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Nov 2009 Issue:
New Releases:
The Art of SEO
By Eric Enge, Stephan M. Spencer, Rand Fishkin, Jessie Stricchiola
Beautiful Testing
By Tim Riley, Adam Goucher
C# 4.0 in a Nutshell: Rough Cuts Version, Fourth Edition
Confessions of a Public Speaker
By Scott Berkun
Debug It!
By Paul Butcher
Friends with Benefits
By Darren Barefoot, Julie Szabo
From Camera to Computer
By George Barr
Getting Started with Google Wave
By Andrés Ferraté
Grails
By Dave Klein
Great Java
By Brett McLaughlin
Head First iPhone Development
By Dan Pilone, Tracey Pilone
Hello, Android, Second Edition
By Ed Burnette
iPhone Game Development
By Paul Zirkle, Joe Hogue
iPod: The Missing Manual, Eighth Edition
By J.D. Biersdorfer, David Pogue
Log4J
By J. Steven Perry
Make: Technology on Your Time Volume 20
By Mark Frauenfelder
Photoshop Elements 8 for Mac: The Missing Manual
By Barbara Brundage
Premiere Elements 8: The Missing Manual
By Chris Grover
QuickBooks 2010: The Missing Manual
By Bonnie Biafore
The Sustainable Network
By Sarah Sorensen
VMware Cookbook
By Ryan Troy, Matthew Helmke
Windows 7 Annoyances: Rough Cuts Version
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Welcome
Hi there,
The holidays are moving in quickly and soon 2009 will be over. Is your group celebrating with a holiday party? Make sure we send books for your raffle. One book that should be on every group's list or library is Scott Berkun's lastest book Confessions of a Public Speaker that just
released this month. This book is funny as well as practical. One UG leader
told me he read it to his wife. Now how's that for an endorsement?
Last month I visited the Atlanta area to attend a gathering of user group leaders of all kinds. We had a great turn out and spent the day discussing topics such as community, membership, meeting structure, sponsorship, and more. Please check out the notes on the group wiki when you have a chance.
User group leaders are invited to join the West Coast Community Leadership Summit coming up January 9 at DeVry University in Daly City. Registration is open. Thanks to Michael
Van Riper for getting the ball rolling. The
evening activity will be an Ignite at Google in San Francisco. Read on for more details.
Please pass along any part of this newsletter to your group via email or
your website and include the discount codes. We offer both a text and an HTML version.
Thanks,
--Marsee Henon
O'Reilly Answers -- Clever Hacks. Creative Ideas. Innovative Solutions.
We're launching the beta of O'Reilly Answers, and I'm inviting you to be
part of it. In brief, O'Reilly Answers is a community site for sharing
knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together
our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends
of O'Reilly). O'Reilly is at the center of an amazing exchange of
knowledge sharing and idea generation, and we want you to join us in
changing the world by spreading the knowledge of innovators.
What's Hot in O'Reilly Answers:
Great Java on Video
If you're learning something new, doesn't it make sense to learn how to do it well? Great learning from O'Reilly helps you do just that: from start to finish, we teach you tried and true methods for every topic we cover, from Java programming to HTML coding, and more. And, rather than just sitting and watching, you learn by doing, in real time. It's as if you're sitting next to a good friend (and programming expert) as he shares what he knows and you follow along, step-by-step. It's simply a
great way to learn.
Throughout the course, you'll progressively learn to code and compile
programs, work extensively with text, and declare, convert, and cast
between data types. You'll also read files, get user input, and build
arrays, including multi-dimensional arrays. Finally, you'll move into
objects, modeling your data and behavior into core Java structures.
Great Java: Level 1 will teach you the fundamentals of Java, from the
basics of compilation through methods, objects, and the key concepts of
good programming. By the time you're through these lessons, you'll be
programming, and programming well.
Online Conferences in December -- Where 2.0. Velocity, and Gov 2.0
Where 2.0 Online Conference
An Emphasis on iPhone Sensors
December 3, 9:00 am - 12:45 pm Pacific time
25% discount code for User Group members: whrfall09usrg
By creating a widespread platform that allows for third-party
development and geolocation, iPhones define the state of the art for
location enabled sensors. Presentations exploring these new
opportunities include:
- The Sensors in Your iPhone: Alasdair Allan, University of Exeter and
Babilim Light Industries
- Augmented Reality: Andreas Alfare, Mobilizy
- Location Sensors: Ian Peters-Campbell, Loopt
- Working with Audio Input: Martin Roth, RJDJ
- Computer Vision and the iPhone Camera: Jeffrey Powers, Occipital
Velocity Online Conference
Fast by Default
December 8, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm Pacific time
25% discount code for User Group members: velfall09usrg
The Velocity Online Conference dives into some of the most important
developments in web performance and operations, including:
- Performance Impact: How Web Speed Affects Online Business KPIs: Hooman
Beheshti
- Faster Load Times Through Deferred JavaScript Evaluation: Charles
Jolley
- Load Balancing & Reverse Proxies with Varnish & More: Artur Bergman
- CouchDB from 10,000 Ft: J Chris Anderson
- Operations Roundtable: Jesse Robbins, Artur Bergman, Adam Jacob, John
Allspaw
Gov 2.0 Online Conference
Facing Challenges and Winning: Five Gov 2.0 Examples
December 10, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm Pacific time
Free!
When citizens interact with their government, powerful things can
happen. Web 2.0 is the industry which has shown that transparency,
participation, collaboration add up to increased efficiency. Gov 2.0
harnesses this for the public good, as we'll explore in these sessions:
- City of Santa Cruz Budget Crisis: A Blueprint Using Social Media: Peter
Koht, City of Santa Cruz
- txts 4 africa: Merrick Schaefer, UNICEF
- Utah Department of Public Safety Media Portal: Jeff Nigbur, State of
Utah, Department of Public Safety
- Digital Diplomacy: Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds: Rita
King, Dancing Ink Productions
Safari Books Online's Coder Challenge and Safari Open House
It's time for the next Safari Books Online's Coder Challenge. Tell us
about your achievement on or before November 30, 2009.
We're looking for super techie professionals who stand out in our
industry -- those who are using technology in creative ways or are helping our
community in novel ways.
Tell us about a project that demonstrates your super techie achievement using the submission form. If you're selected as one of the winners, you will receive a 3-month subscription to Safari Books Online and an
invitation to join Tim O'Reilly, CEO and founder of O'Reilly Media, Inc., at a special event early next year in California. Winners are selected by a panel of judges; however, community votes and comments are encouraged.
Try the new version of Safari Books Online during our Open House -- no
charge, no strings attached!
O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly is enthusiastic about the benefits
of this new release:
"Safari Books Online 6.0 is a complete, bottom-to-top revamping of the
original service. The new UI is slicker and faster, with the kind of
drag-and-drop goodness that people expect from a modern web application.
In addition, we've added some long-requested features that take
advantage of the online medium in ways that aren't possible with
standalone ebooks."
10 Days Free -- test drive Safari Books Online free for 10 days or 200 page views. Get your free trial now.
For a very limited time, try a Safari Library account on us -- no
strings attached! Register during our Open House and test drive Safari
Books Online for up to 10 days or 200 page views.*
*Limited time offer ends November 24, 2009. Not available in all
countries. Available to new subscribers only. Rough Cuts and Downloads
not available during trial.
Reviewers Needed and Book Discount Code
We're always looking for book reviewers, especially on our new releases.
Titles we're excited about include Confessions of a Public Speaker, The Sustainable Network, The Art of SEO, and Getting Started with Google Wave. If you'd like to write a review of any of these books for Amazon,
Slashdot, your favorite book community site such as GoodReads or Shelfari, or your blog, please send an email to your user group leader with the book title and where you'll review it.
Get 35% off from O'Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, PC Publishing,
Pragmatic Bookshelf, Rocky Nook, SitePoint, or YoungJin books and ebooks
you purchase directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938.
The O'Reilly School of Technolgy Referral Program
The O'Reilly School of Technology (OST) just started a new referral program.
For every new student you refer to OST, earn $100 cash or credit towards
OST courses.
How does it work?
- Just register for free so we can create a referral account for you. (If you're a current or past OST student, you are automatically registered -- just log in.)
- Then we'll give you a special website URL to post as a link on your website, Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace page. If you like, you can use banners we provide.
- Or, you can simply give your email address to your friends to use when enrolling so that we know you referred them.
- Log in to your Referral account and watch the money come in!
Here's the FAQ for more info.
O'Reilly School of Technology Courses: UG Members Receive a 30% Discount
By enrolling in the O'Reilly School of Technology, you can stay
competitive in Information Technology without the high cost or huge time
commitment. Our courses work around YOUR schedule, not the other way
around. And within months, not only will you have the University of
Illinois Certificate to display on your resume, you'll also have a
portfolio of projects that are sure to impress in your interviews!
OST's full-price tuitions are already lower than comparable continuing
education or community college courses. However, as an O'Reilly User
Group member, you save an additional 30% on all the courses in the
following University of Illinois Certificate Series:
- Database Administration Certificate
- Java Programming
- PHP/SQL Programming
- Linux/Unix System Administration
- Web Programming
- Open Source Programming
- .NET Programming
- Client-Side Web Programming featuring AJAX
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.
UG leaders only -- 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 a link to your group's site with one or more banners posted,
I'll send you the O'Reilly book(s) of your choice. Choose from
the following list:
Upcoming Events
Webcast: Tokyo Cabinet in One Hour
When: Nov 17, 2009
Tokyo Cabinet is a fast, synchronous key/value database library with support for several major languages, including Ruby. We will look at both its benefits and its problems, and work through several examples that demonstrate its capabilities, ease of use from Ruby, and performance potential. At the end of the talk there will be a question and answer session.
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