PHP penetration into the web market continues to grow. As of July 2003, the PHP web programming language had risen to 52.26% of the web servers running Apache (Apache now runs over 60% of the world's websites). (http://www.securityspace.com/s_survey/data/man.200110/apachemods.html)

NOVALynx uses PHP exclusively for its real-time websites. Real-time websites build your web pages from live data that you yourself can control without the intervention of a programmer.

Apache avoids most security woes:  ( by Timothy Dyck , eWEEK July 20, 2001) "The Apache Software Foundation Inc.'s Apache HTTP Server has earned what many hope for and few achieve: an enviable security reputation.

This achievement is especially striking when contrasted with Microsoft Corp.'s IIS (Internet Information Services) Web server (see related story), which has gained the reputation of having more holes than Swiss cheese. ..."

(Note: click on links to see the original articles)

PHP (language used by NOVALynx) Growing by the Month: (July 17, 2001)  Dan Orzech, Zend Staff July 2001: JSP enjoys the backing of Sun; hence its constant media attention. It is interesting to note that despite the lack of any publicity campaign, PHP's popularity is growing at a monthly rate of 8-11%, a percentage far greater than the Internet's 4% monthly growth -- as the demand for server-based applications has risen. More than 6.5 million sites use PHP (Netcraft May 2001 survey).

PHP is used on 39% of Apache servers; Perl trails fourth, with 11% of the market. Apache maintains 59% of the Web server market; Microsoft IIS is second, with 28% of market share (E-Soft Inc./SecuritySpace's May 2001 report).

Prominent corporations using PHP include Bang & Olufsen, Unilever, Philips, NTT, Cisco, Japan Airlines, Air Canada, Lufthansa, GE Marketplace, Wallstreet:Online Germany; AuctionWatch, VillageVoice, Dialpad and BMC

New Features for NOVALynx Sites: (July 14, 2001): We have created programming that keeps information about visitors to our website and to the websites of clients who wish to use this feature. The information is stored in a secure database. It is only available from a browser using administrative access passwords. And of course the PHP programming code we use is not visible in any browser. The program tracks the date, time, page visited and the IP address of the visitor. The client who owns the website can select which pages they wish to have tracked.

The database will allow the client to ask questions like how many visitors did my home page and my site map have in the hours between midnight and 4 AM over the past week. In looking at the NOVALynx site for the last day, we saw visits from the Netherlands, Australia, California, two European Internet registration agencies, Nova Scotia and Ottawa in Canada. The query mechanism can filter out your access to your own website.

(Note: The IP address will not tell who the visitor is but indicates who their Internet Provider is. This can give an indication of what region the visitor to your site was in. Of course it will not work if the website visitor uses a proxy server to disguise location or if it is a provider like AOL where all requests are routed through Colorado.)

NOVALynx uses only Apache Servers: (June, 2001): We use Apache servers for all our sites and the graphs indicate that this seem to be the way to do it. (Servers are were websites that you visit are stored and delivered to you.)

Address on Wind Energy: (May 30, 2001): Lise speaking on one of her favourite topics, wind energy. She was the guest speaker at the Rotary Club at the Toronto Lawn Tennis Club in Rosedale.

Developer Shed, Inc. (May 21, 2001) by Luca Marshall: Apple's newest operating system, Mac OS X, has been anticipated by Mac users for many years now. It's a fusion of a revised Mac OS, and a very fast and reliable BSD-based UNIX core.

The BSD core in Mac OS X allows for any program that is able to be compiled on Linux, BSD, or any other UNIX or UNIX derivative to be compiled and run in Mac OS X. The fusion of the Mac OS's ease of use with the power of UNIX has attracted much attention from the open source community, and many open source developers have worked to make sure their projects will work well on the new system.

Among the best open source programs are several that you may have read about...: Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It just happens that all of these programs compile and run relatively painlessly on Mac OS X.

Note: This is exciting news. 58% of the world uses Apache to run Web Servers (see survey below.) NOVALynx uses Apache, MySQL and PHP for its development work, and now the new Macs will be able to provide this environment for the growing open source community.

Computing Canada (May 18, 2001) by Matthew Friedman:  “Page best viewed by what you don't have”: ...Don't even try to read it with an earlier version, or some other browser, like Netscape Communicator. If you do, all the JavaScript, doohickeys, Java Applets and ActiveX controls will freeze your browser, and probably crash your computer. ... The scary thing is that the Web is just like that these days. The coding and plug-ins on so many pages are so narrowly technology specific that you have to keep two or three browsers on your hard-drive, just in case.
   The irony is that this is not how this medium is supposed to operate, or at least how it was intended. ...

Note: NOVALynx does not put scripts, doohickeys, applets or ActiveX controls onto your browser.  Our programming resides on the Web server and is not placed onto your computer. The programming scripts on the server send out simple HTML for your browser, so that all but the most primitive browsers will work just fine. Your visitors are much less likely to flee in horror.

Computing Canada (March 23, 2001):  “Enterprise Computing - Undercover Coding: Open source* languages are finding a sometimes secret but welcome home in back office systems...
  Larry Karnis, senior consultant at Brampton, Ont.-based Application Enhancement, a Web and Unix integration specialist, started using PHP (a server-side scripting language that performs the same tasks as ColdFusion and Active Server Pages) a year ago, when he found a PHP-based e-mail client that enabled him to access messages via a Web browser behind clients' firewalls.
  "I can (also) run Oracle on any server in my company. From my server-side program I can query my Oracle database...and don't have to pay a dime for that", Karnis said.
  Open source is not for the 'faint of heart' and scripting languages assume a high level of technical sophistication in it users, he warned.
  Karnis also said many of his clients use them without corporate approval, though that often comes after IT departments demonstrate the results.”

"Børsen" excerpts from articles in the Danish business paper :

(February 2001):   The Computer Giant IBM Blue - Stamps The Free Operating System Linux ...LINUX can function as an operating system for the smallest pocket PC and the biggest super computer. That makes it easier for the world's largest IT company, IBM, to persuade its customers to invest in new and larger hardware, which will give them bigger computer muscles, and give IBM more money in the vault. "It is very costly to move from one operating system to another. But in our laboratories we have gotten LINUX to operate a computer in a wristwatch, and at the other end we are now building super computers with LINUX. That reduces the upgrading costs. It is a big advantage to us, being the biggest in our field. We do not have any small niche to protect", says Carl Christian Ægidius, who considers LINUX one of the biggest forward jumps in the history of IT.

...The Swedish Telia company is throwing out 70 big servers and replacing them with 1500 virtual LINUX-servers placed on a single mainframe computer...

(January 2001)   Linux Ready To Jump:   In late December 2000 the oil company Shell ordered a big parallel LINUX number- cruncher for analyzing geodetic data. When finished, 1024 computers will be connected, each supplied with a copy of the free operating system. Measured in number cruncher power, that order was exceeded last week by an IBM order for a LINUX super computer for the American research institution The National Center for Supercomputing Applications. That machine will sneak in between the five biggest of its kind in the world with a number cruncher power allowing 2,000 Billion calculations per second. The computer will be used for studying atomic particles and biological structures, and as a tool to test Einstein's today somewhat disputed relativity theory.

IBM has to some extent worked with LINUX over the past couple of years. But only when the top executive, Lou Gerstner, revealed that IBM was ready to tie eight Billion Kroner onto the tail of the company's internal LINUX-bet did the employees seriously start to waddle after the LINUX mascot, the penguin Tux...

"Open systems can scale. A lot of people have not been aware of that. Just look at those who are caught in the Solaris-trap" says Carl Christian Ægidius, Director of IBM Denmark. But according to Ægidius, LINUX will gradually get to occupy more space in the IBM world, for the heavy-duty solutions as well as for the small web servers. The driving force is not only IBM, but also a growing consciousness in the business community regarding LINUX as an alternative.