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'Twas the Holiday Season in the Digital Age

'Twas a night during the holidays, when all through the house
Everyone was connecting and using their mouse.
The screens were alight and holding their stares,
While holiday music from iTunes loudly blared.

The children were chatting and texting their friends,
Searching for YouTube clips they just had to send;
And Daddy with his iPhone and I with my RIM
Were synching our calendars to meet at the gym.
Read more.

Scott Berkun on How to Get People to Pay Attention

Speaking is Not Trivial

The Importance of What You Say — "People laugh when I tell them I'm a professional speaker. They assume at first that I'm some kind of self-help guru or infomercial star," writes Scott Berkun in a new O'Reilly Insights column on Forbes.com. In the column, the bestselling author of the newly released Confessions of a Public Speaker discusses how to choose what to say and which angle to take. Read more.

Holiday Gift Guide: Create. Learn. Inspire. Give O'Reilly.

Buy 2 Books, Get the 3rd FREE!

Holiday Gift Guide — Need a gift for the hard-core geek in your life? How about the DIYer or digital photographer? O'Reilly has something for every techie and crafter on your list, from hobbyist to pro. Check out our Gift Guide to see our new titles, and pick up some great gifts for the holidays. Give O'Reilly.

Four short links: 17 December 2009

Desirable Devices, iPhone Piracy Numbers, Internet Trend Numbers, Value of Privacy

By Nat Torkington
Comments: 1

iPhone Piracy -- over 70% of submitted game scores for this game (Tap Fu) were from pirated copies. Having seen our data and the fact that not a single pirate bought Tap-Fu after playing it, these arguments all sound a bit delusional to me. It seems like an attempt at trying to be legitimate while hiding the real reason. They should just change their page to say "We pirate because we can". That seems to be a much more honest statement based on the data we've seen. (via timoreilly on Twitter) This and more in today's Four Short Links. Read more.

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Featured Ignite Video: The Plight of the Digital Chicken

Ignite Show Episode 42

Subscribe to this video podcast series via iTunes. Or, visit the O'Reilly Media area at iTunes to find other podcasts from O'Reilly.

Global Ignite Week: 40+ Ignites Coming Next March

By Brady Forrest
Comments: 8

Global Ignite Week: 40+ Ignites Coming Next March

Just over three years ago, Bre Pettis and I threw a geek night in our home town. We called it Ignite Seattle. Since that first amazing night in 2006, Ignite has spread to over 60 cities, bringing together thousands of geeks and generating hundreds of videos of Ignite talks. This March, it gets much, much bigger. O'Reilly is launching the first-ever Global Ignite Week, to bring together as many local Ignites as possible. Read more.

Is Facebook a Brand that You Can Trust?

By Mark Sigal
Comments: 15

In light of the company's past consumer-unfriendly initiatives, Facebook's recent 'privacy' settings change should serve as a wake up call to its 350M users that they are entrusting a Fox to guard the Hen House; a truth that is destined to erupt into a crisis for the company. Read more.

What's New in O'Reilly Answers

Interacting with government, Building a baseball database, Windows Live Apps, and much more!

Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

Using R to answer a football question

By Joseph Adler
Comments: 0

Last Monday night, I was watching the Ravens playing the Packers at Green Bay. Mostly, I was watching penalties. This game featured an astounding number of penalty calls: 23 calls, 310 yards. I wondered whether penalties really affect the outcome of football games. Here's what I figured out in 15 minutes, with a little help from R. Read more.

First Look at nook: Not Encouraging

By Andrew Savikas
Comments: 4

We (finally) received our nooks (pre-ordered quite some time ago), and the early results are ... disappointing. Loading one (any) of our EPUB ebooks causes the nook to hang, and the book never opens. I tried loading a number of O'Reilly Media titles that are valid and work on the Sony Reader and every other ePub device. The Nook only brought up the "Formatting" message, and then hung. Only a full restart would bring it back. This is an extremely serious problem. Read more.

Government 2.0: Five Predictions for 2010-12

By Mark Drapeau
Comments: 13

Government 2.0: Five Predictions for 2010-12

Under no pressure from anyone, I’ve forced this obligatory “end of year predictions” post upon myself. People always ask me where I think Government 2.0 is going anyway, I may as well get some writing mileage out of it, right? So, here are some non-exhaustive, somewhat creative, and entirely debatable trends and ideas that I foresee taking shape in the next three years or so:

Local governments as experiments
The rise of Citizen 2.0
Mobile devices as primary devices
Ubiquitous crude video content
Always on-the-record

Read more.

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News & Commentary

'Twas the Holiday Season in the Digital Age

Scott Berkun on How to Get People to Pay Attention

Speaking is Not Trivial

Holiday Gift Guide: Create. Learn. Inspire. Give O'Reilly.

Buy 2 Books, Get the 3rd FREE!

Four short links: 17 December 2009

Desirable Devices, iPhone Piracy Numbers, Internet Trend Numbers, Value of Privacy

Register Now - Free Upcoming Webcasts

DRBD and MySQL, Cloud Security, IT and Sustainable Business, Entity Framework 4, and Social Media Marketing

Featured Ignite Video: The Plight of the Digital Chicken

Ignite Show Episode 42

Global Ignite Week: 40+ Ignites Coming Next March

Is Facebook a Brand that You Can Trust?

What's New in O'Reilly Answers

Interacting with government, Building a baseball database, Windows Live Apps, and much more!

Using R to answer a football question

First Look at nook: Not Encouraging

Government 2.0: Five Predictions for 2010-12

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