Indian Govt Takes The Open Source Route

 The Indian Government has been talking of the open source-based systems for long, but for the first time it is working on a policy on the use of operating systems and device drivers in all new e-governance projects.          
Friday, July 08, 2011:   According to the latest draft policy on e-governance, all new projects must work on open source operating systems only. The draft Policy On Device Drivers For Procurement Of Hardware For e-governance says, “Government of India (GOI) endeavours to provide e-governance services, which are technology-neutral, cost effective, interoperable and vendor-neutral. GOI Policy on open standards is a step towards meeting this objective in the development of e-governance applications.” The policy shall apply to all the new e-governance projects as well as the existing ones.
   



 The need for such a policy was felt because while implementing open source, there is a possibility of non-availability of device drivers for all general purpose operating systems. “Hence, there is a need for a policy by GOI for procurement of computers and associated peripherals to empower the implementation of e-governance projects with neutrality to all general purpose OS,” states the draft.

The draft clarifies the reason for covering both computers and peripherals. According to the document, most parts of the computer, in general, work with the recent stable versions of Windows and Linux operating systems. However, some of the devices internal to computers may require drivers, which should adhere. The policy has to be applicable to them also, for example, webcam, inbuilt speakers. Other devices (like printer, scanner) are external to computers. Hence both computers and peripherals are covered in the policy, in addition to the drivers of external peripherals to ensure the complete-working of the computer system.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT) has demanded the following from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

1. The computers shall be capable of running on all general purpose operating systems.
2. OEMs shall provide drivers for computers and peripherals, which are capable of running on all general purpose OS.
3. The drivers of computers and peripherals for GNU/Linux (one of the general purpose OS) shall satisfy any of the following conditions:

a. The source code, build procedure and installation instructions for the drivers must be made available as per any of the open source software (OSS) licences listed. Computers and peripherals must be operational using these drivers in the latest stable Linux-kernel. It implies that in case, the source code, build procedure and installation instructions for the drivers are made available as per any of the open source software licences listed in the policy, and if these are accepted in the latest stable Linux-kernel, then it is expected to work in any of the Linux-distributions.

b. The source code, build procedure and installation instructions for the drivers must comply with LSB-3.0 or higher versions and accepted by any of the Linux-distributions. The compliance with LSB-3.0 or higher versions is opted because the current stable version of Debian distribution (Version 6.0 Squeeze) is compliant with LSB Version 3.2, and not LSB Version 4.0.

c. In case only binaries are made available for the drivers, then they shall be Linux-compatible; in addition, kernel dependent binaries must adhere to the specifications of the latest stable Linux-Kernel.

As mentioned above, the adherence to any one of the three conditions is sufficient when considering Linux OS. The reason cited for this is: "The source code of the device driver for the Linux operating system is made available through two approaches, (a) under open source licences (b) LSB compliance, as indicated in the policy. From any of the two approaches, binary for the device driver can be built. Third approach is to use the binary of the device driver provided by the vendor as per the policy requirements."

The open source licences demanded in the policy are:

1. Apache License, Version 2.0
2. Eclipse Public License- v 1.0
3. European Union Public License (EUPL v.1.1)
4. GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPLv2)
5. GNU General Public License, version 3 (GPLv3)
6. Mozilla Public License 1.1 (MPL 1.1)
7. The BSD License
8. The GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1)
9. The GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3.0 (LGPLv3)
10. The MIT License
11. Any other licence which gives freedom to copy, modify and redistribute driver source code without any restrictions.

The draft policy clarifies the demand for so many open source licences. It says, “The widely used OSS licences are listed along with generic open source software licence which gives freedom to copy, modify and redistribute driver source code without any restrictions. Hence the driver is made available by building the executable from the available source-code under any one of the listed licences.”

Source: www.efytimes.com

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How To Find Broken Links on Your Site?

Broken links are nothing more than links inside your website that point to pages that don't exist. Maybe you deleted the page because it was not relevant anymore, or maybe your simply used a wrong URL when creating the link. Fact is that when a user clicks on one of those links he will see a frustrating 404 error page. 

It is easy to see how broken links can negatively affect the user experience inside your site. Apart from annoying your human visitors, though, broken links also upset search engine bots, and if your site has too many of them your search rankings might suffer.

For these reasons I recommend that you check for broken links on your site at least twice a year.

Now if you have a large blog or website it would be impossible to check all the links manually right? Luckily there is a great tool that you can use for this purpose, called Xenu's Link Sleuth, or simply Xenu.

Don't worry you won't need to pay anything, just download it and install on your computer (it only runs on Windows).

Here is the official site: http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

The design of the site is horrible, I know, but it is a legitimate project.

Once you have the tool running, just type the URL of your website and it will start crawling all the links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, and so on.

You will be able to follow the process, and in the end you will see a report with all the broken links, redirects, valid URLs and more.

It is really a nifty piece of software, and a must have on the tool-belt of any webmaster.

Make sure to visit again at http://www.anilkmishra.blogspot.com, for latest trends and techniques in ICT.

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5 Free PC-Cleaning Downloads

Is your PC slowing you down? Try these to fasten and smarten up your comp, and live with your laptop happily forever…

    From the huge number of free downloads and tools available to tweak your PC to make it boot up faster, here are five featured free downloads which are really easy to use. Web search each title in the list and see carefully as to which tool suits your needs the best. 

   Also note that none of these are Mac-compatible.

Soluto

Soluto is a freeware programme for the operating systems of PCs. Although no system requirements are specified on the website’s page,the program has been tested on a 32 bit machine and it ran flawlessly. It’s main function is to speed up you boot time – and that it does.


Smart Defrag
This is a tiny PC-compatible utility sized at only 1.8 MB. When you run the program, you can view all your hard drive partitions. Click on the partition you feel is responding slowly, and perform an analysis to see if any files require defragmentation.

 
Fontfrenzy

Your computer comes loaded with a huge number of fonts you will probably never use. To clean up these redundant fonts, you could employ any one of countless font managers available on the web. The suggested one, however, would be Font-Frenzy – a font manager with some extra font cleaning features. FontFrenzy is a freeware sized at only 490 KB and is compatible with your PC. When you load it, the programme shows all fonts installed on your computer. 



 USB Write Protect
A flash drive virus works by writing itself onto your flash drive. If you could somehow temporarily disable the writing permissions on your drive, your flash drive would be more secure. At the same time, you will be unable to accidentally delete or modify the flash drive’s contents. USB Write Protect is a tiny utility sized at only 11KB. You download the archive, extract it, and run the .exe file in it.



Bvckup




 Bvckup is a programme currently in its beta that works with Windows Operating Systems. The programme has a number of interfaces and functionality features which set it apart from applications that perform the same auto-syncing tasks. 
   

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Open Source and Free Software Directory

 

The following tables comprise a selective guide to various free and open source software tools for a variety of digital media applications.

 

This is an attempt to provide a first port of call for those looking for free and/or open source applications on the Internet. There is a bewildering array of such software and, as a result, we cannot hope to make this directory comprehensive. In addition, the almost daily changes in existing applications and the constant arrival of new ones means that the accuracy of information in these tables can't be guaranteed.

 

What this directory can provide is an easy way into the maze of applications on the Internet and a useful list of some of the most popular tools available.  A quick glance at the tasks in the left hand column will immediately lead to one or more appropriate applications along with information about what machines it or they will work on. We hope to provide evaluations of some of these applications in the near future as well as keeping the directory as up-to-date as we can.

 

If a more exhaustive search for applications is desired, there are a number of places to look.  Aside from the inevitable Google search, many tools can be found by checking the SourceForge website and the Open Source Software Directory.

Notes

• Webware applications are also known as cloud applications or online applications. They are tools which do not require the downloading of software to your computer. Instead, a browser is used to access the site on the Internet where the tool is used. There is some information available from an event at the University of Bristol.  Also see our advice documents on free online image editors, free online audio editors and free online screencasting tools.
  
• Note that 'free' does not mean 'open source'. Often, free applications are stripped-down versions of commercial applications and, as such, may not provide all of the functionality you are expecting.
  

AUDIO	Webware	Linux	Mac	Windows	Website	Open source	Free	Notes
audio editing		Audacity	Audacity	Audacity	audacity.sourceforge.net
	Audio Expert				www.audioexpert.com
		SoX	SoX	SoX	sox.sourceforge.net
		Traverso DAW	Traverso DAW	Traverso DAW	traverso-daw.org
		WaveSurfer	WaveSurfer	WaveSurfer	www.speech.kth.se/wavesurfer
		Ardour	Ardour		www.ardour.org
		LMMS		LMMS	lmms.sourceforge.net			Linux MultiMedia Studio
		Ecasound	Ecasound		www.eca.cx/ecasound
		Snd			ccrma.stanford.edu/software/snd
		Jokosher		Jokosher	www.jokosher.org
		MusE			muse-sequencer.org
		Qtractor			qtractor.sourceforge.net
		ReZound			rezound.sourceforge.net
		Rosegarden			www.rosegardenmusic.com
		Sweep			www.metadecks.org/software/sweep
			WavePad	WavePad	www.nch.com.au
	Myna				www.aviary.com
file conversion			Switch		www.nch.com.au/switch
music creation	Roc				www.aviary.com

 

STILL IMAGE	Webware	Linux	Mac	Windows	Website	Open source	Free	Notes
image colour editing	Toucan				www.aviary.com
image compression		Smush.it	Smush.it	Smush.it	www.smushit.com			lossless
image creation and editing (see also our guide to Free Online Image Editors)	DrPic				www.drpic.com
	FotoFlexer				fotoflexer.com
		GIMP	GIMP	GIMP	www.gimp.org
		ImageMagick	ImageMagick	ImageMagick	www.imagemagick.org/script			bitmap
		Inkscape	Inkscape	Inkscape	www.inkscape.org			vector graphics, can be used for video titling
	LunaPic				www.lunapic.com
	Phixr				www.phixr.com
	Phoenix				www.aviary.com
	Photoshop.com				www.photoshop.com
	Picnik				www.picnik.com
	PicResize				www.picresize.com
	Pixer.us				www.pixer.us
	Pixlr				www.pixlr.com
	Splashup				www.splashup.com
	Sumo Paint				www.sumopaint.com
image effects editing	Peacock				www.aviary.com
image markup	Falcon				www.aviary.com
image vector editing	Raven				www.aviary.com
panorama creation				AutoStitch	cvlab.epfl.ch/~brown/autostitch/autostitch.html

 

MOVING IMAGE	Webware	Linux	Mac	Windows	Website	Open source	Free	Notes
animation (2-D)		Pencil	Pencil	Pencil	www.pencil-animation.org			for traditional hand-drawn animation
		KToon			www.ktoon.net
		Synfig	Synfig	Synfig	synfig.org			vector-based
animation (3-D)		Blender	Blender	Blender	www.blender.org
DVD ripping		Doom9	Doom9	Doom9	www.doom9.org			repository for an enormous number of rippers, codecs, filters and much more
subtitling		Aegisub	Aegisub	Aegisub	www.aegisub.org
		Gaupol		Gaupol	home.gna.org/gaupol
			Miyu		www.fluffalopefactory.com/miyu
		Subtitle Editor			home.gna.org/subtitleeditor
				Subtitle Processor	sourceforge.net/projects/subtitleproc
				VisualSubSync	www.visualsubsync.org
video capture and processing				VirtualDub	www.virtualdub.org
video distribution platform		Kaltura			www.kaltura.org			includes editor and player
video editing		Avidemux	Avidemux	Avidemux	www.avidemux.org
		Avitricks Classic			www.bobyte.com/AviTricks			for AVI files
		Cinefx	Cinefx	Cinefx	www.cinefx.org			also visual effects; used to be known as Jahshaka
		Cinelerra			www.heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php			also a compositor
	Clesh				www.clesh.com			based on FORscene
			Hyperengine-AV		sourceforge.net/projects/hyperengine
	Jaycut				jaycut.com
		LiVES	LiVES	LiVES	lives.sourceforge.net			also a performance and VJ app
		Lumiera			lumiera.org			based on Cinelerra
		Kdenlive	Kdenlive		kdenlive.org
		Kino			kinodv.org			including FireWire capture from DV
		Open Movie Editor			www.openmovieeditor.org
				VideoPad	www.nchsoftware.com/videopad/index.html
				Windows Movie Maker	www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx
		ZS4 & Zwei-Stein	ZS4 & Zwei-Stein	ZS4 & Zwei-Stein	www.zs4.net
video playing, converting, etc.		Cineplay	Cineplay	Cineplay	www.cinefx.org
			MPEG Streamclip	MPEG Streamclip	www.squared5.com			can also edit
		Mplayer & Mencoder	Mplayer & Mencoder	Mplayer & Mencoder	www.mplayerhq.hu
				Prism Video Converter	www.nchsoftware.com/prism/index.html
		VLC Player	VLC Player	VLC Player	videolan.org/vlc			probably the best open source app in the world…
video transcoding		Cinecode	Cinecode	Cinecode	www.cinefx.org			drag-and-drop utility to convert anything to Flash
		HandBrake	HandBrake	HandBrake	handbrake.fr
webcam recording				Debut	www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html

 

CROSS-MEDIA	Webware	Linux	Mac	Windows	Website	Open source	Free	Notes
audio & video qualitative analysis			Transana	Transana	www.transana.org
collections management system		Omeka			omeka.org

 

OTHER APPLICATIONS	Webware	Linux	Mac	Windows	Website	Open source	Free	Notes
CAD (Computer Aided Design)			Google SketchUp	Google SketchUp	sketchup.google.com/			3D modelling software. Integrates with Google Earth
cloud storage	Dropbox				www.dropbox.com
	Mozy				mozy.com
collaborative software				Dimdim	www.dimdim.com
		Etherpad			etherpad.org
		ProjectPier			www.projectpier.org
	Google Docs				docs.google.com
content management system		Plone	Plone	Plone	plone.org
		Drupal	Drupal	Drupal	drupal.org
digital repository management	DSpace				www.dspace.org
		Fedora	Fedora	Fedora	www.fedora-commons.org
		Greenstone	Greenstone	Greenstone	www.greenstone.org
eLearning development environment		Xerte	Xerte	Xerte	www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte
object identification and validation		JHOVE			hul.harvard.edu/jhove
		DROID			droid.sourceforge.net
RSS aggregator		Brief	Brief	Brief	brief.mozdev.org			add-on for Firefox
screen capture			Jing	Jing	www.techsmith.com/jing/
		Camstudio			camstudio.org/
	Screen Toaster				www.screentoaster.com
	Screencast-o-Matic				www.screencast-o-matic.com
	Screenjelly				www.screenjelly.com
	Screenr				screenr.com			designed to work with Twitter
	Talon				www.aviary.com
screenwriting		Celtx	Celtx	Celtx	www.celtx.com
VLE		eFront			www.efrontlearning.net
		Moodle	Moodle	Moodle	moodle.org
web server		XAMPP	XAMPP	XAMPP	www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html			easy-to-install version of Apache

 

 

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