Author Jim Van Meggelen (Asterisk: The Future of Telephony, Second Ed.) discusses a new Voicemail application the next TAUG meeting.
O'Reilly FYI
Here’s a photo John Osborn sent me with his latest book, Programming WPF, Second Edition by Chris Sells and Ian Griffiths. It will start shipping this week. Thanks to everyone who looked at this title when it was a Rough Cut.
You can divine much from looking at a person’s desk. Take mine, for example.
In this photo below, you can see my coffee mug (now empty), a newspaper (The Wall Street Journal), some colorful file folders (cheerful and handy but infrequently opened), a peek at a handmade basket I purchased at a holiday craft fair many years ago, a teacup parked on the window sill (rarely used), a glimpse at a short stack of magazines (unread), and, most important, a tower of O’Reilly books–the titles I’m charged with promoting.
So now you know–I prefer coffee over tea, read newspapers, hang on to the past. I stack, I pile–only occasionally file. And I’ve got work to do.
The press releases for these books are on the way (I’m writing as fast as I can.) When I complete one, I move its corresponding book off my desk to a nearby book shelf. But for those who can’t wait, here’s some buzz about what’s new:
Security matters
Security Power Tools
Your brain on SQL
Head First SQL
Service-oriented architecture
SOA in Practice
Sara’s desk
Everyone needs a hobby that takes them back to their childhood… even if it means returning to childish rebellion against the rules. For those who follow No Starch Press’s new releases, this book may fulfill that desire: Here’s a blurb about the book from Camille Herrera at No Starch: Do you have a big bucket of LEGO bricks sitting in your basement/garage/kids’ bedroom? Well, haul them out and start building again. Forbidden LEGO introduces you to the type of free-style building that LEGO’s master builders do for fun in the back room. Using LEGO bricks in combination with common household materials (from rubber bands and glue to plastic spoons and ping-pong balls) along with some very unorthodox building techniques, you’ll learn to create working models that LEGO would never endorse. Try your hand at a toy gun that shoots LEGO plates, a candy catapult, a high voltage LEGO vehicle, a continuous-fire ping-pong ball launcher, and other useless but incredibly fun inventions. See the automatic plate gun and ping-pong catapult in action on YouTube:
Attention all New Englanders–here’s a heads-up that we’re having a
second Ignite Boston on Thursday, September 6, from 6 to 10pm at
Hurricane O’Reillys. Yes that’s right, Hurricane O’Reillys at 150 Canal
St, Boston, MA. No, it’s not Tim’s office after FOO Camp. We’ve picked a
venue that is more acoustically-oriented and should allow everyone to
hear what’s going on. And we are planning to mix-up the format a little.
There will be some short “launches,” followed by lightening talks, and a
couple of other ideas that we will inform you of in the coming weeks.
Let’s show our tech colleagues around the country that Boston/Cambridge
have a vibrant tech community that gets involved in talking about cool
new technologies and ideas. Not to mention that it’s a social event to
get to know other developers in the area.
Buzz is building for Programming Collective Intelligence. To learn more about the book, check out Tim O’Reilly’s blog. Writes Tim:
“Toby Segaran’s new book, “Programming Collective Intelligence,” teaches algorithms and techniques for extracting meaning from data, including user data. This is the programmer’s toolbox for Web 2.0. It’s no longer enough to know how to build a database-backed web site. If you want to succeed, you need to know how to mine the data that users are adding, both explicitly and as a side-effect of their activity on your site.
There’s been a lot written about Web 2.0 since we first coined the term in 2004, but in many ways, Toby’s book is the first practical guide to programming Web 2.0 applications. (We won’t tell you how to be the next Google, but we’ll teach the basic techniques that are part of the price of entry. Better or more specialized algorithms are going to be the heart of each web 2.0 company’s secret sauce.)
Take a look at the table of contents (or better yet, the book itself), and let me know what you think. “
Dorian Benkoil recently asked David Pogue how appearing on video has changed his professional life?
Well, I’ve been very surprised. To me, they’re not really a big deal–nobody even noticed them the first couple of years–but now they’ve won awards, they occasionally rise to the top 10 on YouTube, and they have a HUGE following of fans (plus the vindictive hatred of a few humorless bloggers!).
They also led to my Discovery TV series, “It’s All Geek to Me,” which just finished airing, as well as to some other TV opportunities that are coming up.
Check out what Lifehacker.com has to say about Scott Berkun’s latest book:
The Myths of Innovation is a must-read for creative types searching for their muse–and anyone who want to understand more about the world we live in.
The Boston Globe’s column “Work-life Readings Worthy of Summer” features Devices of the Soul:
“The Mirror–Steve Talbott is a former organic farmer and computer programmer who has developed a growing following for his critical writings on technology. In his new book “Devices of the Soul: Battling for Our Selves in an Age of Machines,” (O’Reilly Media), he argues that our dependence upon and identification with our machinery is leading us to mistake the limited gains of technology for real human progress.
Based in upstate New York, Talbott is no born-again Luddite, but rather a firm believer in living with our machinery.
“Our primary task is to discover the potentials within ourselves that are not merely mechanical, not merely automatic, not reducible to computation,” writes Talbott, a gifted storyteller with a talent for revealing the illogic of many of our assumptions. This is an important book.”
Michele Leroux Bustamante author of Learning WCF is preparing for the upcoming .NET RoadShow 2007 with a handy blog post on setting up an environment to work with the latest .NET technologies. The tour starts September 10 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL and ends September 21 in Boston. Juval Löwy, author of Programming WCF Services is also presenting.
Despite rumors to the contrary, David Pogue’s “iPhone: The Missing Manual” is the first (and we think the best, the clearest, and the most fun to read) and available for sale now, here and at brick-and-mortar bookstores like Barnes & Noble.
David Pogue, the author of “iPhone: The Missing Manual,” shares this terrific tip for identifying your caller’s cellphone carrier:
It’s kind of amazing that there’s no little indicator-and that no culture of asking a caller, “Hey, are you AT&T?” has developed to save money.
Anyway, a reader named Mike has come up with a thoughtful suggestion for iPhone users:
“In the iPhone address book, change the ‘mobile’ label for the caller’s contact info to ‘AT&T mobile,’ and that’s what will show up on your phone when she or he calls. Once you make this change for one contact, ‘AT&T mobile’ will show up as a custom label option for any contact.”
The author of “The Myths of Innovation” knows a thing or two about bullshit, too.
Says Scott:
The first rule of BS is to expect it. Fire detectors are designed to expect a fire at any moment: they’re not optimists. They fixate on the possibility of fires and that’s why they save lives. If you want to detect BS you have to swallow some cynicism, and add some internal doubt to everything you hear.
As I post this, Scott’s essay on BS detecting sits now on Digg’s Top 10 in all Topics.
E-consultancy.com just reported that O’Reilly author Jenifer Tidwell is one of their
“top ten user experience gurus.” Read more.
In her book, “Designing Interfaces,” Tidwell shows readers how to create user-friendly interface designs–whether they’re delivered on the Web, a CD, or a “smart” devices like a cellphone.
Steve Talbott, the author of “Devices of the Soul,” talks to reporter Tim Blangger about the impact the Internet is having on our lives.
Blangger: Are there specific aspects of Net culture that you find especially dangerous? Social networking sites? Second Life? Are some more dangerous than others in the way they take our humanity from us?
Talbott: You can find potentials both virtuous and ominous in every conceivable human setting. I tend to focus, not on the relative merits of the different kinds of Websites that have evolved so far, but rather on the human stance that enables us to remain upright regardless of what we are doing.
Quoting from the Publicity page:
The Perl Survey is an attempt to capture a picture of the Perl community
in all its diversity. No matter what sort of Perl programmer you are,
we’d love to hear from you.
The survey can be found at: http://perlsurvey.org/
It only takes about 5 minutes to complete.
The survey will be open until September 30th, 2007. After that, we’ll be
reporting on the results and making the data freely available.
From a recent story in USA Today:
Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, a technology book publisher in Sebastopol, Calif., responded to the threats to his friend Sierra by calling for a code of conduct for blogs. He has urged bloggers to ban anonymous comments and to delete threatening or libelous comments.
“There is a kind of ethic on the Internet that says it’s OK to be abusive, or to have to tolerate it, in the interest of free speech,” O’Reilly says. “It’s a mistake.”
Recently, O’Reilly Media has “shifted our focus from a code of conduct to developing technology that will allow blog readers to participate in moderating comments,” says O’Reilly spokeswoman Sara Winge. “We think that’s more likely to get widely adopted than a written code that requires agreement from bloggers.”
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