The Open Source Data Center Initiative was launched last week with the idea of applying open-source ideas to the design and construction of data centers.

The data center industry is “dominated by a handful of large engineering houses” that are wedded to mechanical and engineering designs that are “largely considered proprietary,” said Michael Manos, who used to run Microsoft’s global data center operations and is advising the initiative. Those companies don’t have enough incentive to educate their customers about simpler, more standardized alternatives, he told the New York Times.

“When you think of all the great things we’ve been talking about at data-center conferences, about moving to greener designs and driving efficiency with new technologies–a lot of that innovation is being held back because competition for those ideas is not out there,” Manos added.

The details are still being worked out, according to Manos, but the idea is to give smaller engineering firms access to a pool of engineering resources that could help them compete for business with more established players.

And the concept of open source data centers is one likely to take off quickly.

For more on open source data centers:
- see this New York Times article

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OpenOffice 3.2 has been released, and is now available for download. The OpenOffice productivity suite consists of a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation application, and database capabilities, mirroring that of Microsoft Office. In addition, OpenOffice also comes with software which allows users to create graphics and diagrams.

This popular open-source alternative to Microsoft Office has seen over 300 million downloads over the last 10 years. One of the previous complaints though, was that it has grown increasingly bloated and slow. I haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but fans will be glad to know that among the new features listed among its release notes would be faster start up times. On top of ODF support, support for proprietary file formats has also been added.

Florian Effenberger, marketing project lead of OpenOffice.org summed up what OpenOffice 3.2 is about, saying “…we want OpenOffice.org to be the 2010 office software of choice, and 3.2 takes us another step toward that goal.” OpenOffice 3.2 can be downloaded here.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at PCMag 

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Google’s Chrome browser passed Apple’s Safari to become the third-most widely used browser, after just 16 months, according to Net Applications, an Internet market research firm. The company did not reveal its methodology.

However, both Chrome and Safari–with 4.63 percent and 4.46 percent respectively–lag far behind number two Firefox, with 24.61 percent, and Goliath-like Internet Explorer, with 62.69 percent. An earlier study dated Nov. 10 found Firefox claimed 25 percent of the market.

In comparison, a year ago, Internet Explorer had 68.15 percent, Firefox had 21.34 percent, Safari had 7.93 percent, Chrome had 1.04 percent and Opera had .71 percent, according to Net Applications. So obviously a lot of Chrome’s growth has come at Safari’s expense, as well as some from Internet Explorer.

Firefox first exceeded 20 percent in November, 2008. Net Applications said at that time that it has a larger residential share than a corporate share, and that the election–which people followed from home–played a role in its success that month.

To see an up-to-date report on browser market share:
- see this report

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WordPress released a new version this week they are calling 2.9 Carmen (after Jazz singer Carmen McRae). It includes the usual bug fixes along with several interesting enhancements including:

• Better plug-in management: The new version lets you manage your plug-ins for upgrade purposes. You can choose any or all plug-ins and check for compatibility with the most recent upgrade in one quick step.
• Light-weight image editing: I’ve never been crazy about the way that WordPress handles images, but at least the new version offers a way to do some light-weight image editing including cropping and flipping. There is also some control over aspect ratio.
• Simpler video embedding: As with images, it has taken a bit of work to embed video into WordPress blogs. In the new version, you simply place the URL for the video into the body of the post and WordPress converts it automatically and embeds the video. Looks very slick and supports most major video sites.
• Trash receptacle: Instead of deleting your posts outright, they now go to a trash can where they remain for 30 days. This way, if you change your mind, you have the option of restoring the deleted item.

You can read the full list of enhancements on the WordPress blog, but for an interim release, it includes some very welcome updates.

For more information:
- see the WordPress blog announcement

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Open source content management vendor, Alfresco announced today a new partnership with RightScale, a SaaS cloud management vendor that should help Alfresco customers manage and deploy their Alfresco cloud solutions faster and more efficiently. Alfresco claims the beauty of this partnership is the ability to scale resources instantly to the needs of the application, which if true could greatly simplify cloud-based deployments.

Using RightScale, Alfresco customers can use only the servers they need at any given time. This could be particularly useful for retailers, for example, this time of year when holiday traffic could drive up server usage. Rather than having to buy server time, based on guess work of how much they will need, customers can let RightScale deal with the scaling issues in real time. And after the holidays when the traffic fades to normal levels, the customer can let RightScale automatically dial down the server requirements. If it works in this fashion, it offers Alfresco customers a great service that should reduce overall deployment and maintenance costs and take the guess work out of server needs.

Alfresco CEO, John Powell says, this should simplify cloud building for his customers. “More and more of our enterprise-level customers are taking advantage of the cloud environment, and we are well-positioned to continue to expand capabilities in this area,” Powell said. “Our partnership with RightScale builds on Alfresco’s existing foundation as a flexible, scalable and low-cost solution and will further streamline the process of building complex architectures around Alfresco in the cloud.”

It certainly sounds like a great plan for Alfresco customers looking to deploy applications in the cloud by giving them a cost-effective and seemingly automated way to deal with the tricky issues of deployment and management. I have the feeling there is probably some more fine tuning involved here than they let on, but if it works even close to the way they describe, it should give customers a combined open source and SaaS solution platform on which to build cloud applications.

For more information:
- see the Alfresco press release

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