O’Reilly News for User Group Members: March 5, 2009

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:

• 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know
• Adobe Illustrator CS4 One-on-One
• Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
• Apprenticeship Patterns
• Architectural Photography (Rocky Nook)
• Beautiful Teams
• Build a Better Photograph (Rocky Nook)
• Cisco Routers for the Desperate, Second Edition (No Starch)
• Cocoa Programming (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
• Computer Orchestration Tips and Tricks (PC Publishing)
• Data Warehousing with SAP BW7 BI in SAP Netweaver 2004s (Rocky Nook)
• Growing Software (No Starch)
• iMovie ‘09 and iDVD: The Missing Manual
• iWork ‘09: The Missing Manual: Rough Cuts Version
• Java Web Services: Up and Running
• Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 17
• Manage Your Project Portfolio (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
• Masterminds of Programming
• Network Know-How (No Starch)
• Palm webOS: Rough Cuts Version
• Photoshop CS4 Photographer’s Handbook (Rocky Nook)
• Practical Digital Photomicrography (Hard Cover) (Rocky Nook)
• Programming Entity Framework
• Programming F#: Rough Cuts Version
• Programming Ruby 1.9 (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
• Programming Scala (Pragmatic Bookshelf)
• Programming Scala: Rough Cuts Version
• Programming the Semantic Web: Rough Cuts Version
• Scanning Negatives and Slides, Second Edition (Rocky Nook)
• Security Monitoring
• Sexy Web Design (SitePoint)
• Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac, Third Edition (TidBITS)
• The Book of Inkscape (No Starch)
• The Manga Guide to Electricity (No Starch)
• The Nikon Creative Lighting System (Rocky Nook)
• The Nikon D90 Companion

O’Reilly School of Technology

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:

• Java Programming
• PHP/SQL Programming
• Linux/Unix System Administration
• Web Programming
• Open Source Programming
• .NET Programming
• Client-Side Web Programming featuring AJAX

In today’s economy, it’s crucial to stay competitive in Information Technology. With the O’Reilly School of Technology, you can do just that–at your own pace, with 1-to-1 instructor support, real tools, and free books.
New Java Programming Course Java Programming 1: Introduction to Java and the Eclipse Development Environment! We are especially excited about this course, because it is the first course to utilize Ellipse, our brand-new Learning Sandbox built on the Eclipse open-source IDE. This is the first course in our upcoming Java Programming Certificate Series. The Java Programming 2 and 3 courses will be released very soon as they are in their final editing phases.

To redeem, use Promotion Code “ORALL1″ good for a 30% discount, in Step #2 of the enrollment process. Each course comes with a free O’Reilly book and a 7-day money-back guarantee. Register online. (This discount may not be combinable with other offers.)

News from O’Reilly & Beyond

UG News

Listen to the O’Reilly Week in Review
Get some O’Reilly on your iPod! Every week, we take the wisdom of O’Reilly, and squeeze it down into a bite-sized podcast you can listen to on the go. The O’Reilly Week in Review features excerpts from interviews, tips from authors, roundtable discussions from the editors, and a quiz that can score you a free O’Reilly book. Subscribe via iTunes or search for “week in review” on the O’Reilly web site to listen from your browser.

Can Subversion help teams work better? Tell us and you could win one of 10 great prize packages!
Are you on a team that works with shared documents? If so, you know what a headache version control can be. The good news is that there is a remedy: Subversion, a simple yet powerful open-source document management tool that streamlines the versioning process. O’Reilly, Beanstalk, Versions, and CollabNet–four companies who make working with Subversion even easier–want to hear your best stories about how Subversion has or could help your team. Tell us your story by March 6, 2009 and enter to win one of 10 Prize Packages.

State of the Computer Book Market 2008
As described in Computer Book Sales as a Technology Trend Indicator, and our other posts on the State of the Computer Book Market we have an updated series of posts that show the whole market’s final 2008 numbers.

• Part 2: The Technologies
• Part 3: The Publishers
• Part 4:The Languages
• Part 5: eBooks and Summary

Why Kindle Should Be An Open Book
In O’Reilly Insights on Forbes.com, Tim O’Reilly boldly predicts that “unless Amazon embraces open ebook standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years.” In the new column, O’Reilly explains why he’s thrown his support behind “epub and other open ebook standards, providing our books as “ebook bundles” that give the reader the choice of pdf (still the only viable choice for many highly formatted books like our Head First series of “brain friendly” tutorials that even HTML can’t handle), epub, and mobi, an HTML-based predecessor to the Kindle format that lacks digital rights management but that can be imported into the Kindle.”

Deke McClelland’s Martini Hour Visualization Contest Details
The basic idea is simple; create a graphic that can be used to promote Martini Hour that features some Deke, some Colleen, and some Martini or other refreshing beverage. You can use the raw materials we have posted in the dekeOnline Flickr group. Or you can use anything you like. (Remember, Deke likes costumes and weapons.)

Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study
Back in December, Dell reported that offers from its Dell Outlet Twitter account had led to more than $1 million in revenue. A small percentage for a company that books $16B in revenue annually–but a nice number nonetheless, particularly in a dreary economy. Question is: are they the only ones?

Call For Makers: Maker Faire Bay Area 2009
We are now accepting entries for the Maker Faire Bay Area, May 30 and 31 at the San Mateo County Expo Center. This year’s focus is Re-Make America, inspired by President Obama’s call for all of us to participate in remaking America. We’re looking to showcase “the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things.”

Sneak Peek at iWork ‘09 & Share Your Tips Contest
Currently available as a Rough Cut, the new book will teach you everything you need to know about Apple’s incredible productivity programs, including the Pages word-processor, the Numbers spreadsheet, and the Keynote presentation program that Al Gore and Steve Jobs made famous. Read an excerpt from Josh Clark’s work in progress, (adapted for the web). Then, take a minute to share an iWork ‘09 tip and you could win free access to iWork ‘09: The Missing Manual: Rough Cuts Version.

What You’ll Find in “Ruby Best Practices”
When Ruby Best Practices first entered roughcuts, Gregory Brown passed on a couple copies to some reviewers to see what they thought, and Peter Cooper summed things up pretty accurately.
And here’s a sample chapter “Mastering the Dynamic Toolkit” in PDF.

Ignite Launches Weekly Video Series Highlighting the Best of GeekCulture
Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations on topics ranging from “The Best Way to Buy a Car” to “Hacking Chocolate” to “Transhuman Technology Trends.” Imagine that you’re on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. What would you do? What would you say? Could you stand the pressure? Every week, find out how some of the smartest minds on the planet dealt with this situation as your host, Brady Forrest, highlights a different talk from Ignites around the world.

Safari Books Online Optimizes for Top Mobile Devices
Safari Books Online Ubiquitous for Users On-the-Go Safari Books Online is now fully optimized to support the top mobile devices in the United States. The new website, m.safaribooksonline.com, optimizes Safari Books Online’s content and reading experience for the majority of mobile phones (such as Nokia, BlackBerry, iPhone, and Windows Mobile), making it possible for users to read while on-the-go.

ETech Preview: Creating Biological Legos
If you’ve gotten tired of hacking firewalls or cloud computing, maybe it’s time to try your hand with DNA. That’s what Reshma Shetty is doing with her Doctorate in Biological Engineering from MIT. Apart from her crowning achievement of getting bacteria to smell like mint and bananas, she’s also active in the developing field of synthetic biology and has recently helped found a company called Gingko BioWorks which is developing enabling technologies to allow for rapid prototyping of biological systems.

ETech Preview: Inside Factory China, An Interview with Andrew Huang
China has become the production workhorse of the consumer electronics industry. Almost anything you pick up at a Best Buy first breathed life across the Pacific Ocean. But what is it like to shepherd a product through the design and production process? Andrew “bunnie” Huang has done just that with the Chumby, a new internet appliance.