Joomla is one of the most famous open-source Content Management Systems. Most of the open-source CMSs are not that rich in functionality. Among them, Joomla gives much than any other. The Joomla framework is written in PHP.  It makes users easy to publish the content to the web with the available wide variety of modules. Polls, language internationalization and RSS feed are some of frequently used ones among them. The popularity and the consumer attraction are well showed by the download times within the first year being 2.5 million.

Content Management Systems

A content management system is a tool that can be used to separate the content from presentation. In general, a Content Management System follows three steps. There are designing the end user template, adding the content as text or html to the database and displaying the results to the end user. Increased functionality, being easy to do large-scale changes in a very easy manner and no need of HTML knowledge are the some of the advantages of Content Management Systems. It will be a great option to use a CMS for large, often updating, multiple contributors required and dynamic content included websites.

History Overview

The name Joomla came from the Arabic word jumla which means all together. This was a legalization of the early Content Management System which was known as Mambo. It was trademarked by Miro International Private Limited. Joomla has a very short span of history as a Content Management System. It was first released in the August 2005. Thereafter, day by day it has improved its functionalities and become stronger than the other once.

How It Works

The content is the key in a Content Management System. Therefore the content is displayed with three types. A section is the basic among them which groups a group of content. A set of sections are categorized as a category. Articles hold content like images, text and other content. There is a Media Manager to manage the images like things. Contact is a place to store forms. The user can change colors and the graphics using the website template. In addition, the users are able to use plug-in that will add automated content to the user’s content. The site owner has the full permission to the content and the owner can check them by just adding ‘/Administrator’ to the homepage URL. It contains many more other features like User Manager, Language Manager, Banner Manager, Polls, Search, Web link Management, Syndication and Newsfeed Management, Menu Manager, Template Manager, Integrated help system and web services to provide a top class output to the Joomla consumers.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Joomla

It is said that Joomla is the most recommended Content Management System for a website that contains large content. It can be described as a fully fledged CMS. The deep levels of navigation make the content well managed and improve the efficiency of the website. The main advantage of Joomla is the free and open source availability.

There are so many disadvantages as well. It has a bigger learning curve when it is compared to other CMS like WordPress. Joomla is not the best option for small sites. It is not at all good with Search Engine Optimization. JavaScript and CSS can get bulky due to the slow loading time and the layout changing is also not that easy when compared to other famous CMSs. Some costly plug-ins for Joomla comes freely with the Content Management Systems like WordPress.

Competitors

There are number of Content Management Systems available in the today’s world. Durphal and WordPress are the most famous ones among them. WordPress is much lighter than the Joomla and it can be a good option for the websites with small content. Durphal is much powerful and flexible when compared to the Joomla. But the numbers of Joomla users are greater than Durphal. The main reason is that it is the easiest CMS to handle websites with large content. In a nutshell, WordPress is the best for the end users, Durphal is the best option for the web developers and Joomla will be the best web designing CMS.

How To Make Joomla More Efficient

One of the major concerns over the other Content Management Systems with Joomla is that the high complexity of operating for the end user. It will be a better implementation if it is possible to reduce the complexity for certain extend. Blogs are the world’s fastest growing type of web pages. Among the Content Management Systems, WordPress is the most popular for blogging. The reason is that it can be updated frequently in an easy manner. It can be great if it is possible to provide two editions of the Joomla CMS. One will be for the high end users and the other one will be for the normal users. The reason is that the normal users can be provided some easy and lightweight tools with them. Most of the good software has several editions. Microsoft products have become that much popular due to the user availability in their own choice. This edition based development is not that often seen in the Open source products. Providing it can do much better for everyone. Another major issue in Joomla is the weaknesses that it has. There are so many security threats and vulnerabilities in it.  Therefore the content can be damaged or hacked during the processes of developing.

Consumer Response

There is a rapid growth in the Joomla community since it was released. The latest builtwith statistics shows that it has achieved the third place from the Content Management Systems. In addition, it has had a +0.18% movement from the 4.6% total CMS used websites. Another factor provided to prove the consumer response is that the number of comments and posts appear on the walls of the social networks. With the Video component and the Joomla web services the users and the new trend has attracted to this community.

References

• CMS Usage Statistics. (2010, 05 18). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from CMS Usage Statistics: http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
• Joomla-Advantages and Disadvantages. (2009, 09 28). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/tradocaj/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-joomla

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Social networks were gaining their popularity in an exponential rate in the past few years. If you take a look at Alexa web ranking you can see so many social networks at the top including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. The major reason behind this success was people like to express themselves and they won’t get enough chances with their busy life style. And some people feel more comfortable to express their feeling with a online friend rather than real friend. Apart from that there were so many creative technological innovation done by social networks in order to make it easier to express their member’s feelings. However at this point Social networks has became a addictive web applications and you can easily find so many people who are spending large part of their life connection to them, playing games with their online friends, chatting without knowing what is happening in the real world.

Current Social Networks

Facebook

Facebook is at the top in when it comes to the popularity of social networks. It’s providing all the common features of any social network including personal profile, multimedia sharing etc. In addition to that Facebook API provides facility to develop 3^rd party application which can share facebook member details. This is the one of critical success factor of the facebook. In addition to that it provides highly performance tuned streamlined interfaces with a chatting module. In past few years facebook was doing so many developments and so many new applications were introduced. It leads facebook to highly sophisticate at the same time highly complex social network. However traffic ranking was continuously increasing for facebook.

Twitter

Compared to other popular social networks Twitter is new. But it gained exponential popularity due to its highly simple functionality. The major feature is members can write a message which contain maximum 140 characters and other member who follow can read it in their main page. In addition to that your message will be added to twitter main time line if your profile is not protected and the entire world can see it. Due to this simple functionality so many user were attracted to twitter and it was showing nearly 300% member base growth in past few years. And it won’t collect your personal data like facebook and other social networks. So there are lesser chances of privacy issues to occur. These days most of the online marketers using Twitter to promote their products and services to large crowd.

Ning

Ning is a special kind of social network concept. It allows its members to create their own social network on Ning platform. And they have made it so user friendly, so any non-technical use and create their own social network within few minutes. They also providing major functionality for the social networks and users can easily configure them by drag and drop development interface. At this moment Ning supports large amount of social networks on their platform. According to Alexa ranking it’s gaining its popularity in a decent rate along with the number of social networks on it.

There are so many other social networks including MySpace, Hi5, Flicker which is specially designed to share images, Orkut which is prowled by Google and LinkedIn.

Features

Networking

The most common feature in any social network is Friends network. It allows you to create your own profile and add your personal data in to that. After that you ne send request to other member, the one who confirm it will become your friends. Your selected private data will be shared with all the members and other may shared with your friends. It provides features to communicate with members through text messages and various other ways. Multimedia sharing is one of the popular features. There you can upload image or video and your friends can

Micro Blogging

This was a pretty old feature in social network. It was there in almost all the social networks including hi5 and Facebook with different names. But Twitter took only that feature and creates a new social network with lead to huge success and popularity. It allows you to write a message with limited length and share it with your friends.

Applications

So many social networks provide API which can be used to develop 3^rd party application which can be interact with it. Facebook is showing major success in there with Facebook API. In the Facebook there is millions of application developed and so many users are addicted to them. In Addition to that Twitter is also providing highly sophisticated API to control Twitter using 3^rd party application. However this has its negative effects, why so many people develop robots to spam and do other harmful things in the social networks using their APIs.

Future Of Social Networks

Privacy And Security

These days’ main concern in all the social networks is Privacy and security. In past few years there was so many incidents reported about the breach of privacy in social networks and sometimes they led to huge disasters as well. If you take a look at those incidents most of the time it about “Not using” provided security and privacy features. Due to that all the social networks providing highly simplified privacy and security controls. More creatively some social networks don’t collect member’s private details as far as they can. In future social networks will provide more sophisticated privacy features and users will be able to control each and every parameter as they want. And the privacy groups will be well defined like they have in Facebook now as Friends, Friends of Friends and Public. In the other hand when you increase privacy it will be difficult to share things freely. In order to solve such a problems social networks will provide clearly defined public data and more comprehensive searching to connect with each other. There may be search which shows a relationship between you and another member who is not your friend in a tree structure like graphical representation, but still you can see his personal details.

Simplicity

Twitter became success it selects only one feature which is micro blogging. At the same time Flicker is a huge success it select only image sharing. This is the future trend in social networking. People need them to be simple and highly user friendly rather than full of complex features. And most of the social networks provide mobile interface where users can control it over the phone or its browser. This further increases the interaction and simplicity of the social networks. In near future there may be dedicated mobile devices which can be used with Social networks.

More Personal Details

With the improvement of the security and simplicity of social networks people will share more and more probate information with them. Even now Google Latitude provides a facility to update your location via mobile phones GPS unit. And social networks already have your email, its password and large part of your personality details. In future if they manage to get your DNA structure online? There won’t be any privacy and it can simply re create you not just with physical features but with personality features as well.

There will be continuous and increasing impact on human civilization by online social networks. They can be positive or possibly negative according to current observation.

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GPS satellite grid is maintained by Unites States Government and it gives as a free service to the public. The Global Positioning System provides facility of giving the information details of a certain place under any condition of weather. More than 30 GPS satellites located around the earth helps to calculate the exact position. US government understood the less importance of functioning this only in their country and then they made it available worldwide.

It has a lot of advantages. The best thing is that it gives us an accurate idea about a position of some object or a person. That feature of the Global Positioning System can be used for so many applications and already done by several people. Another advantage of this Global Positioning System is that it gives us whole details about the location with a lot of details such Altitude etc.

Technology

The Global Positioning System is a system which has a group of satellites in earth orbit that transmit precise signals, it allows GPS receivers to calculate and display accurate information about the location, time and speed to the person who is using the application. The GPS receiver is designed to calculate the location of the receiver based on the singles received using Mathematical formulas.

The way how Global Positioning System works is simple. Each satellite transmits a unique signature as the signal. That signature consists of the position of each satellite. When there is a need of calculating a place, at least four satellites transmit signals to the object and calculate the time taken to receive that signal back. With the time and the speed of the signal, the distance is measured. At least a GPS unit needs to have four channels To be able to lock onto four signals. Most of the units have 12 channels. Calculations were made for the orbits necessary for each of the 31 satellites. As the orbit has 360 degrees in it, at least 6 satellites are visible to any place on the earth.GPS can be used in any type of weather and they are used on land, air, and in water.

Applications

There are so many devices made with the implementation of Global Positioning System. Google Earth is the most famous application that uses the signals received by the GPS receivers. It enables public also to access the maps which tell the users about the locations all around the world.3DEM is freely available software that will create 3D terrain scenes and flyby animations and export GIS terrain data files using any of the following freely available terrain data as a source.People use Global Positioning System for several uses. A research published on a magazine states that the percentage of uses for each several requirement is as follows.

• Car navigation 37%
• Hand held 26%
• Tracking 10%
• GIS 8%
• Survey 7%
• Manufacturing 7%
• Vessel Voyage 2%
• Military Related 1%

United States and European countries show a rapid growth in using GPS for the car navigations and the number of GPS equipped mobile phone usage. Those facts prove that the Global Positioning System helps many people in many other ways.

Navigators

Navigation applications are the most famous GPS applications. The latest releases of those applications allow users to have much advanced features and facilities.

DeLorme Street Atlas 2010: This is software that enables users to do things like trip planning, GPS navigation and mapping. This was much harder to learn how to work with it with the software. It is said that the latest edition has removed that complexity and made it easy for the users to use.

Gramin nRoute: This is free software that enables laptop users to make their work easy with the GPS maps. However, users must already have a MapSource product running on your computer for nRoute to work.In addition to those Microsoft AutoRoute and Streets and Tips are some of the other famous applications.

Tracking

A tracking applications are not that much popular as the navigation applications. But, so many people take uses of them. It enables users to find a location of any object that is tagged with a system.

Top Grossing Apps on iTunes: iPhone users can have this facility through the iTune store. This made the iPhone look much smart in its words.

LOCiMOBILE Apps for tracking people: This enables iPhone users to track people in a particular place at a particular time.

GPS Tracking Lite v2.0 is taking the nation by storm: GPS Tracking v2.0 by Locimobile is their biggest update to date application and it includes much advanced features than the others.

Auto pilot Applications

An auto pilot application is software that enables a vehicle to travel automated with the GPS map. These have been tested and made so many applications where the accuracy is also high.

Future of GPS Applications

There can be several further implementations also as this GPS has become widely available. This can be used to provide a solution for the deforestation.  The green plant density of a certain area can be calculated or estimated. With a comparison and analyze, the deforestation rate can be calculate and can ask the officials to pay their attention on those areas.

Cultivation also can be helped with this Global Positioning System. The empty lands can be explored and let the people to cultivate on those areas is something that can help the people to improve their production and the right place for the right product will be available through this system.

The functioning of the currently available GPS is at a very low level. This can be developed with advanced features that could be able to find the areas where marijuana cultivated likewise. The cameras should be much more sensitive to identify such objects. The research things will be easy if that kind of facility can be established. The application developers will have much advanced API for their development that can give a greater outcome.

Other Satiate Grids

IRNSS

It is named as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System which will be released by 2014 as it was approved by the government in 2006. This will be fully control of the Indian government. This will be totally base on India.

QZSS

Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) is to be developed by Japan for their GPS coverage.

References

• Forssell, P. B. (2009). The dabgers of GPS/GNSS. Coordinates , 6-10.
• Hlavac, M. (2007, October 11). List of laptop GPS navigation software programs and review. Retrieved May 16, 2010, from laptop gps world: http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/37-list-laptop-gps-navigation-software-programs-reviews

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Bitmap and Vector graphics are two main types of graphics that can be used to display vivid information to the viewers. Graphic designing has improved very much during a short span of time. Graphic designing task is done with several intentions in several manners. Depend on the place and the time, the designing methods differs. Number of applications and tools has developed to provide the consumer request to the maximum extend.

Bitmap Graphics

A bit map is a map of bits. The bits are stored in well organized arrays where the array elements are called as pixels. Bitmaps are also named as the Raster Artworks. Possibility of making very smooth color gradations makes it easy to apply photographic or artistic effects. Graphic Interchange Format (.GIF), Joint Photographers Expert Group (.JPG, .JPEG), Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF, .TIF), Encapsulated Postscript (.EPS) are some of the famous Bitmap graphic file formats.

Graphic Interchange Format

It was introduced in 1987 and has become a very popular graphic file format since it supports a wider area of the worldwide web. This format can be used to create the animations as well. With available 256 different colors, it supports 8 bits per a pixel. Images with continuous colors will not be well viewed by this format.

Joint Photographers Expert Group

It is a widely used bitmap graphic format that uses lossy compression. The compression ratio is 10:1 and there is a little quality reduction also.

Tagged Image File Format

TIFF formats are very often used in Apple Macintosh computers. This format can use both lossy and lossless compression techniques. The TIFF format is the standard for document management systems and document imaging.

Encapsulated Postscript

EPS can be used as a postscript document that contains additional information about the file formats. In addition this can be used to have a preview on a document containing information.

Bitmap Graphic software

• Adobe Photoshop
• Corel Paint
• Paint Shop Pro

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bitmap Graphics

The main advantage of a bitmap is that it can be accessed sooner through the internet when you have the proper size. The accuracy is very high when displaying image information including the shadings and the other complex and smooth places. Another advantage is that it can be used as a universal format. Most of the Bitmap graphics are not proprietary.

There are many disadvantages of using the bitmap images when it comes to professional level. The main disadvantage is that it cannot get the original quality when resizing. The best solution to overcome this is to cut the image in the size which it is needed to use.

Vector Graphics

Lines and curves are the basics of Vector Graphics. The Vectors are defined by the mathematical drawings and calculations. Illustrator (.AI), Encapsulated PostScript (.EPS), PostScript (.PS), Windows Meta File (.WMF) and Flash Movie (.FLA, .SWF) are some of very popular file formats.Vector images do not have the issue of reducing the quality when zoom the images. The mathematical functions that describe the images can resize the images without getting blurred.

Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator Artworks are proprietary file format of Adobe Systems. There is much software that supports Adobe Illustrator file formats. This AI formats supports both PDF and EPS formats.

Windows Meta File

It can be used in Microsoft Windows systems as a graphics file format. As WMF was a 16-bit file format, the new 32-bit Enhanced Meta File format was introduced to support the windows versions after Windows 3.0. Enhanced Metafile Plus extension and compressed formats such as Compressed Windows Meta File and Compressed Windows Enhanced Meta file formats were announced with the Windows XP released.

Flash Movie

This is also a format developed by Adobe Systems with the intention of making the video streaming available over the internet. The SWF format was released first in 2002, with the Flash player version 6. The latest formats of flash movies are much different compared to the previous versions. There are two main video formats named .f4v and .f4p and two audio formats named .f4a and .f4b.

Vector Graphic Software

• Abobe Illustrator
• Corel Draw
• Macromedia Freehand
• Macromedia Flash
• Resizing is better in vectors than the bitmaps
• Vector graphics usually require fewer amounts of data than the bitmaps.
• Vector graphics are easy to edit than the bitmap graphics.

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Vectors

There are some disadvantages over using the vector graphics. The images with complex curves are hard to reproduce. It can be harder to write the code for a particular image. The vector images come relatively slower. The other disadvantage is that the most of the vector formats are proprietary.

When To Use Vector And Bitmap

Vector will be the best option for images with text, many colored graphic objects. Due to its algorithmic functions, it will not be hard to give a quality image. Bitmaps are the best choice for complicated images with shadows and many shades, 3D effects, textures and photographs. The main thing is to consider when choosing a bitmap image is that to choose the same size that is need to be applied on the corresponding place.

Converting Two Types

Bitmaps to Vectors: The edges of the objects are located in a bitmap image and the resulting shapes are converted into vector objects.

Vectors to Bitmaps: There are two main issues when converting vectors to bitmaps. The first step is rasterization. Determining the color of each pixel can be not that perfect. Vectors being the mathematical functions of lines and curves cannot make a perfect contact with the each pixel of the image.

References

• (2009). Retrieved May 2010, from www.eznetu.com: http://www.eznetu.com/Graphics/graphic_types/images/bitmap-vector-diagram2.jpg
• Harris, A. (n.d.). Vector Graphics. Retrieved 05 31, 2010, from http://wally.cs.iupui.edu/n351/vector/Vector_Graphics.html

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Color Theory is the guidance for mixing and making visual impacts on the color combinations. Writings of Alberti and notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci show the first appearance of the color theory. There are three main aspects of using the color theory. Giving the maximum readability and clarity to the viewer, drawing on with an effective meaning and creating a good combination of graphics to the viewer are them. Ones sweet can be bitter for someone. Therefore the color theory gives a justification for make it in favor of everyone.

Color

It is the frequency of a light wave within the bandwidth located in the electromagnetic spectrum where human eye can catch it. The range of frequencies which are higher than the maximum of the above bandwidth is called as the ultraviolet region while the lower frequencies are in the infrared region. Every visible color in the spectrum is a combination of the three basic colors which are Red, Green and Blue.

Color Depth And Color Pallets

In general, a picture is a collection of pixels where each pixel has a unique color. The number of colors that a pixel can have is defined as the color depth. The color depth is equal to two to the power of number of bits that image have. For example an 8bit color image can have 256 colors to represent a one pixel and a 16bit color image can have 65536 colors to represent a single pixel. A color pallet is a mathematical table that defines the available color of a pixel. They are also called as the Color Look Up Tables. Most common pallets are of 1, 4,5,16 and 24 in bit depths.

Web safe colors are the colors that are being shared by the Windows and Mac operating system pallets. There is a combination of color codes ‘00’, ’33’, ‘66’, ‘99’, ‘CC’, ‘FF’ for each color in the web safe color palette. Each color is defined with three pairs of numbers.

Color Models

Color Model is the way to specify colors in the terms of computer. RGB, SGB, HSL, CMYK, CIE are some of them. It represents color in a mathematical system.

RGB is the most famous color model from all. It contains Red, Green and Blue which are the primary colors of light. The 24-bit RGB color system represents each color by providing 8-bits for each color. Therefore there are 256 shades of each red, green and blue color.

HSB is a combination of Hue, Saturation and Brightness. Every color has 3numbers from each representation. Hue is a value between 0 to 360 degrees. The next number saturation is a percentage value between 0 and 100. The last one is brightness that can have a value between 0 and 100. HSL is the replacement of lightness for the brightness in HSB. Lightness means the black color availability of the color.

HSI color model includes a parameter for the intensity. The distance unit percentage from the center of the HSI color pyramid is defined as the Saturation. Intensity defines the distance up axis from black which will be ‘0’ or ‘1’.

CMYK color model is a collection of Cyan Magenta Yellow and black and it is the color model used in printers as well. Cyan is the while light without red. Magenta is while light without green. Yellow is white light without blue. But this model is less applicable in multimedia production. They are the primary colors of pigments that are used to make the other colors in practical.

Analogous And Complementary Colors

Analogous Colors are defined as any close three colors on a 12 colored color wheel. The nature is the best example for a practical place where the Analogous combination can be found. There is lot of varieties of greens that are closer to each other in the jungles as well. They are very much pleasant to the eye because of the less change in it. Also it has less attraction in it due to the low color change n it. Split Analogous colors are the colors that are located once after a once in the color wheel.

Complementary Colors are any two colors that are located one against one. They are very hard to pick up on human eyes and it shows things highlighted. Places where to find quick attraction can be colored with complementary colors. Although these combinations are not that cool for eyes, it will not be a good implementation for the pictures that should keep the eye for a long time. Split-complementary color scheme are the ones that have one hue but located in each one’s opposition.

Color Theory Applications

There are so many applications of color theory can be found in the day today life. Graphic designing is the most famous one among them. Several artworks have become famous due to the proper application of the color theory. Color theories are highly applied for the advertising purposes. There are so many products that has become much famous and so many that has become less popular due to the color selections for the advertising. A company logo is the trademark of a company. It will be a key factor in the business purposes. Normally the Analogous color patterns are applied to the logo designs because of it provides the majesty of that company. Advertising is very much different from the logo designing and the complementary colors are applied to get more consumer attraction for the sales purposes. Video games are also applied the color theory with several intentions such like changing the player’s mind during the play, highlighting and hiding several operations for the player and so many other tricks that could attract the player to play the game. World Wide Web is another famous application of the color theory that gives dynamic content to the site visitors by using several techniques. Cascading Style Sheets are often used to provide the content to the user in a very much attractive manner. Interior designers concern very much on the color theory to match the suitable colors for the building according to the place.

Color theory is not that famous as most of the other theories used for any other works. But it is one of the rapidly used theories in the world and this can be applicable for most of purposes and activities.

References

• Color Models: HSB, RGB, CYMK and LAB. (n.d.). Retrieved 05 27, 2010, from WOWAREA: http://www.wowarea.com/english/help/color.htm

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