Newsletter:
May 6, 2008
It's been a long time since we've sent out one of our Campware
newsletters, but that's mainly because the Campware team has been quite
busy working with independent media organizations in developing countries,
developing software, implementing it and promoting the adaptation of free
and open source software among the media. So without further delay, here's
a quick yet lengthy rundown of what's been going on with Campware (please
pardon the length, we've been meaning to tell you all of this for months
:).
In this issue:
Campsite 3.0
Cream 3.0
Campcaster 1.4 Update
Campware stuff from Cafe Press
What's in a Name?
Donating to Campware
Things we've got our eye on - open source software relevant to
independent media
Real time, chat-based discussion on the Campware IRC channels
Are you using Campware's solutions for your media organization? We'd love
to hear what you've been up to. Write us at contact at campware.org with your
news.
Campsite 3.0 update
===================
Campsite, our flagship web content management system for media
organizations, has finally released version 3.0. Campsite 3.0 is important
for many reasons, mainly because it is the first all-PHP version of
Campsite, replacing Campsite's template parser with the popular and
widely-used Smarty templating engine. For users, the main difference they
will see with Campsite 3.0 is that it can be installed on any server
running MySQL and PHP, including Windows and MacOS X servers. Webmasters,
system administrators and site designers will appreciate all the new
features and functionality that can be built using the new templating
system.
Campsite 3.0, codenamed "Filip," can also be installed on hosted servers,
which will bring down the costs of operating a powerful, professional news
site down even further. Root access is no longer required to install
Campsite.
The Campsite 3.0 release also rolled up many of the features intended for
the 2.7 release, including site replication and what we call the "Radio
Package" for integration with our Campcaster radio management system. Site
replication means that you can have one Campsite server installed in your
office and then have it sync on a regular basis with a public server
located at a fast hosting provider. The "Radio Package" enables users at
radio stations to store their audio files on Campcaster's storage server,
but to serve those files to the public via Campsite for audio-on-demand.
For those using older Campsite versions, there are upgrade scripts that
should be able to help speed your transition to the new version.
We still need to update and refresh the Campsite manuals, and we are
always open to new suggestions for items to go into those manuals. Also,
for those of you who are multilingual, we would like to ask you to get
involved in updating existing localizations into other languages and to
localize Campsite into new languages.
You can download Campsite 3.0 "Filip" here: https://www.campware.org/projects/campsite
We're looking forward to your feedback on the new Campsite 3.0. You can
use the 'Help-> Feedback' option from Campsite or join either the Campsite
support mailing list at http://sympa.mdlf.org/wws/subscribe/campsite-support or the Campsite developers' list at http://sympa.mdlf.org/wws/subscribe/campsite-dev
Cream 3.0 and MDLF's Digital Kiosk
==================================
Campware's customer relationship management system, Cream, had a major
release in mid-August of 2007. The 3.0 version of Cream includes a number
of important improvements, including the fact that it now works with the
free and open source MySQL database server, as well as providing better
integration with Campsite for more automated management of users and
subscriptions.
We decided to "eat our own dog food" with Cream, and since February 2008
we've been using an altered version of Cream to run our Digital Kiosk
e-commerce service. The Digital Kiosk lets you buy subscriptions, books,
CDs, and other items from 14 independent publishers worldwide at http://digitalkiosk.mdlf.org.
The Digital Kiosk is a service that enables independent organizations to
sell their products and services online; in many parts of the world, banks
still do not allow their customers to take online payments. Campware
created the Digital Kiosk as a way to enable these media organizations to
accept online payments for their goods and services. Now that it's powered
by Cream, we're able to have much better management of products, orders
and customer communications.
Campcaster 1.4 "Monrovia"
================================
Work is continuing on the 1.4 "Monrovia" release of Campcaster, our radio
playout and automation system. Campcaster had a quiet release in the fall
of its 1.3 "Dakar" version, which included a substantial reworking of the
Campcaster Studio program to enable features such as drag-and-drop between
windows. The main work in the 1.4 "Monrovia" release involves a rewriting
of its interface with the Gstreamer multimedia layer under Linux. What
this means is that sound handling is much faster, numerous file formats
(including WAV and FLAC) can be supported and the system will be able to
use other plugins from the Gstreamer multimedia framework. While a lot of
that sounds like Linux audio geekery (and it is), this will greatly
improve Campcaster's playback reliability and keep Campcaster on the right
path for future development.
Work on the Campcaster 1.3 and 1.4 releases has been covered by a generous
grant from the Open Society Institute for West Africa (OSIWA). In
cooperation with West Africa Democracy Radio, a news and information
network based in Dakar, Senegal, we are working on a deployment of
Campcaster among community radio stations in rural Liberia.
What's in a Name: Campware Naming Conventions
=============================================
In case you've ever wondered why Campware usually includes a codename in
its releases, there is indeed a method to our madness. Here's a quick
guide.
Since the 2.2 version, Campsite releases have been named after someone
close to the developers - in practice this has meant new births.
2.2 "Mara", released April 14, 2005 - named after Mugur Rus' daughter Mara
2.3 "Niko", released August 1, 2005 - named after Paul Baranowski's nephew
Niko.
2.4 "Rade", released January 10, 2006 - named after Sava Tatić's son Rade.
2.5 "Eli", released - named after Micz Flor's nephew Eli.
2.6 "Joey" - named after Douglas Arellanes' daughter Joey.
3.0 "Filip" - named after Pavla Čihařová's son Filip.
LiveSupport 0.91 (later renamed to Campcaster) was codenamed "Fritz" after
developer Sebastian Goebel's grandfather Fritz, and it also used this
convention. But then we changed it so that the Campcaster releases changed
their naming to be after the cities in which the work was deployed.
1.1 "Freetown" - Freetown, Sierra Leone
1.2 "Kotor" - Kotor, Montenegro
1.3 "Dakar" - Dakar, Senegal
1.4 "Monrovia" - Monrovia, Liberia
Cream doesn't have a naming convention yet.
Bonus trivia: On a training visit to Jakarta, Indonesia, Douglas Arellanes
and Paul Baranowski found out that in Bahasa Indonesia, the main language
of Indonesia, "Kotor" means "dirty." :-)))
Campware Stuff from Cafe Press
==============================
One of the useful ideas to emerge from the SummerCAMP developers' and
powerusers' event in Prague in the summer of 2007 was to create our own
CafePress store, where people can buy things like shirts and coffee mugs
with the logo of their favorite Campware project. Proceeds from this go to
maintaining Campware projects. Check out the store at this address:
http://www.cafepress.com/campware
Also, if you have any suggestions for stuff you'd like to see on a
Campware t-shirt or other CafePress product, let us know about it. We're
always interested in good ideas from you, our community.
Donating to Campware
====================
It's extremely easy to make a donation to Campware (through our parent
organization, the Media Development Loan Fund), and it's even
tax-deductible if you live in the USA. We take credit card donations
online through our Digital Kiosk service (http://digitalkiosk.mdlf.org:8080/kiosk/app/template/StoreProduct.vm/id/1052).
Things We've Got Our Eye On - Open Source Software Relevant to Independent
Media
================================================================================
(K)Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and 64Studio
----------------------------------
If a magic goldfish were to grant Campware a wish, it just might be for a
good, specialized Linux distribution relevant to the media organizations
we work with. But we're always bad with magic goldfish and the closest
thing that's out there to our dream distribution is the Ubuntu Studio
project, which gathers together a number of the top audio, video and
graphics programs based on the Ubuntu Linux distribution. (We love Ubuntu,
but you probably already knew that.) We especially like Ubuntu Studio's
sound apps, including the outstanding Ardour digital audio workstation,
and of course Audacity (see below). Ubuntu Studio includes a couple of
things important for multimedia production, including a low-latency kernel
(important for recording one track while listening to others in your
headphones) and an automatically-configured version of the Jack program
for handling audio outputs. Check it out at www.ubuntustudio.org. The
project seems to have been quiet for a while now, so we hope they continue
with it.
Ubuntu in and of itself is pretty great. It and its KDE-based variant
Kubuntu are really the first Linux distributions we feel comfortable
promoting to journalists on deadline. Campware has versions of its
Campsite and Campcaster software available in packages tailor-made for
Ubuntu, and if you install them online, you get the added benefit of being
able to automatically update the software when new versions come out. You
can visit the Ubuntu website at www.ubuntu.com
We had the good fortune of meeting Daniel James of the 64Studio project,
which, like Ubuntu Studio is a specialized Linux audio distribution, but
one based on Debian. As its name implies, 64Studio works quite well on
AMD's 64-bit CPUs, but is also very good on regular Intel chips. Daniel
and his team are doing some good work, and now offer custom Ubuntu
distributions of 64Studio and other bespoke programs. Nice stuff! http://www.64studio.com
Audacity
---------
Audacity is a sound editing program, and as such it has special importance
for Campware's target audience of media organizations, both because it's
extremely powerful, has a lot of features and is available for Windows,
Linux and Macintosh. Plus it's free and open source. We're using and
promoting it among the radio stations we work with as an alternative to
programs like CoolEdit, Vegas and Audition. Go to http://audacity.sourceforge.net for more.
OpenOffice
------------------
OpenOffice continues to get better with every release. The latest, 2.4, is
pretty slick, and at least the word processing and presentation programs
are on a par with MS Office. Those who work with people who use lots of
macros in Excel would still probably be better off sticking with that, but
for simple spreadsheets, OpenOffice works fine.
At Campware, we strongly support localization and internationalization
efforts, and we're happy to see that OpenOffice has been ported to a
number of world languages, including spell checkers. You can download the
latest version of OpenOffice at www.openoffice.org.
There are a couple of variants of OpenOffice that are also worth keeping
an eye on.
IBM Lotus Symphony is a new version of the OpenOffice.org office software.
We're just testing it now, but already it looks a lot slicker and
user-friendly than OpenOffice. And there are Windows, Mac and Linux
versions too. More at http://symphony.lotus.com. Our Mac-using friends should take a look at NeoOffice, which is a
version of OpenOffice that's been altered to take better advantage of
native OS X features.
Google Documents
----------------
Because Campware works with people all over the world, collaboration
becomes pretty crucial to whatever we do. We're starting to experiment
with Google Documents for documents where a) people are spread out b)
where we need to keep track of who made which changes at which time.
Google Documents is pretty good in this way, and it works with both MS
Office formats and OpenOffice.
Trac
----
We love Trac. Trac is a wiki-based ticketing system and, well, a wiki, but
one that interfaces with the Subversion server our programmers use to
submit their programming changes. Trac is what we use to run our developer
pages (all of which are at https://www.campware.org). And of course it's open source. Visit http://trac.edgewall.net for more info.
VLC
---
VLC is a media player that will play just about any multimedia file out of
the box. VLC supports all kinds of video formats, including Windows Media,
and it runs on all three operating systems - Windows, Mac and Linux. More
at http://www.videolan.org/vlc
Real-time discussions on the #campsite and #campcaster IRC channels
===================================================================
If you've got a burning question that won't wait for the various Campware
mailing lists, you might want to try visiting the #campsite and
#campcaster IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. If you have an IRC-friendly
chat client program, it's very easy to head there, and if you don't, try
installing the very easy-to-use Pidgin instant messenger client. Then you
can navigate over to irc.freenode.net and the #campsite and #campcaster
channels.
About this newsletter
=====================
Campware News is supposed to come out quarterly, providing an update on
goings on in and around the Campware Initiative, which seeks to create
free and open source tools for independent media in the developing world.
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