Open hardware edition! Plus OpenStreetMap and more

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Top 5 articles of the week on Opensource.com

By Urbanzenvia Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 / Modified by Jen Wike Huger

This week, I talk about open hardware components and answer some important questions, plus OpenStreetMap in Nepal, and more.

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Top 5 articles of the week

#5. The future of open source in health IT

This is an interview with Fred Trotter on the current state of open source in healthcare. Fred is a frequent speaker at OSCON and was recently a panelist at the SXSW MedTech Conference. Tony McCormick asks the questions you want to know about electronic records and the work of those in the space like Fred's company Open Source Health, Inc. and others, like DocGraph, VistA, and CareSet.

#4. A tinkerer's tool for PCB design and printing

This story is about fritzing and part of our Open Hardware series. Fritizing is an open source application for hardware and electronics enthusiasts that allows users to create schematics by selecting parts from a large part library, connecting them, and laying them out on a virtual breadboard.

#3. How open source disrupted the CMS market

Alain Veuve, a this at here, says although the software industry is still leading the open source movement, content management systems have played a significant role in paving the way for the influence open source software has today. He breaks it down for us in this timely article.

#2. OpenStreetMap responds in Nepal

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team has been organizing the mapping of disasters on OpenStreetMap, like the earthquake in Nepal this year, since the earthquake in Haiti in 2010. By pinpointing areas in exact locations and what they need, the efforts of first responders like the Red Cross and the United Nations are more efficient and meaningful.

#1. Should I get an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi?

By a wide margin this week, Ruth Suehle's article answering the question of whether electronics and hardware enthusiasts should get an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, hit the top of the list this week with almost 10,000 page views since Tuesday.

Ruth is the co-author with Tom Callaway of the book Raspberry Pi Hacks, so you might think she would be biased one way, but she argues for each one for different reasons. Find out why by reading the full article.

Honorable mention

Staff Open Hardware Day at Opensource.com

To celebrate the greatness that is open hardware, the Opensource.com team gathered once again, as we did last year, for a Staff Open Hardware Day at Red Hat Tower. First, we cracked open our package of components from SparkFun and got to work on a light-up backpack inspired by a project we found on Instructables. Next, with some inspiration from the Raspberry Pi Foundation's Ben Nuttall, we played around with Minecraft Pi on our Raspberry Pi. And, finally, we ended the day with a 3D printing demo from Tom Callaway and his LulzBot open source 3D printer.

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Jen leads a team of community managers for the Digital Communities team at Red Hat. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and daughters, June and Jewel.

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