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Open Source

Open Source Audio Capture Utility

Are you looking for an open source audio capture utility?  If you are there are a few good ones out there that will do the job for you. one of the most popular of these programs is Nanogong.

Nanogong is an applet that can be used to record, save, and playback a voice recording.  It’s very simple to use, you just download the applet and stick it in the web page and your users can record using the microphone attached to their local PC.   There is also code that integrates the recording device in the open source tinyMCE editor so recordings may be made and attached as audio files to your web page.

There is another audio capture software program  available called Audacity which is an open source program for both capturing and editing sounds.  This software is a cross platform program in that it is available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.  This is a great program especially if you are interested in editing the sounds.  This program comes with many USB turntables that can be used to clean up all those pops and hisses that exist on your old vinyl records when you convert them to digital.

Elsewhere in the Open Source

Audacity Free Audio Editor for Windows, Mac, Linux | I

Audacity: Free Audio Editor for Windows, Mac, and Linux Audacity is a free and open source audio editor and recorder that works for Windows, Mac, and Linu… … It can record live audio through a microphone or mixer. Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during, and after recording. Can digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or minidiscs. Can capture streaming audio. Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings. […]

 .NET Voice Recorder

NET framework does not provide any direct support for recording audio, so I will make use of the open source NAudio project, which includes wrappers for a number of Windows audio recording APIs. Note: It is important to point out that . … Normally, you will be able to use the default audio capture device without any difficulties, but should you need to offer the user a choice, NAudio will allow you to do so. You can use the WaveIn.DeviceCount and WaveIn.  […]

Open Source

Moodle

Moodle is an open source course management system that is also parlayed as a learning management system or a virtual learning environment.   In reality Moodle is a content management system writtne in PHP which has all of the functionality if many PHP online collaboration and development tools available in open source.

The Moodle platform creates a community of users that can communicate with its various levels of citizenry using email, forums, blogs, task managers, chat rooms, and online educational routines.  For the educational community, Moodle offers a fully integrated platform that lets administrators and teaches communicate and manage course activities among themselves and to the students who take online courses through the Moodle network.

This platform can be used within a school or within an entire school district to manage courses and activities across multiple locations in a central location.  The platforms allows members to communicate with each other using either email, forums, or chat which in turn increases productivity through mutual collaboration while extending courses to students that can be worked on independently within a classroom atmosphere.

Moodle

After a few weeks of using Moodle, an open-source and therefore free VLE, it finally took over from WebCT and we all breathed a sigh of utter relief. To entirely misquote Steve Jobs, using Moodle really is like drinking a glass of ice cold water in the dark depths of Hell.

Moodle vs Blackboard 

Moodle vs. Blackboard Learning Management System: An Evaluation – Moodle is the industry-leading, open source learning management system and it is gradually taking marketshare from Blackboard due to its scalability, dramatic cost savings, and robust features.

Open Source

Open Source SSO

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Open Source SSO is project that provides the core identity services to simplify and implement a transparent single sign-on (SSO) as a security component in a network infrastructure. OpenSSO provides the basis for integrating diverse web applications that might typically operate independently with a disparate set of identity parameters which and are hosted on a variety of platforms such as web and application servers.

This project is based on the code base of Sun Java System Access Manager which was developed by Sun Microsystems.  

Glassfish is Open SSO’s  preferred deployment container The general idea os the SSO is to provide an tiered relationship between the different functions and applications acrros an enterprise network.  The tiered relationship bascialy creates separate and isolated functional areas.

In a typical arrangement, multi-tiered application have a client tier, a middle tier, and a data tier (or enterprise tier).  The client tier consists of a client tier which makes requests to the middle tier. The middle tier’s comprises of the business functions which handle client requests and process application data, and then storing it in a permanent datastore in the data tier. 

This means that the middle tier holds the business logic of the application and provides the framework for conversations with the client.  From a users perspective this is comprised if the web tier which handles the interaction between the client (e.g. the individual workstation) and the business tier (the business application itself) which collects input from the client, generates content, controls the flow of the screen or pages (the application flow), maintains the user session, and performs basic logic to hold data temporarily, and then forwards the completed data to the enterprise tier for permanant storage of information for use by other systems.

Open Source SSO

Specifically, the WinSSO plugin had a few problems with the interceptor implementation as it would also only allow SSO when a user was in the KnowledgeTree database and it did not work for Kerberos authentication. … Every open source project lives mainly from its community. With a thriving community OSS projects will undoubtedly succeed. It is imperative that everyone that uses and enjoys KnowledgeTree contribute their ideas, bug fixes, documentation, translations, etc.

Google Open Source Blog: New Functionality for Moodle

Our Open Source Programs Office sponsored the work and the result is an Open Source single sign-on integration between Moodle and Google. The best part is the extensibility features allow any educational software vendor to take a  similar approach to provide user directory synchronization, single sign-on, and user data integration.

Secure Internet Single Sign-On (SSO)

Written for anyone interested in understanding how secure Internet SSO works, this white paper explores the limitations of current SSO implementations outside of a single security domain (including identity and access management systems and open source development)  and introduces standalone secure Internet SSO as a solution.

Linux

Will Windows Software Work on Linux?

Whenever you move from one operating system to another there are always a few of your favorite programs that you wish you could use on the new platform.  So now you want to move to the open source linux platform and you have some Windows programs you want to be able to continue using.  Well, you are in luck, there is an application on the linux platform which acts as a platform loader where you can run Windows programs.

That application is called WINE which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator.  This application is always being enhanced because the fact of the matter is that the application must be revised to create an API for each Windows Application that you are trying to run.   However, do not let ths get you down as WINE is used to port such programs as Ofice Installer, Photoshop CS3, iTunes, and many games such as Guild Wars and the World of Warcraft.

The primary thing to remember is that  under linux you can run applications under open source that are very similar to the look and feel of the same programs in Windows, but without the out of pocket expense.

Switch from Windows to Linux

Speaking of VirtualBox, even if a Linux application you want to use doesn’t have a Windows-compatible version, you don’t have to give up Windows in order to install Linux and run your program.

Run Windows apps on Linux

Wine enables Linux, Mac, BSD, and Solaris users run Windows applications without a copy of Microsoft Windows. Wine is free software under constant development. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free.

Install Windows Games in Linux

All these use wine which is a free software for running Windows applications in Linux. Though paid, Cedega and Crossover Games don’t support as many applications as PlayOnLinux. And when you are not sure that whether your games are going … Do as directed, then under “What do you want to do?” select “Install a program in a new prefix“ in case you are installing the application for the first time.

Linux

Building a Linux Ubuntu Computer

If you have been using Microsoft products such as XP and Vista or even the earlier versions sub as Windows 95 or Windows 98, you are probably thinking that building a Linux Ubuntu computer is something only those super geeks can do.

Well, this is certainly not the case.  Building a linux desktop computer is just as straight forward as building a Microsoft PC once you have the software CD ready.  If you have a Ubuntu installation CD, all you have to do is to change the setup in your computer so that it boots first from the CD. Once you have done that, you just pop the CD in the drive, restart the computer, and follow the prompts to get Ubuntu up and running.  

In fact, the Ubuntu installation for the desktop PC takes only a few minutes.  If you have a brand new disk drive in the computer for this system, as I did for this project, the entire system was installed on a computer in approximately 10 minutes.  The nice thing is the fact that I only had to reboot the computer once, right after the install to set the registers.  From that point on adding software does not require rebooting the cmoputer over and over again. 

Installing Ubuntu

about as easy as installing Ubuntu 9.04. It really was as simple as: download the ISO, burn a disk (I have a USB DVD RAM drive), boot the disk, choose install, provide user info and select the simple options for everything else.

Installing Ubuntu 9.04

With previous releases it has been necessary to install a customized Linux kernel to add support for wireless networking, Ethernet, and more. In Ubuntu 9.04, everything is supported by default with the exception of some of the keyboard function keys.

Linux

A Brief History of Linux

Here is a brief history of Linux and how the open source revolution got started.

1971 The first edition of the Unix server operating system emerges from Bell Labs. Although Linux does not include any Unix code, it is a Unix clone, which means it shares a number of technical features with Unix, which might be considered the forerunner of the open-source operating system. During the 1970s, Unix code was distributed to people at various universities and companies, and they created their own Unix varieties, which ultimately evolved into Sun (SUNW) Microsystems’ Solaris, Berkeley (dossier)’s FreeBSD and Silicon Graphics (SGI)’ IRIX.

1985 Richard Stallman publishes his famous "GNU Manifesto" (www.gnu.org/gnu/manifesto.html), one of the first documents of the open-source revolution. Stallman began working on the GNU operating system in 1983, largely because he wanted to create an open-source version of Unix. (GNU stands for "GNU is Not Unix.") Stallman’s Free Software Foundation later created the GNU General Public License (www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html), the widely adopted, fully legal "anticopyright" treatise that today allows Linux and other software to remain completely free.

1987 Professor Andrew S. Tanenbaum invents Minix, an open-source operating system that’s a clone of Unix. Young Linus Torvalds, at the time a computer science student in Finland, is introduced to Minix, and bases his plans for Linux on the Minix example.

1991 In August, Torvalds announces his plans to create a free operating system on the Minix users newsgroup. He modestly notes in his posting that his OS is "just a hobby. [It] won’t be big and professional like GNU." In October, Linux 0.01 is released on the Internet under a GNU public license. In the Minix newsgroup, Torvalds asks his fellow programmers to lend a hand in making the system more workable. He gets enough help to release version 0.1 by December. Over the next several years, Linux developers swell into the hundreds of thousands and work to make Linux compatible with GNU programs. Vendors like Red Hat, Caldera (CALD) and Debian create popular distributions of Linux that bundle the operating system with useful programs and a graphical interface.

1997 Torvalds moves to Silicon Valley and goes to work at Transmeta.

1999 In August, Red Hat completes its initial public offering, making it the first Linux-oriented company to successfully go public. In December, Andover.net, a consortium of Web site resources largely devoted to Linux, and VA Linux, a manufacturer of Linux hardware, have wildly successful IPOs. Linuxcare, a leading Linux service provider, announces alliances with such industry giants as IBM (IBM), Dell (DELL), Motorola (MOT) and Informix (IFMX).

Here is a quote from Linus which really sums this up.

`When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at  you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".’

There is something to be said for someone who developed an operating system for the betterment for everyone and "by everyone" as well.

Linux

What are the different types of Linux?

Currently there are approximately 220 worldwide distributions of linux that are maintained.  There are obviously others that have not been kept up to date.  When you look at Intel compatible platforms which is basically the PC market, there are 208 varieties – too many to go through and too many to choose from. 

However, let’s consider what you are going to use it for.  If it’s a Home Desktop of Office type workstation, then it is best to look at Mandriva, SUSE, Linspire, Xandros, MEPIS, Fedora Core, and Ubuntu.

download linux operating system

If it’s a small to medium business server that you need, well, then take a look at Debian, CentOS, Fedora Core, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, or RedHat Enterprise Linux.  These distributions can server up web pages, handle email, run a network and printers all from one server.

If you have a couple of old PCs lying around, you can convert them into thin clients which would be the Linux Terminal Server Project or PXES.  Another way to use these old PCs is to use them as a firewall or router – for that you would only need FREESCO or Smoothwall.

Okay, so how to choose between all of these different types of linux.  Well, it’s primarily a matter of personal choice in the end.  The operating system and the commands are the same, the difference between all of these different flavors is ease of use and additional tools and scripts that make the setup of your system easier.  The basic deployments of linux are based on RedHat, Debian, Slackware, Mandriva, and Fedora.  Most of the differences between the system is where all of the files are located on the machine.  For this reason, if you want to have a full deployment across a large network of computers, it’s best to use only one of  these distributions for the entire network as there can be differences between machines running different versions in terms of utilizing hardware and network security as well. 

My personal linux flavor of choice is CentOS. It’s easy to use, the server can be set up by booting from a CD and following the easy instructions, and it handles all of the hardware drivers I need to run the business applications.  I started with RedHat years ago and converted to a free open source distribution when RedHat went commercial.  CentOS is RedHat based so everything was basically in the same place on the machine.  I tried Fedora when they first got going, but I never was able to get a clean install from an installation disk so I gave up on that one.  That was quite a few years ago so I would presume that would not be the case today.

For this Open Source PC project that I am undertaking, however, I am going to use the Ubuntu distribution which is a Debian based linux.  The reason for this is that some of the open source applications I am going to use have been built using Ubuntu so I would expect all of the idiosyncrasies of this distribution will have been solved for those applications. 

Whichever distribution you choose, it should run smoothly and effortlessly on the machine get is installed.  With linux, memory leaks are hard to come by and you do not have to reboot the computer every time you turn around.

8 Linux Distributions Compared

Here’s an interesting article comparing 8 Linux distributions. The distros reviewed were Fedora, Mandriva, OpenSuse, Knoppix, Ubuntu, PuppyLinux, Backtrack and ArchLinux.

The Many Flavors of Linux

Debian is regarded as the largest Linux distribution to date in terms of users. It is renowned for its stability and quality and its interoperability with other software. It has a very large following and over 28000 packages you can add.

Portable Ubuntu for Windows

Portable Ubuntu for Windows is a nice tool because it allows to use a Linux distribution on several machines just moving a small, light, and portable USB mass storage device. 

Open Source

Open Source Telephone Software – Asterisk

Why Asterisk?

Firstly, to use a product, you will have to know what it is. Asterisk is an Open Source PBX telecommunication platform. It is flexible because it is able to run on different operating systems – Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Open BSD, etc. Only basic software is required. Asterisk comes with high end features like IVR, voice mail, automatic call distribution, etc. It is highly programmable and it able to handle VoIP calls over multiple VoIP protocols.

You are able to easily integrate PSTN with VoIP. Asterisk also allows mix match of analog, IP and digital phones. Even if you have no knowledge of how to change from traditional PBX to Asterisk, fear not! Asterisk allows you to migrate from traditional PBX easily. It gives the user a complete control of telephony. What’s more, it is free! It is licensed under the GPL open source. A commercial license version is also available.

I quote, Joshua Stephens, CEO of Switchvox, "With Asterisk, you can build any phone system you want. It’s irreplaceable when you need custom programming. It lets you build PBXs with the kinds of features that otherwise would cost many tens of thousands of dollars."

Just like any other open source project, the need for Asterisk was also there. It started with Mark Spencer, creator of Asterisk. Mark felt traditional PBX was too expensive for his business, and started writing software, which was the first version of Asterisk. In actual fact, voice lines can hook up to PC via expansion cards and process itself by software.

Mark teamed up with Jim Dixon to build inexpensive expansion cards for inexpensive PCs to interface with PSTN. These inexpensive expansion cards are known as Digium PCI cards. Today, Asterisk is the de facto standard for voice switching and PBX functions in open source space.

Asterisk allows one to take control of their phone system, and the costs are very low. It allows you to integrate with business systems or existing PBX and it is in an easy development environment. Asterisk is not tied down by proprietary systems and it comes with a powerful and flexible dial plan. You can have advanced telephone features for a low cost access.

The customer has a lower deployment cost and has freedom for him in the network implementation. It frees the customer from single vendor dependency, and eliminates upgrade-path costs. The calls cost less, and provides the alternative avenues for support big fixes.

The supplier benefits from the broad base of potential users, with a technically savvy user base. Because the existing software is very expensive and the need for extreme customization, customers would take an easy way out and leave it all to the supplier. The supplier has a potential hardware market and there is a strong advantage for entering the fast expanding convergence market.

By: San Singhania

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Article contributed by Phil Lam who is a VoIP consultant at Lantone Communications. Led by a team of experienced IT developers, Lantone Communications is one of the leading VoIP Provider in Singapore. Please visit their official website for the latest information on VoIP. This article may be reprinted in its original form as long as the resource box is left intact and the links live and the article is not to be modified in any way.

Asterisk PBX System Install

I dial 1 and the 207 phone on my desk rings and I can pick it up and talk pretty cool when you get that working for the first time. Next time we will get outbound calls working. Asterisk PBX Install – Index. 

Asterisk on Steroids

You can schedule reminders by telephone by dialing 1-2-3 from a phone connected to your Asterisk PBX. The default password is 12345678. To keep strangers from using your reminder system, you need to change this password.

VOIP Phone Server

I have gotten it work with asterisk pbx though. I had to manually specify my public IP in the asterisk SIP configuration. Then it did work. I don’t know your PBX solution, but it probably should have a setting like that.

Open Source

Benefits of Open Source Software

There are many benefits to using open source software in any technological environment.  Here are a few examples of those benefits.

Open source software is a type of software that is developed using a particular method that allows the software to be more open than other methods. It harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. As a result, open source software is of a higher quality, has higher level of reliability, is more flexible, has a lower cost than other software options, and is a feasible end to predatory vendor lock-in.

Open source software has a higher level of quality than many other software options thanks to its peer review process. Much like the peer review methods that are used by scientific, medical, or scholarly magazines, open source software programs undergo many of the same processes. Peer review enables fellow software writers to ensure that the software will actually do what it is designed to do. Open source coding can be analyzed, audited, and vetted by dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of individuals who all expect to be able to use their software without problems.

Another benefit is that bugs and other aberrations can be discovered quickly and patched. This is because the coding for open source software is open and transparent. Because people can look at it, they can easily figure out where the bug or aberration is. This creates something of a disincentive for malicious programmers to place back doors, Trojan Horses, and other types of malicious coding in their programs. In addition, once it has been affected by such a negative item, open source code can be corrected more easily.

Another benefit of  is that it is much less expensive than other options. If I company needs $60 billion worth of software for its offices and chooses to go with a less expensive option that still gives all the benefits and minimizes the risks, that company has just saved a lot of money. That can lead to an investment of the money into other areas that will lead to a return on investment rather than further draining the company’s coffers with costly updates.

Open source software really has too many benefits to be named in one place. One of the newest benefits is that the benefits of using it now, in many cases, out weight the possible risks. A recent survey of businesses in Europe revealed that 54% now felt that open source software brought more benefits than risks.

For more information on the open source software and its uses, please visit http://www.mpoweropen.com.

Author: Joseph Devine

Joseph Devine

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joseph_Devine

Open Source

The segment also takes a look at the personal reasons behind this collaboration and the benefits of an “Open Source” approach to sharing biomedical knowledge. Featured in this segment are representatives from two of Health Commons.

Open Source Benefits Of MySQL

Looks like it works in benefit of the open source philosophy. In fact, we can effectively use it to highlight free-as-in-speech benefits of open source software that usually get ranked below the free-as-in-beer ones.

Open Source Sotware Benefits

Considers benefits to producers including lower capital costs, reduced operating costs and higher revenues, and benefits to users including improves quality and reliability, lower costs and greater consumer choice. Discusses economic and societal benefits such as reduced energy consumption, enhanced national security, conservation of natural resources, less air pollution and lower carbon emissions.

Open Source

Who Uses Open Source Software

Trolltech ASAis a Norwegian company with its headquarters in Oslo, Norway, that is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. The company was founded in 1994, by Eirik Chambe-Eng and Haavard Nord (although they had actually begun writing Qt in 1991).

Trolltech’s principal product is Qt (pronounced "cute"), a multi-platform framework for developing applications – originally GUI applications only, but since version 4, also suitable for use in developing console-based programs and server applications. As well as cross-platform functions for developing GUIs, Qt includes a wide variety of other useful functions, also cross-platform, such as functionss for multi-threading, database access, XML parsing, file manipulation, internationalization, etc.

The Qt framework has been used to develop a wide variety of applications. These include KDE, a popular desktop environment (in fact Trolltech employs several KDE developers), as well as the Opera web browser, Skype, Google Earth, Adobe Photoshop Elements, and OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment). Qt itself is written in an extended version of the C&#43&#43 programming language (a special preprocessor is used to add features to standard C&#43&#43), but the toolkit can in fact be accessed from a variety of programming languages including Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Pascal, C#, and Java, as well as C&#43&#43.

In 2001, Trolltech introduced Qtopia, a version of Qt adapted for applications on devices running an embedded version of Linux, such as mobile phones, PDAs and other consumer devices. In 2004, a version of Qtopia for smart phones, called Qtopia Phone Edition, was introduced. Qtopia Phone Edition has been subsequently used by Trolltech themselves in their own brand smart phone, named "Greenphone", which they began selling in 2006.

Author: Sunil Tanna

First published at http://www.osgram.com/news_companies_trolltech.php

Discover the latest Open Source and Linux news at http://www.osgram.com/

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