Gnizr 2.4.0 Milestone 3 Release

Gnizr 2.4.0 Milestone 3 is now available for download.

• Download: gnizr-2.4.0-M3.zip
• How to install or upgrade
• Configure gnizr-config.xml for 2.4.0
  
• What has changed
  

Note: This release is intended for evaluation and testing, and it's not suitable for any serious deployment.

See also: Gnizr 2.4.0 Milestone 1 and Gnizr 2.4.0 Milestone 2

I Forgot My Password

People often forget their login passwords. We have implemented a function that allows gnizr users to reset their login password. In the login page, users can follow a "I forgot my password" link to reset their password.

Users must have valid email addresses defined in their respective profiles in order to use this function. Users can change their email address by going to the "settings" page. Administrators (i.e., gnizr) can also change user email address under the User Management function.

When a password reset request is submitted, an email message is sent to the user. To enable this function, when installing or upgrading to 2.4.0-M3, the administrator must configure mail server setting in the gnizr-config.xml.

Here are some typical SMTP configurations.

Policy-Driven User Registration

In the previous releases, gnizr administrators can implement one of two user registration policy -- (1) anyone can register, and (2) only the admin can create new accounts. Starting in 2.4.0-M3, a third option is available.

The new option allows anyone with a valid email address to register, but in order for their accounts to be activated, they require explicitly approval from the administrator (i.e., gnizr).

Here is a detail description of gnizr's User Registration policy.

This feature requires the administrator to configure mail server setting in the gnizr-config.xml.

New Bookmarklet for the Internet Explorer 6

Some enterprise users having trouble using the bookmarklet that comes with gnizr in the IE6 browser. David Hochman kindly sent us a fix to this issue. Part of his fix has been included in 2.4.0-M3.

In the "help" page, users can find this experimental bookmarklet. We have tested in IE6, and it worked much better than ours in the previous releases.

Monitor gnizr Devleopment and Say Hello World

Since the public release of gnizr 2.2.0 on Dec. 7th, 2007, within 2 weeks, we received ~4000 downloads. Thank you for everyone's interest in gnizr. Some users voiced their questions in our user group, and some others commented on our Wiki pages and submitted Issue reports.

New Mailing List

Today we created a separate mailing list for tracking issue changes and SVN commits. Subscribe to this list to receive immediate notifications when users submit new issue reports and we commit changes to SVN.

http://groups.google.com/group/gnizr-dev-tracking

New Developer Documenations

As reported in our Twitter stream, we are in the process rolling out gnizr developer documentations. Our goal is to provide information to help developers to extend gnizr by either adding new functions or altering its existing behavior.

We begin with an overview of the gnizr design and its database model. We then describe instructions on how to set up a build environment for rapid prototyping and testing -- fyi. we use the same settings in our development. Getting things started, we created a Hello World tutorial to showcase how you can take this building environment into action.

All documentations are in the editing process. We will complete the Hello World tutorial when we release gnizr 2.3.0-M3.

We are very excited about what gnizr can do for the open source community. Not only we want to make it the best open source social bookmarking and mashup application, but also we want to provide a free and open source educational tool for people to experiment with social web technologies and innovate new applications to exploit the power of Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web.

Gnizr 2.3.0 Milestone 2

Gnizr 2.3.0 Milestone 2 is now available for evaluation.

Key Changes

• Added Ajax support to allow links in an OpenSearch result page to be bookmarked.
  
• OpenSearch services selected by a user will be remembered in the subsequent search requests.
  
• Several bug fixes

See Changelog for detail.

More Documentations, Please.

We are in the process documenting gnizr API, its design and internal implementation. We hope this will help developers who want to integrate gnizr into their enterprise systems or add new functions to gnizr.

There are many different ways to extend gnizr. We have identified at least four. Because different approaches will require different kinds of documentation -- e.g., Java API doc, architectural design discussion and programming best practice.

Currently we are documenting the design and implementation of gnizr user management and user authentication function. If you're interested in other aspects of gnizr development, please drop us an email, we will do our best to put your request on the top of our todo list.

Gnizr 2.2.0 User Guide

Gnizr 2.2.0 user guide is now available. The document is in PowerPoint format. You can view it online via Google Doc or download it onto your local machine.

http://code.google.com/p/gnizr/wiki/GetStarted

In this document, you will find information on:

1. How to create bookmarks and define geo-coordinates
2. How to use folders
3. How edit tag relations
4. How to navigate through clustermap, timeline, maps and tag clouds
5. How to use gnizr robot to harvest RSS feeds

Some gnizr features may be missing in the document. We will continue to develop this user guide. If you have any questions, please let us know.