Inside .Mac -- This handy, quick reference offers a clear overview of the entire .Mac package and many of its not-so-obvious features. You'll learn how to set up and manage your account quickly and without fuss. Each .Mac service is discussed in an objective, no-frills fashion that'll show you how to use--and what to expect from--iDisk, web mail, your personal web site, and everything else that .Mac offers. Sample Chapter 5, Using Virex, is available free online.

Hackers & Painters examines issues such as the importance of beauty in software design, the programming language renaissance, spam filtering, the Open Source Movement, and Internet startups. Each essay moves beyond widely held beliefs about the way programmers work, and tells important stories about the kinds of people behind technological innovations, revealing distinctions about their characters and their craft. Hackers who read this book will surely recognize themselves within these pages, and programmers will have new thoughts percolating the minute they put it down. Sample Chapter 2, Hackers and Painters, is available free online.

The Best Damn Windows 2003 Server Book (Syngress) -- Windows Server 2003 has more features and functionality in any one of its component services than existed in the entire Windows NT 4 operating system. This book distills the tens of thousands of pages of documentation for this complex enterprise OS into a concise, applied format that system administrators can use. Every aspect of planning, installing, configuring, and troubleshooting a Windows Server 2003 network is documented, with plenty of examples and illustrations. No other book on the market combines this breadth and depth of coverage.

Java Cookbook, 2nd Edition has been completely revised and updated to cover all the major APIs from Java 1.4 as well as significant first-look recipes for the most important features of the new 1.5 version. Packed with hundreds of tried-and-true Java recipes, the book also covers many specialized APIs--like those for working with Struts, Ant, and other open source tools--and delivers expanded Mac OS X Panther coverage. This comprehensive collection of problems, solutions, and practical examples will serve well Java developers at all levels of expertise. Sample Chapter 8, Data Structuring with Generics, foreach, and Enumerations (JDK 1.5), is available free online.

Google: The Missing Manual -- Google, the planet's most popular program for finding stuff on the web, has no manual. It may seem like an easy-to-use program, but Google has many hidden tricks and tools that can turn your simple searching into powerful--and successful--discoveries. You just have to know where to look. This book is your guide, covering search techniques and tricks, must-have tools, and those little-known corners of Google. Get more out of your Google searches with this friendly deskside companion. Sample Chapter 3, Googling Further: Images, News, and the Directory, is available free online.

Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook shows you how to use Hibernate to automate persistence: you write natural Java objects and some simple configuration files, and Hibernate automates all the interaction between your objects and the database. You don't even need to know the database is there, and you can change from one database to another simply by changing a few statements in a configuration file. If you've needed to add a database back end to your application, don't put it off. It's much more fun than it used to be. Sample Chapter 3, Harnessing Hibernate, is available free online.

XML Publishing with AxKit presents web programmers with the knowledge they need to master AxKit, a mod_perl- and Apache-based XML content delivery solution. This book provides detailed information on installing, configuring, and deploying AxKit effectively, and it features a thorough introduction to XSP, which applies the concepts of Server Pages technologies to the XML world. The book also covers integrating AxKit with tools such as Template Toolkit, Apache:: Mason, Apache::ASP, and plain CGI, and it contains reference sections on configuration directives, XpathScript, and XSP. Chapter 3, Your First XML Web Site, is available free online.

Degunking Your Mac (Paraglyph) covers Panther as well as earlier Macintosh operating systems, including OS 9. It provides essential tips and tricks on periodic cleaning of your hard drive as well as file, application, and email maintenance--tips that will help all Mac users bring their computers up to top performance. Learn how to manage fonts properly, how to get rid of the extra stuff OS X installs, how best to deal with spam, how to fix and improve the Dock and Desktop, and much more.

Digital Photography Hacks -- Going beyond the standard fare of most digital photography books, Digital Photography Hacks shares the knowledge that professional photographers have learned through thousands of shots' worth of experience and years of experimentation. With exquisite, full-color photos throughout, the book presents 100 proven techniques in the areas of daytime and nighttime photo secrets, flash magic, digital camera attachments, fun photo projects, camera phone tricks, and more. This book is your passport to taking the kind of digital photos you've always aspired to. 10 Sample Hacks are available free online.

Better, Faster, Lighter Java -- In this latest O'Reilly Java book, the authors argue that the old heavyweight architectures, such as WebLogic, JBoss, and WebSphere, are unwieldy, complicated, and contribute to slow and buggy application code. As an alternative means for building applications, the authors present two "lightweight" open source architectures, Hibernate and Spring, that can help you create enterprise applications that are easier to maintain, write, and debug, and are ultimately much faster. The Preface and two Sample Chapters are available free online.

Office 2003 XML explores the relationship between XML and Office 2003, examining how the Office suite of products both produce and consume XML. Developers will learn how to connect Office to others systems, while power users will learn to create and analyze XML documents using familiar Office tools. Beginning with an overview of the XML features included in the Office 2003 components, this book provides quick and clear guidance to anyone who needs to import or export information from Office documents into other systems. Sample Chapter 2, The WordprocessingML Vocabulary, is available free online.

BSD Hacks -- Looking for a unique set of practical tips, tricks, and tools for administrators and power users of BSD systems? From hacks on customizing the user environment to networking, securing the system, and optimization, BSD Hacks takes a creative approach to saving time and accomplishing more with fewer resources. If you want more than the average BSD user--to explore and experiment, unearth shortcuts, create useful tools--this book is a must-have. Five Sample Hacks are available free online.

A Brief Introduction to GPS Photo Linking -- Digital cameras record EXIF data that tells us when we took a picture, but what if we want to know where too? David Goldwasser introduces us to using GPS positioning data with EXIF timestamps to build interactive maps showing pictures of markers. Typical of the kinds of hacks David contributed to O'Reilly's recently released Digital Photography Hacks.

Best Practices for Assigning FSMO Roles -- Getting FMSO roles right is key to the proper operations of an Active Directory environment. Learn how to make sure you use them properly in this article by Mitch Tulloch, author of Windows Server 2003 in a Nutshell.

ASP.NET Forms Security -- In his latest Whidbey column, Jesse Liberty shows how easy it is to provide forms-based security in ASP.NET 2.0 via login screens and authentication without writing a single line of code. Jesse is a coauthor of Programming ASP.NET, 2nd Edition.

Learning the Basics of Subversion -- Subversion is an open source version control system that can access its file repository across networks. Various users are able to modify and manage the same set of data from their respective locations. Learn the basic concepts of this important new version control system in this preview of Chapter 2 from Version Control with Subversion.

Don't Make Me Eat the Elephant Again -- Thinking back to what EJB brought to Java developers in the early days, Bruce Tate writes, "I respect the original elephant hunters (and inventors) for bringing enough of the industry together to settle on a standard. In fact, the original hunt was based on sound principles ... [but] I just think that the hunt is targeted, sold, and used in many situations that don't call for an elephant." So, what about EJB 3.0? Bruce offers his opinions. Bruce is a coauthor of Better, Faster, Lighter Java.

Reading and Writing Registry Keys with Visual Basic -- Need to use Visual Basic to perform basic operations upon Registry keys? It's not tough to do, once you know the basics. Ron Petrusha shows you how. Ron is a coauthor of VB.NET Language in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.

History of Programming Languages -- O'Reilly has produced a poster on the history of programming languages that plots over 50 languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline, based on a diagram created by Éric Lévénez. Download the poster in PDF format. You can also find full-size copies at Team O'Reilly bookstores, and at O'Reilly conferences, such as this July's Open Source Convention.

Hacking BSD, Part 1 -- Learn a few administrator tricks--how to make it easier for your users to find files in Unix, and how to add more temporary files or swap space without having to repartition--in these two excerpts from O'Reilly's BSD Hacks.

New Titles on Safari -- Search, annotate, and read your favorite O'Reilly books on Safari Bookshelf. New titles include: Better, Faster, Lighter Java; Mastering Regular Expressions, 2nd Edition; iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual 2nd Edition; Inside .Mac; Office 2003 XML Essentials; Learning Red Hat Enterprise Linux & Fedora, 4th Edition; BSD Hacks; and Windows XP Home Edition: The Missing Manual. If you haven't gone on Safari yet, get a free trial.

Linux/Unix System Administration Certificate Series -- This four-course series from the O'Reilly Learning Lab teaches you the skills that span Unix administration skills from basic to complex. Students will have access to their own Linux machines and networks throughout the series. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. Enroll in all four courses and save 40%. Offer expires June 23rd.

Troubleshooting Stop Errors -- What to do when the Blue Screen of Death appears? Mitch Tulloch offers five tips on troubleshooting Stop error messages. Mitch is the author of Windows Server Hacks.

Top 12 Ways to Degunk Your PC -- If you want to clean up your PC, and get it running as fast as it should, follow Joli Ballew and Jeff Duntemann's 12-step program for degunking your PC. Joli and Jeff are the authors of the bestselling Degunking Windows, from Paraglyph Press.

Improving JSF by Dumping JSP -- Hans Bergsten explains why you should not to give up on JavaServer Faces just because the JavaServer Pages layer is flawed. In this article, he shows you how to use a custom ViewHandler to resolve all of the issues. Hans is the author of the recently released JavaServer Faces.

Windows Compatibility for the Linux Desktop -- David Collier-Brown demonstrates how to run the Windows programs MS Visio and Project on a Linux desktop via Win4Lin. David is a coauthor of Using Samba, 2nd Edition.

Tim O'Reilly at eBay Developers Conference Tim will deliver a keynote at eBay's Dev Conference, June 23-24, in New Orleans. If you're a developer working on applications for the eBay or PayPal platforms, you won't want to miss this show, or O'Reilly's recently released eBay Hacks and the upcoming PayPal Hacks.

O'Reilly Now Selling Mandrake Software -- O'Reilly Media is now a U.S. and Canadian reseller for Mandrakesoft, creators of Mandrakelinux--a user-friendly Linux distribution ideal for first-time users. O'Reilly is reselling two English-language versions of Mandrakelinux 10.0: Mandrakelinux Discovery 10.0 and Mandrakelinux PowerPack 10.0. For more on these two versions, or to order them, visit mandrake.oreilly.com.

Java Development on Eclipse, Part 1 -- Steve Holzner shows how Eclipse makes it easy to create new methods, classes, and packages, as well as how to build and run the code, in this excerpt from Chapter 2 of his book, Eclipse: The Definitive Guide.