<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Newsletter:</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">May 6, 2008</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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 :). </font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">In this issue:</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Campsite 3.0 </font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Cream 3.0</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Campcaster 1.4 Update</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Campware stuff from Cafe Press</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> What's in a Name?</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Donating to Campware</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Things we've got our eye on - open source software relevant to independent media</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> Real time, chat-based discussion on the Campware IRC channels</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Are you using Campware's solutions for your media organization? We'd love to hear what you've been up to. Write us at [email protected] with your news.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Campsite 3.0 update </font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">===================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">For those using older Campsite versions, there are upgrade scripts that should be able to help speed your transition to the new version.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">You can download Campsite 3.0 "Filip" here: https://www.campware.org/projects/campsite</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Cream 3.0 and MDLF's Digital Kiosk</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">==================================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Campcaster 1.4 "Monrovia"</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">================================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">What's in a Name: Campware Naming Conventions</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">=============================================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Since the 2.2 version, Campsite releases have been named after someone close to the developers - in practice this has meant new births.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">2.2 "Mara", released April 14, 2005 - named after Mugur Rus' daughter Mara</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">2.3 "Niko", released August 1, 2005 - named after Paul Baranowski's nephew Niko.</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">2.4 "Rade", released January 10, 2006 - named after Sava Tatiæ's son Rade.</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">2.5 "Eli", released - named after Micz Flor's nephew Eli.</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">2.6 "Joey" - named after Douglas Arellanes' daughter Joey.</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">3.0 "Filip" - named after Pavla Èihaøová's son Filip.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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. </font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">1.1 "Freetown" - Freetown, Sierra Leone</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">1.2 "Kotor" - Kotor, Montenegro</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">1.3 "Dakar" - Dakar, Senegal</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">1.4 "Monrovia" - Monrovia, Liberia</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Cream doesn't have a naming convention yet.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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." :-)))</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Campware Stuff from Cafe Press</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">==============================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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:</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">http://www.cafepress.com/campware</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Donating to Campware</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">====================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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).</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Things We've Got Our Eye On - Open Source Software Relevant to Independent Media</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">================================================================================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">(K)Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and 64Studio</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">----------------------------------</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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 </font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Audacity</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">---------</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">OpenOffice</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">------------------</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">There are a couple of variants of OpenOffice that are also worth keeping an eye on.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif"> </font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Google Documents</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">----------------</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Trac</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">----</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">VLC</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">---</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">Real-time discussions on the #campsite and #campcaster IRC channels</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">===================================================================</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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.</font>
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<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">About this newsletter</font>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">=====================</font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">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. You are getting this email because you - or someone - added you to our subscription list. We hate spam maybe even more than you do, so if you think you've gotten this email in error, you can unsubscribe here:</font>
<br>
<br><font size=3 face="sans-serif">https://www.campware.org/mailman/listinfo/campware-newsletter</font>
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<br><font size=1 color=#808080 face="sans-serif"><i>Invest in Press Freedom: Visit http://www.mdlf.org/support-free-press</i></font>