Insoshi wants to be WordPress for social networks, except built on top of Ruby on Rails instead of PHP. We covered them in March when they presented at the Spring Y Combinator demo day. Now they’ve officially released their software for public download so anyone can install it on-premise to run their own social networks. Insoshi is […]

Insoshi wants to be WordPress for social networks, except built on top of Ruby on Rails instead of PHP.

We covered them in March when they presented at the Spring Y Combinator demo day. Now they’ve officially released their software for public download so anyone can install it on-premise to run their own social networks.

Insoshi isn’t the first company to release its social networking code. Broadband Mechanics has always emphasized the openness of its PeopleAggregator platform, and even Ning, the most publicized DIY social networking company, will give you the underlying code if you request it.

It’s not even the first Ruby on Rails project to go open source. Lovd By Less appears to have claimed this honor, even though Insoshi founder Michael Hartl insists that the code he released under an MIT License in July 2007 should be considered the first RoR social networking open source code. Quibbles about who was first aside, Insoshi certainly has the advantage of having in Hartl a very prominent founder: he wrote RailsSpace, which is considered the book for writing social networks in RoR.

I look forward to seeing whether Insoshi is really able to build the type of developer community that’s associated with names like Mozilla and MySQL. If it manages to pull it off, it will become a very attractive option for organizations that want to run social networks independently.

Check out a test social network built on Insoshi here.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Via [TechCrunch]

Share This

By Andrew Liszewski Over the years there have been many studies on the dangers of radiation and electromagnetic fields from cellphones. Some have said it’s perfectly safe, while others feel it’s really dangerous. But why listen to someone else’s findings when you can conduct your own research and come to your own conclusions with this handheld [...]

By Andrew Liszewski

Over the years there have been many studies on the dangers of radiation and electromagnetic fields from cellphones. Some have said it’s perfectly safe, while others feel it’s really dangerous. But why listen to someone else’s findings when you can conduct your own research and come to your own conclusions with this handheld EMF detector. It measures both radio frequency radiation as well as extremely low-frequency magnetic fields and should give you a pretty good idea of which electronics in your home are the worst offenders. Of course the readings given by the CellSensor don’t exactly fall into a ’safe’ or ‘not-safe’ category since I’m pretty sure there’s no definite guidelines yet. But don’t let that stop you from publishing your own research on the dangers of cellphones and see if it makes the 6 o’clock news like so many before it.

The CellSensor is available from X-Treme Geek.com for $29.95 and runs off a single 9V battery which is not included.

[ CellSensor EMF Detector ] VIA [ IT Rush ]

Via [Ohgizmo]

By Andrew Liszewski It might not immediately seem clear why someone would need a device that’s capable of copying data to 60 flash drives at once. But just think of all the promotional flash drives you’ve been given over the years that feature PR material or demo software and you’ll get the idea. This particular model from […]

By Andrew Liszewski

It might not immediately seem clear why someone would need a device that’s capable of duplicating data to 60 flash drives at once. But just think of all the promotional flash drives you’ve been given over the years that feature PR material or demo software and you’ll get the idea.

This particular model from Virtual Console features 60 ports with a maximum duplication speed of 5.6 MB per second per port. On average it can fill 60 512 MB flash drives in about 90 seconds, and it will probably take just as long to remove and attach 60 new flash drives once the copying process is complete. The duplicator itself connects to a Computer via USB or ‘fast ethernet’ and also comes with the option of enabling AES 128bit encryption, though that feature is sold separately.

But the convenience of the Virtual Console 60 Port Duplicator doesn’t come cheap. The device actually has a pretty hefty price tag of $7,999.

[ Virtual Console 60 Port USB Flash Drive Duplicator ] VIA [ I4U News ]

Via [Ohgizmo]

Share This

Is Microsoft finally learning to love the penguin? After years of fighting Linux and denying its very usefulness, Microsoft has recently changed its tactics. It is trying to be more open, even if that’s an attempt to appease European regulators. And today, it is announcing the beta of new data center management tools [...]

Is Microsoft finally learning to love the penguin? After years of fighting Linux and denying its very usefulness, Microsoft has recently changed its tactics. It is trying to be more open, even if that’s an attempt to appease European regulators. And today, it is announcing the beta of new data center management tools that—gasp!—recognize that some companies might be running something other than Windows on their servers. Now it will support two flavors of Linux (Red Hat and SUSE) and two flavors of Unix (HP-UX and Sun Solaris), all from one management console. The name of the software is System Center Operations Manager 2007 Cross Platform Extensions. Yeah, I can’t remember that either.

What Microosft is signaling here is a new tactic in the war against Linux, which it realizes is not going anywhere. So if Microsoft can’t beat Linux, it will try to smother it with love by offering a way for IT folks to manage and control all of their servers using Microsoft software. But it is a little late to the game. HP’s Openview, Tivoli, and BMC already offer such capabilities. Microsoft can still make inroads, though, by competing on price and ease of use.

Embracing openness and other software is also a good idea. Microsoft new data center management software supports open standards such as Web Services for Management and OpenPegasus. At the same time, Microsoft is also announcing new virtualization management software (System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008) that will let IT managers control virtual machines running on EMC’s popular VMWare, as well as Microsoft’s own virtual machines. (Virtualization is a big trend in data centers that effectively splits and segregates jobs on one physical server into many virtual ones). For those interested in more, you can read all the gory details in the press release.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Via [TechCrunch]

By Andrew Liszewski Here’s a great post from the people at Mightygodking.com who claimed to have found a genuine working-condition Atari 2600 at a garage sale, complete with a huge stack of classic games that they’ve scanned for our enjoyment. In reality, it’s a huge post of classic video game artwork that’s been updated with titles [...]

By Andrew Liszewski

Here’s a great post from the people at Mightygodking.com who claimed to have found a genuine working-condition Atari 2600 at a garage sale, complete with a huge stack of classic games that they’ve scanned for our enjoyment. In reality, it’s a huge post of classic video game artwork that’s been updated with titles and descriptions that more accurately reflect what’s being depicted on the cover. If you’ve ever looked at an old video game and wondered how the artist came up with those over-the-top covers when the games barely featured a few pixelated sprites you’ll find these pretty amusing. And really, do you have a better way to spend your Saturday morning?

[ Fun From Yesterday! ] VIA [ Fazed ]

Via [Ohgizmo]

The last time Web hosting provider Rackspace filed for an IPO was back in March, 2000, at the peak of the first Internet bubble. Now, it may be about to do so again. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow or Monday, according to one tipster who tells us that email to that effect are [...]

The last time Web hosting provider Rackspace filed for an IPO was back in March, 2000, at the peak of the first Internet bubble. Now, it may be about to do so again. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow or Monday, according to one tipster who tells us that email to that effect are circulating inside the company. (Rackspace is a TechCrunch advertiser, but our source is not an employee).

There are no filings yet with the SEC, but press releases touting its revenues have mysteriously been stripped from the company’s site. Here is one that’s been cached, announcing 2006 revenues of $224 million. Various reports put quarterly revenues for 2007 at $75 million, $84 million, and $96 million, respectively for each of the first three quarters, which suggests that full-year 2007 revenues were north of $350 million. Rackspace claims to be profitable, and has more than 15,000 customers. A major outage last November caused by a traffic accident near its Dallas data center was noticed across the Web.

Rumors of an IPO have been swirling recently. The company just hired a new chief financial officer on March 31. Last October, it acquired Webmail.us and it offers cloud computing services that compete with Amazon’s Web Services through its Mosso brand. In January, it shifted strategyto emphasize its utility computing business model.

It is time to pull the trigger.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Via [TechCrunch]

By Luke Anderson Most USB hubs you see are pretty standard, as they are a plastic shell (that may or may not look like something cool). They come in two categories; powered and unpowered. The former requires you to run a power cord to a nearby power outlet. At least that’s usually how it works.

One good quarter does not make a trend, but there is a glimmer of hope in the fight against click fraud (fake clicks that can nevertheless cost advertisers money). Click Forensics is reporting that the overall click fraud rate was down half a percentage point in the first quarter to 16.3 percent. Although [...]

One good quarter does not make a trend, but there is a glimmer of hope in the fight against click fraud (fake clicks that can nevertheless cost advertisers money). Click Forensics is reporting that the overall click fraud rate was down half a percentage point in the first quarter to 16.3 percent. Although that is still higher than the rate was a year ago, it could be an indication that Google’s and Yahoo’s efforts to filter out bad clicks on search and contextual ads and improve the overall quality of those ads is starting to have an effect.

When you look at the click fraud rate on their respective content networks where the worst offenses occur, AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, the click fraud rate there also dipped slightly to 27.8 percent from 28.3 percent in the fourth quarter. That is still nearly a third of all clicks and needs to seriously go down further.

Perhaps this year the overall click fraud rate can be held steady instead of rising 15 percent, as it did in 2007.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Via [TechCrunch]

FirewallScript has just launched a software-based security service that can be used on any server that supports PHP5, and even provides support for shared hosts. The firewall is very similar in function to the popular open source firewall ModSecurity, but according to co-founder Ron Myers, there are some important differences. For one, a [...]

FirewallScript has just launched a software-based security service that can be used on any server that supports PHP5, and even provides support for shared hosts.

The firewall is very similar in function to the popular open source firewall ModSecurity, but according to co-founder Ron Myers, there are some important differences. For one, a ModSecurity installation is server-wide, meaning that nobody on a shared hosting plan is able to install or modify its settings. This inevitably leads to problems, because ModSecurity tends to take a generalized approach to protection which may conflict with valid applications run by users who are unable to disable it.

In contrast, FirewallScript can be installed by any user on a server, even under a shared hosting plan. All users can install or modify their security settings at will, and FirewallScript offers ‘Rule Packs’ which are pre-configured for certain web apps like WordPress and vBulletin. This allows users to tailor their security to cover things that applications like ModSecuity may have mishandled. Installation is also a breeze, requiring only a simple install script and a minimal amount of technical knowlege.

I think that FirewallScript could have a place in the market, given that the vast majority of small-time sites are hosted on cheap shared hosting plans. But I question how many people will be unsatisfied with the security their plans already provide, or how many will care about security to begin with. For those that are interested, enter the code ‘techcrunch’ for 50% off the normal price of $85.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Via [TechCrunch]

This guest post about the widget economy was written by Michael Jones, an angel investor, the CEO of Userplane and a Senior Vice President of AOL. Userplane, which was acquired by AOL in August 2006, is a communications widget provider (add chat and other services to sites) and a large advertising network. Mike Jones’ personal blog [...]

This guest post about the widget economy was written by Michael Jones, an angel investor, the CEO of Userplane and a Senior Vice President of AOL.

Mike Jones’ personal blog is here.

Companies facing a slowing economy are looking for more cost-effective ways to reach customers. Forrester’s recent post on the role of social media during economic recessions supports the idea that social media can help companies survive and thrive in tough economic times. And Josh Bernoff’s full report on the subject calls for an end to “toe-dipping” by interactive marketers and advises a more serious look at cost-effective and measurable social marketing programs. A key take away:

…since interactive marketing programs are now fueled by measurable results, not dot-com madness, we believe that they can thrive in a recession. Social applications in particular, such as communities and social networking sites, are cost-effective and have a measurable impact on prospects’ decisions in the consideration stage, which will be important to companies under recessionary pressures. Interactive marketers should stop toe-dipping and invest only in programs that can deliver on measurable metrics.

Additionally, Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang points out that social marketing costs far less than traditional marketing. So when purse strings are tightened, marketing execs will become more excited about social media’s potential of reaching exponentially more people with fewer dollars.

While the recession-proofness of social media is a case study in the making, the idea that social applications can thrive in tight economic times because they are a cost-effective, precise way for companies to interact with customers and prospective customers, is right on the money – quite literally.

(more…)

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Via [TechCrunch]