07-02-2008, 07:14 AM
A great article especially for the Open Source gurus
[COLOR="Navy"]RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit is a RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of the news feeds you follow on the net. It's newspaper view lets you get a quick overview of unread posts across the blogs you subscribe to. The newspaper view can be customized and the templates are compatible with those used in FeedDemon.
If you flag anything for follow-up while reading - these posts are always easily accessible in a special flagged items folder. RSS Bandit also allows you to read comments to the posts if the blog supports this feature - so you don't have to leave RSS Bandit to read them. And even better you can send your own replies to blog posts - your replies will be saved in a sent items folder for later reference.
If the blog you read does not support all of the comments features - you can simply open it in the embedded browser as a tab. If your browsing takes you to a new site RSS Bandit will auto-discover feed for that site.
Another strong feature of RSS Bandit is that it will allow you to synchronize everything with NewsGator online. So everything marked as read in either application is reflected in the other. You can also synchronize multiple instances of RSS Bandit if you have it running on multiple computers. This can be done through WebDAV or FTP, this of course requires that you have access to a web hosting account.
RSS Bandit also provides access to news on news servers (similar to Google Groups) - it uses NNTP to read and post to newsgroups anywhere on the net. It integrates to Goolge Groups by linking to posts on their website.
0 comments/votes
Joomla
Joomla is among the top two or three open source content management systems (CMS) on the market. Joomla offers an advanced CMS which is extremely modularly built. This makes developing extensions easy both because of the excellent core, but also due to the huge number of existing extensions that can be used for inspiration.
Joomla allows you be build professional websites, intranet, sites for e-commerce, etc. Every detail can be customized and you have full control of everything. The Joomla extensions database has more than 2000 existing plugins. So before you start developing anything for Joomla you should check that is has not already been developed by someone else. Chances are that you will find a close match that you can use out of the box - or modify to your needs.
Typical extensions include features like: forum, calenders, blogs and modules tailored for specific businesses. Joomla can be customized to work with virtually any language - it is built on PHP and uses MySQL as it's backend database.
Archimedes
Archimedes is a computer aided design (CAD) solution focusing on architectural design. While the current version of Archimedes may not be mature enough for all - this project is very promising. It already has many of the most common and advance drawing features you will find in a commercial CAD solution. However, it's interoperability with other products is still lacking. On the other hand drawing can be exported in scalable vector graphics (SVG) format - allowing you to share finished drawings with a wide audience without requiring them to install the product.
This is a great upcoming project started in Brazil - their goals are to create a real alternative for AutoCAD, but make it more suited for architects.
IceBB
IceBB is an upcoming bulletin board/forum software. Since its initial release in 2004 IceBB has slowly gained in popularity and features. Today it is a feature rich forum software package that delivers a scalable platform that can easily be modified and skinned to match your design and layout requirements.
Among its strongest features is that every forum and topic is RSS enabled. This allows people to follow specific subjects easily using their RSS readers - and it makes it possible for others to syndicate the discussions and embed them on other sites. Like all modern bulletin boards - IceBB features a WYSIWYG editor and unicode support makes it available in virtually any language using their own character set.
The online community supporting IceBB provides support in multiple languages - making it easy for anyone to get started. IceBB is still beta software, but is used for production on many sites. Upcoming version promises even more features that will both bring it closer to its competitors by matching their features - but also differentiate by introducing features inspired by the community.
SilverStripe
SilverStripe is an easy to use content management system (CMS) based on PHP. Not only does SilverStripe offer an very cool looking user interface, but is is really simple to get started with and building websites of any size and for any purpose.
Each page has a behavior that acts as a template for the functionality the page features. Normally it will just be a standard page, but it could be a contact form, a forum or one of the other included templates. The behaviors match the modules listed on the SilverStripe website. These modules include (but are not limited to) e-commerce, google maps integration, a blog - and Flickr gallery that easily lets use integrate photos from Flickr by user, tag or photoset.
SilverStripe is also search engine optimization (seo) friendly - for each page meta-data such as description and keywords can be added. Additionally the meta-data lets you have full control of the URL, so that keywords can be embedded exactly as you wish in a seo manner.
Finally I wish to high-light the newsletter feature - now you don't have to struggle in Outlook or other e-mail programs that are really not designed for making newsletters. Everything is managed directly from your website - it does not get much more simple than this. Also I really like that working with images in the WYSIWYG editor - you can scale them, and SilverStripe will automatically re-sample your original image. This makes images look pixel perfect - every time.
SilverStripe is a great and fairly young project (open sourced in October 2006) - that looks incredibly promising.[/COLOR]
source Osalt
[COLOR="Navy"]RSS Bandit
RSS Bandit is a RSS and Atom reader that allows you to keep track of all of the news feeds you follow on the net. It's newspaper view lets you get a quick overview of unread posts across the blogs you subscribe to. The newspaper view can be customized and the templates are compatible with those used in FeedDemon.
If you flag anything for follow-up while reading - these posts are always easily accessible in a special flagged items folder. RSS Bandit also allows you to read comments to the posts if the blog supports this feature - so you don't have to leave RSS Bandit to read them. And even better you can send your own replies to blog posts - your replies will be saved in a sent items folder for later reference.
If the blog you read does not support all of the comments features - you can simply open it in the embedded browser as a tab. If your browsing takes you to a new site RSS Bandit will auto-discover feed for that site.
Another strong feature of RSS Bandit is that it will allow you to synchronize everything with NewsGator online. So everything marked as read in either application is reflected in the other. You can also synchronize multiple instances of RSS Bandit if you have it running on multiple computers. This can be done through WebDAV or FTP, this of course requires that you have access to a web hosting account.
RSS Bandit also provides access to news on news servers (similar to Google Groups) - it uses NNTP to read and post to newsgroups anywhere on the net. It integrates to Goolge Groups by linking to posts on their website.
0 comments/votes
Joomla
Joomla is among the top two or three open source content management systems (CMS) on the market. Joomla offers an advanced CMS which is extremely modularly built. This makes developing extensions easy both because of the excellent core, but also due to the huge number of existing extensions that can be used for inspiration.
Joomla allows you be build professional websites, intranet, sites for e-commerce, etc. Every detail can be customized and you have full control of everything. The Joomla extensions database has more than 2000 existing plugins. So before you start developing anything for Joomla you should check that is has not already been developed by someone else. Chances are that you will find a close match that you can use out of the box - or modify to your needs.
Typical extensions include features like: forum, calenders, blogs and modules tailored for specific businesses. Joomla can be customized to work with virtually any language - it is built on PHP and uses MySQL as it's backend database.
Archimedes
Archimedes is a computer aided design (CAD) solution focusing on architectural design. While the current version of Archimedes may not be mature enough for all - this project is very promising. It already has many of the most common and advance drawing features you will find in a commercial CAD solution. However, it's interoperability with other products is still lacking. On the other hand drawing can be exported in scalable vector graphics (SVG) format - allowing you to share finished drawings with a wide audience without requiring them to install the product.
This is a great upcoming project started in Brazil - their goals are to create a real alternative for AutoCAD, but make it more suited for architects.
IceBB
IceBB is an upcoming bulletin board/forum software. Since its initial release in 2004 IceBB has slowly gained in popularity and features. Today it is a feature rich forum software package that delivers a scalable platform that can easily be modified and skinned to match your design and layout requirements.
Among its strongest features is that every forum and topic is RSS enabled. This allows people to follow specific subjects easily using their RSS readers - and it makes it possible for others to syndicate the discussions and embed them on other sites. Like all modern bulletin boards - IceBB features a WYSIWYG editor and unicode support makes it available in virtually any language using their own character set.
The online community supporting IceBB provides support in multiple languages - making it easy for anyone to get started. IceBB is still beta software, but is used for production on many sites. Upcoming version promises even more features that will both bring it closer to its competitors by matching their features - but also differentiate by introducing features inspired by the community.
SilverStripe
SilverStripe is an easy to use content management system (CMS) based on PHP. Not only does SilverStripe offer an very cool looking user interface, but is is really simple to get started with and building websites of any size and for any purpose.
Each page has a behavior that acts as a template for the functionality the page features. Normally it will just be a standard page, but it could be a contact form, a forum or one of the other included templates. The behaviors match the modules listed on the SilverStripe website. These modules include (but are not limited to) e-commerce, google maps integration, a blog - and Flickr gallery that easily lets use integrate photos from Flickr by user, tag or photoset.
SilverStripe is also search engine optimization (seo) friendly - for each page meta-data such as description and keywords can be added. Additionally the meta-data lets you have full control of the URL, so that keywords can be embedded exactly as you wish in a seo manner.
Finally I wish to high-light the newsletter feature - now you don't have to struggle in Outlook or other e-mail programs that are really not designed for making newsletters. Everything is managed directly from your website - it does not get much more simple than this. Also I really like that working with images in the WYSIWYG editor - you can scale them, and SilverStripe will automatically re-sample your original image. This makes images look pixel perfect - every time.
SilverStripe is a great and fairly young project (open sourced in October 2006) - that looks incredibly promising.[/COLOR]
source Osalt