O'Reilly News & Commentary

Announcing O'Reilly Answers - Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.

By Allen Noren
November 4, 2009

We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.

The Right Stuff: Apple's Q4 Earnings Call

By Mark Sigal
October 21, 2009

The Fourth Quarter was Apple's most profitable quarter ever. Yesterday's earnings call was about two things. One, the iPhone Platform continues to deliver the goods. Two, the continued impressive growth of the Mac, especially MacBooks. As such, it was about the power of the platform as much as it was about the device itself.

Snow Leopard Is Location-Aware

By Brady Forrest
October 15, 2009

Shortly after installing Snow Leopard I saw the first evidence of the new location services built into the operating system. I got the new version of Clarke, a Fire Eagle updater. After the install a window appeared that asked me if I wanted to share my location with an application. Finally! So how is Apple doing it? The same they do on the iPhone.

Four short links: 15 October 2009 - Open Access, Right to Broadband, Machine Learning Textbook, Javascript Performance Art

By Nat Torkington
October 15, 2009

Open Access Week -- October 19-23 is Open Access Week 2009. Open Access Week marks a time to show support for "free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research." Organizers hope that the week of higher visibility for their movement will encourage more people to support freely accessible research data with immediate online availability as soon as such research is published. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Four short links: 12 October 2009 - DSL for NLP Task, Insider Tradespotting, Outsource Fail, Cloud Fail

By Nat Torkington
October 12, 2009

Insider Trades -- A Yahoo! Hack Day app by a Canadian law student that turned out to be worth continuing. Scans SEC systems every 30 seconds and alerts you if the stock you track has been traded by an insider. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Big Data and Real-time Structured Data Analytics

By Ben Lorica
August 13, 2009

The emergence of sensors as sources of Big Data highlights the need for real-time analytic tools. Popular web apps like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are also faced with having to analyze (mostly unstructured) data in near real-time. But as Truviso founder and UC Berkeley CS Professor Michael Franklin recently noted, there are mountains of structured data generated by web apps that lend themselves to real-time analysis.

FLARToolkit and FLARManager

By Eric Socolofsky
July 24, 2009

FLARManager is a lightweight framework that makes building FLARToolkit augmented reality applications easier. When I first came across FLARToolkit, I was simultaneously excited and stymied -- there seemed to be so much potential, but it was difficult to use and even harder to understand. Augmented reality is still a long way from maturity, and leveraging FLARToolkit on the ubiquity of Flash Player provides a great opportunity for further exploring its possibilities. FLARManager aims to provide quicker entry to the technology, to allow a focus on new forms of interaction via marker detection and augmented reality.

Mechanical Turk Best Practices

By Ben Lorica
June 12, 2009

Last night, Dolores Labs hosted what was billed as the first-ever Mechanical Turk meetup, and I was fortunate enough to have been able to squeeze into what turned out to be a great series of presentations. While Amazon was the pioneer and remains the largest provider in the space, other services like Dolores Labs and Nathan Eagle's txteagle have emerged to expand the pool of users and turks.

Analysis: Apple WWDC Keynote - Punishing the Wizard, Part Two

By Mark Sigal
June 9, 2009

Fair or unfair, Apple has done such a good job of delivering technical wizardry over the years that when they merely execute, we hammer them because...well, we expect magic. With that in mind, this analysis of Apple's WWDC Keynote yesterday tries to make sense of the key storylines likely to play out for Apple in the coming months.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update Incorrectly Signed? Had to use Combo Update File

By Todd Ogasawara
May 14, 2009

My 1st generation MacBook didn't like the 10.5.6 update. And, now it doesn't like the 10.5.7 update. Fortunately, the Combo Update file for each release saved the day in each case.

Josh Clark on iWork '09: The Missing Manual

By Mary Rotman
May 7, 2009

I recently had a chance to catch up with Josh Clark, author of our newly released iWork '09: The Missing Manual. He had a lot to say about the new version of iWork, as well as a few tips & tricks to share to make the user experience even better.

A Virtual "New" Tab for Movies in iTunes 8

By Jochen Wolters
March 27, 2009

In the comments to my blog post on adding custom genre artwork to iTunes 8, one reader asks if there is a way to add a "New" tab to the grid view for Movies. I am not aware of a hidden iTunes preference to enable such a tab, but its functionality -- list all movies I haven't watched yet -- can be achieved in other ways.

At last, a new Mac mini...

By Rich Rosen
March 6, 2009

This week, Apple finally announced a long-awaited upgrade to the Mac mini product line. If you're an Apple watcher, you may recall that at MacWorld earlier this year, anticipation was high that Apple would be announcing an update to...

Document security and macros

By Rick Jelliffe
February 26, 2009

One of the big selling points of descriptive markup is that it is safe. If you use a binary format (or a macro-enabled file) you can have a security problems. I think ODF needs to take a leaf out of OOXML's book here, and at least adopt the convention where the normal extensions must be opened by conforming applications with macro- and script- and event- disabled. Security is so important, that it should be part of ODF 1.2 rather than a next-generation ODF issue.

A Quicker Search of Almost Everything

By Jochen Wolters
February 10, 2009

Mid-January, yet another interesting software project was introduced by the Google labs: the Google Quick Search Box. According to its project page, Google Quick Search Box -- or "QSB" for short -- "is an open source search box that allows you to search data on your computer and across the web". That is a _big_ understatement.

A Brief Guide for Mac Switchers/Try-ers (No Laments, Please!)

By Todd Ogasawara
January 7, 2009

Wow, CNET's Rafe Needleman sure raised a ruckus with his Mac switcher's lament article. If you are thinking about moving from a Windows PC to a Mac and want to avoid the feeling of lament, read on, I have some advice that might help you make the change.

Macworld: Where did the Mac mini go?

By Rich Rosen
January 6, 2009

Everyone seemed to be anticipating that a new version of the Mac mini would be announced at the Macworld conference today. But then... nothing.

Surplus, Scarcity and the iPhone App Store

By Mark Sigal
December 17, 2008

George Gilder once pointed out that when the availability of a given resource shifts from scarcity to surplus, a lot of wealth is created. In the technology realm, one can think of processing power, storage and bandwidth as the great “wealth exponential-izers” of first the PC era, then the Internet era, and now, the Mobile Broadband era (as these...

The grand demo

By FJ de Kermadec
December 17, 2008

This news just in, Steve will not be gracing Macworld Expo 2009 with a keynote. For the past couple hours, the blogosphere has been quietly buzzing with unusually tame speculation about the meaning of this announcement and its potential effects on investor confidence. Overall, nobody seems unduly worried about the health or future of Apple's CEO, and a nice consensus...

First Steps into Rails (on the Mac)

By Simon St. Laurent
November 25, 2008

Once you have Rails installed, it's time to explore the foundations of how Rails applications are put together. It's not quite programming yet - it's more looking around to figure out how the pieces fit together.

Swapping Custom Views with RubyCocoa

By Eric Berry
October 29, 2008

Learn how to swap custom views using RubyCocoa in your interface.

Can My Mac and T-Mobile G1 (Google Android) Phone Sync?

By Todd Ogasawara
October 23, 2008

Google wants me to sync my T-Mobile G1 Android-based smartphone with Google Contacts and Google Calendar. That's fine. But, I would also like this information synced to OS X's Address Book and iCal. It can't be that hard, can it?

One Way to Become an O'Reilly Author

By Mary Rotman
September 25, 2008

Interested in how to become an author for O'Reilly? One way is to make your opinions known on GetSatisfaction! Read more to see how author Rich Rosen both suggested and helped write the newest edition of Mac OS X for Unix Geeks. Also, enter to win a copy of the book!

Let's Roll

By Daniel H. Steinberg
September 15, 2008

I've been asking developer lately if they'd want the App store to start selling apps for their Mac and most are enthusiastic about the possibility. But ...

The Mac at 25: Andy Hertzfeld Looks Back

By James Turner
August 27, 2008

Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Macintosh, is also the author of the book Revolution in the Valley, which tells the tale of the birth of the Mac. As the Mac approaches its 25th anniversary in January, Andy spent some time talking about how the Mac has changed over time, how a group of highly talented individuals was able to come together as a team to create it, why Xerox let it get away, and how life might have been different if Steve Jobs hadn't left the company for more than 10 years.

Mac vs PC: Does it matter anymore?

By C.K. Sample III
August 18, 2008

Is Mac vs. PC becoming irrelevant because of the maturing of the internet as a platform and cloud computing?

Get the Most Out of Your Brain

By O'Reilly Media
August 14, 2008

Your Brain: The Missing Manual is a practical look at how to get the most out of your brain — not just how the brain works, but how you can use it more effectively. What makes this book different than the average self-help guide is that it's grounded in current neuroscience. You get a quick tour of several aspects of the brain, complete with useful advice you can apply to everyday situations. Learn more. And don't miss the Gallery of Illustrations from Your Brain: The Missing Manual

Why I've Joined the Cult of Mac

By James Turner
August 14, 2008

I've always been a PC-hardware sort-of-guy, but I've finally broken down and bought a MacBook Pro. Here's why.

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