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Where Have Portals Gone?

Portals Fostering Open-Source Success
“If you go to the open-source development site sourceforge.net and search on the term “portal,” you’ll get hundreds of hits. In fact, you could reasonably argue that, when it comes to open-source enterprise applications, portals have been the biggest success story.

In addition to being highly effective and capable on their own, open-source portals have served to demonstrate the effectiveness of other open-source technologies, especially the MySQL database and the PHP scripting language. This is clearly illustrated in probably the most popular open-source portal application, PHP-Nuke (www.phpnuke.org), which is easily customized and includes pretty much any feature you would want from a portal, including content and document management, forums, chat, and blogging. PHP-Nuke has spawned additional open-source portals, including PostNuke (www.postnuke.com).“

Looks like Open Source is the place to g oif you’re looking for portal software. Once a buzz word, portals have quietly become the norm for site development in many areas. I suspect aht blogs and such will follow a similar path.

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New Releases for Debian and SUSE

Slashdot | New Releases for Debian and SUSE
“With the recent SUSE LINUX 9.3 Live DVD ISO released, we get a sneak peek. (screenshots) of this much anticipated OS update. Cool updates in 9.3 includes Firefox 1.0, OpenOffice.org 2.0, Gimp 2.2, Beagle. Xen, VoIP client, and more.” And while Debian’s Sarge isn’t here yet (give Branden Robinson a chance to find his plush new office!), wrochal points out that the fifth update to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (“Woody” ) has arrived. 3.0 (r5) “mainly adds security updates to the stable release, along with a few corrections to serious problems.”

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Bash Blogger

Bash Blogger
“Bash Blogger is a small, bash-powered, weblog engine. It generates valid, semantic, XHTML 1.1 webpages styled with a single CSS for layout and appearance without relying on popular, server-side scripting languages (i.e. Perl, Python, PHP, ASP, SSI, etc.).“

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Rater of Change in Linux 2.6 Kerenl Sparks Debate

Kernel Changes Draw Concern from Open-Source Community
“Members of the open-source community are expressing concern over rapid feature changes in the Linux 2.6 kernel, which they say are too focused on the desktop and could make the kernel too large.“

The inclusion of features for gamers and music, as well as uncertainty about the future of virtualization in the kernel are causing concern for some of the large corporations feeding off of Linux. This will certainly get worse before it gets better. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised to see a fork in the code in the not to distant future with the BigCos taking on the development of an ‘enterprise’ kernel and the volunteer developers continuing on with a kernel for the rest of us.

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phpSurveyor

phpSurveyor
“PHP Surveyor is a set of PHP scripts that interact with MySQL to develop surveys, publish surveys and collect responses to surveys. Once a survey has been created it can be published as an online survey (displayed as single questions, group by group or all in one page) or you can use a dataentry system for administration of paper-based versions of the survey. PHP Surveyor can produced ‘branching’ surveys (set conditions on whether individual questions will display), can vary the look and feel of your survey through a templating system, and can provide basic statistical analysis of your survey results.“

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SkypeIn, Other Features Announced

Skype for Windows Windows Version 1.2 Delivers User-Requested Portability and Personalization Enhancements
“Skype, the Global Internet Telephony Company, today announced the public beta launch of SkypeIn and Skype Voicemail, two new premium services available in the latest download versions of Skype software for Linux, MAC OS X, Pocket PC and Windows platforms. SkypeIn provides an affordable, flexible alternative to costly mobile phone roaming charges with SkypeIn personal numbers. SkypeIn customers can receive inbound calls to their Skype client from ordinary fixed telephones or mobile phones while they travel worldwide, providing seamless interconnectivity without having to pay costly roaming charges. Skype Voicemail enables users to manage incoming voicemail messages, making their Skype usage more ubiquitous.“

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Chaos: Linux Distro for Instant Clustering

Wired News: Linux Distribution Tames Chaos
“Chaos, a Linux distribution developed by Australian Ian Latter, harnesses the unused processing power of networked PCs, creating a distributed supercomputer that can crack passwords at lightning speed.

The program remotely boots Linux on a PC without touching the hard drive, leaving the “slave” PC’s operating system and data secure and untouched. Thirty PCs connected as a cluster create enough processing power to complete complex mathematical equations or high-level security tasks like password cracking that no individual PC could handle alone.“

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IBM Seeks Firefox Talent

Slashdot | IBM to Hire Firefox Developers
“According to news.com, IBM has placed an employment ad for a developer who would be responsible for ‘enhancing the Mozilla Firefox Web browser with new features complimentary to IBM’s On Demand middleware stack.’ IBM might possibly be interested in FireFox integration with their Workplace software. The job is not for just anyone, however, as those who wish to apply for the job should have some cred with the Mozilla development community.“

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