O'Reilly News

Help Us Create a New Technical Certification Program - Chance to Win Free O'Reilly Ebooks

2009-07-09T21:22:27Z

O'Reilly Media is conducting research about a technical certification program and we want your opinion. Please take our 20 question survey to help us understand what you want in a certification program from O'Reilly — what topics, what motivates you, and what you'd expect to get out of it. Complete the survey and you'll be entered in a random drawing for a chance to win $200 of O'Reilly ebooks. Thank you for your help! Take the survey now!

New York Times & NPR to Host Media Mashup at OSCON - Come to the Media Mashup to Help Shape the Future of News and Information

2009-07-09T15:37:25Z

The New York Times and National Public Radio invite you to their first Media Mashup session at OSCON. Spend the afternoon with the developers who built the Times APIs and NPR APIs. Build your own mashup to share with the group, or just hang out. "And we don't want to just talk about code in the abstract, so in order to seed discussions, spark coding adventures, and just plain have fun, we're sharing some of the things we've built," writes New York Times blogger Derek Gottfrid. So go to Media Mashup at OSCON and share your creative ideas about the future of news and information.

Jono Bacon on the Value of Good Communities - We need to build good relationships across all of open source.

2009-07-09T11:40:27Z

Ubuntu has enjoyed fantastic success over the past few years, becoming one of the dominant Linux distributions, and the distribution of choice for netbooks. Jono Bacon's job is to make sure that that success continues, by keeping the huge Ubuntu developer community happy and productive. We caught up with Jono in advance of his appearance at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, and he was more than happy to talk about the efforts underway to not only improve the Ubuntu community, but also bring together other communities, such as Gnome and KDE, to help them work better together. Jono officially works for Canonical, a company founded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth for the promotion of Ubuntu and other free software projects.

Embarrassment of Riches: Managing a Mountain of iPhone Apps - Josh Clark Shares His Tips for Organizing Your iPhone

2009-07-08T17:51:01Z

Guest blogger Josh Clark, the author of Best iPhone Apps: The Guide for Discriminating Downloaders, offers his tips for managing a mountain of iPhone apps. "A healthy collection of iPhone apps calls for an equally healthy hygiene regimen for your iPhone," says Josh. "Here are a few pointers for keeping your apps tidy and your data safe."

Now Under Way - YQL: select * from internet - A Free Live Webcast

2009-07-08T16:57:20Z

YQL: select * from internet — The Yahoo! Query Language is an expressive SQL-like language that lets you query, filter, and join data across Web services. With YQL, applications run faster with fewer lines of code and a smaller network footprint. With YQL, developers can access and shape data across the Internet through one simple language, eliminating the need to learn how to call different APIs. This webcast will cover YQL and delve into some exciting recently released capabilities. Join the webcasts now!

Keep Your iPhone Shipshape - New Book Excerpts Teach You How to Set Up, Maintain, and Troubleshoot Your iPhone

2009-07-08T16:41:50Z

If you're considering purchasing an iPhone, planning on developing applications for one, or if you prefer troubleshooting and maintaining your iPhone (rather than taking it to the Apple Store for a tuneup), you'll want to check out the new book excerpts we posted at oreilly.com/iphone.

The Learner's Journey in Practice

2009-07-08T16:08:13Z

Earlier this year, while Michael Milton was in the early stages of developing Head First Data Analysis (publishing later this month), we brought him to Cambridge to meet with the Head First editorial team for a focused training session. Our primary goal was to help crank out storyboards for chapters of Michael's book, but in the process, we further refined our thinking about the purpose and process for the Learner's Journey [1] to help get us there.

Zoe Keating - Should you quit your tech job and join a rock band? - An Ignite Show Video

2009-07-08T15:18:36Z

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Open Gov Is a Dialogue, Not a Monologue

2009-07-08T10:03:32Z

At last week's Personal Democracy Forum I had a conversation with someone working for a city (I won't say which city), who was tasked with opening up that city's data. We were talking about the Apps for Democracy contests held recently in Washington D.C., and he explained his feeling about them: "There were some interesting apps in there, but overall they didn't meet with the mayor's agenda for the city."

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bot

2009-07-07T18:49:41Z

Web technologies often allow you to scale things that weren't scalable before. Unfortunately, that list of scalable things includes spam. From unsolicited phone calls to unwanted emails to unnecessary tweets, it can seem like we're getting progressively overloaded with information we don't necessarily want. One group blamed for the increase in online spam are Twitter bots - Twitter accounts created...

Now Under Way - Managing & Growing Open Source in the Enterprise: Advice from the Trenches - A Free Live Webcast

2009-07-07T16:37:54Z

Managing & Growing Open Source in the Enterprise — What are the key elements essential to maintaining effective policies and growing open source usage safely in medium to large enterprises? In this webcast, Carol Rizzo, past CTO of Kaiser Permanente, AIG and CitiGroup, and Rod Cope, the founder and CTO of OpenLogic share their experiences and insights about using open source in the enterprise. This includes creating an effective enterprise open source software governance program that includes strategy, policy, inventory, approvals, and auditing, with plenty of time for Q&A. Join the webcasts now!

What Ebook Resellers Should Learn from Scribd

2009-07-07T12:00:00Z

Scribd made a splash when they opened up a "Scribd Store" for selling view and download access to documents. Their terms (80% to the document publisher) are quite generous, though one reason publishers keep so much is that most of the merchandising (including pricing) is self service -- Scribd could learn a lot from other media retailers if they're interested in really promoting document sales.

Tim Ferriss on The Practicality of Pessimism - Stoicism as a Productivity System. Ep 20

2009-07-07T14:54:51Z

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Open Source is Infiltrating the Enterprise - Forrester's Jeffrey Hammond Says There's Plenty of it Around, if You Look

2009-07-07T14:07:18Z

There's a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that they fear it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That's certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it's Jeffrey Hammond's job to dispel those perceptions, at least when they aren't accurate. As an analyst for Forrester Research, Hammond covers the world of software development as well as Web 2.0 and rich internet applications, so he sees how open source is being used on a daily basis. He'll be speaking at OSCON, O'Reilly's Open Source Conference, talking about the true cost of using open source, and he gave us a sample of what's going on in the enterprise at the moment.

Hot Spots for the Scientific at Heart - John Graham-Cumming Destinations for Geeks

2009-07-06T20:26:21Z

Travels with a Geek — John Graham-Cumming, author of The Geek Atlas, offers his favorite geeky destinations in a new O'Reilly Insights column on Forbes.com. "Ever find yourself in between business meetings in some distant city with enough time to kill but no idea what to do," writes Graham-Cumming. "If you're an innovator (or just someone who's passionate about science or technology), business trips can offer the opportunity to visit some of science's most fascinating destinations and prove inspirational." Read more.