Replacing FPSS with Views Slideshow in Drupal – Tutorial

I have been using FrontPage SlideShow from JoomlaWorks on a number of sites, and would recommend it as a good CSS/PHP route to building a featured slide section that links to promoted content, articles, blog posts, groups, etc. One problem is that it is not free, the cost is around $35 for a license to use it on 5 to 10 domains. A second problem is highlighted by the example of releasing an installation profile for Drupal. We can release all of the code under GPL for the project except for FPSS. So, I began working on a conversion of our FPSS slides into Views Slideshow views.

The easiest way is to create a new content type, for example “slide,” and disable comments, post information, front page promotion, etc. Decide which size you would like to standardize all the images at, and then create a simple div structure with the image only as content. You can create a “views slideshow” view, sort only the “slide” content type, save it as a block or create a panels views block and embed it on a panels page. Use block or panels permissions to control the display. This is fine if you are using only images or banners made in photoshop that combine text and images, but if you want the to be text editable, viewable by search engines, and style-able by CSS, you will need to build a more complex template for your “slide” content type.

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Web Advertising Options for Bloggers & Independent Publishers

Can a blogger or independent publisher expect to cover the costs of managing their website through advertising? With shared hosting costing generally from $3 to $6 per month, and innumerable free blog sites available, unless your site is in the Technorati Top 100 blogs or frequently featured on the front page of Digg, the basic costs of site management should be minimal. Nevertheless, despite the “adSense Empire” stories that circulate on the web, and undeniable success stories of popular sites earning from PPC advertising, most blogs likely earn less than $10 per month in adSense revenue on average. This is a safe call, considering that the New York Times has reported that 95% of all the blogs on the web are abandoned.

While it may be easy to earn enough in PPC advertising to cover the costs of hosting the blog, most people will never even begin to approach earning enough through this method so that it actually covers the cost of their time put into blogging or developing the site’s theme. Nevertheless, there are a lot of advertising options available for independent publishers and bloggers that could make their site more interesting to browsers who have become accustomed to seeing the same adSense ads on every blog and every page of the web. While there is really no reason to abandon adSense in your pages, it could be beneficial to mix up the advertising copy by pulling in ads from other sources across the web.

The following list includes some of the best web advertising opportunities for independent publishers & bloggers. All of these solutions will scale with your site, and are suitable for both small single-user blogs, forums, & wikis, as well as large multi-user social networks and communities.

1) Google adSense: https://www.google.com/adsense
“Maximize revenue from your online content”

“Display targeted Google ads on your website’s content pages and earn from valid clicks or impressions. AdSense gives you access to Google’s vast network of advertisers, so you can show ads that are suited to your audience’s interests.”

2) Commission Junction – http://www.cj.com/
+ “a global leader in Affiliate Marketing, Online Marketing, and Search Engine Marketing”

“Drive quality results and extend your reach by partnering with affiliate marketing’s most productive network of publishers. Further increase sales by complementing your customized affiliate marketing program with a fully-managed and integrated, comprehensive search engine marketing solution.”

3) PepperJam Network – http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/
+ “Join the Affiliate Marketing Revolution!”

“Pepperjam is one of the true pioneers of affiliate marketing having started out as an affiliate and then successfully building one of the largest, most respected and recognizable full-service internet marketing agencies in the United States. Pepperjam has been managing and consulting with affiliates and merchants on how to build successful and sustainable affiliate marketing businesses for nearly a decade.”

4) Text-Link-Ads.com – http://text-link-ads.com/
+ “Make more money by selling text based ads”

“Join over 40,000 publishers monetizing their sites. Connect with our large and growing client base Maintain editorial control over ads placed on your site Get paid instantly on the 1st of each month with no fees. Search our massive publisher base to: -Generate targeted traffic to your website -Improve your natural search engine rankings Only advertisements from Text Link Ads can do both!”

5) OpenX - http://www.openx.org/
+ “Take control of your advertising.”

“OpenX Market is a powerful and independent monetization platform. It helps publishers maximize the price of their ad inventory and helps advertisers gain access to highly targeted, premium inventory. OpenX’s unique technology platform provides you with a complete foundation for building your online advertising business. Use OpenX Ad Server to power your advertising in highly innovative and flexible ways.”

6) Yahoo Publisher Network – http://publisher.yahoo.com/
+ “Build the Power & Innovation of Yahoo! into Your Web Site”

“EARN REVENUE FROM YOUR WEB SITE. Simply display ads that are relevant to the content of your site and earn money from qualified clicks. No investment is required and setup is quick and easy. If your site generates between two and 20 million page views monthly, you may be eligible for a customized program and dedicated account management.”

7) Amazon Affiliates / AmaSense Ads – https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
+ “The web’s most popular and successful Affiliate Program”

“Link to Amazon or Endless products, your favorite destinations, search results, or any other page on Amazon. Want something that stands out and provides rich content and an interactive experience to people visiting your web page? Feature any Amazon products in a self-contained online store embedded directly within your web page.”

8) Microsoft Live Search Advertising – Microsoft pubCenter Beta Program – http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher
+ “Web Site Owners: Earn Money with Microsoft Ads on Your Web Site”

“The Microsoft pubCenterBeta offers you the chance to include advertising from one of the leading online advertising networks on your web site. With the pubCenterBeta you can: Place ads on your web site—realizing revenue potential with relevant ads targeted to your audience, Customize ads to the look and feel of your web site, Gain access to one of the largest advertising networks, delivering high-quality ads, Monitor performance with a variety of tracking features. As a beta user, you’ll also have the opportunity to earn money and influence the direction of this new advertising marketplace.”

9) Miva – http://www.miva.com/
+ “Recently acquired by Adknowledge – leading performance advertising networks”

“A pioneer in performance marketing, MIVA launched pay-per-click advertising in 1999 and currently delivers performance-based solutions to thousands of advertisers and publishers. MIVA helps advertisers find highly targeted customers, where they pay only for the quality leads that MIVA delivers. MIVA helps distribution partners monetize their page views with relevant performance advertisements.”

10) Bidvertiser – http://www.bidvertiser.com/
+ “Pay Per Click Advertising On Sites Of Your Choice”

“Display the BidVertiser text ads on your website or blog, get paid for every click and have the payments sent directly to your PayPal account… Make money with affiliate program that pays you for every click. You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10.”

11) Adbrite – http://www.adbrite.com/
+ “The Internet’s Ad Marketplace”

“Get ads from thousands of advertisers, including top brands. AdBrite can help you monetize your site with advertising that fits the content and user base of your site. Our base of advertisers includes top brands like Live Nation, GM, AT&T and Verizon—at the same time, AdBrite serves ads on nearly 1 billion pages daily, providing massive scale opportunities.”

12) AffiliatesGarage – http://www.affiliatesgarage.com
+ displays ClickBank & PayDotCom Text Ads on a Website.

“Promoting high-paying affiliate products that are relevant to your websites’ content is a great way to monetize your websites or blog. However, this process involves setting up a product list and constantly changing the list to match your content. It can also get quite expensive… Luckily, AffiliatesGarage.com makes this process effortless.”

13) Chitka – http://chitika.com
+ “Turning Page Views into Profits” – Search Targeted Advertising

“Founded in 2003, Chitika (pronounced CHIH-tih-ka), is a full-service on-line advertising network serving over 2 billion monthly impressions across more than 30,000 websites. For advertisers and media buyers, Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue.”

14) Kontera – http://kontera.com
+ “Delivering Relevant In-Text Results”

“Kontera’s advanced In-Text Pay Per Click Advertising solutions guarantee the highest degree of relevancy between content, keywords and ads. Unduplicated Reach, Strong Relevancy and ROI, & Higher Click-Through Rates – Kontera´s Contextual Advertising is based on sophisticated technology which enables real- time analysis of static or dynamic content.”

15) Quigo – http://quigo.com
+ “Targeted Ads – Your Way”

“Quigo® Technologies, Inc. is a wholly-owned division of AOL® and a Platform-A company. Quigo Sponsored Listings, Quigo’s content-targeted text links, are distributed to the AdSonar network. The AdSonar network includes many of the web’s most recognized sites including AOL Money & Finance, TMZ.com, Engadget, CNNMoney.com, TIME.com, People.com, ESPN.com and many more. Quigo Sponsored Listings offer advertisers multiple targeting options for their campaigns; including national and local targeting by vertical category, site, individual page, section, topic, and/or keyword.”

Mullenweg: Biggest WordPress.com Mistake – “Buying Servers”

WordPress Guru & Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg gave a speech at the recent GigaOm’s Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, where he spoke on cloud computing and wordpress.com’s server infrastructure. The speech was reported on by Rich Miller at datacenterknowledge.com. According to the report, Mullenweg said, “The biggest mistake we made with the Wordpress.com infrastructure was actually buying servers… (buying servers was ) not a utility. Now we lease them all on a month-to-month basis.” According to the presentation, WordPress.com runs “about 5 million sites serving more than 1 billion page views a month. Automattic uses two data center providers, the dedicated hosting specialists ServerBeach (PEER 1) and Layered Technologies.”

Mullenweg went on to say he viewed WordPress.com’s use of Amazon’s S3 storage system “a failure” because it represented a lack of an open source alternative. “When I have to go to the cloud, I consider that a failure. The thing that’s been most exciting to me is how the open source tools have evolved.” The summary, for those who would like to learn from the experience of running one of the most highly trafficked, multi-user blog sites on the internet? Use leased servers rather than investing in your own data center, that way you can keep on the latest and most up to date boxes without having to cover the cost of the perpetual upgrades, management staff for the data center, and infrastructure / backup facilities.

Month to month leasing also keeps open the negotiation options for a large hosting account like WordPress when dealing with service providers, rather than getting locked into a long term contract or HR staffing issue. This makes a lot of sense. For example, I recently looked into opening a data center in India based around Virident Eco Ram servers, 4 at around $5000 each. Add office space in an Indian IT Park ($400-$500 p/month), backup power supply and power synchronizers ($5000), cooling system ($2500), 24 hour sys admin staff ($36-$40,000 p/year), internet backbone connection ($1250-$2000 p/year?), utilities ($100-$150 p/month), etc. and the total quickly adds up. Granted you likely do not need 24 hour sys admin for 4 servers, but how to maintain a data center without on-site security and maintenance? Compare this total cost to what you would receive over a similar time period with leased servers. Easy math.

This is why Mullenweg ended up advising start-ups, small development companies, and media groups not to try to compete with what the major tech companies are doing with web infrastructure. “My challenge to everyone competing with Amazon, Google and Microsoft is to remember that you’re competing with Amazon, Google and Microsoft,” he said. “These are strong technology companies, and if you’re going to compete with them, open source is the only way to do that. Otherwise, you have no leverage.”

What then is the “open source equivalent” of a cloud server, when one of the main aspects to the cloud is “utility banks” of grid servers that can expand and contract around the traffic needs of an individual site? With shared, leased, or dedicated servers you are renting a fixed amount of disk space or a set number of machines. It is the ability to scale to meet the highest peak demand, digg-effect, etc. that the cloud is delivering through mass, corporate data banks. Unless someone develops a “distributed computing” model of sharing cpu resources across a network to freely scale in times of peak traffic, and many “open source” servers joined together to share resources in this way, I don’t see an exact “open source equivalent” to the grid. Maybe it is Bittorrent, LimeWire P2P networks, but the performance there is a lot different from Akamai or RackSpace.

Mullenweg recommended the nginx web server for load balancing:

“nginx has been running for more than four years on many heavily loaded Russian sites including Rambler (RamblerMedia.com).
In March 2007 about 20% of all Russian virtual hosts were served or proxied by nginx.
According to Google Online Security Blog year ago nginx served or proxied about 4% of all Internet virtual hosts.
2 of Alexa US Top100 sites use nginx.
According to Netcraft in December 2008 nginx served or proxied 3.5 millions virtual hosts. And now it is on 3rd place (not counting in-house Google server) and ahead of lighttpd.
According to Netcraft in March 2009 nginx served or proxied 3.06% busiest sites.
According to Netcraft in May 2009 nginx served or proxied 3.25% busiest sites.
Here are some of success stories: FastMail.FM, Wordpress.com.”

Source: http://nginx.net/

Optimizing a dedicated server for a high traffic site and “cloud hosting” are very different undertakings. An open source alternative to this aspect of “the cloud” would involve users sharing their CPU cycles with other users around the world or locally on the same network during peak traffic or spinning off virtual clones of the site during overflow to another machine to handle the load. There would seem to be a number of security issues that would arise, and ultimately, somewhere there has to be charity – people giving up their processing power and bandwidth when it is not being used, sharing empty, allocated disk space – entire websites at the end of a torrent, mirrored on different servers. Right now it is basically the SETI Screensaver as a model of the open cloud.

If you have your own data center or dedicated cluster, Apache Hadoop is an open source distributed option: http://hadoop.apache.org/core/

Related: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00193ED1V01Y200905CAC006

Read the full Article: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/06/25/mullenweg-open-source-trumps-the-cloud/

Game Changing Communication Tools: Earth Class Mail & Google Voice

Recently, I have been looking into personal productivity and communication tools to upgrade our office network to be more “cloud” based and remote-hosted for inter-office flexibility & backup security. Last year, I researched quite a bit into Zimbra and IP-PBX based phone systems like trixbox and asterisk, but for whatever reason, did not feel these engaging enough to warrant the time & investment for a platform shift. This year there are two new products that have emerged as really “game changing” options for mobile professionals who frequently travel, work out of multiple offices, and need to maintain an integrated channel of communication for international business clients. The first is “Earth Class Mail” a eco-friendly mail service that will aggregate all of your snail mail to one business address, where you can choose which ones to shred, scan, or forward. The second is Google Voice, still unreleased, which will allow you to forward all of your telephone numbers to one number, voice mail, & inbox, and also to create email text transcriptions from conversations & messages.

Earth Class Mail:

“Earth Class Mail is changing how postal mail is delivered, for the betterment of individuals, businesses, national post offices, and the planet. Instead of making physical postal deliveries that are so dependent on fuel for planes and trucks, we deliver postal mail online, where people can manage it instantly, anywhere in the world. No matter where our customers are, they simply log in to their secure Earth Class Mail account to view scanned images of their mail envelopes. They then decide which items to have opened and securely scanned so they can read the contents online, and which items should be recycled, shredded, archived, or forward-shipped to them wherever they’re located – all with a few clicks of a mouse.”

Earth Class Mail has personal and small business accounts that look basically identical. The standard charge is going to be around $250 per year for a basic account, where you will have to pay extra (around $1.50) for every piece of mail scanned, and an additional charge for the mail forwarding or extra volume. For $500 per year, you get a bit higher of a limit on the details, around 50 included scans, etc. but still also have to pay for the mail forwarding based on location. This service is much more cost efficient for local delivery, and ECM gives you a choice of addresses to register for your inbox. Digging deeper into Earth Class Mail, I found they are doing some advanced research into automating all of this with robotics and have already inked a deal with the Swiss National Post to offer the service at a governmental level. With the rise of Googlers to the Obama cabinet, and the tech innovators working there from other sources, this may be a very visible and doable “IT upgrade” of the US infrastructure that gets implemented officially at the Post Office level soon.

The main worry I would have with this system is its stability, as they say the Post service is the bedrock of reliability as far as governmental utilities go, and an alliance with Earth Class Mail on this level takes most of that worry away. Nevertheless, I have heard that they are closing offices and selling operations during the downturn, and obviously that is the critical issue along with security for a business looking to commit to this system. From what I can gather, it is more of an interest of the start-up investors to “sell out” to a large company like Fed Ex or UPS who can take the service to the next level of popularity, rather than a dissolution issue, that is driving the sale. The service is fairly reasonably priced for entry level users, but there is really no other comparable communication package that can so completely transform the snail mail inbox as Earth Class Mail.

Google Voice:

“Google Voice is a service that gives you one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, and many enhanced calling features like call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls, and more.”

One number for all your calls and SMS

• Call screening – Announce and screen callers
• Listen in – Listen before taking a call
• Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
• SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
• Place calls – Call US numbers for free
• Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
• Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
• Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts

• Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says
• Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone
• Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS
• Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller
• Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails

More cool things you can do with Google Voice

• Conference calling – Join people into a single call
• Call record – Record calls and store them online
• Call switch – Switch phones during a call
• Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile
• GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance
• Manage groups – Set preferences by group

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFVXAqFNgic

Google Voice looks to be about as good of a digital service for telephone use as Earth Class Mail is for snail mail, bringing it all into a web interface for easy management and extension. Both are perfect illustrations of the arguments put out by Marshall McLuhan in chapter one of “Understanding Media”. Snail mail and telephone management are still hold-outs from most people’s digital toolbox. I see these both as “game changers,” like the smart grid, because of the innovative way they remix the old content into cloud applications functioning remotely on the web (”sky-net“).

Along with Google Voice, I am also considering the upgrade to Google Apps Premium: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html

At only $50 per year for a single user, it is reasonably priced but doesn’t seem to include too much more than the already available and free tools like gmail, gchat, video chat, calendar, documents, etc. etc. from Google. The problem is that the free version of gmail limits the addition of external POP accounts to 5. If you are managing multiple domains, with multiple email accounts per domain, it is unlikely that gmail is going to be sufficient to manage all of the email accounts unless you upgrade to Premium. I currently use a combination of Outlook, Thunderbird, and gmail for POP mail, so an upgrade + Google Voice would be a powerful integrated solution that should cover most of the business communication needs of our outsourcing business.

Google Voice should be released publicly within a couple of weeks.

Earth Class Mail – homepage: http://www.earthclassmail.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/earthclassmail

Google Wave Sandbox – Developer’s Preview

Google seems to finally approved Wave Sandbox access for some developers who did not attend the I/o. We are publishing a few screenshots and background information on the Google Wave platform below. It is interesting that we are running Disqus comments on the TypeHost site and there are quite a few similarities between Disqus & Google Wave, as well as some major differences. XMPP is doing really well over all in keeping the messaging instant – you can see people typing updates as it happens on the screen.

My first work embedding a Wave in a Drupal blog page was fairly simple. I added the script to the header of page.tpl.php manually, along with the body init code. Set the “waveframe” width and height in the blog page and that is basically it for the embed. One problem, it is like pouring a huge amount of JavaScript into an iframe. The iframe is not a good theme option for a CMS site particularly. Reply, editing, etc. from two accounts & browsers (FF/Chrome) are working in the Drupal page in synch with the Wave inbox now, but the animated wave playback does not display on the embed page.

For those interested in Google Wave development, here are some screenshots and documentation of the Google Wave sandbox:

Getting Started with Wave

This wave should help you get started in using Wave.

NOTE: This wave is shared with all wave-users, so we only allow a limited set of admins to edit it. If you try to edit or respond to it, your Wave Client will crash. Don’t worry, we’re working on a better UI for that!

As you are currently seeing, Wave is laid out in Panels, let me go through each of them to give you a flavor for Wave:

Uploading Bar

You might periodically see a green bar at the top of the screen that says “Uploading Waves”. This bar indicates that there is data queued up to be sent to the server, so, if you see this, don’t close you browser until it goes away!

Navigation Panel

The Nav Panel is where you will find shortcuts to get to various lists of Wave. It is also where you can manage Folders (yes, there are Folders!) and Saved Searches. Try out some cool things like:

All links in the Nav Panel are actually Searches, look for what they populate in the Search box!

Contacts Panel

The Contact Panel shows all contacts that are currently stored in your account. Try out some cool things like:

Click on your own Avatar in the contact Panel, click on “Change Photo” and it will take you to a settings page allowing you to set up your Avatar picture. Make sure to make it available to everyone in the domain!

the Search box will allow you to find the specific contact you’re looking for.

Clicking on a user’s Avatar will show their information and allow you to create a Wave with them.

You can set your “cool line” by clicking on your own profile at the top of the panel. This won’t be the same as your Gmail IM status, so feel free to set a unique wavy status here.

Make sure any contacts you want to use in Wave are in your contacts (accessible from https://www.google.com/contacts/a/wavesandbox.com).

Search Panel

The Search Panel will allow you to find all of your various Waves. Try out some cool things like:

Cmd+Click (on Mac) or Ctrl+Click (on Windows) to open the Wave in a new Panel

Select a Wave, then click Folders to move a Wave to a Folder

Shift click on Multiple Waves to apply and then choose and Action

Wave Panel

This Panel is where your Waves will open. Try out some cool things like:

Playback!

shift+enter while editing will end your edit, shift+enter while not editing will create a new message!

Maximize the Wave to get more real estate for it

Private Reply from the Message Menu to talk to a smaller number of folks on the Wave

Wave InBox – Debug Settings:

Show objects created
Log wavelet shelf
Evict all shelved wavelets
Dump open remote calls
Extensions
Network
Exceptions
Get current Wave ID
Copy current wave
Show UDW of current wave
Show CC Info
Trigger Wavelet.removeParticipant
Trigger Blip.delete
Attachments
Digests
Participants and Profiles
Toggle fine-grained timing
Misc
Set Window Size

Firebug:

Viewing the page with Firefox Firebug gives all of the JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. that is loading from the remote site, and a lot of code. This is why the page load is slow initially. I hope the CMS solution for integrating Google Wave does not rely on the iframe for implementation in the future, but the embed does depend on it now. iFrames are really the last option in Drupal and are problematic at the theme layer. Until I figure out how to add dynamic wave IDs to the header code of every page individually, it looks like a limit of one Wave embed per site. That may make an easy option just to display a dedicated wave in a drupal block, but the iframe issue makes that a theme issue.

Summary:

Still just a few hours into the sandbox, but it is a nice model. Basically set your application up on google-apps and then widgetize it, add it to the wave through the extension API. Same with robots. Google has some templates and examples for Java and Python code extensions and robots online at: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/embed/guide.html

Related: Whitepaper – Using Attachments in Google Wave
http://www.waveprotocol.org/whitepapers/google-wave-attachments

Understanding Google Wave Development – Part 1

Since “Google Wave” was introduced at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco May 27th to 28th, 2009, there has been a lot of buzz and attention surrounding the new platform. What exactly is Google Wave? According to the development team, it is the biggest upgrade to email since the introduction of the web, a type of combination between email, blog, forum comment section, instant message system, and widget board. Google Wave shows the enormous influence that Facebook is having on the future of the web – in a way, the preview looks as if the majority of Google services were integrated and remixed into an animated Facebook stream. The big differences are in the standards behind the interface: XMPP particularly allows the Wave documents to function like an instantaneous, shared whiteboard in addition to a saved multimedia document with filtered permission levels.

What is a wave?

“A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.”

Source: http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

For those that did not attend the I/O conference, the essential resource is the launch video from that day that is viewable at:

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Developing For Google Wave:

Google plans to open source much of the code behind the Google Wave platform, and one of the points confirmed is that anyone- ISPs, private groups, individuals, companies, websites, domains, will be able to operate their own Wave server based on the Wave Federation Protocols. Developers who would like to build new applications for the Wave platform should review the draft specifications and white papers available at:
http://www.waveprotocol.org/

The Google Wave API is intended to enable developers to embed Wave documents in standard web pages as well as to “extend” the platform by embedding widgets within a Wave itself. The Wave extensions allow for the embedding of virtually the entire archive of iGoogle widgets, and allow programmers to develop Java, Python, ActionScript, and other applications to add new functionality to a Wave. For more information on the Wave API, visit: http://code.google.com/apis/wave/

Related: http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/05/introducing-google-wave-apis-what-can.html

“On May 28th, the second day of Google I/O, we unveiled Google Wave as a developer preview. But, we’d never actually had non-Google developers use it, and we were eager to see how it’d play out… So, on the Friday after I/O, about 60 developers assembled down at Google HQ for the very first Google Wave API hackathon. After five hours of hacking and ad-hoc discussions with members of the Wave APIs team, there were a whopping 17 demos to show off. We were awed by how enthusiastically developers dove in to the APIs that day, and excited to see what they created. Their accomplishments were especially amazing as no one had even used the product prior to the hackathon.”

Source: http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com/2009/06/1-wave-sandbox-5-hours-17-awesome-demos.html

Examples:

Embed API – Methods to communicate w/ server:

LoadWave
SetUIConfig
AddReply
Follow

Sample Google Wave Embed Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>Google Wave Embed API Example: Simple Wave</title>
<script src="http://wave-api.appspot.com/public/embed.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function initialize() {
var wavePanel = new WavePanel('http://wave.google.com/a/wavesandbox.com/');
wavePanel.loadWave('wavesandbox.com!w+waveID');
wavePanel.init(document.getElementById('waveframe'));
}
</script>
</head>
<body onload="initialize()">
<div id="waveframe" style="width: 500px; height: 100%"></div>
</body>
</html>

Source:http://code.google.com/events/io/sessions/ProgrammingWithAndForGoogleWave.html

TypeHost Releases Three Open Source Themes for Drupal – Drigg 5.x

TypeHost Web Development, a Drupal Solutions Provider and open source web design company, has released three free themes for Drupal 5.x installations using the Drigg module for social bookmarking sites. Drigg is an extensive set of modules that transforms a Drupal installation into a social bookmarking site similar to Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, etc. The following themes were developed specifically to integrate Drigg with Advanced Profile Kit and are free to download and use in your Drigg-based Drupal 5.x sites.

Drupala Theme for Drupal 5.x Drigg Install:
The main theme for our social bookmarking / blog portal / social networking installation profile. This theme is derived from the Drigg base theme, but changes the menu structure to allow for more flexibility in working with taxonomy & views when building portal sites. The Drupala theme is two columns, optimized for APK & Drigg, and cross-browser tested in FF, IE6, IE7, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. Uses bright blue gradients to define blocks & site sections, relatively clean, quick loading & scalable. Open Source / GNU Public License.

Download: http://www.typehost.com/free-downloads
Example site: http://drupala.com
Tutorial for Custom Login: WebDevNews.net

SEO-Mix Theme for Drupal 5.x Drigg Install:
The Drupala and SEO-Mix themes are only different in the color of the top buttons in the GUI, and the SEO-Mix theme uses an “up only” voting button, while the Drupala theme uses a +/- system. Included with the download of the Drupala theme above & part of the Drupala profile. Open Source / GNU Public License.

Example site: http://www.seo-mix.com

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Som Mittal / NASSCOM – India IT at $300 Billion in Revenue by 2020

Som Mittal, President of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) in India, stated in an interview with the Hindu newspaper this month that the Indian IT industry was projecting towards totals of $300 billion USD per annum in revenue by 2020. Most important in this, according to Mittal, is the rise in the Asian economies vs. the West in terms of GDP expansion, but he states also that the Indian IT industry must adopt a global model to continue to expand successfully. The BPO / Offshoring model, where companies maintain extensive IT centers in India to offset labor costs primarily requires that clients have absolute security and stability in the long term quality of service provided.

“As an indicator of the future, Mr. Mittal pointed out that in 2025, Asia’s (excluding Japan) share of the global Gross Domestic Product was expected to rise at a compounded annual growth rate of 6.3 per cent, against North America’s projected 3 per cent. To realise this potential, the industry had to leverage on its strengths and adapt to the changed world dynamics, he said. ‘We are an industry which competes fiercely within itself and also collaborates fiercely.’”

“Elaborating, Mr. Mittal said the industry had to look beyond the Fortune 500, and tap into the small and medium businesses. It also had to reduce the heavy dependence on the traditional segments of BFSI (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance), Telecom and Manufacturing, and move into public sector and healthcare verticals. In terms of geography, the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), the Gulf Countries and Japan had potential, he added. ‘The demographic shifts will fuel the growth of new sectors,’ he said.”

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OSnews: Linux Officially Reaches 1% of Desktop Market Share

OSnews blogs that the website marketwatch.com, which tracks software usage statistics, has officially reported that Linux has passed the 1% market share position for desktop operating systems. According to the site, Windows has dropped over the last year while Apple’s OS X has gained. The site also tracks usage of iPhone and iPod for client access to the internet. For example, iPhone is listed at .55% of all traffic vs. .07% currently for Android. Windows accounts for 88% of all users, Mac just under 10%, Linux 1%, and all other clients from Sun to video games and mobile phones amount to around 1% together. Interestingly, the W3 counter / Global stats has Linux usage over the same period (April 2009) at 2.16%: http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

“Linux usage share on client devices has surpassed 1% for the first time in our tracking.  Linux has been successful primarily as a server operating system, but client usage share has not kept pace with server share  Linux has reached this important milestone on the client as Linux-based systems have become more functional, easier to use, and pre-installed on computers from vendors like Dell.”

That pre-installation is important in the spread of desktop Linux is supported by numerous reports as well as common sense. Yet, the bottom line is going to be user experience, stability, and available software vs. dedication to the open source philosophy. For most, buying a machine with the OS set up and running is standard. The increase in popularity of netbooks and the use of Linux as a pre-installed OS on those machines may be leading the trend combined with increased uptake in the education & development communities.

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Citigate Cunningham Nominated for 2008 Gold SABRE Award for Acquia Public Relations

The public relations planning behind the launch of the new Acquia website has landed Citigate Cunningham, the firm who orchestrated the campaign, more than 100 media placements, 11 speaking engagements and two awards for Acquia since the project began in January 2008, according to a press release this week published on the web. The Holmes Group has also nominated Citigate Cunningham’s Acquia marketing and promotional campaign for a SABRE Award this year as one of the best new products in the “Business to Business” category on the web.

The article reports that the development team behind Acquia, which includes Drupal founder Dries Buytaert, had concerns about how the open source community would view a commercial Drupal development company and enterprise release of the CMS, and the PR campaign was designed to smooth this over.

“Drupal, a social publishing system with a vibrant, passionate open source community of more than 350,000 members, is the platform for many well-known company and educational institution websites. Acquia was launched with the mission to increase enterprise adoption of Drupal by providing enterprise-level functionality and support to the open source technology.”

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