Gnuplot can generate sophisticated graphs and output them in vector or bitmap image formats. It can produce many graph types, and you can customize the way the output will look to a great extent. But the customizability of gnuplot can work against it when all you want a simple line graph comparing two series of data points. In those cases, gplot lets you use gnuplot to create simple graphs using more semantic options to customize the appearance of common graph objects.

Squid Graph is a Perl script that takes your Squid proxy server access.log file and generates a Web page showing you statistics about your proxy accesses and transfers, including the number of cache hits and the percentage of requests that were served by the cache alone. With Squid Graph you can see how well tweaks to your Squid configuration are working.

I wrote this article for TechTarget about the fabulous Web Wizard and its uses for mass PDF conversion and quick web publishing of existing documents. It's a great feature that bears re-posting about. It's also really, really not obvious.

While you can create and save documents in the OpenDocument format using OpenOffice.org, KWord, or AbiWord, there are other ways to generate ODF files. odtwriter, for example, can help you to quickly convert plain text files formatted using reStructured Text markup into odt (OpenOffice.org Writer-compatible ODF) documents.

Turning plain data into shiny graphs similar to Visual Thesaurus and Visuwords doesn't only make them look good: it also allows you to visualize connections between different data bits and makes it more fun to explore them. The problem is that creating such graphs can often require three things not all of us have: programming knowledge, time, and money.

"Brad Fitzpatrick’s Thoughts on the Social Graph few weeks ago ignited a spark in the blogosphere. The quest for a simple, neutral protocol for portability of your data (and relationships) and identity management is nothing new.

On their blogs, Matt Asay and Savio Rodrigues are discussing whether IBM is using open source to diminish competitor margins. I think it is obvious that IBM does this, most notably with its Linux engagement, which is squarely directed against Microsoft (Windows). It is what I call a war over the share of customer’s wallet, and open source plays a major role. The graph below shows how it works.

"...Let me repeat. People don't create links to server software; they create links to information. Service Oriented Architectures are about creating links to software. Resource Oriented Architectures are about creating links to information. Change your frame of reference."

The important aspect of graphing is that it enables a busy administrator to evaluate a server visually, often making more sense than strings of data. NagiosGrapher is a tool that you can use with Nagios to graph information that you want to evaluate as an administrator. This tutorial will show you how to install NagiosGrapher in preparation for the data to be graphed.