Pandora open source netbook comes out in february 2012
The open-source netbook-handheld console hybrid called Pandora which is based on linux is in final touches after four years in development.
Do you remember the Linux based Pandora handheld gaming console, right?Plays Quake 3, Mario 64, and will even ship with a 600 MHz ARM-based TI OMAP3 SoC? It manages to cram a full QWERTY keyboard and gamepad buttons into a Nintendo DS XL-like form factor, combining the gaming qualities of a dedicated handheld with the usefulness of a netbook? Yeah, that thing. It’s finally shipping after four years of development, production setbacks and loads of investor funding.
It’s specs seemingly haven’t changed since we last wrote about the device in 2010. It uses a 600 MHz TI OMAP3530 SoC packed with an ARM Cortex-A8 core and a 110 MHz PowerVR SGX530 core. It also sports a 4.3-inch resistive touch screen with a 800 x 480 resolution, 256 MB of DDR-333 memory, 512 MB of on-board storage, and dual SDHC card slots supporting up to 32 GB of additional storage each.
Though that’s not all. An S-Video jack allows users to output to current and older TVs. It also has 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, a USB 2.0 OTG port for charging and a USB 2.0 HOST port for connecting additional peripherals. The Pandora team also managed to cram dual analog controllers and full gamepad controls within the 43-button QWERTY keyboard (numeric keypad included). The device even provides shoulder buttons.
The development team behind the open-source Pandora device reports that the initial shipment will consist of a mere 4,000 units. That’s understandable given there’s been no advertisement on TV and magazines to support the launch. But the price might be a big turnoff for those who didn’t even want to spend $249.99 USD on the Nintendo 3DS: $485 USD/ 375 EUR for international customers, and 445 EUR for European customers (incl. 19-percent VAT).
Further,the thing to keep in mind is that Pandora isn’t a dedicated gaming handheld system: it’s a mixture of both worlds. It’s fast enough to emulate many other systems, run a full desktop, access the internet via Mozilla’s Firefox and play older PC games (like Quake 3 Arena, Warcraft).
“What you’ve got here is an open-source, very efficient handheld PC with a strong community behind it,” reports UMPCPortal who has been following its development since 2007. “It’s also a bit of history.” Apparently the reason why we haven’t heard much about the device since 2010 is because it was having issues after going into limited production at a Texas-based manufacturing company — a failure rate of at least 25-percent to be more precise.
The team was thus forced to halt everything and find a new place to produce the device. Fifteen days later the team found not only a new candidate, but 70 investors stepped forward and coughed up nearly half a million EUR (647K USD). The Pandora device was given a green light once the new company produced a unit with a 100-percent success rate.
Consumers interested in purchasing this pocket-sized netbook with gaming controls can head here and pre-order now. Mass production is expected to begin between now and the end of February. All orders will be fulfilled by OpenPandora GmbH, Germany.
Joomla ! 2.5.0 released
Joomla ! 2.5 the successor to version 1.7 is now available and will be supported for at least 18 months.
Previous versions were only compatible with the MySQL database,Joomla ! 2.5 has been extended to include support for Microsoft SQL Server.
Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project said:
“No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate
with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”
Extended features in Joomla 2.5 includes:
Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available . When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new
notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension
notification updates.
A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also
see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.
The update also addresses two medium priority cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and two low priority information disclosure holes.
Further the security update (Version 1.7.4) has also been released to deal with the same issue but, as Version 1.7 will reach end of life on 24 February 2012, users of
version 1.7 are being advised to update to version 2.5.0 before then.
Google launches sfntly Font Programming Language as Open Source
Developed by the Google Internationalization Engineering team, the sfntly Java and C++ library gives opportunities for programmers to build high performance font manipulation applications and services,” he wrote.
Gill explained, “sfntly allows for the manipulation of fonts very quickly in a now open source library. Being able to do that means that it we (Google) can subset fonts to send out as Web Fonts and for printing in Chrome. That subsetting is fast enough to be done in ‘real time’ as requests happen.” Gill says that the subset fonts can be optimized to specific platform requirements and for specific character and feature usage.
With sftnly (\s-’font-lē\), font objects are both thread safe and high performance, while still providing access for editing, according to Gill’s blog post. “After about a year of internal development sfntly is stable enough to move it into open source and share with others,” he wrote.
Gill says that the current set of uses is only the tip of the iceberg. “sfntly makes it possible for font tools to be written by others with a lot greater ease than in the past,” he explains.
sfntly currently has editing support for most core TrueType and OpenType tables, but Gill says that Google plans to support more of the table types used in fonts by various standards. “Adding support for those will allow for better optimized Web Fonts and for broader international support for scripts such as Arabic, Thai, and Malayalam,” he adds. “Further beyond those, we think that there are possibilities for people to build better tools and applications for creating and using fonts.”
To learn more about the project, visit: http://code.google.com/p/sfntly/
Get the Free Ticket To Asia’s #1 Open Source Event
Wish to avail this ‘Silver’ opportunity to attend Open Source India 2011, Asia’s mega open source convention, for FREE? All you need to do is click on this link and register for your FREE Sliver Pass (which is otherwise worth Rs 1000). But you need to hurry as this offer is available only for the first 500 registrants.
Scheduled to be held from 20 November to 22 November 2011 at Bengaluru’s NIMHANS Convention Centre, the 8th edition of the convention is your BIG opportunity to meet and interact with the gurus from the world of Linux and open source.
Tobias Schlitt, PHP expert and co-founder, Qafoo GmbH; Alessandro Nadalin, Software Agilist in DNSEE, an italian firm based in Rome; Arne Blankerts, co-founder and principal consultant at thePHP.cc, Hugo Hamon, a PHP geek for 10 years and training manager at the SensioLabs company, Paris, France; Sebastian Bergmann, creator of PHPUnit and co-founder of thePHP.cc at thePHP.cc; Jason Levitt, director of Kaltura Developer Network at Kaltura; Bastian Feder, senior developer and quality coach for the Liip Inc., Zurich, Switzerland; Arne Blankerts, co-founder and principal consultant at thePHP.cc, are but a few of the international luminaries who will be sharing knowledge with the Indian open source community.
Apart from this, many national open source technologists and industry veterans like Janakiram MSV, Web Services Evangelist (Amazon); Regunath Balasubramanian, principal architect of the Govt of India UID project; Varad Gupta, chief technology officer of Keen & Able Computers; Khasim Syed Mohammed, lead engineer, Texas Instruments, and many others will join in and share their experiences and knowledge related to FOSS technologies.
The event aims to commemorate and celebrate the true spirit of open source and aims to strengthen and consolidate the Indian open source community.
OSI 2011: Poised to be a huge affair!
Last year, the OSI convention organised at Chennai had witnessed the enthusiastic participation of more than 3,000 IT professionals including software developers, IT administrators, CIOs and budding tech professionals. The upcoming edition of OSI Days, however, promises to be bigger and better!
The special highlights of the 3-day convention would cover special tracks such as ‘FOSS For Everyone’, ‘PHP Days’, ‘Kernel Day’, ‘Database Days’, ‘Mobile Apps Development’, ‘Web Apps Development’ and ‘FOSS For Developers’.
A convention for all FOSS lovers
The event sure has something exciting in store for all open source and Linux lovers, whether they are developers, system administrators, CIOs, CTOs, geeks, or newbies. There’s something for all of them to look forward to. Software developers would get an exposure to the latest open source solutions, software technologies and the best practices to develop their software, albeit in a faster, better and cheaper way. IT managers and administrators are guaranteed to have their own share of ‘economical’ fun with talks on the latest open solutions that can help them manage their IT infrastructure better in a cost-effective manner.
This is the perfect platform for Kernel developers too for familiarising themselves with the latest developments related to the Linux kernel and for CIOs to know about the new open source solutions and best practices to drive strategic IT decisions across India and the globe. There are also special workshops for skill-set enhancement on open-source technologies.
To know more about the speakers and their sessions, click here.
The leading E-Commerce service
Magento Go is the software-as-a-service (SaaS) ecommerce platform from Magento, a leading open-source ecommerce solution. Magento Go may be an attractive choice for some online merchants.
SaaS or hosted ecommerce platforms generally offer a few advantages for merchants. First, many of the headaches of setting up and maintaining web servers are taken care of. Second, SaaS ecommerce platforms generally manage any Payment Card Industry (PCI) requirements, which is a huge benefit. Third, SaaS ecommerce solutions can be much faster to set up.
Easy Registration and affordable Prices
Magento Go has four pricing plans that range from $15 per month to $125 per month, depending on the level of support the merchant wants and the quantity of domains, bandwidth, and storage desired. Magento Go also offers a free plan , which effectively gives offers the $15 plan at no charge for a year.
The Magento Go,theme Selection and Customization
The Magento Go dashboard and user interface is easy to use. The navigation is intuitive, and it is clear that the Magento Go developers wanted to make it simple for budding ecommerce entrepreneurs — even ones without much web experience — to interact with the administration panel.
The system takes new store managers through the process of selecting a store theme, and even offers tools for basic customization. When I looked for a theme for the comic book store I was going to build, I found that I had exactly six to choose from. While these were all attractive themes, there are not yet, in my opinion, enough options.
Go Free Go Open Source Today
For Small Medium Businesses, there are lots of free open source router and firewall solutions and even a few options for enterprises. Many of these also offer other LAN services, such as a VPN server, hotspot gateway and captive portal.
Below are lists of some free and open router projects, covering those suitable for small businesses, medium-sized, and even enterprise-level comparable to Cisco and Juniper.
DD-WRT
DD-WRT is a Linux-based firmware replacement for consumer-level wireless routers, suitable for use by small businesses. In addition to serving as an Internet gateway and network router, it also features an OpenVPN server and client, SSH server, FTP server, and hotspot and captive portal services. Other general features support multiple SSIDs, VLANs, and the ability to customize the startup and firewall scripts.
You can check their router database to see which wireless routers are supported and the DD-WRT variants they support. They also offer a Wiki with a FAQ and installation and configuration help. Some routers can easily be flashed with the aftermarket firmware via the router’s web-based control panel while others require you to connect via TFTP. They even offer hardware specific instructions.
ZeroShell
ZeroShell is a Linux distribution you can load onto PCs, servers and embedded devices. In addition to providing basic LAN services, it offers a RADIUS server for enterprise-level Wi-Fi security, a HTTP Proxy server with antivirus, OpenVPN server and client, and captive portal services. Other general features include load balancing and failover of multiple Internet connections and Wi-Fi AP mode with multiple SSID and VLAN support.
You can download ZeroShell as a Live CD, hard disk image, VMware Virtual Machine, or Compact Flash image. They offer some limited documentation in the form of developer and community contributed articles. You may also want to check out my article series on ZeroShell.
RouterOS
RouterOS is the Linux-based operating system used by the RouterBOARD product line by MikroTik. It can also be installed onto and run from X86-based PCs and servers. Along with the basic firewall and network services, it supports many VPN protocols, RADIUS server and client, TFTP server, and a hotspot gateway. Additionally, it offers various routing protocols and multiple wireless modes.
A basic feature-set of RouterOS is freely available and additional functionality is offered via multiple license levels.
You can install RouterOS onto a machine via a bootable install disc or use the Netinstall utility to install onto a secondary from within Windows and then put into your router PC or server. There are several configuration mediums: local access, serial console, Telnet, SSH access, GUI configuration tool called Winbox, and web-based interface. You can even build your own control application with their API programming interface.
You can try RouterOS by accessing its online demo routers via Telnet or downloading and using their graphical application Winbox. They offer a Wiki for documentation, along with other community and developer resources.
Untangle
Untangle is an open source OS that can install and run on X86-based PCs and servers. It can serve as your network’s router and firewall or run with your existing router as a transparent bridge. Aside from the general LAN services, the free Lite package provides spam, ad, malware, and intrusion protection, and includes OpenVPN and a captive portal. The premium packages add Web filtering, enhanced malware protection, IPsec VPN, and WAN balancing and failover.
You can install Untangle on a dedicated PC or server via a bootable install disc. Configuration can be made locally via a drag and drop GUI command center. You can find comprehensive documentation on their Wiki. You can also refer to a pervious article of mine for more information and to see how to get started.
Endian
Endian offers a free community version of its network and security appliance software, providing Unified Threat Management (UTM) functionality. It’s a Linux distribution that gives you NAT, DHCP, firewall, VPN, antivirus, antispam, and web security and content filtering. It requires a dedicated or virtual machine with minimal system resources.
You can discover some of the Endian functionality by accessing its online demoof the
Clear OS
ClearOS provides three editions of its network OS: ClearOS Home (coming soon), ClearOS Enterprise and ClearOS Core–all completely open and free. They provide antivirus, antispam, VPN and content filtering, as well as the basic routing and network services.
You can discover more about ClearOS via their live demo. On ClearCenter.com you can find User Guides and Video Tutorials for ClearOS Enterprise.
Vyatta
Vyatta provides a free community version of its enterprise-level network OS, comparable to commercial solutions such as Cisco and Juniper. It’s a Debian-based Linux distribution that can run on X86 platforms or on VMware, Citrix XenServer, Xen, KVM, and other hypervisors. In addition to the routing protocols and other typical network services, it provides web filtering and IPsec Site-to-Site VPN, Remote Access VPN, and OpenVPN.
Vyatta is available to download as a Live CD or virtualization image as 32-bit and experimental 64-bit. They also offer comprehensive documentation.
Which is more safe Android or iOS ?
It is believed that more hackers will be attracted to open-source mobile platform in the next five to 10 years.Meanwhile it attracts more hackers ,an increasing number of security experts will also take note and work to resolve these security problems,said Paypal’s principa security architect for mobiles – Hadi Nahari.
In theory ,future Android OS releases will become more secure than other closed OSEs such as Apple iOS,RIM’s BlackBerry OS and Microsoft’s Windows Phone,he continues.
Nahari continues saying that today Android is not secure due to its nature of open-source platform,Everyone including hackers ,has access to the platform’s source codes and this result to security issues , he emphasized.
Apple’s iOS , is not as secure as it seems to be,according to Nahari,who continues saying that as Apple does not disclose more about its security issues and architect.Some users and clients may think this as the OS is safe , he added.He pointed to the host of security problems with the iOS, noting that Apple has been patching and updating the software.