Home Inventory is a free program for Windows or Mac that lets you create a home inventory complete with product photo and receipt scan. A home inventory is an important protective measure for any home owner, renter, or insurance-policy holder as it can be invaluable in times of disaster to help prove to a claims adjuster that you really did have a 50" wall-mounted plasma TV.

The program is easy to use: create rooms to organize your stuff and then add items to each room. For items, you can add information like purchase price/location, serial number, make, and model. You should also add a picture of the item in your house (not just from the manufacturer website), and a scanned receipt proving you paid for the item.

You can print your entire inventory room by room, export to .csv, or save to the Vault24 service (a secure, offiste backup service offered by the makers of Home Inventory). If, for instance, a fire takes your home (and you've been good and backed up your Home Inventory files offsite), you can make life easy for yourself and the insurance people by providing them a complete, organized inventory of all of your significant belongings.

CaTraxx is a music management tool that aims to catalog all of your music, from digital media to CD's, cassettes, and vinyl.

CaTraxx will automatically scan your computer for any supported audio files and import them into its music database. Additionally, you can insert your CD's and CaTraxx will scan and download the audio tracks automatically. The program has a direct connection with the CDDB database; track and album information are instantly downloaded as you import your files.

CaTraxx also functions as a basic jukebox/media player, though iTunes and Windows Media Player would be better options if all you want to do is play your music.

So what good is CaTraxx? In our minds, it's beneficial to think of the program as a database rather than a music collection. So why do you need a database of your music? Well, for example, you might need a database for insurance purposes, in case your beloved vinyl collection is usurped by a thief (or vengeful ex). The database can also keep records of who borrowed pieces from your collection and when they borrowed it, so you never lose track of a CD.

CaTraxx is available as a fully functional trial; after that, it'll set you back $40. In our minds (can we say that twice in a post?), you'd have to be pretty obsessive of your collection to shell out that kind of dough.

[via AppScout]

Yesterday a Reddit user posted a link that supposedly runs a time-consuming SQL query on the RIAA'a website. Of course the Reddit community began trying to stick it to the RIAA, and eventually someone may have deleted all of the site's content by exploiting a poorly configured web/database server with an SQL injection attack.

The site appears to be operating fine now, but we noticed it certainly wasn't fine yesterday (and TorrentFreak has screenshots of the site, sans content). Is it ironic that the RIAA uses free open-source software (OSS) such as PHP to run their website while hunting down people who allegedly don't pay for music? You'd expect something more sinister, like Karl Rove hand typing HTML pages in a dimly lit sarcophagus or, at least MS SQL/IIS.

If only they spent more time working to save themselves from cross-site scripting attacks and SQL injection instead of going after college students for downloading "My Humps."

[Via TorrentFreak]

Lizenzen is a free app for Mac OS 10.4+ that lets you easily organize your software license keys. The program has a sidebar showing the titles of all of the apps you add and a main screen showing detailed information like license key, software version, support contact information, date purchased, and the computer to which the license is assigned. You can also export a simple PDF of all of your software licenses (although the PDF has no column headings for some reason).

The Lizenzen .zip also comes with two other programs: a portable version of the software for taking your licenses with you on a USB drive, and grabbICON. grabbICON is included so that you can extract an app's icon to use for your software license entry in Lizenzen.

A word of caution: your license data is stored in an unencrypted text file.

[Via MacUpdate]

Sun Microsystems has made a huge leap into the open-source market by purchasing MySQL AB, the company behind the wildly popular MySQL database, for $1 Billion in stocks and cash. In a humorously named blog post titled "Helping Dolphins Fly", Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Shwartz stated that Sun would not only support MySQL once the transaction is finalized, but they'll be throwing their engineering support behind making MySQL more efficient on Sun's software platform.

MySQL is a widely used database product. It is the database used behind many popular sites -- Facebook, Digg, and Google, among others. Sun has long been a proponent of open source software, up until this point Sun has promoted PostgreSQL as a favored database.

MySQL AB was about to seek an IPO offering. We think Sun got a good deal by giving MySQL AB a cool billion, but just hope the MySQL database continues to innovate and carry on it's reputation as a fantastic database platform.

Perhaps with the influx of $800 Million, MySQL can make the leap from your favorite website into the enterprise where the real money is. Some large corporations wouldn't touch a database product that doesn't have support behind it, but if MySQL has a good system in place -- and a sales team who've marketed inside the enterprise for years -- new customers are more likely to take the bait and ditch Oracle or Microsoft's SQL Server.

FileMaker, Inc. a company best known for the cross-platform database app, FileMaker Pro, has just released a public preview of Bento, their new personal database program for Leopard users -- which to quote the press release -- "[is] as easy to use as your Mac." The program, which is expected to ship early next year, is available as a free, full-functioning time-limited Preview (it expires in February) from FileMaker's site. The shipping version will be $49 for individual licenses and $99 for a family license. Bento is a Leopard-only application.

We got a chance to play around with Bento prior to today's public pre-release, and are really impressed with both the interface (which is very similar to iTunes and the rest of the iLife series) and the actual power of the program. Bento automatically links itself with iCal and Address Book (so a change made in Bento will show up in the corresponding applications, and vice versa), while also taking advantage of some of Leopard's new features, like being able to play a media file without having to open QuickTime or iTunes, from within the database. This is really helpful if trying to organize a multi-media project, because everything is accessible from one place, and the files can be quickly viewed or opened on the spot.

Bento is also very customizable, both in Library types and in overall appearance. FileMaker provides 20 different "themes" that can be applied to a Library or Collection, and they look very, very Mac, which is to say aesthetically pleasing. Our pals over at TUAW have also previewed Bento, and provide some great screenshots of the program itself and some thoughts on the application as a whole.

While Google gets a lot of attention every time it launches a new online Office application, and Microsoft earned a few laughs with its announcement of online storage and collaboration features for MS Office, Zoho continues to out-pace the competition.

Zoho's latest accomplishment is a full-featured online database application. Zoho DB lets you create, edit, and share databases. You can organize your data as if it were a spreadsheet, but run queries like you would with a database. There's supports for queries in pretty much any SQL format.

You can create a variety of charts and reports, and you can even embed your database in a web page. If you really want to see what it Zoho DB can do, check out the promotional video after the jump.

Eight days into our Invite-a-palooza, we want to give a shout out to all readers who have taken the time to check out all the neat sites we've featured. We're having a great time giving out invitations, and we're not done yet.

Freebase, a collective knowledge database, is a terrific twist on information Web sites like Wikipedia. The creators of Freebase describe it as an "almanac" that sorts and organizes information so it is easily searched by people and software. Once it's opened to the public, users will be able to structure, contribute, search, and organize data for themselves. Since all the data in Freebase is licensed Creative Commons Attribution, users can also copy data for their own use as long as it's linked back to Freebase.

Though the site it still closed to the public, we have some invitations that will let you get in the door early. If you're among first 100 people to leave us a note in the comment section, we'll send one your way (make sure to activate it if you get an email confirmation). If you don't get in under the wire today, be sure to check back to see who's featured next.

If you know of a site you'd like us to consider for the Invite-a-palooza, drop us a note.

UPDATE: We've given away all 100 invitations for today's featured site but check back tomorrrow to see who's up next!

Online applications are great, but what happens when you can't get a connection to the internet? Whether it is because you are on an airplane, or in the middle of nowhere camping, and have to get certain emails, calendar items, or files, you are quite possibly out of luck. Its sure a bummer, and one of the reasons why so many people are hesitant about using online applications for their most important information.

Now Imagine being able to take your online applications, offline, and store that data locally in a completely searchable database? Google is making this possible with Gears. Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide complete offline functionality. Google hopes that developers will use this new toolset to create offline web applications using JavaScript APIs to store and serve the applications resources locally, as well as store data in searchable databases. All of the syncing runs in the background without burning out the browsers memory usage, or slowing anything down.

The Google Gears Beta is currently available for installation on Windows XP,Vista, as well as on Mac and Linux machines. The plug-in works with Firefox 1.5+ and IE 6+. Google's first stop with Gears is Reader, with JavaScript APIs getting released shortly for data storage for use in applications like Docs and Spreadsheets.

The official Google Gears announcement will be made tomorrow to over 5,000 developers at Google's Developer Day gathering.

There's no shortage of CMS or "portal" building tools out there. Drupal is one I've come to trust and its feature set is hard to beat. But many require a certain amount of heavy lifting or at least tweaking to get running. Enter Geeklog-- a so-called "portal in a box," or to hear them say it, "The Ultimate Weblog System." I don't know about ultimate, but I will say the installation and configuration process is pretty darn simple. The most cumbersome aspect will be creating a SQL database (wish I had a nickel for every time I've said that). After you've got your database mojo, it's a straight shot to unpack and install and start working.

Geeklog is no slouch in the added functions, as there are apparently a large number of plugins and add-ons. It's not all sunshine and roses, as there are limited templates and the usual quirks and gotchas. Linux.com has an excellent review, and brief guide to getting started. Geeklog might not be everything you've been looking for, but if you want something quick and dirty (and at some point, don't we all?), it might be a good fit. I should mention they're working to improve the tool by using bounties: a small sum paid to developers (courtesy of sponsor AOE media GmbH) for implementing user-requested features. So with any luck, Geeklog will flourish in the coming months.

[thank Dolores for sending this in!]

Like many web developers, I use MySQL constantly. Sure I can just use the command line, but it is faster to use some kind of graphical client with a decent UI. There are many out there, but my favorite for a while was MySQL's own MySQL Control Center (which has now been discontinued for a while). The replacement for Control Center is Administrator, and I am just not a big fan of it. I loved Control Center because it allowed query browsing and database management, and you'd be hard-pressed to find both features in Administrator which is why I don't like it as much. There are third-party alternatives as well, many of which are not free, which is a sticking point for me? Why, because I am cheap. I currently use (and love) SQLyog community edition (free and full-featured).

Oracle also has a SQL development client, called SQL Developer (oddly enough). They just upgraded it in fact. Now it does easy import and export data in many popular formats. Not retyping all that data, priceless. Oracle's client will manage MySQL, SQL, and Oracle databases, which is rare to find a free tool that handles all three.

I will stick to SQLyog for my database management needs however, since Oracle's java-based solution needs to be configured to work with MySQL's JDBC drivers apparently. Often I don't have the time to install third party drivers, and configure them, that is what a client should be responsible for. Ease of use, and dummy-proofing your app, even more priceless.

MySQL's VP of community relations Kaj Arno's he explains in his blog that MySQL has changed its license from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2 only", so MySQL doesn't have to be forced to use the GPLv3, which as you know is not so widely adopted yet. MySQL may very well move to the new v3 license once it becomes more commonplace, but for now, they don't want to put users and developers in a tight spot with a new license, so they are opting to use the older version exclusively for now. Seems like a good move to stay put but help with the future license progress as well.

[Via Slashdot]

I've never actually heard of SQLyog before (even though it claims to be the "most popular MySQL GUI for the last 4 years"), but its web site is making a big deal out of the fact that this GUI front-end for MySQL is now open source, ergo free, and I certainly won't complain about there being more free MySQL front-ends in the world. To be fair, it's the "Community Edition" that's gone OSS--Enterprise will still cost you--but it does tout a solid feature set, including a favorites manager, a tabbed query/result set editor, SQL templates, export to CSV/XML/HTML, user management, and more. With the recent death of MySQL-Front, SQLyog is a very welcome addition to the open source family.

YouTube is on a quest to add a massive music video library to its extremely popular online database of videos, and is asking major labels to work with them. YouTube has been in talks with major record labels about posting their archives of music videos in their service. This is a drastic, but reasonable move away from a site where people share their own videos, moving towards a more mainstream approach providing professional content.

The co-founder of YouTube Steve Chen spoke about how in 12-18 months he would like to have every music video ever created accessible on YouTube. The big way that YouTube will differentiate themselves is to offer the service for free, and not charge like much of their competition (iTunes, AOL, Google and Yahoo) does.