Thoughts on E-Government and Open-Source Software

What follows is the concluding chapter of my Master’s thesis written a little over two years ago. If you are interested in reading the rest, check it out here. I just thought I would post it to see some of your thoughts on the idea of open-source software as a platform for government service delivery.

I am about half way through Lawrence Lessig’s book Code 2.0 and it has brought back fond memories of my days writing on e-government and open-source software. If you read only one book about the Internet, please make it The Future of Ideas, also by Lessig. This book was the foundation for my thesis and is, in my opinion, one the most influential books on the Internet and information freedom.

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Posted in: Rants, Tech News

Free Software and Open Source Alternatives to Save You Money

The development for open source software is strong and growing. Open source software is software in which the source code is publicly available for examination or contribution. If you talk to a typical person or business, you’ll usually find that their computers are all running Windows and have Microsoft Office installed. Some may even have more expensive software installed like the Adobe Creative Suite applications. By buying and using such high-priced software, it is easy to shell out two or three times as much money on software than on the computer itself. With many capable alternatives, there is a lot of money to be saved by utilizing free and open source software.

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Posted in: Cool Stuff, How To

Magento: A New Open Source Shopping Cart Solution

A good amount of shopping these days is done online, but any developer knows that creating eCommerce websites is not a simple or mundane task. To cook up your own solution can take months of designing, coding, testing and headaches and there is no guarantee that you, your client, or your client’s customers will really benefit from your labors. [Reinventing the wheel is a bad habit we broke ourselves of a couple of years ago when we realized smart open source solutions could be built upon and expanded with great success.—Ed]

At the heart of these eCommerce websites naturally lies the shopping cart. There have been many attempts by both commercial and open source developers to create solutions that can be ported from one project to another. There are literally hundreds of shopping carts available for developers to incorporate into their applications and websites. Instead of talking about several of them and discussing their glories and pitfalls, allow me to present one of the newest shopping cart applications which we think has a great deal of potential.

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Posted in: Cool Stuff, Development, Tech News