OpenX, the well known open source ad server software company, is looking to hire experienced open source web developers.They have several projects and wants developers with proven experience extending open source content management systems or analytics tools.
One big appeal: the location of the developers doesn’t matter! The work can be done remotely (I don’t know if you will be paid for this so you have to ask).

If you are interested then email to tellme@openx.org (include a summary of your experience and some details of one project you worked on and think it demonstrate experience in extending a CMS or analytics application).

If you know a friend or someone interested you can forward this offer to him/her. More of their blog.

We, at MyTestBox.com, have reviewed OpenX ad server software here. We found it to be a very good choice if you want to “take control of your advertising”.

OpenX is well-funded (21 million dollars to date) and is set to become one of the leaders in ad serving software field.

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MacsDesign Studio LLC, the developers the Web Help Desk (the leading cross-platform help desk software solution), announced today the integration with Apple Remote Desktop 3, Apple’s award-winning desktop management system for Mac OS X.

The easy access to ARD information and instant remote control connectivity from within the Web Help Desk promises to boost technician productivity and raise the bar on customer satisfaction.

A scheduled or on-demand import of asset discovery data directly from the ARD database to the Web Help Desk provides support professionals with the critical, up-to-date asset information required to efficiently resolve service requests. This new integration makes Apple Remote Desktop 3 asset data available to any web browser through one centralized web application.

Web Help Desk’s integration with Apple Remote Desktop 3 makes initiating an ARD control session a simple mouse click away. Technicians can instantly access all of ARD’s features and benefits from a Web Help Desk ticket or asset view.

Hopefully, they will add even more features in the future making it better. We, here at MyTestBox, will review this help desk software soon.

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We’ve all been there. When we need it most, the ‘help desk’ turns out to be a ‘no-help desk’, leaving us frustrated and mad at the host company (which might be our company). Well, they’ve actually been paying attention to this. Newer, server-side hosted, browser based help desk solutions keep getting closer to the holy grail of a fully functioning service desk.

With this in mind, MacsDesign Studio LLC  announced version 9 of their popular cross platform product, Web Help Desk. This entirely web-based product now adds a rule-based voting and approval system for change requests, a user interface enhanced with AJAX, and an extensible plugin architecture. It’s still cross platform, with installers for all the popular servers- Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS X.

Point and click
So far, the focus in these help desk ‘improvements’ always seems to be the customer over the service personnel. It’s about time someone realized that servicing the enduser (the tech or manager) is key to getting the problem resolved. And problem resolution is what the customer is going to remember in the end.

Understanding this, Web Help Desk uses a filtering, point and click interface to categorize service requests before the e-mail goes out.

From their site:

These Request Type Categories assist in providing high-level information to service desk personnel, as well as assist in Web Help Desk’s automatic assignment of tickets  to the correct personnel, group of personnel, location, and correct department.

But there’s even more point and click. Installation and customizing your filters are set up for non-programmers. This allows the people who need the information set up the forms.

Next, the software displays a list of all software and hardware assets assigned to the request submitter. This gives techs the unique info they need without having to pry it out of reluctant and largely ignorant users. (”When I double click the thingie, that other bit with the colors doesn’t come up.”) From a service department management point of view, Web Help Desk provides loads of report options- tracked and linked to incidents and assets involved. You can bet when the complaints about X not doing Y start rolling in, they aren’t going to stop with the first fix.

Finally, Web Help Desk allows shunting similar problem types to the right solver. It can rank and send tickets to the people most likely to solve them quickly and correctly. This last one might be the most important feature of all. I can’t tell you how often I get the phone tag shuffle until finally (maybe) I get routed to the right person.

You can see their demo here.

The Web Help Desk software is deployed as a Java servlet running under the Apache Tomcat 5.5 servlet container (included in the installation). A compatible Java 5 Runtime Environment (JRE) is included for all platforms except Mac OS X and Solaris, which have a pre-installed JRE. Because the application is 100% pure Java, you have the freedom to install the Web Help Desk server-side software on the operating system of your choice without the worry of OS lock-in.

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phpMyAdmin, the MySQL web based administration tool, won two category awards at 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards!
It was close to win the hearts of the developers too, but in the end it was only a finalist (Notepad++ took the cake).

The categories in which this web software won are:
* Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition (wow! Well, why not after all? I’m wondering who would buy it though…)
* Best Tool or Utility for Sys Admins (you deserve the love, that’s for sure! But be aware of the competition too… )

The team didn’t enjoyed too much the celebration and they are back to work with a new release: 2.11.8

This new phpMyAdmin release is a security release: a Cross Site Framing vulnerability was found by Aung Khant (member of YGN Ethical Hacker Group).
In the past it was permitted to display phpMyAdmin’s frames inside another page, opening potential phishing or fooling possibilities.
Now, a parameter “AllowThirdPartyFraming” must be set to TRUE in “config.inc.php” to allow this behavior.
Also, XSS (Cross Site Scripting) was possible for someone who could overwrite “config/config.inc.php” during the time this file is present in this directory.

The latest release, phpMyAdmin version 2.11.8.1, is identical with 2.11.8, except it includes a fix for a notice about “lang”.
Check out their security advisory.

About phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin  is a MySQL database web based administration tool written in PHP (GPL license distributed).
It is one of the most popular MySQL database administration tool in the world (if not THE most popular - no wonder it won the “Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition” category at 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards).
The tool is available in 55 languages, an impressive achievement by the community of the translators which really shows the popularity of this project.

See if phpMyAdmin is translated in your language here!

Grab the latest copy of phpMyAdmin here!

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The team behind MODx (the content management system software) launched the version 0.9.6.2.
Go here to download this new release.
This new version is completing the original vision team had for MODx. From now on, their legacy code base got a new name: Evolution.

But the team now is working on the new release “0.9.7″ which will be probably named Revolution and the version number re-named 1.0

These new names will get new logos, site architecture, support resources and website design.

The MODx Evolution code base (0.9.6.x) will be supported for long time (according to the team) because there are hundreds of thousands of installs around the world and the team is commited to provide the website owner with the peace of mind knowing they are not left out in the dark.

A future release of MODx Evolution will start to see it correlate directly with the Revolution lingo (e.g., “Resources” becomes “Elements”), and also bring a much more svelte core distribution.

MODx Revolution 1.0 version (the future version) has a massively improved code and the version 2.0 will have a 100% new and unique code. The team also developed migration tools which will help convert old sites to the new version without too much trouble.

MODx Revolution also brings a very clear distinction between the core (API, parser, data access, base access controls, etc.) and the add-ons (Ditto, Wayfinder, content et al). MODx has traditionally been distributed with baseline content and a selection of resources.

Check out more info about this future release: http://modxcms.com/roadmap.html (if you have suggestions the team is glad to hear them)

Because the add-ons are splitted from the core more frequent updates will occur. A slimmer distribution, harmonizing some terminology, and a dedicated separate installer for Elements (currently “Resources”), will serve to further ease the transition when people ultimately choose to adopt the MODx Revolution 2.0 code base.

More details here: http://modxcms.com/the-evolution-of-a-revolution.html

About MODx
MODx is a content management system software and a PHP application framework developed by a group of talented people adamant about not creating Yet Another Portal System.
More info can be found on their website: www.modxcms.com

It is licensed under GNU GPL which translates into free for anyone to use. It’s built in PHP, uses a MySQL database backend and runs on pretty much any version of either released in the last few years (it will work also on Apache or IIS web servers). Its Control Panel (Manager) runs on pretty much any modern browser, including Safari. It also allows to quickly leverage the lastest rage of AJAX/Web 2.0 technologies.

For more details about its features click here: http://modxcms.com/features.html
Download the latest stable version here: http://modxcms.com/downloads.html

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