There are some interesting new features in the latest release of Freenet:

Like for example, “Forward Error Correction and Healing” or FEC, which not only allows for larger files to be shared, it also provides a “healing” feature, so that parts of files can be re-created.

In addtion, “Anecdotal evidence suggests that FEC allows the reliable downloading of files as large as 600MB from Freenet at average download rates as high as 90k/sec on a broadband internet connection (which compares quite favorably to more conventional P2P applications).”

Slashdot is offering subscriptions

Agent Frank wants to learn about the user, observe preferences and habits, and become capable of automating many of the tedious tasks infovores face. Eventually, this will come to involve various forms of machine learning and analysis, & etc.

Note to self: Check this out when you get a chance.

An overview was posted on the PostNuke site about the Smarty-based Template Rendering Engine for PostNuke Phoenix.

I can’t wait to see this in at least a beta. I’d love to rid theme templates of those nasty nested tables and exploit CSS.

“Rainbow Project, an open source Content Management System (CMS) based on MicrosoftÂ’s .NET IBUYSPY portal application.”

I’m starting to really dig the IBS portal framework Microsoft made available to demonstrate .Net

OS-CMS is an informative portal that lists and briefly summarizes many of the Open Source CMS and Blog tools available. However, what makes this portal special is that they also provide demos of each.

From Kuro5hin: “While many people see gzip as a compression tool, it also makes a credible spam filter. Here’s how.”

I spent some time today learning about and installing a test version of eZ Publish. I’m still investigating, but so far it seems to have decent workflow and user permissions system. However, it might be overly complex for a blog or small site, but for a site with many contributors and content forms it should be well worth the initial hurdle. I’ll post more as I dig deeper.

“Information technology companies today have a hidden resource that they have
barely started to exploit. IT companies have, over the years, spent a
considerable amount of money equipping themselves with strong relational
database expertise. But these relational teams are traditionally isolated and
kept behind the glass doors, primarily supporting the development teams that
churn out end-user applications. This practice largely continues even today as
the programming face of IT moves to the Web.”
(via ONJava.com)

Hmm, this looks like it’s worth a look … “Hep Message Server is software that transfers bits of information between different messaging sytems on the Internet. When it’s done, you’ll be able to use Hep to transparently route messages between e-mail, weblogs, and instant messaging. “