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Drupal and ImpressCMS Make PacktPub’s Winner’s List

Eric Brown — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:46:20 +0000

This year’s Open Source CMS Awards from PacktPub are well underway now. With three category winners announced already and more to come this year’s awards have some familiar faces and some new comers to the winner’s list.

Drupal once again tops the Best Open Source PHP CMS category which they won in 2008 as well. Filling in the other top two spots for Best Open Source PHP were new comer to the list WordPress which started as a blogging platform but has come full circle as a wonderful PHP-based CMS and Joomla who is no stranger to the list. Drupal walks away with $2000 and the other two will receive $500 each.

In the Most Promising Open Source CMS we have ImpressCMS toping the list, which beats their tie with MiaCMS for the final spot on the list last year. Pixie takes the runner-up spot as a “small, simple” CMS and Pligg brings up the rear. Pligg and Pixie are making the list for the first time this year. ImpressCMS will receive $2000 and the other two will receive $1000 each to aid their efforts.

Two more categories remain for this year’s Open Source CMS Awards from PacktPub.com. They are Best Overall Open Source CMS and the Hall of Fame award. Will Drupal again take the coveted Best Overall spot or will a new comer unseat them and force them to retire in the Hall of Fame? We’ll see Friday.

Plone Wins Best Other CMS at PacktPub

Eric Brown — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:44:09 +0000

PacktPub.com has begun announcing the winners from the Open Source CMS Awards 2009. The first category to be announced is the Best Other Open Source CMS. This category is for non-PHP based content management systems.

Plone once again has taken the first place prize as PacktPub’s 2009 Best Other Open Source CMS. The Plone has been around for about 8 years now and for two years running has won first place in the Open Source CMS Awards. Python + Zope system allows non-developers the ease of maintaining and administrating a website and talks to nearly any database. The first place spot carries a $2000 prize with it as well.

Other winners in the Best Other Open Source CMS category are dotCMS in the first runner up place with a prize of $500 and MojoPortal in second place with a $500 prize. Congratulations to this year’s winners in the Best Other Open Source CMS. Other category winners to be announced this week as well so check back for daily announcements through the week.

PacktPub Open Source CMS Awards Nominations End Tomorrow

Eric Brown — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:35:06 +0000

Nominations for PacktPub.com’s Open Source CMS Awards 2009 end tomorrow. I will keep this short and just remind you to get in there and nominate your favorite open source CMS for each category. You can click the links below to get to the nominations page for each category.

PacktPub Open Source CMS Awards 2009 Categories

Best Overall Open Source CMS
Most Promising Open Source CMS
Best PHP Open Source CMS
Best Other Open Source CMS
Open Source MVPs

Facebook and FriendFeed Make Nice Couple

Eric Brown — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:32:40 +0000

With all the hype recently about Twitter it seems the lesser talked about service FriendFeed was almost forgotten about. That is until recently. On August 10th, 2009 Facebook aquired the start-up known as FriendFeed…and things started moving fast for the social site.

FriendFeed is not much different than Twitter. Short posts, following people and gathering followers, etc., etc. So why the huge news across the web about this acquisition. In short, Facebook happens to be the fastest growing social site ever.

The idea of social networking and microblogging is nothing new. Twitter, Tumblr, FriendFeed and many others have been around for a few years now. But when a social powerhouse like Facebook takes you over amazing things can happen.

Will Facebook Pull FriendFeed Out of the Mire?

The question now is what will happen to FriendFeed? Will it start providing real competition for Twitter? Will Facebook shut it down?

As of now there are no reported plans to shut down FriendFeed. According to Michael Arrington at TechCrunch.com in his interview with FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor and Facebook VP Products Chris Cox, “Taylor and Cox say that the Friendfeed product will live on independently, and eventually Friendfeed will be merged into Facebook.”

Some other structural changes will occur within the 12 employee start-up like who everybody reports to,etc. Aside from that not much will change…or will it?

I decided to do some research into what has happened with FriendFeed since the acquisition and found some interesting information. According to Alexa, FriendFeed has experienced over 63% growth in traffic over the last 3 months, much of it occurring this month.

Whether Facebook will help put FriendFeed at the top of the microblogging world or not is still to be determined. But having backing like Facebook can’t hurt. We’ll all just have to add it to our list of social networking outlets and see how it goes.

Open Source CMS Awards Nominations Closing Soon

Eric Brown — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 15:18:00 +0000

The 2009 Open Source CMS Awards brought to you by PacktPublishing are well into their nominations. They began the nominations on the 3rd of August, but time is running out. Scheduled to end September 11th, 2009, nominations have been rolling in. Obvious names such as Drupal, WordPress, Joomla, and others are sure to be among the competition.

The annual Open Source CMS Awards from PacktPub.com are designed to celebrate excellence in development while also keeping the open source spirit alive. With the downturns in the global economy over the last year open source technology has seen a dramatic rise in support as well as use, particularly in the enterprise level businesses, but small business as well.

The awards are broken down into 5 categories which include:

Best Overall Open Source CMS
Most Promising Open Source CMS
Best PHP Open Source CMS
Best Other Open Source CMS
Open Source MVPs

Voting for this year’s Open Source CMS Awards begins September 21st and winners will be announced starting on November 9th.

New Category for the 2009 Open Source Awards

This year’s awards bring us a new category directed at acknowledging previous Overall winners such as Drupal and Joomla. The Hall of Fame Award will celebrate continued excellence above and beyond the others in the field.

For More Information Visit PacktPub.com

Congratulations to previous winners and good luck to nominees this year. Stay tuned for continued coverage of the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards from PacktPub.com.

WordPress 2.8 Due Out Today…Maybe

Eric Brown — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:43:51 +0000

WordPress 2.8 release client 1 is out for use and testing. According to the WordPress.org blog, if no major problems are experienced the full release will be out today.

New Features of WordPress 2.8

New theme installer
Up to 4 columns for widgets on the Dashboard
Improved widget user interface
Per page options for plugins
Autosave quick keys for posts (Control/Command + s)
WordPress Turbo accessible to all users
Improved database performance
TinyMCE updates
And much much more…

SixApart and WordPress are BFFs

Eric Brown — Wed, 20 May 2009 13:15:37 +0000

SixApart, creators of TypePad and Moveable Type have recently announced that they are opening up some of their technologies for use directly with WordPress. Whether an attempt at making nice or concedeing to the more widely used blogging platform may yet to be seen.

The news came during this years WordCamp Mid-Atlantic and was a bit of shock to some. Anil Dash, co-founder of SixApart made the announcement during his keynote at the conference.

Available for WordPress Courtesy of SixApart

Four major technologies that SixApart had reserved for Moveable Type and TypePad users are now available for WordPress as well.

TypePad Connect – The social connecting technology from SixApart can be integrated with WordPress now.
TypePad Anti-Spam – Available as a plugin, TypePad Anti-Spam may give Akismet a run for its money.
SixApart Media – SixAparts answer to the advertising issues plaguing others. Works similar to ClickBank.
Blogs.com – Blog submission and search site.

Whether this may mean the end of continued work with Moveable Type or TypePad may yet to be seen. But one thing is for sure…open source is changing still and with the still limping economy SixApart seems to realize that being even more open may be what saves some from ultimate downfall.

Blackberry Curve Surpasses iPhone

Eric Brown — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:54:04 +0000

Verizon‘s 2 for 1 sale and the 3 other largest cellular carriers in the U.S. have helped push the Blackberry Curve ahead of the iPhone as the most popular smart phone.

Considering the impact of the iPhone initially and the legal problems Blackberry had a couple years ago this is a big deal for Blackberry. Lower phone prices, more widespread availability through multiple carriers, and specials being run have all attributed the surge that Blackberry has been seeing over the last year.

Wonder what the Storm will do?

ABC Comes to Hulu

Eric Brown — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:27:05 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

ABC‘s parent company Walt Disney Co. announced Thursday that they are entering a contract with the free online television source Hulu. Hulu has a long list of highly rated shows under its belt which include Chuck, Heroes, Fringe, Family Guy, and The Simpsons.

ABC and their sister networks SoapNet and ABC Family will begin airing episodes soon according to Caroline McCarthy at CNET.com. Shows will include Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs and more.

Disney’s Stake in Hulu

The Disney Corporation isn’t just contracting with Hulu for rights to air shows. They are infiltrating their board. Three upper level executives from Disney will join Hulu’s Board of Directors including Disney CEO Robert Iger. Anne Sweeney and Kevin Mayer will be joining him.

So Hulu grows, Disney invades, and we reap the benefits as the reasons for paying for cable get smaller and smaller.