The search for an open source web desktop

I have a prospective client in need of a web desktop application (also called a 'webtop'). So I went on to research existing (open source) ones, just for the fun of it. I came up with several such as Saltanera Purefect and Psych Desktop but I have to say my favorite is eyeOS. It is more than a webtop; its a platform designed to hold a variety of web applications over it. You can call it an operating system running on the web.

Magento: a new open source eCommerce platform

Today, I got the chance to play around with a new open-source platform. It is called Magento, an ecommerce solution brought to us by the folks at Varien (a web development firm based in Los Angeles).

Its main features are single page checkout, ship to multiple addresses, advanced marketing tools, and SEO. It supports multiple currencies, websites and languages.

If you plan to test it out, you need to have the required system set-up:

• Linux or another UNIX-compatible operating system (Windows is also supported, but see the Known Issues section below)
• Apache Web Server (1.x or 2.x)
• PHP 5.2.0 or newer, with the following extensions/addons:
  • PDO/MySQL
  • MySQLi
  • mcrypt
  • mhash
  • simplexml
  • DOM
• MySQL 4.1.20 or newer
• A Sendmail-compatible Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) - Magento will connect directly to an SMTP server if you don't have an MTA

(List taken from the Magento site)

Well, installation was pretty easy; it took less than 5 minutes. When you're done installing, you will end up with a bare site that looks like this:



For now, there's not much to see in the homepage. You have to explore the Admin site first, so that you can add categories, products, static blocks and other stuff to place in your site.