The folks over at Gizmodo love our Missing Manual series founder, but think the Pogue-man needs a dash of cool. For that, they’re asking readers to wield some Photoshop magic. Says Adam Frucci:
Your challenge is this: make David Pogue as cool as humanly possible. Put him on a Harley with a stogie sticking out of his mouth. Surround him with buxom ladies in a hot tub. You know, cool. Find some pictures of him and use your Photoshop skills and send your best efforts to me at adam@gizmodo.com. Entries are due on Friday, and I’ll post the best results early next week.
“Some sixty enthusiastic participants arrived early and stayed late. The shared interests came through clearly: teaching, learning, and spreading the opportunity of Ruby more widely. Slides from the session are available (and they were created with a Ruby program that can be run in Hackety Hack).
Got some time on your hands? The folks that brought you November’s National Novel Writing Month have dreamed up something new to help unleash the writer within. It’s Script Frenzy. More than 6,000 folks have pledged to write an original full length screenplay–or stage play–in June.
To be crowned an official Script Frenzy winner, all you have to do is write a script of at least 20,000 words and verify this word count on ScriptFrenzy.org. Good luck!
Bernie Krause, the Glen Ellen, CA owner of Wild Sanctuary, has been recording sounds for more than 40 years. Now those sounds will be embedded into Google Earth. Read more.
As a n00b in Second Life, I’m one of those people you see climbing out of lakes or walking into walls–none of it intentional at all. Because I’m incompetent, I spend a lot of time as a lonely wanderer, making my way along roads and railroad tracks in vast, vacant regions, watching the world unfold. I understand why more experienced Second Lifers laugh at us newbies and sometimes give us stuff. Getting all this free stuff is cool at first, but soon you have an awful lot and you wonder, “What good is it?” Not much.
But there’s stuff that is good, and Taran Rampersad explains all about it in Making Your Mark in Second Life: Business, Land, and Money. It’s an O’Reilly Short Cut; you can download the PDF for $4.99 US. But say you’re in Second Life and you have a sudden, urgent need for this? No problem. “I have it delivered to people through slexchange.com - at the links provided,” says Taran. “People basically order the ad (what a concept), get it delivered and click on it.” If you want to get stuff you can really use, here’s a copy of the house (free stuff you can use!) and the Short Cut itself.
“Basically, you register at slexchange and you can shop there, having items sent to you in world. It gets sent to you directly,” says Taran. “Think of it as completely virtual UPS.”
In a recent conversation, David talked to me about “It’s All Geek to Me.”
Sara Peyton:
On the show you describe yourself as a couples therapist for people and their gadgets? Why do we need help getting along with gadgets?
David Pogue:
There’s just too much that’ s new, and it’s coming too fast. It all wants our attention and our monthly fees and our power outlets. It’s just too much, almost even for me, to keep track of. Somebody’s got to wade through it all and try to make sense of it!
We have our first Ignite Boston! event coming up soon in Cambridge, MA. So far we have 25 cool presentations and more than 100 RSVPs. If you want to be part of this event, please get your RSVP in ASAP so we can save room for you.
Ignite Boston! will be on Thursday, May 31, from 6 to 10pm at Tommy Doyle’s in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. From 6-7pm.
Join a MAKE challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge-made from less than 1K popsicle sticks-support?) After that, we’ll have a special keynote address from author Scott Berkun (The Myths of Innovation; The Art of Project Management). Then, onto guest speakers who’ll catch you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. Don’t blink or you’ll miss their lightning-fast, five-minute presentations. During intermissions, get a cold beer and chat with speakers, sponsors, and O’Reilly’s own editors.
Presentation Guidelines:
Ignite is a user-generated event. If you’re interested in speaking, then
submit a proposal for consideration
Presentations must:
*Be between 5 and 10 minutes
*Be on an innovative topic (no sales pitches, please!)
*Be viewable on a PC with a standard AV equipment
In writing about the latest book from Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby, Thomas Beck says, “Every IT generation has its seminal tome that transcends time and connects the dots in a way that no book had before it. For the object oriented generation in the 1980s, it was the Gang of Four (GoF) book. For the application architecture generation in the 1990s, it was Fowler’s book on patterns (PoEAA). RESTful Web Services will be, in my opinion, that book for the 2000s Web services generation.
“There is something absolutely special about this book that readers of GoF or PoEAA will immediately recognize and appreciate. ” Check out Beck’s Musings about technology and things tangentially related to see why he thinks this and what else he has to say on the subject.
Maria Arguello, Vendor Liason for Main Line Macintosh Users Group and Apple User Group Regional Liaison for the Northeast United States, calls David Pogue’s performance “brilliant, informative, and entertaining. He unravels and dispels the mysteries about our most popular high-tech gadgets with his own inimitable style and talent, laying it all out in an understandable, funny and non-intimidating manner.
Is Second Life a game or serious business? A lot depends on the way you approach it and what you do there. According to Taran Rampersad, one of the wonderful things about Second Life is that you can make money in it. “For the average person,” he says, “Second Life can be a profitable hobby and perhaps a full time job in the future or it may not. Making informed decisions is a big part of whether one does or does not do well.”
So you’re asking, “How do I make big bucks in Second Life?” Taran’s got the answers and you can have them, too. His 55-page Short Cut Making Your Mark in Second Life: Business, Land, and Money reveals all the secrets of making a profitable presence within Second Life–or, at the very least, will help you avoid losing money. Learn the basics of running a business in Second Life, buying and selling land, and more. Download it now and start building your wealth in both worlds.
Mid-Michigan CFUG is hosting Ben Forta, Adobe evangelist on May 21st on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing. Come see a preview of Coldfusion 8 aka Scorpio.
Flummoxed by your iPod? Upgrading your cell phone? In the market for a new digital camera? If your life’s filled with digital thingamajigs and gizmos, chances are you’re a devotee of gadget guru David Pogue, the popular New York Times tech columnist, and founder and author of the Missing Manual series. And now he’s the star of his own TV show.
That’s right. “It’s All Geek to Me” –a six-episode TV show hosted and written by this multi-talented tech expert–begins May 18 at 8 p.m.(ET) on two channels, Discovery HD and The Science Channel. Read the Full Review
The Rest of Us shares a video from their February meeting. See how a Mac Mini is used in astronomy to capture views of the universe outside of Terra Firma.
TCS is having a summer picnic Sunday, May 20, from 2-7 PM, at Fort Lowell Park. Tucson Computer Society largest open membership PC Users Group in southern Arizona.
Chris Marshall has a “strong, but unsubstantiated, view that the current trend towards ‘entry level’ DSLR’s is fueled in no large part by people who want more from their photographs but probably haven’t fully explored their current camera.” On MyAppleStuff, he writes, “Personally when I started the process of moving to a DSLR I prolonged the move by at least a year by really getting to know what my Sony DSC F707 could do. So, if you are considering a move ‘up market’ I could think of lots of worse things to do with $16.99 as you may well find that it extends your enjoyment with your current camera.”
Chris is referring to the book 40 Digital Photography Techniques (YoungJin), which provides dozens of tips for taking better pictures and getting creative with digital photography. He makes a good point–there may be plenty that we’d do well to master in our current cameras before moving up to a more expensive model. Before investing in that new camera, see if you can’t get some valuable extra mileage out of it with O’Reilly’s digital photography line of books.
The Association for Computing Machinery Pepperdine Chapter of Pepperdine University in Southern California have no meeting boundaries when it comes to meetings. Most of the club’s members live outside of the vicinity of the Pepperdine campus and rely on virtual technology to communicate from a distance. With members from California, Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Washington, for example, holding traditional face-to-face club meetings could be seen as a challenge. The club relies on access to tools such as Second Life. Still at its experimental stage and limited access to a small group at the Graduate School of Education and Psychology. Lani Fraizer, ACM’s President says, “access to Malibu Island in Second Life gave ACM’s officers a platform to convent together, albeit virtually.”
Find out more about Second Life by listening to ACM member Kai explain some of the basics of becoming an active SL resident.
It’s hard to find a good PMP practice exam that’s no an advertisement for an expensive course or doesn’t require that you buy a book of questions, a CD, or an online course. That’s why Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman created a full-length, 200-question, free PMP practice examand set up free forums to help you ace it.
As Jenny Greene says, “It bothered us that there weren’t a lot of options out there for people who just want to study, without making a major investment.”
The exam closely follows the Project Management Professional (PMP) Examination Specification. It’s a little harder than the questions in Head First PMP and it’s meant to closely mimic the real thing.
Give it a whirl. If you have any questions, feel free to talk to Andrew and Jenny in the discussion forum. They do their best to read and respond to questions and keep the discussion alive.
Come watch robots battling it out in a sumo ring, solving
mazes, following lines, showing off their artistic side, walking, and
more! Six different competitions; exhibits; robotics vendors; FIRST,
Vex, and FIRST Lego League demonstrations; prizes! Free admission.
10am-5pm Lloyd Doubletree Executive Meeting Center; Produced by the
Portland Area Robotics Society and DorkBotPDX.
“For all the online video and interactive disc-based media, the best way to master .NET development topics still involves curling up with a good book. Unlike the early days of .NET 1.0, when many books basically rehashed Microsoft’s documentation, today’s better selections deliver unique perspectives and substantial practical experience,” writes William F. Zachmann in today’s Redmond Developer News. According to The ASP.NET 2.0 Library, Unique perspectives and practical experience highlight the books to consider adding to your ASP.NET shelf. It’s good to see O’Reilly titles included among them.
The Science Channel debuts “It’s All Geek to Me,” a new weekly series
that brings O’Reilly author and The New York Times personal-technology
columnist David Pogue’s expertise on the world of technology to
television. The series premieres Friday, May 18, at 8 PM (ET/PT) and
will air every Friday on The Science Channel.
Just click on the image below to learn more about the show. (Hint: Find David’s songs on the Tech Fun link.)
Join the Boston ColdFusion User Group for their meeting next week featuring the ColdFusion 8. It is free, but you do need to register. See the Boston CFUG site for more details.
O’Reilly and Goodwill Team Up For Donations
Salable Furniture and Goods Wanted
SEBASTOPOL - O’Reilly Media Inc., and Goodwill Industries are sponsoring a community recycling event scheduled to be held from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday, May 18 at the O’Reilly parking lot at 1005 Gravenstein Highway North just north of the Redwood Market Place
“Our organizations believe in recycling,” said O’Reilly spokesperson Juel Bortolussi. “Our waste reduction and recycling activities can make a difference. Source reduction, preventing waste before it is generated can further reduce the auantity of items added to our landfills and saves more resources.”
Bortolussi said that her firm, for example, replaces computer equipment only after it has been passed around the company to various departments before being donated and replaced.
“Microsoft is in a new era. The Bill Gates cutthroat ‘we win by killing’ days are passing,” says Nat Torkington, co-chair of the O’Reilly Open Source Convention. “Microsoft exists by making users happy. And sometimes–just sometimes–you make Microsoft users happy by giving them a technology that wasn’t invented at Microsoft.”
Mike Hendrickson, General Manager for the Open Tech eXchange division, O’Reilly Media just announced Ignite Boston! He says:
“Mingle and talk tech with your fellow FOOs, alpha geeks, and techies from the greater Boston area. While you are there, you can join a Make Challenge team and participate in building bridges (how much weight can your bridge–made from less than 1K popsicle sticks–support?) After that, we will have a special Keynote kicking off our Ignite night, and then onto guest speakers who catch you up on the cool, new, innovative stuff going on in technology today. Don’t blink or you’ll miss their lightning-fast, five-minute presentations.”
From our German office comes news about a new book, “Das Kochbuch für Geeks.” The new book deals with real cooking, not coding for Geeks. The book includes UML diagrams to illustrate modular muffin recipes, recipes for LAN parties and other cool stuff.”
I’m giving a keynote tomorrow at the BISG (Book Industry Study Group) Making Information Pay Conference in New York. My talk is focused on all the challenges and opportunities facing publishers as customers increasingly migrate to the Web for information and entertainment. I was lucky enough to come across the following quote, which I think illustrates how we all need to approach our jobs:
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.
–Zen master Shunryu Suzuki
I’d bet that the folks who envisioned myspace and craigslist, youtube and wikipedia, and all the other ventures that are challenging big industries run by “experts,” all started out as beginners.
The ReadSpeaker audio feature went live on the O’Reilly Radar last night, and I’m very pleased to receive positive responses from listeners. Here is a sampling of what people are saying about the service:
I really really love readspeaker. I wish I could download it as a program for my Mac. I wish it was incorporated into Leopard!
Very nice feature. Glad to see O’Reilly reaching out in this way.
This is potentially a great service. The speech is reasonably well paced, and pleasant.
I love the feature. Thank you very much
Really cool service! Wow!
I love this service! I am a very slow reader and hate to read on screen. It also allows me to multi-task as I listen.
Thank you for such a wonderful tool.
Next on the list is to enable the podcasting feature that will turn RSS feeds into mps files. Keep the feedback coming, good or bad. You can submit your thoughts through the “Feedback” link on the audio pop-up, as well as make suggestions to improve pronunciation.
Say you were stranded on a deserted island without any fresh water. You and I might just go thirsty. But some science savvy third graders would have no problem turning salt water into something potable. For their ingenious solution, the Chapman Hill Techno Team won an honorable mention in MAKE’s MakeShift Challenge. And they’re invited to present their science project at the second annual Bay Area Maker Faire 2007 on May 19 and 20 in San Mateo, CA.
Seattle-based author Scott Berkun’s first book, 2005’s “The Art of Project Management” (O’Reilly), quickly scaled the bestseller charts. In his widely anticipated new book, “The Myths of Innovation” (O’Reilly), Scott aims to demystify innovation. In a recent conversation, Scott illuminates why much of what we think we know about innovation is not only false, but may actually stifle our creativity.
Sara Peyton
What prompted you to delve into innovation?
Scott Berkun
For years my job at Microsoft was to come up with good ideas for making new things in Internet Explorer, and I did it well. I studied how the great innovators achieved what they did and why certain things both worked and failed. Along the way, I discovered amazing, mind-blowing facts from history that I wish someone had told me long ago. I wanted to distill the deepest, funniest, most powerful lessons from all my research into a form others could use so that anyone interested in changing the world could have a fast, entertaining, and thought-provoking path to the truth.
Also, years ago I gave a lecture about some of the myths of innovation that are now in the book. After the lecture a young woman said to me, “This would make a great book.” That was six years ago. I hope she reads it and thinks she was right.
It’s hard to find a good PMP practice exam that’s no an advertisement for an expensive course or doesn’t require that you buy a book of questions, a CD, or an online course. That’s why Jennifer Greene and Andrew Stellman created a full-length, 200-question, free 
“For all the online video and interactive disc-based media, the best way to master .NET development topics still involves curling up with a good book. Unlike the early days of .NET 1.0, when many books basically rehashed Microsoft’s documentation, today’s better selections deliver unique perspectives and substantial practical experience,” writes William F. Zachmann in today’s Redmond Developer News. According to 
Seattle-based author Scott Berkun’s first book, 2005’s