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 Campware News
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May 02, 2006 |
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Campware Good Gnewsletter #1
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 We are proud to annouce the first installment of the Campware Good Gnewsletter - a publication we plan to send out quarterly to let you know about the latest software releases, events, news, and annoucements in the Campware world. You can subscribe to the newsletter here: https://www.campware.org/mailman/listinfo/campware-newsletter.
The newsletter gives you a "big picture" view of what is happening. If you want up-to-the-minute news of Campware happenings, then subscribe to our RSS feed: https://www.campware.org/en/camp/rss.
Click "read more" to read the first newsletter...
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Campware Good Gnewsletter #1
2 May 2006
Welcome to the first issue of the Campware newsletter! We hope to bring you this kind of updates on a quarterly basis to let you know what we've been up to. To learn more about Campware, visit our website: https://www.campware.org or subscribe to our RSS feed (See related story below)
In this issue:
* Demo the Campware Software Suite
* Renewed cooperation with Parsons School of Design
* Campsite Status & Roadmap
* LiveSupport Status & Roadmap
* LiveSupport in the Field
* Cream and Status & Roadmap
* Dream Status & Roadmap
* Stay Up to Date with the Campware RSS Feed
Demo the Campware Software Suite
================================
All Campware products can now be tried out on our demo servers (no downloads or installation required):
Campsite: http://campsite-demo.campware.org/admin
LiveSupport: http://livesupport-demo.campware.org
Cream: http://cream-demo.campware.org
Dream: http://dream-demo.campware.org
Renewed Cooperation with Parsons School of Design
=================================================
Campware and Parsons School of Design are about to embark on a new round of cooperation from September 2006. The idea, which has been agreed upon in principle on 27 April in New York, will have a group of Parsons graduate students working for two semesters on usability and design of all Campware products as a part of a collaboration studio (course). The concrete program still has to be fleshed out, but get ready for major beautification and functionality enhancements for Campsite, Cream, Dream and Docmint. Head of the Design & Technology Department Colleen Macklin will be coming to Summercamp this year to further refine the plan.
Campsite Status & Roadmap
=========================
Campsite, Campware's content management system for news-media sites, is currently in its 2.5 "Eli" version (released in early April).
For details about the new features, see:
https://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/654/
You can download the latest version (2.5.1) here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66936
Interest in Campsite is picking up.
Here's a comparison of the downloads for the past two releases:
Version 2.3.x:
1358 downloads
Time span: 150 days
= 9 downloads per day
Version 2.4.x:
974 downloads
Time span: 54 days
= 18 downloads per day
We hope to keep up this trend by implementing the features that our users ask for and getting the word out about Campsite.
Behind the scenes, Campsite had a major overhaul of its code in the 2.4 release, which is one of the reasons that release cycles are now happening at about 1.5 to 2 month intervals instead of 4-6 month intervals. We have one last major overhaul of the system to do: replace the template parser (the template parser is the part of the system that actually displays the web pages to the subscribers). Replacing it will fix one of the major problems behind Campsite adoption - the difficulty of installation it and finding a hosting provider that allows root access.
The Campsite roadmap for the next six months:
Campsite v2.6 (due to release sometime in May)
* Integrated Article Comments and Forum - the integration of Phorum code with Campsite will allow readers to comment on articles and simultaneously create new threads in the forum. This unique feature will enable news-media sites to instantaneously drive the traffic to their forums as well allow a article comments to evolve into forum threads that can outlive the original news item.
* Increased security for the login screen to prevent scripting attacks
* "Article Types" will get a major overhaul (Article Types define the
structure of your articles in Campsite). You will be able to hide
old article types that are no longer in use, rename and translate
article types, and even merge them together.
* Automated bug reporting – if there is an error in the Administration
interface, you will have the option to automatically send feedback
about it to the Campsite team. You will also be able to submit issues
directly through the Campsite interface.
Campsite v3.0 (preview release in July, release in August)
* The C++ template parser will be replaced with a PHP parser. This will
allow Campsite to be installed on any platform that supports PHP,
which includes Windows.
* A new and improved way for subscribers to search for articles,
something more like Google.
* An HTML installer to replace the command-line installer. You will be
able to install Campsite through your browser.
* Debian packages
LiveSupport Status & Roadmap
============================
The LiveSupport development continues at a brisk pace, heading toward the
release of the eagerly-awaited 1.1 version in June. LiveSupport 1.1 will
include a number of new features, most notably the ability for radio
stations to share program content among themselves, either online or
offline.
Planned features in the 1.1.0 "Freetown" release include:
* Import and export of playlists for sharing with other LiveSupport
stations, either on- or off-line, and in either SMIL or native
LiveSupport playlist formats.
* Ability to save playlists to a single sound file for podcasting.
* A new file upload and download status window for viewing the network
traffic.
* Combined local and network search, in which a station employee can
search their station's archive as well as the network archive.
* Numerous user interface improvements, including drag and drop in the
LiveSupport Studio's Live Mode window.
* LiveSupport Studio will have a 'Preferences' palette that includes such
items as easy sound card configuration, server locations, and storage
server backup.
* A new Live CD based on Ubuntu 6.06 “Dapper”
The 1.1 release will be the first release to use detailed use case
scenarios for developers and project managers. You can review these use
cases at this address:
https://www.campware.org/projects/livesupport/wiki/UseCases
LiveSupport in the Field
========================
Pilot implementations of LiveSupport are underway in community radio stations in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa (home of the Kruger National Park, among other things). The pilot implementations are now in the phase where LiveSupport is installed and stations are testing it for full-time broadcasts for a limited period. Feedback will then be collected and passed on to the LiveSupport developers.
To support these and similar implementations in environments where there is little or no connectivity, developer Sebastian Goebel has created a CD ISO file containing every package and library LiveSupport needs. In normal circumstances, users can simply add the LiveSupport repository, but the CD can help in less-connected situations.
CAMP is planning a number of real-world implementations of LiveSupport
following the 1.1 release: Freetown, Sierra Leone; Yerevan, Armenia;
Jakarta, Indonesia; Mpumalanga Province, South Africa; Belgrade,
Serbia and Montenegro.
The first of these is an implementation in Freetown, Sierra Leone, where LiveSupport will power a network of radio stations run by the Cornet community radio consortium. Because the technical infrastructure in Sierra Leone is far from ideal, we are building in a number of features that reflect the situation on the ground – for example, even if the stations' Internet connections are down, they
should be able to share files by burning them to CD/DVD and delivering
them.
The LiveSupport team also took part in MDLF's Media Forum 2005 in November, broadcasting interviews with participants in the event, which brings together MDLF clients from around the world. The broadcasts used a single PC connected to a low-power FM transmitter, with inexpensive portable FM radios distributed to nearly 200 forum participants.
Cream Status & Roadmap
======================
Cream 2.0 "Sofija" was released on 11 August 2005 and included a number of useful features, including:
* Ability to send HTML newsletters to customers, as well as ability to receive email from your customers.
* A what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor for composing email.
* Greatly improved Windows compatibility and documentation
* Improvements to the user interface
The upcoming 2.1 release of Cream will feature an XML-RPC interface to
allow it to communicate with other applications and a port to the MySQL database. The MySQL port will enable Cream to share the same database with Campsite and thereby take over subscriber management and interaction. The 2.1 release is expected in June and will be followed by implementations among some of the clients of the Media on the Web project in the former Yugoslavia.
Dream Status & Roadmap
======================
The current version of Campware's print newspaper circulation tracker Dream is 1.0.1. The version is an update of the 1.0 release that brought localization support to the application user interface.
Further releases of Dream will move the application to the Cream 2.1 framework as well as improve the communication features of the application.
Stay Up to Date with the Campware RSS Feed
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To keep up to date with the latest Campware news, subscribe to our RSS feed. If you are using Firefox or other advanced web browsers, you can add a live bookmark directly from your browser. If you prefer to use your favorite RSS feed reader, add the following link: https://www.campware.org/en/camp/rss |
Attachments:
Campware Good Gnewsletter.txt - Campware Good Gnewsletter in text format
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