Tool of the Week

Tumblr
Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme's HTML.




WordPress

WordPress is an open source blogging tool and publishing platform powered by PHP and MySQL. It can be customized into a Content Management System (CMS). WordPress has many features including a plug-in architecture and a template system and is the most popular CMS on the internet.

It was first released on May 27, 2003, by Matt Mullenweg. In February of 2011, version 3.0 had been downloaded over 32.5 million times.

It is currently the most popular Content Management System in use on the Internet.

Visit WordPress today and create your blog at : http://wordpress.com/

Sample blog created using WordPress:

FrontlineSMS

A lack of communication had been a barrier for grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs & INGOs) working in developing countries for quiet a long time now. However that barrier had been broken with FrontlineSMS - which is the first text messaging system created exclusively to tackle this communication barrier problem.

The software was originally developed in 2005 for conservationists to keep in touch with communities in South Africa.

FrontlineSMS works with those basic tools already available to most NGOs — which are, computers and mobile phones. The software can work without an internet connection by connecting a device such as a cell phone or GSM modem with a local phone number, It enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s quite simple to setup, easy to operate, and most importantly, the software is free. enables users to connect a range of mobile devices to a computer to send and receive SMS text messages.

If internet access is available, FrontlineSMS can be connected to online SMS services and set up to feed incoming messages to other web or e-mail services. FrontlineSMS includes different features which enable messages to be filtered by keyword, or allows the submission of java (programming language) based forms with FrontlineSMS Forms.

To use FrontlineSMS, you need a computer, the frontlineSMS software, and phone or GSM modem eg. Huawei, Samsung, etc... However, if it is fully setup, the GSM modem must have credits/units to be able to send out messages. It can send and receive messages, group contacts, respond to messages, and trigger other events.

What is OpenDNS?

OpenDNS is a DNS (Domain Name System) resolution service. OpenDNS extends DNS adding features such as misspelling correction, phishing protection (the fraudulent practice of sending e-mails purporting to be from legitimate companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as credit-card numbers, online), and optional content filtering.

Advantages of OpenDNS

When you type an address like www.yahoo.com in your browser address bar, the computer doesn't know where yahoo.com points to and it will therefore ask the DNS server. The job of a DNS server is to translate this human-readable web address (like www.yahoo.com) into a computer-readable number also known as an IP address (209.131.36.158). Once your computer knows the IP location of a web domain name, it opens the website in your browser.

DNS is such an integral part of our Internet life working behind the scenes every time we connect to a website. In most situations, our Internet Service Provider specifies the DNS Server address that we key into the browser network settings or the router.

Unfortunately, this can prove to be the weakest link in the entire workflow. For example, if the DNS server of your ISP is slow, the time it takes to resolve the web address adds up to the overall loading time of the website.

To solve this problem, we look at a simple and reliable service called OpenDNS that speeds up your Internet connection and also handles some other very important issues. There is no software to install, it’s very easy to set up.

To use OpenDNS, all you have to do is open your Network Connections or Router’s settings page and update the default DNS server to point to the OpenDNS nameservers that are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Another huge advantage of using OpenDNS is that it blocks phishing websites from loading on your computer. It uses data from Phishtank, a community site that is also used by Yahoo! Mail to determine if some particular website is part of any online phishing scam.

OpenDNS also takes care of any typos that you commit while typing the name of popular websites. For instance, if you type www.gogle.com omitting the additional “o” by mistake, OpenDNS will open the main www.google.com site automatically.

If you are a parent worried about kids visiting adult websites on the home computer, you can configure OpenDNS to block any adult website from loading on the computer. In fact, quite a few business places use OpenDNS to block social sites like MySpace and Facebook on employee computers.

Power users can assign abbreviations or OpenDNS Shortcuts to access their favorite websites more quickly. For instance, you can set “mail” as a shortcut for http://mail.google.com/ or something like “a” for www.reallylongname.com - just type the shortcut to access the site. A good alternative for browser based bookmarks and it works across all computers where you have logged in to your OpenDNS account.

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization (that is, the particular kind of sotware that allows an unmodified operating system with all of its installed software to run in a special environment, on top of your existing operating system) product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Oracle ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.

For configuration, installation and the entire user manual on virtualbox, please visit http://www.virtualbox.org

This week our featured tools are Dropbox and Mozy.

Dropbox is a Web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. It uses cloud computing to enable users to store and share files and folders with others across the Internet using file synchronization. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi.

There are both free and paid services, each with varying options. Comparing dropbox to similar online storage services, it offers a relatively large number of userclients across a variety of desktop and mobile operating systems. There are versions for many Operating Systems, like Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux as well as versions for mobile devices, Android, Windows Phone 7, iPhone,iPad and BlackBerry, and a web-based client for when no local client is installed. Its free service provides 2 GB of free online storage. Users who refer Dropbox to others can gain up to 8 GB of free storage. For more on dropbox visit https://www.dropbox.com/

Mozy is an online backup service for both Windows and Mac users. The cloud service allows users to back up data continuously, manually or schedule updates. Mozy is known for offering backup storage space for home and business users. In 2011, they changed to their current tier

ed pricing model. Originally released as a consumer product for end-users (MozyHome), Mozy later released a remote backup utility for businesses called MozyPro, with additional functionality and an administrative portal. As of 2011, Mozy is operated by VMware on behalf of its parent company. It operates in iphones and Andriods as well. For more on mozy visit http://mozy.com/