The jury is still out on whether Google will be successful marketing the Nexus One to the average consumer but when your product is endorsed by a giant in the Open Source community, you know you are on the right track.

Linux Torvalds, best known for developing the Linux Kernel, acknowledged that “the Nexus One is a winner” and has replaced his rarely used G1 phone.

What is his view of cellphones in general?  His direct quote,  “I generally hate phones–they are irritating and disturb you as you work or read or whatever–and a cell phone to me is just an opportunity to be irritated wherever you are”.

What changed Torvalds’s mind about this horrid device called a cellphone, “I no longer feel like I’m dragging a phone with me ‘just in case’ I would need to get in touch with somebody – now I’m having a useful (and admittedly pretty good-looking) gadget instead. The fact that you can use it as a phone too is kind of secondary.  I’ve wanted to have a GPS unit for my car anyway, and I thought that google navigation might finally make a phone useful.”

The Android OS is an open source mobile platform that is fully customizable which allows developers total control and ease of application development.  There are currently 20,000 plus applications available and that number is expected to skyrocket.

Sources: http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2010/02/happy-camper.html

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a popular and most used programming language for website development. After its release in 1995, a number of web applications were made on PHP. This scripting language is a powerful tool for designing dynamic web pages. The language is widely used for web development and can be easily embedded into HTML code. Major operating systems such as Linux, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X etc., support PHP language. PHP is most commonly used in server side scripting, command line interfaces and desktop applications. Various databases like Oracle, Sybase, generic ODBC (Open Database Connection), MySQL etc., are supported by PHP. It also includes external libraries to generate PDF documents and parsing XML. Because of being an open source language, it is used by a large number of developers, can be easily downloaded, saves time and is cost effective. The time needed to process and load a webpage made on PHP is also comparatively low. Due to its versatility, PHP development is growing at a faster speed and gaining popularity worldwide. PHP’s main benefit is that it is totally free for website programming development and no investment is required for beginning in web development cycle. Various other advantages of PHP web development are:

The aforesaid benefits along with numerous others have made PHP an ideal solution for businesses to use it as a tool for their web-based applications. PHP offers better performance, versatility, reliability, faster speed and efficiency as compared to other programming languages, which makes it popular among web developers. Being free (as it is an open-source software), fast (as it can be easily embedded into HTML) and having the capability to build application compatible with any type of browser, PHP continues to grow rapidly and is being used on 24% of the sites on the Internet. Only a few languages can come close to deliver what PHP can offer.

One of the things I like my most about my T-Mobile G1  is that I can tether the mobile phone to my laptop and use my mobile phone’s Internet connection to browse the web.  Tethering isn’t anything new, but most cell phone carriers simply won’t allow it.  They want you to go buy their expensive AIR cards and then pay an additional $50 – $75 per month for service.

Graham Stewart, from Boulder, Colorado created a very nice little Android app to tether the G1 to a laptop (or any computer for that matter).

Here are the instructions to get everything set up:

To get on the Internet, you’ll need to do a few things.

1. Open a cmd prompt (Press the windows icon and type cmd in the search bar). You need to navigate to the directory that contains the adb.exe file.  In my case, I just downloaded the ADB utility (see above) and not the entire Android SDK platform.  I unzipped the ADB utility into a folder called “Android” on my C: drive.  Now in the cmd prompt you’ll type cd C:Android

Now you need to type: adb forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

If all goes well you should receive something that says “Daemon started successfully” (and then the window will appear to close).  The program is still running in the background so whenever you’re done using the Internet you should close it.  Press Ctrl+Shft+Esc to open the Task Manager.  Under the Processes tab, close the file called adb.exe to exit the program.

Tip: I created a simple shortcut on my desktop (right click on your desktop and select New Shortcut) to skip having to open the cmd prompt and enter the forwarding command each time.    If your adb.exe file is located in a different folder than mine below, just change the path to match yours. Here is what my shortcut looks like.

C:Androidadb.exe forward tcp:1080 tcp:1080

I also changed the icon of the shortcut to a cell phone because I’m cool like that.

2. Using Firefox is the best way to browse the web using this tethering app.  You can use Internet Explorer but I’m not making a tutorial for installing the proxy program with IE.  IE is scary.

Anyways, using Firefox, go to http://www.foxyproxy.com and download the plugin for Firefox.  Firefox should install it and then restart.  Once Firefox has restarted you should see something in the bottom right corner that says “FoxyProxy: Disabled.”  Right click on that and select Options.  Click on the Global Settings tab and then select “Use Socks Proxy for DNS Lookups”.  It will make you restart Firefox again… do so.

Now left click on the “FoxyProxy: Disabled” in the bottom right corner once.  Click on the tab that says Proxies.  On the right, click on Add New Proxy.  Make sure Enabled is checked and then give it a name. I named my connection “G1? but you can name yours whatever you’d like.  Now click the tab at the top that says Proxy Details.  Select Manual Proxy Configuration and enter the host name (which is localhost) and the port (which is 1080).  Check the SOCKS proxy box and then choose Socks v5.  Click OK at the bottom of the window.

You’re so freakin’ close now!

Now that you have TetherBot installed on your phone, you’ve added the adb utility to your laptop and you’ve configured FoxyProxy in Firefox you should be able to give this thing a whirl.

These are the steps you’ll need to take each time you launch TetherBot

The port bouncer will let you connect to a single port on a remote host. This works well if you need to establish an SSH tunnel to your home machine.

This should work for TCP only vpns (openvpn can be configured in this mode) but it wont work for Microsoft PPTP (because it’s GRE based) or most typical openvpn setups (because they are UDP based).

and you should be routed through to the server in question.

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Apple has once again demonstrated its precedence for creativity and innovation by launching next generation mobile Phone, the IPhone. Mobile phones once considered luxury have become an integral part of our daily life. Smart phones like Black Berry, IPhone, and Android intend to take mobile phone to next level by positioning them barely as communication device but as portable computing devices. No wonder the change is coupled with advancements and adaption of wireless internet technology. However, the impact of this innovation has transformed our daily lifestyle. No longer we use mobile phones for only staying connected, but we also use it for more trivial tasks including searching web, regularly checking emails, internet messaging, and conducting business transformation. This now allows people to be more connected to their work-life, businesses and the “world”.
The shift to portable computing device has provided an opportunity for enhancing productivity and reliability of businesses. For widespread usage, Apple recently launched App Store, building a marketplace for IPhone native application. As of today, numerous applications are available over Apple store in various categories including business, productivity, sports, games, etc. Though, numerous smart phones existed before: however IPhone touch concept and creative browser simply enhanced the experience resulting in mass adaption to concept.
IPhone applications are not only useful for enhancing personal productivity, but also have widespread usage in business automation application. Let me share few applications that can help enhance sales force automation. We understand various giants like Siebel, http://SalesForce.com, Sugar CRM are providing sales force automation solution etc. Still, IPhone based CRM solution are gaining mass appeal for its ability to further assist sales force in recording sales activity sheet at spot. Instant recording assists in increasing accuracy of reporting, and provide more updated sales view to management. Not only, this will provide quick information for sales managers, but also help sales managers do complex sales territory analysis utilizing GPS based feature. The GPS based sales automation system will not only help in making optimized sales territory allocation, but also more acceptable incentive based pay system. Long story cut short, IPhone present a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs. The opportunities exist for enhancing personal productivity by building applications for track shipments, manage personal finance, manage shopping list, arrange to-do, take personal notes and interact with friends near by.
IPhone applications can be served using standard web-interface or native application. Native application provides more control allowing features including offline access, GPS feature, Accelerometer and access to SQL-lite. Native application can be downloaded from Apple Store. Apple store hosts free as well as paid applications. To evaluate consumer preferences it would be helpful to review few top rated applications. iBowl is most famous IPhone application at apple store, available free of cost to download. The application simulates the bowling experience using accelerometer technology. User can swing the IPhone as a ball, and click on throw button, pushing the ball with the force of the swing. Though the application only measures force and does not take angle into consideration, but still its most highly rated application. The application is not only famous amongst youngsters but also amongst adults. No wonder, the application has just opened a whole new set of opportunities for innovative games, measuring hand gestures.
As opposed to native applications, browser based applications are usual HTML pages optimized for small screens. A large number of web pages are optimized for IPhone. Recently many social networking applications have been optimized for IPhone, including facebook. Facebook application is available both as native as well as HTML version. IPhone , web based interface, is optimized for small screen device like IPhone. The application heavily use custom animations i.e. page moving flying from right to left. The safari browser within IPhone does provide very good Ajax support and custom components.
Despite the global economic recession significant investments are made to transforming applications to Smart phones mainly IPhone. A definite analogy can be made to early transformation of desktop based applications to Web in late 90′s. Analyst feels that, similar to past trend, in late 2000′ all web applications are transformed for Mobile. The transformation has great opportunity for budding entrepreneurs as simple IPhone application can be developed for only 10K US $, with a significant expected return on investment.
Apparently simple looking IPhone applications require sophisticated process to ensure maximum success. In a highly competitive growing market, the success of any application heavily relies on idea. We suggest that due efforts should be put in evaluating idea by doing quick environment scan, competitive analysis and understanding customer needs. Once satisfied, the next step is to build requirement specification / user interface design. You must hire a user experience developer, familiar with IPhone development guidelines, to build design. The user interface will assist investors, innovators, and potential customers visualize product and provide early feedback. Then you should hire IPhone Application developer, who can build IPhone application faster, better and obviously cheaper for you. There are many companies which specialize in building IPhone applications. Please ensure to find register for Apple developer license for 99 US $, as it shall ensure in tracking payments and ensuring intellectual copyrights.

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In November of this year Sun Microsystems moved to “open source” status for Java, after a decade of maintaining proprietary status for the portable programming language. Specifically, Sun has placed Java into the public domain by putting it under GPL – an acronym for General Public License. What this means is that software programmers will have vastly increased freedom to develop programs based on Java and to develop modifications for the language itself.
It also puts Sun into the mainstream with other major platform developers such as Linux. While the company had put its Solaris operating system into open source status some time ago, Java is a highly distributed consumer platform and providing open source access to it gives the company a real boost in its standing among its peers. Perhaps more important, it will stimulate further development of consumer oriented Java-based programs. It is estimated that eight out of every ten cell phones have a Java application running on them.
A GPL use requires that any product developed under such licensure be returned to the “open source community” and remain, in effect accessible to all. Sun’s variation on this principle has an exception for applications built on the Java “Virtual Machine,” a platform that the company made available to software developers some time ago.
What this exception does is allow continued development of proprietary software written for Java, which keeps the language viable as a platform for revenue producing products. Prior to the switch to GPL status, Java program developers had to pay a licensing fee to Sun.
IBM has been after Sun to take Java to open source status for years. Their Works Projects has been a center for the development of open source products, primarily based on Linux. From their perspective, Sun’s decision to grant GPL status for Java is viewed as an opportunity to unite with Linux and provide a stronger platform to challenge Microsoft. The politics of software can be enormously complicated, especially when there’s an elephant like Microsoft in the house. But what Sun has accomplished with this move is provide an opportunity for programmers to zero in on Java products as potentially large revenue sources.
Unlike Linux, which was spun off of UNIX to provide an alternative to Windows, Java stands in a class of its own. While Linux has survived in the marketplace, it has never mounted a major challenge to Windows. Java’s unique qualities and the intellectual property that protects those qualities will now be an open book for programmers developing new applications.
It will also provide the opportunity to bundle Java products with Linux based software. Sun’s internal interest in this move is to stimulate more developers to use the language, in order to revive its own internal software business. Since taking a huge hit in their high-end server market, Sun has been struggling to find a new path and has increasingly looked to software as an opportunity.
Sun’s EVP for software summed up the value of the move for the company and its product. “People have been hesitant to distribute Java worldwide with Linux (distributions) because of (concerns over) license alignment,” Green said. “This is the last gate to ensure that Java will be distributed worldwide.”

Vim and EmacsVim and Emacs are not dedicated development tools, but still, they offer a fair number of features for editing HTML and, in fact, any language you may use for web development. They both support syntax highlighting (HTML, PHP, Python, Perl, CSS and many others) and offer support for editing files on remote machines. Both programs are very versatile and can be extensively customized because they support numerous scripts and extensions to extend their functionality. However, both programs are complex tools and present a very steep learning curve.

OOo Writer/Web (OpenOffice.org web)It’s possible to write a simple web page without knowing any HTML at all using the Open Office own web creation tool. This would be a very basic page indeed, because it does not support CSS or forms, for example. I would not recommend using this tool for a complete web site because the code it produces is sometimes unnecessarily complicated so it could present a nightmare in the future to edit and transform a large project which was initially created with Open Office web. But for a quick page, why not ?

SeaMonkey Composer (ex Netscape Composer, ex Mozilla composer)The Open Source SeaMonkey Composer is based on the venerable Netscape composer, so it’s now incorporated into the SeaMonkey suite. It is a fairly simple WYSIWYG editor which generates clean code – unlike many commercial WYSIWYG editors. Unfortunately, it’s not very powerful and it only partially supports CSS. SeaMonkey Composer is a suitable tool for complete web design beginners who want to create a very basic website.

KompozerAvailable on Linux, Mac and Windows, Kompozer is based on the Mozilla composer so it shares a relatively similar interface. However, it is a much more advanced tool now, while trying to maintain a non-scary approach for new-comers in web design. The documentation is good and the community active, so, if you have questions or problems, help is not far away! While SeaMonkey Composer lacks many features in WYSIWYG mode, with Kompozer you can almost create a complete website staying in pure WYSIWYG mode. Still, if you want to add some code manually, it’s possible to jump in a second between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML, using tabs. The preview mode uses the gecko engine (Mozilla, Firefox) to render web pages. While the code is clean, it will still be necessary to test your web pages against less-compliant web browsers, such as Internet Explorer 6, for example. It’s got an easy-to-use, built-in FTP client to quickly upload files to your webspace. Support for forms, tables, and templates is very good but CSS support isn’t perfect and it doesn’t currently support server-side language like PHP. In conclusion, for the moment, Kompozer rests somewhere between tools like Frontpage (Kompozer produces better code) and Dreamweaver (yes, this is huge gap !): it is a good web development tool, aimed at beginners or intermediate users but it will need more refinement and support for server-side language if it wants to approach the very best web editors available on Windows, for example.

Quanta PlusQuanta Plus is a user-friendly HTML editor and web development tool designed primarly for the K Desktop Environment (although it can run on almost any environment). Unlike Bluefish, Quanta is capable of both WYSIWYG designing and handcoding. It supports a huge number of languages, and its syntax checking and highlighting are excellent. It has code folding and current line highlighting. Features also included are: templates, document structure management, project management, plug-in support, DTD support,etc, integrated FTP client and preview function to let you see the results of your work while you’re working. There is also a commercial variant called Quanta Gold, available on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows, with more features. For Gnome users, the KDE interface of Quanta Plus will look a bit out of place, but overall that’s quite minor (note : this is not the case with Quanta Gold, because it’s based on QT). Quanta Plus is free; Quanta Gold costs US $39.95 (download) and $49.95 (cd set).

Screem Screem is an open source web development environment written for use with the GNOME desktop environment (it can also be used on other windows managers, however). Screem supports Dreamweaver templates and offers a number of wizards to help with the addition of multimedia content. It does not provide a WYSIWYG display of pages and it’s more aimed at advanced users.

BluefishBluefish is a powerful and lightweight open-source editor targeted towards programmers and web designers, with many options to write websites, scripts and programming code. Browser integration is good and it’s got very good support for HTML, CSS, XML, PHP, Pearl, C, JavaScript and even … Pascal or Octave/MATLAB ! As the developers say on their web page, it’s “a what you see is what you need” interface, so it’s not a tool suitable for complete beginners in web design (and it was never meant to be !) and there is no graphical preview (but you can quickly access/launch external browsers by clicking on the relevant icon). One important feature missing is FTP integration. Otherwise, it is by far my favorite editor !AmayaAmaya is the W3C’s -the international consortium which helps develop standards for the World Wide Web – browser and web editor. Although it’s theoretically a WYSIWYG package, the interface is rather confusing and not very well designed. Finally, this program can be relatively unstable.DreamweaverThere is no native version of Dreamweaver on Linux, on which it is officially not supported. However, Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver 8 run well using Wine or Cross-over office. Dreamweaver is the now ultra-dominant web design package available on Windows and Mac OS : it’s often excellent and very expensive.

Magento is the new improved e-commerce platform that gives a superior force to web traders to get rid of obstacles in the way of business process implementations. With downloads surpassing the magical figure of 600,000, Magento is easily the fastest growing commercially available tool for online business solutions.We at Maven Infosoft have solid expertise in working with all leading e-commerce and portal-building platforms and have managed and implemented heavy-duty enterprise-level content management systems. We can safely assert that Magento has outshone all of them.There remain a few uncertainties, as with any growing and emergent platform, in the design and development capabilities that Magento has to offer. The high competence level required means that it is not for all and sundry. Having said that, Magento is by far the most adaptable and compliant e-commerce program to hit the online trading market.In many ways, Magento is not a typical open source solution. It is free to download and use. It does give you the ability to create customize themes and module extensions. It has all the potential for swell in usage and gain in popularity. However, it has a dedicated company supporting its growth. Magento is the product of Varien, an e-commerce design house that seems to benefit from Magento by offering traditional web agency services.Magento is based on a theme based framework with individual layouts, templates and skins, which in turn has greater look and feel customize capability. Once you get the hang of it, creating stores in Magento turns into a piece of cake. Unlike shopping carts and content management systems devoid of themes, this framework elevates Magento to a different level.The comprehensive features available reflect long years of e-commerce experience. Features such as advanced pricing rules, product image zoom, side-by-side comparison and inventory management indicate the strong relevance to marketing functions and requirements. Other features that we approve of are:Ready to go iPhone themeSingle page checkoutAvailability of real time rates from UPS, FedEx and the US Postal ServiceGreat analytics and reportingOne administration panel and product catalog to manage multiple websites/storesCustomer reviewsFlexible coupon rules for flexibility of campaignsLayered and faceted navigation for filteringGoogle Website Optimizer integrationURL rewritesNewsletter managementEasy integration of third party tools using Web APIChoice of more than 50 payment gatewaysOption to up sell during checkoutSelf-generating site mapsFull support for digital and downloadable productsRSS feeds for customers and administrators alikeThough Magento does have simple usage rules including easy handling of the administration interface, it does require developers to have fundamental skills in PHP, MySQL, SOAP, XML, XHTML, Apache and CSS. This is indeed the case for most shopping carts or platforms, but Magento is much more application oriented. Even a standard implementation will have you accessing files and programming code that other simpler platforms do not ask for.All said and done, Magento is an outstanding tool for online commerce and web marketing. It is no less than a boon for leading Internet retailers.If you are looking to design and develop Magento ecommerce store for your business, Maven Infosoft is a one stop helping point for all your requirements. Maven Infosoft is one of the initial starters who work on Magento since its first version. The expertise of Magento developers at Maven Infosoft, serves Magento customers to meet their Enterprise requirements.Maven Infosoft provides services for enterprise Magento theme development, enterprise Magento template design, Magento extensions like Vendor module, Purchase module, accounting module and Magento payment extensions like iVeri, Paymentec, Safepay, Secpay, Secpay 3D secure, DIBS DirectPay, Cardinal Direct, Cardinal 3D secure.As Magento is free open source application, Maven Infosoft also provides free Magento theme, free Magento templates, and free Magento extensions to help Magento grow in terms of ecommerce application.Like Magento, Maven Infosoft is helping internet business to grow further to reach new heights.For more information please refer drop us an email at info@offshoresoftwaredevelopmentindia.com. Address:-Offshore Software Development India406, Shiromani complex,Nr Nehrunagar cross road Nehrunagar,