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6 years in the making-Apache releases Hadoop v1.0

suhailajmal — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:39:46 +0000

Apache has been developing Hadoop for six years

The open source company, The Apache Software Foundation, recently made news as they launched their new framework, Apache Hadoop v1.0. The software was fine tuned to perfection within six years and was launched for organizations which specialize in distributed computing. Basically, Hadoop enables companies to manage and process ‘big data’ and is capable of supporting a large number of servers as well.

Some of the companies which have already started using the software include Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Facebook, eBay, Apple, HP, and Netflix. In fact, Yahoo search engine stands out from the rest of these esteemed web giants, as one hosting the biggest Hadoop production environment (it spans more than 42,000 nodes!).

According to the Vice President of Apache Hadoop, Arun C. Murthy, “this release is the culmination of a lot of hard work and cooperation from a vibrant Apache community group of dedicated software developers and committers that has brought new levels of stability and production expertise to the Hadoop project. Hadoop is becoming the de facto data platform that enables organizations to store, process and query vast torrents of data, and the new release represents an important step forward in performance, stability and security.”

Besides this, Hadoop also offers support for HBase, Kereberos legitimate security, Webhdfs and all versions 0.20.205 and prior 0.20.2xx features.

“Gartner is seeing a steady increase in interest in Apache Hadoop and related ‘big data’ technologies, as measured by substantial growth in client inquiries, dramatic rises in attendance at industry events, increasing financial investments and the introduction of products from leading data management and data integration software vendors,” Merv Adrian, Research Vice President at Gartner said in a statement. “The 1.0 release of Apache Hadoop marks a major milestone for this open source offering as enterprises across multiple industries begin to integrate it into their technology architecture plans.”

About Apache Software Foundation

The Apache Software Foundation specializes in handling official and monetary matters of open source software developments. The company utilizes a mutual and beneficial development process to provide business oriented services to a multitude of users. Launching Apache based products, is also a cinch with the useful Apache License.

Original: 6 years in the making-Apache releases Hadoop v1.0

TransferSummit 2011 Presents Open Source

DN — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:38:08 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

TransferSummit recently announced that its forum for this year will take place from 5^th-8^th September’ 2011 at Keble College, Oxford. The Summit has announced to provide special incentives when registering from 8^th July.

It provides its partakers with an opportunity to tackle needs and issues, and benefit from the current and future employment of open source technology. The theme for this year’s summit is “Open Innovation Everywhere”, addressing improvement of open source mobile solutions meticulously.

The forum provides an inspirational podium to its participants, from where they gain and share experience with open source influencers. Sessions held by academic speakers, along with representatives from Alfresco, eBay, HP and Red Hat, and leading figures from Apache, Outercurve, Mozilla and LiMo, will present information on the basis of open innovation, open development and case studies.

According to the TransferSummit chair, Ross Gardler, “We are committed to bringing together prominent mind and leading organizations to discuss the most important issues driving open source and mobile development strategies today – and to address what we might expect in the coming year.” He stated, “Places are limited to 300 to give delegates the chance to learn, debate, and share in a highly interactive environment.”

This is the only forum which will present tactical answers to develop cooperation between academic and commercial concerns. The TransferSummit provides access to helpful studies and widens ones creativity in dealing with corporate challenges using the latest technology.

The TransferSummit events will start off with a keynote by the founder of Redmonk, James Governor, titled “Open Business and The Open Society: The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance”. It will provide attendee with a special opportunity to network through event such as:

Break-out Sessions and Gala Dinner: Participants can carry out discussions regarding presentations during tea breaks and the multi-course banquet at Keble College’s dining hall.
Beers of a Feather: The term was founded based on a slip-of-the-tongue by Ross Gardler, which expanded TransferSummit’s Birds of a Feather morning coffee break across the college grounds towards nearby pubs.
Open Gadget Playtime: Participants will have access to the newest advancements in open hardware produced by open source.
BarCampOxford: A participant driven event, managed in partnership with The Apache Software Foundation, providing partakers to discuss a variety of technology based topics.

Gardler commented, “We are thrilled by the success of last year’s sold-out event. Based on community feedback, energy, and enthusiasm, we anticipate TransferSummit becoming the must-attend gathering for intelligent conversation focusing on the opportunities of open source across technologies, industries, and innovations”

For online registration of the event, visit http://www.transferummit.com/registration, and avail a 20% discount until 8^th July.

Original: TransferSummit 2011 Presents Open Source

How to Utilize Web Applications for Enhanced Site Performance

DN — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 19:39:45 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

As a webmaster one of your primary focuses should be enhancing the performance of your site in order to provide your site visitors with an enjoyable browsing experience that will encourage them to return at some point in the near future. Doing this requires a combination of providing updated quality content, ensuring that page navigation is simple and user-friendly, and utilizing various scripts and web applications to give your customers more than they need to learn and entertain themselves on your site. Fortunately, with the abundance of open source web applications available on the internet today, you do not have to be a web developer or an SEO specialist to increase your web site traffic and enhance the overall performance of your site. The following information describes how you can begin using web applications to enhance the performance of your site today.

Using Content Management Systems For Organization and Productivity

Perhaps the most popular type of web application utilized by webmasters today is the content management system, also referred to as the CMS, which is an overall site management platform that lets you categorize, update, edit and publish content with ease. Aside from simply managing content, you can also design and create entire web sites using pre-designed templates with a good CMS. Content management systems eliminate the need for even the most basic programming skills because no coding is necessary. Aside from improving your own experiences as a site owner, content management systems are also compatible with plugins that enhance the browsing experience for your site visitors by installing widgets and modules on the sidebar and various areas of your web pages.

Using Bookmarking Applications to Attract new Visitors

You can also install bookmarking applications that will automatically bookmark every post you publish on your site, attracting visitors from the bookmarking site, their friends, and traffic from search engines as a result of immediate indexing. When your a link to your posts is published on a social bookmarking site you’re effectively creating backlink for your site that is registered by the search engine and then followed to your site. This creates fast method of indexing all of your pages efficiently with minimal effort while also bringing in a short burst of traffic after the posts are submitted to the bookmarking site. With many bookmarking web applications you can customize a variety of settings and preferences that make the process more suitable for your site’s needs.

Using Live Chat Applications for Enhanced Support

Finally, one of the most commonly overlooked yet effective web applications that can enhance the support you give your customers and site visitors is a live chat client. These applications establish a live connection between you and the site visitor and place a small icon on the side of the page that lets them know when you are available for chat. Studies have shown that using live chat instead of email increases conversions and customer satisfaction rate significantly and reduces the delay associated with other support methods.

Original: How to Utilize Web Applications for Enhanced Site Performance

What is Linux Enterprise Web Hosting?

DN — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 05:47:19 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

Although Linux is not a popular operating system for personal computer users, it is commonly used in the web hosting industry to manage server environments. During the past decade Linux web hosting has surpassed Windows web hosting in the amount of user, primarily because of the low cost and open source compatibility.

Because Linux is an open source software that can be modified and expanded upon easily by any developer with the desire to do so, it can be especially beneficial for companies that need custom software configurations for their corporate web sites. Out of this concept Linux Enterprise web hosting arose, and this hosting type is now being offered by many reputable web hosting providers. If you are curious about Linux enterprise web hosting then you may want to review the following summary of Linux Enterprise web hosting.

Corporate Benefits of Linux

Linux comes in many flavors, some of which are specifically designed to accommodate the needs of a corporation or large web site. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is often used to manage powerful dedicated servers and VPS hosting plans that are used to host large corporate web sites. Since your web hosting plan operates using the Linux operating system, you’ll be able to customize your user interface with the assistance of an open source Linux developer. There are a lot of programmers and developers that specialize in creating software for the Linux hosting environment. Unlike Windows web hosting, Linux is much more flexible and can be amended for compatibility with new software fairly easily. Most corporations use an open source custom operating system that is based on a corporate distribution of Linux such as Red Hat Linux.

Small Businesses and Linux

Linux also has distributions that are perfectly suitable for small business owners that need a way to manage a few smaller web sites. Most small online business owners lack the skills needed to correct an error within their web hosting operating system, so they will need the assistance of the web hosting provider. Unfortunately, many bugs in the Windows operating system can only be fixed by Microsoft, which means you would have to wait until Microsoft fixes the bug, which would most likely take months. With Linux hosting the small business owner does not have to stress, because any bug within the open source operating system can be fixed rather quickly by an in house technician.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a cheap, popular and flexible operating system for your next web hosting plan then you should strongly consider the benefits of Linux over Windows. However, it is important to note that in order to use some Microsoft web applications you will need to have Windows web hosting. Most web hosting providers will offer both Windows and Linux web hosting, however only a few of the larger web hosting providers offer Linux Enterprise hosting, which is actually a type of dedicated hosting. To circumvent the restrictions of being limited to one operating system, many Linux web hosting users utilize virtualization software in order to run Linux and Windows simultaneously on their web server.

Original: What is Linux Enterprise Web Hosting?

Windows Shared Hosting vs Linux Shared Hosting

DN — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 22:57:03 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

Shared hosting is often the entrance point for inexperienced webmasters that need a cheap and simple solution to host their first web site. However, even though shared hosting is the cheapest form of web hosting, there are several types of shared hosting that need to be considered.

Most people don’t realize that they are using shared hosting because it operates under many names and is almost never referred to as shared hosting. Ecommerce and reseller hosting both operate under the shared hosting environment, however they are much more capable than a standard $10 per month shared hosting plan. The way the shared hosting environment behaves has a lot to do with what operating system is being used. If you are unsure whether to use Windows or Linux hosting then you may want to consider the following information.

Cost and Compatibility

When it comes to cost, Linux is the cheaper solution, primarily because Linux is an open source software that is inexpensive and easy to manage. However, with that being said, Linux is also much more compatible with third party applications than Windows because Microsoft’s software is not open source. Windows web hosting of all types usually costs more because of the service involved with repairing bugs in the operating system when they occur. With Linux bugs can be fixed quickly and easily by anyone with the development experience. Even though Linux is more easily compatible with new development, it is important to note that anyone planning on using a server side Microsoft application will need a Windows hosting plan.

Reliability and Resources

When it comes to server resources there is not a huge difference between Windows shared hosting and Linux shared hosting, as both of them seem to perform the same until a bug arises. However, once problems do occur, it seems as if Linux wins in terms of reliability because there is often a quicker fix available due to the open source nature of the operating system. As far as server resources are concerned, Windows shared hosting may be more limiting than Linux simply because Windows consumes more RAM to operate than Linux, which ultimately takes away from the amount of Ram you have allocated to your partition of the shared web server.

Popularity and Alternatives

In terms of popularity, Linux web hosting seems to have Windows beaten, even though there is a portion of webmasters that prefer a Windows web hosting account due to their need to operate Microsoft software. It should be noted however that Windows Cloud VPS hosting is currently becoming more popular than Linux VPS cloud hosting because it is a new addition to the hosting industry.

Some people like to use Linux dedicated hosting and then install a virtualization software in order to use Windows on a Linux hosting account. However, this option is not available for shared Linux hosting, which means you have to choose between the two. Overall, if you are looking for the most convenient form of shared web hosting then you should consider Linux shared hosting.

Original: Windows Shared Hosting vs Linux Shared Hosting

Review of the Expression Engine CMS

DN — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 06:07:29 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

While Expression Engine is not nearly as popular as other content management systems like Joomla WordPress, and Drupal, it is quickly gaining popularity as more people become aware of its extensive benefits. Expression Engine’s user interface is incredibly user friendly and is ideal for both novice webmasters and advanced web developers alike.

After examining the user interface for more than a coupe of minutes, virtually anyone with the smalls amount of technical experience should be able to express themselves freely through the Expression Engine control panel. The following will review the overall functionality of Expression Engine, in comparison to some of its more popular competitors.

Managing Multiple Sites with Expression Engine

Expression Engine has many revolutionary and unique new features that webmasters and developers will love. For example, the software supports the management of several web sites simultaneously through a centralized control interface. This is a huge time saver and productivity booster, especially considering that most of the other CMS on the market do not support multi-site management out of the box. The software makes it easy to manage your network of sites using features like the global find and replace, which lets you perform a find and replace on all of your web sites instantaneously. Never before has there been a content management system that simplifies the administration of multiple sites like Expression Engine.

Developer’s Features in Expression Engine

Developers love Expression Engine because it provides unparalleled flexibility when designing new web pages, due to the highly compatible templating system that the software is based on. Thus, Expression Engine is an ideal solution for professional web developers that need a platform to express their art form through. If you’re tired of the restrictions that other CMS place on your development capabilities, you may want to consider the flexibility and simplicity of Expression Engine, which is being expanded upon every day. Since Expression Engine is an open source software, the team f developers that work to improve it is expanding every day, along with the feature list of the software and its overall functionality.

Is Expression Engine Free?

Expression Engine is one of the few content management systems that has a free and paid version. The free version provides enough power to manage and create web sites, and can be compared to conventional content management systems. The free version of the software can only be used on a couple of web sites, while the commercial version of the software (which costs about $100) can be used on an unlimited amount of web site, and there are no usage restrictions. Professional webmasters and web developers should definitely consider the added advantages of using the paid license of Expression Engine, rather than a free version or a conventional CMS, which bears significant functionality limitations. Considering that Expression Engine is one of the only CMS on the market that is not free, it is easy to see why so many new features are added with each update.

Original: Review of the Expression Engine CMS

Are You Doing it With Drupal?

DN — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:56:13 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

Open source content management systems are beginning to gather quite a reputation and customer base lately thanks to the recent announcement by the White House of its move from proprietary solutions to open source CMS heavyweight, Drupal. Full service hosting provider NeoSpire has been a long time advocate of open source software and specializes in solutions incorporating Drupal.

Do It With Drupal Seminar

From December 9^th to 11^th, 2009 in New Orleans, the Do It With Drupal Seminar will take place and NeoSpire is not only one of its top sponsors but will be exhibiting as well. The seminar promises to have some of Drupal’s top developers on tap to teach more about the program as well as information from community building experts.

Patrons of the event can expect to see successful Drupal sites and meet with like-minded professionals, developers, designers and more all intertwined within the Drupal community. The event will allow interested participants the chance to see the actual workings behind the architect and building of a Drupal web site. Topics such as building and growing successful web sites with Drupal will be covered.

The cost of this three-day event is $1195 until December 8^th. Thereafter, walkup registration is $1295.

NeoSpire

NeoSpire managed hosting provides a number of hosting solutions designed to meet the demands of organizations needing a 100% guaranteed up-time. NeoSpire has been in the web hosting business since 1999 and continues to provide extremely secure and reliable solutions for their hosting customers. The hosting provider offers several managed hosting options, co-location services, application hosting and more.

One of the more interesting offers by this company is its Drupal CMS Hosting. NeoSpire offers fully managed Drupal hosting that covers everything from simple web sites to load balanced and redundant set-ups. The company even has a specially dedicated Drupal support team that are considered the best server admin and tech support people in their field. Not many web hosting companies available on the Internet sport the same offering or specialized support team. It is a testament to the security and reliability of both NeoSpire and Drupal.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source CMS program that was initially created in 2000 by an enterprising man, Dries Buytaert. What initially began as a small news site allowing friends to leave notes to each other gradually grew into the full-blown content management system available today.

The Drupal CMS is extremely extendable with several hundreds of modules to add onto the main program and hundreds of themes to change the overall look. As an open source project, many third party programmers are heavily involved with the project creating new and innovative modules almost every day. Drupal users can expect to be able to find just about anything they require within the Drupal module download area. Administration, e-commerce, file management, statistics, and spam prevention are just a small percentage of what can be found.

Conclusion

A world-class open source CMS program coupled with a world-class hosting solution provider is a dream combination. NeoSpire and Drupal are, indeed, doing it.

Original: Are You Doing it With Drupal?

Free and Easy CMS e107

DN — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:40:48 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

“e107, It’s a candy store (and you’re 8)” proclaims the web site of the open source CMS program e107. One of the older and more well-known open source content management systems around, e107 strives to be a community based program with a lot of input from its users.

Beginnings

What began as a web site related to the Windows shell replacement Litestep, quickly started gathering speed and evolved into e107 (the seventh project taken on by the owner of this content management system). Officially open to the public in July 2002, e107 was already a few months old and into its 2.1 version. As with most CMS programs, attempting to do it alone is never a good idea so the program owner brought on board a few seasoned developers. Several updates and revisions late and e107 has its current stable 0.7.16 release available to the public (the owner changed version numbering partway through its early production stages).

Plugins

Once e107 is installed and running, enhancing this content management program is a breeze. The site is affiliated with e107 Plugins (separate entity but tied in with the main web site) and this area is overflowing with downloadable files to add to the base core of e107. Administration tools, e-commerce, file and directory, and multimedia are a few of the categories covered in this plugin web site.

Themes

e107 has two design web sites affiliated with its main core program – e107 Themes and e107 Designs. This is where the one downfall with this CMS program may lay. While there are a number to of designs to choose from, the total number is limited to under 200. This makes the likelihood of having a unique e107 run web site fairly slim. However, the program is based on PHP and if the user of the program has a bit of experience with PHP coding, creating a unique web design for the program should be a fairly easy task.

Community

As e107 depends heavily on community input and feedback, the forum area of this open source program’s web site is extremely active. Covering topics such as third party coding, support, theme request and more, e107 keeps tabs on what users want, what they don’t like and what they have to offer to enhance the software overall.

Sites

e107 is proud to showcase the many web sites utilizing their open source software. Among the more diverse sites to be found on their webring are Waves of Faith, KISS 105 FM of Indonesia, and CuartoPoder.com.mx (touted as the first newspaper site powered by the CMS).

Conclusion

While not one of the top heavy hitters when it comes to open source content management systems, e107 is a great product with quite a lot to offer. If one is in need of a CMS that has more than a couple hundred designs to choose from, this program may not be the best choice. However, for those with a bit of PHP knowledge and some time on their hands to create their own design, e107 can be a great addition to help create and maintain a business web site.

Original: Free and Easy CMS e107

Microsoft Launching an Open-Source CMS?

DN — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:46:31 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

Though best known for its extensive suite of proprietary commercial products, as of late, Microsoft has been dabbling a lot more in the field of open-source development. Many suspect that this is due to rising competition from major open-source players such as Red Hat, Adobe and Google. It has just been revealed that Microsoft is working on a new content management software application along with a set of reusable compatible components. Going by the codename of Orchard, the software details will be shared at the TechEd Europe event. Perhaps the most surprising part about all of this is that Orchard is said to be a free open-source web CMS set to rival with popular systems such as Joomla, Mambo and Drupal.

While Microsoft is being tight-lipped and secretive about the project, we were able to gather some details on what is currently known about the Orchard CMS.

Orchard Overview

Orchard is Microsoft’s latest effort to distribute free open-source software with reusable components and a fully featured application capable of creating a wide variety of types of websites. The company’s core team of expert ASP.NET developers is actively seeking contributions and guidance from the community of .NET programmers to help get the project off on the right in the early goings. According to a representative from Microsoft, Bradley Millington, who has been anointed as Engineering Lead for the Orchid project, will be spearheading interactive discussions to invite the community to get actively involved on the ground floor. Millington will be accepting input to get better understanding of what developers would like to see in the project, the components they envision for their own applications, and how to encourage the community to contribute to make the project a success. Microsoft remarked that is open to discussing strategy, logistics, functionality and whatever else developers bring to the table.

Apparently, Orchard is not Microsoft’s first attempt in the open-source content management space. A while back, it was reported that the company was working on a CMS project called Oxite. In December of 2008, Microsoft made an alpha version of the Oxite source code available under the MS-P1 (Microsoft Public License). Mary Joe Foley of ZDNet hinted that Orchard could be right on time and become one of the first projects announced for the CodePlex Foundation. Created to allow for the exchange of code and collaboration among software vendors and the open-source developer community, the Foundation recently released the first working draft of its Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines. When Foley asked if Orchard was simply a revamped version Oxite under a different name, Microsoft did not respond.

We all know that Microsoft is very skilled at keeping secrets and rolling out big surprises. Therefore, we just might have to wait until the TechEd Europe Session takes place on November 11 to get more comprehensive details on the Orchard project. As soon we get something more concrete, we will surely try to pass along the news.

Original: Microsoft Launching an Open-Source CMS?

WhiteHouse.gov To Use Drupal

DN — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:32:24 +0000

(From Website Hosting)

Open source technology has been around for quite some time and has struggled over the years to place itself in the higher echelons of business and government. The United States’ current President, Barack Obama, has been a vocal proponent of an open and transparent administration. To further emphasize this, the President recently approved the use of the open source CMS (content management system) Drupal for the WhiteHouse.gov web site.

About Drupal

Drupal is a free open source CMS that allows easy publishing and managing of web sites. There are tens of thousands of web sites online now that utilize the program and include site types such as community web portals, corporate web sites, resource directories and even social networking sites.

The program is designed to allow quick additions of modules that enable a web site to expand its functionality. Some of these modules allow for newsletter publication, picture galleries, e-commerce and much more.

As Drupal is open source software, it is constantly being checked, debugged and new updates are constantly being released. The advantage of this is ensuring that the safest and most secure edition is available to its users.

The word from Dries Buytaert

According to Dries Buytaert, creator and founder of Drupal, his software is well matched and up to the task of helping further the platform of an open and transparent government. He goes on further to state “Drupal’s flexibility and modularity enables organizations to build sites quickly at lower cost than most other systems.” Dries feels this move to use open source technology and software indicates that governments are realizing that open source does not present any added risks when compared to propriety software.

One important point Dries brings up is the ability for the Drupal-run WhiteHouse.gov web site to allow for open communication and participation. This, by itself, is worth seeing the new site and checking out what one can accomplish with respect to open participation.

Not the only government site

Surprisingly, the WhiteHouse.gov is just the pinnacle of government offices using Drupal to publish their web sites. The Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the General Service Administration and the Department of Education have all been using the Drupal CMS for some time.

Other large business, company and entity web sites currently running on Drupal include the New York Observer, Yahoo! Research, Christian Assemblies International and Sony Music. The list of Drupal-run web sites continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Future looking open

Going on into the future, the hope is that with Drupal’s latest coup of the White House web site, other government agencies, big businesses and even government entities world-wide will see the awesome potential of open source software and technology. Further, this may also show the world that open source technology is a huge step in the right direction – especially in the area of cutting costs. Perhaps this recent Presidential approval will start a web site trend and we’ll begin to see more and more “big guys” realize the advantages of open source.

Original: WhiteHouse.gov To Use Drupal