O'Reilly News

"Serendipity and O'Reilly" - How @timoreilly's Tweets Changed Everything

2009-11-30T21:09:23Z

"Over the course of a short number of weeks, I've come to realize that Tim O'Reilly is one of the most important people that I follow on Twitter. Important, influential and potentially life-changing," writes @NickJewell in a post we certainly appreciate. "O'Reilly's tweets have led me down an intellectual path that, in the space of weeks, means that I've accumulated more knowledge than I would have through possibly an entire year of a Master's post-graduate degree. I'm astounded how much I've learned and I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I've retained." Read more.

Chris Brogan Reviews Scott Berkun's Confessions of a Public Speaker - "This book is a MUST for your collection"

2009-11-30T15:46:10Z

"While at Web 2.0 Expo, I was handed a copy of Scott Berkun's great new book, Confessions of a Public Speaker. I've seen Scott speak a few times before, and he knows his stuff. Add to this his sense of humor, plus the fact that pretty much everyone can stand to learn some new ideas about speaking, and this book is a MUST for your collection." Register now for Scott's live webcast this Wednesday, 2 December, 10 AM PT.

Steve Souders: Making Web Sites Faster in the Web 2.0 Age - How huge JavaScript libraries, rich content, and lame ad servers are slowing the web down

2009-11-30T15:00:00Z

As much as anything else, a user's impression of a web site has to do with how fast the site loads. But modern Web 2.0 websites aren't your father's Oldsmobile. Chocked full of rich Flash content and massive JavaScript libraries, they present a new set of challenges to engineers trying to maximized the performance of their sites. You need to design your sites to be Fast by Default. That's the theme of the upcoming Velocity Online Conference, co-chaired by Google performance guru Steve Souders. Souders is the author of High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, and spent some time discussing the new world of web site performance with me.

Four short links: 30 November 2009 - Paywall Performance, News Decisions, Sony Subsidising US Supercomputer, Invisible Open Source Business Model

2009-11-30T11:00:00Z

Paywall Performance for News -- the National Business Review (NBR) in New Zealand went to a paywall in mid-July, and Foo Camper Lance Wiggs says their visitor numbers reveal a grim picture. As a commenter says, of course, visitor numbers go down but NBR makes money directly from the visitors that stay. I'm curious to see the effect on advertisers now the site's incentives are not to spray their load far and wide to land on as many eyeballs as possible. An interesting canary in the mine for Rupert's paywall plans at Fox. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Handling Delayed Instantiation in Flex 3 (part 1 of 2)

2009-11-29T04:50:25Z

Delayed Instantiation is a technique in Flex whereby children of IContainer components aren't created until the user actually needs to see them. For instance, if you know that only the top half of your component will be showing, you can take control of the creation of children added to the component through MXML and only show the ones you know they will see at first. Then, when they scroll, you could show the rest. The most familiar example of a Flex component that uses delayed instantiation is ViewStack and its subclasses, Accordion and TabNavigator.

Washington Newseum stresses individual heroism, downplays economics and social context

2009-11-28T01:00:31Z

The Washington DC Newseum is an experience worth the entrance fee, and a capacious view into the profession that it honors. The history exhibit boasts history-making front pages throughout the life of our country, and the First Amendment exhibit brought tears to my eyes. But a lot was missing from the Newseum too, and I didn't think the omissions were just something they'll get to later. It gives short shrift to journalism's economics, influence on society, and technology.

Four short links: 27 November 2009 - 3D Models from Webcams, a Javascript Scheme, EMACS in Your Browser, and CS History

2009-11-27T11:00:00Z

ProFORMA -- software which builds a 3D model as you rotate an object in front of your webcam. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Climategate - Thoughts on the Coffs Harbour floods

2009-11-26T15:39:15Z

I am perversely enjoying Climategate: the conclusions that some people are reaching, with seemingly no actual evidence, that their opponents fudged their data looks like high farce. I can understand that the extent of the impact of human activity can reasonably be debated; but I find it difficult to understand those who first insist that there can be no human impact, and then go from there to deny there is any climate change at all, or at least that there needs to be no real human response to climate change. Whether Rome is burning a little or a lot, and whether a person caused it or the Gods, and whether it will eventually burn anyway, we should at least stop fiddling and get out our buckets.

Vale JCP? - Scala and Java:

2009-11-26T04:45:56Z

I am really impressed by Scala, though I have not used it on any real projects yet. Apart from reflection, it seems to be much stronger than Java in all the kinds of features that are good for XML document processing: co-routines, pattern matching and so on. The built-in XML tree that documents can be parsed in to does not contain back pointers, so up-going axes require extra coding; Scala is obviously more congenial for OmniMark or XSLT programmers than Java.

I Am Thankful for the Network

2009-11-25T21:07:26Z

I find myself feeling optimistic. Why? Because I know we have the capacity and tools to make more and more of these positive changes. We have the network. And the network can help everyone and everything it connects maximize their potential.

Onstage, Terrified - Confessions of a Public Speaker in the Wall Street Journal

2009-11-25T19:09:09Z

Onstage, Terrified – "It is always reassuring to read about the performance anxiety of the successful--whether it's a star pitcher feeling jittery before starting a World Series game or a concert violinist who admits to going into a meditative trance before walking out onstage," writes Philip Delves Broughton of the Wall Street Journal in his entertaining review of Scott Berkun's Confessions of a Public Speaker.

What's Hot in O'Reilly Answers - Configuring Drupal Themes, Android on Verizon, Home Backup Systems, Google Wave, and much more!

2009-11-25T19:08:57Z

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Calculating Carbon Footprint

2009-11-25T13:34:00Z

I tried a few sites for calculating carbon footprint. It seems my carbon footprint is probably between 3 and 6 tonnes, and this is maybe 1/3 of Australian average and maybe 1/4 of the US average. I suppose because I walk to work and the local shops. Actually, I don't think I have any close friends who even have cars, now that I think about it. But what is noticeable is that my typical one international flight per year contributes such a lot of carbon: maybe 2 tonnes.

Four short links: 25 November 2009 - Sexy HTTP Parser, 9/11 Pager Leaks, Open Source Science, GLAM and Newspapers

2009-11-25T11:00:00Z

Copyright, Findability, and Other Ideas from NDF (Julie Starr) -- A newspaper industry guru attended the National Digital Forum where Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums talk about their digital issues, where she discovered that newspapers and GLAMs have a lot in common. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Steve Jobs is the closest thing to Walt Disney since Walt Disney

2009-11-24T21:10:52Z

I have written in the past about the the vision that drove Steve Jobs in pursuing his ambition for Apple. A cursory glance at the significant milestones in the careers of Walt Disney and Steve Jobs suggests an otherworldly ability to invent, re-invent and extend 'unfair advantages' across seemingly orthogonal domains. Steve Jobs is the closest thing to Walt Disney since Walt Disney, now forever bound by Pixar.