Instiki is a Ruby on Rails wiki, created by the famous David Heinemeier Hansson

This wiki doesn’t try to match options offered by more mature products such as MediaWki. Instead, it focuses on simplicity and ease of use.

Lately I’ve been playing with it to create a public wiki and private one and the only thing I can say about it is … AMAZING.

If you know how to use textile then you will love it, you can actually use this wiki as a CMS to build websites.

I am thinking about Instiki more as a framework rather than a final product.

There are so many things that could be developed on top of this great and simple wiki. Just imaging the possibilities…. no seriously this is an awesome application.

So if you are a Ruby hacker and you haven’t looked at Instiki source code yet, then you know what you need to do this weekend ;) Don’t forget to buy your favorite bottle of wine too. Because Ruby goes best with wine :)

Sun has officially opened Java under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2), the same license as GNU/Linux.

So thank you Sun even though you are late… I wish Sun was wise enough to open Java sooner. I think Java would have gained much better place among open source developers.

I’ve used Qtopia SDK in the past to write software for embedded Linux devices such as the Sharp Zaurus PDA. I was always impressed with the simplicity of their development tools.

TrollTech the company behind Qtopia has been working on a Linux development phone (GSM/GPRS). The phone will be loaded with Qtopia Phone Edition.

This phone should be perfect for developers and entrepreneurs who like their phones to do more advanced things than just making phone calls and playing songs.

Your Linux phone could run a web server or SSH or even control your home appliances.. the possibilities are unlimited.

I am expecting this phone to ignite innovative ideas in the mobile devices industry..

Can we say mobile 2.0 madness is about to start?

According to CNet, The basic package—consisting of a phone, cables and source code will cost around $700

So do you want this phone or iPhone??

If you need a Linux advanced messaging and calendaring software then Scalix 11 might be the right solution for you.

Scalix 11 pre-release version is available for download (for evaluation purpose only). The production release will be offered in November.

They offer packages for RedHat , Suse and Debian (works on Ubuntu)

Scalix offers both free and commercial lines of their product. It depends on your needs and whether you need support or not.

Here is a summary of their features:

• Full-featured email and calendar server
• AJAX based web client for accessing both email and calendar
• Connectivity support for Outlook and Evolution
• Mobile client access for advanced wireless email and PIM support
• Web services programming interfaces which makes it easier for developers to integrate the product with other applications.

I will be installing and evaluating this software… It seems like Ximda mail is about to find a new home.

I was reading on cnet that Lenovo and Novell are planning to offer Suse on ThinkPad. This move made me believe Suse is still holding up in the tough OS market.

I was once one of the first adopters of Linux Suse on the desktop. At that time Suse was the leader of the Linux desktop by providing an easy to use eye candy desktop environment. Suse used KDE as its default desktop system while RedHat (it’s biggest competitor) used Gnome.

I was the only one of my friends to adopt Suse over RedHat or Mandrake. For me Suse desktop was superior. Suse developers tried to pay attention to details and to make things look nice yet functional. Unfortunately Linux early adopters were hackers and system administrators who wanted Linux to be difficult and exclusive so obviously Suse wasn’t their first choice.

Things have changed a lot; hackers and power OS users now appreciate the clean look of their desktops. The biggest example is the rise of mac systems sales. However, this is didn’t help Suse achieve better place in the desktop market because Ubuntu – the new Linux super star – was born and it was rapidly becoming the most popular Linux distro.

Ubuntu’s biggest advantage over Suse is the fact that Ubuntu is based on Debian. So you are getting the most stable Linux distro, the most successful packaging system (Debian package) and a very nice looking and easy to use desktop.

IBM has always been helping Suse to gain leads in the OS market by investing money in Novell (the current Suse owner) and by supporting Suse on IBM’s hardware and software products. But IBM also has been helping Ubuntu supporting IBM software; in fact, Ubuntu is already certified to run DB2.

As Ubuntu keeps rising in the desktop and expanding in the enterprise, Suse seems to have internal problems. And the people who once started Suse are no longer part of Novell!

Web2.0 has taken the news headlines from operating systems. Yeah the media always gets excited about new things. But web2.0 has a lot to offer, now you can use AJAX, Rails, PHP, etc. to build web applications that can do almost everything desktop applications can do. In addition, you get access to these application from anywhere with internet connection. You no longer need to be concerned about OS support, data backup or software upgrade.

Talking about OS war these days is like talking about the cold war. It’s part of the past�

Sun says the question is not if it will open source Java, but how

At JavaOne in San Francisco, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green, the company’s new executive vice president of software, officially announced that Java will become open source. Green encouraged the Java community to participate in the process. watch the video

Finally RadRails 0.7 is available for download. It’s built on top of eclipse

If you are a Ruby on Rails developer, this IDE is your second best choice after TextMate Actually it’s your only choice if you don’t have a mac.

I use eclipse almost every day for my Java/J2EE development. It’s a very good tool but it eats a lot of my computer resources.. I’ve never liked Java desktop application anyway.

As for RadRails, well it’s much slimmer than my RAD (IBM Rational Application Developer) but still uses a lot of memory.

TextMate is much faster and lighter. It’s a powerful text editor like Vi and Emacs with a very user friendly interface.

I think TextMate is perfect for interpreted languages since you really don’t need an IDE. However, I wouldn’t want to use it for Java development where eclipse is better fit for it.

At the end .. what tool to use depends on the task you need to achieve..