O’Reilly Media

If you find yourself performing the same tasks over and over again in Photoshop, it's time for you to tap the power of actions. Scott Bourne shows you how.

The most valuable part of any LAMP application is the data. Yet when this data exists in configuration files as well as databases, protection means regular and secure backups. Paddy Sreenivasan discusses strategies for backing up MySQL and PostgreSQL databases securely and effectively.

Perl lightning articles are short, direct, and full of electrifying practical information. This time, Steven Philip Schubiger demonstrates how to convert crufty MakeMaker installation scripts into shiny pure-Perl installers, Phil Crow demonstrates the use of Java's powerful Swing UI toolkit from Perl, Joshua McAdams explains how to turn any module into a script, and chromatic removes duplication from test suites.

A few user-friendly distributions of FreeBSD have appeared lately. DesktopBSD is a user-friendly variant of FreeBSD 5.5 that is suitable even for Unix novices. Dru Lavigne walks through the installation and use of DesktopBSD to provide a modern, powerful workstation.

Bruce Perry's latest piece introduces GWT, the Google Web Toolkit, which is a kind of Java to Ajax compiler. It's a very interesting new development in the world of very interactive web apps.

Many eyes are on Sun, awaiting the promised eventual open-sourcing of its Java SE implementation. But Daniel Steinberg has another idea: instead of open-sourcing Java, Sun should outsource it, so that it can be developed by parties more attuned to the needs and opportunities of cross-platform development.

Building a multi-domain, multi-site testbed network with a workstation in each domain and at each site can take about half a dozen machines...unless you follow Mitch Tulloch's advice, and build a virtual routed network on one PC with Virtual PC.

If you've had a less-than-agreeable experience with Vim in the past and are willing to give it another shot, please ponder these points: 1) there's generally a learning curve involved with any powerful tool, 2) Vim is much more than just your run-of-the-mill text editor, and 3) the effort required to become a proficient Vimmer isn't as much as you'd think: it's comparable to that of learning to touch type. Matthew Russell explains.

We're featuring three sessions from the second day of the Where 2.0 conference. Chris Spurgeon presents the best geo hacks of the last 2000 years, Gary Lang looks at the possibilities that arise from APIs and Open Source Code, and Tim O'Reilly moderates a panel on the future of the data industry. (DTF 07-10-2006: 32 minutes 15 seconds)

OSCON program chair Nat Torkington looks ahead to this year's O'Reilly Open Source Conference in Portland, Oregon July 24-28. (5 minutes, 47 seconds)

Wikis are becoming known as the tool of choice for large, multiple-participant projects because jumping in and revising the pages of a wiki is so easy for anyone to do. This article covers how to effectively use a wiki to keep notes and share ideas among a group of people, and how to organize that wiki to avoid lost thoughts, and encourage serendipity. Matt Webb and Tom Stafford co-authored this article using a wiki, as they did their book, Mind Hacks.

Good documentation makes good software great. Poor documentation makes great software less useful. What is good documentation, though, and how can communities produce it effectively? Andy Oram explores how free and open source software projects can share their knowledge with users and how publishers and editors fit into the future of documentation.

Simon St. Laurent looks back to see if we can all learn a lesson or two: were there signs early on in the life of XML that something like JSON would eventually do very well as a Web data format?

SQL gives you plenty of options for handling relationships--you can use joins and database relations, or you can make multiple queries and write complex logic on the client. What are the benefits and drawbacks of each? David Wheeler recently experimented with moving complex relationship logic into PostgreSQL's PL/pgSQL language; the results were stunning.

Arpeggiators are some of the handiest gadgets in computer music. With an absolute minimum of dexterity, you can create driving rhythms and superhuman tapestries of notes. Jim Aikin explains how arpeggiators work, what features to look for, and how to use them to revitalize your music.

Who are you online? Your digital identity is a complex bundle of information--not just what you say about yourself, but what other people say about you and how trustworthy they are. O'Reilly editor Andy Oram recently attended the Identity Mashup conference at Harvard Law's Berkman Center and reports on one of the most vital issues of privacy and usability on the internet.

Using Flash, Jason Levitt shows another variation of a workaround to the limitations of XMLHttpRequest object, the foundation of Ajax.

The popular Eclipse IDE's latest release, version 3.2, is the cornerstone of an ambitious release of ten Eclipse-branded projects on the same day. But what's in it for you? Ed Burnette takes a look at the new features in Eclipse's Java Development Tools and shows you how they'll make your development much easier.

Maciek Kaminski presents the Yet Another Telephony Engine (YATE) project. YATE allows developers to write scripts in higher-level languages, while taking advantage of the performance of native libraries without sacrificing too much efficiency--making it an ideal environment for rapidly prototyping telephony applications.

What do you do if your system crashes and you've got a corrupt registry? Mitch Tulloch comes to your rescue with advice on how to recover and restore your registry.

The short version of this discussion about Parallels can be summed up in a single word: amazing. Nothing is perfect, of course, and there is room for improvement as Parallels moves this product beyond version 1.0. However, if you have an Intel-based Mac and need or want to run Microsoft Windows, some version of Linux, or some other supported operating system, read on. Todd Ogasawara reports.

We're featuring four sessions from the first day of the Where 2.0 conference. Josh Peterson tells you to live your life as if you're on vacation; Mike Liebhold looks at a future in which the invisible annotations on the world around you becomes visible; Schuler Erle demos Gutenkarte, which reveals geographic information in the books you read; and Lauren Gelman cautions us about the privacy issues in exposing our data. (DTF 06-26-2006: 26 minutes, 15 seconds)

Our Latest Book Registration Winner is Phil Townrow

Linux has a reputation as a multimedia lightweight. That's undeserved; there are plenty of powerful, useful, and usable applications to meet most of your media needs. For example, it's possible to become an independent podcaster with a little bit of equipment and experience. John Littler shares his advice on podcasting with open source.

Database to XML and back again. If everyone's doing some or all of this, then shouldn't we write it once, get it right, and standardize? JDBC 3.0's WebRowSet offers a profound increase in power over the old ResultSet. Sharad Acharya shows you what's possible.