Below is a quick run-down of what I’ve seen out there. What are you using?

Zen-Cart
Well-known and well used, with years of development behind it and an active community of developers and supporters. Powerful features, integrates with any number of payment gateways, and plenty of free add-ons/modules available, but still very old school looking. Will it ever get to Zen Cart 2.0?

UberCart
 Due to its integration with Drupal, UberCart seems to be taking off with a lot of developers. Allows for custom product fields, anonymous checkout, and one-page checkout.

VirtueMart
All the standard features you’d expect, but like UberCart and Drupal, VirtueMart’s main virtue seems to be its integration with Joomla and Mambo.

Magento
One of the most attractive packages out of the box, with the ability to manage multiple stores under one admin. Paid support available. Still very new, just out of beta, I’ve heard mixed reviews of how ready-for-primetime this software is yet.

PrestaShop
Just ran across this European offering, with a neat, easy-to-understand backend admin. Doesn’t seem to have a lot of payment gateways supported as of yet.

That missing feature was being open source. With that checked off, I expect adoption to pick up and for Connector development to pick up rapidly.

I’ve always thought Connector would make a great extended family address book. It’s just about time to find out.

[1] I still want to use my trusted iCal, Mail, Address Book, Finder combo – with Connector synching things up in the background. I prefer to use Connector – and all browser-based productivity apps as a point of reference, not a point of origin.

• Adobe Illustrator. Of course, this is the one Adobe is trying to hook us all up with. “AI has a great personality” they say. I’m not buying it*. It’s just the ugly, mean step-sister of Freehand, IMHO. (* And by that, I mean, yea, I probably will buy it at some point. Can’t live with out the CS suite, right?)
• Inkscape. Open source! I want to love this one, and have been fooling around with it on the side even while I was committed to Freehand. It has a lot of potential. It’s no where near Freehand’s level at this point, but seems to have a lot of momentum–some great features on the horizon based on the Inkscape Roadmap include: PDF export, AI import, CorelDraw import, CMYK support (!!), multi-page (not sure what that means, but hope it’s like Freehands multi-page support), and some tech-drawing enhancements.
• LineForm. LineForm is a new player on the field, and seems to have a lot of Buzz and a robust feature set (according to their handy chart). OSX only.
• Stone Works’ Create. Stone Design was one of the first companies to offer OSX-native DTP applications. Alas, I’ve never heard much about their programs. They do suffer from some horrendous application icons, but the promise of ‘free upgrades for life’ seem to outweigh that minor issue.
• Corel Draw. Corel Draw was always the 3rd place finisher behind AI and FH. That said, it seems to have a very loyal fan base. They no longer offer OSX versions (maybe the death of FH will get them to reconsider?) but it’s definitely a mature product. It also comes with a large font library, which is always nice. It also seems to have a little-mentioned ability to create fonts. Huh.
• Xara Xtreme. I don’t know a lot about Xara, other than I hear it suggested often when the topic of alternatives to Freehand pop-up. Windows only.
• Canvas. Another application I don’t know much about, but hear mentioned quite a bit. Comes in both OSX and Windows flavors. It also appears to have custom feature sets targetting cartographers and tech illustrators.

If you’ve used any of the above, please share your thoughts. If I’ve missed any, please mention them!

Update:  Thanks for the comments thus far. I have a few more potential options to add:

• Cenon. Jesse mentioned this open source option in the comments below. It appears to be a bit more CAD/CAM centric moreso than DTP centric, but, that said, it does have a Desktop Publishing module, so it’s likely worth a look-see. Interestingly, it also has a dedicated Astrology tool. I imagine that’s fairly unique in the vector illustration world. ;o)
• Microsoft Expression Design. I had completely forgotten about Microsoft new weapon in the Adobe vs. Microsoft wars. The Expression line of products is based on software MS aquired about 2 years ago. It comes in a couple of flavors (‘Web’ being DreamWeaver’s opponent) and Design is the one focused on vector illustration (amongst other features).

Currently I have no site of of my own. I used to host JakeFreeberg.com off a machine at home, but that’s just a bad solution. It allowed me to play with WordPress and MovableType installs and learn a few things, I really need to put some cash down and get myself a real web host.

I’m posting here in with the hope that someone here will recommend the perfect hosting solution for my needs, which I will list below:

• It need to be affordable (None of what I plan to do with it will generate any revenue, but I am willing to sign up for a 2 year term and pay upfront if it’s a really good deal)
• I’d like to start a new WordPress Blog at Jakefreeberg.com
• I’d like to do a Drupal install with the hopes of building a site for a friend of mine who’s running for chair of an organization.
• Both of the above require PHP and MySQL databases.
• I’ve already purchased a .mn domain name for that campaign and need name server hosting to point that domain at the Drupal install.
• I’ll most likely end up hosting other domains in the future and I’d like to have the ability to host many domains within this same account.
• Knowledgeable, friendly telephone-based technical support is important
• Easy to use Tools that allow me to manage file permissions, email, domains, etc.
• I will probably end up hosting some video and audio which will require a lot of server space.

Things that I don’t care as much about:

• Bandwidth (I probably won’t be getting that many hits)
• Microsoft Server Software (I’ll avoid ASP and .Net)
• Email accounts (most people have a half dozen already, but forwarding would be nice)
• E-Commerce (If I sold anything I’d probably send people through Paypal or something)

So that’s about it.

I’m wondering who people have used, and what they’ve like and disliked about the services.

All help will be appreciated.

My company is hiring.

I’m particularly keen to see the Web Designer position filled by someone with IA and usability interests and skills.

Feel free to contact me privately at peter at peknet.com about my experience at Atomic Learning.

Another new option I just ran across is aptana. Aptana is still in beta, but already looks quite promising. It’s an open source port of the Eclips JAVA IDE designed specifically for ‘web 2.0′ HTML, CSS, and Javascript, with PHP support coming.

The MacBook is great, and has that nice built-in iSight camera. Fun! Alas, I can’t record any video on it. Why is that? Well, as usual, that feature is only available if I fork out a few bucks and pay for QT Pro. What’s the deal with QT Pro? Are they a separate business unit and only get funding from whoever actually pays for the license? Why does Apple give us this fully featured multi-media laptop with plenty of bundled software but then expect us to fork out an additional $30? I don’t know.

Apparently, I’m not the only one annoyed by this. Amateur is an open source project attempting to write a free, uncrippled clone of QT Pro. They haven’t gotten around to adding video recording yet, but I will be paying attention to this project.

While I’m at it, here are some other random links. I’ve been woefully lacking in my blog postings as of late. Hopefully this will make up for it a bit. ;o)

I think I’ve mentioned this one before but never got around to downloading it. Seashore is a Mac OSX-ified version of The Gimp.

Not open source, but RapidWeaver appears to be a bit of a clone of (what else) DreamWeaver and Apple’s own iWeb.

Logopond is just like a (not original) idea I had to start a free version of logolounge. I, of course, was too lazy to build that site which is probably for the best, as logopond has done a very nice job. Sign up and show off your logos.

Songbird appears to be progressing along nicely. Songbird is a mozilla based replacement for MP3 players like iTunes. Not only is it shaping up to be a great app, it also has the unique honor of the Open Source project with the greated logo ever: a farting bird. Koshi, also does a commendable job with weekly illustrations featuring said farting bird. A fun blog to watch.

The idea that giving ideas away for free was in some way detrimental to business success. That in fact, sharing is worse than not.

My problem with that perspective is that I also believe:

“…value is in creating the thing, not simply having the idea.” – Brad Feld

It doesn’t matter how many ideas for cool applications and tools I have (there’s a lot) if I don’t launch them. Even if I did launch them, they might not be launched in a way that makes sense for your situation.

This is the benefit of open source projects. When they launch, they solve a specific problem that one group of people have. By making the application freely available, the ideas within it influence the derivations (making the original application more valuable). Otherwise, you’re demanding the rest of the world to reinvent the wheel – just to solve a slightly different problem. That seems pretty snotty.

For comparison, TadaList & Sproutliner.

TadaList is a tiered-access hosted browser-based to do list application by 37Signals.
Sproutliner is an open source, install yourself browser-based to do list application.

Basically the same idea (browser-based to do lists) built by 2 different groups of people to meet the needs of 2 different audiences.

I’ve been having this tools discussion with many of my colleagues lately, (local and virtual). Well the a really good (and might I add free) solution was right under my nose.

It’s called NeoOffice. It is an incarnation of something called OpenOffice which Sun contributes to the creation of as they are very good community and open source supporters and contributors. I started using OpenOffice, but it requires x11 and it’s slow. I found NeoOffice about 4 months into my employment and was thrilled, but didn’t think it would make sense as a tool. I found out I was wrong.

So it’s free, it’s compatible with Microsoft Office and it’s for Macs. It can also do html pretty well, so you might be able to ditch your Dreamweaver too. !

Go get it: http://www.neooffice.org/