Open Source » Application Serving

Open source helps Facebook achieve massive app scalability

People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.

By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 09:40

Tags: apache, cloud computing, databases, Facebook, high performance computing (HPC), lamp, Linux, memcached, mysql, open source, php, SaaS, software development

Slideshow: Open source at Facebook

It’s loved by millions and has risen from a small-time university social networking service to the biggest phenomenon on the Internet. It’s the phenomenon that is Facebook. Popularity, however, doesn’t come easy. With some 400 million unique home pages Facebook is pushing the boundaries of traditional Web application scalability and it’s not shy to admit that it has been achieved by leveraging open source software. We take a look at some of the slides presented by Facebook at this year's FOSDEM conference in Belgium.

By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 14:25

Tags: cloud computing, Facebook, open source, social networks

NSW Office of State Revenue CIO reflects on five successful years of open source

NSW Office of State Revenue CIO David Kennedy looks back on the challenges and achievements the government agency has had with open source technology and offers advice to CIOs on developing a successful open source strategy.

By Rodney Gedda | 01 October, 2009 08:28

Tags: CIOs, government, NSW Office of State Revenue, open source

15 amazing Web apps built in 48 hours

Winning entries from the annual Ruby on Rails coding contest.

By Julie Bort | 12 November, 2008 10:41

Tags: ruby on rails

Installing Linux apps: A few good tips

Sooner or later, we all end up installing new software on our computers. Whether it's a new version of Firefox, or a cool game, or a video editing package, there comes a time when you want to make your system do more than it can do now.

By James Turner | 29 September, 2008 08:10

Tags: desktop linux, linux apps, operating system

The 10 best Google Android applications

Late last year, Google announced that it would give US$10 million worth in prizes to software development companies to develop innovative and useful applications for their open source mobile Android platform.

By Brad Reed | 10 September, 2008 08:21

Tags: Google Android

12 great apps for bridging Windows, Linux and Macs

Blogger Ron Barrett has scoured the IT world to bring you this list of affordably priced business productivity tools that run on any desktop (many are even free). Also check out Barrett's full review of each tool in his A Better Windows World blog.

Linux-based Exchange sub helps health care systems cut costs

For three health care centers, the challenge was clear: Find a way to improve internal communications by expanding e-mail accounts to all employees, including doctors, nurses, security staffers, dietary workers and others, without breaking their IT budgets.

Hospital dumps Microsoft Exchange for Linux-based clone

Taking a page from the doctors at Moses Taylor Hospital, IT staff at the US facility last year diagnosed their messaging system and came up with an effective treatment that's turned out to be a life saver.