O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

Open for Business - Designing Social Interfaces

2009-11-19T14:00:00Z

This is an excerpt from Designing Social Interfaces. From the creators of Yahoo!'s Design Pattern Library, Designing Social Interfaces provides you with more than 100 patterns, principles, and best practices, along with salient advice for many of the common challenges you'll face when starting a social website. Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone share hard-won insights into what works, what doesn't, and why. You'll learn how to balance opposing factions and grow healthy online communities by co-creating them with your users.

RIA Unleashed Boston Conference - My thoughts

2009-11-19T11:00:00Z

Kevin Shuttle already beat me to the proverbial punch with his review, but I'd to share some of my thoughts on a recent Boston based conference called RIA Unleashed. This developer focused event was recently held at Bentley College, Waltham,...

CarTunes

2009-11-18T20:00:00Z

Green Technologies and Interactive Audio are two fields not generally considered related, but a new trend may change that: "Generated Sounds for Electric Vehicles", aka "EV Audio", aka "CarTunes". When I first heard that "electric cars are so quiet, manufacturers want them to make noise", I had a strong memory flashback to 1995, when I was contracted to produce my first ringtone (Fur Elise for Sprint PCS). At the time, I thought "mobile phone plays melody when it rings" was the stupidest idea I'd ever heard of; now, it's a multi-billion dollar industry. If you think audio personalization of your cellphone is an important statement of your individuality (as many do), imagine how much more important personalizing the sound of your car will be!

What's Hot in O'Reilly Answers

2009-11-18T15:59:05Z

How the iPhone sensors work in concert to determine orientation What's your backup system at home? Learn the Anatomy of Palm Web OS How to Share Printers and Fax Machines in Windows 7 Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

Conference Review: RIA Unleashed Boston

2009-11-18T14:00:00Z

Boston was home to the RIAUnleashed conference on Friday, November 13, and was jam-packed with Flex, AIR, ColdFusion and other RIA goodness. What was so unique to me about this conference was the fact that not only were the speakers...

Four short links: 18 November 2009

2009-11-18T11:00:00Z

Mapsicle -- Is an open source Javascript library to create mashups and application on Google Streetview, from NZ developers Project X. It has been released by Google as part of the Maps Utility library. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

The iPhone: Tricorder Version 1.0?

2009-11-17T20:13:46Z

The iPhone, in addition to revolutionizing how people thought about mobile phone user interfaces, also was one of the first devices to offer a suite of sensors measuring everything from the visual environment to position to acceleration, all in a package that could fit in your shirt pocket. On December 3rd, O'Reilly will be offering a one-day online edition of the Where 2.0 conference, focusing on the iPhone sensors, and what you can do with them.

The War For the Web

2009-11-16T14:29:43Z

It is becoming clear to me that we are heading into a bloody period of competition that could be extremely unfriendly to the interoperable web as we know it today. If you've followed my thinking about Web 2.0 from the beginning, you know that I believe we are engaged in a long term project to build an internet operating system. I've outlined a few of the ways that big players like Facebook, Apple, and News Corp are potentially breaking the "small pieces loosely joined" model of the Internet. But perhaps most threatening of all are the natural monopolies created by Web 2.0 network effects. We're facing the prospect of Facebook as the platform, Apple as the platform, Google as the platform, Amazon as the platform, where big companies slug it out until one is king of the hill. And it's time for developers to take a stand. If you don't want a repeat of the PC era, place your bets now on open systems. Don't wait till it's too late.

It's in the Bag! The Apple Tablet Computing Device

2009-11-13T21:11:08Z

In the past 25 years, the 'personal' computing revolution has evolved from tethered (desktop) to luggable (portable) to joined-at-the-hip (mobile). The author argues that the next wave of computing will extend this level of personal attachment to the bag-carrying consumer (think: purses, backpacks and briefcases) when Apple releases it’s much rumored Tablet Computing Device. Read more

Four short links: 13 November 2009

2009-11-13T11:00:00Z

Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- An academic statistical analysis of open design. We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

What's Hot in O'Reilly Answers

2009-11-12T15:56:44Z

What are the best iPhone or Android Apps for System Administrators? How to calibrate the iPhone Accelerometer for optimal use How to support older version of the iPhone SDK What Apps do you use daily? When can I try MS Project 2010?Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

What's Hot in O'Reilly Answers

2009-11-11T15:54:02Z

How to support older versions of the iPhone SDK HTML/CSS/JavaScript or Objective-C/Cocoa for iPhone app development? How to Work with Roman Numerals in Perl How to calibrate the iPhone Accelerometer for optimal use When can I try MS Project 2010? Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

The Minds Behind Some of the Most Addictive Games Around

2009-11-09T13:54:38Z

An interview with Jason Kapalka, one of the founders and the creative director of PopCap. We discussed the evolution of PopCap, how the casual gaming industry differs from mainstream gaming, and the challenges of creating games that can be engaging, without being frustrating.

Four short links: 9 November 2009

2009-11-09T11:00:00Z

New Microsoft Interface Technology -- videos from Craig Mundie (Chief Research and Strategy Officer) on the MS Campus Tour talking about the future of UI using a sexy glass prototype that features tablet PC, gesture, speech recognition, and even eye tracking. Lustable. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

Tactical and strategic XML design

2009-11-06T03:35:58Z

So I guess when we look at a system's architecture, the first thing we can do is ask 'Is this XML here being used strategically or tactically?' A strategic use might be, for example, to allow long-term archiving; a tactical use might be XML in AJAX (where using JSON would be another tactic.) If the answer is tactical, then we can ask 'Is it implemented in a way that allows flexible rearrangement, when a different tactic becomes appropriate?'