Sun's Collaborative Portal Server 7

Another big hit by Sun Microsystems Inc today by announcing major enhancements to the Java Enterprise System with a new version of the Sun Java System Portal Server(version 7) that will provide developers and customers with collaborative features and identity-based content through web-based applications.

As Collaborative Portals are speedily replacing the traditional portal features and architecture, Sun was a bit late but came with enhanced and the most needed capabilities of its Portal Server which will allow the easy creation of interactive communities of users and services, building community portals populated with collaborative content including RSS feeds, blogs and wikis.

The story of Collaborative technology is not new anymore ,Interwoven’s WorkSite (Document Collaboration), IBM lotus Quickplace, EMC Documentum e-room were the first one to include the Collaborative technology in their products.

Liferay Portal server 3.6 too have and support for the collaborative content including RSS feeds, blogs and wikis, but follows the Gropus and Role Concept that works more or less the same as Community Concept

Identity-based portals and community portals, when combined with Sun's leading support of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript) portal containers, allow users to experience the interactive power of the Web along with the personalization and rich application interfaces traditionally associated with the desktop.

Some of the enhancements made to the Sun Java System Portal Server 7 include:
**Delegated Administration Features -> enables end users with the ability to manage page layouts, reset passwords, and allow non-technical users the ability to manage common portal functions, thus freeing up IT resources .
** Tools to Create New Communities and Community Services -- including user communities, wikis, file sharing, blog integration, and an open interface to build and expand on these services.
** Sun is also incorporating the open Java DB, a Sun supported distribution of the Apache Derby database, in the Sun Java System Portal Server 7 for use in data storage.

More information can be found at: http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem

Jetspeed 2.0 Open Source Enterprise Portal

With the release of the Jetspeed 2.0 Open Source Enterprise Portal , I believe that Open Source Portals are in the way of changing their Portal Architecture not just by enhancing their Security components but also a combination of both LDAP and the Database as a Backend.

Now what kind of data Jetspeed 2.0 has put on LDAP and what all info is there in underlying database can only be gathered by rigorous evaluation of the product.
anyways….this release is fully-compliant with the Portlet Specification 1.0 (JSR-168). Jetspeed-2 has passed the TCK (Test Compatibility Kit) suite and is fully certified to the Java Portlet Standard.
Apache Portals Bridges project can be used to 'bridge' portals with existing technologies including Struts, JSF, PHP, Perl. For GUI designers, Jetspeed comes with several built-in templates used to decorate portals and portlets.

Open Sun ( a new era)

Finally… after a long wait and the market evaluations on changing trends and expectations from the developer community for open source versions , the Boss ie, Sun Microsystems Inc. has come up with its open-source offerings for core software products .

This is a very strategic move that could have long-term implications on the company's image and make people accept and enhance Java and its products.
This was a well-thought out concept and the open source Solaris OS was a precursor to the present move of permitting its middleware, management and Java development tools free to use.
The Company's release also points out no variation in pricing for corporate users, who will still have to pay for service and support for these products . Corporate users can use the company’s Java Enterprise System (JES) middleware stack for free, but they w ouldn ’t have free support or service.

Sun will make open-source JES, which includes
*Sun Java System Application Server 8.1.
*Sun Java System Access Manager 7.
*Sun Java System Directory Server 5.
* Sun Java SystemAdministration Server 5.
*Sun Java System Portal Server 6.2.
*Sun Java System Instant messaging 7.
And other proxy ,integration and communication suite. ..what else J

According to my knowledge and experience ,JES (Portal and Access manager ) functionalities are far behind than other competitors .Sun has not leveraged upon the most in-vogue Concept of the Collaborative Portal...…and making JES open source will definitely be a value addition.

Moreover, open sourced product brings its own advantages as it evolves to maturity with everyone pooling in ideas ,suggesting changes and developing features,

FatWire Content Server 6.3

Fatwire Software, today announced FatWire Content Server 6.3, the latest version of its Content Management Platform, and FatWire Analytics, the newest module in the Content Server product family.

New features in Content Server 6.3 include :

InSite Templating - New InSite Templating capabilities add to existing InSite Editing features that let non-
technical users edit content from within the context of a Web page.

Increased Portal Integration - Content Server 6.3 continues FatWire's focus on enabling robust content management solutions for portals. With its latest release, FatWire adds support for IBM's WebSphere Portal, providing out-of-the-box content management portlets for WebSphere Portal. It also extends the caching capabilities of FatWire Satellite Server to support portal environments.

Additional Platform Support -This release adds support for Solaris 10 and the latest versions of Oracle Application Server and Sun Java Enterprise Server.

FatWire Analytics Content Server users to access data on site visitors and content usage right from within the main Content Server interface. This ensures that those creating content and making editorial are able to quickly incorporate data about site visitors and content usage into their decision-making processes. Out-of-the-box reports provide data at the asset, page, and site levels, with easy drill-down for specific time periods.

source :Fatwire

Firefox 1.5 Released

Mozilla releases Firefox 1.5 yesterday. Firefox is also one of the most widely distributed open source programs, meaning anyone can use and modify the code
The new Version has come up with many small/big features..here are few..

1- More sophisticated security and performance features.
2- Support for new web programming standards, such as AJAX, that enable more graphical capabilities in Web pages
3- Firefox 1.5 also adds support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), JavaScript 1.6 and new versions of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). SVG is a language based on XML for writing sophisticated, two-dimensional graphics.
4- In addition to a more effective pop-up blocker, the updated browser is designed to ease security updates. The program checks daily for patches, downloads them automatically and then prompts users to install them.
5- It includes a wizard that allows users to report Web sites that don't work in Mozilla's browser so developers can ensure sites that work in Explorer also work in Firefox. The new version also includes more descriptive error-message pages and a redesigned Options/Preferences window that increases the number of category icons and moves them from the left side of the window to the top.
6- Forward and backward browsing buttons :)

You can download this new version from here.

Sun to integrate PostgreSQL into Solaris 10

Sun Microsystems announced that it would begin
including the PostgreSQL database with Solaris 10 as soon as possible , and will immediately offer full support for it, as well as fully integrate the software into the operating system over the next several months.
PostgreSQL will be the second database included with Solaris, though it is expected to be made a more major part of the OS than MySQL.

Anyways its good for PostgreSQL too.
The PostgreSQL project, which started in 1986 as an offshoot of the Ingres database, is BSD-licensed database software that already is available with most Linux distributions.PostgreSQL is also Included in all of the RedHat's Enterprise Server Line.

Nokia and OpenSource

Nokia launched OpenSource.nokia.com today. It is the first place to look for information concerning Nokia involvement in the Open Source community.
The Projects page lists all Nokia developed downloadable code.

The website also features a list of all projects Nokia contributed to."

Google Maps API

The Good and Great folks over at Google Map and Yahoo Map released their Map API's that allows you to roll your own "interactive, draggable, zoomable, maps (with satellite immagery)."

Yesterday, Google released an API for Google Maps and today Yahoo has released an API for Yahoo Maps. (That’s the spirit :-) )

The Google Maps API is based on JavaScript, which makes life pretty easy, since you don't need to worry about installing software. You can directly run JavaScript in just about any web browser. Knowledge of XML and XSL helps to build a rich user interface, but it's not required. Google Maps currently supports Firefox 0.8+, Mozilla 1.4+, IE 5.5+, Safari 1.2+, Netscape 7.1+, Opera 7+, but E 5.0 is not supported.

There are several limitations to the Maps API:
1- It doesn't provide a geocoding service; that is, you have to provide it with longitude and latitude. This means you need to rely on third-party geocoding tools to get longitude and latitude for an address.
2- It doesn't include a routing or driving directions service.
3- The Google Maps API key is restricted to generate maps only for URLs (website or a local host). You need to have a web server even for development.
4- The key you receive is only valid for a single directory on your web site.
5- It can be used for commercial purposes, but it should be available to end users for free.
6- It can be used on a site that is password protected, but consumers should be able to sign up for a password without charge.

At the same time Yahoo Maps API offers free access to Yahoo's SmartView Technology that will allow developers to create customized maps by overlaying content onto an existing Yahoo map,including weather reports, vacation photos,news,etc etc

*** I think we should expect a IDE /Web User Interface from Google from where we can easily drag and zoom maps onto our applications….....

Google Desktop 2

AUG 22,
Google Inc. has announced Google Desktop 2 (beta), a free downloadable application that combines desktop search with an intelligent sidebar that learns the user's habits and interests.

Intelligent enough, this is more like personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in."

Built on Google's desktop search technology the software include major new features, such as a Sidebar that provides desktop access to a variety of personalized information including email, news, weather, photos, stocks and RSS and Atom news feeds. Sidebar appears as a small vertical window on the side of a user's screen that includes a series of "live" content panels.

Additional features include a scratch pad to type and save notes and a quick view of recently or frequently visited websites.

And the Outlook Toolbar enables Microsoft Outlook users to search all of their Outlook email directly from an embedded search box and results list, without having to leave the application and apart from searching the Web, Google will trawl PC program data like Word, Excel, Adobe PDFs and instant messages.

Apart from all this ,GoogleIM is also available now.

open-smiles

Paul Murphy: Whether you prefer Linux, BSD, or Solaris is immaterial when the choice is Unix or Windows. If you work with Red Hat the enemy isn't Sun; and if you work with OS X, the enemy isn't Linux. For any Unix, the enemy is Microsoft.

64 bit Windows, many years from now
With the release of 64-bit Windows, the roadmap for future operating-system upgrades has become more congested. It's taken four years for a reluctant industry to adopt XP; the signs are that 64-bit Windows won't win hearts, minds and desktops much faster.

Sun Microsystems has released Solaris as open-source software, a move that's central to the company's plan to regain lost relevance and fend off rivals Red Hat, IBM and Microsoft.
The company on Tuesday posted more than 5 million lines of source code for the heart of the operating system--its kernel and networking code--at the OpenSolaris Web site. However, some source code components, such as installation and some administration tools, will arrive later.
But competing with Linux is tough. Though Linux is not as mature in many regards, Solaris work is concentrated at one company, whereas Linux has a fully fledged community of open-source programmers. Participants come not just from universities and Linux sellers such as Red Hat and Novell, but also from server sellers IBM and Hewlett-Packard, chipmaker Intel, and database maker Oracle.

open-Portals and CMS

Liferay released its much awaited 3.5 version Liferay Portal 3.5.0.New features include hot deployable themes, portlet instancing, built in support for Sun JSF and MyFaces, friendly URLs, and much much more! Many new JSR 168 complient portlets are also incorporated for eg--

Navigation Portlet -The Navigation Portlet allows you to display the navigational structure of a portal page. Its features a GUI console for editing and adding the nodes,hence Liferay renders the navigational structure accordingly.
Other Good Portlet is..
Portlet Aggregator - which provides flexibility for laying out portlets. Instead of being constrained to placing portlets under one, two or three columns, you can now mix and match.

So more is in the Look and Feel part too :-)

open-news

Dated August-9-05

Novell is to move its SuSE Linux Professional
to a community-driven development process with a project called OpenSuse.
The move follows the strategy of RedHat's Fedora.
Novell will still distribute its SuSE Linux Enterprise Server under its current
go-to-market strategy, again mirroring RedHat's strategy. Novell says that unlike RedHat's Fedora, which it believes is technically focussed, SuSE Linux will be focussed on non-technical end-users. Novell currently trails market leader RedHat for market share in the commercial Linux distribution space.

************************************************************
A panel of high-profile industry players weighed on whether the world will ultimately turn to open source as a means for solving its software needs, with
the overriding view being "yes."

In the next five to 10 years, the open-source movement will transform the software business, according to several top industry executives speaking at the AO 2005 Innovation Summit at Stanford University.

IBM has begun participating in open-source Java project Harmony and intends to contribute code to the initiative, according to a Big Blue executive.

In the past week, IBM has dedicated an employee to working with the proposed
open-source project, which is being done at the Apache Software Foundation.

At this point, IBM's participation is limited to thoughts on design, but the company likely will contribute code to the project.

Harmony(a opensource java project)was launched in May to create an open-source edition of Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), the software needed to run Java programs on desktop PCs.

Some Advancements goes here too--

IBM urges Sun to make Java open source .
Sun reluctant to make Java open source .
Apache eyes open-source Java project .
IBM buys open-source Java outfit Gluecode .

open source now

A software is written with source code. but with a open source software, the code is protected by a special license that ensures that everyone has access to that code. That means no one company can fully own it.General public/developers can see it,use it,review it and of course can enhance it.

open source code brings millions of minds working for a particular project which surely will be fast ,reliable and bugs are more quickly found and fixed.
And when customers don't like how one product is serving them, they can choose another without overhauling their infrastructure.

Gone are those days when a company used to prefer Properitory softwares because of the kind of support they provide,of course for a huge Price.
But today open Source industry is more strenghtened ,streamlined and focussed in terms of both technology and serving customer needs.

These are the few opensource products which already have taken market by strom in their respective fields.

Web Servers - tomcat
.
Application servers - jboss, jonas ,Zope ,RHAPS etc.

Portal Servers -LifeRay , exo, Jboss, MetaDot etc

CMS - opencms ,zope ,postnuke etc

Operating system -RedHat Enterprise Linux.

IDE's - Eclipse ,NetBeans

and the list goes on...

That means: No more arbitrary pricing. No more technology lock-in. No more monopolies.


Imagine if all of this past knowledge was kept hidden or its use was restricted to only those who are willing to pay for it then......

In the same way shared knowledge propels the whole of society forward, open technology development can drive innovation for an entire industry.

-- With all my love to Open source Community