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CometChat, a powerful chat application for websites (which was previously shared at WRD), has recently released the 4th version with new features and giving away 4 licences (3 Basic and 1 Pro) to WRD readers to celebrate the event.

In order to join the giveaway, please make sure you check the details at the bottom of this post.

What is CometChat?

It is a PHP-MySQL (or MSSQL) powered application that enables users of a website to easily communicate with each other and interact with the website.

CometChat sits in the footer of a website and supports both text (including group chat) + video/voice chat. It also allows file transfers, screensharing and, with the most recent version, the ability to chat with Gtalk and Facebook friends.

This is an exciting feature as it helps "the activity of users to grow" by keeping them on the website more.

The application also offers more than chat:

• it has 100+ built-in games -including multiplayer ones-
• users can write or draw together on whiteboards or writeboards
• it is possible to publish announcements
• integrates Facebook fan page and displays Twitter activities
• works as a social share widget

There are integrations with many other popular softwares (like JomSocial, vBulletin, SocialEngine, Invision Power Board, phpFox, Boonex Dolphin, BuddyPress, phpBB, WordPress, SkaDate, Elgg and more) exist.

With the new version, there is now a mobile web interface which works in all major devices/platforms.

CometChat can be completely customized to better with the style of any website and it can be controlled very easily with the help of a powerful admin panel with settings for everything.

The discount

CometChat is offering a 10% discount to all Professional Edition or higher purchases until 1st of November with the coupon code: "WRD10OFF" (without quotes).

How to join the giveaway?

CometChat is giving away 1 Pro and 3 Basic licenses to WRD readers. In order to join the giveaway, just comment to this post and the random query below will be choosing the winners:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2537 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 4

Winners will be announced 1 week later (1 November 2011) as an update to this post. Good luck.

The winners

Here are the winners of CometChat licenses:

• Derek (comment #422062) – Pro license
• NiK Makovka (comment #417901) – Basic License
• MasterChowl (comment #418049) – Basic License
• Dennis (comment #418259) – Basic License

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining.

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Most of the MySQL users will remember MySQL-Front, a very popular database manager application which later on stopped being developed (and turned into a paid application by another team).

The developer of this application, Ansgar Becker, re-launched this project under the name HeidiSQL, it is again free + open source and improved regularly.

HeidiSQL can connect to multiple databases and besides creating/editing databases, tables, views, stored routines and triggers, it has support for scheduling events (great for regular jobs like backups).

Databases and records can be exported or imported with multiple formats and its even possible to transfer a database directly into another server.

Currently experimental but HeidiSQL can now connect and manage MSSQL databases which is awesome for anyone working with both platforms.

There are many other handy features offered like optimize/repairing tables, duplicating them or query editing with syntax highlighting.

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DaDaBIK is an open source and mature PHP application for creating a customizable database front-end without coding.

Within minutes, you can create a basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application or dive into its features to build a more complicated one.

It doesn't generate a PHP script, stores the settings and can easily adapt to changes made in the database schema.

The application works with MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle + MS SQL Server and has features like choosing:

• if the field must be included or not in a search/insert/update form and results table
• labels
• content format (e.g. numeric, alphabetic, e-mail, url…)of a field
• the HTML input type (e.g. textbox, menu, date, rich text editor, password box…)
• the possible values, also driven from another table (foreign key support)
• and much more…

Some other exciting features include:

• master/details view (attaching 2 or more tables to each other like choosing a user from "users" table and seeing his orders from "orders" table)
• file uploading
• exporting to CSV
• e-mail notices

DaDaBIK is multilingual with support for 10+ languages.

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WebMatrix is a free kit by Microsoft which includes everything you need for creating websites on Windows.

The application itself enables you to control almost everything from a single interface like the code and database editor, web site and server management, search optimization, FTP publishing, and more.

The kit comes with:

• IIS Developer Express (a development Web server)
• ASP.NET (a Web framework)
• SQL Server Compact (an embedded database)

and with just a click, you can install open source applications like WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke, etc.

WebMatrix has also some nice features like the ability to run a SEO report or monitor real-time Web requests and responses to track down problems right at the source.

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OTRS is an open source trouble ticket system for easily managing support requests in a multi-agent interface.

The application can auto-convert e-mails into tickets (e-mail piping) which "eliminates the need of using the web interface" for customers.

OTRS is used by large organizations like Opera, MySQL AB, BitDefender, Suse & has very nice features like:

• transfer of tickets between agents
• auto-calculation of hours worked on a ticket
• powerful reporting
• canned responses
• multilanguage support
• themable web interface
• role-based user management
• & much more..

OTRS is built with Perl & can work with different databases (e. g. MySQL, PostgeSQL, Oracle, DB2 and MSSQL).

It has one-click installers for multiple operating systems (including Windows).

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Almost every web developer has a favorite database that he/she feels comfortable working with as all the tricks & gimmicks are already experienced.

It can be one of the popular databases below:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• MSSQL
• SQLite
• MS Access

or even simpler ones like XML, text, etc.

It is understandable why these databases are frequently used; they are well-documented, have a community behind them, integrated with most popular CMSs', easy-to-use, offered by most of the hosting companies ,etc..

But there are also many other databases which are getting popular day-by-day & may have advantages over what you're already using.

Here are 25+ open source alternative databases that you may consider using in your next project:

MongoDB

It is an open source, high-performance, scalable, schema-free & document-oriented (JSON-like data schemas) database.

There are ready to use drivers for most popular programming languages like PHP,Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, C++ + more.

Hypertable

Hypertable is a high performance distributed data storage system designed to support applications requiring maximum performance, scalability, and reliability.

It is modeled after Google's BigTable and mostly focuses on large-scale datasets.

Apache CouchDB

A document-oriented database that can be queried and indexed in a MapReduce fashion using JavaScript.

CouchDB offers a RESTful JSON API which can be accessed from any environment allowing HTTP requests

Neo4j

It is an embedded, disk-based, and fully transactional Java persistence engine that stores data structured in graphs rather than tables.

Neo4j offer a massive scalability. It can handle graphs of several billion nodes/relationships/properties on a single machine and can be scaled across multiple machines.

Riak

Riak is a very ideal database for web applications as it combines:

• a decentralized key-value store
• a flexible map/reduce engine
• a friendly HTTP/JSON query interface.

Oracle Berkeley DB

It is an embeddable database engine that provides developers with fast, reliable, local persistence with zero administration.

Oracle Berkeley DB is a library that links directly into your application & enables you to make simple function calls rather than sending messages to a remote server for a better performance.

Apache Cassandra

Cassandra is a highly scalable second-generation distributed database that is used by giants like Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Cisco & more..

It aims to provide a consistent, fault-tolerant & highly available environment for storing data.

Memcached

Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.

It is intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load.

Firebird

Firebird is a relational database that can run on Linux, Windows & various UNIX platforms.

It offers high performance and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers.

Redis

Redis is an advanced fast key-value database written in C which can be used like memcached, in front of a traditional database, or on its own.

It has support for many programming languages & used by popular projects like GitHub or Engine Yard.

There is also a PHP client named Rediska for managing Redis databases.

HBase

HBase is a distributed & column-oriented store which can also be called as the Hadoop database.

The project aims to host very large tables like "billions of rows, millions of columns".

It has a  REST-ful web service gateway that supports XML, Protobuf, and binary data encoding options.

Keyspace

It is a consistently replicated, fault-tolerant key-value store that works in Windows OS.

Keyspace offers high availability by masking server/network failures & appearing as a single, highly available service.

4store

4store is a database storage and query engine that holds RDF data.

It is written in ANSI C99, designed to run on UNIX-like systems & offers a high performance, scalable & stable platform.

MariaDB

MariaDB is a backward compatible, drop-in replacement branch of the MySQL® Database Server.

It includes all major open source storage engines + the Maria storage engine.

Drizzle

It is a fork of MySQL that focuses on being a reliable database optimized for Cloud and Net applications.

HyperSQL

It is a SQL relational database engine written in Java.

HyperSQL offers a small & fast database engine which has in-memory and disk-based tables, supports embedded/server modes.

Also, it has tools such as a command line SQL tool & GUI query apps.

MonetDB

MonetDB is a  database system for high-performance applications in data mining, OLAP, GIS, XML Query, text & multimedia retrieval.

Persevere

It is an object storage engine and application server (running on Java/Rhino) that provides storage of dynamic JSON data for rapidly develop data-driven JavaScript-based rich internet applications.

eXist-db

eXist-db is built using XML technology. It stores XML data according to the XML data model & features efficient, index-based XQuery processing.

Others

• Gladius (PHP flat-file database)
• CloudStore
  
• OpenQM (multivalue database)
• ScarletDME (multivalue database)
• SmallSQL (Java Desktop SQL Database Engine)
• LucidDB
  
• HyperGraphDB (graph database)
• InfoGrid (graph database)
• Apache Derby
  
• hamsterdb
  
• H2 Database
  
• EyeDB
  
• txtSQL
  
• db4o
  
• Tokyo Cabinet
  
• Project Voldemort

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nopCommerce is an open source shopping cart software that is built with ASP.NET & uses MSSQL for storing the data.

It comes with a powerful backend & highly customizable frontend.

nopCommerce has all the features of a standard e-commerce websites & offers more like:

• support for kit products (e.g. build your own computer)
• real-time currency exchange rates
• multilingual interface
• compare selected products
• highly flexible shipping calculation (integrated providers, width/height/order total based & more)
• tax calculations by country/state/product & more
• built-in forum & polls
• wishlist

One of the most impressive parts of the software is the integrated marketing capabilities it has. You can customize the design of a product or category page, create any type of discounts & even activate an affiliate system.

nopCommerce supports most of the popular payment gateways & with its pluggable modular/layered architecture, new ones can be added with ease (some are already created).

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Kentico CMS is a powerful, flexible & complete content management system that is built with ASP.NET.

It has various modules that make building any type of website possible from blogs to e-commerce or wikis to social networking.

The application comes with an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor for creating/editing the content.

One of the unique features Kentico offers is the worklow management. It allows you to control the process of content creation & modifications by creating custom approval steps (like proofreading, editing, approval, etc.).

Kentico is multilingual & can manage multiple websites from the same administrator panel.

It has an API that allows you to script any Kentico CMS operation (like creating a new document, user or even the whole web site) which is great for integrations with any 3rd party software. On the other hand, with the modules integrated, there is almost no extra function needed. Here are all the modules it offers:

• Blogs
• Booking system
• Content Rating
• Content Staging
• E-commerce
• Event calendar
• Forums
• Friends
• Geomapping
• Groups
• Image Gallery
• Media Library
• Message Boards
• Messaging
• Newsletter
• On-line Forms
• Polls
• Reporting
• Taxonomy
• Wiki
• Web Farm Support
• Web Analytics

which simply show what the application is capable of.

And, these are not all it has. Kentico generates SEO-friendly URLs, has full-text search support, a powerful role-based security system & much more..

Besides the paid versions, it offers a limited free version which is ideal for smaller websites. The free edition have no time limitation & can be used even for commercial purposes with no additional cost. It can be downloaded from here.

Kentico CMS is reliable and stable product & I didn’t came to any bug. But if that occurs, the company promises to fix it within 7 working days, furthermore they plant a tree in the name of the client who finds the bug. You can read more about this interesting initiative here.

The product can be evaluated by downloading the TRIAL or FREE editions. Other way is to use the Virtual Lab service which allows you to test-drive Kentico CMS on-line, without installing anything on your local PC.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

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Picok (personal information cockpit) is an open source, multi-user script where users can create their own iGoogle-like start pages.

It is ideal for intranets as an admin account can pre-define the available components like feed addresses & users can select items from that list.

Similar to iGoogle, the items can be:

• drag’n dropped
• minimized
• configured

The script has integration support for Lotus Notes, Doodle, Wikipedia, Google Maps & more. Also, users can create post-it notes.

Picok offers a multi-language interface & can be extended by writing custom portlets.

It is built with PHP (Zend Framework), YUI & supports MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Lotus Notes.

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Besides anything we write on a website, we also create content on 3rd party services by:

• uploading images, videos (Flickr, Youtube..)
• saving bookmaks or voting (Delicious, Digg..)
• listening to music (Last.fm..)
• logging "what we are doing right now" (Twitter, Facebook..)
• & more..

AmpliFeeder is an open source lifestream application which can combine every activity we have on other services & present them.

The application is already integrated with many popular services & new ones can be added easily.

The look & feel can be totally customized with the theming support (there are 10+ ready-to-use themes).

AmpliFeeder is built with ASP.NET & uses MSSQL for storing the data.

P.S. The source code is not yet available for download but it can be downloaded in the next few weeks.

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