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O'Reilly.comUG Program Newsletter

Hi there—

viguy I'd like to share Tim O'Reilly's post about his recent trip to Beijing "China Foo Camp: On the Outside, Looking In." Tim writes about his experiences in China, the smog, and the differences between the tech cultures in Shanghai and Beijing.

As we start to think about the end of the year, I should point out the incredible list of books we have coming out in December. It seems to be an O'Reilly tradition to get as many books out as possible by the holidays. Take a look at the list of upcoming titles and you'll see what I mean.

If any of these look like they might be just right for your group, don't heistate to send me a list. The earlier we start the better. As usual all Amazon, Slashdot, and oreilly.com reviews are appreciated.

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

—Marsee

In this issue:


O'Reilly UG Program News—Just for User Group Leaders
November 16, 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
November 16, 2007

New Releases: Books, Short Cuts, and Rough Cuts

Head First C#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

MAKEThe 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

Craft 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


Eddie Tapp at Chicago Area Camera Club
Nov 18, 2007
Chicago, IL
Author Eddie Tapp (Photoshop Workflow Setups and Practical Color Management) is presenting a Photoshop Seminar.

Eddie Tapp at the Software-Cinema Training Camps
Nov 18, 2007
San Francisco, CA
Author Eddie Tapp (Photoshop Workflow Setups and Practical Color Management) is a presenter.

Michael Hüttermann at Java User Group Karlsruhe
Nov 23, 2007
Karlsruhe, Germany
Author Michael Hüttermann (Agile Java-Entwicklung in der Praxis) is presenting "Testing Java Rich UI Swing applications."

Dynamic Learning Series Authors & the AGI Creative Team Host "Mastering the Adobe Creative Suite 3"
Nov 27-29, 2007
Crowne Plaza Norwest Sydney, 1 Columbia Court
Sydney, Australia
Learn from the team of authors and instructors that created many of Adobe's official training titles and have now combined their talents to bring you the Dynamic Learning series of seminars, books, and training videos. Come discover the new features and understand hard-to-find tips and tricks that can save you hours of time.

Derrick Story Teaches a Workshop at the Santa Rosa Junior College
Dec 1, 2007
Santa Rosa Junior College
Santa Rosa, CA
Author Derrick Story (Digital Photography Pocket Guide and iPhoto 6: The Missing Manual) will be holding a workshop titled "I've Taken Great Photos, Now What?"at the Santa Rosa Junior College Community Education program."

James Shore Will Be Presenting at the Orlando Agile Development Practices Conference The Art of Agile Development
Dec 3-6, 2007
Shingle Creek Resort
Orlando, FL
Author James Shore (The Art of Agile Development) will be leading two different sessions at the Orlando Agile Development Practices Conference. His two sessions, entitled "Maximizing ROI with Agile Release Planning" and "That's Not Right! Using Fit to Prevent Business Rule Defects" are sure to be instructive and applicable for all in attendance.

Adobe Presents Colin Moock's ActionScript 3.0 From the Ground Up Tour
Dec 3, 2007
Chicago, IL
Join author Colin Moock (Essential ActionScript 3.0) for a packed day of free ActionScript 3.0 training. Presented by Adobe, this training will leave attendees with new understanding, tips and tricks, pamphlets and information to take home, and a discount coupon to purchase Essential ActionScript 3.0. This free event is sure to fill up quickly, so register early!

Eddie Tapp at the Institute of Visual Arts
Dec 5, 2007
Oahu, Hawaii
Author Eddie Tapp (Photoshop Workflow Setups and Practical Color Management) is presenting Photoshop.

Author Steve Feuerstein Gives Seminar on Oracle and PL/SQL Best Practices
Dec 6, 2007
Birmingham, UK
Author Steve Feuerstein (Oracle PL/SQL Language Pocket Reference, 4th Ed. and Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices, 2nd Ed.) will present a two hour masterclass entitled "Best Practice PL/SQL" at the UKOUG annual conference.

Jesse Liberty at The Software Association of New Hampshire
Dec 6, 2007
Beford, NH
Author Jesse Liberty (Programming C# 3.0 and Programming ASP.NET) will be delivering a talk on Microsoft Silverlight.

James Shore Will Be Leading a Workshop at San Francisco BayAPLN
Dec 11, 2007
San Francisco, CA
Author James Shore (The Art of Agile Development) will be leading a workshop entitled "Agile Planning in Action" at San Francisco Bay's APLN. This popular and novel workshop introduces participants to agile planning by allowing them to plan their own tutorial. Participants learn the basics of agile planning, then use those lessons to create a tutorial covering the agile topics they're most interested in. When they're done, James will deliver the tutorial on the spot! This is a great session that exposes participants to the benefits and challenges of real agile planning. Plus, participants get a second tutorial on the subjects they care about most.

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.

Conference News

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 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 RailsConf 2008 The call for participation is open for RailsConf 2008.
May 29--June 1, 2008 in Portland, OR.
Ruby Central and O'Reilly Media are seeking leaders for RailsConf sessions and tutorials, including a large number of advanced-level proposals for the 2008 event. Proposals are due December 13.

Last Chance--Where 2.0 2008 Call for Participation ends November 26 Last Chance--Where 2.0 2008 Call for Participation ends November 26
May 12-14, 2008 in Burlingame, 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 Where 2.0 2008. Where 2.0 will be held May 12-14, 2008 at the San Francisco Airport Marriott in Burlingame, California, US. Proposals are due no later than November 26, 2007.

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

NoVa Code Camp, Reston, VA--November 17
NoVa Code Camp 2007.02, a free conference-quality event led, organized and attended by the local community. Topics include Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio Professional Edition, Visual Studio Tools for Microsoft Office System, Visual Studio Standard Edition, Visual Studio Express Editions, .NET Framework, Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.0, Silverlight, Expression Studio, Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows CardSpace, and Visual Studio 2005.

Flex Camp BostonFlex Camp Boston, Bentley College, Waltham, MA--December 7
Advance your Flex skills, meet members of the Adobe Flex team and network with local companies and fellow developers. Flex Camp Boston is a full-day event featuring some top industry experts on Adobe Flex and AIR from both inside and outside Adobe. Sessions will be geared towards developers with moderate to advanced levels of experience with Flex and/or ActionScript. There will be plenty of giveaways, raffles and swag (and lunch). At $10, you can't beat the price! The event will be held on December 7 at the LaCava Center of Bentley College in Waltham from 8am to 5pm (registration from 8-8:30).

2007 December Coders Social, Portland, OR--December 11th
Multiple Portland programming users groups are going to combine meetings into one large meeting. This will be a socializing, festive atmosphere meant to allow the local group members to get to know each other a bit better.

The Bay Area Functional Programmers continued their tour of Functional Web Frameworks
In November David Pollak presented lift, his Scala-based web framework. David's talk followed HAppS, a Haskell web framework, talk in October. BayFP finishes the series with Yariv Sadan presenting the Erlang framework ErlyWeb in December. Videos & slides are available for all the talks at the BayFP blog.

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

What's New in Ubuntu 7.10? (a.k.a. Gutsy Gibbon)
Ubuntu is arguably the most popular desktop Linux distribution out today. On the 18th of October, the latest release, 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) was released. Here is a comprehensive history of Ubuntu and a look at some of the many new and improved features.

Flash CS3 Screencast
Sometimes reading about a feature just isn't enough. When you need to see how a program works, try a Missing Manual screencast--video tutorials accompanied by step by step guidance, here's the latest one on Flash.

Bre Pettis From MAKE Magazine on WIRED Science
Bre shows off a High Speed Photography Hack in this video on the new PBS show WIRED Science.

Yahoo's Web Performance Guru: 14 Tenets for Speeding Up Sites
In seven years at Yahoo!, Steve Souders had focused most of his effort on back-end engineering tasks like squeezing more performance out of a database, or optimizing the memory usage in C++ programs running on a server. Three years ago, when he was named Chief Performance Yahoo! and charged with improving the user experience for visitors to Yahoo! Web sites, he expected it would mean doing more of the same.

Google Calling: Inside Android, the gPhone SDK
Google has finally unwrapped the gPhone, and rather than a product, it's a platform called Android. Today, Google is releasing an early SDK for Android and Brian DeLacey has been given an early preview of what you'll find inside.

The Mojo of Dojo
Few use raw JavaScript anymore if they can possibly avoid it, in the same way that few people code in assembly language. Dojo is one of a group of powerful JavaScript toolkits that can do a lot of the work for you, and Matthew Russell has put together this introduction.

Rick Sammon's Travel Tips for Photographers
Seasoned travel photographer Rick Sammon sits down with Derrick Story in the O'Reilly Media booth at PhotoPlus Expo '07 in New York City. In this podcast, Rick draws upon his experiences to offer good advice for photographers on the go.

DIY Surround-Sound DVDs
Learn how to make 5.1-channel Dolby Digital DVDs at home without pricey pro software. Plus — a sneaky way to hook multiple speakers to a stock Mac.

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

Blogs

O'Rellly Radar My paperless office
Is Apple Losing To Microsoft On Python Integration?
If Social Networking Sites *Really* Wanted to Interoperate
Flash Killers ---Java FX, Silverlight, Groovy and Xoetrope
Skinny Languages and Fat Tools
OpenSocial: It's the data, stupid

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

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