Archive for Dev & Productivity Resources

| February 2, 2013
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Open Source MEAP – Mobile Enterprise Application Platform

Explosion of Mobiles, tablets is making enterprises to act fast on mobile strategies. Rapid demand of BYOD – Bring Your Own Device, Mobilizing work force are some of the key requirements of today’s enterprises.

 

Statistics speak:

     

    1. There will be 1 billion smartphones in use worldwide by 2016, 350 million of these being used for business.5

    2. By 2016 nearly 70% of internet users will use more than five network-connected devices. There will be 10 billion internet-enabled devices globally, and smartphone traffic will grow 50 times the size it is today.

        3. The growth rate of smartphone and tablet adoption between 2007-2012 is more than four times that of personal computers between 1981-2000.

        4. Smartphones now account for half of all mobile phones used in the US.

        5. 63% of US adults regularly go online wirelessly with their mobile devices.

        6. Average smartphone data usage nearly tripled over the last year, to 150MB per month.

        Source: Antenna research

         

        While there are quite a number of frameworks and platforms for developers to achieve enterprise mobility, one can not ignore the open source power. Listed few are some of the emerging Open Source MEAP products

         

        OpenMEAP

        open source MEAP

        A Mobile Rapid Application Development environment, The OpenMEAP platform enables the existing web development teams to create applications once, which will work on every platform by using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript for a true device agnostic solution. Read more

         

        Convertigo

        open source MEAP

        Easily bring your IT asset on mobile devices using Open Source MEAP product – Convertigo. Connectors to a large variety of enterprise apps such as SAP, Salesforce.com, Oracle Apps, Microsoft Dynamics and many others. Read more

         

        Openmobster

        A lesser known Open Source Mobile Enterprise Backend. Read more

        Category: Dev & Productivity Resources, Enterprise Mobility, Open Source | Tags: , , , , ,
        | November 3, 2012
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        15 Great Open Source Creative Tools

        GIMP (Mac, Linux and Windows)

        GIMP is one the most versatile graphics manipulation tools. It has some of the most amazing image manipulation tools such as Layers, Brush, Cropping and other tools and plugins similar to Adobe Photoshop which is the commercial leader. Read more about GIMPs features here.

        Free Creative tools

        MyPaint (Mac, Linux and Windows)

        MyPaint is a cool digital painting app. It is simple, fast and lets you focus on the art rather than the software. Download it here.

        Free Creative tools

        Krita (Linux, Windows)

        Krita, the full-featured painting application for digital artists with natural looking brushes and other tools.

        Free Creative tools

        Darktable (Mac, Linux)

        Darktable lets you process your Raw and JPG images. It has some of the advanced image processing features such as color correction, tone correction etc. Detailed feature list is here.

        Free Creative tools

        Inkscape (Windows, Linux, Mac)

        Very good vector illustration tool similar to Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. Free and very capable tool for designers. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. Inkscape has an aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

        free creative tools

        Calligra Flow (Linux)

        Calligra Flow is great diagramming tool similar to Microsoft Visio. Free and great to use. It can open Visio files too. Check it out here.

        Scribus (Windows, Linux and Mac)

        Scribus is an Open Source program that brings professional page layout to Linux/UNIX, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp 4 and Windows desktops with a combination of press-ready output and new approaches to page design. Scribus is an alternative to Microsoft Publisher, Adobe InDesign, FrameMaker etc.

        free creative tools

        Audacity

        Audacity is the best sound editing and recording software tools out there. Highly capable, downloaded and recommended.

        free creative tools

        Hydrogen

        Hydrogen is an advanced drum machine for Linux. It’s main goal is to bring professional yet simple and intuitive pattern-based drum programming.

        free creative tools

        Mixxx (Mac, Windows and Linux)

        Mixxx is a top notch DJ software, has everything you need to start making DJ mixes in a tight, integrated package.

        free creative tools

        Blender (Windows, Linux and Mac)

        Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems. Blender has some of the advanced modeling features and it is commercial grade.

        free creative software

        Synfig Studio (Linux, Mac and Windows)

        Synfig Studio is a free and open-source 2D animation software, designed as powerful industrial-strength solution for creating film-quality animation using a vector and bitmap artwork.

        image

        Pitivi (Linux)

        Pitivi is a free, intuitive and feature rich movie editor for the Linux desktop

        Kdenlive (Linux, Mac)

        Kdenlive is afree open source video editor.

        Kdenlive 0.7.8

        Sparkleshare (Linux, Mac and Windows)

        SparkleShare is an alternative to the popular DropBox, Google Drive kind of file sharing services, free and open source. You can setup where to sync etc.

         free creative tools

        Category: Alternatives, Dev & Productivity Resources, Open Source | Tags: , , , ,
        | September 11, 2012
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        Ten Free Cloud Computing Platforms- as-a-Service for Developers

        If you are a developer and looking for cloud computing platform services where you want to host your software for free then the choices are many. Depending on the web application frameworks you have used in your development, the migration to cloud computing platforms can be done with very little efforts. Many of them offer free services up to certain limits and you would need to pay only if you use beyond the free limit.

        1. OpenShift

        OpenShift-Logo

        OpenShift is Red Hat’s free, auto-scaling Platform as a Service (PaaS) for applications. As an application platform in the cloud, OpenShift manages the stack so you can focus on your code. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications. OpenShift takes care of all the infrastructure, middleware, and management and allows the developer to focus on what they do best: designing and coding applications. OpenShift takes a No-Lock-In approach to PaaS by providing built-in support for Node.js, Ruby, Python, PHP, Perl, and Java. In addition to this flexible, no-lock-in, language approach, OpenShift supports many of the popular frameworks that make a developer’s life easier including frameworks ranging from Spring, to Rails, to Play.

        For more information check here.

        2. Google App Engine

        Google_App_Engine_Logo

        Google App Engine is a platform as a service (PaaS) cloud computing platform for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple servers which enables you to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google applications. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain. You just upload your application, and it’s ready to serve to your users.Its Easy to Get Started, Automatic Scalability with The Reliability, Performance, and Security of Google’s Infrastructure. Currently, the supported programming languages are Python, Java (and, by extension, other JVM languages such as Groovy, JRuby, Scala, Clojure, Jython and PHP via a special version of Quercus), and Go.

        For more information check here.

        3. Heroku

        heroku-logo

        Heroku is a cloud platform as a service (PaaS) supporting several programming languages. Heroku, one of the first cloud platforms, initially supported the Ruby programming language, and later added support for Java, Node.js, Scala, Clojure and Python and (undocumented) PHP. The base operating system is Debian or the Debian-based Ubuntu in the newest stack. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.

        For more information check here.

        Other free Cloud Computing Services that offer Platform as a service are the following:

        4. Cloudify

        5. Cloud Foundry

        6. AppFog

        7. dotCloud

        8. Joyent

        9. OpenStack

        10. phpfog

        Category: Alternatives, Dev & Productivity Resources | Tags: , ,
        | June 14, 2012
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        Beyond Siri: Top Voice Assisted Apps for Android & iPhone

        Since 1995 we have seen the voice assistance taking new levels as the technology grew along starting from text-to-speech to Natural language understanding. During 1995 what started as a virtual telephone assistant using the text to speech technology enhanced to the virtual concierge using the speech recognition technology during 2000-2010. Year 2011 is when we saw the virtual search assistant using the speech recognition technology, Google introduced voice search. The coming years, 2012 to 2015 is going to be the new era of your lifestyle buddy, a new UI that understands natural language. With Apple’s successful launch of its Siri technology in 2011, voice-activated mobile virtual assistants (VAs) have crossed the chasm into mass-market deployments. With the help if Apple’s Siri Technology success in 2011, voice activated  mobile virtual assistances have enabled users to complete their tasks like search, dialing or texting via voice commands. 

        Beyond Siri, here are top 10 virtual assistance ( voice assistant) apps in terms of downloads since their launch.

        1. Voice Search ( Android ) by Google

        image

        Downloads: 109 million & Revenues: 0

        2. Vlingo Virtual Assistant ( Android ) and Voice App (iPhone) by Vilingo Corporation

        Download 8.2 million & Revenues: 0

        3. Iris (Android) by Dexera

        Downloads: 4.4 million & Revenues: 0

        4. Skyvi (Android) by Blue Tomado

        Downloads: 1.9 million & Revenues: 0

        5. Assistant (Android) & Skeaptoit Assistant (iPhone) by Speaktoit

        image

        Downloads: 1.7 million & Revenues: 57 thousand USD

        6. AIVC – Free & Paid (Android) by YourApp24

        Downloads: 1.4 million & Revenues: 57 thousand USD

        7. Car Home ( Android ) by Google Inc

        image

        Downloads: 1.2 million & Revenues: 0

        8. Dragon (iOS) Search by Nuance Communications

        Downloads: 1.1 million & Revenues: 0

        9. Jeannie ( Android ) and Voice Action ( iOS ) by Pannous

        Downloads: 1.1 million & Revenues: 665 thousand USD

        10. Everfriends ( Android ) by i-Free Innovations

        Downloads: 0.7 million and Revenue: 0

        source: http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2012/06/infographic-beyond-siri-the-next-frontier-in-user-interfaces/

        Category: Dev & Productivity Resources, Mobile, Tech Reviews |
        | May 11, 2012
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        Free Mind Map Tools For iPad (Tablet)

        Mind mapping is a great way of visually representing our ideas in a simple way. Very important while the team does brain storming and passing on ideas to new set of people. There are quite a few free mind mapping tools for PCs. Now, it is the ear of tablets and iPad has come a long way. Very intuitive and multi touch screen allows a far more intuitiveness while drawing mind map. There are few free tools to create mind maps on iPad too. These are good alternatives to commercial mind mapping tools such as iThoughtsHD, MindNode, Maptini, MagicalPad etc.

        SimpleMind+ (Free)

        Mind mapping tool that turns your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch into a brainstorming, idea collection and thought structuring device. AppStore link

        iPhone Screenshot 1 

        MindMeister (Free)

        MindMeister is a great tool for iPhone is the companion app for mind mapping.

        AppStore link

        iPhone Screenshot 1 

        IdeaSketch (Free)

        Idea Sketch lets you easily draw a diagram – mind map, concept map, or flow chart – and convert it to a text outline, and vice versa. You can use Idea Sketch for anything, such as brainstorming new ideas, illustrating concepts, making lists and outlines, planning presentations, creating organizational charts, and more!

        iPhone Screenshot 1

        MindJet (Free)

        Mindjet for iPad lets you easily enter ideas, tasks, and meeting notes into intuitive visual maps that help you quickly organize concepts and prioritize action items. Instantly create new maps or import them from Mindjet Connect.

        iPad Screenshot 3

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