SourceForge.net, a longtime provider of open source code and applications, has announced a new service for developers that provides virtualized access to open source apps. With the new Hosted Apps service, you’re able to install an app within your own web space, and it’s managed by the SourceForge team in a dedicated and secure web space, including any necessary maintenance like updates and patches.
The New Hosted Apps Service
At this time, there are only three applications available in the new hosted format:
- LimeSurvey
- MediaWiki
- phpBB
However, any existing application can now be enabled as a hosted app, too. This can be done from the new “Hosted Apps” Project Admin page, a link to which can be found under the “Admin” project navigation menu.
According to Ross Turk, director of community at SourceForge, “developers can be much more productive when they don’t have to worry about maintaining their infrastructure, and this new offering allows them to use the tools they know and like without the burden of maintaining them.”
Benefits Of Hosted Apps
This service was actually launched quietly a few weeks ago, as SourceForge insiders may already know. The announcement was then made via a forum posting which clued in members to the new service. But since the news only hit the mainstream channels today, we imagine this means that they’re now ready for primetime.
That earlier announcement touted several benefits to using Hosted Apps, including the following:
- Eliminates the overhead of deploying supported applications; simply opt-in and begin using the application right away. No need to deal with config files and install procedures.
- Served from a dedicated database and web server pool, separate from the project web servers — so you don’t need to cope with the security limitations of project web’s shared hosting environment, or project web’s outbound mail and connectivity restrictions.
- They maintain the application code for Hosted Apps and will deploy updates as they become available from the vendor. This should reduce the risk from vulnerabilities found in the Hosted Apps and eliminate a major administrative burden (installing updates) to projects.
- They perform regular backups of the Hosted Apps data, but also provide you the ability to easily make application backups on-demand.
- They perform application testing, tuning and monitoring to ensure Hosted Apps operate properly. If service faults occur, they respond and fix the issues. If defects are found in the application (either through our own testing or through end-user report), they will repair the defects or raise the defect to the vendor for repair.
- All Hosted Apps make use of our centralized authentication infrastructure (users login with their SourceForge.net usernames and passwords) but retain the permissions (authorization) of the application (so, for example, existing users of MediaWiki will find permissions handling exactly as they expect).
- Since this offering is centrally managed, any improvements they make either to the infrastructure or to the Hosted Apps themselves will immediately become available to all projects. The Hosted Apps offering reduces their overhead for adding major new functionality to their offering, since all applications share common integration points and common infrastructure.
- Since Hosted Apps are available under an Open Source license, this centralized service has the potential to rapidly increase the user base of Open Source applications and drive high quality feedback for the further improvement of those applications.
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Posted in Hardware, Internet, Software, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment »
I can’t believe what I’m reading. All across the Web, reporters are saying that at Apple’s press event next week, the company will unveil an $800 Mac to appeal to those looking to spend less on an Apple computer.
Anyone who has followed Apple since its inception knows that the very idea that Apple could actually compete on the same level as its competitors on price is a shocker. For years, the company has wanted to be considered a boutique vendor that doesn’t submit to price leadership to sell units.
Steve Jobs went out of his way to create good-looking devices with a unique experience so he wouldn’t have to charge less for his computers and it worked like a charm.
Mac sales have never been higher, and it’s quickly becoming apparent that people are more than willing to spend the additional cash to own a Mac. And yet, the rumors that Apple will sell an $800 Mac simply won’t go away.
Now, I’m a firm believer that Apple should start lowering its prices to appeal to more consumers and take the fight to Hewlett-Packard and Dell, but if Apple’s plan next week is to offer cheaper Macs, I can’t help but wonder if this is Apple’s new strategy going forward.
I think it is.
Remember when we all made a fuss over how high the price of the original iPhone was? Do you remember when we all rejoiced as Apple announced that the lower-end iPhone would retail for $199?
And if you look at the iPod, now you can spend as little as $49 for the iPod Shuffle, $149 for an iPod Nano, and $229 for the iPod Touch. And just in case you want an Apple TV, the entry-level price of $229 isn’t too bad for a set-top box with that kind of functionality.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? Apple is quickly becoming a company that offers high-quality products at a relatively affordable price. And if it decides to sell a Mac for $800, I don’t think there’s any debating the fact that Jobs has decided to change his company’s business model.
And what a change that would be. As I mentioned, Apple is a boutique vendor on a number of levels and has decided that it would rather offer products for a higher price than play the pricing game. But as economic conditions change and people need to think more about their wallets than they may have over the past few years, Apple feels it needs to change its course and compete more effectively against HP and Dell.
Will it work? I can guarantee that it will. But what will it do to Apple’s image? As long as the company continues providing high-quality products that easily eclipse the competition, I don’t think it will have anything to worry about on that front either.
Apple’s decision to offer a cheaper Mac is a smart one. But it goes beyond a cheaper product. In reality, Apple is now a changed company that will compete on price. And it’s because of that that its competitors should be scared.
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Google has brought to Linux the beta version of its new Picasa 3 software for image editing, cataloging, and uploading.
The new release catches the open-source operating system up with Windows, which got the Picasa 3 beta one month earlier. There’s still no word about a Mac OS X version, although Mike Horowitz, Google’s Picasa product manager, told me earlier that “Macs are important to us…We’re always looking for new ways of making sure our users are happy, so it’s something we’re looking at.”
The new version adds a retouching tool, automatic synchronization of photos on the PC with those stored at Google’s Picasa Web site, and a collage mode that lets people combine numerous snapshots into a poster-size collection, Google programmer Lei Zhang said in a blog post announcing the new version. The new version also is faster, he added.
However, it does lack the Windows version’s movie maker feature that can turn photos into a slideshow with a soundtrack that can then be uploaded to YouTube.
The software runs using Wine and an open-source software layer that translates a program’s Windows instructions into commands for Linux instead. Google has contributed about 850 patches to the Wine project so far this year, Google said. Better video support in Wine is still a work in progress, though, which is why the movie maker feature is disabled.
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Posted in Google, Linux, Software | No Comments »
