Splitting Books Open: Trends in Traditional and Online Technical Documentation  While technical publishers strive to adapt to new online media and formats, online efforts at self-education by computer users are becoming a form of true grassroots documentation. O'Reilly editor Andy Oram discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each side--traditional books and user self-education--and suggests how they may converge. He also offers suggestions for improving the educational effects of mailing lists, computing project web sites, and other community-based documentation.   [O'Reilly Network]

A Day in the Life of #Apache  In this month's column, Rich Bowen tackles an Apache security issue. Learn how to configure Apache to send a different Server response so no one can identify what version of Apache you're running or any of the modules you have installed. The less information your server reveals, the safer it will be from crackers. Rich is a coauthor of O'Reilly's Apache Cookbook.   [ONLamp.com]

FreeBSD Basics
FreeBSD Basics: FreeBSD Bag of Tricks  Software junkies like Dru Lavigne always file away interesting new programs for their bag of tricks. In this installment of FreeBSD Basics, Dru demonstrates how to use usermin for easy webmail and reveals the convenience and glory of TheOpenCD.   [ONLamp.com]

This Week on Perl 6, Week Ending 2004-09-17  Piers Cawley has the latest from the Perl 6 mailing lists. The perl6-compiler list discusses grammar bootstrapping, the Parrot people debate namespaces again, and the Perl 6 Language list ponders the freshly updated Synopsis 5.   [Perl.com]

A Quick Guide to Digital Shoeboxes  You like taking all of those digital photos, but what do you do with them after you put them on your computer? Giles Turnbull looks at four digital shoeboxes that can help you organize your image library.   [O'Reilly Network]

Features
Introduction to Device Independence  The W3C is working on standards related to device independence, which will allow an optimal web-browsing experience across the diversity of web-capable devices. Peter Mikhalenko introduces us to this new, exciting area.   [XML.com]

Developing Your First EJBs, Part 2  In part one of this two-part excerpt from Chapter 4 of Enterprise JavaBeans, 4th Edition, the authors walked through what you need to do to develop your first entity bean. This week concludes this series with a look at how to develop a session bean, building on the examples presented in part one.   [ONJava.com]

Standards Lowdown
XMP Lowdown  Bob DuCharme introduces XMP, Adobe's RDF-based specification for embedding metadata into digital artifacts. Get ready to mark up your photos and images with Adobe tools.   [XML.com]

Advanced SiteMesh  Developing a web application with a consistent look and feel isn't easy, especially if parts of the site use different underlying technologies. But as Sunil Patil shows, SiteMesh offers a solution, with servlet filters called "decorators" that apply your appearance late in the game.   [ONJava.com]

Featured Photographer
Featured Photographer: Jose Campos III: Fashion with a Flair  The work of Jose Campos III combines visual beauty with narrative. Even though his fashion images have a distinct New York City flair, there's often an element of surprise that moves his work well beyond pretty pictures of attractive women. See for yourself.   [O'Reilly Network]

XML-Deviant
XML-Deviant: RDF Roundup  Edd Dumbill's report on XML community discussions covers how to write XML documents as RDF models and more incredulity at the WS-* web services specifications.   [XML.com]

Unit Test Your Struts Application  Consistent unit testing is an essential part of development, but web applications aren't necessarily well-suited to unit testing--how to you validate the "correctness" of a returned stream of text or HTML? Lu Jian has an answer in the form of StrutsUT, a Cactus-based library for unit testing Struts web apps.   [ONJava.com]

Role-Specific Backup Strategies for Windows Servers  A good server backup strategy should be role-specific in order to minimize your resource usage while maximizing speed and ease of recovery. Mitch Tulloch, author of Windows Server Hacks, shows you how to build the best backup strategy.   [WindowsDevCenter.com]

Manipulating Space with CSS  One of the main strengths of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is how the technology handles web typography. In this article, Christopher Schmitt shows how to use CSS's letter- and word-spacing properties to easily adjust the space between two letters or to separate whole words within a paragraph. Chris is the author of O'Reilly's recently released CSS Cookbook.   [Web DevCenter]

Mac OS X for the Traveler, Part 4  As with so many things in life, preparation is the key to success. In this week's installment, you'll read about how to pack just the right amount of equipment, and how to make sure the data on it is fit for travel.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Using Extensions in Firefox  The Firefox browser has a lot going for it, and one of its best traits is its ability to use extensions that add to its features. Wei-Meng Lee, author of Windows XP Unwired, shows you how to find and install them, and clues you in to his favorites.   [WindowsDevCenter.com]

Wireless Security and the Open1X Project  Open1X is an open-source project focusing on network security. The wireless adoption of this technology is referred to as 802.1X. In this interview, Matthew Gast travels to the University of Utah to talk to Chris Hessing and Terry Simmons, who are intent on bringing standards-based wireless security to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows clients.   [MacDevCenter.com]

Danny O'Brien: To Evil!  Danny O'Brien starts his new monthly column for OSDir measuring players in the open source software world by who is the most evil! Our contestants for August: Rob Enderle, Jörg Schilling and Gareth Jones. 

Learning ASP.NET for the ASP Developer, Part 1  You may be an ASP developer. After the boom of the 1990s, there are thousands of you out there. We know you want to learn ASP.NET. In this, the first of three articles by Dr. Nahal J. Mehta, he shows you how to leverage your ASP knowledge to learn how to think like an ASP.NET developer.   [ONDotnet.com]

Security Alerts
New Apache  Noel Davis look at problems in Apache 2.x, GNU Radius, libXpm, CUPS, gdk-pixbug, cdrtools, SUS, and Webmin.   [LinuxDevCenter.com]

Hacking IRC  IRC Hacks author Paul Mutton has selected some of his favorite hacks to excerpt here. This week find out how to add your IRC nickname to your webcam, and how to make your own IRC bot for passing on short messages to other users. Be sure to check back to this space next week for hacks on performing feats of math; announcing newsgroup posts; and using IRC within a screen.   [Web DevCenter]

Applying "Digital Hub" Concepts to Enterprise Software Design, Part 5  So far, Adam Behringer has covered an enterprise software architecture based on a flexible "hub" that stores and vends data to a number of cross-platform tools and apps using a standard XML "spoke." In this fifth installment, he shows you how to build (with Cocoa) a client module that will work with the XML data.   [MacDevCenter.com]

This Week on Perl 6, Week Ending 2004-09-10  Piers Cawley has the latest from the Perl 6 mailing lists. The perl6-compiler list makes its introduction as Parrot people argue about configuration and namespaces and play Minesweeper and the Perl 6 language list continues to discuss Synopsis 9.   [Perl.com]

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