TikiWiki Project: One of the Most Active Projects on SourceForge
According to Ohloh.net, Tiki has "one of the largest open-source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh." (http://www.ohloh.net/p/tikiwiki/factoids/). This diverse and extensive community effort has fueled more than 800,000 downloads (http://sourceforge.net/project/stats/detail.php?group_id=64258&ugn=tikiwiki&type=prdownload) plus countless one-click installations through control panel applications such as Fantastico.
José Valim and Carl Lerche joins Rails core
Please give a warm welcome to José Valim and Carl Lerche as they both join the Rails core team. Both guys have been key contributors to the Rails 3 development and both have made it into the top 10 of all-time Rails contributors. It’s an honor to have them on the team!
Vital Signs – An educational citizen science project
Vital Signs 2.0 (VS) is an educational citizen science project consisting of an extensive Drupal website created by Image Works in Portland, Maine for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) and funded by the Hewlett Foundation and a generous in-kind donation of services by Image Works.
The VS project provides students, teachers, scientists, and citizen scientists with the tools to monitor environmental conditions throughout Maine. The project includes a structured central data repository, tools and protocols for identifying, mapping, tracking and analyzing the occurrence and spread of invasive species into and around the state. Beginning in fall 2009, these resources and supporting programs are being utilized on the laptop computers provided to all Maine middle school students and will be made available to all interested parties starting early 2010.
The project's site is composed of 13 original custom Drupal modules, approximately 2 dozen Drupal core modules, more than 40 contributed modules, Google Maps and other web services. In order to give back to the community that made this project possible, we are releasing the full source code for the website under the GPL license and adding it to the Drupal.org project repository.
CakeFest 2009 Berlin Venue Dispute
Coming Soon: Host a Conference Call from your Workspace
At Enterprise 2.0 we announced our Real Time Collaboration update, integrating chat and live broadcasting on all Business Edition networks. Today we’re excited to introduce the final part of the real time update – Voice Collaboration.
Voice Collaboration is the fastest and easiest way to set up a conference call with vendors, clients and colleagues. There is no need to set up an external conference line, instead place a call and add participants from your workspace.
Voice collaboration will be available on all Business Edition networks soon.
Here’s how to create a conference call in two steps:
1. Choose Voice Collaboration on the bottom right of your workspace.
2. Add conference call participants – you can add existing users or enter a phone number. Now start your conference call.
It’s that easy! Now you can host a conference call while streaming live edits and chatting on IM all from one place. Voice Collaboration will be available on all Business Edition networks soon.
“You’ve done it again. Intuitive functionality, tight integration, and affordability. Team members or clients are directed to a workspace page, the call is launched and collaboration begins… It’s single-button functionality that accelerates team collaboration.”
–Tracy Campbell, CEO, Simplicated LLC.
Plugin Authors: Toward a Better Future
Some of the biggest changes in Rails 3 involve how Rails expects plugins to behave.
DependenciesIf your plugin has dependencies, make it a gem and have your users install it using the Gemfile. This will ensure that Bundler properly calculates the dependencies alongside any other dependencies the user’s app has.
If You Override Something, Require ItIf you need to override ActionController, ActiveRecord or other Rails frameworks, require them first, then override. Instead of assuming that Rails will require your gem plugin at a “correct” time, assume that the user will require your plugin extremely early.
This gives you the opportunity to hook in earlier to the initialization process, but it also means that you should explicitly require the dependencies you need.
# in your_lib.rb require "active_record" require "your_lib/extensions" ActiveRecord::Base.class_eval { include YourLib::Extensions } Use a Railtie, But Only if You Need ToEven though you can expect your gem to load very early, you might still need to hook into a later part of the initialization process. If you do, inherit from Rails::Railties. Inside of a Railtie, you can declare a block that Rails should run when it runs Rakefiles, specify initialization blocks, add a subscriber to the notification system, and specify generators to load.
class TestingFu < Rails::Railtie # This creates a config.my_plugin in the user's Application railtie_name :testing_fu rake_task do load "testing_fu/tasks.rake" end # specify the default generators for test frameworks config.generators.test_framework :testing_fu # you can also specify :before or :after to ensure that # your initializer block runs before or after another # initializer block initializer :setup_my_plugin do |app| # in here, I have access to the user's application, # which gives me access to app.config end end Make sure to require any railties that you intend to extend. For instance, if you want to run an initializer before one defined in ActionController, require “action_controller/railtie”That said, don’t use a Railtie if your code does not need to hook into any part of the Rails lifecycle. When possible, simply create a standard Ruby library, requiring the parts of Rails you need to override.
EnginesEngines in plugins (vendor/plugins) work as they did in Rails 2. In a gem, you’ll need to provide a Rails::Engine subclass:
# lib/my_engine.rb module MyEngine class Engine < ::Rails::Engine engine_name :my_engine end end Place your app directory next to the lib directory and Rails will pick it up. You can read the documentation for Railte, Engine, Plugin and Application, all in just one place, here: https://gist.github.com/af7e572c2dc973add221 Start a Conversation at railsplugins.orgIn order to make this process easier, Engine Yard has put together railsplugins.org. If you’re a plugin author, please submit your plugins to that site. You can tell users whether or not you expect your plugins to work on Rails 3, whether or not your users can run them in threadsafe mode, and whether they run on JRuby.
Once you’ve put a plugin up there, users can say that they either agree that your plugin runs or disagree, with a comment about what is broken. You can reply to any such comments, and the user can change his mind if he just made a mistake. When you submit a new version, the site creates a whole new page, so comments about things not working on a previous version don’t clutter up the current version (users can still get at the old versions if they wish).
If we do this right, the Rails community will have a strong sense of what works on Rails 3 and what doesn’t. Have at it!
Rails 3.0: Beta release
You thought we were never going to get to this day, didn’t you? Ye of little faith. Because here is the first real, public release of Rails 3.0 in the form of a beta package that we’ve toiled long and hard over.
It’s surely not perfect yet, but we were out of blockers on the list, so here we go. Please give it a run around the block, try to update some old applications, try to start some new ones, and report back all the issues you find.
I’m really proud of this moment, actually. We’ve had more than 250 people help with the release and we’ve been through almost 4,000 commits since 2.3 to get here. Yet still the new version feels lighter, more agile, and easier to understand. It’s a great day to be a Rails developer.
There’s plenty to get excited about here. A few of the headliner features are:
- Brand new router with an emphasis on RESTful declarations
- New Action Mailer API modelled after Action Controller (now without the agonizing pain of sending multipart messages!)
- New Active Record chainable query language built on top of relational algebra
- Unobtrusive JavaScript helpers with drivers for Prototype, jQuery, and more coming (end of inline JS)
- Explicit dependency management with Bundler
But please take a look at the full release notes and enjoy the latest!
To install:
gem install tzinfo builder memcache-client rack rack-test rack-mount erubis mail text-format thor bundler i18n gem install rails --preNotes: The first line is required because RubyGems currently can’t mix prerelease and regular release gems (someone please fix that!).
The Drupal.org Redesign Progress
Just a few years ago Drupal.org was maintained by a small team of insiders. Now, we are making major changes to the site using the community's many developers and themers.
This update provides the Drupal community our implementation redesign progress, where we've run into challenges, and provide information about our future plans.
The following update provides insight into:
- Our progress so far
- The present focus of the implementation and management team
- Where help is needed from the community
The Drupal.org redesign is an effort started in 2007 to make Drupal.org meet the needs of the growing Drupal community and showcase the power of the Drupal software. In 2008, an exciting and visionary new design for Drupal.org was completed by Mark Boulton Design and the community.
Release: CakePHP 1.2.6
Post-Earthquake Map Tiles for Haiti
Haiti Terrain Maps and OpenStreetMap Tiles on MapBox
We just added seven new map tilesets of Haiti to MapBox.com, created after the January 12 earthquake. Two of these sets are of terrain baselayers - one is a clean grey tile designed to be overlaid with data visualizations and the other is a terrain tile showing color-coded elevations in Haiti - and both cover the entire island. We also created three sets of overlays that work with the terrain data to show roads, collapsed buildings, and seismic data from the earthquake.
Seismic data from the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, overlaid on our Haiti Terrain Grey tile.
Baselayers specificsThe two terrain baselayers are generated from SRTM elevation models. Haiti Terrain is a combination of a hillshade/color-relief map and emphasizes the topography of the island. Haiti Terrain Grey is a hillshade layer intended to be used as a more subtle backdrop to additional overlaid data.
OverlaysThe main overlay maps all roads, labels, parks, buildings, and some other features using data from OpenStreetMap. Volunteers have been doing an unbelievable job of improving OpenStreetMap in Haiti since the disaster. OSM's data - which is completely open and free for anyone to use - is now the best source for Haiti maps and continues to improve every day. Best of all, it is being used on the ground to save lives.
Yesterday’s New Magento EE 1.7 Webinar Recording Now Available
Thank you to all those who attended yesterday’s excellent webinar introducing and showing off some of the great new features in Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.7. The recording is now available, along with many of our other great webinars, for viewing and downloading in the Magento http://www.magentocommerce.com/media/webinar-archive.
A transcript will be provided shortly as well. For more information on Magento Enterprise Edition Version 1.7 please contact us.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
Win an Apple iPad with Dimdim!
UPDATE: April 12, 2009
Our first iPad winner is Dimdim ID lifeinparadise
We'll contact you via email. In the meantime, we're ready to giveaway more iPads. Just keep tweeting and signing up!
That's right, Dimdim can help you get a new Apple iPad!
Simply sign up for a 30-day Dimdim Pro trial via this URL or 30-day Dimdim Webinar trial via this URL and you instantly qualify to win the new Apple iPad! It's that simple.
You will fall in love with Dimdim, the easy, open, affordable web conferencing tool while you wait to get your iPad. We'll pick a winner in the next week, so sign up now! No credit card required.
And tell all your friends via this Twitter link about our contest - if we reach 5x our normal daily signups by Tuesday we'll give away 5 iPads! So tweet away to increase your chances of winning!
(And we'll determine if there is enough buzz & excitement to build Dimdim for iPad) Stay tuned!
Evaluating Paid Development
As you know, this past fall OSM started to pay Louis and Andrew for a day or two of their time per week working on Joomla! Development. This was done as an experiment, and now is the time at which we will begin evaluation of the results. The most important question is: what is the impact of this on our community of contributors, which is to say the people who are contributing to the Joomla! project. We are also interested in the thoughts of the wider world of engaged users and Joomla! business people who may not contribute directly, but do have a stake in the continued success of the Joomla! Project. We invite everyone to participate in this process by filling out this form. We'll collect responses until 11:55pm UTC on January 31 2010.
We want to emphasize that this form focuses on the actual impact on people and firms, not on philosophical discussions or speculation about the impact on other people.
Of course a form like this is not in any way a vote or a popularity contest, nor is it scientific. It is simply one of a number of ways of collecting information from people with a variety of experiences and backgrounds. We'll be sharing the results of this and other analyses in February.
Thanks for your help with this.
Magento Sites Amongst the Top 35 Beautiful eCommerce Websites
Recently, Smashing Magazine did a showcase of beautiful eCommerce store designs. We know that there are a few amazingly well-designed Magento stores out there and just a few happened to be on the list. Below is a rundown of some that made it and what Smashing Magazine had to say about them.
If you’re looking for resources around designing a Magento shop be to check out these great resources. The official Magento Designer’s Guide, Inchoo’s Designer’s Guide to Magento, and this great multi-part series currently running on eCommerce Developer on Building a Magento Theme Start to Finish.
Fred Perry’s e-commerce store has a contemporary and elegant look, conveying key features of the brand very well. The stylish grayscale color scheme, along with sparse text in Helvetica font, make an impact. The design naturally combines Flash and JavaScript. The mini-cart window, the readable layout of the shopping cart and checkout pages, the usable navigation and informative product descriptions all up to a slick and friendly shopping experience.
Olive & Myrtle produces beautiful sustainably developed goodies. A clear layout, soft natural colors and subtle typography make this website look modern and eco-friendly.
Premium sports apparel brand ’47 has an interesting history: “This is a classic story. It’s the American dream come to life…” Thus, the company emphasizes the individuality of its brand in its store design and associates that brand with a community. The website combines jQuery and Flash, which slows the loading speed, but given its objective, this is not critical. Creative visualization and a well-implemented shopping mechanism make for a wonderful e-commerce design.
Blik manufactures whimsical removable graphics to spice up the walls of your home. Even though the “About” info gets a bit lost in the large product preview in the center, getting an idea of what Blik is all about doesn’t take longer than a couple of seconds. Aside from the stylish look, the easy shopping experience is what makes this design exquisite: all products are categorized by tags, the thumbnails are big, product descriptions are detailed and supported by decal outlines, and quick tips are placed here and there for maximum assurance. Vintage-looking faded colors and rotating logo add considerably to the elegance.
The design of German club-wear and accessories store Bellyshades stands out for sure. The vibrant acid colors, insane typography and animals that stand in for shopping carts will leave you anything but cold.
Rules and standards are made to be broken from time to time. You don’t have to speak Russian to tell that the design of Ukrainian t-shirt store Teez is far from ordinary. A chaotic mash of text and images is obviously a new trend in Web design. Despite all of this, the shop looks and feels pretty darn awesome. Take a minute to explore the website and you’ll see how easy it is to shop there. Off-the-chart creativity!
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
GeoDC Meetup on Wednesday, January 27
Mapping Haiti, Washington, DC, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
The next GeoDC meetup will take place on Wednesday, January 27th, starting at 7:00 pm. This will be a particularly exciting meetup as many of our members have been heavily involved with CrisisCamp's response to the earthquake in Haiti. We'll get a chance to hear from folks from FortiusOne on the mapping projects started to aid relief and recovery efforts, the progress made, and how the community plans to move forward.
Magento Reaches 1.5 Million+ Downloads
Magento reaches another milestone, recording over 1.5 million downloads! Congrats to the team and the Magento community for the phenomenal growth.
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!
DP Bestflow: The Definitive Online Guide to Digital Photography
After a highly successful Drupal deployment for the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) national website, the ASMP decided to again use Drupal for their next project: Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow, or dpBestflow for short. DP Bestflow is a Library of Congress-funded initiative to provide an all-encompassing resource for digital photography best practices.
The ASMP once again teamed up with Chicago's Grillo Group for graphic design, and Philadelphia-based web development firm Context to perform the Drupal implementation. The most impressive part of the site, however, is the immense amount of rich, useful content, the majority of which is the handiwork of digital photography gurus Richard Anderson (author of Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow) and Peter Krogh (author of The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers).
Week in DC Tech: January 25th Edition
Maps, Photography, Start Ups, and CrisisCamp Haiti this week in Washington, DC
There are many interesting technology events happening in Washington, DC this week, focusing on everything from international mapping efforts by local experts - including ones of Haiti to be used in earthquake relief efforts - to photography tips from a pro to a start up challenge for university students. Below are the ones that piqued our interest, and you can find a full list of the weeks happenings at DC Tech Events. Have a great week!
Monday, January 25Noon - 1:30 pm
The Administration's Strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan: At this event, National Security Advisor James L. Jones will discuss the Obama Administration's current strategy on Afghanistan and its larger national security goals moving forward. A panel discussion will follow, analyzing Afghanistan's current government and approaches the international community can take in the region.
Take the Magento User Survey!
Does your company use Magento or are you currently evaluating Magento as your next eCommerce platform? If so, we'd love to hear from you.
The survey will take only a few short minutes. The information collected will help us improve our offerings and services as well as shape Magento's product roadmap in the months to come.
We'll be giving away a free Google Nexus One phone to one lucky respondent, selected randomly from all fully completed survey submissions, so make sure to make your voice heard for a chance to win!
Your help and feedback are greatly appreciated!
FROM THE MAGENTO TWITTER FEEDNOW AVAILABLE
The Official Magento User Guide by Varien is here!