As a Web developer, I like to visit some sites that talked about programming, build application, or pointed out some cool software tools. For me, it’s indeed a strange experience to go back to some sites that existed on the Web for a while, but I did not profile it on my blog, and Intel’s cool software platform is one of them.

I first thought it’s no longer maintained by Intel anymore, but the top result at the time of writing, i.e. with the vote of 29 is illustrative of trend that this Digg clone will likely be accepted by the Internet users, and proudly served as a Web product that will sustain for a long period of time. Frankly, in a noisy world out there, if a site carried a brand name like Intel, it will always has the advantage to lure in users. When I first started TagEdge, I did profiled a lot of Digg clone (check out this Digg link at TagEdge), but Intel’s cool software is one of the Digg clone sites that makes people want to go there, visit and revisit again, simply because of it’s an Intel product.

Intel’s cool software platform, like any other Digg clones, the article submitted by registered user with the most votes will always be appeared on the main page. In evaluate how its offering can bring value to the software lovers, it does its founding mission. However, when I pay close attention to the community participation on the site, it still did not generate the same kind of buzz as generated by Digg, not to mention how this site will help Intel to find out “the next Google,” as written by VentureBeat in October last year. Perhaps all those so-called “the next Google” are still the small and lean ventures, and definitely not that easy be found by the ordinary Internet users, only private investors and venture capitalists will know how to access them in the first place.

This site is said was powered by Pligg, a famous open source content management system. When it is developed using an open source tool, I still curious how it cost around $40,000 to develop.

Sweetcron is a new open source software that helped one to create a self-hosted lifestream service. Currently developed in Japan and in Alpha phase, it probably will be released soon by its creator, i.e. a php programmer called Yongfook.

At this moment, very little information about this newly open source software, but the front page of Sweetcron stated that it will be an open source RSS aggregator, with a bunch of php source files that one can easily debug and improve from it, and of course, a default CSS theme readily offered to the users. Since it is an open source software which you can self-host it with your own domain, it also mean that you need to configure the update yourself.

Dimdim, a startup provides a free, hosted Web conferencing service where anyone can share their desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via Webcam is announcing its public beta today. As of present, there are over 200,000 downloads on Dimdim’s open source version, and its beta users are growing in a substantial pace throughout the world, with the number of 375,000 people from 165 countries. When consider Dimdim before using and deploying it, it is appealing to most of the potential users because it is free, open source and Dimdim’s product is GNU Public Licensed.

However, Dimdim’s business operating model is based on product versioning. While the free Web conference service can only have 20 users/attendees, but its Professional version is scalable up to 100 people, with an annual fee of $99 to $495 per year. These two are the most popular and widely used, with the functionality of 100% Web-based, hosted version, and compatible with Windows, Mac or Linux. Additionally, Dimdim also offered its Enterprise version, which suitably for a very large-scale Web meeting purposes and the onsite software can be hosted in customers’ own servers. As stated on Dimdim’s home page, its Enterprise version is based on commercial streaming and media components, i.e. Adobe Flash Server.

Perhaps how this Dimdim continue to work and thrive is how it solve the integration issue when comes to integrate with some open source content management systems such as Drupal, Joomla, Coranto, etc. It should be noted that they’ve already integrated with the popular learning management systems like Moodle and Claroline. Meanwhile, they also released the API to encourage the development of additional functionality and integration.

Dimdim was founded in Feb 2006 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. They have offices in New Hampshire, Canada and India. Dimdim is being backed by venture capital firms which include Nexus India Capital, Index Ventures and Draper Richards.

Ubuntu, a popular open source operating system has a new sister site that called Ubuntu Brainstorm. This is a site preoccupied the Digg ideas where users determine the hot stories will go to the front page, but this time, it’s not the hot general stories, but the hot topics surrounding Ubuntu. On the Ubuntu Brainstorm, you’ll read all those stories that posted by Ubuntu users, from technical issues, wanted features, future direction to the know-how that most of the Ubuntu users want to learn. I think most of the questions or issues that posted there are that Ubuntu can’t afford to say ‘No.’ Like this one, the WiFi issue, as I experienced with my friend, it’s indeed not easy for a beginner to configure the WiFi connection. Unlike Windows, you just install the driver, the system will automatically detect the connection for you.

I like the purpose of this site, in spite of the idea was inspired by Dell IdeaStorm. If Ubuntu managed to take advantage from the sincere ideas posted by its users, it won’t be far behind Windows or Mac.

Adobe has recently launched its new open source site, a significant move that reflect the extension of its open source focus. There are several positive effects on this site, particularly users can find a total number of nine (9) projects, with the notable one Flex 3 SDK, as well as the intention to put its applications that support Linux platform. On this site, users will access to available projects, source, documentation, but notice carefully will know that Adobe is demonstrated a strengthened focus on Flex 3 and BlazeDS. Additionally, this site also keep users in touch with some of our favorite bloggers by providing a blogroll on the sidebar of the site.

It should be noted that Adobe’s new open source site will help speed both the Adobe and Linux growth through application support. They definitely trying to improve the existing Adobe Reader and Flash on the Linux distributions.

Despite the initiatives that named after open source was promoted by Microsoft in several years ago, but I still hardly find any correlation between Microsoft and open source. Sometimes, I thought this is a tactical move that Microsoft trying to raise its public image in the industry. Today, a video has been uploaded to YouTube entitled, “Is Microsoft Open Source’s Friend?“, as embedded in below, watch it.

Drupal.org, a popular open source content management system (CMS) provider is officially launching the Drupal version 6.0. For a seven years old CMS startup since its first inception in January 15, 2001, and with the released of six major versions, for them it’s no doubt a remarkable achievement. In launching this version, Drupal reported that there are more than 1,600 issues have been resolved during this release cycle, and it also took them more than one year of development since the previous version 5.0. From this, you probably know how much contribution that Drupal community, comprised of over 700 individuals have submitted to this latest version. As expected, the core idea behind Drupal is to give its users a very good PHP & MySQL framework in building the powerful and robust Websites.

This version 6.0 began by satisfying some immediate and recognizable requirements and needs, such as an improved installer, ease the users in setting up the Drupal sites whether their purposes are for blogging or building the Websites. Language features have also been revamped, so if an user want to translate a post, translation can be done through the built-in interface, without having to install any additional module. Perhaps the most notable change in this version is the OpenID support. The OpenID client module has been added to the core of this version. In other word, users can sign on to a site with their OpenID accounts. To do this, Drupal has moved the long time favorite Drupal.module out of the Drupal package. Additionally, jQuery 1.2.3 is included in this version, a feature that jointly effort between the jQuery and Drupal communities.

Currently, there are over 100 third-party plugin modules already available for this newly Drupal release. With Drupal version 6.0, Drupal.org is poised to further growth, they should expected reaching more than 300,000 users by end of this year (Now they have registered 240,000 users).

via [CenterNetworks]

The popular open source content management system (CMS) Joomla has released the newest version, i.e version 1.5. Overall, this is the latest stable version after they have recently organized the “Squash Bugs” events with the purpose to fix the priority 1 & 2 bugs in this version before it went public download. Since Joomla first inception in two and a half years ago, the version 1.5 represented a milestone for them, as several new enhancements can be found on it. Building extensions will be much easier and faster with the new API released by Joomla. Other than this, new user interface for site administrators, with several functional improvements ranging from single installer, media manager, core article manager to friendly search engine URLs. As stated by them, one of the most powerful features of the Joomla framework is the new component objects based on the Model-View-Controller programming pattern, in which Ruby on Rails, another Web development framework that heavily based on.

Until now, for existing Joomla sites that still using version 1.0, this version remains as a “caution” if they want to migrate their sites to this newest version. The main reason was that this upgraded version has nothing to do with any of the security problems found on the previous version 1.0 and the version 1.5 is still under refinement when refers to the migrating issue.