Linux comes with various GUI based email client to stay in touch with your friends and family, and share information in newsgroups with other users. The following software is similar to Outlook Express or Windows Live Mail and is used by both home and office user.

Webmail interfaces allow users to access their mail with any standard web browser, from any computer, rather than relying on an e-mail client.

However, e-mail client remains extremely popular in a large corporate environment, small business, home and power users. An e-mail client (also mail user agent (MUA)) is a frontend computer program used to manage e-mail. Mail can be stored on the client, on the server side, or in both places. Standard formats for mailboxes include Maildir and mbox.

The following are top five amazing piece of cross-platform software from various projects to make your life easy with wide variety of plug-ins / add-ons.

#1: Mozilla Thunderbird

It is an e-mail and news cross-platform client software package by Mozilla Foundation. Thunderbird can manage multiple e-mail, newsgroup and RSS accounts and supports multiple identities within accounts. Features like quick search, saved search folders , advanced message filtering, message grouping, and labels help manage and find messages. Just like Firefox, the tons of extensions and themes for this client makes it very secure and flexible to to enhance your productivity.

Fig.01: Mozilla Thunderbird

=> Download Mozilla Thunderbird

#2: Claws Mail

Claws Mail is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Like Firefox , the wide variety of plug-ins for this email client makes it very flexible and secure. Claws Mail runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, BSD, and Solaris.

Fig.02: Claws Mail in Action

=> Download Claws Mail

#3: Spicebird

Spicebird is a collaboration client that provides integrated access to email, contacts, calendaring and instant messaging in a single application. It provides easy access to various web services while retaining all the advantages of a desktop application. It is developed by an Indian company called Synovel. It is a free, open source and cross-platform software.

Fig.03: Spicebird in Action (image credit Spicebird project)

=> Download Spicebird

#4: Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

Zimbra is a client and server platform for messaging and collaboration. The web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring in a rich browser-based interface. This is more like MS-Exchange and Outlook combo. In other words it is compatible with proprietary clients such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple Mail, both through proprietary connectors, as well as the open-source Novell Evolution, so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. Zimbra also provides native two-way sync to many mobile devices such as Nokia Eseries, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone with 2.0 software.

Fig.04: Zimbra (credit offical Zimbra website)

=> Download Zimbra Collaboration Suite (Open Source Version)

#5: Sylpheed

Sylpheed is a free, GTK+-based, open source email and news client. It is very light lightweight. Sylpheed runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Unix-like systems such as Linux, and BSD.

Fig.05: Sylpheed in Action

=> Download sylpheed

Other Email Clients For UNIX Like Operating Systems

1. SeaMonkey – Mozilla SeaMonkey is an all-in-one Internet application suite that includes an Internet browser, email and newsgroup client, HTML editor, IRC chat, and web development tools. It includes a pop-up blocker, junk mail controls, and a tabbed interface.
2. Pine (Alpine) – Alpine is a rewrite of the Pine Message System that adds support for Unicode and other features. Alpine is meant to be suitable for both inexperienced email users and the most demanding of power users.
3. Evolution or Novell Evolution – Evolution provides integrated mail, addressbook and calendaring functionality to users of the GNOME desktop.

Recommendations:

1. Claws Mail – Highly recommended for netbook user due to lightweight usage.
2. Mozilla Thunderbird – The wide variety of add-on for this email client makes it very flexible, secure and easy to use. Highly recommended for desktop and power users.
3. Zimbra Collaboration Suite ~ Open Source Edition or Businesses Editon – Highly recommended for business and corporate users due to its support for a broad range of email clients and mobile devices via "over the air" sync.

(From Mashable)

Twitter has become an integral part of our social media lives, marketing strategies, and business objectives. We have multiple accounts, hundreds of followers to watch, Twitter trends to track, hashtags to follow, and a frequent need for continuously updating search results.

As such, getting by on the limited feature set available via Twitter.com is difficult at best. Enter the desktop application, a third-party piece of software that you can install on your computer to interface with Twitter and get more out of your microblogging activities.

Now that Twitter is older than a toddler, you have a variety to choose from. From apps for groups, Mac and PC specific clients, and apps that let you do a whole lot more than tweet, you can use this guide to help you find the desktop client that’s right for you.

*Note: all ratings are based on 5 stars

Power Users Only

Destroy Twitter: Certainly not your most sophisticated Twitter client, but definitely above average and packing a few hidden nuggets. Destroy Twitter is a single account, single column app (but does allow for multiple columns in the expanded view), that’s clearly not for power users who have multiple presences to manage. It does, however, have a simple yet powerful groups feature that supports groups of users or groups of multiple keywords. The only problem is that accessing those groups can be a challenge.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: user-created themes that you can download to skin the app
Common concern: better features are hidden

TweetDeck: Our current head-to-head winner in the desktop space, TweetDeck’s most recent updates improve upon the column experience to include a report spam button, recommended people to follow, better video playback, auto-suggest for usernames, yFrog integration, and unlimited columns. Oh and it also happens to have a complementary iPhone app that syncs with your desktop columns. Nice.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: sync with the iPhone app
Common concern: groups need a little fine tuning

*Disclosure: TweetDeck partnered with Mashable to create MashDeck, a branded version of the software.

Seesmic Desktop: This really is the everything Twitter app. It features support for unlimited Twitter accounts and columns, a smattering of URL and photo options, hands down the best Facebook integration we’ve seen, and unlimited saved searches. We’re really in love with Seesmic Desktop, and it seems to be evolving at record pace.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: fantastic Facebook integration for comments and likes
Common concern: system resource hog

PeopleBrowsr: The desktop version is just as complicated and feature-rich as the web app (you’ll need to log in to the website to find the download link in lower right-hand corner). With PeopleBrowsr you get a full-featured Twitter app that is bloated with features like export, sort by Twitter name or number of followers, map or gallery views, stats on stacks (which are like columns), an aggregate view of tweets across stacks, simultaneous posting to other services, quick access to a number of different filters, and so much more. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the integrations with every popular social site on the planet. Even though the light mode is a little easier, this app is better left to extreme power users. Plus all those features seem to really slow it down.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: export
Common concern: information overload

Mac Apps

Mac Lounge: This app is incredibly appealing for its dead simple, single column interface and respectable feature set. We, of course, love the multiple account support, but also appreciate saved searches, quick access to view followers and following, and tweet options to link to tweet, copy tweet, or copy tweet URL. There’s also an accompanying iPhone app [iTunes link], which syncs with the desktop version and greatly improves the app’s relevance.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop categories to reorder (on left-hand panel)
Common concern: lack of support for groups or image posting

Nambu: This really sophisticated Mac app should be more than enough for any and all of your Twitter needs. You’ve got access to your followers and friends, custom groups, search (integrated with FriendFeed and One Riot), trends, tr.im and pic.im integration, multiple accounts, Ping.fm integration, filters, and three view options for a one or many column view of tweets.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: Twitter search with FriendFeed, OneRiot, and Yahoo results
Common concern: needs more variety for photo and URL shortening

Tweetie for Mac: Beautiful, sleek, and simple, Tweetie for Mac is everything you’d expect from the developers of the top mobile application for Twitter. You can get a beautiful view of conversations, toggle through and manage multiple accounts, save searches, and even post videos to yFrog. It’s the cleanest single column app with multiple account management that we’ve ever seen.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: killer conversation threads
Common concern: groups are strangely absent

TwitterPod: This app isn’t known for its sophistication or advanced Twitter functionality. TwitterPod is a basic single column Twitter app with an inline browser and the ability to filter for just tweets with links. Its heyday has long since passed, but original fan boys and girls may still be using this for their twittering.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: inline browser
Common concern: not reliable

EventBox: This just-for-Mac app is a favorite of many because it supports Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr integration, and also supports feed reading with Google Reader, and internet trend watching with Reddit and Digg. Keyboard shortcuts, hotkeys, instapaper integration, and photo uploads to Flickr and Facebook make EventBox pretty nifty. It’s also got a very slick interface with a navigation menu on the left-hand side.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: feed reading alongside tweet watching
Common concern: single Twitter account support only

Windows Apps

Digsby: The beloved IM, email notification, and social networking application also does Twitter, but it’s only available for PCs at the moment. On the social networking side, Digsby pulls in Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn so you can get a more complete view of what’s happening across your entire social presence.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: IM and email integration
Common concern: not robust enough for power users

DigiTweet: This open source desktop Twitter client for Windows is built on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and allows for a lot of customization in the layout and view of your Twitter stream with an interactive dockable pane. DigiTweet has also evolved to include multiple search tabs, color coding users you follow by categories (kind of love this), alerts for specific users, follow/unfollow, and link preview.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: toast alerts for specific tweeters
Common concern: tricky user interface

A Few More Options

Twhirl: This oldie but goodie, though no longer actively being updated (Seesmic Desktop took its place), is still working just fine and many a Twitter early adopter are happy to have a single column Twitter experience, with additional windows available for additional Twitter accounts, plus FriendFeed, Seesmic, and Identica integration for viewing and posting content to those sites. Since you can still save Twitter searches, TwhirlTwhirl is actually a really great desktop client if you’re not beholden to groups.

Mashable rating: 3.5 stars
Hit feature: FriendFeed support for viewing threads and adding comments
Common concern: window overload

Skimmer: It’s hard not to love this app. Not only is it beautiful to look at it, but it also tracks your favorite social sites. Skimmer’s certainly not an application for the social media beginner, but power users of Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, blogger, and Twitter, will appreciate the aggregation of content, filtering options, view types, and enhanced content viewing experience.

Mashable rating: 4.5 stars
Hit feature: gorgeous Flickr and YouTube video viewing
Common concern: sacrificing a few advanced twitter app features for beauty

Sideline: Sideline is just a search and trending topic app from Yahoo, but it does a darn good job at satisfying those specific needs. You can view current Twitter trends, select to see the three latest tweets or pop out as its own saved search, and create custom search groups as tabs.

Mashable rating: 4 stars
Hit feature: search groups that support multiple keywords
Common concern: can’t tweet from the app

Less to Tweet Home About

Tweetr: A lesser known simple app, Tweetr is beautiful adobe AIR based app that doesn’t support multiple accounts, and isn’t right for power users, but might be just perfect for lightweight Twitterers. You’re not going to get columns, groups, search, or filters, but you can share files and take photos with your web cam.

Mashable rating: 3 stars
Hit feature: file sharing and webcam photos
Common concern: URL shortening limited to hurl.ws

Twibble Desktop: Twibble is a bit of a riddle. It’s not a bad app when it comes to feature set, but it’s also not the most intuitive. You can manage multiple accounts, but all tweets are merged together in one stream. You can reply, DM, fav, RT, and copy tweets, but you’ll have to hover over the tweet to even know those behaviors are possible. You can also use keyboard shortcuts, filter your tweets for keywords, or conduct searches that open up in new windows, but Twibble just doesn’t seem to flow as easily as we’d like it to.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: drag and drop photo upload
Common concern: very tricky user interface

Twitterrific: Once the preferred app of the Mac Twitterati, Twitterrific has seen brighter days on your desktop (meanwhile the iPhone app is certainly an impressive option). As it stands, Twitterrific is hardly an improvement on the Twitter.com web experience.

Mashable rating: 2 stars
Hit feature: super lightweight
Common concern: hard to filter tweets for mentions and direct messages

Spaz: With a name like Spaz, you’d expect this AIR based client to be perfect for the Twitter spaz. Unfortunately, that’s not quite the case. So even though it’s not a terrible app for lightweight Twitterers, power users won’t get by on the limited feature set.

Mashable rating: 2.5 stars
Hit feature: in-line short URL decoding
Common concern: no photo uploading options

Snitter: Another one of those apps that was all the rage back in the day, but is now in dire need of an update. This one is definitely a pass for the time being.

Mashable rating: 1.5 stars
Hit feature: filter by time period
Common concern: too many to count

2. AdBlock Plus – stop displaying annoying ads on websites
AdBlock Plus is, as its name suggests, an add-on which will strip all the ads from a website, very useful for those who don’t like ads put in unwanted places which can distract from reading and accessing a website properly. The first time it starts, AdBlock will prompt the user to select a country-specific list of advertising sites to block. These lists are huge and the end-result is very satisfactory.
Install from the Firefox add-ons page
Homepage

3. PDF Download – convert web pages to PDF
PDF Download is a nice, feature-rich add-on which will convert a web page to PDF on demand and it will save it on your hard drive. When you will select this action it will also open a new tab (or window, depending on the settings) with the homepage of PDF Download. This add-on also offers the possibility to specify the format of the PDF (portrait or landscape) and how to handle margins.
Install from the Firefox add-ons page
Homepage

4. Speed Dial – add-on similar to Opera’s speed dial
Speed Dial is similar with one good features the Opera browser ships by default. Speed Dial will display in a single tab several previews of web pages of your choice, which will make accessing your favourite websites faster and easier. The add-on allows you to set the number of rows and columns to be displayed. It is highly configurable via the Tools -> Add-ons menu option. The only drawback Speed Dial has is that for some sites the preview is not very accurate.
Install from the Firefox add-ons page
Homepage

5. Google Preview – insert previews in Google and Yahoo! searches
Yet another useful extension, Google Preview will insert previews in Google and Yahoo! search results, helping you to make an idea about what a specific site is about and if it is worth accessing it. You can set the number of maximum previews per page and and make it show the site rank in a small bar below the site’s description. Of course, it comes at bandwidth cost and a little slowness, but many find this add-on very useful.
Install from the Firefox add-ons page
Homepage

ZeeVee, a startup venture focused on helping people watch high-definition Internet video on their TVs,  recently introduced a new version of its free video browser – formerly known as Zviewer.  Now called called Zinc,  it was originally designed for the ZvBox, the firm’s PC-to-TV-over-coaxial-cable appliance.  The application runs on any Windows XP or Vista computer and the company’ website reports that a  Mac version is also in the works.

Once installed on a PC (a Mac version should surface by April), users can easily navigate to tons of internet-based TV content from the likes of CBS, ABC, etc. Also of note, this version bakes in access to your Netflix Watch Instantly queue, providing access to 15,000 feature length movies and tens of thousands of TV shows. For now, ZeeVee’s committed to keeping the application free, and it believes its superior UI will win folks over. The full release is waiting just past the break, and those interested in giving it a go should find a live download waiting right here.

If you’ve ever maintained a blog and experienced the dreadful ho-hum web-based interfaces of WordPress, Blogger etc.,  then l’ve got a tip that will get your fingers moving happily again!  First, I should state for the record that I am not a Microsoft fan.  I prefer my Mac or Linux workstation in just about every situation but…

The whole Windows Live team is doing some really kick @$$ things these days.

I’ve been using Windows Live Writer (WLW) on my various WordPress blogs for a few months and now I wouldn’t use anything else.  It’s super easy to change between blogs, or if you have one post you want to post to both places, just select it from a drop down menu.  If you change the theme of your blog, you can even download the look and feel into WLW as well so you can see what your post looks like before you publish.  Way cool.  It’s also simple  to manipulate the placement of photos in your blog (left, right, center) and also a snap to insert video from YouTube or Vimeo.  The capability of scheduling your blogs for publication at a later date is a handy feature for those of us who have flurries of creativity followed by days of writer’s block.  Ever find a typo in your post and want to update?  Just fix it in WLW and republish –  it’s smart enough not to duplicate the post.

Bottom line:  Windows Live Writer is unquestionably and undoubtedly the best blog writing program on any platform.  Period.  Bar none.  It is the one reason I keep a Windows machine around (well, I guess Unreal Tournament and Office are pretty good reasons too).  I have yet to find any program on the Mac that remotely comes close to Live Writer in terms of functionality and just general program goodness.  If someone knows of one, I would love to know.

Best of all — its free and you can download it now at Windows Live.

March 31, 2009 (Computerworld) When big companies release new software, they launch it with lots of hoopla: press tours, technical conferences, free T-shirts. Open-source projects, even the well-known ones, generally release their major new versions with a lot less fanfare. The FOSS (free and open-source software) community is often too busy coding and testing to bother with marketing, even when the new "point release" of the software is really remarkable.

And there are plenty of remarkable open-source applications on the way this year. Quite a few projects are quietly (or not so quietly) working on major releases or significant upgrades that they aim to make available sometime during 2009. I’ve rounded up 25 of the most notable here.

There are browsers and operating systems, mobile platforms, development tools, productivity applications, IT administration tools, collaboration software and a few hard-to-classify items. Some of these you’ve heard of; others may be relatively obscure but should give you the wriggly "Oooh, cool!" sense of discovery.

You’re sure to feel that one or two really important upcoming releases are missing. (You try paring the list down to a couple dozen candidates!) But the FOSS community spirit can serve here too. Please add your nominations for can’t-miss open-source releases of 2009 to the article comments, including links to the project sites, and we’ll all benefit.

Browsers and operating systems

Ten years ago, who’d have thought there could still be so much innovation in Web browsers in 2009? Microsoft Corp. may intend to keep up the pace with Internet Explorer 8, but the FOSS options are at least as compelling.

Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox 3.5 promises a native parser for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), a data exchange format frequently used in Web apps, and several features to enhance rich media Web content, including support for the HTML 5 video element and the Ogg Vorbis and Theora open audio and video codecs.

And then there’s whatever Google Inc. is planning for its Chrome browser, based on the open-source WebKit engine. The company is playing it close to the vest, but we do know Mac and Linux versions of the browser are in development.

Ubuntu 9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope.
Click to view larger image.

Linux fans have much to look forward to, too. Following the release of Ubuntu 9.04, the "Jaunty Jackalope," in April, the Ubuntu team is planning for Ubuntu 9.10, the "Karmic Koala," to see the light of day in October 2009. Among the promised new features are integration with the Amazon EC2 APIs, so users can set up their own cloud using entirely open tools, and a kernel mode setting for a smooth and flicker-free start-up. The Ubuntu Netbook Edition will get the latest technology from the mobile Internet project Moblin, including better screen support.

Every other Linux distribution is sure to get better, too, along with associated operating system components. For example, openSUSE 11.2, scheduled for November, should include KDE 4.3, GNOME 2.28, Linux kernel 2.6.30 (or higher), a Web-based YaST interface and netbook support.

Red Hat Fedora 11 is slated for release by this summer, with several updates. The project’s goals include making Fedora boot and shut down faster (you’d be at the log-in screen in 20 seconds), changing supported architectures and default installed kernels, and improving support for fingerprint readers.

Mobile software

It’s easy to keep our eyes focused on the proprietary technologies behind the iPhone and BlackBerry, but the FOSS community elves have been hammering out their own mobile innovations.

Android is Google’s software stack for mobile devices, including an operating system, middleware and key applications. The current beta version of the Android SDK, released in early 2009, has tools and APIs for programmers to begin developing applications on the Android platform in Java.

Current focus is on support for input methods, such as devices other than physical keyboards. Later this year, Android should get support for displays beyond HVGA. Nobody is talking dates yet, but the entire mobile community is watching.

The T-Mobile G1, the first Android-powered device. Click to view larger image.

Maemo is a Linux-based software platform built by an open-source community (with Nokia as its principal sponsor and contributor) to support mobile devices, particularly tablets like Nokia’s N810 Internet Tablet. The Maemo 5 Alpha SDK, introduced in March, has a new UI framework and APIs so developers can build location-aware applications that control vibrations and respond to changes in device orientation. Maemo 5 is also expected to have OMAP3 support, cellular data connectivity and high-definition camera support.

The new Wikipedia Mobile.
Click to view larger image.

For all the delights of Wikipedia, its mobile offering is … underwhelming. Fortunately, Wikipedia Mobile is under active development. The new version (written in Merb) will give you access to Wikipedia on modern 3G mobile devices, such as the iPhone and Android phones, and also will have tailored versions. It’s in alpha testing now and should be released sometime this year.

Also worth watching:

• Openmoko, which produced the Neo FreeRunner GSM mobile phone in mid-2008 as a starting point for developers and product designers to build open mobile appliances with integrated communications. Its FreeRunner mobile hardware platform, which includes the Debian and FDOM distributions, the Qt application and UI framework and the Android software stack, lets developers alter the fully operable mobile phone design for their own purposes.

Programming tools and languages

Open-source developers understandably invest a lot of effort in improving the tools they use to write better software, whether it’s a programming language, development platform or content management system. This category could have filled up an entire article by itself, but here are a few of the highlights.

In December 2008, the communities behind the Web development frameworks Merb and Rails agreed to merge rather than maintaining parallel development tracks. They intend to preserve the flexible configuration and advanced features appreciated by Merb users, along with the rapid productivity and ease of use that has given Rails so much attention from developers.

The new project, to be called Rails 3, will incorporate some key Merb features and concepts, including its agnosticism about object-relational models, JavaScript libraries and template languages. Rails 3 will also be more modular, letting developers opt in or out of specific components. It’ll have significant performance improvements and will gain a defined public API.

According to the Rails blog, the "overly optimistic" date for the Rails 3 beta is for the Rails Conference in early May, but it’ll be worth paying attention to whenever it arrives.

The Dojo Toolkit is a one-stop shop for developers creating dynamic Web applications, especially for those who don’t want to become gods of DHTML and JavaScript. Dojo 1.3, now in RC1 and expected to be final very soon, has a collection of fast and concise DOM manipulation APIs, a more configurable NodeList class, a brand-new lightning-fast CSS Selector query engine, and new widgets and components.

The Dojo Toolkit. Click to view larger image.

Moonlight is an open-source implementation of Microsoft’s Silverlight, a browser plug-in for streaming video and Internet apps. The result of a technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell Inc. and related to the open-source .Net implementation Mono Project, Moonlight is primarily for Linux and other Unix/X11-based operating systems.

The Moonlight community has access to Microsoft’s test suites for Silverlight and distributes a media pack for Linux users with licensed media codecs for video and audio. Moonlight 1.0 was just released in February, and work is already under way on Version 2, to keep it in sync with Silverlight.

Watching the presidential inauguration via Moonlight. Click to view larger image.

(You might also keep an eye on Moonshine, a Firefox browser plug-in and desktop player that encapsulates any WMV or WMA content into a Silverlight container.)

In fact, it’s worth calling attention to Microsoft’s active open-source involvement simply because so few imagined that Microsoft would ever show up at the party. Among the successes is IronPython, a Python implementation designed to run on .Net and Mono; Version 2 was released in February. Now that that’s done, the team can turn its attention to an IronPython version to support Python 3.0. While the team is vague about a release date ("after 2.x is out the door," according to a spokesperson), it will likely arrive sometime this year.

Microsoft also created IronRuby, a Ruby implementation for .Net, and the Dynamic Language Runtime, a set of shared services for implementing dynamic languages on .Net. All three projects are distributed under the terms of the Microsoft Public License.

Also worth watching:

• The MariaDB project, a community-developed branch of the MySQL database using the Maria storage engine; the brainchild of Michael "Monty" Widenius, founder of MySQL AB and Monty Program AB.
• CodeIgniter 2.0, a PHP framework with a very small footprint, built for PHP coders who need a simple and elegant tool kit to create full-featured Web applications. (While Version 2.0 hasn’t exactly been announced, you can pre-order a book about it on Amazon. Hmmm.)
• Eclipse Galileo, a coordinated release of different Eclipse projects, due to ship at the end of June 2009.

Business apps

Most of the preceding projects are of interest mainly to geeks (and we mean that in a nice way). Increasingly, though, businesses are adopting open-source software for productivity use and line-of-business applications.

Primary among these is the open-source "replacement" for Microsoft Office. OpenOffice.org 3.1, expected imminently, is currently available as a "developer snapshot." It promises grammar checking, anti-aliased drawings, improved charting and better outline features.

That’s on top of the new features from Version 3.0 (released in October 2008), including compatibility with ODF 1.2 and OOXML and native Mac OS X support.

The OpenOffice.org 3.1 developer preview. Click to view larger image.

But business-quality open source isn’t limited to traditional desktop apps or enterprise software. Kaltura is an open-source platform for creating and viewing video applications. It’s aimed at Web publishers, integrators and application developers. Kaltura currently has extensions for several platforms, including content management (such as Drupal), blogging (WordPress) and collaboration (MediaWiki).

Kaltura’s Drupal plug-in.
Click to view larger image.

In the second quarter of 2009, Kaltura’s Community Edition will be launched under the GNU General Public License, allowing any Web site to build its own YouTube-like video portal, fully independent of Kaltura. Optional enterprise support includes streaming and hosting, ad serving and content syndication.

Dimdim claims to be the first open-source Web meeting company; its software has been downloaded nearly half a million times. Among its existing features are unlimited use, multiparty video and audio conferencing.

A Dimdim Web meeting.
Click to view larger image.

Dimdim has big plans for 2009 (though it didn’t get more specific than that on timing), including a commercial version. The Dimdim open-source platform will become a full webinar product, allowing meetings of more than 1,000 participants, which will make it attractive to anyone who needs to conduct general meetings or training sessions.

Also worth watching:

• LedgerSMB, a fork of the SQL-Ledger accounting package aimed at small businesses. Its rapidly approaching 1.3 release promises better contact handling and security that integrates with a company’s network security infrastructure, such as Kerberos.
• The Lucid Desktop (formerly the Psych Desktop), a Web desktop (maybe a Web operating system) that integrates with the Web, existing desktop technologies and mobile devices, acting as a portable, online workspace to store files, play media and manage your office documents. Version 1.0, still in beta, is overdue, but it shouldn’t be long now.

IT administration tools

Some categories of open-source software are of interest mainly to a niche set of users, such as network administrators or Web developers. That’s fine; it just means that these tools are correctly tuned for their audience, and everyone else can turn to the next page. Or as Abraham Lincoln said, "People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

For IT administrators, the most exciting release this year may be Samba 4.0, which is supposed to have active directory support, an internal Kerberos server and full NTFS semantics for sharing back ends. You might have heard all that before, as Samba has been stalled for a while, but the development team is actively working on it now, and there’s a new build as of late February.

You can certainly expect action in the configuration management space — tools that help system administrators get more work done, faster and more consistently. Among them is Reductive Labs Inc.’s Puppet 1.0, due to be released sometime in 2009.

Puppet 1.0. Click to view larger image.

Reductive Labs intends to fully rewrite Puppet’s networking functionality, as well as optimize modeling, language enhancements and reporting. Preliminary testing shows the server will be about three times faster with a memory footprint that’s a third of its current size, says a project spokesperson.

In April, Zenoss Inc. will release Version 2.4 of Zenoss Core, its open-source monitoring and systems management suite, with a new dynamic Web-based user interface and with agent-less Linux and Unix command-line collection via SSH to improve system-level monitoring. The group will also launch a Zenoss community collaboration platform, Zenoss.net, for users to submit and share network monitoring and management best practices and Zenoss extensions.

Zenoss Core. Click to view larger image.

These aren’t the only new and improved tools for IT admins. Longtime Unix configuration tool Cfengine, which bills itself as "autonomous engineering for the data center," is now in Version 3.0 and backed by a commercial support company; an enterprise edition is planned for this year.

Also worth watching:

• Enomaly Inc.’s Elastic Computing Platform, a programmable virtual cloud infrastructure. Version 2, now in alpha, includes a Web services API, automated VM deployment with Elastic Valet and multiserver support.
• OpenQRM, a suite of data center management tools that may excite people dealing with configuration management and other administrative tasks in the cloud. As an example of the work under way, Version 4.4 (just out) includes remote control for the cloud using a SOAP Web service.

Content management and collaboration tools

Don’t you hate it when perfectly good descriptive terms become buzzwords? That’s been the case for "collaboration tools" and "content management" and maybe (just maybe) "knowledge management." These are useful categories, but the terms are so mushy that the products become hard to describe.

We humans are pretty good at creating meta-tools for organizing, sharing and presenting data … and that’s what this category is about.

Several open-source development frameworks and content management systems are in between major versions. Django 1.0 shipped recently and Plone 4 probably won’t arrive this year, though each has incremental upgrades planned. (For example, Plone 3.3, currently in beta and due in the next few months, brings better support for multisites, better locking support and iCalendar support for events.)

Nevertheless, content management fans will find plenty to keep themselves occupied.

MindTouch Deki is an open-source application for enterprise collaboration that sports a wiki-like interface. It allows users to organize raw data into actionable information and ensures that it’s dynamically updated from disparate, disconnected data sources.

Slated to be released in early 2009, MindTouch Deki Lyons will expose more ways to interact with the core Deki application by coupling Deki’s traditional mashup strengths with new tools for developers, such as the ability to trigger actions based on activity inside Deki or use a built-in local storage mechanism.

A MindTouch Deki Lyons mashup.
Click to view larger image.

Foswiki is enterprise-ready wiki software that’s a fork of TWiki (which has apparently moved its attention toward commercial products), initiated by former developers and users of the TWiki project. They just released Version 1.0 in January and are under way on 1.1, aiming to improve usability as well as interaction with updates in skins and plug-ins. Version 2.0, also planned for this year, will give attention to performance and scalability.

WordPress has grown to be more than a blogging system, with all sorts of plug-ins to extend its functionality. Version 2.7 just shipped, and Version 2.8 is under way with its top priorities widget management, theme browser/installer and performance upgrades. Beyond that, WordPress 3.0 is scheduled for August.

Other really cool stuff

Among the neatest things about open source is that its philosophy of collaboration isn’t limited to strict "applications." Here are a few examples of work under way that may make a difference beyond ones and zeroes.

A Talking Book Device in a Ghana classroom. Click to view larger image.

Literacy Bridge created the Talking Book Device, an open-source digital audio player and recorder specifically designed for people living in poverty. Over the short term, Talking Book Devices will serve as mechanisms for the rapid and free distribution of essential, accurate information via device-to-device sharing. Over the long term, say its organizers, Talking Books facilitate literacy learning.

A pilot project was launched in Ghana early in 2009, enabling undergraduate students at MIT and other volunteers to collect information regarding device functionality and durability.

Literacy Bridge isn’t the only company extending open source to the hardware realm. For instance, SparkFun Electronics is also providing "open-source schematics" for its microcontrollers, such as the LilyPad wearable technology — the next iteration of the "wearable computer." Since these boards are meant for hobbyist experimentation, the definition of "wearable technology" is left up to you. It’s released under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, so you can download all the engineering files and hack on the hardware to your heart’s delight.

EveryBlock is a microlocal news Web site funded by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It has a distinctive approach to local news: You enter an address in one of 11 U.S. cities to see the news immediately near you. In June, the EveryBlock team will open source its publishing system, so that any news organization, government or citizen can create an EveryBlock-ish site for its own town.

Whew. That’s quite a pile of cool open-source software (and hardware!) to look for in the coming year. Nonetheless, there’s a good chance that you’re thinking how unfathomable it is that I left out your favorite project, which is apt to change the face of computing. Groovy — it’s time to share it with the world. In the article comments, tell us about the open-source release you’re most looking forward to seeing this year, and why it’s such a big deal.

Esther Schindler has been writing about technology since 1992. She has a tropism for techie topics that make other people’s eyes glaze over — particularly software development, operating systems and open source.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a Computerworld columnist, provided extra reporting on this article.