O’Reilly Media

I spend a significant amount of my working day staring at a web window pane within a browser. That browser may be written in C++ but is increasingly likely to be written in JavaScript or Python of even Java, not necessarily because these languages are any faster, but because these languages are generally easier to work with. Read more.

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That's a real question, not a rhetorical one. In a Radar post I wrote last week about whether Twitter's user base was hitting a critical inflection point, the first comment was, "How does Twitter make money?" Although the post wasn't about Twitter's business model per se, a lot of the comments were. Which wasn't too surprising, given that many people... Read more.

Over the past year, the news editors at O'Reilly have been shifting their focus a bit, adding coverage of green tech, biotech, innovations, economics and other non-computer areas to the existing news coverage. We may not be able to change human nature, but maybe we can make it irrelevant. Read more.

Highlighting the importance of the phrase "data backup" with an "Are you kidding me?"-type moment, it seems Facebook has some serious "'splaining to do" as to how they /lost/ my (and I assume others) application notification settings. Read more.

At 7:30 eastern this morning, one of my brothers called to tell me that he is, "being attacked by hackers." He was about to fall prey to a common scam. He did have some bad stuff on his computer (his existing anti-virus had indeed failed him), but it was trying to get him to pay to remove itself and a bunch of phantom viruses that didn't really exist. Read more.

Like a lot of people, I was feeling a bit of post-partum letdown after the election. Those of us who were really engaged, following the polls, making calls to undecided voters, arguing out the merits of the candidates, experienced a bit of a vacuum after the election. Doonesbury summed it up pretty well: "I've been on a constant news drip... Read more.

Like its misanthropic superhero, director Peter Berg created unintended havoc off the set of Hancock, as Sony Imageworks, the company that created the film's visual effects, scrambled to keep up with his run-and-gun style. Read about how the VFX team augmented the prison scene by creating a CG inmate whose head gets stuck in another inmate's, um, bum, and all about the spectacular SUV chase sequence that was largely practical. And digital effects supervisor, Ken Hahn, talks about the coming revolution in 3D delivery.

"Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be President," declared Arianna Huffington from the stage at Web 2.0 Summit, the day after the election. In "The Web and Politics" session, moderator John Heileman explores the new world of running for office--and governing once you win--with Huffington, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and veteran politico Joe Trippi. Politicians... Read more.

Everything You Wanted to Know about Drupal but were Afraid to Ask — In this live webcast, happening Friday, Dec. 5th, Drupal developers Jeff Eaton and James Walker will guide newcomers through the nuts and bolts of Drupal's content management system, content management framework, and community. Attendance is limited, so register now.

With QuickBooks 2009: The Missing Manual, you don't just learn how to use this popular program, you learn why and when to use specific features. You also get basic accounting advice so that everything makes sense along the way. If you're new to QuickBooks, special "Up to Speed" boxes fill you in on introductory information. Sidebars labeled "Power Users' Clinic" offer technical tips, tricks, and shortcuts for the experienced QuickBooks fan. Get more out of QuickBooks 2009 whether you're a beginner or an old pro. Learn more.

I take minutes in two conference calls every week. Every call starts at the same time -- I look up the number in my calendar, dial the phone, then launch a Vim instance. I've written a few Vim macros to... Read more.

An Editorial. Doom and gloom seems to be the order of the day. The stock markets seem to be making daily 4% to 5% drops, followed up by the very occasional 5-6% surges (perhaps the epitome of random walks happening... Read more.

Photoshop expert Deke McClelland offers some straight talk about trimming excess poundage from your images using Photoshop's near magical Liquify command. In this new dekePod episode—The Instant Liquid Diet—Deke shows you how to nip and tuck, avoid stretch marks, and make your trim edges nice and smooth. Watch the video.

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.