WordPress.com, one of the most used blog host, now allows users to post text and images by email. If you are at work with Outlook or on the move with a BlackBerry and wanted to publish at quick post, this feature can be extremely useful.

Post by Email, is simple to use.

From the new ‘My Blogs’ menu you can generate special email addresses. You can create as many email addresses as you need, one for each blog you have access to.

You can send email from any email client, whether in a browser, on your desktop, or from your cell phone and as much formatting will be retained as possible.

Your images will be included and automatically converted into thumbnails. If you include multiple images, they’ll be converted into a gallery.

If you’ve purchased the Space Upgrade then MP3 attachments will be displayed using our audio player. If you’ve purchased the VideoPress upgrade then you can also include videos.

Post by Email Features:

• Transcoding of any video files supported by the WordPress video player (mp4, mov, wmv, avi, mpg, and m4v).
• Add your email addresses directly into your address book using downloadable vCards. (You don’t even need to remember the address)
• Automatic notification of a published email post.
• Automatic removal of standard signature blocks, with support for manual removal of other signatures.
• Conversion of YouTube URLs into embedded videos.

You might want to read more about it on ReadWriteWeb and WordPress.com News.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

AUVICA Gmbh, the german web software company, announced the launch of osTube 2.5, the latest version of its video sharing platform solution (Youtube clone).
One major improvement is the WebTV mode which it is, actually, a complete WebTV portal. This mode is available from the osTube main menu. The “Auto-Fill”-Logic will permanently add related content to the current playlist. Users can comfortably add further videos by browsing the content and choose from there (every user can save, load or send his personal playlist to friends).
The new WebTV-mode offers also the “LightsOff”-mode that darkens the background and a new atmospheric feature, called “ColorMood”, which colorizes the background so that it always matches the mood of the currently playing video.

Other enhancements of this version are:

• Create, load and/or send personal playlists to friends
• WebTV-mode completely integrated (can be disabled, or run in “WebTV only” mode)
• Easy updater for osTube versions 2.x
• Mediaplayer now supports H.264/AAC (Flash Auto-Update integrated)
• “ColorMood”-mode that automatically colorizes the browser
• Teaser-System to feature certain videos as a layer
• Ad-Integration in WebTV-mode (Pro/ProPlus)

The list of all features of osTube are here  and if you want to test-drive the 2.5 version you can do it here  (you can get a glimpse of the WebTV mode here).

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

In the article about cloud computing/utility computing/grid computing  we’ve presented the most important companies which offers cloud computing hosting.In this article we will present the companies which offers means (mainly, the software and hardware) which powers most of the cloud computing hosting providers.

As Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_virtualization puts it:
——————–
In computing, platform virtualization is a term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources. Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of computing resources from their users, be they applications, or end users. The term has been widely used since the 1960s.

Platform virtualization is performed on a given hardware platform by host software (a control program), which creates a simulated computer environment, a virtual machine, for its guest software. The guest software, which is often itself a complete operating system, runs just as if it were installed on a stand-alone hardware platform. Typically, many such virtual machines are simulated on a single physical machine, their number limited only by the host’s hardware resources. Typically there is no requirement for a guest OS to be the same as the host one. The guest system often requires access to specific peripheral devices to function, so the simulation must support the guest’s interfaces to those devices. Trivial examples of such devices are hard disk drive or network interface card.

Virtual machines are used to consolidate many physical servers into fewer servers, which in turn host virtual machines. Each physical server is reflected as a virtual machine “guest” residing on a virtual machine host system. This is also known as Physical-to-Virtual or ‘P2V’ transformation.

Virtual machines can be used in disaster recovery as “hot standby” environments for physical production servers. This changes the classical “backup-and-restore” philosophy, by providing backup images that can “boot” into live virtual machines, capable of taking over workload for a production server experiencing an outage.
——————–

There are several methods of platform virtualization:
- full virtualization
- hardware assisted virtualization
- partial virtualization
- paravirtualization
- operating system-level virtualization

Below we’ll be trying to present most of these platform virtualization and software providers (next page).

• VMWare
  It is the grand daddy of virtualization software commpanies but it is the most active in the field. Their software helps companies to offer cloud and utility computing through Virtual Datacenter OS but not only.The list of their customers is too long to show it here so you can check it out on their website.
  They have different ranges of prices and that depends of the sofware they sell.

   

• RightScale
  RightScale enables companies to create Web solutions running on cloud computing providers such as Amazon EC2 that are scalable, reliable, easy to manage, and affordable. Core offerings include: automated system management, pre-packaged and re-usable components, service expertise and best practices.They have different pricing plans, including a free one.

  Animoto, Tunecore, ForeclosureRadar, iWidgets, Wexas, G.ho.st, Genuitec, Neulio, and ELC Technologies are some of their customers.

   

• eNomaly
  eNomalism is an open source web-based virtual infrastructure platform. Designed to answer the complexity of managing globally disperse virtual server environments. Enomalism helps to automate the transition to a cloud computing environment by reducing an IT organizations overall workload. The easy to use dashboard can help with issues including deployment planning, load balancing, automatic VM migration, configuration management, capacity diagnosis and resource monitoring. Multiple physical servers can be managed as a single server using a specialized tool set which include a centralized user provisioning system, virtualized server creation wizard and templates which facilitate virtual server configuration, application deployment mechanism, and integration into 3rd party applications via web services API as well as centralized user management.

  Being open source it doesn’t cost you a dime to use the software but it could cost you to use the support.

   

• Force.com
  Force.com is the fastest platform for building and deploying enterprise applications. What used to take months can now be done in days or weeks. Unlike a stack of separately designed hardware and software products, Force.com speeds innovation through a powerful yet easy-to-use development model. Assemble applications with clicks, components and code then instantly deploy them to the salesforce.com infrastructure.

   

• Gigaspaces
  GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) is a next-generation application scale-out server built for today’s most demanding enterprise and web applications. Unlike traditional application servers, GigaSpaces XAP enables predictable application scalability on-demand. GigaSpaces XAP works seamlessly with existing development frameworks in Java (Spring, Hibernate, Tomcat, Mule, J2EE), .Net and C++.

  Virgin Mobile, DowJones, Nortel, ABB, BAT, CME, Commerzbank, Lehman Brothers (rest in peace!), Webster, eTapestry are some of Gigaspaces customers. If you are a start-up you may qualify to get Gigaspaces XAP free. They have also a free limited edition (GigaSpaces Community Edition).No prices are listed on their website so you have to contact them regarding this.

   

• Citrix
  Citrix XenServer  is server virtualization that makes datacenters more agile and efficient through faster application delivery, higher levels of availability and improved utilization of IT resources. XenServer is based on the open source Xen® hypervisor, an exceptionally lean technology that delivers low overhead and near-native performance. Leveraging both Intel VT platforms and AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) platforms for hardware assisted virtualization, XenServer delivers faster, more efficient virtualization computing.

  Unlike other virtualization products that are built on closed proprietary systems, XenServer’s open APIs allow customers to access and control advanced functions from their existing server and storage hardware.They have lots of customers too.

   

• Xen
  The Xen hypervisor, the powerful open source industry standard for virtualization, offers a powerful, efficient, and secure feature set for virtualization of x86, x86_64, IA64, PowerPC, and other CPU architectures. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris, and various versions of the BSD operating systems.The Xen hypervisor is a unique open source technology, developed collaboratively by the Xen community and engineers at over 20 of the most innovative data center solution vendors, including AMD, Cisco, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Mellanox, Network Appliance, Novell, Red Hat, SGI, Sun, Unisys, Veritas, Voltaire, and Citrix.

  Xen is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL2) and is available at no charge in both source and object format. Xen is, and always will be, open sourced, uniting the industry and the Xen ecosystem to speed the adoption of virtualization in the enterprise.

   

• KVM
  KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream. Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.

  KVM is open source software which means is free to use.

   

• Microsoft Virtualization
  Of course, Microsoft couldn’t resist to enter this market and it did it so by buying an independent virtualization software maker some time ago. Now they offer a full range of products which competes directly with VMWare.They have big names as customers.

   

• Sun VirtualBox
  Another big software player entered in this market with VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

  Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

   

• VirtualIron
  Virtual Iron provides true server virtualization including intelligent virtual machine mobility, high availability, rapid recovery and performance load balancing. The Virtual Iron Web-based console is easy to deploy, use and manage.They also have an interesting comparison between their virtualization software and VMWare, Microsoft and Citrix virtualization software http://www.virtualiron.com/Products-and-Services/Compare.

   

• Parallels Virtuozzo
  Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is the world’s leading OS virtualization solution. Parallels Virtuozzo creates isolated containers on a single physical server and OS instance.

  Compared to other virtualization technologies, Parallels Virtuozzo offers the highest levels of density, performance and manageability.

   

• Oracle Grid
  The grid computing technologies developed by Oracle including: Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware Clustering, Automatic Storage Management and Enterprise Manager Grid Control enable customers to fully exploit low-cost, industry standard hardware and storage. Oracle VM is a related and complementary technology that enhances the benefits of deploying low-cost hardware by combining the ability to virtualize within as well as across x86 and x86-64-based servers.

  Together, Oracle’s grid computing technologies and Oracle VM deliver a complete virtualization solution for the data center.

   

• IBM PowerVM
  IBM couldn’t miss the pack so here’s their offer regarding virtualization.
  PowerVM is the family of technologies, capabilities and offerings that deliver industry-leading virtualization on IBM POWER^TM processor-based systems.

  IBM Power Systems servers coupled with PowerVM technology are designed to help you consolidate and simplify your IT environment.

   

VirtualLogix
VirtualLogix VLX is an innovative and high-performance solution providing concurrent support for rich operating systems (OS) like Linux, and in-house or commercial Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) on general purpose processors and DSPs.

VirtualLogix VLX has been designed for products requiring the broad feature set of rich OS’s combined with the pre-ported stacks, or real-time performance of RTOS solutions.

VirtualLogix VLX enables developers to completely consider new and flexible architectures for their embedded products, yielding lower bill of materials (BOM) and development costs, enhanced preservation of intellectual property, and faster time to market.

 

• OpenVZ
  OpenVZ is container-based virtualization for Linux. OpenVZ creates multiple secure, isolated containers (otherwise known as VEs or VPSs) on a single physical server enabling better server utilization and ensuring that applications do not conflict. Each container performs and executes exactly like a stand-alone server; a container can be rebooted independently and have root access, users, IP addresses, memory, processes, files, applications, system libraries and configuration files.OpenVZ is free open source software, available under GNU GPL.

  OpenVZ is the basis of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, a commercial virtualization solution offered by Parallels. OpenVZ project is supported by Parallels.

   

• Hewlett-Packard Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM)
  HP Integrity Virtual Machines (Integrity VM) is a soft partitioning and virtualization technology, within the HP Virtual Server Environment, which enables you to create multiple virtual servers or machines with shared resourcing within a single HP Integrity server or nPartition.HP Integrity Virtual Machines runs on any HP Integrity server (including blades).

   

• Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtualization
  With Virtualization from Novell, you can consolidate workloads running on multiple physical servers onto a single physical server and harness unused computing power. You can also reduce your total number of servers by migrating multiple environments on different physical machines to individual virtual machines hosted on a single server. As a result, you can increase your CPU utilization and the efficiency of your server hardware.Xen is the main driver for Novell virtualization solution.

   

• GridGain
  GridGain is developed in Java and for Java developers and it is a natural extension of the latest Java development methodologies including annotations, integration of Spring and AOP-based grid-enabling. It is focused on doing one thing and doing it better than any other product – providing the best grid computing platform for Java that is fun, simple and productive to use. GridGain is dual-licensed under LGPL and Apache 2.0 licenses and is built on open source software foundation.

  They have important clients like: TomTom, PointLoyalty, Traficon, TradingScreen, PitneyBowes, Moody’s, Vedia and others.

   

10Gen
The 10gen software stack is analogous to Google App Engine in that it provides a new stack of tools (database, grid management, application server) that are purpose-built to run in a cloud environment.

The 10gen system is open-source and great for small development projects, yet our design goal is tools powerful enough to run the largest web sites on the internet.

 

• Parascale
  The ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS) software aggregates storage across multiple standard Linux servers to provide one highly scalable storage cloud, with massive capacity and parallel throughput. Files are accessible via 100% standard file-access protocols (NFS, HTTP, FTP), which means that applications don’t have to be modified to use PCS, and installation is easy. Deployments can start easily with several terabytes and scale to several petabytes in a single pool (namespace).A single administrator can manage hundreds of servers, with the system automatically balancing out hot-spots and capacity utilization across the various nodes.
• Elastic Servers
  Elastic Servers are custom application stacks, built from components, virtualization ready, download to test and deploy to a cloud.

   

• Elastra
  Elastic Computing, powered by ELASTRA, unlocks the value of the cloud. Companies building applications focus their resources and time on their applications and customers – not on their infrastructure. Design, deploy & manage database and application infrastructure in the Cloud… in minutes – all with the click of a button.

   

• Bungee Connect
  The Bungee Connect PaaS delivers the entire application lifecycle, including all the environments, tools and systems required to develop, deploy and host web applications. Development on Bungee Connect is accelerated by a comprehensive IDE, automated web service and database connectivity, integrated end-user interactivity, and developer collaboration.

   

As you see, plenty of software to choose from. A very nice comparison between different virtualization software you can also find on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_virtual_machines

If you have other suggestions please let us know in the comments.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

The interface for Elgg v1.0, the free open source social networking platform, underwent a radical overhaul due to the overwhelming users request for theming.

The team has created two basic themes to help those interested in theming get to grips with the components of an Elgg theme. Check them out here!
Elgg themes are developed as plugins which makes them distributable, customizable and powerful (they can also be enabled and disabled easily).

Here’s a short tutorial  on how to get started in theme creation.

There’s a dedicated place on Elgg website for theme development and it can be found here.

Elgg is a pretty new free open source social networking software and recently they launched its first version 1.0. It competes with a plethora of other free social networking platforms like Dolphin, PHPFox, PHPizabi, AroundME, Wordpress MU+Buddypress  and others.
It is PHP/MySQL built and it seems it’s gaining momentum in this crowded space.

Download it for free from here.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

The latest release of Magento, Version 1.1.6, was released this week and contained updates to the admin, a new design Skin and more. To coincide with the availability of 1.1.6, the Magento Team at Varien also released a new Blank Theme to assist designers in creating new custom themes for Magento.Version 1.1.6 is now available for download  and includes a few great updates, along with bug fixes which are listed in the release notes. Version 1.1.6 is a continuation of the Version 1.1.5 release.

Version 1.1.6 includes an update to the category management tool which allows store owners to more efficiently manage a large number of categories. This feature can be tested on our demo admin site. The release also comes with a new skin, Blue Skin, which can be seen on the demo frontend site.

As a reminder, they do not recommend upgrading directly on a live environment. For more information on the release please see their blog announcement.

To coincide with the availability of Magento 1.1.6, we have also made a new Blank Theme available via MagentoConnect.

With ‘Blank Theme‘ the Magento team answers the call of numerous community members out there who’s been inquiring about an extra light theme to use as a basis for theme customization. With this theme we’ve removed all the custom CSS formerly used in Default and Modern Theme, and replaced them with minor typography and positioning CSS assignments.

References to the class names were left in the CSS files to provide a solid starting ground for designers/developers. Markups were also revisited and cleaned up in theme-level.

Download, customize, and enjoy the new ultra light Magento theme!

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

It seems the Magento e-commerce solution is unstoppable. Besides winning the SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards Best New Project  Magento just won another prize: the “Best of Open Source Enterprise Applications (E-Commerce)” at Infoworld’s annual BOSSIE Awards  (this award “recognize the best free and open source software the world has to offer to businesses, IT professionals, and productive individuals who rely on computers to get work done”). The 2008 BOSSIE winners include 60 products in eight categories covering business and productivity applications, development tools, middleware, networking, security, and storage.

Other projects selected by InfoWorld’s editorial and test center staff are dotProject (open source project and task manager), Alfresco (open source enterprise content management system), Pentaho (open-source provider of reporting, analysis, dashboard, data mining and workflow capabilities), SugarCRM (open source commercial customer relationship management) and JasperReports (open source report-generating tool).

The company also announced the first of a series of challenges named Magento Developer Challenge (AKA HackGento). The goal is to develop Magento extensions with widespread usage in the community. They will present a challenge to the community every week: the first challenge is integrating Magento with Google Spreadsheet.

These are the details for the challenge #1 (from their blog ):

Overview: Allow simple product management from Google Spreadsheet (GS) using the GS API
Prize: $300 Amazon gift certificate
Questions? Please post all questions in the Developer Challenge Forum

Export
* Export user-selected (or all) simple products from Magento’s product grid directly into a GS doc and allow editing and adding of products in GS.
* The export should include the union of all attributes that the selected products are associated with.




Import

* Import all simple products from GS back into Magento while updating existing products and creating new products, if needed.
* Only attributes that are in the attribute set that a product belongs to will be saved. Any validation on the attribute level (e.g. required, decimal etc…) must be enforced before saving the product.
* Support for image management by specifying image name and type in GS and pulling the actual image from a specific location (e.g. /temp/) into Magento’s file structure.
* All values of simple products should be supported, including images, design, categories, related products, up-sales etc. Only custom options are excluded.
* When import is complete a report of all successful and rejected products should be presented to the user, with an appropriate reason(s) for rejection.




Configuration

Add a new configuration section under Catalog called Google Docs API to enter all required authentication values (token, etc.)
Requirements

* The solution must be developed and submitted as a Magento Extension compatible with Magento 1.1.x and higher.
* The extension must use Magento native functionality as much as possible.
* Extension should be packaged and uploaded in the appropriate forum thread. Varien staff will test and validate the extension in the order submitted.
* The solution’s asthetics must be compatible with the Magento Admin interface.
* The extension must be licensed under an OSI certified license (OSL, GPL, etc.)
* Once verified, the extension must be made available through Magento Connect to the public.

NOTE: they reserve the right to make changes at any time to the contest rules.

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Magento team released the production version 1.1.1 several days ago. This is a major release of this e-commerce software and it is focused on expanding Magento’s product configuration options, increasing the flexibility of the core tax module to allow for Canadian and EU tax rules, streamlining integration between strategic Magento modules and external applications and boosting the overall performance of the Magento platform.

Magento has been downloaded over 400,000 times and this gives it a strong presence on the ecommerce market (it has strong competition though, among them are well known names from the open source world). But as this e-commerce platform matures it will be a very good contender in this space (especially with the Web2.0 features it has on the backend).

What did they add or improve in this new version?
Well, here’s the short list (taken from their blog):

* Create more product-types
Merchandisers can now create a few new product types:
- Bundles (most commonly used in kitting or in the built-to-order product model)
- Virtual Products – products that don’t require shipping information

* More ways to configure products
- Custom Product Options – allow merchants to designate a SKU to a base item and add attributes instead of having to create a unique SKU for every combination of options (simple products).
- Personalized Products – a new product configuration feature in Magento 1.1 that allows customers to personalize products by adding text, such as embroideries, engravings, etc.

* Integrate with any application via Web Services
Magento 1.1 features a new Webservices API with methods for easy integration between Magento’s Catalog, Customer and Sales modules and any third party application. More about the Magento API here.

* Speeding up the process(ing)
One of the main goals for Magento 1.1 was to examine bottlenecks in the platform and improve performance. In the production release of Magento 1.1 performance was improved by as much as 40% in the catalog and sales modules, and by optimizing when and how data loads, responsiveness of the Admin UI was also increased significantly.

View full list of features in Magento 1.1

Upgrading an existing Magento version
(take their advice seriously! Especially regarding using the new version on your live environment.)

It’s now possible to upgrade your existing Magento installation to 1.1 through the Magento Connect Manager extension.

Here’s how to do it:

* Do NOT use your live or production site. We suggest making a copy of your site and upgrading that copy first.
* Log into your Magento Connect Manager.
* Select the ‘Setting’ tab.
* Change the Preferred State to ‘Stable’, and save settings.
* For the Mage_All_Latest package select upgrade.
* Click on the ‘Commit Changes’ button. The upgrade should start.
* After upgrade is complete click on the ‘Refresh’ button.
* You should now have Magento 1.1 installed.

Read also the users’ comments on their blog! You might find useful tips for installation and upgrading from those who already tested the new version.

There is a wiki post available detailing how to upgrade your Magento theme to take advantage of the new release.

Download the latest version here!  (registration required)

By the way, congratulations to Magento team for winning the “Best New Open Source Project” at 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards!

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

Magento e-commerce platform has been selected as a finalist for the 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards.

It was chosen in the following categories:

* Best Project for the Enterprise
* Most Likely to Be the Next $1B Acquisition
* Most Likely to Change the World
* Best New Project

That’s quite an achievement for a relatively young enterprise ecommerce platform (and young as a company). Congratulations for them! (more here )

Sourceforge will be present also at OSCON 2008 in Portland on July 21-25, where they’ll be hosting their awards party on July 24th at the Jupiter Hotel. Doors open at 6pm.

You can vote for Magento here, if you wish! (you need to register first)

©2010 MyTestBox.com :: web software reviews, news, tips and tricks. All Rights Reserved.

osTube www.ostube.de is a social networking media platform allowing the sharing of music, video, pictures and documents. It has been developed by AUVICA GmbH in Munich, Germany. Their other product lines are MyRadio, Reisepanne, and VIMP.

osTube is available by three product editions: Community, Professional and Enterprise. Community edition is free but you can’t run any ads and social networking communities with it. The Professional edition allows banner and video (priced differently) ads as Enterprise edition is a not priced solution for commercial projects which can include Live Streaming, Mobile payments, etc.

Professional edition costs $149 to manage Google AdSense ads with some extra templates and you should spend $299 when you want to run video ads and have more templates included.

Installation and configuration.
AUVICA promised us a test environment and without their help, I would not have been able to get the product running at all. The upload and distribution of files went quickly but afterwards I ended up with list of Apache Linux settings errors that I was unable to change without a console access besides modifying directory rights using ftp. Even I downloaded the English version of the software, the installation and error messages where in German. So seems that not all installation messages where yet translated. I also encountered several spelling mistakes in English language version further.

When finally I was able to complete installation routines, I ended up “Insufficient Rights” SQL error when trying to access the administration module. Finally when they had fixed it I was able to use the administration module when logged in as “admin”.

When logged to the administration module, the first page shows all developers news and you re able to login to developers forum to seek help.

The users section allows to manage users, including a modification of their profile, lock users, give users administration or moderation rights, modify groups and configure the minimum length parameters for passwords, usernames, group names, etc. You can get a list of those users who have missing address data or e-mail address not verified.

From the module configuration settings, besides site parameters the administrator can setup the language (English, German) which sections (video, audio, pictures, documents) are in use, is member address required, is it visible, is birthday data visible, maximum upload size, notifications when media item has been reported, will the uploaded media and new users to be approved by administrator. There is also possibility to setup site metags, paths and video conversion settings.

The Layout section allows changing the templates, uploading site logo and changing portal objects colours. The administrator is able upload watermark supporting only PNG format.

The modules section allows configuring which kind of modules will appear in first page, including the news module where the administrator can enter a separate message for each section.

Banner management section in Professional edition allows to setup banner campaigns as “superbanner” (horizontal banner over the screen which can be shown in top, below the header or in bottom), “skyscraper” (vertical banner in the right side of the screen) or Extended. Using extended setup, I was able to setup Google Adsense which can be shown in all mentioned sections. The campaign options management allows defining the priority of banner ranging 1-100 scale, duration and which pages this banner will be shown. There where no possibility to setup certain amount of views or clicks. The banner statistics gives campaign views and clicks information including click thru ratio.

Site statistics shows top users, top media, top videos, top music, top pictures and top documents.

As the administrator I was able to design elements in home and community page, including setup the element width by dragging and dropping them. The screen seems to be divided to four columns. However those boxes somehow didn’t want to stay in the place where I wanted them to be.

Usability
The home page has sections Featured Video, Las added and Video Top 3, New Users with Picture, Latest messages, Chat, Top rated, Icon Description and Tag Cloud. The chat box button says “Send Mail”.

After the confirmation, new member is able to edit profile, upload media, edit friend list, manage groups, empty history or delete profile.

Besides the basic information such as birth date, gender, address, sex, relationship status, a member can upload the avatar picture, give the general about me description and talk more about the occupation, school, favourite movies, favourite music and favourite books.

Member can setup also the e-mail notifications for new messages and comments.

When uploading the avatar my picture where cut from the bottom and changing my profile background and text colours changed those only for my profile part of the page, but not guestbook, recent activities and on actions box.

From the profile page user can relate the guestbook entries with person media but there where no integration between comments on media and guestbook entries.

Members can upload Videos, MP3 files, Pictures and Documents. Each media can be tagged and categorised having multiple categories for each media.

The media can be private or public. Document types I tested were PDF, MS-Word and MS-Excel. Those where opening as Windows objects allowing document modifications but I wasn’t able to save them back to server.

After the media file upload there is possibility to go directly to media page or upload another media. Somehow the system didn’t make a screenshot picture from my FLA test videos.

From media page the owner can make it private or delete it. Everyone can rate it, comment it, report abuse and bookmark it either to your bookmark list or to oneview.de, iq.lycos.de, del.icio.us, digg, mister-wong.de, yigg.de, blibklist.com and webnews.de.

There is a possibility to copy the embedded link for each media type.

The media page shows category playlist, statistics, related tags, WebPages referring to this media, page visitors and related media with same tags.

Users can browse the media by type and categories, sort them by most recent, by rating and by views.

The search box allows also keyword search from members, groups and blogs.

Groups must be setup also by categories and can be private or public. The group creator can setup the media approval and new media notifications to the group. Each group will be given their specific URL address.

Besides your group and media, site member can write a blog. The blog entries were not showing up in profile page but users are able to attach media files with blog entries and use simple formatting (Bold, Italic, Underline, Link and Link to Image) within the entry text.

Same Rich Text options where also available when creating blog comments, including the possibility to include additional media files for comments.

Each blog entry must be accepted before it appears in the blog list.

The blog page shows all blog entries which can be limited to 10/25/50 in page and latest messages. Blog entries can be sorted by date or latest comments.

Community page shows Top rated users, new users, most active users, new guestbook entries and latest comments. User is able to list new members, most active users, top rated users and switch to groups.

The group messaging allows only short one line topic header which can be related to your media file and can be commented. The commenting button says “Send Mail”.

Conclusion
osTube is commercial alternative to phpMotion (both being social networking media platforms with common characteristics). I found their staff quickly reacting to problems even the product I tested was official release and not beta as phpMotion. So instead asking license fee for commercial use of their software maybe this company should consider support and hosting services. The site setup features where more powerful, compared to phpMotion and it can be seen everywhere that this product is in active development. Of course they should hire an English speaking person to get a German product properly translated to the English speaking markets.

The software being a media portal platform, I didn’t see any need for the document sharing in a way they have implemented it.

Despite the problems I actually liked the software and the fact how committed their creators are to the product, I would consider it as a good commercial alternative (and the free edition too).
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Veiko Herne is lifetime entrepreneur, currently working as Independent Consultant with over 30 years experience in IT and starting his activities in Internet since 1993. After establishing and managing one of the most successful IT companies in Estonia after the collapse of Soviet Union, he later managed worldwide interest to his analytical financial accounting and HR management software packages from New York until September 11th. He is currently living in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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