Blogs
Velocity 2009: Themes, ideas, and call for participation...
November 21, 2008
Last year's Velocity conference was an incredible success. We expected around 400 people and we ended up maxing out the facility with over 600. This year we're moving the conference to a bigger space and extending it to 3 days to accommodate workshops and longer sessions. Velocity 2009 will be on June 22-24th, 2009 at the Fairmont Hotel in San...
When Times Get Tough, the Tough Invent
By Kurt CagleNovember 21, 2008
The best ideas are risky ... and often are not necessarily beneficial to the originator. At O'Reilly we recently had a discussion about the distinction between invention and innovation. Invention, the creation of truly novel ideas, especially the paradigm changers, is comparatively rare. It requires focused dedication, persistence, intelligence and a willingness to fight the status quo. This is because the status quo - our society overall - is resistant to the idea of change, and inventions by their very nature bring change.
OOXML standards finally published and available free!
By Rick JelliffeNovember 21, 2008
I am delighted to see that the free site for ISO publicly available standards finally has the OOXML standards available:
The Commoditization of Massive Data Analysis
By Joseph HellersteinNovember 20, 2008
Big Data is a major theme on the O'Reilly Radar, so we're delighted to welcome guest blogger Joe Hellerstein, a Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley whose research focuses on databases and distributed systems. Joe has written a whitepaper with more detail on this topic. There is a debate brewing among data systems cognoscenti as to the best way...
Web Meets World: Privacy and the Future of the Cloud
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 20, 2008
Yesterday I gave a talk to the Privacy Forum in Auckland, New Zealand, titled Web Meets World: Privacy and the Future of the Cloud. The talk was intended as a scene setter for a discussion with the audience, about 70 lawyers, technologists, consultants, and public policy wonks. They responded well to the challenge, and we talked about the nature of...
Point-Counterpoint: On Digital Book DRM
By Peter BrantleyNovember 20, 2008
In the first part of a point-counterpoint exchange, Peter Brantley outlines reasons why DRM is bad for book publishers.
EFF Attorney: Google Book Search Settlement Weakens Innovation
By Peter BrantleyNovember 20, 2008
In an editorial in The Recorder, Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation says Google's settlement with publishers and authors signals an implicit abandonment of Google's legal team...
We Need iPhone Tethering and We Need It Now
By Dave AielloNovember 20, 2008
Several weeks ago I wrote about the experience of using a Nokia E71 as a 3G tethering device for my laptop here on Inside iPhone. I took advantage of a $19.99 unlimited data plan offered by AT&T GoPhone, the pay-as-you-go...
Managing Open Source Complexity
By Eric LarsonNovember 20, 2008
Sean McGrath wrote a great article on the struggle for Open Source to manage complexity. It's a great insight because much of programming is managing complexity. This requirement has fostered "high level" languages and continues to be powerful concept that...
Installing Rails on Ubuntu Hardy Heron (Server)
By Simon St. LaurentNovember 20, 2008
Want to install a Rails development environment on a bare-bones Ubuntu server setup? It's not that hard.
Why Microsoft's free AV won't matter
By John ViegaNovember 20, 2008
Earlier this week, Microsoft announced that they're going to stop selling their consumer security product OneCare, and instead they're going to give away for free an AV product based on the same technology. I've had several people ask me questions...
Small Apps, Loosely-Joined Into Contextual Tasks
By chromatic November 20, 2008
I spend too much time telling my computer how to do things when I should be able to tell it what I want to do. Perhaps it's time for declarative UIs to replace our procedural UIs.
Tiny MIDI Keyboards for Your Laptop
By David BattinoNovember 19, 2008
Heading out the door to a laptop jam session today, I eyed my chunky little MIDI keyboard, but even it was too big to fit in my backpack. I ended up typing out melodies and chords on the computer keyboard itself. Not very expressive. What you really want is velocity-sensitive, piano-style keys along with pitch-bend and modulation controls.
Creativity Tools NOW
By David BattinoNovember 19, 2008
BoinxTV is a striking example of how digital creativity tools are changing. As our tools begin to work in real time, they become less tools and more instruments. We begin to PLAY them, and playing is the heart of creativity. Can you think of other examples?
Good Job, or Good Work?
By Spencer CritchleyNovember 19, 2008
Creativity is a good thing. But I think we sometimes fall into the habit of thinking it's the only good thing. Not happy in your job? You probably need more opportunities to be creative. Not happy in your personal life? If you could just express yourself more, you'd feel better. I've been working creatively my whole life, and I feel...
Why Blogging and Social Media Shouldn't be Ignored
By Mac SlocumNovember 19, 2008
Consistent blogging and Web-based interaction often fall by the wayside when other projects demand attention, but venture capitalist Fred Wilson makes a compelling argument for keeping connectivity on the...
[TOC Webcast] Making the Case for Print on Demand
By Mac SlocumNovember 19, 2008
Tools of Change for Publishing will host "Making the Case for Print on Demand," a free webcast with presenter Brian O'Leary, on Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 1 p.m. eastern...
Publishers Need to Get In on the Conversation
By Peter BrantleyNovember 19, 2008
Kassia Krozser has a Cluetrain-like manifesto for publishers. From Booksquare: It's time to get your hands dirty, to dig into the real-world conversation. It's a weird thing, and sometimes...
A Good Idea: Genius For The App Store
By Giles TurnbullNovember 19, 2008
There's so many new apps appearing on the App Store, how can anyone keep track of what interests them? Apple's Genius playlist technology, currently restricted to just music, might be one answer.
New MySQL Query Analyzer for enterprise customers
By Andy OramNovember 19, 2008
MySQL AB (now Sun's Database group) established a multi-pronged business model long ago: support contracts, dual licensing, and proprietary add-ons all play a role in making them one of the biggest success stories in the area of open source business. Today their MySQL Query Analyzer adds another brick to that edifice. The analyzer can do simple things such as tell you how long a recent query took and how the optimizer handled it (the results of EXPLAIN statements). But it can also give historical information such as how the current runs of a query compare to earlier runs.
Why geeks don't like to run AV
By John ViegaNovember 19, 2008
When you look at the average, non-technical user, they probably should be running AV, because it is pretty unobtrusive, it does catch some things (even if it's not many), and they don't have the same sense of what the real risks are as I do. But, many technical people are like me. We're only going to use security technology if it's easy to use and works pretty well, unless forced to do so by our bosses. That leaves many geeks more vulnerable than they expect. But I know plenty of people who didn't install AV even after an infection, because they thought the price was too high... they'd rather do a very occasional cleanup.
Getting Started With Drupal
By Kurt CagleNovember 19, 2008
Once upon a time, website programming was a fairly arduous proposition. You could spend months putting together the various back end processing pages in ASP or PHP or Perl, writing included files that, if you were thoughtful about it, may contain some reuse, but overall writing such code by hand almost invariably meant that the code was not only very targeted to one particular use but was an absolute nightmare to maintain.
Installing Rails on Hardy Heron (Desktop)
By Simon St. LaurentNovember 19, 2008
One of the most difficult parts of the tech review for Learning Rails was Chapter 1, installing Rails. There are way too many operating systems and choices within those operating systems to provide a straightforward explanation. To help deal with...
Twitter's Hockey Stick Moment?
By Sarah MilsteinNovember 18, 2008
Over the weekend, TechCrunch postulated that with a frenzy of election-related activity, Twitter hit its hockey stick moment in late October. The theory goes that Twitter saw a 25 percent increase in U.S. visits from September to October and is thus about to experience the sort of explosive growth that will propel it into mainstream consciousness. That could well be...
Voice in Google Mobile App: A Tipping Point for the Web?
By Tim O'ReillyNovember 18, 2008
As I wrote in Daddy, Where's Your Phone?, it's time to start thinking of the phone as a first class device for accessing web services, not as a way of repurposing content or applications originally designed to be accessed on a keyboard and big screen. The release of speech recognition in Google Mobile App for iPhone continues the process begun...
DIY Appliances on the Web?
By Jim StogdillNovember 18, 2008
The appliance is moving up the stack in the enterprise data center. How about open hardware appliances on the web?
When Not to Send iCal Invitations
By Jochen WoltersNovember 18, 2008
Making travel reservations online has come a long way, and some airlines now even include standard vCalendar files in their confirmation emails, so it takes just a few mouse clicks to add all flight-related information to your digital calendar. One such airlines is Lufthansa, who include vCalendar _invitations_. And that, I daresay, is a bad idea.
Audio Hijack Pro: Record Audio from Almost Any App
By Todd OgasawaraNovember 18, 2008
I took a look at Audio Hijack Pro as a potential tool that is inexpensive and simple enough that even I can use it as a two-person audio podcast recording tool.
Redefining Professional Content and Accepting Digital's Limitations
By Mac SlocumNovember 18, 2008
Scott Karp's 10 observations about the future of media inspired a few thoughts on the shifting definition of "professional" and the limitations of digital.
Ebook to iPod to Hard Copy Purchase
By Peter BrantleyNovember 18, 2008
Hugh McGuire is loving Stanza, the free ereader app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. From the Book Over Blog: 40,000 ebook dowloads-a-day. I've got 35 of them sitting on my...
Juval Lowy explains Service-Orientation
By Kathryn BarrettNovember 18, 2008
Juval Lowy's Programming WCF Services is considered to be the most definitive treatment of Microsoft's WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) available. In it, Juval provides both the guidance and insight needed to master the skills for building maintainable, extensible, and reusable WCF-based applications. Juval's talent as a teacher—that for tackling vast subjects and making them easy to learn—comes through especially well in this appendix from his book: An Introduction to Service-Orientation. These days, there's no avoiding the phrase "service-oriented," but few people can explain what it means and why it's so important. Juval gets to the heart of the matter in this excerpt.
Your Social Network *IS* Your Computer
By Dan McCrearyNovember 18, 2008
Social networking software is making trust more transparent to the user of a service. It is creating a new paradigm shift in computing: it allows people to just use resources without worrying about trust issues. Building your social network and integrating social network trust data into your application will be more important than ever.
What Would Depression 2009 Look Like?
By Tim O'ReillyNovember 17, 2008
Boston.com has a really thought-provoking article entitled Depression 2009: What would it look like?. The subtitle answers: "Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one." This is one of those "Duh!" articles that makes you see the obvious. As the article notes: Most of us, of course, think...
Mobile First, PC Second
By Mac SlocumNovember 17, 2008
Over on Radar, Tim O'Reilly says the mobile tipping point is upon us: I think about the web as experienced on a PC, and then about mobile as an...
Redirecting Your Website to an iPhone-Optimized Site
By Dave AielloNovember 17, 2008
I've come to an important stage of the development of an iPhone-optimized version of my website, RinkAtlas. I've decided to redirect all visitors to the site who are using an iPhone or an iPod touch to the iPhone-optimized version of...
Warning: x = x + 1 May Be Hazardous to Your Brain
By Dan McCrearyNovember 17, 2008
Many people that are just starting in their software career have not been exposed to the contrast between two very different approaches to solving server side scalability issues. And although efficiently using 100 CPUs is not critical today, in the next five years it will become critical for a projects success. In this article we look at how the cognitive styles of functional and imperative software will shape the computing industry.
Open Comparability: boycott and ban products with anti-benchmarking EULAs
By Rick JelliffeNovember 17, 2008
It is time that legislators, regulators and procurement officials put an end to end-user license agreements (EULA) that prevent publication of comparative benchmarks.
Schemas: stereotypes, archetypes or prototypes?
By Rick JelliffeNovember 17, 2008
The problem with schemas is this: sometimes we need prototypes, sometimes we need archetypes, sometimes we need stereotypes, but transitioning between them is not trivial in any schema language, which may be optimised for particular cases.
My journey into security
By John ViegaNovember 17, 2008
This is my first blog post on O'Reilly. I thought I would start out with some background on myself, and then give a high level overview of the kinds of things I'm going to be blogging about. When I was...
Daddy, Where's Your Phone?
By Tim O'ReillyNovember 16, 2008
I met recently with Vic Gundotra, formerly Microsoft's head of platform evangelism, and now VP of Engineering at Google, responsible for all their mobile efforts outside of Android. We were talking about Google's mobile strategy and the insanely cool new voice-activated Google search in the Google Mobile Application for iPhone. But what I really want to share is Vic's story...
How do _You_ Avoid The Muse? Let's make a list...
By The Fat ManNovember 16, 2008
Twenty-five years ago, it was easy. We weren't rock stars because we didn't have the recording equipment. You couldn't say it was for lack of trying, either. Pretty much everybody out with whom I hung would have emphatically jumped through unthinkable flaming hoops to have access to a 24-track recording device and a microphone or two--it would have been like...living...
iPhone Pricing Revisted
By Paul KafasisNovember 16, 2008
Yesterday, I read a terrific post by Andy Finnell regarding iPhone Pricing. You may now have seen this article linked by Daring Fireball or Ranchero, but if you haven't, it's absolutely worth a read. In it, Andy discusses the low...
Google is the Next Microsoft
By Eric LarsonNovember 16, 2008
I'm going to ahead and say it, Google is the next Microsoft. Microsoft played a very important role in changing the way the world thought of computers by helping to place a computer in practically everyone's reach. Google has effectively...
Apps for Democracy
By Jim StogdillNovember 14, 2008
The District of Columbia is making its data transparent. Now it's up to you to do something with it.
Where 2.0 2009 CFP Is Open
By Brady ForrestNovember 14, 2008
The fifth Where 2.0 Call For Participation is now open. This year we're going to focus on location-ware technologies and their implications. The iPhone and Android have paved the way for a new breed of app and Where 2.0 will be focused on it. If you want to join us on stage submit your talk by December 2, 2008....
Tagging the Real World through Barcode Apps
By Mac SlocumNovember 14, 2008
Mobile phones with barcode apps bring digital tools into real-world curation.
The Joys of Vertical Audio
By Erica SadunNovember 14, 2008
One of the things I hate about the Media Player framework is that although it offers easy-to-use audio playback, it does so horizontally. Users have to flip their phones onto the side and access the playback controls in landscape. It's not all that hard to force Media Player into portrait mode and today I'll show you how.
Taking Charge of Your New Canon Digital Rebel--Tips, Warnings, and Reminders
By Sara PeytonNovember 14, 2008
Two new books from O'Reilly's Companion Series offer a complete photography class, tailored specficially for folks using Canon's new Digital Rebel cameras. Both--The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi/450D Companion and The Canon EOS Digital Rebel XS/1000D Companion--are by producer and videographer Ben Long. In each of his handy pocket guides, Ben not only provides a detailed one-stop camera manual but he also walks you through all the basic photography theories that apply to any camera. And here Ben provides tips, warnings, and reminders from the books for using the XS cameras (which are applicable to most DSLRs). Read on to learn more.
I succeeded to cancel my credit card insurance
By Emerson NiideNovember 14, 2008
Hiring a service is easy, but to cancel it is usually harder than passing your finals and more boring than declaring your taxes. But what if it was an easy thing to do?
Sun's Layoffs, Anil Gadre, and What happens to Java now?
By Timothy M. O'BrienNovember 14, 2008
Sun announced massive layoffs of up to 18% of the global workforce as they split the software division into three groups. What do these changes mean for Java? And, who is managing the new Application Platform Software group?
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