Somewhere out there!

Still considering which CRM product to use. Although it seems there is really only three good choices in the LAMP/OSS world.

SugarCRM has released a new 2.0 version. This time round there is some difference between the OSS and professional versions. Here is a useful review of this new version. One of its major new features is a Calender plug-in. There is a quotes modules in the professional edition. However, the main feature missing from the OSS version which the Pro version has is decent ACLs.

SugarCRM also has a plug-in to Outlook. Given how easy it is to development plugins to Thunderbird/Firefox it would be nice to see something like this for Sunbird whenever it gets a extension option.

Being purely OSS driven XRMS does not have such clear cut version releases. There is some comparison here of XRMS to Sales Force, although the comments can apply to any consideration. XRMS also has a calender plug-in, although it seems to be still under littler more development.

Dark Horse CRM has released a new 2.9 version and changed it’s name to Centric CRM. Seems to have a more open OSS license now, although its hard to tell if the user number is restricted like the previous Dark Horse Free version.

In all Centric is the most mature product, although the fact it is JRE oriented makes its difficult to maintain and develop. XRMS seems development pretty rapid, although its hard to tell as the online demo is obviously not updated as much as the its commercial competitors due lack of developer time.

I suspect I’ll finally get the time to development something in the next month. So I’ll be putting these products though some testing.

One unfortunately thing, is that none of them seem to have a good work flow management system. Although I think Centric is close to something. Plus for neither has a good system for tracking internal tickets/jobs associated with other work flows related to the business. It would be nice to integrate this, at least on a simple scale.

New version of thunderbird has been released.

It has some really cool new features:

• Message Grouping like Outlook.
• Virtual Folders like Evolution.

Also when you are installing this, have a look at this extension minimizetotray. You can combine that with these tips for speeding load times.

Tech geek candy: I.TECH Virtual Keyboard Full Review at ZDNet UK Reviews. Pricing indication here

Found a link to DHTML Lemmings at Slashback: Echo, Lunchbox, Questions.

Damn that’s cool.

I’ve started reading ebooks on my Psion 5MX and sometimes like SE P800.

After downloading some stories in lit format from Fictionwise I converted to mobipocket format by first using Convert LIT and changing them to OEBF. Then with Mobipocket I created some I could read on my Psion 5MX.

I must say its very cool being able to open my Psion at exact the right page.

Some other useful ebook resources at this site.

Couple Python Cookbook useful recipes:

• passwd-file-compatible ($1$) MD5 crypt
• A very simple session handling example

I’ve been meaning to pay around with VoIP for a long time. This is an interest case study about an install in the US: Installation And Securing VoIP With Linux – Softwink, Inc. [800-538-9357].

I’ll have to use something from Voicetronix that is Telepermited for NZ.

DRBL is a fat-client method for Linux. In contrast to the thin client method of LTSP.

Will have to investigate how their scripts work.

As some people might have notice, my spelling is usually really bad. Unfortunately the only WordPress spell check plug-in that is available requires a recompile of php on Debian in order to get the pspell module installed. Given that php is often getting security releases, I prefer just to use the standard packages.

Along comes firefox to the rescue. The extension module SpellBound is da bomb.

Discovered QEMU today.

After a quick apt-get install qemu I was able to run a quick test successfully:

nic@thunder:/vol/nfs/lode/other/bsd/openbsd/3.4$ qemu-fast -fda floppy34.fs


At the moment, I’m running my openbsd dev machine on an old Tecra 8100 (P3-600) laptop. I use this to compile sources for my flashboot based routers. Qemu both seems like a easier mechanism than boches to test these images, plus a method to retire that laptop to some other use and centralise the openbsd dev work to another machine. I’ve tried this previously on vmware, but it was never reliable. make world would always throw sig-11 faults.

Supposedly Qemu (non fast version) has about an 8 time slow down. My dual 2.4Ghz Xeon would be perfect.

The ideal I searching for though is not quite there. I’d love to be able to run openbsd and linux side by side on my colo machine. Let openbsd/pf+altq deal with the firewall and traffic management, and have linux provide the application server. I was hoping that Xen might do this job, but I don’t think quite there yet.