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O'Reilly.comUG Program Newsletter

Hi there—

viguy December is coming up soon and that means O'Reilly will be releasing even more books then usual as we rush to get them out the door. Just take a look online to see the complete list of upcoming titles.
And as usual, we're looking for readers willing to post reviews on Amazon, Slashdot, and oreilly.com. Books we'd especially like help with include YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts, Using Drupal, Head First Physics, Head First Statistics, Getting Started with Arduino Enterprise Rails, Learning XNA 3.0, and Coding4Fun.

Let me know if you'd like to see any of these or our other new books and I'll get them ordered.

We're glad to annouce that we are able to offer user group members Safari Books Online at a special discount.

Here's the deal to pass along to your members:

15% off the first 3 months of Safari Books Online for UG members

Safari Books Online is a fully-searchable online digital library that provides one integrated source for over 6500 expert reference and learning materials from leading publishers. The site includes exclusive access to the collections of O'Reilly Media, Peachpit Press, Cisco Press, Addison-Wesley, Apress, and Manning as well as additional titles from John Wiley and Sons and Microsoft Press.

We're offering User Group members an exclusive 15% discount on Safari Books Online subscriptions for the first 3 months. Subscriptions must be purchased before March 2, 2009, at http://safari.oreilly.com/subscribe.

Enter coupon MMUMRFA at the time of checkout to redeem your discount.
(Offer Details: Not valid with any other offer. Coupon is good for 15% off the first 3 months of a Safari Library or Safari Bookshelf account. Offer valid for new subscribers only.)

Travel Update:
Going to Macworld in January? So are we. Check out all our activities and find out who'll be speaking in our booth or get a free expo pass. I'll be there too so come on by and say hi.

Marsee


In this issue:


O'Reilly UG Program News—Just for User Group Leaders
November 21, 2008


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
November 21, 2008

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:



MAKE Magazine Subscriptions

makezine.comThe 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

craftzine.com 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 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


Sétphane Faroult Presents "SQL in Depth - The Art of SQL and Refactoring SQL Applications"
Nov 24-25, 2008
Beijing
Sétphane Faroult (The Art of SQL) will present a two-day seminar organized by Oracle University.

Harold Davis Speaks at the Golden Gate Computer Society
Nov 24, 2008
The Embassy Suites Hotel, 101 McInnis Parkway
San Rafael, CA
Author Harold Davis (Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers) presents Less is More: Photography and Remembrance in the American Holiday Tradition at the Golden Gate Computer Society weekly meeting.

Nancy Duarte at the Apple Store, SoHo
Nov 24, 2008
Apple Retail Store - 103 Prince Street
New York City, NY
Join Nancy Duarte (slide:ology) who will be presenting "Telling a Visual Story." Why are we so quick at believing that we can't draw or tell stories well? We're in an era of history where our innovations are some of the most exciting yet when we introduce slides into our stories, our magnificent ideas become marginalized. Learn how to clear your head, clean up your slides and interact in your own human way so that you and your ideas will be remembered.

Java Power Tools Bootcamp in Wellington
Nov 25-28, 2008
Equinox House
Wellington, New Zealand
The Java Power Tools is back in Wellington, and so is John Ferguson Smart, author of the popular Java Power Tools book! The Java Power Tools bootcamp is an intense 4-day hands-on workshop covering some of the best open source tools for Java development on the market. The course takes you on a in-depth guided tour of some of the best open source Java tools, showing how you can use them individually and together to write code better and faster, and have fun while your doing it!

James Kalbach on Web Navigation Design
Nov 25, 2008
Center for Architecture
536 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY
Author James Kalbach (Designing Web Navigation) will be presenting a day-long seminar entitled "Optimizing the User Experience of Your Website." This Web Navigation Design Primer will address the key questions you should ask when starting any project.

This day-long class covers principles of web navigation and methods of navigation design with practical examples and exercises. Participants should have some experience creating or maintaining websites and are looking to deepen their design skills. This includes graphic designers, web masters, usability experts, and beginning to intermediate information architects.

Sétphane Faroult Presents "SQL in Depth - The Art of SQL and Refactoring SQL Applications"
Nov 27-28, 2008
Shanghai
Sétphane Faroult (The Art of SQL) will present a two-day seminar organized by Oracle University.

Sétphane Faroult Presents "SQL in Depth - The Art of SQL and Refactoring SQL Applications"
Dec 1-2, 2008
Hong Kong
Sétphane Faroult (The Art of SQL) will present a two-day seminar organized by Oracle University.

Marco Casario presents at MAX Europe
Dec 1-4, 2008
Milan, Italy
Marco Casario (Adobe AIR Cookbook) will be presenting a session at MAX Europe entitled "ActionScript 3 mash-ups for AIR projects." In this session you'll learn how to set up your application to consume some of the most popular web services to make your AIR desktop applications sexy and to provide useful functionalities to end users.

Webcast: Making the Case for Print on Demand
Dec 3, 2008

This is a free live event. Scheduled for approximately 90 minutes. Publishers who dismiss the use of print-on-demand technologies as too expensive may be missing an opportunity to better manage their inventory, total costs and the unit costs of books sold. This session will provide an economic rationale for more extensive use of POD services, based upon analysis and real-world use cases.

Sétphane Faroult Presents "SQL in Depth - The Art of SQL and Refactoring SQL Applications"
Dec 4-5, 2008
Singapore
Sétphane Faroult (The Art of SQL) will present a two-day seminar organized by Oracle University.

Webcast: Everything You Wanted to Know about Drupal but were Afraid to Ask
Dec 5, 2008

This is a free live event. Scheduled for approximately 60 minutes. In this live, online webcast, Drupal developers Jeff Eaton and James Walker will guide newcomers through the nuts and bolts of Drupal's content management system, content management framework, and community. They'll cover the evolution of CMSes and how Drupal fits in, discuss some of Drupal's philosophies towards concepts such as content management and software architecture, and explain some of the fundamentals about Drupal's extensible APIs. Finally, they will muse about Drupal's thriving community and how best to leverage and participate within it.

Harold Davis at Blackoak Books in Berkeley
Dec 6, 2008
Black Oak Books, 1491 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA
Harold Davis reads from "100 Views of the Golden Gate" and "Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers", signs books, shows his photographic prints, and discusses digital photography. Presentation accompanies an exhbition of Harold Davis works.

John Papa at VSLive in Dallas, Texas
Dec 8, 2008
Dallas, TX
Author John Papa (Data Services with Silverlight 2) will be presenting a session on Data Binding, WCF, and RESTful Services with Silverlight 2 at VSLive.

Using Drupal Authors at "Do it With Drupal"
Dec 10-12, 2008
New Orleans Marriott Hotel
New Orleans, LA
Come see presentations by Jeff Robbins, Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Jeff Eaton, Nate Haug, and James Walker--the authors of Using Drupal! This large-scale, 3-day learning event will take place December 10-12, 2008 at the New Orleans Marriott Hotel, located at the edge of the city's historic French Quarter. Attend sessions on the nuts-and-bolts of architecting and building Drupal sites. See dissections of some of the most popular Drupal sites out there. Learn important topics such as the processes for building and grow successful Drupal websites. The event is organized by Lullabot's team of experts and features some of the world's most well-respected Drupal developers, designers, and architects.

Conference News



Money:Tech Register for Money:Tech 2009
February 4-6, 2009 in New York City, NY
The second edition of O'Reilly Money:Tech will be an even deeper dive into the space where Wall Street meets Web 2.0, using technology as a lens to provide a unique view of the most pressing issues facing the industry right now. Web 2.0 is ultimately about "collective intelligence"--as are financial markets. Money:Tech brings web entrepreneurs and activists to Wall Street to foster an exchange of ideas about new ways to leverage information.
Use code "mt09usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the registration price.

Tools of Change for Publishing Conference Register for the Tools of Change for Publishing Conference 2009
February 9-11, 2009 in New York City, NY
Just a few years ago, "digital publishing" meant books were typeset in PageMaker or Quark and sent to the offset printer as a PDF. But true digital publishing means creating, producing, and delivering content that may never appear on a printed page. Or more likely, will be offered to customers in print--possibly print-on-demand--as just one of many options. And those now doing the "publishing" include entirely new business models built around developing paid content and assembling an audience.
Use code "toc09usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the registration price.

Emerging Technology Conference Register for the Emerging Technology Conference 2009
March 9-12, 2009 in San Jose, CA
The theme of ETech 2009 is Living Reinvented: The Technology of Abundance and Constraints, exploring how how emerging technologies can bridge the gap between the worlds of material plenty and economic constraint. Four full days of keynotes, tutorials, and sessions explore new program areas like CityTech, Mobile & The Web, Personalized Healthcare, and Materials & Mechanics.
Use code "et09usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the registration price.

Where 2.0 Conference Where 2.0 2009 CFP Is Open
May 19-21, 2009 in San Jose, CA
O'Reilly Media invites technologists and strategists, CTOs and CIOs, technology evangelists and scouts, researchers, programmers, geographers, researchers and academics, artists and activists, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead conference sessions and tutorials at the next Where 2.0 Conference. Call for proposals closes December 2, 2008.

Found Conference Call for Participation for the O'Reilly Found: Search Acquisition and Architecture Conference
June 9-11, 2009 in Burlingame, CA
We're looking for proposals that will change how developers create web applications so that search connects their sites to their potential customers. Proposals are due December 17th. Now is your chance to be part of the program.

Velocity Conference Call for Participation for Velocity 2009 is Now Open
June 22-24, 2009 in San Jose, CA
Velocity is the O'Reilly conference for developers and engineers building at internet scale. Web companies, big and small, face the same challenges--our pages must be fast, our infrastructure must scale up (and down) efficiently, and our sites must be reliable without burning out the team. Learn how to build websites and services that are fast, scalable, efficient, and reliable. We're bringing together people from around the world who are doing the best performance and operations work to improve the experience of web users worldwide.

Ignite Logo Ignite
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.
Create your own Ignite in your area. Submit your proposal.
Or read the How To.

Upcoming Ignite events:

O'Reilly School of Technology

OST 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:


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

Stay Competitive. Regroup, Retrain, Rebuild.
Financial markets are in a tailspin. Jobless rates are at a 7-year high. Budgets are shrinking. The good news is that the shifting economic landscape is creating new opportunities for those with the right skills. Do you have what it takes to tackle tough technical problems? To offer bold solutions? To provide businesses with the expertise they need?

Read some sample chapters of our latest Microsoft Books
Interested in how to become an author for O'Reilly?

Don't miss Derrick Story's Latest Screencasts
Based on his book "Photoshop CS4 Companion for Photographers," Derrick covers the Quick-Start Roadmap, Photo Downloader, Collections in Bridge and Batch Processing in ACR.

Special Borders.com Holiday Discount
From December 2, 2008 to December 15, 2008. Borders.com will be offering customers a special 30% discount on all Missing Manuals (does not include stores). If you prefer to shop at Borders.com, here's your deal.

Raise up Your Goblet of Rock to the Makers of Guitar Hero World Tour
In less than five years, Guitar Hero has become not only one of the most successful video games of all time but also a pop cultural phenomenon, immortalized on everything from South Park to Gossip Girl (Serena shreds "Free Bird"). Read all about how the game makers create convincing avatars of your favorite rockers, and scrapped a remarkably inaccurate scripting program for musical notation they dubbed "Murder Face."

Watch the "Twitter for Business" Webcast
Sarah Milstein's webcast on November 13 on how to use Twitter for your business is now availble online.

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.

News & Commentry

Getting Started With Drupal
Music, Interrupted and Other Feature Gripes and Hopes
Ajax Adept: An Interview with Fletcher Moore,contributor and technical reviewer on Head First Ajax.
The Commoditization of Massive Data Analysis
Installing Rails on Ubuntu Hardy Heron (Server)
Online Communities: The Tribalization of Business
Juval Lowy explains Service-Orientation
Derrick Story's Recipes for Brightening a Smile and Blotting Out a Blemish
Head First Web Design Complete Sample Chapter
Retire in a Down Market? Not So Fast
New Radar Report: Twitter and the Micro-Messaging Revolution
What Would Depression 2009 Look Like?
O'Reilly Needs an RIA Developer
The Visible Hand
The $20 gift guide at MAKE--Electronics kits for $20 and under!
Relational Database Technology: A Crash Course
Why geeks don't like to run AV

For more news and commentry, go to: oreilly.com/archive.csp

Until next time—
Marsee Henon
Spreading the knowledge of innovators.O'Reilly.com