O'Reilly User Group Program
Newsletter
April 18, 2003


Please share this information with your members...


Highlights This Week:
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Book News
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-Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition
-The Web Programming CD Bookshelf, Version 1.0
-O'Reilly Pocket References
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Upcoming Events
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-Rael Dornfest ("Mac OS X Hacks" & "Google Hacks") A32 and SVMUG
Meeting, Cupertino, CA--April 21
-Simon St. Laurent ("Programming Web Services with XML-RPC"), 
XML Special Interest Group of New York, NY--April 22
-Directory Experts Conference, Scottsdale, AZ--Apr 28-May 1
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Conferences
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-Day Passes are available for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference
-Registration is open for the 2003 O'Reilly Open Source Convention
-O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference Call for Participation
-Put Up an O'Reilly Open Source Convention Banner, 
Get a Free Book
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Safari 
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-"Go On Safari" winner--Alfredo Octavio, Caracas Macintosh User Group
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News
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-Interview with Tim O'Reilly
-Eight Search Engine "C" Changes
-Special Offer--Free 'Intro to XML' Online Class
-Knoppix: A Painless Introduction to Linux
-PHP and Heredocs
-Reading and Writing Excel Files with POI
-.NET Streams Explained
-Migration to Windows Server 2003 Now Easier
-Getting Dreamweaver MX Up to Speed with PHP
-Implementing BIND on Mac OS X
-Apache Web Serving with Jaguar, Part 2
-Tell Us What You Think: The First Survey of Mac DevCenter Readers
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News From Your Peers
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-SF Java By The Bay Meeting, San Francisco, CA--April 23
-MD25MD: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of The Maryland Apple Corps,
Baltimore, MD--June 1

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Book News
================================================
Review books are available--email me for a copy.

***Please include the book order number on your requests.

Let me know if you need your books by a certain date.
Allow at least four weeks for shipping. 
Send or email me copies of your newsletters and book reviews.

Don't forget, your members get 20% off any O'Reilly book they purchase
directly from O'Reilly. Just use code DSUG when ordering.
http://www.oreilly.com/

***Group purchases with better discounts are available***
Please let me know if you are interested.

Press releases are available on our press page:
http://press.oreilly.com/

***Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition
Order Number: 4389
"Programming Visual Basic .NET, 2nd Edition" is the complete guide to
application development using VB.NET. Thorough, entertaining, and easy
to follow, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed overview of
the language, object-oriented programming, and the .NET Framework. Then
it goes further, showing you how to create Windows and web
applications, as well as web services.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progvbdotnet2/

Chapter 15, "Building Web Applications with Web Forms," is online now:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/progvbdotnet2/chapter/index.html


***The Web Programming CD Bookshelf, Version 1.0
Order Number: 5105
We've packed six of our best-selling web programming guides into this
CD-ROM, giving you 4,668 pages of O'Reilly references and tutorials,
all fully searchable and cross-referenced. You can search either the
individual index for each book, or the master index for the entire
collection.  
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/wprogcdbs/


***O'Reilly Pocket References
Our pocket references and pocket guides are comprehensive, inexpensive,
compact, and easy to use. They pack lots of the hard-to-remember
details of programming and web syntax, focused tutorials that explain
the basics of a new technology, and power-user tips into your back
pocket.  
http://pocketrefs.oreilly.com/

===============================================
Upcoming Events
===============================================
***Rael Dornfest ("Mac OS X Hacks" & "Google Hacks"), 
A32 and SVMUG meeting, Cupertino, CA--April 21
Author Rael Dornfest will be speaking with the Association of A32 Users
and the Silicon Valley Mac Users Group about his two new Hacks books.

April 21, 7 pm
Beatles Conference Room, DeAnza Building Three
Apple Corporate Campus
Cupertino, California 
Meeting Directions:
http://www.a32.org/inner_pages/map.html

For more info:
http://www.a32.org


***Simon St. Laurent ("Programming Web Services with XML-RPC"), 
XML Special Interest Group of New York, NY--April 22
O'Reilly author and editor Simon St. Laurent will be presenting the XML
used in Microsoft Office 2003. Microsoft Office 2003 will include
enormous new XML functionality, especially in Microsoft Word and
Microsoft Excel, as well as a new (though limited-distribution)
application, InfoPath. This talk will take a close look at what's
included and not included in this set of tools, as well as how
developers can integrate them with their own systems.

April 22, 7-9pm
Goldman Sachs
180 Maiden Lane, Room 30C1
New York, NY

To reserve a place at this meeting please send a request to
wperry@xml-sig.org. You will receive a confirmation by return email.
Security requires that those attending this meeting be registered at
least a day in advance so that their names are available to check
against attendance at the door. Please register before Monday, April
21, to insure that you will be admitted.


***Directory Experts Conference, Scottsdale, AZ--Apr 28-May 1 
Authors Robbie Allen ("Active Directory, 2nd Edition" and "Active
Directory Cookbook," both coming in summer 2003) and Cricket Liu ("DNS
and BIND," "DNS on Windows NT," and "DNS on Windows 2000") are featured
keynote speakers.

April 28-May 1
Scottsdale Mountain Shadows Marriott Resort & Golf Club
5641 East Lincoln Drive
Scottsdale, Arizona 
http://www.netpro.com/welcome/decadus/index.cfm

================================================
Conference News
================================================
***Day Passes are available for the O'Reilly Emerging Technology
Conference
Can't make the whole conference? Buy a day pass for 
April 23, 24, or 25.
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2003/create/ord_et03

For more info on the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference: 
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etcon/


***Registration is open for the 2003 O'Reilly Open Source Convention
--Portland, OR
Programmers, developers, strategists, technical staff, and other open
source votaries from around the world congregate for five days of
tutorials, conference sessions, and networking of the flesh-and-blood
variety. Recognizing that open source tools have moved squarely into
the mainstream, this year's convention focuses on "embracing and
extending proprietary software."

O'Reilly Open Source Convention
Portland Marriott Downtown,
Portland, OR
July 7-11, 2003
http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon/


Early Bird Discount--
User Group members who register before May 23, 2003, get a double
discount. Use code DSUG when you register, and you'll get 20% off the
"Early Bird" price.

To register, go to:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2003/create/ord_os03


***O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference Call for Participation
System administrators, developers, strategists, technical staff, and
power users are invited to submit proposals to lead tutorial and
conference sessions at the second annual O'Reilly Mac OS X Conference.
Suggested topics include: Scripting Genius, Amazing Applications,
Ingenious Hacks, and SysAdmin Mac Style, to name a few.
http://conferences.oreilly.com/macosxcon/

The submission deadline for proposals is May 14, 2003:
http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/macosx2003/create/e_sess


***Put Up an O'Reilly Open Source Convention Banner, Get A Free Book
Ready for the next conference banner promotion? Here it is:
We are looking for user groups to display our conference banners on
their web sites. If you send me the link to your user group site with
our O'Reilly Open Source Convention banner, I will send
you the O'Reilly book of your choice.

OSCON Conference Banners:
http://ug.oreilly.com/banners/oscon2003/

================================================
Safari News
================================================
***"Go On Safari" Tip of the Week Winner--Alfredo Octavio, 
Caracas Macintosh User Group
"Even if you have a University library or a big bookstore nearby,
you'll find Safari's accessibility and sheer number of books very
convenient...There are books by Sun, Addison-Wesley, Peachpit Press,
Apprentice Hall, Que, Adobe Press, Sams, Macromedia Press, Cisco Press,
and Microsoft Press among others. The variety of publishers guarantees
that you will find a book on a topic with any experience level you
need."

Your group can also participate in this introductory program just for
user group members. To "Go on Safari," any of your members who sign up
for our Safari 14-day free trial send comments on their experiences, or
tips and tricks for how they used Safari  (it only needs to be 2
sentences long, but it may be longer) to safari_talk@oreilly.com.

Every week someone will be chosen from the tips or comments submitted
to receive fun stuff from O'Reilly (T-shirts, book bags, or other
surprises). If a member of your user group is selected, your group
receives free gifts, too. Whatever the individual member receives, your
UG will get one, too, to give away at your next meeting, or use however
you see fit. Recipients--and their comments--will be announced in the
User Group Newsletter.

**Please use this special UG URL to sign up for the 14-day trial**
http://www.oreilly.com/safari/ug

For more information on Safari:
http://safari.oreilly.com/

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News From O'Reilly & Beyond
================================================
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General News
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***An Interview with Tim O'Reilly 
Tim isn't just talking about open source; he's talking about the basic
human impulse to share and participate. In this Switch interview, he
places art, western science, music, and the movies squarely in the
middle of open source culture.
http://switch.sjsu.edu/~switch/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php?artc=268

Tim will be talking about these kinds of topics at next week's Emerging
Technology Conference.  
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etcon/


***Eight Search Engine "C" Changes 
Tara Calishain, a self-proclaimed search engine addict, ponders the
future direction search engines could take. How might pay-for-inclusion
programs and other revenue generators change the way we search?
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/04/11/googlehacks.html

Tara is a coauthor of "Google Hacks."
Order Number: 4478
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlehks/


***Special Offer--Free 'Intro to XML' Online Class
Enroll in any Linux/Unix online certification class at the Learning Lab
and get a free 'Intro to XML' course, a $298 value. Receive hands-on
experience in sys admin with a live coach. Graduates of the four course
series receive certification from the University of Illinois, one of
the top five engineering schools in the U.S.
http://oreilly.useractive.com/courses/sysadmin.php3

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Open Source
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***Knoppix: A Painless Introduction to Linux
A new release of Knoppix has hit the mirrors. Burn a copy and give it
to a friend.  
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/3065

***PHP and Heredocs
Tired of having PHP, HTML, and even SQL jumbled together in the same
file? Are your designers, coders, and DBAs going crazy trying to keep
everything in check? A clean layer of separation can help. Daniel Smith
explains how PHP's heredocs can make your life much easier by
separating presentation, content, and logic.
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/04/10/php_heredocs.html

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Java
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***Reading and Writing Excel Files with POI
The Jakarta POI project provides a nice Java API for reading and
writing Microsoft file formats. After learning about the project, most
people ask, "How can I write a spreadsheet?" Andrew C. Oliver and the
POI folks demonstrate how to read and write Excel files using the
Horrible SpreadSheet Format class.
http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/04/16/poi_excel.html

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.NET
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***.NET Streams Explained
On of the common challenges facing beginning .NET programmers is the
large number of classes in the .NET Class Library. Looking for the
correct class to use for file handling can be confusing. There are many
classes in the System.IO namespace, each looking not much different
from the others. Wei-Meng Lee explains the differences between the
Stream classes.
HTTP://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2003/04/14/streams.html


***Migration to Windows Server 2003 Now Easier 
Gartner Research suggests that up to 70 percent of Microsoft Windows
users still run NT. If you or your company are considering migrating to
Server 2003 in the next year, you'll need a copy of the bestselling
book for both Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003, "Active Directory,
2nd Edition." http://www3.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=112816

Active Directory, 2nd Edition
Order Number: 4664
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/actdir2/

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Web Development
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***Getting Dreamweaver MX Up to Speed with PHP
David McFarland has updated his article on Dreamweaver's PHP extensions
to include some free and commercial products from Interakt. If you
missed his article the first time around, Dave has written a
comprehensive list of available add-ons for using PHP with
Dreamweaver.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/javascript/2003/02/07/dreamweaver.html

Dave is the author of" Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual."
Order Number: 3498
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/drmweavmxtmm/

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Mac
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***Implementing BIND on Mac OS X
The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) distribution is a suite of
Unix utilities that works with the Domain Name System. The nslookup and
dig utilities are a part of the BIND distribution, but the named DNS
server is what people most often refer to as BIND. The DNS server
portion is what we will be focusing on in this article.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/04/15/bind.html


***Apache Web Serving with Jaguar, Part 2
Kevin Hemenway explores the world of CGI access in his continuing
series of articles on Apache Web Serving with Jaguar.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/04/11/apache_jaguar_pt2.html

Kevin is a coauthor of "Mac OS X Hacks."
Order Number: 4605
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/mcosxhks/


***Tell Us What You Think: The First Survey of Mac DevCenter Readers  
If you want to know, you've got to ask. We're asking Mac DevCenter
readers to participate in an online survey. We've sweetened the pot
with a chance to win books and T-shirts. Here's how it works.
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/04/11/survey.html

================================================
News From Your Peers
================================================
***SF Java By The Bay Meeting, San Francisco, CA--April 23
Java By The Bay, the Java user group for San Francisco presents Grid
Computing: An introduction to Open Grid Services Infrastructure by
Sastry Malladi and Creating a Java Development Environment with Open
Source Tools and Oracle9i JDeveloper on Linux by Rob Clevenger.
Registration and refreshments at 5:30pm and speakers begin at 6 pm.
Please RSVP at http://www.vircon.com/events/javabythebay.htm

Wednesday April 23, 2003
The Commonwealth Club
595 Market Street,
San Francisco, CA  


***MD25MD: Celebrating Twenty-Five Years of The Maryland Apple Corps, 
Baltimore, MD--June 1
The Maryland Apple Corps, in cooperation with The Mid-Atlantic
Macintosh User Groups Team celebrates twenty-five years as the Greater
Baltimore area's Apple/Macintosh Users Group! Very special keynote
address by Steve Wozniak, Apple Co-Founder/Technology & Industry
Innovator  with special guests: Chuck Joiner (Apple User Group Advisory
Board Chairman/Hershey Apple Core President), Dave Marra (Apple K-12
Senior Systems Engineer/User Group Guru), Daniel M. East (Mid-Atlantic
Macintosh User Groups Team President), Victor Nazarian (Technologies
Expert/Consultant/Maryland Apple Corps Member), Fred Showker
(Association of Apple Computer Users & Groups Editor/User Group Network
President), Gail Murphy Glore (WiredWomen Founder/Apple Consultants
Network Member/Fmr. User Group Advisory Board), and others.

June 1, 2:00pm,
Baltimore Hebrew Congregation
7401 Park Heights Avenue 
Baltimore, MD 21208-5490
*event location subject to change based on capacity.
http://www.mamugs.org/md25md/

Until next time--

Marsee