OpenX is a free open source ad server software developed in the past years by a devoted open source developer community. Their website is www.openx.org . For now, they have the software as downloadable and installable on your server but they are beta-testing a hosted version of it (so you can use it without being necessary to download and install it).

It was started in 1998 by Tobias Ratschiller, the creator of also popular phpMyAdmin (a MySQL database web administration tool). Scott Switzer continued his work building on Tobias’ code. Today he is the co-founder of OpenX Limited, the company behind the ad server software.

OpenX was known as OpenAds, phpAds, phpAdsNew and MaxMediaManager but finally the company settled down for the OpenX name in 2008. The company which is behind OpenX got two rounds of funding: 5.5 Million dollars in 2006 and 15.5 million dollars in 2008 and this means it will have plenty of cash to improve its product and make it top-notch (not that it’s not already).

Over 30,000 publishers and advertisers around the world uses this ad server software platform to maximize their online advertising results. The current version of OpenX is 2.4 with a 2.5 beta version in the works (this review is for 2.4 version mainly).

You can download the current version here: www.openx.org/download

OpenX let you choose banners, campaigns and terms that fits you best. It has a sophisticated tracking system which let you gather statistics and optimize the results.
In short, you can take the control of your advertising without having to pay big bucks to big boys.

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• Mambo - the thoroughly simple content management system (CMS)
• Introducing GeoClassifieds - Build Your Own Online Classifieds Website
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If you are running Wordpress blog software (and it’s not upgraded to the latest version) you might have been a target for hackers who are looking to take over blogs for search-engine optimization (SEO) of other sites they control, traffic-redirection and other bad purposes.

Most of the attacks consist in using SQL injection and XSS cross-site scripting and that is because the user input isn’t filtered properly by the software. Some of the attacks use bots which can create hundreds of spam pages on your blog automatically, place a backdoor (so the hacker can come back at later time) or steal users passwords.

Hackers are taking advantage of the open-source nature of the software to look and analyze the source code of a specific software they want to attack and test it for potential vulnerabilities. Then the developers and users have to detect, track down, and shut down the vulnerabilities in the code that those attackers are using.
The pattern seems to be the same: when a new hole is found, it’s broadly exploited, then developers rush out a patch and/or a new release. Most of the damage inflicted by the automated exploits can be reversed with an upgrade but in some cases you can be left with thousands of spam pages and images to clean up (and they are usually well hidden). If the attacked software is very popular (and that attracts hackers too) - like Wordpress - then thousands of installs can be compromised.

Chances are that a blog owner realizes late that his blog was hacked that why it is important to keep up with the latest upgrades and security patches from Wordpress.com and keep an eye on your blog: monitor the statistics, the blog usage, have frequent backups and track other security blogs for news about any security holes one of them is BlogSecurity.net.

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• MyTestBox.com widget launches! Get our web software reviews on your website or blog!
• WordPress - the most used open source blog software

iAuto is a SEO friendly auto/vehicle classifieds web software that allows you to create an auto/vehicle classifieds website, similar to www.autotrader.com. It has all you need to start your own vehicle listing service, and doesn’t require much time to learn the way it works.

iAuto was developed by WorksForWeb software team with a set of other niche classifieds software products such as iRealty and iLister. WorksForWeb started to develop its classifieds framework, that is used in all WFW products, in December 2005 and since that time scientifically improved it to correspond to the market needs.

This web software comes with different price ranges:

• Standard edition - $519
• Special edition - $219
• Hosted version - $49.95/month

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• Introducing GeoClassifieds - Build Your Own Online Classifieds Website
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Sharemixer www.sharemixer.com is a Youtube clone (video sharing solution) developed in Zagreb, Croatia by a company having over ten years of web development expertise and currently moving to media market.

It has a ton of features too long to be listed here so you can look on their website here.

Sharemixer license cost $199 with one year support, $299 with two years support, $499 with lifetime support and there is special $100 offer for Clipshare owners to migrate to Sharemixer. The license can be also purchased as subscription service for $39 per month.

Their additional services pricelist is long so seems that this company would like to make more money selling services rather than from their software licensing.

Installation and Setup
To use Sharemixer, the hosting service should have Linux, BSD or Apache server with MySql 4.1 running, PHP 4.4.3 and up (including PHP 5) and access to CGI-BIN directory. It should also have FFMpeg with Lame, Libbogg and Libvorbis, Mencoder-MPlayer, Rubby on Rails and flvtool2 installed (this extra server-side software is required, to inject meta-data to the converted videos - key-frames, tags, title, etc. FLVTool2 is used for that and it depends on Ruby On Rails to work.). To checkout details of the server requirements please look here.

The MySQL database must be created manually from provided script and the configuration parameters should be configured manually in several files, including assigning proper directory rights so some technical knowledge will be needed to install it.

To migrate from Clipshare you should run a different database script, configure the files and delete some older directories.

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• Build the next Youtube! Introducing Clipshare - the low cost video sharing solution
• PHPMotion - free open source social networking media platform
• SkaDate - online dating and social networking software combined
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SkaDate is a social networking and online dating software platform supporting videos and photo albums. It can be seen here: www.skadate.com

Ska Date has been developed by Skalfa eCommerce, employing 18 dedicated programmers and support staff. They recently opened their representative EU office in Czech Republic instead usual UK. Besides dating software their other product line is Chuppo rich media applications, which are actually part of SkaDate.

Sites features are customizable from administration module, like Press, Search, Photo, Multimedia, Profile view, Events, Messages, Virtual Kiss, Friends Only Photos, Flash chat, Instant messenger, Photo rate, Profile Rate, Friends Networking, Polls, Ads, Tags, Bookmark, Blocklist, Chuppo Recorder, Forum, Blogs, Password Protected Photos, Profile comments and HTML usage in profiles.

They also offer a hosted version of this software. Check it out here

From administration module was possible to assign cost for each event or leave it as free service. The software supports unlimited membership levels allowing setup events for each level and limiting even the event usage per day or month.

SkaDate supports several payment gateways like PayPal, ccBILL, SecurePay, Authorise.net, SecPay, etc.

The navigation menu was customizable to each member level group so members will see only functions allocated to the membership level.

The administration module allows customization of multimedia and photo parameters, limiting the number of invitations, creating virtual kiss templates, enabling the friends’ network and customizing the profile fields which can be even dependent to each other.

Customizable watermark can be added to photos and videos to protect copyrights.

The product becomes with 18 layout templates and the customer can get additional templates free of charge from their website when those will become available free of charge. I assume that knowing little bit CSS the programmer can write their own templates for the site.

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• AbleSpace and AbleDating - combining social networking and video with dating in one package
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• osTube - a new social networking media platform
• Sharemixer - low cost video sharing solution a la Youtube