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Offline Until Monday February 6th

I will be away on vacation from January 30th until February 6th. During this time, I will still be able to respond to emails but I may not be in a positon to deal with complex suport enquiries or provide assistance with customisation.

I will not be able to perform software installations or upgrades until the February 6th.

Pixaria Opposes SOPA and PIPA

Today content producers and web users around the world are voicing their opposition to draconian and ill conceived legislation drafted by the US and other governments that could result in the end of the world wide web as we know it.

Wikipedia, Reddit and others are staging an internet blackout on their English language websites and many more are making known their opposition to ever increasing volumes of legislation that place onerous restrictions on the principles of free speech and technology we rely on to communicate.

'Big Content' trade associations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and British Phonographic Industry (BPI) continue to use lobbying and other questionable methods to influence the creation of copyright legislation to suit their purposes without due consideration to the rights and needs of the public who are ultimately their clients. With the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) threatening to alter the security and very infrastructure of the internet solely to satisfy the needs of a wealthy minority, the time has come to make a stand and say 'enough is enough'.

Pixaria Software is strongly opposed to the use of legislation such as SOPA that has been drafted without any consideration to the technological, security and free speech impacts it will have should it become law. Speaking as a producer of commercial software, it's important to recognise that copyright theft can be a significant problem for rights holders. Legal solutions to these issues must however be drafted and implemented in a sane, technically feasible and secure fashion, something SOPA cannot offer as it currently stands.

You can find out more about SOPA and the impact it and similar legislation would have on the future web at these websites:

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Wikipedia
ArsTechnica

Pixaria Software Ltd.

After seven years operating as a sole trader, I'm very happy to announce that Pixaria Software Ltd. is now incorporated as a registered, limited company in England and Wales with registration number 7895095.

Incorporation is an important step in the development of the business and I'm excited to be able to cement my continued commitment to delivering great software products!

Pixaria 3.7 Now Available

Welcome to 2012! To kick off what promises to be an exciting new year, I am delighted to announce the release of Pixaria Gallery and AssetDeck versions 3.7. It's been a longer than usual gap between releases but I've been working hard during this time to add some exciting new features and improvements to the software which I hope will be welcome additions.

For AssetDeck users, the big news in this update is the addition of support for authentication against LDAP servers such as Windows Active Directory or Mac OS X Open Directory. LDAP support can be enabled from the newly updated registration settings control panel where you can configure details of the server such as login credentials, SSL support and the directory distinguished name information. It is possible to link any existing account to LDAP or to allow any valid LDAP users to log in without having to create an account for them in the Pixaria database.

An exciting change to the store functions in version 3.7 is the ability to change the order of products and create categories for grouping products for display. This new addition makes it easier to present your products to customers if you have large numbers of products and want to keep related items listed together.

Responding to a frequent request over the last year, it is now possible to specify five custom fields for new user registrations. As with the existing, built in fields, it is possible to choose whether the fields are requested or required. In addition to the new custom fields, an additional built in field has been added to allow capture of sales tax (VAT/IVA) registration number information.

These are just some of the new features but you will also find many others so before upgrading, please be sure to check the release notes to make sure you're aware of all the changes. Don't forget that, as always, the change log contains details of all the files that have been modified since version 3.5.

Registered users can download the update from the 'My Support' website using a license code and e-mail address. If you do not know your license details, please send an e-mail to [email protected].

Active Directory support coming to Pixaria AssetDeck

One of the most frequent requests that I get in relation to Pixaria AssetDeck is about adding support for authentication against Windows Active Directory and other LDAP servers such as Open Directory on Mac OS X. For digital asset management users in an office or team where login sessions for Windows or Mac OS X are centrally managed, LDAP authentication is crucial because it improves security and means that users only have to remember one username and password combination to access resources managed by the central server.

After conducting extensive testing, I'm pleased to announce that a beta release of support for LDAP authentication will be included in the next version of AssetDeck which will be made available in mid-December. LDAP support has been fully integrated with the user management and login system and it's possible to convert existing users to log in via LDAP or to enable any users with valid credentials to sign in and automatically be assigned an account.

In order to use this new feature, PHP on your Pixaria AssetDeck web server must be able to connect to your LDAP server on the default TCP port 389 (or 636 for SSL connections). If your Pixaria AssetDeck software is installed on a different physical or logical network or isolated by a firewall, then you may need to make special arrangements with your IT department or systems administrator in order to use LDAP authentication. Because of this, LDAP support is best suited to installations on internal intranets rather than public websites.