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CMS of interest January 7, 2008

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, web.
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I have been looking for something more than a wiki lately: something that would allow me to have menus for pages created, to have a blog integrated, to have API documentation pages that could be edited by me (ease of use) and others (community input), and that would support polls and other such things. This crosses the line from wiki to CMS (content management system). Some notable CMS are:

  1. joomla:
    1. probably most popular, but apparently its permission system is very basic,
    2. it doesn’t support wiki-type community contributions, and
    3. doesn’t support versioning (a must for me)
  2. drupal: very popular, seems to have good permissions system, supports wiki etc.
    1. Uses a module system for extensions, it looked like there were 100’s of modules. This is both a pro and con as it can make it time-consuming to add a capability (first need to find if some modules support it, then see which one supports best, not always easy to find those modules).
    2. But can’t tell from docs if supports versioning of articles, will have to try it I guess. Demo on opensourcecms.com didn’t work well in Firefox but ok in IE.
    3. Extensive online docs and simpler UI seems to make it more approachable than the more sophisticated typo3
  3. cmsms (CMS Made Simple): seems nice and minimal which keeps it simple. Unfortunately, version only scheduled for version 2, and no wiki support mentioned (the cmsms site is powered by itself, but the wiki is by mediawiki).
  4. tiki CMS: like drupal/joomla but uses the tiki wiki for all features (blogging, polling etc). I think it looks too much like a wiki and not enough like a portal.
  5. typo3: very advanced, perhaps a better architecture than drupal,
    1. but steeper learning curve, not obvious what process to follow
    2. online help available but tends to be rather terse; no tutorials found

Geolocation of IP addresses December 27, 2007

Posted by Schollii in freeware, web.
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Sometimes I think of a web application that would involve “Travel through geolocated IP web”. MaxMind offers an open-source geo-locator with bindings in several languages such as C, Python (requires the C dll), Apache (uses the C dll), PHP (pure) and javascript (uses the maxmind host service).

Remote desktop sharing December 27, 2007

Posted by Schollii in freeware, web.
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  • Dimdim is an interesting web-based desktop sharing (web meeting) application. It comes in both an Open-Source and Commercial version. Support for OS version is through forum/community. Help forum has about 1-5 posts/week, with over half unanswered. Can use dimdim server, or a dimdim server can be installed on your Intranet. However, there is no installation guide (unless one is available after installation). Last version was from June 2007.
  • Even more interesting is Zoho Meeting. This uses the zoho server to create a meeting environment in which one “presenter” can share her desktop and any number of viewers can see, do text chatting, and take control if allowed by presenter. Note however that this is not very different from having one VNC server and many VNC viewers, but with the disadvantage of having to pipe all data through a server. Zoho claim to encrypt comms but who can verify that they aren’t decrypting stuff while it is going through the zono servers? (it’s fairly easy to verify that data leaving your desktop is encrypted but the encryption might be trivial). I’ve had mixed results with VNC when it comes to openGL, but Zoho Meeting was able to handle it even including GLSL shader effects. Given that Zoho involves an activex control downloaded from server, plus a server connection, it seems crazy that VNC wouldn’t be able to do an even better job with openGL.

XML editing with Relax NG schema December 4, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, xml.
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xmloperator: an XML editor that can use any Relax NG schema to guide editing

Note that many tools exist to convert from Relax NG compact notation to standard notation, see http://relaxng.org.

Wiki engines of interest November 25, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, web.
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The wiki-selection engine: http://www.wikimatrix.org/ is a great tool to get which of 100’s of wiki engines satisfy certain criteria. Preferred selection of wikis:

  • twiki: it uses Perl (it’s the only one of the list), which could be an issue: how easy is it to setup? could be used on SF.net?
  • phpwiki: similar to twiki capability-wise, but written in PHP; doesn’t support SVG editing like twiki does, but supports MySQL and SQLite in addition to file-based repository, whereas twiki is limited to files
  • pmwiki: only one to support SVG editing (together with twiki), but a lot of capabilities are from plugins, which can mean a lot of searching and installing
  • tikiwiki: comparable to twiki in many ways but written in PHP; doesn’t support SVG editing or complex tables but has other features that twiki doesn’t (more stats pages and database types, e.g.). Note that Tikiwiki is also a CMS: has modules to support blogs, trackers, etc.
  • docuwiki: doesn’t support PDF export, but othewise comparable to others
  • moinmoin: uses files rather than DB
  • wikkawiki: doesn’t support PDF export, but othewise comparable to others

Wikkawiki was preferred choice for wiki that support code highlighting and MySQL and could be set up on SourceForge. I remember trying either phpwiki or pmwiki (believe the latter one) on SF.net and couldn’t get it setup (was easy to screw up setup).

Remote-desktop sharing between MS Windows machines October 27, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, mswin.
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There are many free VNC client/server bundles available (see wikipedia for a discussion). The three that stand out are:

  1. TightVNC: like RealVNC, but adds filetransfer and more
  2. TurboVNC: built upon TightVNC, adds faster OpenGL rendering
  3. UltraVNC: alternative to TightVNC, provides encryption and audio

The only advantage of UltraVNC over TightVNC is that former supports audio chat, and natively secure data transfer via a plugin system. However I have not been able to use encryption feature in many-to-many configurations, ie to have N clients connectable to M servers running UltraVNC with encryption: they must all use the same key!!! Looks like there might be a way when used from command line (http://msrc4plugin.home.comcast.net/~msrc4plugin/faq.html#shortcut) but it seems a bit convoluted and requires too much “memory” and “thinking” (not integrated in GUI).

Secure connection via encryption is likely best achieved via tunnelling. This involves an ssh server on a host that forwards requests to other programs, and an ssh client that forwards communication from other programs. E.g. telnet localhost, and ssh client listening on telnet port, sending over port 22; ssh server listening on port 22, forwarding all other ports; telnet server listening on telnet port. The following link gives a good summary: http://members.shaw.ca/nicholas.fong/vnc/.

On MS Windows the ssh tunneling can be done via Putty or stunnel or Zebedee, though the latter hasn’t been updated since 2005.

Kaboodle may also be useful but remains in need of further investigation. It integrates zebedee and VNC (any of the clients) to find devices on a network (using WinPCAP) and run VNC on them (assumes each one has a VNC services installed of course).

MD5 checkers September 10, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, mswin.
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Looked at many on softpedia and the following two stood out:

  • md5checker from TSoft: seems to be most popular on softpedia; rather basic, either checks or generates md5 for one file; for checking, value taken from clipboard, quite handy. Easy to use and to the point, only disadvantage is its support for only one file at a time, but I have yet to require more than that.
  • matmd5: can check a list of files

Folder sizes and disk space visualization September 10, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware, mswin.
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I often want to know what folders are using up the most drive space. The three that have been useful so far:

  • FolderSize for Windows Explorer (FSFWE): makes available a new column in Windows Explorer File Manager windows, for folder size; must disable size and enable “folder size” column; works well, uses low priority threads to compute sizes. Great extension.
  • VisDir: scans specified folder and presents a pie chart that can be drilled down. Useful.
  • TreeSize: scans specified folder and presents a bar chart for sizes of subfolders in a specified folder. Seems to use some form of caching since re-scanning of same 21 gig folder a second time took a few seconds instead of a few minutes. Good alternative to visdir but need the pro version if want pie chart and other “nice to haves” like diffs between scans (see which files have changed etc), reports, etc.
  • ExplorerXP: enhanced file explorer window that shows several folders in separate tabs and shows folder sizes and supports other handy operations such as multi/recursive move/copy/rename/clean/split/merge/etc
  • Disk Space Visualizer by Zero Assumption: Uses a block diagram to portray sizes of folders, can zoom in/out but zoom out only to the folder selected at top-level. However, redoes the complete folder scanning every time (no caching), which pretty much makes it useless, pitty. Not worth keeping.
  • SC-DiskInfo by Soft-Central: very similar to TreeSize, but doesn’t work very well! No caching, no indication of status of size computations (e.g. FSFWE shows “+’ signs, very useful). Not worth keeping.

Site lists open-source alternatives to commercial software September 9, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware.
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OSALT, the Open Source Alternative:

  • Useful to find Open Source alternatives to commercial software
  • Handy description of open-source software categorized by platform. Especially handy is that each software has a list of similar open-source alternatives of it, and a list of commercial software for which it is a free alternative.

System backup/restore September 8, 2007

Posted by Schollii in Software tools and toolkits, freeware.
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  • NTFS/FAT32 drive imaging/backup:
    • MaxBlast: by Maxtor, free (version of full commercial version $30), so would trust it more than freeware solutions
      • does win2k and win XP, but only maxtor/seagate drives!
      • Shows the estimated size of image, allows to select several compression types and shows time and size estimates for each, very convenient for choosing
      • However, has the ability to create bootable MaxBlast CD with support for USB drives, which DriveImageXML doesn’t do (ie a working MSWin OS must be on the host and DriveImageXML installed on it).
      • It is fast: it took only one hour to image a 90 gig drive.
      • Found out that it doesn’t do NON-maxtor drives, which is not really surprising but contrary to what the docs led me to believe.
      • Also, the image restore does not resize the partitions to match the partitions already on the destination drive. So if the image contains two partitions, say 30 gigs each for a 60 gig drive, the image restore on a 120 gig drive will just have two 30 gig partitions, which I believe is not the case for DriveImageXML – the latter will resize the partitions to be 60 gigs each, containing 30 gig of data.
      • The non-Maxtor-specific version is $30 from Acronis
    • DriveImage XML: clone/backup/restore hard drives, GUI very good, good clear docs, seems more powerful than MaxBlast in some respects
      • Does NOT support win2k!
      • Separates file info into an XML and a data file
      • Supports volume locking and shadowing, which MaxBlast doesn’t seem to — at least not explicitely — but then again with the MaxBlast CD those two options aren’t necessary since the drive won’t be in use.
      • Only problem may be performance: 4 hours for 90 gig drive. However it just did a 60 gig drive, 25% full, in 40 minutes. It could be that the % full matters: the 90 gig drive is 90% full, which would imply 3.3 hr, close to the estimated 4 given by DriveImageXML.
      • Is able to restore image on different size drive and uses whatever partition size you have setup (so you have to setup partitions — no format or drive letter needed, just size), this is very handy for upgrading laptop drive since in laptops the new drive can’t be connected to the computer at the same time as old (unless there is a ATA/SATA-to-USB external drive enclosure in which to put the new drive, clone drive via USB, then install in laptop).
      • Could not clone a system (ie bootable) SATA drive, got “missing operating system” when booted. Trying other possibilities, listed http://forums.techguy.org/5403372-post2.html.
    • DrvImagerXP: seems very popular but only downloadable from repositories (author website no longer available); several software by same author seem very popular, see softpedia’s registry for Lexun software. UI really clunky. Very basic app but does the job and supports essential settings (break image into several files etc). Does 90 gigs in 2 hours.
    • HDClone: seems popular but the free version only works from CD, and is slow (300 mb/min, so a 90 gig drive would require 4 hours).
    • Bart’s PE Builder: build a bootable Window CD-Rom or DVD from Windows XP, requires OEM CD’s that came with PC
    • SystemRescueCD: contains partimage which did detect my USB drive, but I couldn’t mount it as writable.
    • XXClone Free 0.58 (at http://www.xxclone.com/): supports win XP and 2k. Can clone to larger disk; very simple interface; can close to USB stick etc. It uses file-based copy rather than sector-based (like Ghost etc). So it is very slow the first time, but then it can do incremental very fast. Problem: the freeware version can’t do incremental.
  • Partition Management:
    • Partition Logic: Resizes partitions; this seems to be the only freeware partition resizer

    Bottom line:

    • Try XXClone Free (need to compare to DriveImage XML). But license is free ONLY for PERSONAL use.
    • Use MaxBlast for cloning on 2k/XP if drive is Maxtor; way easier to use than Norton Ghost and handles external USB much better
    • Use DriveImageXML for partition imaging in Win XP; it is easier to use than Norton Ghost, and resizes partition when it restores images so can restore to larger drive
    • Use Partition Logic for resizing partitions; don’t know yet if it preserves data.