Open Source Business

February 9, 2009

Quick custom text ad placement in WordPress blog categories

Filed under: wordpress — Tags: categories, text ad, wordpress — tina @ 2:48 pm

WordPress plugins abound for Google AdSense and other third-party text ad brokers, but what happens when someone wants to buy ad space directly from you, on a specific category page in your blog? You can easily add static HTML text ads to your category search result pages by creating category-specific page templates.

Because most WordPress themes have a single template for archives, aptly named archive.php, it’s not immediately apparent how to place a text ad on a specific category results page. But never fear: by default, WordPress searches using what it calls a “template hierarchy.” By taking advantage of the template hierarchy, it’s easy to make a special page that keeps your text ad where it belongs.

The template hierarchy works like this: if your visitor clicks on category #3, WordPress first looks for the most specific template: category-3.php. If it doesn’t find that, then it goes after the more generic category.php, and then archive.php, and if it doesn’t find that, it finally drops back to index.php. Armed with this knowledge, you can create a category-specific template using archive.php as a base. (Note: your categories probably have actual names, not numbers, but WordPress assigns ID numbers to categories, just as it does with pages and posts. If you don’t know the ID numbers off the top of your head, look in the administration panel under Manage -> Categories; the numbers are in that first column.)

To create your custom category page, open a copy of the archive.php file in a text editor and save it with a name that matches whatever category number you want to display the ad in — category-#.php. Place the static text ad into your new category-specific PHP file by surrounding the HTML code with <div id="sticky-snip"></div>. Then paste that snippet, including the div tags, into the file, directly under this line of code: <?php get_header(); ?> , as in this example. Save the file, upload it to wp-content/themes/your_theme, and you’re done.

Granted, this is static code in a dynamic page and therefore not the most elegant solution, but it works. You PHP wizards out there might have a better way to write this, especially for situations where you need to publish several different ads in different categories. In that case, we welcome your suggestions — or a new plugin.

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January 16, 2009

Open source business plan for Mindquarry

Filed under: open source business model — Tags: community, mindquarry, open source, subscription model, tina gasperson, trieloff — tina @ 12:27 am

Lars Trieloff was already familiar with open source software before he launched Mindquarry as a business based on it. Trieloff studied in Germany at the Hasso Platner Institute, where he received a degree in software systems engineering. During that time he noticed that, outside of the software development industry, true collaborative efforts didn’t happen often, and when they did, there often wasn’t an efficient and user-friendly way to conduct that collaboration.

“I had the idea to create collaborative software that combines aspects from software systems such as wikis, version control systems, issue tracking systems, and mailing lists,” Trieloff says. “I was accustomed to using these tools, and I found it irritating that collaboration outside of the software development industry did not work. [At one job,] after spending a week setting up version control, wiki, and bug tracking, I was frustrated, because I could not convince my co-workers to use these tools, no matter how productive we might have been. Their complexity and power made them nearly unusable.”

That’s when he got the idea for Mindquarry. Mindquarry is open source, collaborative, and easy to use, says Trieloff. It’s designed to remove the usability barrier.

After the usability barrier comes what Trieloff calls “data lock-in. We allow our users to cross this barrier by offering an open REST API and standards-based storage. The third barrier is lock-out of users due to restrictive proprietary licenses. With our participatory open source model we are tearing down this third barrier.

“My original idea was not to make [it] open source,” he says. “I already had gathered experience as a user, contributor, and developer in open source, but had not thought about the business opportunities in open source until my co-founders Alexander Saar and Alexander Klimetschek and our investor pointed me in this direction. It then became obvious: what the world needs is not only better software for supporting the teamwork of knowledge workers, but that in order to make the software useable by everyone, we had to remove all barriers.”

Trieloff says he’s on the pragmatic side of the open source philosophy. “We are offering open source, not because I believe software must be free, but because I believe it is the best option for customer and vendor,” he says. “Since the late 1990s I have been using open source software. My first real open source software was PHP3 and MySQL. I chose them not because they were free, but because they gave me options to develop software that other proprietary systems did not have. This, of course, was a result of freedom, but freedom was not what made my decision.”

Mindquarry will generate profits through a subscription model through which customers receive maintenance and support. “For our enterprise customers this removes another barrier: uncertainty when dealing with community-created software.” Mindquarry is also available in a hosted version where small companies can, for a fee, take advantage of a pre-installed version of Mindquarry that resides on remote servers.

Trieloff says the idea of community is the most important aspect of launching a business based on open source. “If you are using open source software internally on mission-critical systems, or starting a company on this software, make sure to be involved in the community,” he says. He also cautions that “the community that creates large parts of the software must be understood to keep your requirements and the development in sync. Without your contribution, the community will hardly create the software you need.”

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December 28, 2008

Four Twitter clients for Linux

Filed under: linux — Tags: linux, opera, twitter, twitter client — tina @ 1:11 pm

Twitter is a social networking platform that keeps you in conversation by allowing you and your friends to follow each others’ updates. The service lets users post and read 140-character updates, called tweets. With Twitter, you can do social networking on the fly, from your mobile phone or at your desktop, from a Web browser or a Twitter client. Twitter clients make the service more usuable by automatically checking for updates from your friends and allowing you to easily post your own updates. I tested four Twitter clients for Linux on a desktop running Ubuntu Hardy Heron.

gTwitter

gTwitter 1.0 is nothing fancy, and that’s a good thing. This lightweight, easy-to-install, and easy-to-use Twitter client for GNOME is as simple as it could be. It displays updates from your friends or from the public timeline, which is all Twitter users’ updates, automatically, right in the gTwitter application. You can choose to see tweets themselves, or just view a summary of who has updated recently. You post your own updates from the status box at the bottom of the window.

The only thing that might make gTwitter too simple for some is its lack of an option for audible tweet notifications. For others, however, it might be nice to work without hearing a ding every few minutes that tempts you to stop what you’re doing and see what’s happening on Twitter. If you need to keep up with tweets and the lack of audible notifications is a problem, just set gTwitter to “always on top,” instead of the default behavior, which hides the window whenever you click on another window.

Developers say the project, written in Mono/C# and licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, is still in beta. Direct message viewing and the ability to log tweets are near the top of the development priority list.

Twitux

Twitux 0.62 is another simple Twitter client for GNOME. It seems a bit quirky on first take; the client refuses to wrap tweets to conform to the size of the window. I had to scroll sideways the first time I ran Twitux. It looked better after a system restart, but it still cut off the right side of any tweets longer than one line.

Even worse, Twitux doesn’t have a built-in posting window. Instead, you have to go into the menu options or press Ctrl-N to be able to post. Twitux also doesn’t offer an easy way to reply to a tweet, instead forcing you to enter the username you’re looking for manually. Most other clients automate the process of replying and sending direct messages.

Twitux does offer a popup notification when you receive new tweets. You can select how often you’d like Twitux to check for new updates, and you can have it check only your friends’ updates or only the public timeline. Twitux also has a spellcheck feature that comes in handy if you’re concerned about making sure your tweets are spelled correctly.

Twitux is currently buggy, but it will be worth taking another look at when it’s no longer in beta.

TwitBin

TwitBin, which is a cross-platform Firefox add-on, sits as a sidebar in your browser, always visible while you’re browsing but not getting in your way. TwitBin features a clickable @ by each user’s avatar, making it easy to reply to a specific user. It also displays a clickable link to each user’s Web site (if available). Like the other clients, you can decide whether to get updates from just your friends or the entire Twitter universe, and you can determine how often you’d like to receive the updates. TwitBin autowraps tweets and shortens links to keep everything nicely formatted in the sidebar. However, you can also enlarge TwitBin up to half the width of your browser window, narrow it to about one-fifth the width, or choose any size in between.

Twitter widget for Opera

For anyone who browses with Opera, the Twitter widget for Opera is the best of the bunch. To install, simply click the Launch button on the widget’s page on Opera.com. Enter your login name and password, and you’re set.

Opera’s Twitter widget looks and works great. You can drag this widget anywhere; it’s not confined to the sidebar. You can set it to remain “always on top” or to behave like a normal application window, and you can resize the widget to make it larger.

The Twitter widget for Opera doesn’t come with many options, but you don’t need many. It checks your friends’ updates by default, keeps a record of your updates, and makes it easy to view and create replies and direct messages. Click on a Twitter user’s avatar or username, and Opera opens the user’s profile page on Twitter.com.

The only thing missing from Opera’s Twitter client is an automatic link shrinker. Also, you have to keep Opera open or the client will shut down. This one’s a keeper, though, and is my Twitter client of choice.

Conclusion

Is there a single best of show among these clients? If you like using Opera, its Twitter widget is my top recommendation. If you’re using Firefox, you can’t go wrong with TwitBin. gTwitter is a good, general, easy-to-use client. For now, I recommend not using Twitux, but that may change as the application matures.

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November 6, 2008

Three Firefox extensions for Gmail

Filed under: linux,windows — Tags: addons, firefox, gmail, open source, plugins, tina gasperson — tina @ 2:53 pm

Gmail, Google’s popular Web mail application, is already full of useful features all on its own. But Firefox users can further customize Gmail with a variety of add-ons. Some only change the appearance, while others add functionality that makes Gmail more like a personal planner than just a plain old email application. Let’s take a look at three Firefox add-ons for Gmail. (more…)

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October 31, 2008

Asterisk awakens open source love in telecom entrepreneur

Filed under: asterisk — Tags: asterisk, entrepreneur, linux, marc fribush, open source, telephony — tina @ 8:43 pm

Marc Fribush, a former “Microsoft guy,” is a telecommunications industry entrepreneur who discovered the benefits of open source when he launched a turnkey SAAS telephony business based on Asterisk. “It’s really powerful stuff,” Fribush says. (more…)

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October 30, 2008

Linux Today Managing Editor Carla Schroder

Filed under: open source business model — Tags: carla schroder, linux, linuxtoday.com — tina @ 1:15 am

arla Schroder says she just “kind of wandered into” her current life as a free software advocate and well-known IT journalist. “I don’t have much in the way of formal education. But I’ve always been mechanically inclined – your classic ripping things apart and figuring out how they work. I think that makes open source a natural fit for me.” (more…)

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October 23, 2008

A business built on open source, virtualization, and clouds

Filed under: open source business model — tina @ 6:42 pm

ReadyTechs provides network support services for companies that don’t want the expense of hiring and caring for their own employees. Now CEO Gerry Libertelli says the company is using Linux virtualization to open a new income stream based on cloud computing. (more…)

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August 8, 2008

Software configuration management built on OSS gives Virtusa a competitive advantage

Filed under: free software,gpl,open source,open source business,open source business model — Tags: gpl, licensing fees, open source, sahana, tina gasperson, virtusa — tina @ 6:14 pm

Virtusa, an IT services company founded in 1996, was using proprietary version control and collaboration systems to develop software for its clients until Sri Lankan founder Kris Canekeratne decided that a custom solution built on open source components was a better fit for internal use. As a result, the company ended up saving millions of dollars on licensing fees and acquisition costs. (more…)

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June 21, 2008

May 6, 2008

Thingamablog makes client-side blogging easy

Filed under: content management,java,linux — Tags: blogging, client-side, java, linux, open source, software, windows — tina @ 2:56 pm

Thingamablog is a cross-platform GPL blogging application that lets you create, update, and maintain multiple blogs from the client side. Thingamablog even acts as its own FTP client when you’re ready to publish or update your blog with new content. The software is easy enough for beginners to use, but sophisticated enough that veteran bloggers will appreciate it too. (more…)

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