HAPPY BIRTHDAY WORDPRESS !
On Tuesday, May 27th, WordPress turned 5 years old. Wordpress team is having a party in San Francisco. You can get the full details and RSVP on Upcoming.org or on Facebook.
And I was surprised to see a new Wordpress's screenshot on safari or firefox browser on MAC (probably.. the screenshot seemed so)
Thank you Wordpress team for such a nice opensource blogging platform ! Long Live Wordpress !
Six Apart announced the beta release of Movable Type 4, a much anticipated upgrade to a blog
platform that has two distinct user bases - consumer base and Enterprise. Movable Type Open Source, or MTOS, is the open source project that will consist of a GPL-licensed version of Movable Type 4.0, to be released in Q3 2007, and resources for the already large community of Movable Type developers.
Its already late but never too late..to stay in the competition of these blogging platforms, they had to open source it..anyway..better late than never …
The MTOS distribution will be available for download / checkout later this summer at www.movabletype.org
To learn more about the open source project, visit its website http://www.movabletype.org/opensource/.
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new series of robots that are
simple enough for almost anyone to build with off-the-shelf parts, but are sophisticated machines that wirelessly connect to the Internet.
Illah Nourbakhsh is a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which has one of the world's most prestigious robotics programs, and his research is funded by the likes of Google, Intel and Microsoft. But in the end, he says, he does it for the kids.
Qwerkbot, a three-wheeled robot that can send images over the Internet, is one of several robots that can be built with the Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK), a combination of a robot controller, commonly available parts and assembly instructions (recipes) developed by the CREATE Lab in Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute. Photo credit: Ken Andreyo/CMU
"[TeRK] is not only open from a software perspective, but also from a hardware perspective," Legrand says. "That's something this industry has never seen."
via [ scientific american ]
Google Inc. has launched an AJAX API (application programming interface) designed to simplify the
process of creating application mashups using JavaScript.
The new Google AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) Feed API eliminates the need for developers to write server-side proxies to access public data feeds using JavaScript, Google announced in an official blog posting.
With this API, feeds can accessed by writing "a few lines" of JavaScript. "The API automatically handles the proxying and offers a clean, straightforward interface for accessing syndicated data," a Google spokesman wrote via e-mail.
Sample tasks the API simplifies include displaying a dynamic blogroll on a Web page or photos from a feed from the Google Picasa photo management service on a site.
The new API supports the Atom and RSS syndicated feed formats.
Have a look at an Example of Google Ajax API here.(iTunes feed used )
Oh! what a challenge..Make website Rank High on Google and get $10 million.
The topic — Can a poker Web site rank high on a Google search using purely white hat tactics — meaning no spamming, cloaking, link farms or other frowned-upon "black hat" practices. Fishkin answered yes, provided the site also added other marketing techniques and attracted some media attention.
But one poker Web site owner was intrigued, and he later approached Fishkin. "He said, 'If you can get us a search ranking in the top five for online poker or gambling [using white hat methods], we'll buy that site from you for $10 million,'" recalls Fishkin, president and CEO of SEOmoz in Seattle. Intrigued but skeptical, Fishkin consulted other gambling site owners at the conference. "They said, 'If it really does rank there, we might be interested in paying you $10 million more.'"
If at all a single online gambling customer brings in at least $1,000 in revenue. With a recent Google search of "Texas Holdem Poker" yielding 1.64 million results, so there is no doubt that the site owners would pay millions to crack the code for Google's PageRank algorithm.
The poker owners would pay anything to get the Google PageRank algorithm cracked !
A nice article by 
fine-tuning of your system, about the understanding of the processes which are running, and resource availability and process start up. Tweaking configurations, about how to disable undesirable processes, enable necessary housekeeping, and adjusting your kernel to better handle your needs to give you the best performance !
We know different versions of Ubuntu (and Linux) use different startup scripts and run different support processes.He nicely quotes :
[ Hacking Ubuntu to Improve Performance ]
At Palm's analyst and investor conference in New York Tuesday, CEO Ed Colligan announced that
the company was investing in a new Linux-based platform for its line of Treo smart phones.
Colligan said the Linux platform "will build a new foundation for Palm" and give the company, users and developers more flexibility.
The platform has been in development for "a number of years", he said, but emphasized repeatedly that Palm is still committed to the Palm OS and will continue to ship products based on that platform.
Those were the only details provided.
Access purchased PalmSource, developer of the Palm OS in 2005, and last year licensed Palm OS back to Palm. Access then rebranded its version of the platform as Garnet OS and is developing its own Linux version of the platform
PN:
Other news sources have reported that Palm will introduce products based on its Linux platform later this year. When contacted, Palm was unable to comment on whether these products would be available in the Asia-Pacific region.
via [ cnet ]
Great News ….NASA scientists plan to announce a new open-source project this month called CosmosCode — it's aimed at recruiting volunteers to write code for live space missions.
Jessy Cowan-Sharp and Robert Schingler set up CosmosCode to help NASA develop open-source software for space exploration.
The program was launched quietly last year under NASA's CoLab entrepreneur outreach program, created by Robert Schingler, 28, and Jessy Cowan-Sharp, 25, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. Members of the CosmosCode group have been meeting in Second Life and will open the program to the public in the coming weeks, organizers said.
"NASA is recognizing the value of free and open-source software in other sectors," said Cowan-Sharp, a contractor at NASA Ames in Mountain View, California. "CosmosCode is going one step further by allowing NASA scientists to begin a software project in the public domain, leveraging the true value of open-source software by creating an active community of volunteers."
NASA has already released more than 20 open-source software titles, including World Wind, a 3-D virtual globe similar to Google Earth, and Vision Workbench, a framework for computer vision applications.
via [ wired ]
Google Summer of Code 2007 is on! They are now accepting student applications. They have also
published some additional web app documentation for mentors and organization administrators.
What is Google Summer of Code?
Its a program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source projects.
Who can apply ?
Students can submit their applications via the GSoC web app between March 14-24, 2007.
Deadline : March 14-24, 2007
Eligibility :
All college and university students around the world are invited to apply
Prizes to be won ?
Get paid $4,500 USD to work on your favorite open source project this summer. Its not just for $4,500 .. the real big thing is - the competition is conducted by Google and the award too.. ! what more does anyone want ?
Apply Here :
Guide to the Google Summer of Code Web App for Student Applicants
PS : WordPress is among the 131 accepted to Google Summer of Code, of more than 300 projects that applied.
Note : Google Summer Code is no longer accepting applications from open source organizations.
[ Apply ] via [ Google Summer Code ]
Adobe will give developers a free preview of its forthcoming runtime code-named Apollo today by
releasing an alpha version of the technology on its Adobe Labs site.
So,What is Apollo ?
Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.
Developers can download the technology for free from the Adobe Labs site. The release includes a free software development kit that provides a set of command line tools to develop and work with Apollo applications. Web developers can use the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) of their choice to build applications for the runtime, Adobe said.
Apollo, like the Flash Player, is a runtime, but one in which applications built using standard internet development technologies - such as HTML, Flash and AJAX - can run offline.
Also See a demonstration of how eBay is building an Apollo application to engage customers.
Check out : Technical Articles / Developer Videos / Sample Applications from adobe labs.
This Offline internet app is going to threaten Microsoft's products.
[ Get Apollo ] via [ Adobe Labs ]