County of San Mateo Declares May 30th & 31st Maker's Weekend - Send Us a Photo for a Chance to Win 2 Weekend Passes

As this year's Maker Faire gets ready to launch, San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom has declared May 30th & 31st "Maker's Weekend". Keep reading for more information on this official declaration as well as how to win 2 adult weekend passes to this year's Maker Faire.

Associating Schematron with documents in editors - Plus a link to a video!

An effort at ISO SC34 WG1 to try to get an agreed on way to associate documents with schemas. Plus some recent editors that support ISO Schematron, and a link to a good video introduction to Schematron for developers.

Single Catalog or Multiple Catalogs in Lightroom?

Underneath all of the features and tools, Lightroom is, at its heart, a database program. One of the things that make Lightroom such a powerful and flexible application is its ability to help us find our images. As our collection of images grows it can become more and more difficult to locate that image of the puppy in the basket by the red flowers. But the keywords, metadata, collections, folders, and so on are all hooks Lightroom can use to search and find that puppy! There is nothing in Lightroom to prevent you from creating more than one catalog to store your images. But should you? Let's take a look at the reasons you might decide on one approach versus the other.

Featured Video: @MSG on Some Images are REALer Than Others - Ignite Show, Episode 14

Subscribe to this video podcast series via iTunes. Or, visit the O'Reilly Media area at iTunes to find other podcasts from O'Reilly.

MySQL faster, better, and still unified: notes about Sun, Monty Widenius, Percona, and Drizzle

It might have seemed last week, with the announcement of the Open Database Alliance, that MySQL is forking. The ODA promises a "central clearinghouse for MySQL development" and claims to improve on areas where criticism has historically been aimed at MySQL AB/Sun: bug-fixing, performance, and community responsiveness. But what's going on behind the scenes is much more subtle and promises a much better outcome for MySQL.

Thoughts on Amazon's New Whispernet Charge Policy

As everyone probably knows by now, Amazon has altered the conversion/delivery fee associated with sending files wirelessly to your Kindle. When I got my Kindle v.1 I was happy to see that I could email PDFs and other documents and have them delivered wirelessly to the device for 10 cents/attachment. When I dug in deeper and was told by an Amazon rep (last summer) that they're actually not charging anything for this service I was ecstatic. Once I figured out there was no cost involved in using this service, well, I'm sure I used it a lot more frequently than Amazon anticipated. Unfortunately, I apparently wasn't the only one doing this, which is what forced Amazon to change the policy.

Time Lapse of Galactic Center of Milky Way rising over Texas Star Party

According to William Castleman: "The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party. I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod. Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3). Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery. Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9."

ZDNet Puts the Twitter Power Tips Webcast in the News - The ROI From Twitter: "Don't bother" telling your CFO, O'Reilly says

ZDNet reporter Tom Steinert-Threlkeld covered theTwitter Power Tips webcast with Tim O'Reilly, CEO and founder of O'Reilly Media, and Sarah Misltein. The two authors of The Twitter Book fielded questions from some of the 1080 attendees who tuned in to the online event from around the globe to learn more about effective twittering. During the webcast Tim observed, "It's very difficult to quantify the return on investment of Twitter, to an organization." Instead, as the ZDNet reporter noted, Tim takes a Nike stance on it: "Just use it." Read the ZDNet story now. And don't miss the slides from Twitter Power Tips webcast!

Social Science Moves from Academia to the Corporation

This is the latest of a series of posts addressing questions regarding social technologies. These topics will be opened to live discussion in an upcoming webcast on May 27 with a special guest to be announced. In order to control a thing you must first classify that thing -- and we are seeing a massive classification of social behavior. While that classification falls under the guise of making life easier (targeted ads, locating a nearby pizza joint using your mobile), history tells us that we should be leery of the motives driving the masters of our social data (see Captivity of the Commons). Social sciences (behavioral psychology, sociology, organizational development), whose historical lack of data and scientific method left them open to ridicule from the “hard” sciences, finally have enough volume of data and analytics and processing power (see Big Data) to make “social” much more scientific.

Now Underway - Twitter Power Tips Webcast with Tim O'Reilly & Sarah Milstein

Twitter Power Tips — In this webcast, Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein, Twitter experts and coauthors of the The Twitter Book, will show you how to use Twitter more effectively, whether you're on the site for personal socializing or to meet business goals. They'll explain why Twitter is emerging as an important channel, and they'll share key tips--along with compelling, real-life examples--from power users. The presentation will be followed by attendee Q&A.; Join the webcast now!

Collaborative Publishing Based on Community Feedback

Over the last few years, traditional publishing has been moving closer to the web and learning a lot of lessons from blogs and wikis, in particular. Today we're happy to announce another small step in that direction: our first manuscript (Programming Scala) is now available for public reading and feedback as part of our Open Feedback Publishing System. The idea is simple: improve in-progress books by engaging the community in a collaborative dialog with the authors out in the open.

Linux To Regain 50% Netbook Market Share

The past couple of weeks saw a flurry or articles debating the future of Linux on netbooks. A report in the Taipei Times on May 9th was picked up by LinuxToday but largely ignored by the tech press and the blogosphere. Stephen Lim, the General Manager of Taiwan based Linpus Technologies, made the surprising prediction that Linux will regain 50% market share from Windows on netbooks by next year.

Yahoo! Placemaker - Open Location, Open Data and Supporting Web Services

Today at Where 2.0 Tyler Bell, the Head of Yahoo's Geo Technologies Group, launched Placemaker (this link should be live at posting). Placemaker is a webservice that takes in text and returns the locations found within via either XML or enhanced GeoRSS. The locations Placemaker returns come in the form of WOEIDs (Radar post). You might be cautious about relying on Yahoo's ID system for your locations. To alleviate your fears Yahoo! is announcing the release of GeoPlanet Data, all of the WOEIDs available as a free download under Creative Commons in June. Woot!

The Digital Panopticon

This post is part three of a series raising questions about the mass adoption of social technologies. These posts will be opened to live discussion in an upcoming webcast on May 27. In 1785 utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham proposed architectural plans for the Panopticon, a prison Bentham described as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." Its method was a circular grid of surveillance; the jailors housed in a central tower being provided a 360-degree view of the imprisoned. Prisoners would not be able to tell when a jailor was actually watching or not. The premise ran that under the possibility of total surveillance (you could be being observed at any moment of the waking day) the prisoners would self-regulate their behavior to conform to prison norms.

Andy Oram Explores the Impact of Customer Innovation on Business - New O'Reilly Insights on Forbes.com

It's All About The Customer — Andy Oram, an editor at O'Reilly Media, suggests various new ways businesses can take advantage of customers' innovations in a new O'Reilly Insights column on Forbes.com. "As customers annex new areas of practice and innovation, they will change the threshold where one can make money," writes Oram. "This will be stressful, as businesses have to stay on the run, but in return they will find themselves able to participate in whatever is exciting and creative in the productive sector." Check out O'Reilly Insights to read Oram's analysis.

Google Launches Maps Data API

The crowd at Where 2.0 was expecting an API announcement and Google delivered one. Lior Ron and Steve Lee announced their Maps Data API, a service for hosting geodata. As they describe it on the site: The Google Maps Data API allows client applications to view, store and update map data in the form of Google Data API feeds using a data model of features (placemarks, lines and shapes) and maps (collections of features).

Completing the circle on journalists and public participation

Capital News Connection has jumped into Web 2.0 full-tilt with Ask Your Lawmaker. The opportunity for a virtuous cycle of public input, professional processing, and listener loyalty--especially in a field whose death has been predicted by many -- puts Ask Your Lawmaker into an intriguing category of its own.

The Five Laws of Implementing a Login Solution

So, you're implementing a new software system that requires user authentication and management? Personally, I'm tired of seeing web sites fail to include a number of basic elements in their user management schemes. These Laws for Authentication Systems should not be violated regardless of how important or unimportant security is for you. If you decide to write your own solution or pick a packaged solution, make sure that system does not violate these laws.

Wolfram Alpha a Google Killer? Not... Supposed... To... Be

I'm getting tired of reading about whether Alpha is a Google-killer. I've seen Stephen Wolfram's presentations a couple of times; he's quite careful to say that it isn't. There's a fundamental difference that many people out there are just missing. Google is a search engine. Alpha looks like a search engine, but it isn't; it's all about curated data, and the analysis of that data. What's the difference? Look at one simple query: "earth circumference".

Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon

When you think of companies that are not only built to last, but rather, built to thrive - in good times and bad - what companies logically sit at the top of the pyramid? Equally important, what should be the criteria for assessing them? Let me propose a straw man for assessing the "Built-to-Thrive" bunch...

Captivity of the Commons

This post is part two of the series, “The Question Concerning Social Technology”. Part one is here. These posts will be opened to live discussion in an upcoming webcast on May 27. In January 2002 DARPA launched the Information Awareness Office. The mission was to, “ imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness (emphasis added)” The notion of a government agency achieving total information awareness was too Orwellian to ignore. Under criticism that this “awareness” could quickly migrate to a mass surveillance system the program was defunded.

Writing a book by competition

I've worked on lots of collaborative books before. Now, I'm starting on something different: a book written by competition.

Where 2.0 is Underway! - Conference News and Coverage

Where 2.0 Conference is now underway. You can follow the conference on Twitter and check the conference site for news, coverage, videos, presentation files, and photos.

Now Underway - Effective Communication webcast w/Head First editor Brett McLaughlin

Effective Communication: Making your point in a video-game culture — The book is dead; the play is dead; the lecture is dead. Everywhere you turn, you've heard about the demise of classic forms of communication, from the written word to the spoken. So how do you communicate today, and get your point across? It takes more than stage pyrotechnics and fancy graphics (sometimes, it takes less!). In this 60-minute webcast, happening Tuesday, May 19 at 10am PT, learn the fundamentals of effective communication. You'll understand how to tailor any content to be engaging, and to speak to your audience's needs in a manner to which they'll respond and interact. Join the webcast now!

The Assertions in HTML 5 - What kinds of constraints are assertions used for in HTML5? What about the content models?

Lets look at the assertions in draft of HTML 5: The Markup Language which collects constraints about the markup: the kinds of things that are susceptible for schema testing.

More Geo-Games: Ship Simulator on Google Earth

At Google I/O 2008 the Google Earth API was released. It brought Google Earth's 3D capabilities to the web (with the help of browser extensions). Since that release they've started supporting Macs. One really nice part of the Google Earth API is the ability to create games in the 3D world. One of the sample apps was the game...

Why $9.99 Won't Always Be an eBook Pricing Ceiling

Have you stumbled across any of those Kindle owners who get angry anytime they see an ebook price over $9.99? How about publishers who insist on maintaining their print list price for the e-version? Btw, for the record, at O'Reilly we typically fall somewhere in between; our "digital list price" is generally less than the print list price and, of course, Amazon is free to discount to an even lower price. As a consumer, when I see a Kindle price over $9.99 I'm highly likely to skip it.

Amazon's Physical vs. Digital Dissonance

In March of 2008, I wrote about the frustrating experience of trying to get this blog added to Kindle. Fourteen months later, apparently that "rather large ingestion queue" is still full, because the blog never showed up, and I never heard another peep about it. (There is now a self-publishing feature for blogs, but as with their self-publishing book feature (known as DTP), the standard terms of service you must accept to participate aren't something many commercial publishers will be willing or eager to swallow.)

The Question Concerning Social Technology

I am an evangelist of social media and an active participant: on Linked In (business), MySpace (music) and Facebook (increasingly my online identity), I blog on several sites and I am a daily user of Twitter. I also make my living speaking to companies about the value and operating principles of these more open, participatory technologies. I have read the proponents that abound (Why I Love Twitter, Groundswell, Here Comes Everybody etc.) and found much to agree with. I have read the detractors (“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” …, Facebook Addiction is Real etc.…) and found little to agree with.

Final Day to Register for Effective Communication: Making your point in a video-game culture - A Free Live Webcast with Brett McLaughlin

Effective Communication: Making your point in a video-game culture — The book is dead; the play is dead; the lecture is dead. Everywhere you turn, you've heard about the demise of classic forms of communication, from the written word to the spoken. So how do you communicate today, and get your point across? It takes more than stage pyrotechnics and fancy graphics (sometimes, it takes less!). In this 60-minute webcast, happening Tuesday, May 19 at 10am PT, learn the fundamentals of effective communication. You'll understand how to tailor any content to be engaging, and to speak to your audience's needs in a manner to which they'll respond and interact. Attendance is limited, so register now.

Scribd Store a Welcome Addition to Ebook Market (and 650 O'Reilly Titles Included)

The document-sharing site Scribd has launched a new "Scribd Store" selling view and download access to documents and books. As part of the launch, there are now more than 650 O'Reilly ebooks now available for preview and sale in the Scribd store, and all include DRM-free PDF downloads with purchase. (Scribd will soon be adding EPUB as a format, and we'll make that available as soon as possible.)

Velocity Preview - The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number at Microsoft

The psychology of engineering user experiences on the web can be difficult. How much rich content can you place up on a page before the load time drives away your visitors? Get the answer wrong, and you can end up with a ghost town; get it right and you're a star. Eric Schurman knows this well, since he is responsible for just those kind of trade-off decisions on some of Microsoft's highest traffic pages. He'll be speaking at O'Reilly's Velocity Conference in June, and he recently talked with us about how Microsoft tests different user experiences on small groups of visitors.

Announcing InsideRIA Conference

Yep, you heard correctly in association with the 360Conferences guys, InsideRIA is having its first conference August 23-24, 2009 in San Jose, CA at the eBay facilities. This 2-day event will into the nitty gritty of developing for the Rich Internet Application (RIA) space. Sunday will be hands-on workshops to get you familiar with a few of the RIA platforms. Monday will be a full day of sessions with 3 distinct tracks: Development, Design/User Experience and Business Development. All 3 tracks will be aimed at the RIA platform in general.

Being a Suggested User Leads to Thousands of Twitter Followers

Ever since Twitter started suggesting accounts to new users, it was clear that those on the suggested users list were gaining thousands of followers. Setting aside the fact that number of followers is a poor gauge of influence (see our Twitter report for details), I wanted to know how many followers a suggested account gains by appearing on the list.

Free Live Webcast - Twitter Power Tips with Tim O'Reilly & Sarah Milstein - Thursday, May 21, 2009 at 10 PT

Twitter Power Tips — In this webcast, Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein, Twitter experts and coauthors of the The Twitter Book, will show you how to use Twitter more effectively, whether you're on the site for personal socializing or to meet business goals. They'll explain why Twitter is emerging as an important channel, and they'll share key tips--along with compelling, real-life examples--from power users. The presentation will be followed by attendee Q&A.; Attendance is limited, so register now.

Now Under Way: iPhone Hacking - Intermediate & Advanced - A Free Live Webcast

iPhone Hacking - Intermediate & Advanced — This webcast is targeted towards people who want to do more hardware and advanced hacks involving software development. You'll learn various ways to get hardware connected to the iPhone, without having to go through the 3.0 approval process. We'll include several specific hacks on how to connect keyboards and serial devices to the phone, and more. Join the webcast now!

Building Higher Performance RIAs for Smart Phones

With the growing popularity of smart phones like the iPhone and Google’s Android, as well as new players on the market like Palm’s Pre, the idea of having an always-connected general computational device is finally being realized. Today’s smart phones are not only used for making calls, taking pictures, and listening to music; now people are using their phones to do business, build presentations, make quick edits to important files, and even surf the web. Yet contrary to what the commercials would have you believe, few smart phones provide a web experience equivalent even to a netbook.

Credit card company data mining makes us all instances of a type

The New York Times has recently published one of their in-depth, riveting descriptions of how credit card companies use everything they can learn about us. Any detail can be meaningful: what time of day you buy things, or the quality of the objects you choose. So who gave them permission to use our purchase information against us? What law could possibly address this kind of power play? There's another disturbing aspect to the data mining: it treats us all as examples of a pattern rather than as individuals.

April Column: Computational Geometry

Computational Geometry is the study of geometric algorithms and the data structures that enable their efficient implementation. We present algorithms that solve the Line Segment Intersection problem and describe challenges in validating their implementation. This is the sixth of a series of monthly columns in the blog associated with the Algorithms in a Nutshell book, published October 2008 by O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Final Day to Register for iPhone Hacking - A Free Live Webcast, May 15 at 10am PT

iPhone Hacking - Intermediate & Advanced — This webcast is targeted towards people who want to do more hardware and advanced hacks involving software development. You'll learn various ways to get hardware connected to the iPhone, without having to go through the 3.0 approval process. We'll include several specific hacks on how to connect keyboards and serial devices to the phone, and more. Attendance is limited, so register now.

Final Day to Register for iPhone Hacking - A Free Live Webcast, May 15 at 10am PT - Presented by Damien Stolarz, David Jurick, Adam Stolarz

iPhone Hacking - Intermediate & Advanced — This webcast is targeted towards people who want to do more hardware and advanced hacks involving software development. You'll learn various ways to get hardware connected to the iPhone, without having to go through the 3.0 approval process. We'll include several specific hacks on how to connect keyboards and serial devices to the phone, and more. Attendance is limited, so register now.

Now Underway - Free Live Webcast on Showing Off Your Models: Presentations in Google SketchUp

Showing Off Your Models: Presentations in Google SketchUp — Google SketchUp is a free and powerful 3D modeling application, and it's easy to start right away and quickly create impressive models. But SketchUp has many presentation features that most users don't know about, such as sectioning, scenes, styles, walk-throughs and animation. If you already know how to create a basic model, this webcast can help get your models to the next level. Join the webcast now!

Schematron on the Browser: JavaScript, CSS3 selectors, JQuery, Regex, JSON - Validation of structured web pages on the client side!

Schematron run from inside JavaScript on the web-browser, editing structured documents/data trascribed to HTML. Click "validate" and a box comes up with a list of the validation problems; click on of those and the corresponding text or element is background-highlighted. Very slick. 300 lines of code only.

The Modern Way to Put out an Album: NYeT!

It would be cruel to cite this as another example of the increasing irrelevance of newspapers, but I was honestly stumped by this entry in today's New York Times crossword: Modern way to put out an album. "P2P" sure didn't fit.

CSI Sydney: Character Set Investigation - A tale of drugs and confusion

The scene: a document of pharmaceutical data keeps on displaying ? after each major drug name but before a generated trademark sign.

Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update Incorrectly Signed? Had to use Combo Update File

My 1st generation MacBook didn't like the 10.5.6 update. And, now it doesn't like the 10.5.7 update. Fortunately, the Combo Update file for each release saved the day in each case.

Google's Rich Snippets and the Semantic Web

There's a long-time debate between those who advocate for semantic markup, and those who believe that machine learning will eventually get us to the holy grail of a Semantic Web, one in which computer programs actually understand the meaning of what they see and read. Google has of course been the great proof point of the power of machine learning algorithms. Earlier this week, Google made a nod to the other side of the debate, introducing a feature that they call "Rich Snippets." Basically, if you mark up pages with certain microformats ( and soon, with RDFa), Google will take this data into account, and will provide enhanced snippets in the search results.

Come to Ignite Where & Launchpad

Every year we kick-off Where 2.0 with a combination Launchpad and Ignite event. This year is no different. So far we've got 11 geo-oriented Ignite talks paired with 5 product demos spread across two sets. We'll be starting the show at 7PM and will conclude by 9PM on May 19th at the Fairmount in San Jose. Bar opens at 6:30.

W3C: Please put XSD 1.1 on hold and address the deeper issues - The subset of XSD that we need for more reliable databinding etc looks like RELAX NG

Here is a letter I have mailed to the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) and to the W3C XML Schemas Working Group, regarding the XML Schemas 1.1 proposed recommendation. "I would like to register with the W3C TAG and the W3C XML Schema WG that, on having considered the XSD 1.1 draft, I think it is exactly the wrong direction for the WG and W3C to be taking. That is, while each individual decision may be well-founded, and each change justifiable and beneficial, the total effect will not help get us out of the mess that XML Schemas has created, but mire us further in it."

Getting Involved in Higher Education

The single biggest recommendation I can give to developers out in the field, the one thing that they can do that will impact their career and personal growth, is to get involved in higher education by teaching. The benefits are so many, so far reaching, and so distributed that I felt they would make a great topic for discussion.