osTube 2.5 – the latest video sharing software version from AUVICA
Feb 17, 2009 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
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).
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Tags: auvica, ostube, platform, version, video sharing, youtube clone
The new Wordpress blog software 2.7 Beta 1 is out for testing
Nov 4, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Wordpress blog software evolves steadily and now it reached the version 2.7. This is the first beta 1 release to the public.What it brings new?
According to ther blog it brings a new visual design mainly.
But also it features new additions like:
- the posibility to respond to comments from the admin area,
- automatic upgrade,
- plugin/browser installer,
- drag and drop dashboard,
- navigation expand/colaps,
- comment threading and paging,
- quick inline editing,
- add media without creating post,
- XMLRPC comments API,
- HTTPOnly Cookies,
- upgrades and installs over secure FTP,
- bulk editing of posts
- others
The most popular changes seem to be the new design/layout (looks good indeed), the automatic upgrade (pretty handy feature) and the revised dashboard (according to their poll).
This Beta version works well with Firefox and Safari although it’s not yet finished but the team is working also on making IE and Opera compatible.
The final release was intended to be unleashed into the wild on 10th of November but it seems that is not possible so the team is pushing the date with two weeks.
In the meantime, they’ll release a RC candidate (release candidate) which will be pretty much good for production use.
Go and try out the new Wordpress blog software! Dowload Wordpress 2.7 Beta 1 here.
Another announcement the company did is the launch of Wordpress Showcase, a display of some of the best and brightest WordPress users, who are using it to do a whole lot more than blog.
You can make a suggestion and the team will check that out and put it on Showcase if they think the site deserves it.
We have reviewed Wordpress in the past. Take a look at it.
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Tags: beta, blog software, review, showcase, version, wordpress
Security update from Wordpress: version 2.6.2
Sep 9, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
If you have a blog and allow open registration, then you definitely need to upgrade to this version!
There’s a security hole in the actual version of Wordpress which allows an attacker to randomly change passwords of other registered users (done by crafting an username). The passwords won’t be revealed to the attacker himself, but it is annoying for users to have their passwords changed suddenly. This attack, coupled with a weakness in the random number seeding in mt_rand(), could be used to predict the randomly-generated password (which is not something you want).
Stefan Esser brought the attack to the attention of the Wordpress team, which also helped them fix another problem (SQL Column truncation danger and weakness of mt_rand() ).
The new version of Wordpress also has a handful of bug fixes (checkout the forum). See the full changeset and list of changed files.
To keep up with Wordpress development, checkout their blog.
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Tags: blog, blog software, open-source, security, version, wordpress
Movable Type Pro and 4.2 – blogs are leaning towards social networking side
Aug 14, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
On August 13 (hope it won’t be bad luck!) Six Apart released a new version of its world acclaimed blogging software: Movable Type 4.2.
This new release show, according to Six Apart, where the blogging is going. Being one of the leaders (along Wordpress) who are we to say otherwise 
? Actually, we DO have a saying: when MovableType wasn’t open source WordPress was (still is). And we, the users, embraced WordPress more than MovableType, forcing them to go open-source too .
So, what is new in this 4.2 release?
Many things, if we look at their blog announcement.
Let’s number some of them here (snippet from their blog):
- * 100% Free AntiSpam. TypePad AntiSpam is the best comment spam prevention service on the web. And it’s 100% free no matter how many comments you get, plus it’s open source and Akismet API compatible so it’s easy to hook up to your site. With MT 4.2, it’s also built right in to Movable Type.
* It’s fast. Movable Type’s smart caching only publishes the parts of the page that change, and the core engine’s been radically revamped to make it more efficient. The result? Using your current templates, publishing can be two to three times faster, right out of the box. Some testers have seen results with publishing up to ten times as fast or more.
* Better APIs. OpenID suppport, OAuth libraries, and the ability to add in plugins to connect with the iPhone, Action Streams and more are all built right in. And all of your Movable Type 4 plugins should keep working just fine with this update, or have been updated to work even better in 4.2.
* Templates are super simple. Movable Type has always been designed so you don’t need a ton of plugins to do fancy things with your site’s design. But with all that power, our community told us that we also needed to make sure templates were still easy to understand. So in Movable Type 4.2, templates are vastly simplified, and easier than ever to customize. And live template previews even let you see design changes before they’re published on your site.
* Plus all the power of Movable Type 4. A powerful built-in asset management system. Integrated widget management. The smartest template editor around. The ability, as always, to manage an unlimited number of blogs and authors all in one place. Industry-leading support for new technologies and features. And an absolutely unparalleled community of passionate developers, designers, bloggers, and experts.
On top of these new features of Movable Type version 4.2 the Pro version of Movable Type adds the following (from their blog also):
- * Membership. It’s easy to allow anyone on the web to register on your site, or to sign in with Movable Type’s industry-leading OpenID support. Once they’re in, your site’s members get full-fledged customizable profiles, personalized user pictures (avatars), and can follow their friends or other site members they’re interested in.
* Everyone’s invited. You can easily add full-featured forums, community blogs and group blogs to your site, and since Movable Type has always managed an unlimited number of blogs in one interface (like Wordpress MU), you can keep track of all those conversations using a single set of tools.
* Ratings and Recommendations. Any registered user on your site can vote for content they like, making it easy to create “most popular” or “most recommended” lists on your site. You can even create your own voting communities within your site — think “Digg in a box”.
* User-generated content. Any member of your community can, with appropriate permissions, submit content for publishing on your site. Administrators have full ability to review submissions, and submitted posts show up on user profiles right next to their comments and other activity.
Note that Movable Type Pro is free for personal use but it is NOT free for commercial use! Movable Type 4.2 is free for all.
Basically, step by step, this blogging software goes towards a social network software with blogging being on the center stage. You might say “Oh no! Not another social network!”. And you might be right. It adds to the noise which is already there considering that many white label social networking software already have blog option incorporated in their offer. We have to find a way to manage all that noise.
Now, with all these features I’m wondering if it’s a better platform than WordPress (which powers this site among hundreds of thousands other sites).
Probably not, because WordPress it’s not just sitting still. They are developing BuddyPress (BuddyPress was a set of plugins written for WordPress MU – multiuser by a third party and was acquired by WordPress later on).
The new BuddyPress is based on WordPress MU core and still will be a set of plugins (friends, extended user profiles, private messaging, groups, status updates, photo albums and a plugin for a feature which resembles Twitter).
In the end, social networks and blogging converged and will be merging soon like with other software happened. Social networking is everywhere these days.
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Tags: blog software, buddypress, Movable Type, Six Apart, social networking, version, wordpress
Tikiwiki CMS launches the version 2.0, release candidate 4
Aug 7, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Two weeks after the release candidate 2 (Tikiwiki version 2.0) a new release candidate has been unleashed: #4Tikiwiki version 2.0 http://tikiwiki.org/ is the new version of this popular content management and wiki software/groupware.
We have reviewed an older version of Tikiwiki here.
This new version is packed with new features and enhancements like:
- # Accessibility
# Action log
# Admin improvements
# Ajax & Flash enhancements
# Authentication
# Banners
# Calendar
# Category
# Contacts (in MyTiki)
# Contribution
# Copyright management
# File Galleries
# Free tags
# Forums
# Wiki Auto Save a Draft
# Wiki page permissions
# Wiki Page Staging and Approval
# Universal Wiki edit button
# Wysiwyg in Wiki pages
# and many more!
In short, it has even more features, it’s faster and has a better user interface.
To see all of these new features and improvements, check out their page: http://doc.tikiwiki.org/Tikiwiki+2.0
It had amassed over two years of work and these new improvements seem fantastic. We might review this new version soon.
The official release will be out in August, so stay tuned!
The team (formed by over 300 developers around the world) already started the work for version 3.0, which could be released in April 2009. The main focus of version 3.0 will be enhancing the admin interface, the user interface, the theme system and built-in themes.
Get TikiWiki 2.0RC4 here:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=64258&package_id=266122
Help them improve. Report any issues here:
http://dev.tikiwiki.org/Report+a+Bug
And if you discovered any security issues report it to security@tikiwiki.org
About Tikiwiki
Tiki CMS/Groupware (aka TikiWiki) is a powerful open-source Content Management System (CMS) and Groupware that can be used to create all sorts of Sites, Web applications, Portals, Extranets, Intranets. TikiWiki is a multi-purpose package with a lot of native options and sections that you can enable/disable as needed. It is designed to be international, clean and extensible. TikiWiki also works great as a Web-based collaboration tool.
TikiWiki incorporates all the features present in several excellent wiki systems available today, plus a lot of new features and options, allowing your wiki application to be whatever you want it to be – from a simple wiki to a complex site for a whole user community with many intermediate steps. You can use TikiWiki as a forums site, for poll taking, a chat room, and much more!
Read our review of Tikiwiki here! (videos included)
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Tags: cms, content management, groupware, tikiwiki, version, wiki
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