Holiday Gift Guide — Need a gift for the hard-core geek in your life? How about the DIYer or digital photographer? O'Reilly has something for every techie and crafter on your list, from hobbyist to pro. Check out our Gift Guide to see our new titles, and pick up some great gifts for the holidays. Give O'Reilly.

• How to Find, Install, and Configure Drupal Themes
• How can I use an Android phone on Verizon's service?
• What's your backup system at home?

Recent questions:

• What is your favorite lightweight email client for Windows?
• Have you tried Google Wave?
• How can you convert MIME email files into Outlook on Linux?

Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

Onstage, Terrified – "It is always reassuring to read about the performance anxiety of the successful--whether it's a star pitcher feeling jittery before starting a World Series game or a concert violinist who admits to going into a meditative trance before walking out onstage," writes Philip Delves Broughton of the Wall Street Journal in his entertaining review of Scott Berkun's Confessions of a Public Speaker.

We're entering our third year of Velocity, the Web Performance & Operations Conference. Velocity 2010 will be June 22-24, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA. It's going to be another incredible year. Steve Souders & I have set a new theme this year, "Fast by Default". We want the broader Velocity community & to adopt it as a shared mission & mantra. The reason for this is simple. Read more.

Copyright, Findability, and Other Ideas from NDF (Julie Starr) -- A newspaper industry guru attended the National Digital Forum where Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums talk about their digital issues, where she discovered that newspapers and GLAMs have a lot in common. This and more in today's Four Short Links. Read more.

For leaders, managers and anyone who speaks and expects someone to listen, Scott Berkun shares an insider's perspective on how to effectively present ideas to anyone. Loosely based on his third book, Confessions of a Public Speaker, this fun, interactive webcast brings you lively lessons and insightful confessions, giving you new insights into the art of persuasion--as well as teaching and learning--directly from a master of the trade. Bring your toughest questions and situations for Scott to answer or solve. Attendance is limited, so register now!

More Upcoming Webcasts and Online Conferences:

• DRBD and MySQL - An HA Match Made In Heaven
• Using ICT (Information & Communications Technology) to Create a Sustainable Business
• Where 2.0 Online Conference - An Emphasis on iPhone Sensors
• Velocity Online Conference - Fast by Default

Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

Metadata has the ability to give us context to the media we are dealing with. It also makes for an interesting data source. Using the Flash Platform we can combine information all ready contained in files that you are using along with web services to create an interesting user experience. This tutorial will combine id3 metadata from your mp3's to power an Flickr image search. Our final output will be an AIR application written with Flex Builder 3. Read more.

After posting some thoughts a month ago about Erving Goffman's classic sociological text, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, I heard from a reader who urged me to try out a deeper work of Goffman's, Frame Analysis (Harper Colophon, 1974). This blog presents the thoughts that came to mind as I made my way through that long and rambling work. Although the Internet tends to strip away the external meanings Goffman recorded, we still bring our real-life frameworks into online interactions. Read more.

When Twitter decided to slowly roll out a new, official retweeting feature, people waited in anticipation. When it actually became available, people almost universally disliked it. But my post is about why I love the new Twitter retweet feature, without ever having to think about it. The reason is that official retweeting represents the new-new arms race for authority among power users. Read more.