Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic) -- This book shows you how easy it is to install Rails using your web server of choice. In the extended tutorial sections, you'll create a complete online store application to see how a full Rails application is developed. Further, you'll learn how to exploit the Rails service frameworks to send emails, implement web services, and create dynamic, user-centric web pages. There are also extensive chapters on testing, deployment, and scaling.

EuroOSCON Early Registration Extended -- Join us for the first annual O'Reilly European Open Source Convention, October 17-20 in Amsterdam. EuroOSCON targets the specific needs of European developers, programmers, strategists, entrepreneurs, and technologists, helping them to deliver the benefits of open source technology to their companies and organizations. Sign up now and save before early registration prices end on September 21st.

Web Programming Certificate Series Special -- The O'Reilly Learning Lab Web Programming Certificate Series can take you from web newbie to well-rounded web engineer in six courses, which span everything from JavaScript to XML, Perl to Linux/Unix, HTML to mySQL. Upon completion of the series, students receive a Certificate of Professional Development from the University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. From now until September 21st, enroll in all six courses and receive a $200 instant rebate.

Porting Test::Builder to Perl 6 -- With Pugs and Parrot playing nicely and bringing Perl 6 to the rest of us, enterprising early adopters are experimenting with porting their popular Perl 5 modules to Perl 6. O'Reilly editor chromatic recently pushed the limits of Pugs by porting Test::Builder to Perl 6. Here's what he learned about Perl 6, Pugs, and his design along the way. chromatic is the coauthor of Perl Testing: A Developer's Notebook.

Is Perl Still Relevant? -- With the emergence of .NET, J2EE, Python, PHP, et al., one reader asks whether Perl has lost its niche as a scripting glue language? Tim O'Reilly comments in this Ask Tim.

ETech 2006 CFP Now Open -- O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference 2006 is scheduled for March 6-9 in San Diego. We invite technologists, strategists, CTOs, chief scientists, researchers, programmers, hackers, standards workers, business developers, and entrepreneurs to lead sessions and tutorials at ETech. This year's challenge focuses on the amazing amount of digital data in our worlds: how do we visualize the data, filter it, remix it, and access it in meaningful ways? Proposals are due by September 19th.

Batch-Running Word Macros from the DOS Command Line -- Looking for an easy way to run any Word macro, on any number of files, right from the DOS command line? Andrew Savikas shows how to do just that, using Perl, Python, and Ruby, with code samples for each scripting language. Andrew is the author of Word Hacks.

Ten Essential Development Practices -- Perl lets you be productive in everything from quick-and-dirty throwaway programs to big, business-critical applications. Building the latter requires some discipline, though. Damian Conway shares ten essential development practices to make your Perl programming easier, more reliable, and even more enjoyable. Damian is the author of Perl Best Practices.

When Will Perl 6 Ever Get Done? It's difficult to make predictions about when Perl 6 will be released. For one thing, Perl is still and always under development; for another, there's no rush. perl.com editor Simon Cozens shares what he heard from Perl 6 designers and implementers in this month's Ask Tim.

History of Programming Languages -- For 50 years, computer programmers have been writing code, and now, there are more than 2,500 documented programming languages. O'Reilly has produced a poster called History of Programming Languages, which plots over 50 programming languages on a multi-layered, color-coded timeline. The poster is available online in PDF format, but while supplies last, U.S. residents can also get a hard copy of the poster free when purchasing two books through oreilly.com.

SafariU: Create, Customize, and Share Teaching Material -- Looking for a way to truly customize your course textbook and offer students exactly the material you choose to teach, while saving them a good bit of money? Become a SafariU beta tester and check out the new web-based publishing platform from O'Reilly that allows you to create custom textbooks and online syllabi.

Perl Tackles HIPAA Compliancy -- Dietrich Schmitz of the SUNY Upstate Medical University writes, "It is so true that Perl 'makes the simple things easy and the hard things possible'." Dietrich describes how he used Perl in writing an in-house application to make the Claims and Patient Billing system HIPAA-compliant, in this latest Perl Success Story.

Larry Wall's State of the Onion -- At this year's O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Larry Wall delivered his eighth annual State of the Onion address, in which he publicly psychoanalyzed himself while relating screensavers ("my mind is like a screensaver that no one can ever look at") to surgery, Perl, and the Perl community. Larry's speech, including links to his screensavers that you can view with xscreensaver-demo, is online at perl.com.

Cultured Perl: Three Essential Perl Books -- In a recent Cultured Perl column on IBM DeveloperWorks comes a review of what the reviewer calls three "essential Perl books": O'Reilly Media's Perl 6 Essentials, Perl Cookbook, and Perl Template Toolkit. To read more about these and all of O'Reilly's Perl books, visit perl.oreilly.com.