Campware Good Gnewsletter #1

Campware Good Gnewsletter #1
2 May 2006

Welcome to the first issue of the Campware newsletter! We hope to
bring you this kind of updates on a quarterly basis to let you know
what we've been up to.  To learn more about Campware, visit our
website: http://www.campware.org or subscribe to our RSS feed (See
related story below)

In this issue:
* Demo the Campware Software Suite
* Renewed cooperation with Parsons School of Design
* Campsite Status & Roadmap
* LiveSupport Status & Roadmap
* LiveSupport in the Field
* Cream and Status & Roadmap
* Dream Status & Roadmap
* Stay Up to Date with the Campware RSS Feed

Demo the Campware Software Suite
================================
All Campware products can now be tried out on our demo servers (no
downloads or installation required):

Campsite: http://campsite-demo.campware.org/admin
LiveSupport: http://livesupport-demo.campware.org
Cream: http://cream-demo.campware.org
Dream: http://dream-demo.campware.org


Renewed Cooperation with Parsons School of Design
=================================================
Campware and Parsons School of Design are about to embark on a new
round of cooperation from September 2006. The idea, which has been
agreed upon in principle on 27 April in New York, will have a group of
Parsons graduate students working for two semesters on usability and
design of all Campware products as a part of a collaboration studio
(course). The concrete program still has to be fleshed out, but get
ready for major beautification and functionality enhancements for
Campsite, Cream, Dream and Docmint. Head of the Design & Technology
Department Colleen Macklin will be coming to Summercamp this year to
further refine the plan.

Campsite Status & Roadmap
=========================
Campsite, Campware's content management system for news-media sites,
is currently in its 2.5 "Eli" version (released in early April).

For details about the new features, see:
http://www.campware.org/en/camp/campsite_news/654/

You can download the latest version (2.5.1) here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66936

Interest in Campsite is picking up.

Here's a comparison of the downloads for the past two releases:

Version 2.3.x:
 1358 downloads
 Time span: 150 days
 = 9 downloads per day

Version 2.4.x:
 974 downloads
 Time span: 54 days
 = 18 downloads per day

We hope to keep up this trend by implementing the features that our
users ask for and getting the word out about Campsite.

Behind the scenes, Campsite had a major overhaul of its code in the
2.4 release, which is one of the reasons that release cycles are now
happening at about 1.5 to 2 month intervals instead of 4-6 month
intervals.  We have one last major overhaul of the system to do:
replace the template parser (the template parser is the part of the
system that actually displays the web pages to the subscribers).
Replacing it will fix one of the major problems behind Campsite
adoption - the difficulty of installation it and finding a hosting
provider that allows root access.

The Campsite roadmap for the next six months:

Campsite v2.6 (due to release sometime in May)
* Integrated Article Comments and Forum - the integration of Phorum
code with Campsite will allow readers to comment on articles and
simultaneously create new threads in the forum. This unique feature
will enable news-media sites to instantaneously drive the traffic to
their forums as well allow a article comments to evolve into forum
threads that can outlive the original news item.
* Increased security for the login screen to prevent scripting attacks
* "Article Types" will get a major overhaul (Article Types define the
  structure of your articles in Campsite).  You will be able to hide
  old article types that are no longer in use, rename and translate
  article types, and even merge them together.
* Automated bug reporting – if there is an error in the Administration
  interface, you will have the option to automatically send feedback
  about it to the Campsite team.  You will also be able to submit issues
  directly through the Campsite interface.

Campsite v3.0 (preview release in July, release in August)
* The C++ template parser will be replaced with a PHP parser.  This will
  allow Campsite to be installed on any platform that supports PHP,
  which includes Windows.
* A new and improved way for subscribers to search for articles,
  something more like Google.
* An HTML installer to replace the command-line installer.  You will be
  able to install Campsite through your browser.
* Debian packages


LiveSupport Status & Roadmap
============================
The LiveSupport development continues at a brisk pace, heading toward the
release of the eagerly-awaited 1.1 version in June. LiveSupport 1.1 will
include a number of new features, most notably the ability for radio
stations to share program content among themselves, either online or
offline.

Planned features in the 1.1.0 "Freetown" release include:
* Import and export of playlists for sharing with other LiveSupport
  stations, either on- or off-line, and in either SMIL or native
  LiveSupport playlist formats.
* Ability to save playlists to a single sound file for podcasting.
* A new file upload and download status window for viewing the network
  traffic.
* Combined local and network search, in which a station employee can
  search their station's archive as well as the network archive.
* Numerous user interface improvements, including drag and drop in the
  LiveSupport Studio's Live Mode window.
* LiveSupport Studio will have a 'Preferences' palette that includes such
  items as easy sound card configuration, server locations, and storage
  server backup.
* A new Live CD based on Ubuntu 6.06 "Dapper"

The 1.1 release will be the first release to use detailed use case
scenarios for developers and project managers. You can review these use
cases at this address:
http://code.campware.org/projects/livesupport/wiki/UseCases


LiveSupport in the Field
========================
Pilot implementations of LiveSupport are underway in community radio
stations in Mpumalanga Province, South Africa (home of the Kruger
National Park, among other things). The pilot implementations are now
in the phase where LiveSupport is installed and stations are testing
it for full-time broadcasts for a limited period. Feedback will then
be collected and passed on to the LiveSupport developers.

To support these and similar implementations in environments where
there is little or no connectivity, developer Sebastian Goebel has
created a CD ISO file containing every package and library LiveSupport
needs. In normal circumstances, users can simply add the LiveSupport
repository, but the CD can help in less-connected situations.

CAMP is planning a number of real-world implementations of LiveSupport
following the 1.1 release: Freetown, Sierra Leone; Yerevan, Armenia;
Jakarta, Indonesia; Mpumalanga Province, South Africa; Belgrade,
Serbia and Montenegro.

The first of these is an implementation in Freetown, Sierra Leone,
where LiveSupport will power a network of radio stations run by the
Cornet community radio consortium. Because the technical
infrastructure in Sierra Leone is far from ideal, we are building in a
number of features that reflect the situation on the ground – for
example, even if the stations' Internet connections are down, they
should be able to share files by burning them to CD/DVD and delivering
them.

The LiveSupport team also took part in MDLF's Media Forum 2005 in
November, broadcasting interviews with participants in the event,
which brings together MDLF clients from around the world. The
broadcasts used a single PC connected to a low-power FM transmitter,
with inexpensive portable FM radios distributed to nearly 200 forum
participants.


Cream Status & Roadmap
======================
Cream 2.0 "Sofija" was released on 11 August 2005 and included a
number of useful features, including:
* Ability to send HTML newsletters to customers, as well as ability to
receive email from your customers.
* A what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor for composing email.
* Greatly improved Windows compatibility and documentation
* Improvements to the user interface

The upcoming 2.1 release of Cream will feature an XML-RPC interface to
allow it to communicate with other applications and a port to the
MySQL database. The MySQL port will enable Cream to share the same
database with Campsite and thereby take over subscriber management and
interaction. The 2.1 release is expected in June and will be followed
by implementations among some of the clients of the Media on the Web
project in the former Yugoslavia.

Dream Status & Roadmap
======================
The current version of Campware's print newspaper circulation tracker
Dream  is 1.0.1. The version is an update of the 1.0 release that
brought localization support to the application user interface.

Further releases of Dream will move the application to the Cream 2.1
framework as well as improve the communication features of the
application.


Stay Up to Date with the Campware RSS Feed
==========================================
To keep up to date with the latest Campware news, subscribe to our RSS
feed. If you are using Firefox or other advanced web browsers, you can
add a live bookmark directly from your browser. If you prefer to use
your favorite RSS feed reader, add the following link:
http://www.campware.org/en/camp/rss