of momentum, with Acer announcing that it will put it on a broad range of laptops, netbooks and PCs, Moblin mediaphone devices in the works, in-car infotainment systems based on it, and more. According to a blog post from Moblin.org, the beta version is aimed at netbooks and nettops for developer testing.

The announcment from Moblin.org also says:

"With this release, developers can begin to experience and work with the source code of the visually rich, interactive user interface designed for Intel Atom based netbooks. The Moblin v2.0 user experience has been designed from the ground up to provide unique ways to engage with the internet, aggregate your social networking activity, and enjoy your media content. The new user experience and core applications were developed using the Clutter animation framework, leveraging heavily from GL and the physics engine."

You can take a screenshot tour here, see a user experience video here, and download the beta here. The beta includes a richer user interface, aggregation of social networking content, an optimized web browser, a zoomable media player, an updated connection manager, and updated support for Linux desktop applications. According to Moblin.org, the beta is suitable for Intel-based netbooks and nettops, and has been tested on many popular netbooks.

Moblin has its own steering committee at the Linux Foundation, and is making great strides, as is the Android operating system. It looks like The Linux Foundation is taking it seriously.

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OStatic blogs

Microlocal News Web Site EveryBlock Releases Source Code

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