f you've ever worked with and manipulated MySQL databases, chances are you've used phpMyAdmin to manage your databases from a Web interface. But phpMyAdmin can be a little complex; if you want a lightweight alternative, try phpMinAdmin. It's easier to install than its more robust cousin and has an easy-to-navigate graphical user interface for most important MySQL functions. Many Web hosting solutions bundle phpMyAdmin to let users create databases for their blogging software or content management systems. If yours doesn't, you'll find installing phpMinAdmin far easier than installing phpMyAdmin. phpMinAdmin is a single PHP script that requires no configuration.

In this article I will show how to install and use two clients for the popular microblogging platform Twitter on an Ubuntu 8.04 desktop. The first one is Twitux, the second Twitter client is gtwitter. Both clients have similar features, so it is up to you which one you want to install.

A lot of effort in recent months has been expended toward something people are calling "data portability." Just about everywhere you look; you'll bump into people pontificating about it. In case you've been out of the loop (perhaps hiking in the Himalayas), you can run the term through your favorite search engine to pull back numerous articles and blog posts on the subject. You might even want to dip into the Twitter and FriendFeed streams to see the ebb and flow of the micro debate.

Technical exercise bellow is targeting testing Jboss-Seam 2.0.2 SP1 with NetBeans 6.1 (JDK 6.0) to deploy Brian Leonard's Sample to Jboss 4.2.3 on Solaris Nevada ( build 96) with xVM kernel.Hibernate has been selected as persistence provider. Oracle 10gR2 database instance has been installed on SNV93 DomU for performance evaluation.

It's been a pretty incredible year for open source on the desktop. Dell has started selling some of its PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed, which means that even non-technical users can acquire a low-cost, powerful open source system without needing to worry about installation and handling drivers and suchlike.

I’m not sure why it bothers me: I use the word “Free” when I’m talking about “Free Software”, and “Open” when I mean “Open source”. I’m very particular about my words, that way. But that’s just me. I don’t expect another religion to follow the rules of my own, or vice-versa. So why do I expect others to use words in the same way that I do? And why do I feel so cross about “Open standards”, which come with proprietary documentation, a hefty price tag, and an NDA?

Yahoo! and Intel have announced a plan to bring computer-style widgets to TV screens. The idea behind the Widget Channel is to take familiar software technologies to an emerging platform. The two companies have teamed up because Intel's Media Processor CE 3100 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed for use in consumer electronics products including Internet-connected set-top boxes and digital TVs, while Yahoo! already has the software that actually runs widgets, including the software libraries that support them.

Microsoft Wednesday said it would spend up to another $100 million to purchase certificates it will distribute to users who can cash them in for support on their Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers. The investment, which will come on Nov. 1, is on top of the $240 million Microsoft agreed in 2006 to spend on certificates as part of a five-year business and technology deal with Novell that also included intellectual property rights protection.

I know there is a great debate taking place about which operating system is better. Jack Wallen, host of the Linux and Open Source blog, started a lengthy discussion asking the question: Why would you choose Windows over Linux? I thought that was kind of funny, because recently I have been asking myself the opposite question: Who would choose to switch to Linux?

[Is it still FUD if he actually believes what he is saying? ;-) - Scott]

This week, Microsoft renewed their union with Novell, to the tune of an additional 100 million dollars in commitment to buy more SUSE Linux support certificates that it can sell to its customers. Dang, Ballmer, for that kind of cash, you can get your vows renewed in Vegas, with the REAL Elvis. I’m not even going to mention what kind of a group package you can get at the Mustang Ranch.

[Don't let the less-than-scintillating headline fool you -- the rest of the story is as good as the lead -- sr]

Following my piece on a proposed model for enterprise applications maintenance, two fresh posts, one from Matt Aslett at 451.com and another from Leigh Cauldwell offer alternative ideas around how the present conundrum might be solved.

Intel offered a sneak peek of the next-generation of its Classmate PC design at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco today. The new design features a tablet, touchscreen, and motion-sensing user interface, and is powered by — you guessed it — an Atom processor. It runs a choice of Linux or Windows XP Pro.

Today's post is about a program I got turned on to at work, and which makes our script on linux server information reporting seem a bit lackluster. Then again, there's something to be said for not having "too much" information ;) What we're going to look at today is something you (and your technical colleagues) might love (or hate -- check out a message board or two to keep an accurate reading on the heated and irregular pulse of the user community at large ;)

Cloud computing promises to liberate its adherents from the bother of messy implementations of software, while also freeing them from the constraints of hardware capacity. At the same time, however, cloud computing has the potential to deliver the ultimate in vendor lock-in. My colleague, James Urquhart, has put together a proposed "cloud computing bill of rights" to help guide would-be cloud customers to those clouds best able to guarantee their freedom. Just as some are now clamoring for open-data commitments, James' suggestions are intended to deliver the value of the cloud without the lock-in.

Adobe could port its Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design and other subsystems, to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow. Then the company should embrace Linux in-house and develop a complete, optimized Linux OS designed to run a high-performance version of its Creative Suite on Linux optimized for Adobe products, to be sold as a bootable bundle for multicore-workstation hardware. The idea is to produce a near-dedicated Adobe computer designed to use all the power of the newest chips to run the Adobe software under Linux. Since Linux is under the hood, users could exit the Adobe programs and run their word processors and whatever else on the Linux boxes.

As always, the 2008 Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas was full of cutting-edge computer security research, the latest in computer security vulnerabilities, and more than a little controversy. Since the beginning of the Black Hat conference 15 years ago, the show has always been a place for the elite of the computer security industry to release their latest work on what is known as "zero-day exploits." A zero day or "0-day" exploit is a previously unknown computer security vulnerability that is released before vendors like Microsoft have a chance to release a security fix. There were fewer zero-day exploit presentations this year than we have seen in the recent past, but the ones that were presented were big.

f you use Nagios to monitor your system and run openSUSE on a remote server the bash script presented here will check for online updates and is designed to be run by Nagios so that the result will appear on the Nagios service-detail page. The script is pretty unsophisticated as it just parses the output from the zypper command. A more sophsiticated solution might interact directly with libzypp, the library that provides zypper with its functionality. Of course, that's not possible using bash. Based on a quick scan of the libzypp documentation it appears the only current option for doing that is C++.

ominations are now open for the Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest. The winner could be someone you know, or someone whose work you admire, but don't mull over your recommendation too long -- entries must be submitted by September 30.

SMILE, Slideshow Maker In Linux Environnement is a free opensource slideshow creating tool for GNU/Linux, although it also works on Mac OS/X. SMILE helps to create video slideshows from images, that can be played on almost all medias. The numerous features and the simplicity of use make it possible to create dynamic and rich slideshows in just a few clicks, without having to worry about technical issues or complicated settings.

Finally, finally, finally!! I and a few folks have been living with a secret. And of course I wanted to share this as soon as possible. But some events at work (the famous DNS Bug) kept me massively busy. And since work is - well work - you earn a living from it - it got priority. However this nonetheless does not make the secret any less important nor interesting. So, what is it about? What's it about? Hm, let's think... the title says "sugarize it". Sugarize what? As you probably know, sugarlabs.org became independant from OLPC with Walter Bender starting a new organization to continue the dream of an open source user interface for OLPC and for other laptops.