Retrospectiva is an open source project management & bug-tracking application that is focused on development teams.

It is built with Ruby on Rails & requires a MySQL database for storing the data.

It has 3 main modules:

• ticketing: to manage issues/requests
• code review / revision management: supports Subversion & Git)
• milestones / goals: to set & manage objectives for the project

And, comes with various add-ons like:

• wiki: manage documentation
• blog: to interact with the community, make announcements.
• agilePM: comprehensive support for your agile development process
• & more, which can be found in the wiki's installation pages.

Retrospectiva has an easy-to-use admin interface, a XML-REST-based API for integration with 3rd party applications & RSS support for following every content much simpler.

Microblogging, with the wide usage of Twitter, is a hot subject in today’s web.

Using few words & spending less effort compared to the standard blogging, it becomes possible to share knowledge, feelings, etc. And, it keeps users connected to other users with the simple yet powerful community features.

While there are very popular microblogging services like Twitter, Tumblr or Plurk, being a rival may not be (or may be) the best idea. However, in order to create something unique, a community for a closed group or a microblog for a single user, there are still huge opportunities.

Here are 9 open source microblogging applications to create your own:

StatusNet (PHP)

StatusNet (previously Laconica) is the engine which runs the popular microblogging site Identi.ca.

It is built with PHP/MySQL & offers a smooth usage as it is a widely used, mature application.

P.S. The source can be found here.

Yonkly (Asp.Net)

Yonkly is an Asp.Net-powered Twitter-clone for creating your own microblogging community network.

Besides the open source version, it has a hosted & an advanced standalone version.

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VidoopCAPTCHA is a free verification solution that works image-based which is unusual compared to the widely-used text-based ones.

It aims to be a more user-friendly solution as text-based captchas can sometimes be so hard to read for humans besides bots.

VidoopCaptcha is a hosted service & have plugins for WordPress, Ruby on Rails, and Drupal. Also, there are libraries for programming languages such as PHP, Python, and .NET.

It offers some customization options like category, number of grid squares, color & grid size. For a demo of this security resource, click here.

There are lots of social networks from small to huge ones like Facebook or MySpace.

Although trying to create the next Facebook may not be a good idea, you may want to create a niche network or empower & add new features to the network you already have.

Here are 6 open source social networking applications which are developed continiously, well-documented & offer impressive functions.

Elgg

Elgg is a mature social networking framework which offers:

• advanced user management and administration
• social networking
• cross-site tagging
• powerful access control lists
• internationalisation support
• multiple view support (eg cell phones, iPhone)
• an advanced templating engine
• a widget framework and more.

Its plugin based system enables adding new features easily from a plugins database or creating your own.

Elgg is built with PHP / MySQL & comes with a JSON API.

PHPizabi

PHPizabi is a feature-rich open source social networking engine for creating & managing basic-to-advanced communities.

It is built with PHP / MySQL & besides every feature that can be thought for a social networking site, it offers:

• a multilingual interface
• mass mailing to users
• creating blogs
• forum integration & more

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