O'Reilly News & Commentary

MySQL conference 2010: thriving as one of many

A database is just a place for data. You can make it fancy with cross-linking and even stick in stored procedures, but it remains a passive repository that takes on value only as a part of a surrounding environment for processing. There are more tools for manipulating data than ever. The various solutions called as NoSQL have value in their own right and in conjunction with MySQL. Let's look at the future course of MySQL in an environment with many new and intriguing alternatives to relational databases, and multiple versions of MySQL itself.

Protecting Children Online - Part One

We need to remove the idea that stuff online is "not real," or that it doesn't have consequences. We need to drill into them that they will be held accountable for what they do and say when they are online, just as they would be when they are at home or at school. Explain to them that they need to think before they post and they don't have a right to post whatever they want...

Happening Today: What will users pay for? - Join us for this free live webcast at 10am PT / 1pm ET

If advertising alone won't pay the bills and paywalls are tough to get right, how can web-based businesses make money? This is a question Instructables.com CEO Eric Wilhelm has already confronted. We'll dig into the Instructables model and consider potential solutions in this video Q&A; with Eric Wilhelm. Attendance is limited, so register now!Other upcoming webcasts include: LinkedIN: Beyond the Basics Presented by Irene KoehlerApril 20, 2010 Introduction to Apache CouchDBPresented by J. Chris AndersonApril 21, 2010 Web 2.0 Expo PreviewPresented by Brady Forrest, Sarah Milstein, Tim O'Reilly April 22, 2010 An introduction to building mapping applications for the iPhone and iPadPresented by Alasdair Allan April 28, 2010 Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

Ebook annotations, links and notes: Must-haves or distractions? - O'Reilly editors discuss ebook functionality and connected reading experiences

Should ebooks be chock full of links, annotations, and sharing tools? Or is a quiet and disconnected experience the way to go? O'Reilly editors recently tackled these questions in a great back-channel discussion. We decided to share a handful of notable excerpts

Web operators are brain surgeons - Our increased reliance on web-based intelligence makes speed and reliability even more important.

As we become more dependent on our collective consciousness, web operators will be much more involved in end-user experience measurement, from application design to real user monitoring. We're in the century of the distributed nervous system, and web operators are its brain surgeons.

Adding Rounded Corners to HTML with CSS - Thanks to HTML5 and CSS3 it's never been so easy!

Adding rounded corners to an object in your HTML should be easy. Heck, open up Photoshop or your favorite image editor and it is easy to around rounded corners to any rectangle you create. When it comes to creating Web pages it is a different matter. Creating rounded corners to a block of text, a tab or a background is not easy. The only effective way to add a rounded corner is to create a HTML table with image files that look like corners. This is a lot of work and not very easy to update. HTML5’s update to Cascading Style Sheets, CSS3, now supports a new feature that allows you to added rounded corners to elements in your HTML. Rounded corners suddenly have never been so easy.

The iPad isn't a computer, it's a distribution channel

The iPhone was a relatively open phone and we accepted it, but the iPad is a relatively closed computer designed to be a controlled distribution channel, and that's a bummer. The thing is, Jobs' argument was always a bit disingenuous. Closed follows from his brain architecture, not from an argument on behalf of his customers or their network providers. Those are post facto justifications supporting an already-held point of view. And the reason the iPad is going to stay closed isn't because it is good for users, it's because it is good for Apple.

Government transparency: Using search data to connect with your audience

When Americans want to know about health care reform, they don't go to opencongress.org and search for "H.R.3200" or H.R.4872". They go to Google and type in "health care reform". One key to making sure that the information you are working so hard to surface makes its way to the citizens who are looking for it? Use free search data to find out the language people are using to refer to that information. At Transparency Camp, I demonstrated a number of these tools.

My Days with the iPad - Kindle killer or not?

By day I'm the pr manager for O'Reilly Media. Most workdays I face three screens--my MacBook, a large monitor, and my iPhone--in order to keep an eye on several Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, email accounts, instant messaging and texting. These...

Grumpy old men, the "Inmates" and margins - iPad, iPhone and the future of computing

As the iPad descends upon us, it is fair to ask, "Is this the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning?" Depending upon whom you ask, the conclusions vary widely. The yin and yang of openness vs. integrated raises a fundamental question that underscores the battle being fought in the simmering industry battle between Apple and Google.

Flash Next - Part 1

A few weeks ago, Andrew Shorten, Bill Heil, and Deepa Subramaniam from the Flex PM team came to New York to talk to companies and my NY Flash user group about "Flex Next". Flex Next is what adobe is considering for the next two releases of Flash Builder and the Flex SDK. Although I would love to talk about what they presented, I think I would be breaking a NDA or two. Instead, I thought I would outline some key features of what I would like to see in the SDK and IDE in the next few releases.

Happening Now: O'Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo 2010 - MySQL: An Ecosystem, Not Just a Company

The O'Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo is now underway at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Check the O'Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo site for news coverage and more. Morning events include: MySQL Cluster Tutorial with Andrew Morgan (Oracle), Geert Vanderkelen (Sun Microsystems), Andrew Hutchings (Oracle Corporation) MySQL Configuration Options and Files: Basic MySQL Variables (Part 1) with Sheeri K. Cabral (The Pythian Group) MySQL Dual Master Setups with MMM with Arjen Lentz (Open Query), Walter Heck (Open Query) The Replication Tutorial with Mats Kindahl (Sun Microsystems), Lars Thalmann (MySQL) Using Partitioning in MySQL 5.1 and 5.5 with Giuseppe Maxia (Oracle) Diagnosing and Fixing MySQL Performance Problems with Baron Schwartz (Percona Inc.), Morgan Tocker (Percona, Inc.) MySQL DBA Certification Tutorial, Part 1 with Kai Voigt (Sun Microsystems)

Citizens as public sensors - The co-founder of SeeClickFix on how crowdsourcing can help local government

Gov 2.0 discussions tend to center on transparency and making data available to the general public. But information can flow in both directions. SeeClickFix believes citizens can offer as much to local government as government can offer to the people. SeeClickFix co-founder Jeff Blasius discusses the service in this Q&A.;

The Wellington Declaration

This week marks the start in Wellington New Zealand of the next round of ACTA negotiations, nominally the US-led Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The scope of the agreement, however, has extended well beyond trade in fake medicines and knock-off Gucci handbags into the technical realms of file-sharing, ISP liability, disconnection, and DRM. Such issues have been contentious where they've arisen in New Zealand, France, the UK, USA, and elsewhere, yet negotiators seem ignorant of consumer and technology concerns. To correct this, the open PublicACTA conference two days ago drafted and released the Wellington Declaration.

We are iPad. Resistance is (not) futile - Apple may have closed the iPad, but you don't need permission to open it.

A lot of people are upset about how closed the iPhone, and now the iPad, are. Cory Doctorow wrote a lengthy piece about the evils of the iPad and its awful closed system. I agree that Apple has taken far too much away. I agree that it is infantalizing to require us to send in the iPad to get its battery replaced. But, my gosh, when did developers ever need permission to break things? When did Steve Jobs become not just rule maker, but some sort of deity that actually prevented me from ignoring said rule maker, and doing whatever I could with my device?

Games & Entertaiment account for Half of all iPad apps

98% of apps in the U.S. iTunes app store label themselves as "iPad compatible", but most were written for iPhones or iPods. One week into its launch there are about 2,300 apps that run only on iPads. Measured in terms of number of unique apps, Games and Entertainment account for about half of all the iPad apps.

Foursquare. What's It All About? - Brady Forrest Explains How This Hot Location-Sharing Game Can Attract New Customers

Foursquare: Making Games Pay--"Businesses have long wondered about the people who walk through their doors. Foursquare and other mobile apps may be able to help them," writes Brady Forrest in a new O'Reilly Insights column on Forbes.com. The co-chair of Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and avid Foursquare players discusses why businesses should pay attention to the new gamers and mayors checking in to their establishments. Read more.

Brian Aker on post-Oracle MySQL - A deep look at Oracle's motivations and MySQL's future

In time for next week's MySQL Conference & Expo, Brian Aker discussed a number of topics with us, including Oracle's motivations for buying Sun and the rise of NoSQL.

MongoDB experts model the move from a relational database to MongoDB

Because the MySQL conference starts next week and O'Reilly just released a pre-publication version of MongoDB: The Definitive Guide, I decided to spice up discussion a bit by asking the authors about a common question: how to move from MySQL to MongoDB.

How to Read O'Reilly Books on Your iPad or Other Tablet Device

Are you looking for a way to get the O'Reilly ebooks you currently own in ePub format on to your iPad? Follow these three easy steps and you'll be reading your favorite titles with iBooks in no time.

Opinion - How the Role of the F.C.C. Impacts Internet Providers

On April 6th, a federal appeals court ruled that the F.C.C. did not have the authority to regulate how Internet service providers manage their network. While potentially a win for Internet providers, it is now more important than ever for providers to be transparent in their actions to sustain customer loyalty.

Room for Debate: The iPad in the Eyes of the Digerati

Tim O'Reilly, computer scientist David Gelernter, software engineer Liza Daly, and more discuss the implications of the iPad on the New York Times Room for Debate blog.

Featured Video: Web Apps for the iPad

Don't miss all our iPad Launch Coverage. More videos, resources, news and ebooks. Start learning now.

The iPad and computing's middle ground - How much computing happens between the phone and the laptop? We'll see.

The iPad doesn't quite achieve full-fledged "embedded" status, but Marc Hedlund says it does move computers and networks closer to activities that so far have been difficult to reach. One simple example: Phil Schiller's demo of the iWork spreadsheet app, Numbers, in the iPad launch keynote showed a spreadsheet tracking a local soccer team. It's a great demo. Would you carry a laptop around a soccer field?

Raising Consciousness: Facebook's "Automatic Authorization"

In their explanation on the developer wiki, Facebook explicitly states that 3rd party applications that use this feature can only gather information about the given user that may be publicly search-able anyway. However, this assurance from Facebook is without merit because the implied reasoning is based upon flawed assumptions: the act of users choosing to make some of their information publicly search-able does not imply in any way that the users are granting the ability for rogue 3rd party applications to uncloak their identity (and data).

Upcoming Webcast - Subversive Collaboration: The art of working with others to be better co-creators - Register now for this free online event - April 13th @ 10am PT

Thomas Friedman said that "Curiosity and passion are key components in a world where information is readily available to everyone and global markets reward those people." This implies that there's a different set of rules by which we'll thrive and succeed in this new, networked society. Join presenter Nilofer Merchant (author of The New How) in questioning many of the assumptions that have guided our way of working so far. Attendance is limited, so register now! Other upcoming webcasts include: What will users pay for? LinkedIN: Beyond the Basics Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

iPad falls short on cloud integration - Complicated iPad synchronization reveals a missed opportunity

The iPad is an amazing piece of hardware, but it's still a 1.0 device. At the top of the "to be improved list" should be a simple mechanism for synchronization and cloud access. The iPad and the iPhone are perfect smart terminals for cloud computing. At some level Apple knows this, as it was pushing a MobileMe discount with iPads this weekend. But when you get your hands on an iPad, you realize that Apple missed a real opportunity for deep integration with its cloud offerings.

Where the Wild Things Are: an Adventure in Silverlight (Act III)

This is the third in a four part series on understanding Silverlight by a Flex developer. There is a big culture of misinformation in both the Flex and Silverlight camps regarding how the other gets the job done. The best way to bridge the divide is to investigate how Silverlight and XAML does the RIA thang. In this Act, we delve into styling, control templates and state management in Silverlight. All of the features we’ll cover are XAML related, and as such, can be managed completely within Blend.

The War Room Part 2

In my previous article I began to detail the joys of the war room and left off by comparing my company's internal level of incident severity with the Homeland Security Advisory System. A heightened level of Orange would be the equivalent of something happening like maybe all videos on the site have stopped working. At level Orange management and resources across domains are called into the war room. Senior management from Development, Operations, QA, Analytics, Ad Sales, and Video Operations all gather in a room and work on solving the problem.

Styling your web pages for iPhone and iPad - Share your creations with us via Twitter using #ipwa and #iPadORM

Now that the iPad is out, it's time to style your web pages so they look good on both the iPhone and the iPad. In this screencast, I create one page of content that is styled in two different ways: one for the iPhone and the iPad, and show you how to use CSS Media Queries to select the correct style sheet depending on the device you're using. I also demonstrate how to change the style on the iPad depending on whether you're in portrait or landscape orientation, using a little JavaScript.

Hard Drives Can Pose Risks to Sustainability

Extending the use of computing devices is critical if we are to create more sustainable consumption. We can divert waste from landfill and reduce the energy it takes to extract materials and build new devices, if we can lengthen the life of the devices we already have or find new ways to use its components. But what if its reuse poses a risk to you? Hard drives can pose such a risk and, as such, often have their lives and usefulness cut short.

The iPad as a "bedtime computer" - The creator of the "A Story Before Bed" iPad app discusses tablets and the reading experience.

The online story-recording service A Story Before Bed has already reduced the distance between digital content and the book experience. Now, the company's new iPad app could close that gap completely. Co-founder Hillel Cooperman talks about his company's app and the broader implications of tablet computers in this short Q&A.;

Check out C3 cities: your eyes will thank you

The practicality of 3D content is often overstated; I've not yet found an example in the geo world where 3D genuinely compliments, rather than hinders, usability. The high-resolution city models produced by C3 attracted significant attention at this year's Where 2.0, and may in time prove to be the exception to the rule.

The iPad's first 48 hours: impressions and reactions - Register now for this free online event - April 5th @ 1pm PT

The iPad has finally gone from mythical dream device to an actual product. Join us for a roundtable discussion with Adam Flaherty, Mac Slocum, Damien Stolarz, and Adam Engst, where we'll weigh in on features we like and dislike, look at surprising functions or oversights, and see how the iPad compares to our expectations. Attendance is limited, so register now! Other upcoming webcasts include: LinkedIN: Beyond the Basics Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

Four short links: 1 April 2010 - Copyright Economics, RDF, Linked Data Faith, and Douglas Adams

Extending Copyright Duration in Australia (PDF) -- economics of copyright extension. This proposal in the "let's dream" section at the end caught my eye: The potential trade-off between production and distribution of intellectual property can be addressed in a number of ways. Australia could offer a system of graduated copyright protection with differing durations and differing fees. If an individual truly believed that their intellectual property would be valuable seventy years after their deaths, they should pay for that privilege.

Take the Pain Out of Saving Money - Join us for this free, live webcast - April 1st @ 10am PT

In this live event, Mac Slocum, online editor for O'Reilly Media, will conduct a video interview with J.D. Roth, financial expert and author of Your Money: The Missing Manual. Roth will discuss practical tips for saving money and helpful techniques that make saving less of a chore. He'll also field questions from the audience (free advice!), so come prepared with your financial queries. Register now! Other upcoming webcasts include: The iPad's first 48 hours: impressions and reactions LinkedIN: Beyond the Basics Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events!

Featured Video: Designing for iPad - TechCrunch

Don't miss all our iPad Launch Coverage. More videos, resources, news and ebooks. Start learning now.

Play on the iPad: the Magic Circle and a marketplace - Justin Hall on the iPad's gaming possibilities and Apple's restrictions

The prospect of touching, moving, and grabbing your way through a game could open up all sorts of innovation on the iPad, but will developers feel limited by Apple's strict policies? Justin Hall examines the push and pull between the iPad's functionality and its closely-monitored app universe.

Now Underway: O'Reilly Where 2.0 Conference - Watch the Keynotes Live

Where 2.0 is now underway in San Jose! Mission-critical technologies. Ideas that matter. Industry-shaping trends. Watch keynotes live online. Keynotes include: Location Debate: Tim O'Reilly & Michael Arrington Adventures in Mobile Social 2.0: Twelve Months of foursquare Haiti: CrisisMapping the Earthquake Chris Vein & Tim O'Reilly: City Data Community First: Yelp's Unconventional Approach to Local Information

Is the "e" in ebooks the new blink tag? - How one vowel creates a limiting design paradigm

The first group/publisher/company/person who moves away from the ebook and to content -- content that can be delivered to a variety of media, digital and non-digital, with display and style applied separate from and after content creation -- wins.

Featured Video: Designing for the iPad - Fluent News

The State of the Internet Operating System

Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet? I've been talking for years about "the internet operating system", but I realized I've never written an extended post to define what I think it is, where it is going, and the choices we face. This is that missing post.

The iPad needs its HyperCard - Easy to use content creation tools are key to the iPad's long-term success.

Dale Dougherty says that for the iPad to be something different, it must not be just a delivery platform but a creative one. It needs to offer professionals and amateurs an opportunity to create a unique experience with interactive media.

Four short links: 29 March 2010 - Distributed Comments, Graph Exploration, Body as UI, and Genomic Advertising

Salmon Protocol -- protocol to unite comments and annotations with original web pages. A distributed solution to the problem that Disqus tackles in a centralised fashion. Important because we'll all be historians of our earlier lives and dissipated prolific micro-content is a historian's nightmare. Gephi -- open source (GPLv3) interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks...

News from Appland - A look at the early momentum of iPad applications

Carsonified -- a site that proclaims on its home page, "We're hugely passionate about the web" -- declared the death of the web this week in, "Bye Bye Web, Hello Apps." The post makes the case for mobile apps, especially iPhone apps, and their advantages over web apps. I certainly won't be calling web apps dead for a while, but I'm impressed by how much activity has been unleashed by the app world. Here are some stories from Appland this week.

Some Highlights From This Year's Adas

Ada Lovelace Day turned up hundreds of interesting people. Here's a couple of interesting pointers: Mileva Maric is an uncomfortable read, but worth it for the perspective it gives to heroes. Over on Best of Three you get a reading list for Caroline Herschel, Marie Curie, and Lise Meitner. Margaret Moth is lauded on Elpie's blog. Adafruit Industries posted about...

Game Audio In The Cloud - Generated in the Cloud and streamed to your mobile headset

In 2002, at the International CES trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Mark "the Red" Harlan, then Chief Evangelist for a scrappy little start-up called Danger, Incorporated, demonstrated an early version of a wireless internet device called the "hiptop" (later known as the T-Mobile Sidekick). He explained that it was a prototype, costing many thousands of dollars to produce, then he navigated to the Notes application, typed in a message, hit enter, and waited a moment while the Note synced to the Danger servers via wireless connection. Then he put the device on the floor, and dropped a bowling ball on it!

Base Map 2.0: What Does the Head of the US Census Say to Open Street Map?

Ian White, the CEO of Urban Mapping, makes his living collecting and selling geo data. For next week's Where 2.0 has put together a panel of government mapping agencies (the UK's Ordnance Survey and the US's Census Department) and community-built mapping projects (Open Street Map and Waze). Crowdsourced projects like Waze and Open Street Map have forced civic agencies to reconsider their licensing.

Why health care is coming to the Open Source convention

This year for the first time, O'Reilly's Open Source convention contains a track on health care IT. The call for participation just went up, soliciting proposals on nine broad areas of technology including health data exchange, mobile devices, and patient-centered care. IT specialists and programmers across the country who have lost their employment or are just seeking new challenges will naturally be wondering what health care IT is and how they can get into it. A health care track at OSCon is, to start with, a natural way to serve our core audience.

How do we measure innovation?

In response to the IEEE's report on Patent Power, which lists the top companies ranked by number of patents, Ari Shahdadi and Brad Burnham made trenchant comments in email that I thought were worth sharing (with their permission): The main article is sad to read, with choice quotes like this: "Clearly, the global recession seriously hampered innovation in the United States."