Month: March 2010

Most people who work in IT will know that O’Reilly books are very expensive. I’m sat at my desk looking at a ‘Learning Java’ book that cost me the thick end of ??30.

Well, whilst browsing the app store on my iPhone I found that O’Reilly have bundled a load of their books up in the Stanza ebook reader app and are selling each title for peanuts (??2.99 seems to be the most common price point). That ‘Learning Java’ book I paid ??28 for? ??2.99.

SCOTTISH local authorities have paid out more than ??40 million in fees to consultancy firms in the past year, new figures have revealed.

As councils wrestle with looming budget cuts, data released by 28 of Scotland’s 32 councils showed ??42m ??? roughly ??115,000 a day ??? was spent on management and finance advice, with many consultants hired to help councils cut costs.

Macmillan, one of the largest textbook publishers in the world, is introducing a new software for instructors that will allow them to change the online versions of textbooks that their students use.

According to the New York Times, with DynamicBooks, “Professors will be able to reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.”

If you loved browsing the archives of National Geographic when they opened up their vaults last November and found yourself wanting to take your own impressive nature shots, you’ll definitely want to check out the BBC Photo Masterclasses.

Published in the pages of the BBC’s Wildlife magazine, the Photo Masterclasses are articles written by Wildlife photographers and specialists in their genre of nature photography. You’ll find articles on macro photography, landscape photography, and photographing different creatures under all sorts of different conditions. If you love learning a new photography trick or two you’ll definitely want to dive into the archives of the BBC.

Whether you want to save and watch a Flash video offline, convert a Flash music video for your MP3 player, or do something else entirely, learning how to rip and convert Flash videos is a useful skill. Here’s how it works.

When it comes to ripping Flash videos, there’s more than one way to accomplish the task, and in many cases it depends greatly on where you’re grabbing the video. We’ll cover a number of different options for downloading Flash videos, as well as several ways you can convert them into more useful formats. Once you’ve seen the options, you can choose the one that works best for you and your situation.