"o’reilly" entries

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The top 50 Radar posts from the last 5 years

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O’Reilly purchases Pearson’s stake in Safari

Safari Books Online is now a wholly owned subsidiary of O’Reilly Media.

I’m pleased to share some exciting news. On Friday, August 1st, O’Reilly purchased Pearson Education’s 50% ownership share of our Safari Books Online joint venture, and Safari is now a wholly owned subsidiary of O’Reilly Media, Inc.

O’Reilly believes strongly in the direction Safari is heading, and we came to believe that there are substantial opportunities for both organizations working much more closely together. O’Reilly is primarily a media company (books, events, online in-person and video training, expert network), and Safari has the technology, sales, and distribution channel for bringing content to the widest audience possible, especially a B2B audience.

Going forward, O’Reilly and Safari will work together to create new features and products, but Safari will continue to operate as an independent entity, as it did when jointly owned by O’Reilly and Pearson. There are no changes in Safari’s products, staffing, offices, or operations. The Safari brand and domains remain the same, and Pearson will remain a key strategic content partner of Safari. All their current materials remain available, and their future books and videos will be added to the service. Read more…

If you’ve ever wondered where those O’Reilly animal covers come from …

Edie Freedman reveals how the animal covers came to be and how you can help those same animals stick around.

Exploring ExpectThe exchange often goes like this:

Stranger: “Where do you work?”

Me: “O’Reilly Media.”

Stranger: “O’Reilly …”

[Long pause while he or she works through the various “O’Reilly” outlets — the TV guy, the auto parts company.]

Me: “You know the books with the animals on the covers?”

Stranger: “Oh yeah!”

And off we go. Those covers are tremendous ice breakers.

The story behind those covers is also notable. Our colleague Edie Freedman, O’Reilly’s creative director and the person who first made the connection between animal engravings and programming languages, has written a short piece about the genesis of the O’Reilly animals. If you’ve ever wondered where those animals came from, her post is worth a read.

(Something I learned from Edie’s post: the covers that get the best response feature 1. animals with recognizable faces and 2. animals that are looking directly at the reader.)

Edie’s “Short history of the O’Reilly Animals” is part of a larger effort to raise awareness for the plight of the O’Reilly animals, many of which are critically endangered. You can learn more about the O’Reilly Animals project here.

Welcome Jon Bruner to Radar

Jon brings his expertise in storytelling and data to O'Reilly.

Jon BrunerWhere are my manners? Jon Bruner posted his first piece to Radar two weeks ago and I’m just now getting around to welcoming him.

Jon joins our Radar team this month from Forbes where he covered the technology of data. I liked that he called himself a datanaut but I liked even more that he illustrated his pieces with great interactive visualizations and applications. I mean how cool is this?

Jon will continue to cover data, but he’ll also be digging into the Internet of Things, the dynamics of technology and cities, and whatever interesting things catch his attention. I expect you’ll be seeing a lot of him here.

He’s @JonBruner and +Jon Bruner on the Interwebs and in his spare time he plays the pipe organ like a boss. Ok, that’s not really him.

Help the O’Reilly animals

Animals have shaped O'Reilly. Now it's time to give back through the O'Reilly Animals campaign.

No one needs to be told that the tarsier and the camel are O’Reilly Media icons. So are the llama, the elephant, and the flying fox. And hundreds of other animals. Authors speculate on the significance of the animals chosen to grace their books. Customers take pictures of their collections and send them to us. Everyone has a favorite — and spoofs have abounded.

In other words, it’s an understatement to say that the use of classic animal engravings on O’Reilly books has been a success. Unfortunately, what it hasn’t done is help the animals themselves.

The truth is that a large number of the animals featured on O’Reilly books are threatened or critically endangered. We’ve always used colophons in the books as a way to tell readers about the animals. Now we want to use social media and the web to tell those same readers how they can contribute to helping the animals in real life.

At OSCON this week, we’re launching the O’Reilly Animals campaign to raise awareness of the animals’ plight, with a special emphasis on the ways in which people and organizations are using technology to help save and restore endangered animal populations around the globe. With an eye-catching display and the “Animal Ladies” on site (Edie and Karen Montgomery, the Animal book cover designers), we’ll be encouraging members of the O’Reilly community to get involved in whatever ways they can.

Read more…

Cross-platform mobile development is a breeze with C#

Greg Shackles on why C# makes sense for mobile development.

Find out why using C# for cross-platform mobile development will take you less time and less code while bringing your apps to a wider audience.

The stories behind a few O'Reilly "classics"

A look back at "Unix Power Tools," "DNS and Bind," and other O'Reilly titles.

Tim O'Reilly: "It's amazing to me how books I first published more than 20 years ago are still creating value for readers."

A writable API for O'Reilly

Fluidinfo's new API allows anyone to add information to O'Reilly book and author objects.

Fluidinfo's new O'Reilly API contains information from O'Reilly, Amazon, Google Books, LibraryThing, and GoodReads. But most importantly, anyone can "write" their own information to the book and author objects.

A writable API for O’Reilly

Fluidinfo's new API allows anyone to add information to O'Reilly book and author objects.

Fluidinfo's new O'Reilly API contains information from O'Reilly, Amazon, Google Books, LibraryThing, and GoodReads. But most importantly, anyone can "write" their own information to the book and author objects.

Interim report card on O'Reilly's IT transformation

Six months in and there is much to celebrate and plenty of work still to be done.

Implementing O'Reilly's new IT strategy is like swapping out airplane wings mid-flight. We're making considerable change, but at the same time we can't disrupt the services and projects that are already underway.