Apple user group leaders and active members from around the world will gather at the Apple User Group Wine and Cheese Reception from 4-7pm, January 14 at the San Francisco Westin Hotel. David Pogue and many other notable Mac lluminaries including Terry White, Dave Marra, Dennis Sellers, Adam and Tonya Engst, and Jim Dalrymple will be on hand.

Attendance is not restricted to user group officers and board members so stop by if you can. Attendees who use the public registration site pay $20–a 50% discount is available to Apple user group members.

What makes Vista special? David Karp tells Ina Fried of CNET News about the features that make set Vista apart from previous Microsoft operating systems:

I’ve written Annoyances books going back to 1996. Windows Vista posed a little bit more of a problem for me, or I should say a challenge? It wasn’t that it had more annoyances or fewer annoyances. The issues with Vista were more complex. With earlier versions of Windows, you had simple things like programs crashing and features not working.

The problems in Vista are tricky and, with a book like mine, I don’t just write about problems. I only write about problems that I can solve or at least that I can work around. The ones in Vista took a little bit more time and a little more creativity to solve.

So what annoys David the most? No, it’s not the green ribbon of death:

The thing that ticks me off most about Vista is probably a minor quibble to most people. But it hits me every day. There is a feature—it’s kind of convoluted—that allows Windows Explorer to show folders containing different items in different ways. For example, if you look at a folder full of photos or videos, you see thumbnails. If you look at a folder full of MP3s, you’ll see a detailed list of artist names and track titles and track numbers. Basically, Windows Explorer is designed to automatically show you a different view for different types of files to show you the relevant information. The problem is it gets it right infrequently. It gets it wrong most of the time. It will show pictures as music files. It should be something that’s so simple, I think that’s part of why I am annoyed by it.

Read the rest of Ina’s interview with David to see if he’s got the answers for what annoys you.

In a warehouse on San Francisco’s waterfront, the co-founder of Wired magazine, Louis Rossetto, is obsessively engaged in something new and sweet. Artisan chocolate making. Indeed, a recent New York Times story revealed that Rossetto, the CEO, and Timothy Childs, chief chocolate officer, have launched Tcho, a chocolate making plant. The two recycled and refurbished legacy chocolate equipment and mated it with the latest process control, information, and communications systems.

“A lot of people think companies like See’s and Godiva are chocolate makers,” said Mr. Childs. “But they’re not. They’re confectioners who take someone else’s chocolate and do something with it.” Others, said Mr. Childs, simply remelt other people’s chocolate and put their brand on it.

Slightly less fresh-faced than he was in the early 1990s, but with no less fervor for his product, Mr. Rossetto likes to say that Tcho is “where Silicon Valley start-up meets San Francisco food culture.”

Tcho’s company literature promotes the team’s deep experience from Silicon Valley to Berlin, from Fair Trade to Ferraris, from chocolate start up to Web start up. And if you’re in San Francisco you can taste what they’re up to by heading over to Pier 17–where Tcho’s factory is located– to purchase the beta version of the dense hand-crafted bars.

Yum.

Some are cells, others are simply pigeonholes. Still others are decorated with child’s artwork, pictures, and memorabilia among the piles of papers and books. The rare person delights in their cubicle, saying it is a place that inspires creativity. Merriam-Webster defines a cubicle as a “small partitioned space; especially one with a desk used for work in a business office.”

However you view your cubicle at your own office, wish it a happy birthday in the near future, as this coming year marks the 40th “birthday” of office cubicles. The brain child of Robert Propst of Michigan office furniture maker Herman Miller Inc., the cubicle was originally designed “to unleash creativity and collaboration, and take productivity to new heights,” according to today’s article in the Press Democrat. However, over the years it has become a place that tends to be claustrophobic, cutting us off from our colleagues and isolating us to do our work alone.

Lucky for us, MAKE has come to the rescue with a book to enhance our cubicles once more: Eccentric Cubicle. While most assuredly an eccentric book, written by self-professed “Eccentric Genius” Kaden Harris, ideas span from a catapult mail-delivery system to a USB-powered bubble blower to desktop guillotine, and are sure to keep you occupied!

Check out more about the book here: www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510541, and learn how to once again make your cubicle a place of creativity.

Blogger Sam Merrell writes that one of his favorite things about his job is access to the company’s library. He loves libraries and loves to read about technology.

Before I started working, I had to scrounge whatever books I could find, but now I have more access and I can’t wait to read more. I already have about eight other books I plan on reading as well as another seven or so useful references such as the awesome Bash Cookbook from O’Reilly. It has been incredibly helpful in helping me improve my skills with Bash.

Now because we hate to think of people having to scrounge around for technology books, we’ve decided we’ll give a copy of the awesome bash Cookbook to the person who posts the best reason why he or she should get one in response to this blog. Let’s say, by next Tuesday, Dec. 18. Judging will be totally arbitrary. Just let us know what you’d do with improved bash skills and maybe you’ll get a book!

It’s time to think about everyone’s favorite Mac event, Macworld 2008, in San Francisco. I know I’ve been to almost every show or at least as far back as I can remember and long before I started at O’Reilly. My family was always an Apple family back to the Apple II Plus days.

If you’re planning on attending Macworld, don’t forget to stop by the O’Reilly booth (#S-2218, South Hall) and say hi. Many of our authors will be on hand including David Pogue (Missing Manual Series), Derrick Story (Digital Photography Pocket Guide), Deke McClelland (Adobe Photoshop CS3 One-on-One), and J.D. Biersdorfer (iPod: The Missing Manual).

Here is a complete list of the O’Reilly happenings at Macworld.

Look for us on the Macworld community network. Here’s my profile:

Today on WNYC’s “Please Explain” column, DJ Leonard Lopate focused on amateur astronomy. Although somewhat of an ironic topic, considering WNYC is located in the heart of New York City, the station’s website claims, “Anyone can learn to be an amateur astronomist - even here in New York City, where you often can’t see any stars!”

And with the help of guest astronomer and author Robert Thompson featured on today’s show, I’m sure their statement is quite accurate. Richard Rosenberg, President of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York, was also present, telling NYC residents the best spots for stargazing in the city. Thompson then segued into an explanation of the best equipment to use, how to read star charts, and how to locate and subsequently identify objects in the night sky.

There are also two NYC astronomy gazing events posted on WNYC’s website.

Take a minute to listen to the interview here or head to their website for more information — then head over to our catalog page to order your own copy and become an amateur astronomer yourself!

After a surge of protest from Facebook users along with complaints and a petition from MoveOn.org, the site’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Wednesday they’d made multiple goofs when they launched Beacon. Beacon gave Facebook the ability to broadcast its users’ comings and goings on third party websites that partnered with the social networking site. Along with the apology Zuckerberg announced that Facebook users can with a single click opt out of the tracking program. In true Facebook fashion, the young CEO made his announcement on his blog:

Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

So if you prefer your friends didn’t know you bought another pair of red heels, read his blog and learn how to turn off Beacon here.

I’ve never been much for punctuating my emails or text messages with emoticons. Yet recently–with the exponential increase of email arriving in my inbox–I often attach a smiley face to a brief reply to avoid appearing curt. For example–No :-) as opposed to NO.

Things often go easier with a smile, even if only a combination of typographical symbols. I read in Wikipedia that back in 1969 even esteemed writer Vladimir Nabokov once longed for a typographical grin.

In a New York Times interview in April 1969, Alden Whitman asked writer Vladimir Nabokov: “How do you rank yourself among writers (living) and of the immediate past?” Nabokov answered: “I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.”

And now Tom McNichol, writing in the Dec. 10 issue of The New Yorker, has created my new favorite emoticons. In his Shouts and Murmers column titled Emoticons During Wartime, McNichol offers:

:-x I’d rather not say in an e-mail that’s being monitored for my protection.
B) Now donning protective goggles.
(:3 No, I am the Walrus.

Check them out. :-)

Some people will tell you that geeks are hard to buy for. Not true. Sure, you can spend days trying to select the lasted techno-gizmo-gadget, shell out a fortune, and then find out that in some inexplicable way it’s just not right. But that’s because deep down inside, geeks like to buy their own gadgets. Or they want to tell you exactly which ones to buy for them. But if you want to give a surprise—a gift full of meaning, something that will bring delight to a technology enthusiast’s eyes, something utterly classic but totally cutting edge—there’s nothing like a book from O’Reilly. You can’t go wrong with any of these:

Authors Andrew Stellman and Jennifer Greene believe there has never been a better time to learn C#. One reason is the imminent release of C# 3.0. “Microsoft is releasing some really awesome improvements in C# 3.0,” says Greene. “A lot of the things that people can do in just a few lines with 3.0 would have taken much more code just a year ago. Not to mention the release of Visual Studio 2008 Express—a few years back, you had to buy programming tools from Microsoft. Now you can download them for free, and that gives people a great way to learn C# without spending a lot of money.”

“That’s right,” Stellman agrees. “There are all sorts of new features in the Visual Studio 2008 and C# 3.0 that will be released this month.”

With this new Missing Manual, you can count on learning how to use all of Leopard’s new features including the Time Machine, Boot Camp, and File Stacks. And here, as a bonus, David gives you six of his favorite Leopard tips:

1. Spotlight has been given two quiet enhancements that turn it into a different beast altogether. First, it’s a tiny pocket calculator, always at the ready. Click in the Search box, type or paste 38*48.2-7+55, and marvel at the first result in the Spotlight menu: 1879.6. There’s your answer—and you didn’t even have to fire up the Calculator.

And it’s not just a four-function calculator, either. It works with square roots: type sqrt(25), and you’ll get the answer 5. It also works with powers; type pow(6,6)—that is, 6 to the power of 6—and you’ll get 46656. You can even type pi to represent—you know, pi.

Read them all.