Open source most likely has a solution for all of your software needs, including a vocabulary server to manage controlled taxonomies, thesauruses, and, of course, vocabularies. The great news is that one exists and it is called TemaTres. Some open source software has the misfortune of never being updated by its developers, but it was recently updated, “TemaTres 1.7 Released: Now With Meta-Terms And SPARQL Endpoint.”
Here is what you can expect in the newest release:
On Monday, September 23, the President of Estonia, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, gave the key note address at the United Nations panel discussion entitled “A Secure and Free Internet.” That day he was also hailed in a thorough profile on Buzzfeed as “The President of Twitter.”
Today Ilves spoke about Internet freedom and cybersecurity at Columbia University, as part of their World Leaders Forum, with the authority and expertise of a university professor, complete with a patterned bow tie. His talk this afternoon was basically an introductory lecture on modern warfare and the philosophy of informational technologies, punctuated by references to the books taught in Columbia College's common core curriculum.
Ilves compared the Internet revolution to “a sped up version of industrialization.” After going on a technological tangent, he half-heartedly apologized, but pointed out that, “we will all have to know a little bit of technology in order to survive in the future.”
How did he become such a vocal influence and thought leader, online and off, in Internet politics and cybersecurity? Ilves himself traces it back to 2007, when Estonia became the first target—or at least the first target to go public with the information—of cyberattacks motivated by politics.
In an op-ed for the New York Times earlier this year, Ilves wrote that the 2007 attacks were in fact a “blessing—Estonia took cybersecurity seriously earlier than most.”
We love open source, not just because they offer free software and save us money, but also because the community downright rocks. Here is another reason open source rules from Datamation: “50 Noteworthy New Open Source Apps.” Datamation likes to compile a list of open source apps every once in a while to help its readers be knowledgeable about the latest projects because new ones pop up everyday. When they were making the list they found these interesting trends:
“First was the sheer volume of projects surrounding JavaScript and Web development. Many of these relate to the creation of mobile apps and/or HTML5 technology. The second trend is closely related to the first—cross-platform or platform-independent apps. Web-based apps that will work on any operating system are becoming much more common than those designed for a particular OS. Last is the trend toward open source principles spreading beyond software. Every project on the list includes open source code, but in some cases that code is being used to write an open source book or to do open source science where anyone is welcome to participate.”
Browse through the list and you will find everything from database tools to Web development, which takes up more than half the list. Beyond basic development tools, there are apps for fonts, games, videos, task management, and forums. Some of the apps require a little code savvy, while others can be downloaded with zero to none. We love useful lists here and this is one of the best we have found.
If you have SharePoint responsibilities, you know how fabulous Microsoft’s Swiss Army knife solution is. Let me explain. The “fabulousness” applies to consultants, integrators, and “experts” who can make the rusty blade cut better than it does once the system is installed.
I learned about “SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool” from one of the ArnoldIT SharePoint experts. You can download tool to test out and debug search queries against the SharePoint 2013 REST API. The tool does not help improve either the system or the user queries, but I find this software interesting for three reasons:
After years of Microsoft innovation, there are still issues with getting relevant results. Ergo the open source tool.
SharePoint does not provide a native administrative function to perform this type of testing.
Open source may be edging toward SharePoint. If the baby steps mature, will an open source snap in to replace the wild and crazy Fast Search & Transfer technology pop into being?
Stephen E Arnold, one of the world’s leading experts in information retrieval said:
Fast Search is on a technical par with SharePoint. The idea that two flawed systems can cope with changing user needs, Big Data, and unexpected system interactions is making SharePoint software which boosts costs. Change may be forced on Microsoft and without warning.
Worth thinking about and checking out the free widget.
IBM is a respected technology company and it appears that hardly anything can bad can be said about them. There comes a time when every company must admit they have a fault in their product and IBM must step up to the plate this time. The news comes to us from Secunia, a Web site that monitors technology security, in the warning, “Security Advisory SA54460-IBM Content Analytics With Enterprise Search Multiple Vulnerabilities.”The warning is labeled as moderately critical and should worry organizations that use the software to manage their data. The bug messes with cross site scripting, manipulates data, exposes sensitive information, and a DoS.
Here is the official description:
“IBM has acknowledged a weakness and multiple vulnerabilities in IBM Content Analytics with Enterprise Search, which can be exploited by malicious people to disclose certain sensitive information, conduct cross-site scripting attacks, manipulate certain data, and cause a DoS (Denial of Service).”
Ouch! IBM must not be happy about this, but at least they discovered the problem and Content Analytics users can expect a patch at some point. Hate to bring up Microsoft at this venture, but whenever a big company has a problem I can’t help but think about how Microsoft never has a product launch without some issues. IBM is reliable and hopefully they will not go down the same path as Windows 8.
Open source is cutting across the world as solution revolution. It is making technology cheaper and more widely available. It could have positive far reaching consequences in education and aerospace technology, but all revolutions need a little help getting off the ground.
“Open source projects need all the help they can get. If not with funding, then with volunteers contributing to open source programming and free tools they can brandish. Search engines tuned with algorithms to find source code for programming projects are among the tools for the kit bag. While reusing code is a much debated topic in higher circles, they could be of help to beginner programmers and those trying to work their way through a coding logjam by cross-referencing their code.”
Makeuseof.com points to the article, “Open Source Matters: 6 Source Code Search Engines You Can Use For Programming Projects” that lists code search engines to help developers out in their projects. Ohloh Code is one of the largest code search engines with over ten billion code lines in its system. It allows users to search by different code classes, but currently it does not support regular expressions. SearchCode searches through open source communities such as Github, SourceForge, and CodePlex. Amazingly, a single person maintains it. For those who have code with special symbols, Google and other engines cannot cut it. That is where Symbol Hound sniffs around the Net for odd character.
There are a few more code search engines described in the article, but head on over to read it on your own. Code search engines are indicative of the open source mentality-share and spread the wealth.
Whitney Grace, September 06, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search
Citing freedom and security concerns, the makers of Replicant are calling for donations, we learn from “Fundraising a Fully Free Fork of Android” at Boing Boing. The project hopes to give us all the choice to run our Android-based mobile devices entirely upon free software.
But wait, you ask, isn’t Android is already open source? Well, most of it, but a few “key non-free parts” keep our Android devices tethered to proprietary programs. Such parts, they say, include the layer that communicates with hardware; yes, that would be pretty important.
Also of concern to Replicant developers are the pre-loaded applications that some of us call “bloatware,” but upon which many users have come to rely. The team plans to develop free software that provides the same functionality. (I hope they also include the option to delete applications without them returning uninvited. That would be a nice change.) Furthermore, they have set up rival to the Google Play store, their app repository called F-Droid. That repository, the article notes, works with all Android-based systems.
The write-up summarizes:
“Mobile operating systems distributed by Apple, Microsoft, and Google all require you to use proprietary software. Even one such program in a phone’s application space is enough to threaten our freedom and security — it only takes one open backdoor to gain access. We are proud to support the Replicant project to help users escape the proprietary restrictions imposed by the current major smartphone vendors. There will still be problems remaining to solve, like the proprietary radio firmware and the common practice of locking down phones, but Replicant is a major part of the solution.”
Replicant is underpinned by copyrighted software that has been released under an assortment of free licenses, which their site links to here. This is an interesting initiative, and we have a couple of questions should it be successful: Will Google’s mobile search revenues come under increased pressure? What happens if Samsung or the Chinese mobile manufacturers jump on this variant of Android? We shall see.
