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pat eyler

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Aug 25, 2007, 2:57:32 PM8/25/07
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Just a bit of extra info for those of you who are interested.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Marsee Henon < mar...@oreilly.com>
Date: Aug 24, 2007 6:01 PM
Subject: Newsletter from O'Reilly UG Program, August 24
To: pat....@gmail.com

If you cannot read the information below, click here.

Hi there—

viguy 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
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:

O'Reilly News for User Group Members
August 24, 2007

New Releases: Books, Short Cuts, and Rough Cuts

bookGet 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:


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

O'Reilly RailsConf Europe Registration is Open for RailsConf Europe
September 17-19, 2008
Berlin, Germany
Use code "re07usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the early registration price.

O'Reilly ETel 2008 ETel 2008 call for participation is now open
The 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 Money:Tech Conference O'Reilly's inaugural Money:Tech Conference has been announced
The 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
To redeem, use Promotion Code "ORALL1," good for a 30% discount, in Step #3 of the enrollment process. Each course comes with a free O'Reilly book and a 7-day money-back guarantee. Register online.

Open Source

Hawk 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

lizard 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

IrishSetter 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

Tuna 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

sql-girl 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

bees 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.

Until next time—
Marsee Henon

O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472
http://ug.oreilly.com/   http://ug.oreilly.com/creativemedia/


--
thanks,
-pate
-------------------------
   Duty makes us do things, Love make us do things well.
http://on-ruby.blogspot.com       http://on-erlang.blogspot.com
          http://on-soccer.blogspot.com

staff-gmail

unread,
Aug 28, 2007, 10:24:04 PM8/28/07
to ur...@googlegroups.com
pat eyler wrote:
> Be on the lookout for two new Web 2.0 related titles: Programming
> Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
> <http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596529321/>

I'd be interested in reviewing this one.

John

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