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The Louvre of the Industrial Age

By Tim O'Reilly
July 30, 2010

This morning I had the chance to get a tour of The Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI, along with Dale Dougherty, creator of Make: and Makerfaire, and Marc Greuther, the chief curator of the museum. I had expected a museum dedicated to the auto industry, but it's so much more than that. As I wrote in my first stunned...

The Watering Hole - You Can Take the Geeks Out of the Country...

By James Turner
July 30, 2010

In any travel party, you're going to find a variety of interests among the travelers. Our little gang is no exception.

Notable Bookish/Techy News, Links and Tweets: (you know - a roundup)

By Kat Meyer
July 30, 2010

Such a week. The prevailing theme this week was low, low prices! Yes, in a flurry of well-placed PR, Amazon took the e-reader pricing wars to new lows. Read all...

New Lightroom Tutorials from George Jardine

By Gene McCullagh
July 30, 2010

If you have been using Lightroom and involved with the Lightroom community for any length of time then one of the names that is sure to be familiar to you is George Jardine. George was involved with Lightroom from its beginning and was a Lightroom Evangelist at Adobe until he left in 2008 to explore new creative ventures. George Jardine started as a professional photographer. His work has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Better Homes and Gardens, Interior Design magazine, and many other national publications. George first joined Adobe Systems in 1993, and in 2003, he began work on the Lightroom project. George currently teaches workshops, consults for digital photographers, and is a freelance video producer.

Augmented reality as etiquette coach

By Mac Slocum
July 30, 2010

Alasdair Allen, author of "Programming iPhone Sensors," says real-time facial identification -- the sort that pairs names and faces on the fly -- is closer than you might think. He expands on that topic and a number of others in this video interview.

Four short links: 30 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 30, 2010

The No-Twinkie Database -- These are all the Twinkie Denial Conditions described in my “Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!” Designer’s Notebook columns. Each one is an egregious design error, although many of them have appeared in otherwise great games. A collection of "don't do this" for app designers. (via waxy) Cloud Privacy Heat Map (Forrester) -- a map showing...

Which Social Gaming companies are Hiring

By Ben Lorica
July 29, 2010

Disney's announced purchase of Mountain View gaming startup Playdom, follows on the heels of EA's purchase of London-based Playfish last November. Based on active users Zynga remains by far the biggest online social gaming company, but what other independent companies are growing? To see which companies are expanding, I used our data warehouse of online job postings1 to detect recent...

Metadata, Not E-Books, Can Save Publishing...

By Nick Ruffilo
July 29, 2010

Metadata is king. I will repeat this as it is important. Metadata is king. I need not go through the barrage of articles and statistics that show that publishing...

Facebook Mountain ("I wish I knew how to quit you")

By Mark Sigal
July 29, 2010

Facebook is an unstoppable force, rocketing to 500 million users, building a breakout software platform and hardwiring the web with "Like" buttons and single sign-on via Facebook Connect. This piece looks at the reasons why, even in the face of abysmal customer satisfaction levels that rank below the airline industry, the social networking giant's reign is only getting started.

iPad Albums Via Publish Services

By Gene McCullagh
July 29, 2010

In the previous article, Creating iPad Albums With Lightroom, I talked about using Matt Kloskowski's export presets to create albums for your iPad. This method is accessible by both Lightroom 2 and Lightroom 3 users. However, if you have moved on to Lightroom 3 you can take advantage of one of its great new features--Publish Services. (Thanks to John Beardsworth whose comment on the previous article motivated me to get this article out of draft sooner rather than later!) A lot of the attention Publish Services has gotten revolves around the link between Lightroom and online services such as Flickr, Zenfolio, SmugMug, etc.. But the other side of this feature is the ability to create links between Lightroom and your drives. And it is this aspect we will exploit here.

Four short links: 29 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 29, 2010

How to Raise Funds for Non-Profits (Joi Ichi) -- One organization sent a message to all of their donors during the Haiti crisis asking them to give to an NGO that they had vetted. They didn't ask for any money for themselves. This had a hugely positive effect and the donors trust in the group increased. Wallets aren't zero...

Typography Tricks for Flex 3

By Amy Blankenship
July 29, 2010

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing I could take advantage of some of the yummy features in Flex 4 that make precise design and layout possible like, oh, Text Layout Framework (TLF). But some of us are working on...

The Mobile First Revolution

By RJ Owen
July 28, 2010

Luke Wroblewski, or LukeW as he's known on the web, is a self-described "digital product design & strategy guy" who's been pushing the idea of designing for mobile interfaces first for a while now. He thinks that designing for mobile first works best because 1.) mobile is more important than desktop these days, 2.) mobile forces you to focus on what's really important, and 3.) mobile extends your application's capabilities (GPS, touch-screens, etc.). At first I thought this idea was neat. Now I'm convinced it's nothing short of revolutionary.

Startup Showcase Submissions at the Web 2.0 Expo NYC Due 8/2

By Brady Forrest
July 28, 2010

We are looking for startups to show-off at the Web 2.0 Expo in NYC. We always find a place to showcase them and this year is no different. This year we’re hosting our first ever Startup Showcase. Highlighting the startup ecosystem’s creativity and variety, the Showcase will give you a chance to get in front of hundreds of potential...

Capturing health data in everyday life

By Brian Ahier
July 28, 2010

In this audio interview, Paul Tarini, team director of the Pioneer Portfolio at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, discusses the health-care value of sleeping patterns, eating habits and other everyday data.

Book Publicity and Marketing: How Soon was Yesterday?

By Kevin Smokler
July 28, 2010

I spoke to a touring author last week who repeated this phrase about 9 times over a one hour coffee date.  "Everything's changed." She wasn't talking about digital pricing, vanishing...

Four short links: 28 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 28, 2010

The end of the road for the Nexus One (LWN) -- The pessimistic among us can be forgiven for concluding that the battle for open handsets is being lost. The carriers determine which devices will be successful in the market, and they have absolutely no interest in openness. Customers are irresistibly drawn to heavily advertised, shiny devices with low...

Is there such a thing as a business that's not connected?

By Sarah Sorensen
July 27, 2010

When a business course asks 'what are e-organizations doing differently from businesses that are not using the Internet,' I am stumped. I can't think of any businesses that aren't connected in some way. E-organizations are no longer a 'segment' within the business population, rather they are representative of the way business gets done...

The Story of the O'Reilly School of Technology - Part 3

By Scott Gray
July 27, 2010

In this third installment of my series of blog posts, I'd like to tell the story of the O'Reilly School of Technology and the new Make: Mathematics project. I'll also use this time and space to explain our overall mission and plans for OST in the future.

Jailbreaking your iPhone is legal: what changes?

By RJ Owen
July 27, 2010

Yesterday the U.S. Copyright office passed down new rules under the DCMA changing making Jailbreaking legal on iPhones. This is all good and nice, but is it going to result in any real change in the mobile phone market? While the new rules might at least incent Apple to play a little nicer, will consumers benefit in any way?

Open government is a mindset

By Alex Howard
July 27, 2010

While online tools and digital platforms that enable greater transparency, collaboration and citizen participation will continue to improve beyond those used in 2010, the culture of openness within agencies will also need to evolve in order for open government to achieve any measure of success.

Data as a service

By Mike Loukides
July 27, 2010

With "data as a service" APIs like InfoChimps, and embeddable data components like Google Public Data Explorer and WolframAlpha Widgets, we're seeing the democratization of data and data visualization: new ways to access data, new ways to play with data, and new ways to communicate the results to others.

Detroit 2.0: Motor City to Maker City

By Dale Dougherty
July 27, 2010

Maker Faire Detroit opens this coming weekend at The Henry Ford in Dearborn. Our goal is to create a fun, family-friendly event and showcase talented makers from Michigan and aroundthe Midwest. I also think the event gives us an opportunity to consider ways that makers can be part of re-inventing Detroit from the ground-up. This Thursday, just before Maker Faire...

Redesigning the New York City subway map

By Julie Steele
July 27, 2010

Sophisticated data acquisition tools give us more geographic data to display than our eyes and minds can easily digest, calling for a careful editing process. In this excerpt from "Beautiful Visualization," Eddie Jabbour explains the trade-offs he made while reinventing one of the most iconic maps in the world.

The Watering Hole - A Little Social Engineering

By James Turner
July 27, 2010

In any organization, your most vulnerable security assets are the ones standing around the water cooler...

Innovate!

By Tom Barker
July 27, 2010

The Google Innovation Method is one of the best ways to introduce new features or products into the mix. If you aren't familiar with the concept, it's allocating 20% of your engineering team's time to devote just to coming up...

Four short links: 27 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 27, 2010

Digital Continuity Conference Proceedings -- proceedings from a New Zealand conference on digital archiving, preservation, and access for archives, museums, libraries, etc. What Are The Scaling Issues to Keep in Mind While Developing a Social Network Feed? (Quora) -- insight into why you see the failwhale. (via kellan on Twitter) Fan Feeding Frenzy -- Amanda Palmer sells $15k in...

Wrap-up of the health care IT track at O'Reilly's Open Source convention

By Andy Oram
July 27, 2010

The first health care track to be included in an O'Reilly conference grappled with the task of opening up health care. Two contradictory trends make the field difficult for IT to advance.

OSCON Wrap-up: Leaving a legacy

By Kevin Shockey
July 26, 2010

...open source community asking itself, "how can we fix x (any of the world's challenges) with open source?"

Schema languages as if annotation mattered - with more on Operator Grammars

By Rick Jelliffe
July 26, 2010

In 2001 we had an interesting exchange about schema languages on the XML-DEV mail list. I had written Are we losing out because of grammars?. What do I think of it now? Four heads: disconnection, importance, a category error, and operator grammars.

Why fragmentation is a good sign for Android

By Mac Slocum
July 26, 2010

Author Marko Gargenta says Android fragmentation is a sign the project is accomplishing its goal of appearing on many devices and platforms. In this video interview, he talks about Android's growing popularity and why fragmentation was built into the nature of the project.

Creating iPad Albums With Lightroom

By Gene McCullagh
July 26, 2010

The iPad is an excellent tool for showing off your work. Chances are, though, if you are a Lightroom user you don't want to fiddle with iPhoto just to get your images ready for your iPad and sorted into albums. And if you are a Windows based Lightroom user then iPhoto isn't an option for you.

Four short links: 26 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 26, 2010

Is Wikileaks Growing Up? -- I linked earlier to FAS commentator Steven Aftergood, who had ripped Wikileaks as irresponsible and dangerous. The latest leaks, however, get grudging respect. "the latest dump deals with a perfectly newsworthy topic and -- judging from my initial glances at the news coverage -- Wikileaks itself has acknowledged the necessity of withholding certain portions...

Getting Control of Flex Data Binding

By Amy Blankenship
July 25, 2010

Databinding in Flex is one of the features that has made it so popular as a Framework. You change a property in one place and, voilà, some text changes in a completely different place. However, there is a lot...

Xcode 4 Preview 2 Now Available

By Andrew Trice
July 23, 2010

For those of you fellow iPad and iPhone developers out there, a preview version of Xcode 4 has been released. I'm personally looking forward to the integrated single window in the IDE, as opposed to multiple separate applications, the enhanced debugger, and enhanced code editing and navigation tools. Not to mention, the faster LLVM 2.0 compiler.

Four Short Links (and One Semi-Short Ramble)

By Kat Meyer
July 23, 2010

This is a round-up of sorts. Not all of these links have been bandied about in the book-o-sphere, and not all of them are even from this week, but they're...

Web 2.0 risks and rewards for federal agencies

By Alex Howard
July 23, 2010

Testimony from government officials and a consumer watchdog before Congress highlighted how social media is affecting government, including the changing nature of official records in the digital age.

Four short links: 23 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 23, 2010

5 Reputation Missteps (and how to avoid them) (YouTube) -- a Google Tech Talk from one of the authors of the O'Reilly-published Building Web Reputation Systems. Solr on EC2 Tutorial -- the tutorial shows how to index Wikipedia with Solr. (via Matt Biddulph) clive -- a command line utility for extracting (or downloading) videos from Youtube and other video...

VistA scenarios, and other controversies at the Open Source health care track

By Andy Oram
July 23, 2010

The history and accomplishments attributed to VistA, the Veterans Administration's core administrative software, mark it as one of the most impressive software projects in history. Still, lots of smart people in the health care field deprecate VistA and cast doubt that it could ever be widely adopted.

Flash Builder for Force.com released

By RJ Owen
July 22, 2010

Today Salesforce.com announced the release of a special version of Adobe Flash Builder built specifically for integrating with their cloud service, Force.com. Flash Builder for Force.com is a custom bundle of Flash Builder that includes all the normal stuff from Flash Builder premium along with some of the Live Cycle Data Services additions and some specific tools for integrating with Force.com's cloud offering.

How open source can improve health care

By Brian Ahier
July 22, 2010

As the health IT industry ramps up to meet the meaningful use rules, the opportunities for open source to provide solutions are increasing. At OSCON, Radar blogger Brian Ahier spoke with three men with unique perspectives on health care and open source: David Riley, head of the CONNECT initiative, Brian Behlendorf, formerly of Apache and now working with CONNECT, and Arien Malec, coordinator for NHIN Direct.

Four short links: 22 July 2010

By Nat Torkington
July 22, 2010

Boomerang -- a piece of javascript that you add to your web pages, where it measures the performance of your website from your end user's point of view. It has the ability to send this data back to your server for further analysis. With boomerang, you find out exactly how fast your users think your site is. From Yahoo!....

Day one of the health care IT track at O'Reilly's Open Source convention

By Andy Oram
July 22, 2010

Nine talks representing the breadth of a vital programming area can't be summarized in one sentence, but for me the theme of the day was open source advocates reaching out to solve pressing problems that proprietary vendors will not or cannot address.

Detroit Can Do Camp - July 29

By Dale Dougherty
July 21, 2010

As part of the week leading up to Maker Faire Detroit, we have organized Can Do Camp for Thursday, July 29 at Eastern Market in Detroit. Can Do Camp is an informal day for makers to meet each other and explore the DIY mindset. This mindset is a powerful and positive force for building hands-on communites as well as fostering...

Where Facebook's half a billion users reside

By Ben Lorica
July 21, 2010

Facebook announced that they now reach 500 million active users (just five and half years after launching). But where do these half a billion users reside? Refreshing my post from February, the share of users from Asia continues to rise and now stands at 17% of all Facebook users. Over the past 12 weeks, Facebook added over a million active users in fourteen countries, including 5 in Asia and all three members of NAFTA.

@RIARadio Episode 17: Nate Beck, Ben Garney, and PBE

By Garth Braithwaite
July 21, 2010

Nate Beck and Ben Garney join us to discuss PushButton Engine. We are also joined by Ben's sandwich. Most professional episode ever.

Cloud Summit

By Kevin Shockey
July 21, 2010

Whether you think your organization is ready, or not, cloud computing is a reality.

The Making Of FlashBum.com Part 3

By Jesse Freeman
July 21, 2010

Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - The Making Of FlashBum.com Part 3....

Why software startups decide to patent ... or not

By Pamela Samuelson
July 21, 2010

Researchers Pamela Samuelson and Stuart J. H. Graham discuss key results from the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey, including how software startups perceive, use and are affected by the patent system. Of particular note, startups find that first-mover advantage and complementary assets are more important than patents.

Validating Operator Grammars in Schematron

By Rick Jelliffe
July 21, 2010

Operator Grammars is a linguistic theory that we can adopt (or be inspired by, or perhaps dumb-down) for validation purposes. We don't need more information than is in the Wikipedia summary: we want to suggest Schematron features that can handle...

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