A lot of people are interested in open source software but don’t exactly know where to find it. A web site that has a very large filebase with hundreds of active projects is SourceForge. It’s been around a long time and is one of the best open source software sites in existence.

In the video below I show some simple tips on how to find the software you need faster on SourceForge.

This tip is for students who might be interested in download a free full copy of any of the following pieces of Microsoft software:

• Visual Studio 2008 Professional
• Windows Server 2003
• Expression Studio
• XNA Game Studio 2.0

Simply go to this web site for the details and to get started. Basically, the only requirement is that you have a Windows Live Account (it’s free) and then proof you are an active student.

Considering each of the above products retail for several hundred each, I would take advantage and download all of them whether you have an immediate need or not.

Google is at it again. This time, they have released what is called Google App Engine. In short, this is a web application platform to allow developers and businesses to host web apps in the cloud (meaning online). Google launched the product in it’s own new blog yesterday.

Google’s blog post describes the service quite well:

Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. The development environment includes the following features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack, leaving you more time to focus on writing code and improving your application.

This is a poke in the eye of Amazon. Amazon Web Services is also a platform for developers to run their web applications. Amazon offers S3 (for mass storage), EC2 (for virtual servers) and SimpleDB (database). So, Google App Engine is basically taking on Amazon. But, as Techcrunch is reporting, the Amazon package is more loosely coupled than the Google setup. Amazon allows developers to pick and choose what they need whereas the Google setup is pretty much all-or-nothing. In other words, Google App Engine is designed for people who want to run their apps entirely on Google.

Profy.com says that Google has “jumped the shark“, though. While Google is offering free service up to a certain point (500 MB storage, 10 GB bandwidth daily), Profy points out that Google made a mistake by using Python as the programming language rather than Ruby. They also point out that this is just another “me too” move by Google. They saw Amazon making money and decided to try to “one up” them and give some of it away for free (in classic Google style).

So, has Google really jumped the shark? Is Google App Engine really the next big thing, or is this just another temporary excitement designed to get bloggers excited over nothing?

I can tell you one thing Profy is right on: Python? Yuck. Google, for their part, says they will soon be supporting other languages, but I wouldn’t be interested in this until I see some Ruby or PHP support.

This tip is for developers out there who know PHP. If you have ever wanted to convert your PHP scripts into a standalone Windows executable program there are several options out there for you.

First, there are the “standard” PHP to EXE compilers you can get such as Bambalam or PriadoBlender. However, a more intriguing option is WinBinder. WinBinder, in a nutshell, bridges the gap between the PHP interpreter and the Windows API allowing you to create and distribute PHP applications as Windows programs. WinBinder also features a graphical form editor you can use to create GUI’s for your applications. There are also many more features you can read about on WinBinder’s site.

WinBinder is completely free (and open source) and something PHP developers should definitely take a look at.