Managing IT in an open source world

Click the links below to get started with this FREE software today! These are applications that have been around for a while and have a large user base.

Audacity: Recording tool - perfect for podcasts and creating your own study mp3 files. I attend night school (in addition to several jobs that require travel). Who has time to study? I create study audio files and listen to them while traveling. My daughter also uses Audacity to record her garage band stuff. Great Fun!

Wireshark: Packet/protocol analyzer par excellence! This is my #1 tool for troubleshooting network problems. In seconds, you can see exactly what packets are being sent/received. It's also great for finding web app problems - particularly when interfacing multiple systems via APIs. Wireshark will also read tcpdump files.

Webcalendar: Great free web-based calendar system. Our entire staff uses this calendar that does everything a scheduler should do, such as: checking for conflicts and sending reminders. It even allows you to schedule confidential appointments. Sadly, it doesn't interface well with other apps. As a result, I am currently looking for a replacement.

Bugzilla: This is the defacto-standard for managing a large number of IT tasks. I manage our internal IT staff and several outside vendors who have up to 30 resources each. Tasks are likely to fall through holes without some mechanism for management.

Nagios: Enterprise-class network monitoring system, used by many very large organizations (and me). Our nagios setup is configured to monitor our internal network, as well as outside system resources. Nagios can monitor system status -- down to the service/port level. We get instant alerts of any trouble.

python (programming language): I recently learned this language at Albright College (part of their Comp-Sci degree). It is so cool & easy, I used it in my Statistics class to perform a simulation of the birthday paradox. There is a squidoo lens on python here: pythonology

Dotproject: This software is adequate, but big-time project managers may find it lacks a few features. For my purposes it works well. I use it to track very large projects before they are broken into bugzilla tasks. It provides the ability to schedule resources and create Gantt charts for client meetings.

OpenEco: is a global on-line community that provides free, easy-to-use tools to help participants assess, track, and compare energy performance, share proven best practices to reduce greenhousegas (GHG) emissions, and encourage sustainable innovation. The tools can also be used to build custom web apps.

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