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Good programmers tend to be polyglot programmers. I'm not sure that good applications tend to be polyglot applications; perhaps the way we build Internet applications is hazardous in the long term. Read more.

Imagine if your web browser knew who you were on the web. Just as you login to your computer, what if when you fired up your browser, it said "Hello Dave" and asked you to "unlock it" as well. In doing so you become securely logged into your OpenID provider and as you move around the web your browser takes care of automatically logging you into the sites that you want to be, asking you about others, and helping you register with new ones using your OpenID. Argue as much as you want about the details in making this happen, but I think it's hard to disagree that making it easier for people to manage and use their identity (or identities) online is a bad thing. Read more.

After months of being gagged and leashed, iPhone developers are now free to talk about the iPhone SDK. Apple has dropped their NDA and opened the flood gates to those new developers who thirst for iPhone programming knowledge. I feel that Actionscript developers will have an easier transition to Cocoa-Touch than developers coming from other languages. Being a long time Actionscript developer myself I found it easy to port from Flash to iPhone. Further down in this article I show how I built my app in Flash and the steps I took to port it over to Cocoa. But first, here’s why I believe the learning curve is very low for Actionscript developers.

Learning Rails targets web developers whose programming experience is tied directly to the Web. Rather than begin with the inner layers of a Rails web application -- the models and controllers -- this unique book approaches Rails development from the outer layer: the application interface. You can start from the foundations of web design you already know, and then move more deeply into Ruby, objects, and database structures. Browse the book now.

Do we really understand the deepest causes of the economic crisis? If not, then we run the risk that our remedies will not produce sustainable results. Read more.

Taking a cue from Raven's recent post announcing the 10,000 iPhone app milestone, I decided to update some charts from earlier posts on the U.S. iTunes app store. First, the weekly growth in the number of apps was slower in November: the number of apps grew less than 10% on a weekly basis for all of November. During the last... Read more.

I've been operating almost exclusively on a Mac since OS X came out. I grew up in Unix, and never liked the lack of usability in Windows, so it was a good fit. However, I don't have any particular interest in making Apple look better than it really is, particularly when it comes to security. Read more.

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.

James Hamilton is one of the smartest and most accomplished engineers I know. He now leads Microsoft's Data Center Futures Team, and has been pushing the opportunities in data center efficiency and internet scale services both inside & outside Microsoft. His most recent post explores misconceptions about the Cost of Power in Large-Scale Data Centers: I’m not sure how many... Read more.

Last week, the final judgment was issued in the SCO v. Novell lawsuit. Later in the week SCO filed notice of intent to appeal. We thought it might be a good time to check in with the chronicler of all things SCO, Pamela Jones of Groklaw, and see just where things stand. Read more.

Henry Liu and Justin Edelson authors of the just released JRuby Cookbook talk about JRuby, the current state of the Java platform, and some of the compelling benefits of integrating a language like Ruby with the Java platform. Read more.

Last week I posted a blog entry on Twenty Rules for Amazon Cloud Security. In that article, I provided 20 things you can do so that you can feel confident in the integrity of your Amazon EC2 instances. As I... Read more.

This is a brief interview with Andy Oram about the state of the technology publishing market. What are the trends in online publishing, and how does it affect O'Reilly? In this interview, I ask Oram about his views on free books and I ask him to talk about some of the trends he has identified in computing and technology. Read more.