HROUG: Newsletter from O'Reilly UG Program, August 24
Hazel
Hi there—
O'Reilly's created a brand new website devoted to the topics in
our new book Beautiful
Code.
We're looking for sites that fit the spirit of Beautiful Code.
Send us a link so we can blog about it.
If you live in the Boston Area, make sure you sign up to attend Ignite
Boston 2 on September 6. The first one was such a success we've decided to
do it again.
Be on the lookout for two new Web 2.0 related titles: Programming Collective
Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications and Web 2.0: A Manager's
Guide.
As always, I'm looking for Amazon and Slashdot reviewers for
these titles or any of our new releases. Are you or someone you know interested?
Just send me an email with your choices and we'll ship them out.
If you would prefer to receive this email in text instead of HTML, drop
me a line.
—Marsee
In this issue:
- O'Reilly UG Program News—Just for User Group Leaders
- New Releases
- Upcoming Events
- Conference News
- News from O'Reilly & Beyond
O'Reilly UG Program News—Just for User Group Leaders
August 24, 2007
Put Up a Banner Get a Free Book
We're looking for user groups to display our discount banners on their web sites. If you send me your group's site with one or more banners, I'll send you the O'Reilly book(s) of your choice. Choose from the following list:- RailsConf Europe
- School of Technology Banners
- 35% off User Group Discount Banner
- Make Magazine Banners
- Craft Magazine Banners
O'Reilly News for User Group Members
August 24,
2007
New Releases: Books, Short Cuts, and Rough Cuts
Get 35% off from O'Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, PC Publishing,
Pragmatic Bookshelf, Rocky Nook, SitePoint, or YoungJin books you purchase
directly from O'Reilly.
Just use code "DSUG" when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938.
Free ground shipping on orders of $29.95 or more. See details.
Did you know you can request a free book or PDF to review for your group? Ask your group leader for more information.
For book review writing tips and suggestions, go to: http://ug.oreilly.com/bookreviews.html
New Releases: Books, Short Cuts, and Rough Cuts:
- 3ds Max 9.0 (Young Jin)
- The Artist's Guide to GIMP Effects (No Starch)
- The Book of Qt 4 (No Starch)
- Designing Web Navigation
- Dynamic Learning: Flash CS3 Professional
- FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual
- Forbidden LEGO (No Starch)
- Google in Education
- Head First SQL
- iPhone: The Missing Manual
- JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook, Second Edition
- Learning PHP & MySQL, Second Edition
- The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Idea Book (No Starch)
- MAKE: Technology on Your Time Volume 11 ()
- Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual
- The Nikon D200 Dbook (Hard Cover) (Rocky Nook)
- The Nikon D80 Dbook (Hard Cover) (Rocky Nook)
- Photoshop Lightroom Adventure
- Pragmatic Unit Testing in C# with NUnit, Second Edition (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
- Programming Collective Intelligence
- Security Power Tools
- SOA in Practice
- Visualizing Data: Rough Cuts Version
- Windows Vista Accelerated (Young Jin)
MAKE Magazine Subscriptions
The annual subscription price for four issues is $34.95. When you subscribe with this link, you'll get a free issue--one plus four more for $34.95. So subscribe for yourself or friends with this great offer for UG Members: five volumes for the cost of four.Subscribe at: http://www.makezine.com/go/ugsub
Craft Magazine Subscriptions
The annual subscription price for four issues is $34.95. When you subscribe with this link, you'll get a free issue--the first one plus four more for $34.95. So subscribe for yourself or friends with this great offer for charter subscribers: five volumes for the cost of four.Subscribe at: http://www.craftzine.com/go/craftug
Upcoming Events
For more events, please see: events.oreilly.com
| O'Reilly Authors at No Fluff Just Stuff eXchange 2007 |
| Aug 29-31, 2007 |
| London, England |
| NFJS eXchange 2007 will feature over 50 sessions covering core Java,
Enterprise Java, Web Services, Open Source Technology, Architecture, and
Agile Software Development. The NFJS eXchange is a technically focused
event, which is vendor free and offers a limited attendance model ensuring
a great deal of interaction between speakers and attendees. Come learn
from industry experts and from each other, see real world case studies and
delve into hands-on code examples. Features Scott Davis(JBoss at Work: A
Practical Guide and GIS for Web
Developers), Ted Neward (C# in a Nutshell,
Second Edition and Shared Source
CLI Essentials), and Venkat Subramaniam (Practices of an
Agile Developer and .NET
Gotchas). O'Reilly readers get a free Nintendo Wii when booking a
ticket! Just quote NFJS-ORE644. |
| O'Reilly at Photoshop World Expo |
| Sep 6-8, 2007 |
| Mandalay Bay Convention Center Las Vegas, NV |
| This conference brings together photographers, designers, artists,
educators, motion graphics designers, and Photoshop users of every kind
for a three-day Photoshop love fest of training, learning, and fun. Stop
by the O'Reilly booth (# 220) to say hi, and pick up some great new books.
|
| Ignite Boston 2! |
| Sep 6, 2007 |
| Hurricane O'Reillys, 150 Canal St. Boston, MA |
| Mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies
from the greater Boston area. We've picked a venue that is more
acoustically-oriented and should allow everyone to hear what's going on.
And we are planning to mix-up the format a little. There will be some
short "launches," followed by lightening talks, and a couple of other
ideas that we will inform you of in the coming weeks. Let's show our tech
colleagues around the country that Boston/Cambridge have a vibrant tech
community that gets involved in talking about cool new technologies and
ideas. Not to mention that it's a social event to get to know other
developers in the area.
If you plan to attend, email IgniteBoston at oreilly dot com for the
chance to win $300 worth of O'Reilly books of your choosing. You must be
present to win. |
| Steve Souders at The 2007 Rich Web Experience |
| Sep 6-8, 2007 |
| San Jose, CA |
| Author Steve Souders (High
Performance Web Sites) will be presenting a workshop titled "High
Performance Web Sites with Tenni Theurer." Yahoo!'s Exceptional
Performance team has identified 14 best practices for making web pages
faster through a series of research studies on Yahoo!'s properties. These
guidelines focus on the front end, for example, why it's bad to use
"@import" for including stylesheets and why ETags disable browser caching.
These best practices have proven to reduce response times of Yahoo!
properties by 25-50%. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 11-13, 2007 |
| Sheraton LA Downtown, 711 South Hope St. Los Angeles, CA |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 11-13, 2007 |
| Doubletree Market Center, 2015 Market Ctr. Blvd Dallas, TX |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time. |
| Derrick Story and Mikkel Aaland at the Sonoma County Book Festival |
| Sep 15, 2007 |
| Old Courthouse Square Santa Rosa, CA |
| Authors Mikkel Aaland (Photoshop
Lightroom Adventure and Photoshop
CS2 RAW) and Derrick Story (Digital Photography
Hacks and Digital
Photography Pocket Guide, 3rd Ed.) discuss "Photography Publishing
Opportunities in the Digital Age" at the Eighth Annual Sonoma County Book
Festival. |
| RailsConf Europe |
| Sep 17-19, 2007 |
| Berlin, Germany |
| Get on board with the latest Rails developments and hang out with the
experts and other Rails fans making it all happen. Co-presented by Ruby
Central and O'Reilly Media. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 18, 2007 |
| Orlando Science Center, 777 E. Princeton St. Orlando, FL |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 18-20, 2007 |
| Fort Mason Center San Francisco, CA |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time. |
| Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene at PMI Mass Bay |
| Sep 20, 2007 |
| Boston, MA |
| Head
First PMP authors Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene talk
through the ways that software projects fail, using the signature humor
and insight in the acclaimed "Head First" series. There's an old saying:
"There's only one way to succeed, but a million ways to fail." But that
saying just isn't true when it comes to software projects. As it turns
out, there are a small number of ways that projects fail, and they'll
sound eerily familiar to any project manager, software engineer or
programmer who's been around for more than a few years. Many software
projects that started out as a small, stopgap utility turn into raging
behemoths, sucking seemingly unlimited time from your programmers. Or the
president of your company announced that your project will be done this
week, even though you know that it still has an enormous number of bugs.
Or your team delivered the software, only to have users complain that an
entire feature is missing. Or every time the team fixes a bug, they seem
to uncover a dozen more?including ones that you know were fixed six months
ago. Once you know how projects fail, you can do what you need to do to
keep them on track. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 25-27, 2007 |
| Grand Hotel, 615 Second Ave. South Minneapolis, MN |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time. |
| Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3" |
| Sep 25-27, 2007 |
| Sutton Place, 955 Bay St. Toronto |
| Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of
Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to
bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training
videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips
and tricks that can save you hours of time.
|
Conference News
Registration is Open for RailsConf
EuropeSeptember 17-19, 2008
Berlin, Germany
Use code "re07usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the early registration price.
ETel 2008
call for participation is now openThe O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference is happening March 3-4, 2008. We welcome plenary submissions for our audience of people who, like you, are pushing through the boundaries of communications into new ways of thinking and doing. Topics will be centered around the innovations and projects occurring at the intersection of voice, instant messaging, the mobile ecosystem, and the Web. Submit a proposal to speak at ETel. Proposals are due September 17.
O'Reilly's inaugural Money:Tech
Conference has been announcedThe dates are February 6-7, 2008 in New York City. That's right, in the heart of the financial universe, New York, NY, Money:Tech will raise the level of conversation around technology advances in the investment industry, and bring together innovators with established players to increase adoption and awareness and push the technology forward. Learn more about Money:Tech
News from O'Reilly & Beyond
General News
Ignite Boston 2!
September 6
Attention all New Englanders?-here's a heads-up that
we're having a second Ignite Boston on Thursday, September 6, from 6 to 10pm at
Hurricane O'Reillys. Yes that's right, Hurricane O'Reillys at 150 Canal St,
Boston, MA. No, it's not Tim's office after FOO Camp. We've picked a venue that
is more acoustically-oriented and should allow everyone to hear what's going on.
And we are planning to mix-up the format a little. There will be some short
"launches," followed by lightening talks, and a couple of other ideas.
What is O'Reilly Editor Andy Oram Up to These Days?
Andy continues
his research into the free documentation written by users. Recent articles on
the topic include Why
Do People Write Free Documentation? which analyzes the results of an
O'Reilly survey answered by over 350 respondents, and How to
Help Mailing Lists Help Readers which finds interesting results concerning
how many questions get answered on mailing lists and how long the list members
spend on questions. Andy presented his results at the July 2007 Open Source
convention in Portland, OR. For more information or to read Andy's articles, go
to praxagora.com.
The Watering
Hole
A weekly comic poking fun at O'Reilly and the technology
industry in general. Think of it as User Friendly with animals.
DIY
O'Reilly Gear
Create Your Own Calendar, Shirt, Notebook, Poster...In
just three easy steps you can create one of a kind calendars, greeting cards,
keychains, luggage tags, magnets, mousepads, mugs, notebooks, postcards,
posters, shirts, hoodies, and stickers adorned with your favorite O'Reilly
animals. Create yours now!
Top 5 Blog posts on the O'Reilly Network:
M.
David Peterson--Dear WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com
Carla
Schroder--Linux Journal: the Last Idiot's Club
Jeremy
Jones--Is Firefox on Mac Unusable?
Joshua
Scott Emmons--Bad Thurrott==Good Design
Carla
Schroder--Dear Linux Journal: News Flash--Women Are People
O'Reilly School of
Technology Courses: UG Members Receive a 30% Discount
O'Reilly School
of Technology has opened its virtual doors with educational offerings and
certification for IT students looking to further their careers or to launch one.
As an O'Reilly User Group member, you save on all the courses in the following
University of Illinois Certificate Series:
- Linux/Unix System Administration
- Web Programming
- Open Source Programming
- .NET Programming
- Client-Side Web Programming featuring AJAX
Open Source
Cookin' with
Ruby on Rails
Bill Walton, well known for his "Rolling with Ruby on
Rails Revisited" tutorials, is back with a new series that takes Rails to the
next level.
Introduction
to Flex Using PHP
Flex is Adobe's next-generation platform of
deploying browser-based applications. Jack Herrington provides us with an
introduction to Flex, by showing us how to integrate it with a PHP-based
backend.
Mono:
A Progress Report
Mono has always been a bit of an outsider. Open
source folks distrust it because it helps people use Microsoft technologies on
non-Microsoft platforms. Microsoft people don't see the need for it. But this
social outcast has been making steady progress and can offer a lot if you take
the time to check it out. Edd Dumbill gives us an update on the state of Mono.
Digital Media
iLife
'08 for Aperture Users with Joe Schorr
Apple recently released iLife
'08 with a truckload of goodies for Aperture users. In this podcast, Joe Schorr
tells you how to use some of these new tools and discusses the latest Aperture
update (1.5.4).
Thinking
Camera, Lens, Lightroom before taking the shot--George Mann's
Blog
When I saw this scene in front of me, I realized that it was
going to be very difficult to get what I was seeing. For one it was very dark
and I was standing on a very narrow and slippery ledge between the lichen
encrusted ruins of Banteay Kdei (Angkor, Cambodia) and the jungle. I didn't have
a tripod with me but it was doubtful that I could have gotten the angle I was
after even if I had one anyway (where is that Gitzo ladder tripod when you
really need one).
Highlight
and Shadow Recovery in Harsh Light--Derrick Story's Blog
Nothing like
a midday August wedding to strike fear into the heart of this digital
photographer. Harsh sun, sparse shade, black suits, white gowns, black skin,
white skin ? often all in the same shot. This is a situation where you have to
shoot Raw and thank goodness for the Highlight and Shadow recovery sliders in
Aperture. I have lots of tricks for dealing with bad lighting (find shade
whenever possible, fill flash, reflectors, etc.), but as you know, sometimes
clients say, "We don't have time to walk over there; let's just take the shot
here." Horror. "Not here!" I think. "This is the last place on the planet I want
to take this shot."
Mac/Apple
The
Good Easy on OS X
Giles Turnbull examines Mark Hurst's "Good Easy"
productivity tools and methods for Macs. Giles spoke with the author of "Bit
Literacy" about his philosophy and choices for simplifying computing.
Understanding
Exceptions and Handlers in Cocoa
Learn how to use Cocoa to build an
exception handling system. This article shows the classes and keywords needed,
how to prepare and raise a Cocoa exception, as well as how to intercept and
process the exception.
Microsoft/.NET
Build
Dynamic Database Applications in .NET with Project Codename "Jasper"
Instead of moving to Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET developers might
consider Project Codename "Jasper" and the growing number of .NET dynamic
languages. In this article, you'll learn how to use Jasper.
Introduction
to JavaFX Script
In this article, Anghel Leonard give us a
walkthrough of JavaFX Script, the syntax, several examples, and usage within
Eclipse and NetBeans.
Head First
Big Head Photo
Contest Ends this month
Brain packed full of Head First learning?
Show us! Send in a photo of yourself in the Head First "Big Head" style (like on
the covers of our books). At the end of August, we'll pick our favorite one and
send the winner a free Head First T-Shirt and their pick of $200 in O'Reilly
books. We might put the picture inside our next Head First book. If it's cool
enough, we might even use it on the cover.
New Forums
for Head First SQL
Head First SQL is at the Printers. And now you can
chat with the author and other SQL readers at our new forums.
Web
Inside Adobe's onAIR
Summer Bus Tour
FOOs and O'Reilly Folk Hit the Road. Read our blog
posts, tips, photos, dates, and more.
Nifty
Navigation Using CSS
Navigation is the key to surfing the Web, and
in this collection of ready-made solutions Rachel steps us through horizontal
and vertical menus, drop-down, fly-out, and tabbed navigation systems.
Microformats:
More Meaning from your Markup
Hidden on many pages of the Web are
tiny packets of information -- people, places, events, and more. You and I can
read them, but they're invisible to machines. Imagine the possibilities if that
information became visible to other sites and applications! In this article,
Brian shows how the addition of microformats to your web site markup can open up
a whole new raft of possibilities.
OSCON
2007 Coverage: High Performance Web Pages
Matthew Eernisse covers
O'Reilly author Steve Souders (High Performance Web sites
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514211/index.html) session at OSCON in
Portland this year.
Marsee Henon
http://ug.oreilly.com/ http://ug.oreilly.com/creativemedia/