A note on hosting (10th November 2008): I have requested that try-out versions of the software listed below this panel be installed on a faculty server. These will, I hope, be in place by the beginning of the course; and will allow you to explore the different packages before deciding which, if any, will be the most appropriate choice for your own project. I should like it to be possible for students to create their own instances of the programmes on the faculty server; but this may turn out not to be feasible. In that event you will be expected to find third-party hosting for your project. To assist you, I've listed below some of the free hosting options I've found; the responsibility lies with you to create and use such accounts. http://987mb.com http://www.biz.ly http://www.absolutely-free-hosting.com http://www.freevirtualservers.com http://www.free-webhosts.com http://www.freehostia.com http://www.zymic.com/free-web-hosting/ http://www.000webhost.com http://www.yourfreehosting.net http://www.mister.net http://www.bravenet.com/webhosting/ http://www.sitesfree.com http://www.webs.com http://www.heartinternet.co.uk/freewebhosting.shtml http://www.freevirtualservers.com http://www.blackapplehost.com http://www.doteasy.com http://www.110mb.com There's also a fairly extensive listings at: http://www.thefreesite.com/Free_Web_Space/ http://www.webhosts4free.com/webhosts-01.php Issues you'll need to consider are: is hosting ad-free? (no banners, no pop-ups, etc) are you allowed to use your own domain name? (rather than a sub-domain) is the amount of disk space adequate for your purposes? is there a monthly traffic allowance? do you have FTP access? does the hosting service provide / allow PHP 5+ & MySQL 5+? does the hosting service allow other scripting? does the hosting service allow custom site builds? (rather than having to use their own site builders) are there any file type restrictions? does the hosting service offer mail support?

:: Free, open source, and non-commercial software ::

An annotated listing of free, open source, and non-commercial software.

Software for museums, libraries and archives.

• OCLC (Online Computer Library Center)
  Open source offerings for community use and development. OCLC Research offers open source software for the benefit of the library community. The offerings include useful utilities for the development of library-oriented software and ready-to-use components for library systems."
  » http://www.oclc.org/research/software/default.htm
• OpenCollection
  Open source (GPL licence) collections management and access application, with free download. "OpenCollection is a full-featured collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections. It is designed to handle large, heterogeneous collections that have complex cataloguing requirements and require support for a variety of metadata standards and media formats. Unlike most other collections management applications, OpenCollection is completely web-based. All cataloging, search and administrative functions are accessed using common web-browser software, untying users from specific operating systems and making cataloguing by distributed teams and online access to collections information simple, efficient and inexpensive".
• Fedora
  "Fedora Commons is a non-profit organization providing sustainable technologies to create, manage, publish, share and preserve digital content as a basis for intellectual, organizational, scientific and cultural heritage by bringing two communities together. Communities of practice that include scholars, artists, educators, Web innovators, publishers, scientists, librarians, archivists, publishers, records managers, museum curators or anyone who presents, accesses, or preserves digital content."
  » http://www.fedora-commons.org
  
• Concerto
  "Assets within Concerto are managed by means of collections and exhibitions and can be assigned both structured and unstructured metadata. Concerto supports Dublin Core and Visual Resource Association (VRA) metadata standards, as well as any user-defined metadata schema. Concerto also provides a user interface for adding and editing tags (i.e. unstructured metadata) and generates tag clouds for tags within and across collections and users." Great software--worth looking at some of the example collections.
  » https://concerto.middlebury.edu
  » https://segue.middlebury.edu/index.php?&action=site&site=concerto
  
• StreetPrint
  "revolutionary new software for powering digital collections ... free software for creating your own digital collections. Our goal is to make formerly inaccessible and ephemeral texts and artifacts available to the widest possible audience, fulfilling the promise of the Internet and bringing information 'back to the streets'." Have a look at some of their example sites.
  » http://www.streetprint.org/
  
• DSpace
  "DSpace captures your data in any format – in text, video, audio, and data. It distributes it over the web. It indexes your work, so users can search and retrieve your items. It preserves your digital work over the long term. DSpace provides a way to manage your research materials and publications in a professionally maintained repository to give them greater visibility and accessibility over time."
  » http://www.dspace.org
  
• Montala ResourceSpace
  "ResourceSpace is a web-based, open source digital asset management system which has been designed to give your content creators easy and fast access to print and web ready assets." See the ResourceSpace wiki for the full list of features.
  » http://www.montala.net/resourcespace.php
  » http://rswiki.montala.net/index.php/Main_Page
• steve.museum
  Download the application from:
  » http://sourceforge.net/projects/steve-museum
• ccHost
  "ccHost is an open source (GPL licensed) project that provides web-based infrastructure to support collaboration, sharing, and storage of multi-media using the Creative Commons licenses and metadata. It is the codebase used by ccMixter and other sites. Besides its focus on sharing content, ccHost differentiates itself from other multi-media hosting programs by emphasizing the reuse (a.k.a. remixing) of content between artists, not only between artists on any given installation of ccHost, but between all installations across the web and any web site that implements the Creative Commons Sample Pool API, including non-ccHost sites such as the freesound project."
  » http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CcHost
• Omeka
  "Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. ... Omeka will include basic Web 2.0 features such as an RSS feed, blog, and a tag cloud. Other planned plugins include a mapping function, and ways to collect and display stories and photos from web visitors who are demanding a different type of online interaction shaped by Web 2.0. Omeka offers organizations and individuals the opportunity to share in the creation of content. We encourage users to develop other Web 2.0 applications that fit into Omeka’s plugin architecture, and omeka.org will host a directory of all plugins created by the community. Interactive and participatory systems, like Omeka, build regular interaction with a base of online visitors and encourage democratic participation in the shaping of our culture." An excellent cross-platform digital curation and web publishing application; extensive and detailed text and video tutorials make this easy to install and manage.
  » http://omeka.org
• Hive Networks & Hivewares
  "Hive is a new concept that promotes 'narrate and publish' approach to employment of ever advancing computing and communication technologies. Assuming the progress in microelectronic (embedded systems, DSP, etc), presence of public spectrum, and advance of open source, hive is looking into the emergence of narrative based networks, functions of which are defined by underlying platform, be it social network, (non)government initiative or commercial enterprise.
  Such operation can be described as publishing systems that is the narrative itself. A system built upon Hive concept can be composed from variety of available technologies through combination of different platforms. Hive attempts to provide a model of such mechanism, that can guide through the process of building a functional communication environment. It is also important to hive to maintain associated information, tools and discussion forum.
  Hive is also a smart concept whenever locality is important. Each hive component has it's own physical location as well as presence on the network. This creates the link between very defined physical environment and all flexible software techniques. Hive centred around embedded computers, small, cheap, mass-manufactured, that could be fitted almost anywhere. Small range digital radio combined with mesh routing provides flexibility of network. Hive builds on well accepted techniques used for TCP/IP systems that enables wide interoperation of components and resources. Through this Hive provides necessary ontological platform for distributed and location aware publishing.
  Hive enables emergence of heterogeneous multi-tier networks, that reflect taxonomy of the originating narrative. Inevitable abundance of connectivity will demand sophisticated semantic mechanisms for building and navigating such environments. Biomorphic analogy represents suggestive character of Hive as creative exploration project. It is not a distant future when we will see what is a "street radio" or a 'street TV' or a "digital stash'!"
  » http://hivenetworks.net
• The Mobile Bristol Toolkit
  " Imagine a digital landscape overlaying the physical world. As we walk around this landscape, we can tap into the digital sounds, sights and interactions that are positioned in the landscape and activated by our presence and actions. The digital landscape is formed from a dynamic and overlapping set of mediascapes which are context-sensitive combinations of digital media and interactions created and deployed by various authors. The project has created a toolkit, which provides a digital canvas over the physical landscape onto which digital experiences can be painted and new commercial opportunities can be explored. As people walk through the physical environment, a diverse range of digital media experiences augment the ambiance and bring these spaces alive." Download the non-commercial version from:
  » http://www.mobilebristol.com/Download/download.html
• TIKM (Tools for Indigenous Knowledge Management)
  "a set of open source software tools which have been designed to enable Indigenous communities to protect their unique cultures and knowledge which are being preserved through digitisation. The software tools described here enable authorised members of communities to: define and control the rights, accessibility and reuse of their digital resources; uphold tribal customary laws pertaining to secret/sacred knowledge or objects; prevent the misuse of Indigenous heritage in culturally inappropriate or insensitive ways; ensure proper attribution; and finally to enable communities to describe their resources in their own words."
  » http://tikm.sourceforge.net
  
• Vannotea » Applications » Museums » Indigenous Knowledge Management
  "In conjunction with the Indigenous Knowledge Management project, Vannotea is being extended to enable museum staff to share and exchange knowledge and digital representations of artifacts with the Indigenous communities who are the traditional owners. The aim is to deploy the software within museums to enable distributed groups to collaboratively discuss, describe and contextualize museum content from a variety of different perspectives.
  In particular, Vannotea has been extended to enable users within videoconferencing environments to collaboratively attach descriptive, rights and tribal care metadata and annotations to digital images, video or 3D objects.
  This sharing and exchange of knowledge will hopefully revitalize cultures eroded through colonization and globalization and repair and strengthen relationships between museums and indigenous communities."
  » http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~eresearch/projects/vannotea/applications/museums.html
• Greenstone
  "Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM. Greenstone is produced by the New Zealand Digital Library Project at the University of Waikato, and developed and distributed in cooperation with UNESCO and the Human Info NGO. It is open-source, multilingual software, issued under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Read the Greenstone Factsheet for more information.
  The aim of the Greenstone software is to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries. Digital libraries are radically reforming how information is disseminated and acquired in UNESCO's partner communities and institutions in the fields of education, science and culture around the world, and particularly in developing countries."
  » http://www.greenstone.org
• Scriblio (was WPOpac)
  This is a project I've been following since early 2006, though at the time of writing (April 2007) there is still no downloadable application. "What is WPopac? It’s an OPAC—a library catalog, for my readers outside libraries—inside the framework of WordPress." See the Lamson Library demo at:
  » http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac/

Information extraction / 'scraping' from the non-API web (NAW)

ArtEquAkt
A system that automatically extracts information about artists from the web, populates an ontology, then uses the knowledge to generate personalised biographies.
» http://www.aktors.org/technologies/artequakt/

OpenCalais
» http://www.opencalais.com

Hoard.it
» http://electronicmuseum.org.uk/2008/05/20/hoardit-bootstrapping-the-naw/
» http://hoard.it
» http://hoardit.pbwiki.com/Frequently+Asked+Questions+(FAQs)

Yahoo! Term Extraction service
"The Term Extraction Web Service provides a list of significant words or phrases extracted from a larger content."
» http://developer.yahoo.com/search/content/V1/termExtraction.html

Free and open source software for content creation & digitisation

In alphabetical order below are highly recommended general purpose applications for content creation.

Aptana
"Aptana Studio is a powerful, free and open source Ajax development environment which runs stand-alone or within Eclipse. ... Aptana Studio offers unparalleled tooling for Ajax including HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript editing and debugging, plus support via additional free plugins for PHP, Ruby on Rails, Adobe AIR, Apple iPhone development. Aptana Studio's integrated code assist, documentation and API reference not only eases working with popular Ajax libraries like prototype, scriptaculous, dojo, jQuery, ExtJS, MooTools, and others, it also works for the core scripting languages and your own code. Plus, Aptana Jaxer is fully integrated into Aptana Studio 1.1 so that development of end-to-end Ajax applications requires no further installations or server setup."
» http://www.aptana.com

Audacity
Audio editor.
» http://audacityteam.org
» http://audacity.sourceforge.net
» http://audacityteam.org/wiki/
See tutorials at:
» http://www.macinstruct.com/node/131

GIMP
» http://www.gimp.org
» http://docs.gimp.org/en/
» http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/