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O'Reilly.comUG Program Newsletter

Hi there—

viguy Around the office, we're getting ready for Macworld San Francisco in January. We'll have a great booth with many of our digital photography experts including Derrick Story, Mikkel Aaland, Deke McClelland, and Harold Davis. If you're going to be at the show, please let me know. I'd love to meet you in person. I'll be working at the O'Reilly booth on Tuesday, January 15 and Wednesday, January 16. Here's a list of the O'Reilly happenings at Macworld.

I'm looking for Amazon and Slashdot reviews for "Visualizing Data", "The Art of Agile Development," "Programming Collective Intelligence," and the "Linux Networking Cookbook." Send me email if you can help.

And if you're a Facebook user (or want to learn more) don't forget to join the O'Reilly Media group.

Please note: I'll be on vacation December 17-January 1. Back in the office on January 2. O'Reilly will be closed down completely from December 24-January 1.

If you would prefer to receive this email in text instead of HTML, drop me a line.

Happy Holidays,

Marsee

In this issue:


O'Reilly UG Program News—Just for User Group Leaders
December 11, 2007


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
December 11, 2007

New Releases: Books, Short Cuts, and Rough Cuts

The Creative Digital DarkroomGet 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


Jesse Liberty at "The Day of Silverlight"
Dec 15, 2007
Heathrow, FL
Author Jesse Liberty (Programming C# 3.0 and Programming ASP.NET) will be delivering a talk on Microsoft Silverlight.

Cannon's Explorer of Light Photographer--Stephen Johnson speaks in San Jose Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography
Jan 8, 2008
Adobe Systems, Inc., Park Conference Room
321 Park Avenue, San Jose, CA
Photographer and author Stephen Johnson will be discussing his hard won insights into digital photography. Steve is the author of Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography.

O'Reilly Authors at Book Passage
Jan 13, 2008
51 Tamal Vista Blvd
Corte Madera, CA
Ask the Experts Panel Discussion--Derrick Story, Mikkel Aaland, Harold Davis, and Rick Smolan. Leading Digital Photographers answer all your questions.

Adobe Presents Colin Moock's ActionScript 3.0 From the Ground Up Tour
Jan 15, 2008
Tokyo, Japan
Join author Colin Moock (Essential ActionScript 3.0) for a packed day of ActionScript 3.0 training. This event is sure to fill up quickly, so register early!

O'Reilly at Macworld MacWorld
Jan 15-18, 2008
The Moscone Center
San Francisco, CA
Stop by the O'Reilly booth (#S-2218, South Hall) to say hi, peruse our new titles, and meet our expert authors. On hand will be David Pogue, Derrick Story, Mikkel Aaland, Deke McClelland, J. D. Biersdorfer, Harold Davis, and Lesa Snider-King.

O'Reilly Authors at San Francisco Apple Store
Jan 16, 2008
One Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA
Ask the Experts Panel Discussion--Derrick Story, Mikkel Aaland, Harold Davis, and Rick Smolan. Leading Digital Photographers answer all your questions.

David Pogue at San Francisco Apple Store David Pogue
Jan 17, 2008
One Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA
David Pogue--bestselling author, creator of the Missing Manual Series, and NY Times columnist--is coming to the One Stockton Street, San Francisco Apple Store. Pogue will be sharing his Tips and Tricks for Leopard.

Stephen Johnson--Death Valley in Winter: a digital photography field workshop
Jan 19-22, 2008
Death Valley, CA
Join Stephen Johnson (Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography) on a trip designed to be a complete immersion in landscape photography and its digital evolution. He will discuss technical and aesthetic issues, tapping into your emotional response to this landscape, working toward images that are uniquely your own. Enrollment limited to 12.

Conference News

O'Reilly ETech Conference Registration for ETech is now open
March 3-6, 2008 in San Diego, CA
Body hacking. DIY spectrum. Crowd visualization. Sensor games. ETech 2008 will explore the tech that's influencing how we're seen as individuals and what affects our perception of the world around us.
Use code "et08usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the early registration price.Click here to register for the conference.

O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference Registration for TOC is now open
February 11-13, 2008 in New York, NY
Technology is transforming publishing. Are you ready for the future? This conference is a must attend event for anyone interested in shaping the future of the business of books.
Use code "toc08usrg" when you register, and receive 15% off the early registration price. Click here to register for the conference.

O'Reilly RailsConf 2008 RailsConf 2008 Call For Participation Ends December 13
Happening May 29--June 1, 2008 in Portland, OR.
RailsConf is *the* official event for the growing Rails community. If you're passionate about Rails and what it helps you achieve—-or are curious about how Rails can help you create web frameworks better and faster—-RailsConf is the place to be.

O'Reilly Velocity Conference The call for participation for Velocity, the Web Performance and Operations Conference, is now open.
June 23-24 in Burlingame, CA.
Velocity, a new O'Reilly event happening June 23-24 in Burlingame, CA, is dedicated to obtaining the crucial skills and knowledge to build web sites that are fast, scalable, resilient, and highly available. Are you a web developer, engineer, or technical manager doing outstanding work to optimize the experience of your users? If so, we want to hear from you.The submission deadline for all proposals is midnight January 3, 2008.

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:

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.

News from O'Reilly & Beyond

UG News

coati O'Reilly Editor Andy Oram is running a survey about how people search for information
The next time you have to search for information on any topic, try recording your efforts in the form on this page. Easy searches usually aren't interesting, so Andy is seeking submissions just about searches that covered three or more documents (besides search engines). Relevant searches can be done online, using print media, or both--and even other media such as radio or film. The survey is designed to uncover techniques that will help communities, authors, and publishers find more effective ways to offer information.

New York Technical Community Holiday Party December 13
Join many major technical user groups and communities for the second New York Technical Community Holiday Party for a chance to connect with colleagues and share experiences with others. Space is limited so register soon for this free event.

CodeMash January 10-11 in Sandusky, Ohio
CodeMash is a unique event that will educate developers on current practices, methodologies and technology trends in variety of platforms and development languages such as Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP.

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.

Articles

Linux Network Cookbook cover imageTop Ten Tips for Linux Network Admins
Carla Schroder, author of the newly released Linux Networking Cookbook offers her top ten tips for being a superior Linux network administrator--great advice regardless of your level of experience.

Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual Sneak Preview
Five Tips and Tricks from David Pogue and an ultratip.

Programming is Hard, Let's Go Scripting...
Larry Wall's annual State of the Onion describes the state of Perl, the language and the community. In his 11th address, he discussed the past, present, and future of scripting languages, including the several dimensions of design decisions important to the development of Perl 6.

Building Mashup-Friendly Sites in Rails
Mashups have been the hot web technology lately. Rather than try to do everything yourself, why not present the data that makes your site special in an easy to consume fashion, and let users design applications that mix your data in with others. Jack Herrington walks us through an example showing how to create mashup-friendly using Ruby on Rails.

An Interview with Toby Segaran
Toby Segaran is the author of "Programming Collective Intelligence." We recently spoke to him about his new book and why these kind of machine learning techniques are so important in the Web 2.0 era.

Introducing Raven: An Elegant Build for Java
Build processes in Java haven't evolved much since the introduction of Ant or Maven. With the ability to use scripting languages like Groovy and JRuby on the JVM, the power of a full language can be brought to bear on the build process. This article discusses Raven, a build system for Java that uses JRuby.

Advanced JavaScript III
JavaScript guru Howard Feldman completes his voyage through the world of JavaScript hacking with this article. This time around, he tackles dynamic tables, switching out form elements, and putting prompting text in text boxes.

Sal Soghoian on Leopard, Automation, and Aperture
Apple's product manager of automation technologies is the same guy who many of us consider the ultimate AppleScript guru: Sal Soghoian. Even though Sal and I live only a few hours apart, I had to go all the way to the Caribbean to chase him down for this podcast interview. It was worth it. Sal talks about Leopard, automation improvements, and of course, how this all affects Aperture.

For more articles, go to: http://www.oreillynet.com/

Blogs

Shopping for the geek in your life? Here's help.
Bad Math Among eBook Enthusiasts
Hidden Influences on Software Design
Groovy StAX builder
ETech = Energy + Food Hacking + Arduino + Processing + Worldwide Tech
Open Source Hardware Gift Guide
Books for Makers - A gift guide of lost arts and new tech
Some geeks just wanna live forever (well, say, 1,000 years or so)
Naked Light

For more blogs, go to: http://www.oreillynet.com/blogs/

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