Jeff Robbins from Lullabot recently interviewed Drupal developer Earl "MerlinofChaos" Miles for an audio podcast. Earl Miles is the lead developer for some of the more popular contributed modules found at Drupal.org. The podcast focuses on his Drupal module work which includes Views, Panels, and Node Queue. Jeff Robbins also managed to ask some non-Drupal questions in the 88 minute recording that I found just as fascinating. Personally, I always enjoy opportunities to get to know more about the developers behind the software I'm using.

For the record, I'm not much of a podcast listener but I found myself listening to the entire recording this afternoon. Both Jeff and Earl have a good sense of humor that keeps you wanting for more. It also helps that both speakers have a genuine interest in Drupal and software development. So while you're reading some very fine articles here at CMS Report, I'd encourage you to also encourage you to start up the Lullabot podcast.

The release of Geeklog 1.5.0 Beta 1 by the Geeklog Team marked a new milestone for the open source blogging system. Although the software is still in development, Geeklog's developers hope to release the final version of Geeklog 1.5 on May 26th. The end of May marks the beginning of the coding phase for Google's Summer of Code 2008. To mark the occasion, Geeklog is highlighting the work done by students participating in last year's Summer of Code that is going into this new release. How cool is that!

Changes found in Geeklog 1.5.0 incorporates the following projects implemented during the 2007 Google Summer of Code:

• New user-friendly install script
• New Configuration Graphical User Interface
• New Webservices API based on the Atom Publishing Protocol

Webdistortion, a web design studio in Northern Ireland, recently reviewed nine different e-commerce platforms. All nine platforms reviewed were open source software packages.

With e-commerce webdesign really starting to take off, its never been more important to choose a platform which suits you as a developer (i.e. one that you can support) and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.

There are a number of ways of getting a shop online, and we’ve focused primarily on open source e-commerce platforms here.

Those nine e-commerce platforms under review include: osCommerce, ZenCart, VirtueMart (Joomla!/Mambo), Magento, DashCommerce, CubeCart, X-Cart, LiteCommerce, and Shopify. If you're looking for a brief and consolidated review of open source shopping carts, then the Webdistortion reivew is a nice place for you to visit.

For those curious, I found this story via DZone.

Google Code: "Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from 90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. This year, we're welcoming 1125 student contributors and 175 Free and Open Source projects into the program. You can find out more about each participating organization and abstracts of their accepted students' proposals by visiting each organization's page, below. We'll be posting regular news about the program to the Google Open Source Blog."

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Last week, I mentioned that the the Drupal SMFforum Integration module was no longer being supported by the module's project leader, "vb". Apparently, Simple Machines had not granted permission to the module developer to distribute code found in the SMF application as required by the Simple Machines License. While some discussion followed this announcement at the SMF forums, as well as here at CMS Report, none of this discussion compared to what took place at the Open Source Community.

The good news is that Simple Machines LLC has granted vb to continue distributing some of the SMF code to work with the Drupal SMFforum Integration module. vb wrote:

I am glad to announce that distribution of the smf_api_2 package is resumed due to the express permission granted from Simple Machines LLC.
You can download the new package from http://vgb.org.ru/download.

"Orstio", SMF CMS Bridge Developer, added the following at Open Source Community:

Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce is a new book from Packt which will help users to sell online using the award-winning open-source Drupal web application. Written by Michael Peacock, this book provides the essentials of getting an e-commerce website up and running with Drupal.

Drupal is a free and open-source modular web application framework and content management system (CMS) written in PHP that can run in many environments; including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD. Drupal e-Commerce is a free, open-source, feature-rich, flexible package of modules that seamlessly adds full e-Store capabilities to Drupal.

OpenSourceCommunity: As I look at the Psystar Web site, built using Joomla! and VirtueMart, both free, as in liberty solutions, I can't help but wonder if we might be seeing these little extra pushes right now.

Psystar offers a product called "Open Mac." Well, today Psystar wisely renamed the product Open Computer.

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InfoWorld: Linux users worry that Sun's purchase of MySQL will mean a de-emphasis of Linux and the LAMP stack in favor of Sun's Solaris ecosystem

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Building Dynamic Web 2.0 Websites with Ruby on Rails is a new book from Packt which helps users to design, develop, and deploy a fully featured website using Ruby on Rails. Written by A. P. Rajshekhar, this book is a tutorial to create a complete Web 2.0 website with Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails is an open-source web application framework ideally suited to building business applications; accelerating and simplifying the creation of database-driven websites. Often shortened to Rails or RoR, it provides a stack of tools to rapidly build web applications based on the Model-View-Controller design pattern.

Each chapter in this book adds a new feature to the site, adding new knowledge, skills, and techniques. This book is for anyone who has basic concepts of object-oriented programming as well as relational databases and wants to develop online applications using Ruby on Rails. Prior knowledge of Ruby or Rails is not expected.

For more details on the book, please visit http://www.packtpub.com/building-dynamic-websites-with-ruby-on-rails/book.