Programming

Open Source Software: Transforming Business

Open source is having a huge impact on the software development business, and it is going to continue to have a huge impact on the future of software development. Just as computer hardware has become a commodity over the last couple years as manufacturing and production efficiency have increased, the same thing is going to happen with the software development industry. Many may decry this statement. But it is true and it is happening already. The thing is, we don’t need to fear this commoditization of software.

Open source is changing software development at a fundamental level. Once software developers were highly paid to build specialized software systems. These included things such as databases, interface libraries and other fundamental and foundational software packages. At that time, these tools didn’t exist, so they had to be created. This created a foundation that other people could build on.

When you look at these systems, take databases for example, they may be extremely complex systems, but on a larger scale, they don’t really do anything by themselves. They are a piece, a tool that can be used as a foundation to build a more complex system. A database by itself is nothing. In and of itself a database has little value. It has to be utilized by another system before its true value becomes apparent.

I believe that the commoditization of software is going to create a “Lego” effect. A database or an image manipulation library could be considered “blocks”. They do one thing, it is very specific and they do it well. They are very specialized pieces of code. But like a Lego block, by itself, a single library is rather useless.

The value of having all these specialized open source projects that are out there, means developers have more options. There are more blocks to build with. The fun stuff happens when you take these various blocks and you start bringing all the pieces together. Individual pieces of specialized software can be brought together to form complex systems that will do some amazing things.

At this point, developers become more like architects. They don’t have to worry so much about how and what little pieces of code are doing. They can focus more on the macro level, and making sure the entire system is doing what needs to be done. They focus on putting the blocks together in the right order. When this happens, the important skills for software development are going to change. It will be important to know what packages are available, and to have the programming knowledge and experience to pull everything together into a coherent system.

There, of course, will always be the need for people to build more or specialized “bricks”. But as more and more open source software packages become publicly available, developers will be able to worry less about the nitty-gritty internals and focus more on the wider scope of a their projects.

Nexation (http://www.nexation.com/) is a php web development company. They leverage open source to accelerate software development and build innovative business solutions.

9 Free Webmaster Tools You Can Fall In Love With

Webmasters and developers don’t need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that help me run my everyday webmaster chores.

Notepad++

Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discoverd Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.

Filezilla

If you are like me and don’t use WYSIWYG editors to do your HTML/CSS designs then you are probably need or are already using a standalone FTP client to upload/download files to and from your server. Filezilla is a free tool that I have been using for some time and has not failed me. New version 3 has lots of new features, if you are FTPing stuff often maybe you should check it out.

Xampp

XAMPP is an apache server distribution that integrates php, mysql, phpmyadmin and a bunch of other great open source projects into an easy installation. It can be used on production servers to host one’s sites but I mostly use it locally to code and test my html/css/php projects. Its easier to develop locally because there is no need to upload files on servers everytime, and only upload when your project is complete. It can be installed on Windows/Linux and lots of other platforms and if you are serious about developing you should get it installed in your computer and start playing with it.

Google Analytics

Google analytics is a free website statistics package that anyone can easily integrate into their website in a few minutes. Analytics once installed on your website it gathers data and presents you with reports about which sites your visitors come from, what country they live in, how long they stayed on your site, which pages were more popular and a whole lot of reports that you will likely not need another statistics package for you site. Those statistics are vital to the progress of any site in order to understand a site’s audience and find things that might need to be improved. You can create as many analytics accounts as you like (unlimited number of sites) as long as your total pageviews don’t exceed the monthly allowance of 5 million.

Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is not only a great browser to surf with. Firefox was build with extensibility in mind and has given developers a way to extent its functionality with add-ons. Add-ons can enhance the capabilities of Firefox and enhance the browsing experience. There is a whole lot of add-ons in the Mozilla repository that can help you with task such as bookmarking, searching, social interaction, developing, news reading, downloading to name just a few categories. Some of the following favorite tools of mine are actually Mozilla Add-ons. Its definetelly worth your attention.

SeoQuake

Seoquake is a Mozilla add-on that was created with the SEO professionals in mind. It will help you gather important statistics about a website or web page with the touch of a button. Such statistics include PageRank, indexed pages, google backlinks, Cached date etc. One can also extend it/configure it to gather other important statistics from online services not already included in it.

Firebug

Firebug is yet another Mozilla Add-on; a webmaster tool that can help you understand and debug your javascripts. It has so many bells and whistles that I am thinking of devoting a whole article on it. I will just mention the features that I use myself; Inspecting and editing HTML and CSS on the fly, debugging and running javascript on the fly, monitor network activity but there are many others. Here is a video tutorial I recently found that will help you get started with firebug debugging

Gimp

Gimp is an open source image manipulation package that can help you with photo retouching, image composition, format conversion and animations among other things. Its not likely to replace adobe photoshop any time soon but its a free alternative that has found many followers and through its plugin architecture promises to built the only image manipulation tool you will ever need. Some of its features are presented in a way of a presentation but nothing can convince you better than to actually install it and try it on your own.

Drupal

Drupal is a content management system much like wordpress but a lot more extensible. Wordpress is a good CMS (content management system) for simple sites and even though it has many plugins to extend its capabilities I would not recommend building anything other than a blog with it. Drupal on the other hand was built in such a way to be extensible. A programmer digging in its code will appreciate its flexibility, code quality, and modular design and simplicity for writing a new module. Drupal is was build from the ground up a tool for building community sites, and as a result it has many features to support such sites but it is also capable for supporting standard websites. Its learning curve is quite steep but it pays off in the end. Worth more than a look from you.

Giorgos Kontopoulos is a web consultant from Greece. He is one of the authors of GeoLand.org where he can often be found blogging about issues related to web development and search engine optimization. This article on free webmaster tools was originally posted on GeoLand.org

Choosing A File Manager To Use

Most computer users today are spoiled by the richness of the graphical user interfaces or GUI. In Linux, we have dozens of desktop environments that compete against each other for dominance. Right now, GNOME seems to be winning. However, accessing servers remotely using the same desktop environment puts a heavy demand on the network connection. This is one of the reasons why mastering the command-line interface (CLI) is an added ammo in a system administrator’s arsenal. Frankly, it is a must-have in my book.

Anyway, using the CLI does not necessarily have to be too tedious specially when dealing with file management, e.g. moving files from one subdirectory to another, etc. The task is made simpler by a file manager named Midnight Commander (after the popular DOS utility, Norton Commander).

Installation is as simple as invoking “sudo apt-get install mc”. It should not take that long to download and install. PolishLinux.org has a short walk-through of what you can do with Midnight Commander.

Also, it is useful especially for new Linux users or those who are simply not comfortable using the command-line interface (CLI).

Since I am a CLI-user, I find that Midnight Commander, a Norton Commander look-alike, useful especially when deleting selected files or transferring selected files from one subdirectory to another.

The choice of File Manager is really a personal issue. The selection of a file manager is a highly personal decision. For most users, Midnight Commander is probably the command-line choice that is quickest to learn. Few users will want to use one of the generic file managers unless they are already familiar with it from another Unix-like operating system. Of the modern file managers, Konqueror the most satisfactory, so much so that otherwise dedicated GNOME users have been known to install KDE mainly so that they can use it.

However, for those who have always relied on file managers, the first choice has to be Krusader. Combining the centralized functionality of earlier generations with the look and feel of modern applications, Krusader is by far the most complete of the file managers I’ve mentioned.

Depending on your priorities, you might settle on another choice, but it’s worth taking the time to explore your options. For many users, the choice of a file manager remains nearly as important as the choice of an editor is to a developer. A file manager can’t force you to organize your files, but the right one can help you keep them that way.

The author writes about Linux Tip and blogs at http://www.hackitlinux.com/.