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Project News for Cybera - Cyber cafe administration

  • New Cybera release 1.9

    Cybera Project has just come out with release 1.9.
    This should be a stable long term release, anyone running previous versions of Cybera should consider upgrading to 1.9.

    2006-12-10 03:32:59 PST by smonsarr

  • New Cybera release: 1.9.rc3

    Cybera Project (Cyber Cafe Administration system) has just come out with release 1.9.rc3. This should be the last release candidate before the final 1.9 version.
    The main changes of this version are:
    - Updated GUI icons
    - New Dutch translation
    - Many small changes and bug fixes that should make Cybera a lot more robust.
    Anyone running previous versions of Cybera should consider upgrading to 1.9.rc3.
    Please see the changelog at:
    http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=439476&group_id=121074
    for more details.

    2006-08-15 11:17:04 PDT by smonsarr

  • Cybera context & history

    Hi all,

    Well, it has been 4 months since cybera 1.9.rc1 came out, and lately I have been getting worried mails asking when the next release was due. Have no fear, here it is!
    The main reason behind the longer period between the two releases is that I have a real job that is taking up more of my time now. I started Cybera in 2004 when working full time in Africa as a technical assistant to local NGOs. In that capacity, the development of Cybera was part of my job and I could spend a lot of time on it.
    This is no longer the case now that I am back in Europe and have gone back to my main job in IT R&D.
    This means that from now on I will be spending much less time on Cybera and more making a living. This also means that any time I do spend on Cybera will come out of my spare time, so I need to juggle Cybera and having a private familly life :)

    When I published Cybera as a sourceforge project it was mostly in order to provide a simple (well not so simple any more) cyber cafe management system for small cyber cafes. In developing countries, cyber cafes are appearing but the general business model is bad because 1) fixed overhead is generally very high (electricity, phone bills, etc), 2) competition plentiful and 3) technical knowledge, so crucial for maintenance is either non existant or provided at extortionate prices. The bottom line is that, in my experience of Burkina Faso, investing lagre amounts of money in the software needed to run the cyber cafe is not realistic. For this reason I published Cybera as open source. This said, I also activated the Sourceforge donation system and any donations made to the project (none have been made to date) will be entirely used in aid of the original Cybera user: Association Tin Tua.
    Cybera was developed in Burkina Faso, West Africa for a local NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) called Tin Tua (www.tintua.org) wishing to facilitate the access to information for the young.
    In small and medium African towns, Internet access is as expensive as slow... if existent at all. Only people working for companies or big NGOs have Internet access. People get information through the governmental TV, radios and more rarely newspapers. Young rural Africans are often excluded from the Web and have no idea of the amount of information and knowledge available. In order to train the young in the usage of new technology, Tin Tua decided in 2004, with the financial help of a Canadian NGO ( http://www.2tiers.org) to build cyber cafes. These are equipped with 4 to 7 second hand computers and a young manager running the business and training people. When looking of Internet cafe software I found that most were expensive and not adapted to the local context so I developed Cybera (since October 2004). Presently, Tin Tua is running 2 cybercafes and would like to open another in a very small town called Bilanga in the north east of Burkina Faso. Any donations to Cybera will be used to help fit out this and subsequent Cyber cafes.

    2006-02-21 08:28:41 PST by smonsarr

  • Cybera release 1.9.rc2 is out !

    Download and enjoy!

    Here is a list of the main additions:

    * Added prepaid Self service session mode: the manager directly recharges a workstation with a given recharge. The session works exactly like a client or card session except that remaining prepaid time cannot be kept.
    * Added an "Unlimited" flag to recharges. Unlimited recharges enable one to provide Cards and Client accounts (not self-service sessions) with unlimited usage for a given validity period (in days, weeks, months, years).
    * Added a new post-paid billing mode: Time based billing. In this mode an ordered list of selected recharges is used as a base. The system is given a base time increment and a minimum billed time and calculates the bill using these two times and the list of selected recharges.
    * Added a new post-paid billing mode: Simple sequential recharge billing. In this mode Cybera applies all the post-paid recharges in order from shortest to longest time. Should the session run further that the longest recharge, the system continues to increment the bill by specified time increments using the last recharge time/price ratio. This is now the default post-paid billing mode for new installations.

    Full change log:

    Cybera Server:
    New functionality:

    * Added prepaid Self service session mode: the manager directly recharges a workstation with a given recharge. The session works exactly like a client or card session except that remaining prepaid time cannot be kept.
    * Enhanced workstation list info: tooltips now show remaining time/amount due and session type.
    * Added better recharge typing: You can now specify which session type a given recharge is for (Card, Client, Prepaid self service, Postpaid self service).
    * Added finer recharge validity settings: you can now set the validity from 1 to 30 days, weeks, months, years.
    * Changed currency formatting settings: the format now contains </currSymbol> that is replaced by the given symbol, this enables formats that put the symbol before the amount such as the £.
    * Added event logging levels, by default only important events used by stats will be added to the events table, it is possible to start Cybera Server with the following two command line switches: -e:v (verbose) and -e:a (even more verbose) in order to increase event logging detail. The default setting will diminish the amount of data in the database and will speed up the stats.
    * Added an "Unlimited" flag to recharges. Unlimited recharges enable one to provide Cards and Client accounts (not self-service sessions) with unlimited usage for a given validity period (in days, weeks, months, years).
    * Added ability to sort recharges in Options and in the recharge window by double-clicking a column heading.
    * Added a new post-paid billing mode: Time based billing. In this mode an ordered list of selected recharges is used as a base. The system is given a base time increment and a minimum billed time and calculates the bill using these two times and the list of selected recharges.
    * Added a new post-paid billing mode: Simple sequential recharge billing. In this mode Cybera applies all the post-paid recharges in order from shortest to longest time. Should the session run further that the longest recharge, the system continues to increment the bill by specified time increments using the last recharge time/price ratio. This is now the default post-paid billing mode for new installations.
    * Added post-paid grace period. The admin can specify a grace period which will enable managers to cancel ended post-paid sessions without collecting payment if the session time is smaller that the specified grace period.
    * Optimized card and client list update code: now only modified cards/clients are updated in the GUI. This will speed up the GUI when one has over 2000 elements in the cards or clients lists
    * Added two new user rights: Card creation and client creation. This enables one to create users that cannot add customers but can only manage existing customers.
    * Changed the way database upgrading works: Cybera now upgrades a copy of the DB and only deletes the old version if the upgrade process works fine.
    * Added ability to define the default usage mode (client/card/prepaid).
    * Added button to generate a random number for the client login in the "New Client" form so that one can use cybera clients like password protected Cybera Cards.
    * Extended Client comment to 255 characters and enabled multi-line comments.

    Bug fixes:

    * Fixed bug in workstation view, the displayed elapsed time was the workstation usage time, this was misleading, now it is the true elapsed time (without including paused time etc). The workstation usage time is displayed as a tool tip.
    * Fixed GUI bug in Workstation view in the drop down menu.
    * Fixed GUI bug that could crash the server on form resize (detected under w2k).
    * Fixed GUI bug: the workstation control buttons where not contextualized to the current customer type.
    * Fixed tab stop GUI bugs in Options, user config.
    * Fixed bug in Stats: Internet connection time calculation was off (as well as other stats).
    * Fixed bug in Stats: Session graphs may not have been filled under certain conditions.
    * Fixed bug in About box when it was left displayed for over 56 minutes.
    * Fixed bug in user admin: if no users exist the delete & modify buttons where still active.
    * Fixed GUI bug in Workstation view: If the same workstation had been connected under different credentials (Mac address, NETBIOS name etc) then it was present multiple times in the workstation list.
    * Fixed spelling mistakes in the English and French versions.
    * Command line switches are now case insensitive and can be prefixed with '/' or '-' (ex: /T -k)
    * Fixed bug in session updating for free sessions: previous selfservice sessions where also updated.


    Cybera Workstation:
    New functionality:

    * Added two new command line switches:

    * -s : this hides all status windows while a session is running
    * -c : this disables all session close buttons so that the customer cannot close a running session him/her self.

    Bug fixes:

    * Fixed GUI bug in blocked screen when cards are not enabled, the screen was not reset properly.
    * Fixed bug in self-service mode, the displayed elapsed time was the workstation usage time, this was misleading, now it is the true elapsed time (without including paused time etc). The workstation usage time is displayed as a tooltip.
    * Fixed bug that enabled clicking on the system tray icon at start-up.
    * Changed session end routine: for self-service sessions the end batch file is now run after the customer has paid (once the collect button has been pressed on the server).
    * Fixed GUI bug in status forms in post-paid self-service mode.
    * Fixed bug in About box when it was left displayed for over 56 minutes.
    * Fixed spelling mistakes in the English and French versions.
    * Fixed small focus bugs in message box.
    * Command line switches are now case insensitive and can be prefixed with '/' or '-' (ex: /T -k)
    * Changed the time delay before activating a workstation after 3 unsuccessful connection attempts form 5 to 2 minutes.

    2006-02-21 08:27:41 PST by smonsarr

  • New release 1.9.rc1

    Cybera release 1.9.rc1 is just out!

    The main additions of this release are:
    - New Hungarian translation.
    - Client login lengh is now max 255 caracters.
    - Ability to release workstations user rights when logged in as admin.
    - New -l command line argument on the wokstation, that completely disables user rights lockdown.
    - A lot of bug fixes... see change log for details.

    2005-10-20 11:16:03 PDT by smonsarr