6 open source teaching tools for virtual classrooms :: opensource.com

As schools and universities are shutting down around the globe due to COVID-19, many of us in academia are wondering how we can get up to speed and establish a stable workflow to get our podcasts, online lectures, and tutorials out there for our students. Open source software (OSS) has a key role to play in this situation for many reasons, including:

Source: 6 open source teaching tools for virtual classrooms

Top 4 open source alternatives to Google Analytics | Opensource.com

These four versatile web analytics tools provide valuable insights on your customers and site visitors while keeping you in control.

Top 4 open source alternatives to Google Analytics | Opensource.com https://opensource.com/article/18/1/top-4-open-source-analytics-tools

We use Matomo (formerly Piwik) on CALI websites. We decided to host our own analytics for a few reasons including performance, data control, and to better choose the options we use.

Electron | Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.


Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS

It’s easier than you think

If you can build a website, you can build a desktop app. Electron is a framework for creating native applications with web technologies like JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. It takes care of the hard parts so you can focus on the core of your application.

Watch the video

Source: Electron | Build cross platform desktop apps with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

This powers the Slack and WordPress.com desktop apps among other things. It was developed by Github and is open source. I hadn’t heard of this until this afternoon, but it certainly seems like something that is worth taking a look at. HT to Dave Winer who’s using it for his new Electric River app.

5 open source RSS feed readers | Opensource.com

When Google Reader was discontinued four years ago, many “technology experts” called it the end of RSS feeds.

And it’s true that for some people, social media and other aggregation tools are filling a need that feed readers for RSS, Atom, and other syndication formats once served. But old technologies never really die just because new technologies come along, particularly if the new technology does not perfectly replicate all of the use cases of the old one. The target audience for a technology might change a bit, and the tools people use to consume the technology might change, too.

But RSS is no more gone than email, JavaScript, SQL databases, the command line, or any number of other technologies that various people told me more than a decade ago had numbered days. (Is it any wonder that vinyl album sales just hit a 25-year peak last year?) One only has to look at the success of online feed reader site Feedly to understand that there’s still definitely a market for RSS readers.

Source: 5 open source RSS feed readers | Opensource.com