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NewsForge | Build an IDS with Snort, Shadow, and ACID
“Every organization understands the importance of using a firewall to protect its assets. But what happens if someone finds a hole in the wall? What if the infiltrator is actually someone from within your organization who wants to access information that he shouldn’t? To cover those contingencies, you need an intrusion detection system (IDS) to complement your firewall. Fortunately, with a minimum amount of time and money you can set up an IDS with open source tools such as Snort, Shadow, and ACID.“

Novell Tightens Its Open-Source Embrace
“Novell is continuing its embrace of the open-source community with new hires and the promise of even greater integration with key open-source projects.

Novell Inc. has just hired Jeremy Allison, co-author of the Samba open-source software suite, which delivers file and print services to SMB/CIFS (Server Message Block/Common Internet File System) clients.“

freshmeat.net: Project details for NoMachine NX
“This is the first source snapshot of the NX components that will power the upcoming 1.5.0 release of NX Client and NX Server. This version contains new features that include full support for rootless operation in the X11 agent, continuous operation while disconnected, dynamic handling of the geometry of the remote desktop, full support for 16-bit and 24-bit color modes in RDP sessions, and a new NX transport model that ensures easier integration, reduced overhead, and better performance.“

Infinity Set To Debut First Podcasting Radio Station
“Beginning today, users will be able to upload podcasts of varying lengths for free at www.kyouradio.com where it will be eligible to be selected for broadcast. Programming on the station will be determined by listener interests and feedback, and evaluated on a daily basis.“

Picked this up via Scripting News. Sounds like a neat idea, but it could get a little scary:) The site mentioned right now is a little bare, but it does invite you to upload your podcasts. I couldn’t find any public information about copyright, royalties to podcasters, etc. so there is no way of telling what happens when you upload your stuff. The general terms of use of site are pretty standard, but I wonder, if I upload something, do I lose control of it? Am I signing over copyright? Do I get royalties? Should I just be happy that I’m geting ‘air time’? I’m sure a big opreation like Infinity has thought these things out. It would be nice to share.

Yahoo! Search blog: Saving, Sharing, and Syndicating Search via My Web
“Today, we launched a ‘My Web’, a new personal search engine fully integrated with Yahoo! Search. My Web is based on a very simple principle - a search engine should enable you to define and use the information that’s important to you. Specifically, My Web enables you to find the information relevant to you, save it, share it, add your own notes to it, and easily find it again, whether it’s three days or three months later.“

I’ve been using the beta for several months and it is handy. I stick stuff on it that I need for later, replacing some of the function of my blog.

freshmeat.net: Project details for Floranta
“Floranta provides tools to build collaborative real-time discussion boards, notice boards, and extended chat services that can be embedded in Web pages. It also includes extreme programming tools that allow users to create index cards, drop them on tables and move them, and conduct a distributed planning game collaboratively in real time.“

Internet Week > News > Firefox Used By 1 In 10 Business Professionals > April 26, 2005
“Professionals are using Firefox over IE because they like the browser’s tabbed browsing feature and they see it as less of a security risk than the Microsoft browser,“

We’ve seen IE usage decline from 98.5% to 91.75% since August on the CALi website.

How to Create a Frames Layout with CSS - WebReference.com
“By far the most sought after use of CSS is to emulate the dated html ‘frame’ layout, whereby the header, navigation and footer stay on screen at all times and the content area will scroll. Since the adoption of the fixed position style by the latest browsers this is quite an easy task for CSS. Unfortunately, Internet Explorer hasn’t introduced this style into it’s repertoire (perhaps IE7 will correct this deficiency when it’s released later this year).

Fortunately, there are ways around this and it’s possible to make Internet Explorer versions IE5.01, 5.5 and 6 fall into line with the rest.”

IEBlog : IE7 Transparent PNG Implementation
“My name is Sam Fortiner and I’m a developer on the Internet Explorer team here at Microsoft. I joined the company about a year ago when I was given the opportunity to work on IE. Since then I’ve worked on several aspects of IE and recently settled down into the layout and display team. As part of my work in this team, I implemented support for per-pixel alpha in PNGs.“

Aside from the fact this is avery good explanantion of what it took to get transparent PNG support into IE7, this post alos illustrates evrything that is good about corporate blogging. Indeed the entire IEBlog is a testament to how blogging can be used to connect with customers. We could all learn from this.

Corel adds e-mail client to WordPerfect suite | InfoWorld | News | 2005-04-26 | By Joris Evers, IDG News Service
“The e-mail client is based on Bloomba, which was distributed by San Mateo, California-based Stata Labs until that company was acquired by Yahoo last October. Bloomba was lauded by reviewers as being efficient and easy to use, but it lacked a high profile. Yahoo discontinued distribution of Bloomba after it bought Stata Labs.

Corel was in talks with Stata Labs before it was taken over by Yahoo and has now struck a deal with the Sunnyvale, California, Internet company to distribute Bloomba as WordPerfect Mail, said Richard Carriere, a general manager at Corel. Details of the agreement were not disclosed.“

Pegasus Mail and Linux
“As discontent with Microsoft’s “business practices” grows, we have seen unprecedented interest in alternative solutions for operating systems and applications. As a natural consequence of this, I have received numerous, or maybe even innumerable requests for a Linux version of Pegasus Mail. As a corollary to these requests, I have had a lot of people suggest that I also move to an Open Source basis for maintaining the Pegasus Mail and Mercury source code.

In the past, I have taken a cautious “wait-and-see” approach to the idea of Open Source. I am now willing to accept that it is a valid model, and that it is producing some genuinely excellent packages (such as FireFox, of which I am inordinately fond). Ideologically, I believe that Open Source and I are a good match, and I would like to consider going that way.“

Pegasus Mail has always been one of my favorite windows email clients. I hope David Harris finds away to take it to open source.

In Brief: DoubleClick bought for $1.1 billion | InfoWorld | News | 2005-04-25 | By InfoWorld staff
“Two U.S. private equity firms have bought online advertising company DoubleClick for $1.1 billion, DoubleClick announced Monday. The firms, Hellman and Friedman and JMI Equity, expect to complete the deal in the third quarter. JMI Equity, which focuses on the software and business service industries, will hold a minority interest. Hellman and Friedman sees the acquisition of DoubleClick as an opportunity to extend its online advertising and marketing and data businesses, in part though the recognizable DoubleClick brand as well as utilizing its experienced staff, the company said.“

Forgent sues Microsoft, alleging JPEG patent infringement - Computerworld
“Forgent Networks Inc. has added Microsoft Corp. to the list of companies it has sued alleging infringement of a patent for a data compression technique it claims is used in the JPEG digital image standard.

The lawsuit, filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, comes after Forgent was unable to negotiate a licensing agreement with the software maker, said Michael Noonan, director of investor relations at Forgent.“

freshmeat.net: Project details for TCExam
“TCExam is Web-based software for generating and managing online tests and exams. It simplifies the exam cycle, including generation, execution, evaluation, presentation, and archiving.“

Commercial package using PHP, MySQL to create and admin on line training.

freshmeat.net: Project details for Syntax Desktop
“Syntax Desktop is a publishing system used to manage the contents of a Web site. It has an attractive GUI with DHTML elements. You can use it to insert news, photos, documents, and tree data structures into your site. It features easy DB backup and style switching.“

Good use of DHTM GUI. I really should look into this more. It works in Firefox as well as IE.

Remixing how we use the Open Source desktop
“To understand how to design for proper integration, you need to first explore what people actually use their computers for. Aside from recreational use, the majority of businesses users, and those who actually work on their computers all utilise them within the concept of a project. Within this context, you find users who mentally hook together different applications with the intention of satisfying criteria to achieve a project or goal. This can be demonstrated with a simple use case.“

Servoo.net. Document converter for Web applications
“ServOO allows publishing large, structured and complex documents on the web easily. It converts documents prepared in a word-processor into XHTML for publication on the web. ServOO is based on OpenOffice.org so support many usual formats, for instance rtf, doc, sxw.“

freshmeat.net: Project details for RSS2Cisco
“RSS2Cisco is a server-side script that will convert RSS feeds into Cisco’s IP phone XML format for use as a service.“

In PERL. Displays feeds on the LCD of Cisco IP phones.

Slashdot | Open Source Methods Useful Way Beyond Software
“Former head of policy at the British Prime Minister’s office, Geoff Mulgan, has co-authored a paper on uses of Open Source methods in arenas far beyond the normal Sourceforge universe. The paper is jointly written with Tom Steinberg, head of UK civic hacking fraternity mySociety and explores the use of open source methods to improve academic peer review, drafting of legislation and even media regulation.“

Interestingly enough, this is a position that CALI holds and it is reflected in this year’s conference theme.

Open Access Law: Open Law Reviews
“The left column has changed. Details on why soon…“

Over at Open Access Law, Dan Hunter has removed the listing of ‘Good and Bad Law Reviews‘

I would wonder if it is just a layout issue as alluded to earlier,or if he is getting heat from some of the ‘Bad Law Reviews’? FWIW, I agree with Dan that Law reviews should be more open with access to their articles. I guess we’ll just wait and see.

Google service compiles users’ search history | IDGNS | News | 2005-04-20 | By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
“To assist users in looking for previously found, but now misplaced, Web site links, Google will introduce on Wednesday a new service that logs users’ Web search queries on www.google.com and the results they click on.“