Radio frequency identification (RFID) is a technology bubble ready to burst according to a new report by Dublin-based firm Heavey RF.…
JasperSoft has just released version 2.0 of its software, which makes this a good time not just to consider JasperSoft's latest capabilities, but also open-source business intelligence (BI) more generally.
RISC OS is said to be used in set top boxes scattered across the world, and a mobile phone developer reportedly bought up a load of RISC OS 5 kit. But some applications of ROS are much closer to home. Martin Hansen reports on the growing use of RISC OS in the timber frame housing industry.
Many public administrations already use open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to let citizens look at public geographic data trough dedicated Web sites. Others use the same software to partially open the data gathering process: they let citizens directly add geographic information to the official, high-quality GIS databases by drawing or clicking on digital maps.
In 2005, when Slumberland faced end-of-lifecycle replacements of its proprietary Unix platform, its warehouse management system (WMS) vendor suggested a move to Red Hat Linux and commodity x86 servers. Seth Mitchell, the infrastructure team manager at the large furniture retailer, gladly agreed. Upper management wasn't quite as quick to jump on the open source bandwagon, but once the cost savings started rolling in, everyone agreed that it was a profitable decision.
Jose Luis Landivar Chavez, vice president of sales and marketiing for Elastix, discusses his company's appliance, which complements its GPL software PBX. Chavez talks about the overall PBX market, how open source is taking it over, and about the innovations that distinguish his company's solution from others.
Adopting an open source library automation system allowed a small group of libraries on Maryland's eastern shore to save money and create a more intuitive, user-friendly catalog system for both librarians and patrons.
If you're a frequent business traveler who keeps important company files on your laptop, using a centralized management solution to back up files automatically during a fixed time interval won't work. Instead, consider Box Backup, which backs up files from a laptop directly to a backup server over an encrypted link.
No one saw this coming. Cisco, the networking giant, announced today it was buying PostPath, maker of the Linux-based Exchange server replacement PostPath Server.
Scalix collaboration platform, with its latest release version 11.4, aims to be a good alternative to Microsoft Exchange. Based on the HP OpenMail platform, discontinued by Hewlett-Packard in 2001, it has been further developed by Scalix and now acts as an enterprise email and group calendar server with the option of integrating systems like ERP, CRM, and billing into the Scalix system using its open API. It is compatible with most LDAP authentication mechanisms, such as those in Windows Active Directory, Novell eDirectory, and Red Hat Directory Server. The most prominent feature of Scalix is its Exchange compatibility; you can use an Outlook client to access the Scalix platform. Scalix also provides an AJAX-based client that is nearly identical to Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access (OWA). Aside from Outlook compatibility, Scalix also claims to coexist peacefully with other existing Exchange email systems.
Quantum GIS 0.11.0, released last month, is a free geographic information system (GIS) application released under the GPL that runs on multiple platforms, including Linux. QGIS can read, edit, and export common GIS file formats. After installing it and using it to work with existing data layers available from official data repositories, performing common spatial analysis tasks, and sharing files and data with the commercial GIS products, I found QGIS has the potential to be a viable alternative to proprietary commercial GIS programs from the likes of ESRI and Intergraph/Geomedia.
Coverity famously helps open source projects audit their code and eliminate security holes and other bugs, and earns its corporate income by selling software that does the same thing to proprietary software companies. Few seem to realize, though, that Coverity started doing free open source code audits because it got a grant from the US Department of Homeland Security. Coverity's David Maxwell explains.
Hospitals aren't normally known for lightning-fast moves, but when you're a community-based institution tasked to care for underserved communities, sometimes you have no choice but to be flexible, hungry, and savvy, especially when it comes to the critical software choices that power your operations.
Gospel Direct and Maranatha Record Co., sister companies based in South Africa, have exercised their faith in a Linux-based accounting program.
WordPress, one of the most popular blog applications, suffers the same fate as many other open source projects: Users often delay upgrades despite a steady release cycle. That's because upgrading WordPress carries the risk of losing your virtual personality in the case of a botched upgrade. The WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin (WPAU) makes the upgrade process much simpler, quicker, and safer by taking care of all the intricate steps.
Software installation, deployment, and configuration can be a headache and a time sink for systems administrators. To ease the process, JumpBox delivers preconfigured Web apps that run as virtual appliances on any machine, across platforms, irrespective of operating system.
Here are two powerful tools for your MediaWiki installation. One helps you populate your wiki quickly from data in a spreadsheet. The other creates PDF ebooks, complete with tables of contents and page numbers, with a single click from your wiki.
Just a few years ago, getting complex legal assistance from a lawyer you never met in person would have been unthinkable. Today, however, many people carry on relationships online; why not conduct business with your lawyer online as well? One Italian firm already works this way, using open source software as much as it can.
In 2005, Alfresco was the first open source software company in the UK to capture venture funding, for its collection of enterprise document management applications. John Powell, formerly the COO of Business Objects, and John Newton, founder of Documentum, got together to launch Alfresco because they wanted to create a business that would have "global reach," according to Powell. Right from the start, Powell and Newton knew that the best way to do that was to create and market an open source product.
Created as a simple solution for managing documentation, DokuWiki has evolved into a powerful and flexible wiki suitable for most tasks involving collaborative editing. DokuWiki doesn't use a database back end (all pages are stored as plain text files), which makes it easy to install and maintain. Its access control list feature offers a user-friendly and flexible mechanism for restricting access to certain pages and namespaces. You can also extend DokuWiki's default functionality using plugins, and there are hundreds of plugins to choose from.
Most free-libre accounting applications that ship with GNU/Linux distributions are for personal accounting only: they manage one person's finances. Corporations and accounting firms need far greater functionality, however, such as the ability to maintain a complete sets of multi-company accounts, tally final accounts automatically, generate MIS reports, and function synchronously across multiple offices. Though there are some free-libre applications with such functionality, such as SQL Ledger and Ledger-SMB, the lay user may find their installation complicated, as it can involve manual configuration with the PostgreSQL database, possibly the programming language Perl, and the remote access software Samba. And these accounting apps are not installed by default in any distribution. But OpenLX is a distro with an accounting app.
Open source application OpenProj, a Microsoft Project replacement, has been downloaded more than 500,000 times, says Marc O'Brien, CEO of OpenProj's sponsoring company Projity.
Co-founders Jake St. Peter and Thomas Ingham started Coalmarch, a Web applications development company, in 2004 after "about 10 years' background in Web development" for other companies, St. Peters says. After working for a company called gotickets.com, he and his partner decided to launch their own business, providing content management systems and shopping carts. They use open source software, but with it they built a proprietary package -- because, St. Peter says, that's what customers want.