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UFOs (Ubiquitous Findable Objects) -- The emergence of ubiquitous findable objects (UFOs) enables us to tag and track products, possessions, pets, and people as they wander through space and time. In this fascinating read, bestselling author Peter Morville illustrates the power of the future present of UFOs with real examples, GPS, RFID, flocking patterns, anomaly detection, and more. Peter is the author of Ambient Findability.

Wireless Hacks: Long Distance Links -- Radio range isn't something "built into" a product, but is in fact the same for all wireless devices: potentially infinite. The hacks in Chapter 6 of Wireless Hacks expose some of the important details you need to keep in mind, as well as techniques you can use, to make your long distance projects possible. If you like this chapter, read the whole book (and up to nine others) on Safari with a free trial subscription.

Avoid Common Pitfalls in Greasemonkey -- Mark Pilgrim walks through a major security concern that prompted the architectural changes in Greasemonkey 0.5, and then provides solutions to ten common pitfalls to avoid when writing Greasemonkey scripts. Mark is the author of Greasemonkey Hacks.

Hacking Swing: Translucent Windows -- All Java windows are absolutely rectangular, so you can forget about creating a nice Winamp-like window for your Swing app, right? Wrong. In this excerpt from Swing Hacks, authors Joshua Marinacci and Chris Adamson show how you can use some imaging trickery to create arbitrarily shaped windows with Swing.