Study at MIT for free - MIT Open Courseware

OCW is a free publication of course materials used at MIT.

• Get lecture notes, problem sets, labs and more.
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• Study a wide variety of subjects.

MIT is committed to advancing education and discovery through knowledge open to everyone.

OCW shares free lecture notes, exams, and other resources from more than 1800 courses spanning MIT's entire curriculum.

MIT OpenCourseWare is an idea—and an ideal—developed, supported, and embraced by the MIT faculty, who share the Institute's mission to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship to best serve the nation and the world. In 1999 the Faculty considered how to take best advantage of the Internet to advance education, and in 2000 proposed OCW.

Most Active Open Source Projects in Codeplex

It is nice to see the open source projects' progress in Microsoft world, especially it is been extremely fast growth after the Codeplex launched, and also GotDotNet suggests their hosted projects to move on to Codeplex. As you might remember, I have submitted a post about Codeplex a few weeks ago; Microsoft Open Source Projects. This time, it is proud to list most popular and active top 25 projects that has been hosted in Codeplex.

• AJAX Control Toolkit - a collection of samples and components which make it easier than ever to build and consume rich client-side controls and extenders built on the Microsoft AJAX Library and ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. The Toolkit provides both ready to go samples and a powerful SDK to simplify the creation and re-use of your own custom controls and extenders.
• BlogEngine.NET - a full featured blog engine targeted at .NET developers. It is light weight and very simple to modify and extend.
• SharpMap - an easy-to-use map rendering and display engine, including AJAX-powered ASP.Net UserControl and a WinForm 2.0 control. You supply it with GIS data for use in web and desktop applications, and it generates eye-catching, useful maps. Written in C# 2.0.
• VMukti P2P Multipoint Real-time Rich Media Collaboration Platform - Web2.0, distributed, peer-to-peer, grid computing, unified communications SAAS platform for web, phone, and IM rich media collaboration & conference. This Multipoint VoIP, VVoIP Video service delivery platform is based on C#, WPF, WCF, & .NET 3.5.
• GoTraxx - C# program that plays the game of Go.
• DocProject for Sandcastle - drives the Sandcastle help generation tools using the power of Visual Studio 2005/2008 and MSBuild. Choose from various project templates that build compiled help 1.x or 2.x for all project references. DocProject facilitates the administration and development of project documentation with Sandcastle, allowing you to use the integrated tools of Visual Studio to customize Sandcastle's output.
  
• IronPython - a new implementation of the Python programming language on the .NET Framework. It supports an interactive interpreter with fully dynamic compilation. It is well integrated with the rest of the framework and makes all .NET libraries easily available to Python programmers.
• umbraco - a Content Management Platform (CMS) written in c# on the Microsoft .NET platform. It's fast, flexible and with a user interface that makes it a charm to use.
• Coding4Fun Developer Kit - a collection of components, controls and samples in both Visual Basic and Visual C#. The features of the kit include a single installation file that provides users easy access off the Windows Start Menu to the documentation, sample executables and source code; a toolbox entry within Visual Studio for all components and controls for easy drag 'n drop experience.
• Community Kit for SharePoint - a set of best practices, templates, Web Parts, tools, and source code that enables practically anyone to create a community website based on SharePoint technology for practically any group of people with a common interest.
• Facebook Developer Toolkit - the original Facebook Developer Toolkit for the Microsoft Visual Studio Express Team. This project contains .NET wrappers to the Facebook API. Also, includes sample projects and controls. We are going to start by trying to maintain both the vb.net and C# code bases.
• TheBeerHouse - CMS & e-commerce StarterKit, an ASP.NET 2.0 website which features a layout with user-selectable themes, a membership system, a content management system for publishing and syndicating articles and photos, polls, mailing lists, forums, an e-commerce store with support for real-time credit card processing, homepage personalization, localization and more.
• Vista Battery Saver - tinny program will save up to 70% of your battery by disabling those nice, but greedy Vista features. Running in task bar with private workset of 5.5M and 0% CPU it will do all work for you, by enabling and disabling customizable features when power source changed or battery power fall under certain percent.

• Ajax.NET Professional - one of the first AJAX frameworks for Microsoft ASP.NET and is working with .NET 1.1 and 2.0. The framework will create proxy classes on client-side JavaScript to invoke methods on the web server with full data type support working on all common web browsers including mobile devices.
• Sandcastle Help File Builder - consists of a GUI front end that lets you interactively build help files using Sandcastle. A console mode version is also supplied that allows you to build help files as part of the normal project build. The GUI front end provides access to project settings that let you configure various aspects of the resulting help file including the ability to add additional content, build HTML Help 1, HTML Help 2, or website output.
• dashCommerce - a free, open source e-commerce storefront written specifically for ASP.NET 2.0. It features out-of-the-box product catalog and shopping cart functionality that allows website owners to setup, run, and maintain an online store with little or no costs, license fees, or limitations. dashCommerce offers .NET developers of all skill levels the ability to create an e-commerce site quickly and efficiently. The project is built in C# and takes advantage of features of the Microsoft.NET Framework 2.0. It also supports PayPal Website Payments Standard and Pro as the payment engine.
• PHP Excel 2007 classes - a set of classes for the PHP programming language, which allow you to write to Excel 2007 files and read from Excel 2007 files.
• Power Toys Pack Installer - one-stop download utility for all things power toys. Get latest releases and updates from just a single executable.
• ProMesh.NET Web Application Framework - a MVC-ready lightweight web application framework for .NET 2.0. It includes a full unit testing framework.
• Terminals - a multi tab terminal client to ease the work of anyone who needs to connect simultaneously to more then one terminal server/remote desktop.
  Terminals uses Microsoft Terminal Services ActiveX.
• Vista Virtual Desktop Manager - A virtual desktop manager made for Windows Vista using the new thumbnail APIs to create a live preview of all of your desktops.
• DinnerNow.net - a fictitious marketplace where customers can order food from local restaurants for delivery to their home or office. This sample application is designed to demonstrate how you can develop a connected application using several new Microsoft technologies, including: IIS7, ASP.NET Ajax Extensions, Linq, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Powershell, and the .NET Compact Framework.
• SQL Server Hosting Toolkit - A suite of tools designed to enable shared hosters to provide a great experience around hosted SQL Server.
• Ionics Isapi Rewrite Filter - a small, cheap, easy to use, URL rewriting ISAPI filter that combines a good price (free!) with good features. It is implemented in about 1700 lines of C code, works with IIS 5.x and 6, does regular-expression matching, rewriting, redirects, and RewriteCond. IIS7 will have a nice model for managed ISAPI, but IIRF is available now.
• PowerShell Community Extensions - provides a widely useful set of additional cmdlets, providers, aliases, filters, functions and scripts for Windows PowerShell that members of the community have expressed interest in but didn't make it into PowerShell v1.0. Examples of these cmdlets are Get-Clipboard, Out-Clipboard, Get-Hash, Get-ShortPath, Set-FileTime, New-SymLink, Format-Hex, Format-Xml, Test-Xml, Test-Assembly, Ping-Host, etc.
• QuickGraph 2.0 - provides generic directed graph datastructures and algorithms for them. It also comes with algorithms such as depth first seach, breath first search, shortest path, network flow etc...
• SharePoint 2007 Features - add new functionality to a SharePoint 2007 farm, site collection, or site. This project will create Features to address deficiencies in SharePoint 2007 or add new capabilities. You should understand a little about Features before trying these out. The packages here use batch files or WSP files to install the Features. After installation, be sure to activate the Features to see them in SharePoint.
• iTunes 2.0 - an online rich internet application. Using ajax.asp.net and silverlight im going to bring the iTunes experience completely online.
• Facebook.NET - a framework for creating Facebook applications in .NET. It is optimized for creating ASP.NET-based Facebook applications.
• ASP.NET RSS Toolkit - gives ASP.Net applications the ability to consume and publish to RSS feeds.
• BDCToolkit - The MOSS BDC & DAL generator is a tool that generates typed webservices and a typed c# data access layer from an BDC application definition. It also ensures that the code that has been generated is used on the correct application definition.
• DbEntry.Net - a lightweight Object Relational Mapping (ORM) database access compnent for .Net 2.0. By using Generics and Anonymous Method, it has clearly and easily programing interface. It based on ADO.NET, and supported C#, Visual Basic, ASP.NET, Access, SqlServer, MySql and SQLite etc...
• System Search to LinQ - create a LinQ extension to interact with the new functionality of desktop search using de advantages of the elegant and efficient programming model introduced by C# 3.0
• D.NET (DDotNet) - a "Development for .NET" framework, created to help all developers to create a better applications. Contains a implementation of ORM (Object Relational Mapping) framework with Business Objects Framework and other components.
• TFSBuildLab - simplify the day to day operations when using automated builds and Team System.
• Blind Shark - a musical game, where you have to find the music being played before your opponents.
• Balder - A 3D game engine for Silverlight and possibly other .net based technologies.
• Elephant Game Framework - a small Game Framework, currently set with a focus on game development through Microsoft XNA.
• PoshConsole - a more modern PowerShell Console.

See Also;

• ASP.NET AJAX Resources, Samples, Articles, Tutorials and Toolkits
• Most popular free/open source IDEs and Editors
• Essential firefox add-ons for web programmers
• Open source .NET libraries you should be already using
• Sharepoint and MOSS 2007 resources, articles and tutorials
• Top 10+ source code search engines
• Most Useful 20+ Visual Studio Add-ins
• J2EE vs ASP.NET vs PHP
• Why you shouldn't use Typed Dataset...!

Update;
I got slashdotted, please go and read the comments on slashdot.


Checkout;
To run an online business related to webmaster tools requires somewhat different strategies to get good pay per click revenues. You can’t rely on simple techniques like email marketing. It’s recommended highly to save an online backup and get powerful adsl connectivity if you’re providing open source projects in Codeplex on your website.

Essential firefox add-ons for web programmers

• FireFTP - is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers, FireFTP includes more advanced features such as: directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more!
• IE Tab - is a great tool for web developers, since you can easily see how your web page displayed in IE with just one click and then switch back to Firefox.
• Firebug - integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
  
• The Web Developer - adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools.
• HTML Validator - is a Mozilla extension that adds HTML validation inside Firefox and Mozilla. The number of errors of a HTML page is seen on the form of an icon in the status bar when browsing.
• ColorZilla - you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes.
• CSS Validator - is a Mozilla Firefox extension which Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page.
• MeasureIt - draw a ruler across any webpage to check the width, height, or alignment of page elements in pixels.
• View formatted source - displays formatted and color-coded source and optional CSS information for each element.
• View Source Chart - draws a Color-Coded Chart of a Webpage's Source Code and displays Source in its Altered State After the DOM has been Manipulated by JavaScript.
• Venkman - the code name for Mozilla's JavaScript Debugger, aims to provide a powerful JavaScript debugging environment for Mozilla based browsers namely Firefox, Netscape 7.x/9.x series, Seamonkey 1.x/2.x.
• iWEBTOOL - Access over 30 Webmaster Tools for Free directly from your web browser
• http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/
• LinkChecker - check webpage links at a glance with simple color coding. Ditch those massive listings of bad links that provide no context and add LinkChecker to your arsenal of web development tools today.
• Load Time Analyzer is an extension created by Google that displays the number of events that are processed by a certain website and how long it takes to load them all. The load time displayed will obviously be influenced by your Internet connection, nonetheless it can provide a good indicator of the site speed.
• Quick Locale Switcher - Allows you to quickly change and apply a different locale (language) in your Mozilla application.
• XHTML-MP - allows firefox to render HTML content with the mime-type of application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml. For any developer working with mobile applications, this provides an alternative to using a device emulator.
• Console² - let's you display errors filtered by type (Errors, Warnings, Messages), language (JavaScript, CSS, XML) and context (Chrome, Content). Furthermore it provides a simple search box (as seen in the History and Bookmarks sidebars), hiding of duplicates, sidebar optimizations, a customizable toolbar and some more accessibility improvements.

• Page validator - validates a page using the W3C Markup Validation Service. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. This is a simple extension that will work only for online pages.
• xmldeveloper - helps XML developers with their programming efforts by supplying a central toolbar for everything XML.
• The Total Validator - provides one-click validation. Once installed all you do is browse to the page you want to validate then click on the 'TV' icon in the browser status bar.
• Modify Headers - allows the user to Add, Modify and Filter out HTTP request headers. See the help tab in the Modify Headers window for more information.
• The XPather - is a simple extension that integrates both with the browser and its DOMInspector. Thus, is't very lightweight and cross-platform. It is valuable mainly as a web/XML-app development and hacking tool.
• LiveHTTPHeaders - display http headers in real time while pages are being downloaded from the Internet
• Font Finder - Get all CSS styles of selected text in Firefox

See Also;

• Tech and Programming cheat sheets and quick reference guides
  
• Open source .NET libraries you should be already using
  
• Top 10+ source code search engines
  
• Most Useful 20+ Visual Studio Add-ins
• AJAX Frameworks and Resources
• J2EE vs ASP.NET vs PHP
  
• What is Microsoft Silverlight? Silverlight Resourc...

Checkout;
Webmasters running an online hosting providing business too, need fire fox plug-ins to smoothly track the record of their business opportunity and work progress. Famous hosting companies i.e. godaddy and

ipowerweb are of the opinion that much of Fire fox's authority originates from its add-ons platform and dedicated servers.

Open source .NET libraries you should be already using

As we know, there are many good, enterprise level, open source libraries, frameworks and projects implemented in Java. Most of them are being ported into different platforms like .NET and PHP, so developers are migrating to the these platforms with their familiar tools. For example, i have been using Ant, JUnit, Log4J, iText and many mores when i was developing in Java, but now i am still using Log4Net and Nunit in my current .NET projects. You can find many more open source .NET alternatives from the following list;

• AOP.NET (NAop) is an Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) framework for .NET framework
• NAnt - NAnt is a Ant like build tool for .NET
• ZedGraph is a set of classes, written in C#, for creating 2D line and bar graphs of arbitrary datasets. The classes provide a high degree of flexibility -- almost every aspect of the graph can be user-modified. At the same time, usage of the classes is kept simple by providing default values for all of the graph attributes. The classes include code for choosing appropriate scale ranges and step sizes based on the range of data values being plotted. ZedGraph also includes a UserControl interface, allowing drag and drop editing within the Visual Studio forms editor, plus access from other languages such as C++ and VB
  
• NCover - A test code coverage tool for C# .NET
• YetAnotherForum - Yet Another Forum.net is a opensource discussion forum or bulletin board system for web sites running ASP.NET. It is ASP.NET based with a MS SQL backend database.
• SharpDevelop - #develop (short for SharpDevelop) is a free IDE for C# and VB.NET projects on Microsoft's .NET platform.
• NInstall - A project to produce an package that can compete with the commercial installer products
• StructureMap - StructureMap is a lightweight Inversion of Control (IoC) Container written for .NET development. StructureMap can improve the architectural qualities of an object oriented .NET system by reducing the mechanical costs of good design techniques.
• BugBye - BugBye is a web-based bugtracking system developed using ASP.NET technology and C# as scripting language
• log4net - log4net is a tool to help the programmer output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime.

• OpenSmtp.net - OpenSmtp.net is an SMTP component written
• NMail provides an SMTP client & server, POP3 & IMAP4 servers written in C#
• iTextSharp - iTextSharp is a library that allows you to generate PDF files on the fly.
• iBATIS.NET helps you create better persistence layers for .NET applications.
• Personal .NET Portal - is a .NET based Web Portal for personal use. The purpose is to build a Homepage easily. Pages are build through Tabs and Modules.
• NProfiler - An application profiler for .NET
• User Story.NET - This project is a tool for Extreme Programming projects in their User Story tracking.
• RSS Bandit - A desktop news aggregator written
• NxBRE is the first open-source rule engine for the .NET platform and a lightweight Business Rules Engine (aka Rule-Based Engine)
  
• NetCvsLib - NetCvsLib is a CVS client written entirely for the .NET platform. It is implemented as an assembly, and thus can easily be incorporated into other projects.
• Database Commander - Database Commander is a database manager with user-friendly interface for Windows operation system.
• NVelocity - NVelocity is a .Net-based template engine. It permits anyone to use the simple yet powerful template language to reference objects defined in .Net code.
• NUnit - NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit
• Maverick.NET - Maverick.NET is a .NET port of Maverick, a Model-View-Controller (aka "Model 2") framework for web publishing. It is a minimalist framework which focuses solely on MVC logic, allowing you to generate presentation using a variety of templating and transformation technologies.
• SharpWebMail - SharpWebMail is an ASP.NET Web Mail application that is written. It uses a POP3 server as the mailstore and sends mail through a SMTP. It is very simple to configure (Only a few settings in the web.config file). You can compose HTML messages, search your inbox, read complex mime messages and much more.
• NUnitAsp - NUnitAsp is a tool for automatically testing ASP.NET web pages. It's an extension to NUnit
• ProntoWiki - is a wiki engine/site written in C# with VWD (Visual Web Developer), using ASP.NET 2.0 with SQLExpress 2005 as the backend. The wiki engine is quick and easy to use, and allows text markup equivalent to that of a rich text editor. It accepts image and file attachments automatically through the web interface. Other features include page preview prior to post/update, user authentication based on roles, a customizable appearance and layout using web parts, history tracking, and search functionality.
• ScrewTurn Wiki is a fast, powerful and simple ASP.NET wiki engine, installs in a matter of minutes and it's available in different packages, fitting every need. It's even free and opensource.
  
• SAX.NET - SAX dot NET is a C# port of the original Java based SAX API specifications.

For detailed lists of open source .NET projects, go to SCharp Source.

Hope it helps ;)

See Also;

• Essential firefox add-ons for web programmers
  
• Sharepoint and MOSS 2007 resources, articles and t...
• Top 10+ source code search engines
• Let's have a break - Programmer's Life
• Most Useful 20+ Visual Studio Add-ins
• J2EE vs ASP.NET vs PHP

Looking for Free PHP/MySQL Web Hosting?

I have been PHP developer for five years, now still dealing with PHP in some projects. The biggest problem for me was to host my PHP applications on the internet just for real test or production at low cost. If you want to test your application on the internet or you can even host it as a production application without paying no fee, there is one place i can suggest you; 110mb.com which i tried and can say service is really good. Of course, you can pay for additional service such as domain name, more space and more database. The service they offer for free is;

• 110MB 2000MB Space
  
• Dual Xeon & Opteron based Servers
• PHP 5
• Live Support - *Open 5 hours a day
• FTP (chmod enabled)
• Sendmail (PHP Mail) - *Must activate
• Your Own Domain Hosting
• Safe Mode OFF
• 10GB 100GB Bandwidth
  
• SSI
• MYSQL 5 - *Must activate
• IonCube & Zend Support
• NO popups, spam or ads ANYWHERE
• Apache 2.0 based System
• Guides on How To Market & Build Your Site

Good luck

Update;

I have found some more free PHP/MySQL hosting services, but i suggest 110mb, just listing the others for consideration.

• 100 Webspace
• 1 MySQL database
• 5 MB MySQL database storage
• phpMyAdmin
• CGI-BIN / Perl
• PHP support
• FrontPage Extensions
• Over 3400 Perl modules
  
• 12 GB Free
  
• 12Gb Webspace
• 25Gb Monthly Data Transfer
• No Forced Ads
• FTP Supported
  
• 789 MB
• Features: PHP 5, MYSQL, FTP
• 15GB disk space, 250GB Ultra-Quality bandwidth
• 5 MYSQL Databases and 5 MYSQL Users
• 99.9% SLA Uptime Guarantee
• Zero Ads
  
• 4000 Webs Free Hosting
• 4000 MB disk space
• 8000 MB transfer
• PHP/MySQL Database
  
• 1111mb.com
• 3000mb.com
  

See Also;

1. Valuable Resources for Linux Sysadmins
2. Run your asp.net application on Linux
3. Looking for Light WebServer?
4. Learning Resources for Python Language

Microsoft Open Source Projects

Developers and Software Companies are already moved and preferred to choose Open Source Technologies because of its support, poularity, security and cost. There are open source projects' homes like sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net where most of the projects are based on Non-microsoft and Open technologies and languages. Dotnet developers had no chances to find open source projects written using VB.NET or C#, So these developers were changing their skills to use other languages like Java, Php, Perl, Python etc...

Microsoft have started open source project hosting named "Codeplex". In this place, you are find plenty of codes which you can use for free, play with it, contribute to project, can get members of projects, shortly you can find everything that is on sourceforge.net. Projects on Codeplex are Components, Control Toolkit, Extensions, Features that adds value to Microsoft's existing product families. If you are .NET developer, You should not miss this sites and projects on it.

Wikipedia definition for Codeplex

CodePlex is an open source project hosting website from Microsoft. It allows shared development of open source software projects. Its features include wiki pages, source control based on Team Foundation Server, discussion forums, issue tracking, project tagging, RSS support, statistics, and releases.

The initial beta launched in May of 2006, with the official release a month later in June. A new version of the website is released every three weeks adding additional features and updates. It has accumulated 1,642 projects as of June 9, 2007.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex