The internet is chock full of sites that can provide a platform for your blog. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them, so research carefully before deciding which will work best for you.

WordPress— WordPress can either be a hosted platform or one you use on your own server. Basic access to Wordpress is free of charge and there are a wide variety of templates available for customization. It also comes with some attractive features like spam blocking and integrated stats as well as numerous plugins you can add yourself.

Blogger— Blogger is a free, hosted blogging platform. While Blogger might lack some of the usability that other platforms have, it makes up for it with features like the Audioblogger service which allows you to create audio recordings for your blog using your phone. Blogger is also useful in that you can upload it to your own website, meaning visitors to your site won’t even know you’re using it as a platform.

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URL: www.joomla.org

Marquee nonprofit clients:

Al Gore’s website
Women’s Edge Coalition
United Nations Regional Information Centre

Joomla strives for power in simplicity. Its programmers believe that anyone with a bit of technical know-how should have no problem setting up and maintaining a website. They have created a tool that is friendly, comparatively easy to get started with, and prioritizes ease of use.

Screenshot:  A website that uses Joomla in a state not too far from out-of-the-box

Screenshot: Editing this site in Joomla

Joomla is designed to work just fine in basic shared hosting environments (the least expensive, most common web hosting package). Its installer looks much like the simple installers used for common desktop software, and the administrative interface that content editors use looks much like a desktop program as well. There are few barriers to entry with Joomla, which means it should not take a web developer much time to get you up and running, and if you’re technically savvy you may be able to do it yourself.

If you need to extend Joomla in a way not covered by its extensions—which happen to be beautifully documented and easy to find at extensions.joomla.org—you should not have to pay too much for a programmer, because Joomla is written in PHP, a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development.

As is usually true, this ease of getting started comes with a tradeoff. Joomla can be a great choice to build a sophisticated website with hundreds of pages, solid navigation, and common content types such as news items or events. However, it has limited out-of- the box functionality for dealing with sophisticated dynamic content structures. For instance, the site navigation is limited to no more than two levels of hierarchy, and you can only link one page to another (for a “you might also be interested in” type of structure) based on free-form page tags, rather than more rigorous metadata and rules.

The next major release of Joomla, version 1.5, should be out by year-end. This version will be a rewrite of the underlying code, in order to make it easier for programmers to extend certain functionality and organize underlying frameworks, but it is not expected to change the way that content editors interact with Joomla. Site visitors should have no idea that anything has changed.

Joomla is fully integrated with CiviCRM and integrates well with common packages like DemocracyInAction and GetActive.

One of the best vector and all purpose graphic program is Xara Xtreme, well there are now a Linux version and is open source software under GNU Licence.

Xara Xtreme is quite simply the world’s fastest graphics software, with truly flexible illustration tools and revolutionary photo handling. A single application for all types of creative work, whether it’s vector drawings, DTP, photo composition, Website design or Flash animation.

Xara Xtreme is the world’s fastest vector drawing program, by a huge margin. This is partly due to using the world’s fastest vector rendering engine and partly due to the inherent Xara X architecture. In graphics software, performance matters. Performance is directly related to productivity (less waiting around) and also enables more rich, more complex designs to be created more easily.

If you want to download this great tool just click here.

Maybe you need to connect your network to terminals in different locations securely using the internet. Well a great tool, an Open Source tool lets you do that in a secure and safe manner.

OpenVPN is the best software to accomplish that. This software used for little, medium and large companies is recognized as the “Best SSL VPN” in 2007 and “Best Open Software Award”.

I had to create a network between 3 offices; Cancun, Mexico City and San Luis Potosi and it took me 15 minutes to do it with this tool.

A virtual private network (VPN) is a computer network in which some of the links between nodes are carried by open connections or virtual circuits in some larger network (e.g., the Internet) instead of by physical wires.

About OpenVPN

OpenVPN is a full-featured open source SSL VPN solution that accommodates a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, Wi-Fi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls. Starting with the fundamental premise that complexity is the enemy of security, OpenVPN offers a cost-effective, lightweight alternative to other VPN technologies that is well-targeted for the SME and enterprise markets.

OpenVPN combines security with ease-of-use

OpenVPN’s lightweight design sheds many of the complexities that characterize other VPN implementations. The OpenVPN security model is based on SSL, the industry standard for secure communications via the internet. OpenVPN implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the SSL/TLS protocol, supports flexible client authentication methods based on certificates, smart cards, and/or 2-factor authentication, and allows user or group-specific access control policies using firewall rules applied to the VPN virtual interface. OpenVPN is not a web application proxy and does not operate through a web browser.

Best of all is that you can use this software on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. So if you want to download it go to main site of OpenVPM or download GUI for  Windows, Linux and Mac OS.

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There are plenty of programs of any type for Linux all of them of great quality and performance but talking about messengers I think emscense is the best one and maybe more for people who comes to Linux from Windows.

It easy to install, works in any flavor of Linux (Ubuntu, SuSe, Fedora, etc.) and works really great. Is like have MSN Messenger working on Linux. Even you can use it inside windows too instead of Microsoft’s.

The new features on the last version are:

• Clean and easy to use GUI
• Tabbed chat
• Custom emoticons
• File transfers
• Offline messaging
• Personal messages
• Nudges
• Multilingual GUI
• Customization
  • Themes
  • Smiles
  • Sounds
  • GUI
  • Conversation format
• Plugins
• MSN Plus!
• Chat logging

You can download it here.

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