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students in projects and other related courses, additionally to traditional programming languages:

LAMP
• Oracle Express Edition (XE) and Oracle Application Express
(APEX)
• Oracle Designer, Oracle Java Developer, Oracle SQL
Developer
• Oracle Server Standard and Enterprise Editions (10g and 11g)
• Oracle Real Application Cluster
• Eclipse, CentOS and Fedora Linux
• VMware virtualization by utilizing ESX Vmware, Vmware
Server, VMware Control Center, VMware Fusion for MAC
OS X Leopard, VMware Workstations for Windows and
Linux
• IBM Rational Software Architect, IBM RequisitePro, IBM
Rational Rose Enterprise
• CVSNT, SVN and GitHub version control systems, as well as

• free OpenProj, DotProject, PHProjekt additionally to
proprietary MS Project management tool.

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Top 10 Free Cloud Applications for Web Designers

1. GridFox

GridFox is a free add-on to Firefox allowing you to show grids on your currently viewed page on Firefox to check the layout and composition of the page.

2. Pixlr

Pixlr is free and feature-rich, Photoshop-like image editor allowing you to edit image from your web browser with no installation required.

3. Draftboard

Draftboard is a free collaboration tool for web designers and their clients to monitor the development of a particular website, and collaborate on the design elements, etc. in real time.

4. CSS Sandbox

CSS Sandbox is a free web tool allowing you to tinker with CSS configurations on the fly – no coding involved.

5. Snipplr

Want to save and share your codes and work on your web design project quickly? Just go to Snipplr. The free web app allows you to store and share your code snippets, so that you can copy-and-paste them into your future project.

6. Golden Ratio Calculator

Golden Ratio Calculator is a free app helping you to find the best width of your website, so that yours follow with the Golden Ratio principles. Just type in a number and you will get the recommended width of a particular section of your website.

7. Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler is a free Flash-based app helping you to pick the best color schemes for your website. There is an active community that can recommend you some great color schemes.

8. Typetester

Typetester is a free web tool to help you looking for the right typography for your website: Font size, typeface and more – by comparing 3 paragraphs on which you can edit the way you like it.

9. Browsershots

Want to check how your designed website looks in various web browsers? Try Browsershots – a free tool that takes snapshots of your web address from various browsers and OS.

10. Dropbox

Dropbox is a cloud storage allowing you to store your design files on the cloud. An excellent way to backup your work. It is free for the basic plan (more than enough space, in my opinion.)

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Top 7 Apps for Staying Productive in the Cloud

These are some of my most essential applications for staying productive in the cloud.

Google Docs

I’ve slowly moved to using Google Docs as my primary document creation and storage platform. With the recent Docs update came a slew of new, useful features and enhancements, many of which enabled me to take the plunge to using it as my primary document platform.

Google Calendar

I now use Google Calendar to schedule all of my meetings and appointments. It even syncs with my iPhone (including push notifications for upcoming meetings), so I always have access.

Gmail

Gmail is my productivity center. All of my e-mail addresses filter into a single inbox, with intelligent filtering and categorizing for easy organization. Gmail’s recent Priority Inbox update means it’s also become my defacto to-do list.

Dropbox

Dropbox serves as my virtual hard drive (as it’s meant to), and allows me to access important files on any computer I use. Dropbox features a desktop app, web app and iPhone app.

Evernote

As I’m fond of telling friends and colleagues, Evernote augments my brain. Evernote is a desktop / web / mobile app that allows me to save notes, pictures, website and other information into a single collection point. Evernote also features a series of browser plugins so you can save important web pages (i.e. – that study on Facebook users) to your notebook.

Flickr

With Flickr’s pro account, I’m able to upload an unlimited number of photos at full quality, as well as re-download them again later. Given the number of hard drive crashes I’ve experience in my lifetime, it’s great to know that my photos are safe, secure, and accessible from anywhere.

HootSuite

HootSuite is my Social Media dashboard. I’m able to access and manage my Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as a slew of other social networks from one interface. HootSuite is primarily a web based application, with several flavors of mobile apps as well.

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Top 10 Cloud Applications for Small Business

Google Apps for Business: Google is the household name, and it has all needed to offer a reliable and secure online office tools – even before the cloud is as popular as today – Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail, etc. – you can access all of them in a secure and private environment with 24/7 support. The “personal” version is free, while the business version is offered at $50 per user per year.

Skype: Forget the latest historic downtime – Skype is one of the most trusted and reliable cloud-based companies offering free Internet call, with Pay As You Go and subscription-based plans to call on any phones to meet your small business needs.

SalesForce: A household name in cloud computing for customer relationship management (CRM.) Also one of the front-runners in the cloud, SalesForce is growing its arsenal of cloud apps: Sales Cloud, Force.com, Service Cloud, and the latest, Database.com. SalesForce can help your small business to manage everything related to your sales-generating activities in a centralised “dashboard.”

Basecamp: One of the leaders in online collaboration and project management. It can help your stakeholders to discuss, update, upload/download, share – anything you can think of – in one single web account, in real time. Basecamp claims that there are over 5 million people worldwide who are using it.

Quickbase: This online database software can help your small business tech team to create online database application from scratch or use more than 200 templates. Don’t have someone to build database app, yet? Intuit’s Quickbase can recommend you one of 160 partners to help you out.

Box.net: A cloud storage service provider allowing you to share, manage and access files and folders online in a secured and private environment. You can also collaborate to update documents on the fly with your business team members or clients.

Outright: If you are like me, you’ll gonna like this cloud finance app – Outright will help you with your business accounting by allowing you to track income/expenses, tax obligations, and profits/losses in real time, online. No more hiring/firing bookkeeper for your business finances.

Evernote: I call Evernote a “cloud reminder” or “cloud scratchpad” if you will, simply because of what it does best – it helps you to store your ideas, notes, reminders, schedules, to-dos, audios, images, videos, etc. for you to recall and review later on.

Mozy: The industry leader for online backup of any kind of data and information – images, documents, audios, etc. You can use Mozy cloud app to back up your entire business, regardless of your business’ size. With Mozy, you are not location-constrained – you can backup and access your backup remotely.

SiteCloud: Cloud hosting is great to host your small business website because it’s on-demand and scalable – in real time. You are guaranteed service availability due to the nature of the cloud – no issues regarding a sudden surge of web traffic to your site. You can switch plan anytime you want, without service interruption.

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