Pearson Education User Group Program Newsletter
 

News & Announcements

Special Holiday ContestWin a Bundle of Books!
Enter by December 31, 2008 for your chance to win a bundle of free books of your choice from the InformIT catalog! Select the appropriate link below, choose your User Group's operating state, and click Submit to reach the entry form.
    InformIT User Group Contest
    Cisco Press User Group Contest

Social Media SurveyHere's What You Said
Thanks again to all participants! We received a total of 647 responses. Look for another set of interesting data points in the next UG newsletter.

   Do you use social media? Why?
    89% use some form of social media on a
     weekly basis
    59% use social media to gather information on
     new technologies

   Most popular sites?
    71% use Google/Yahoo Groups at least once
     a month
    84% use Wikipedia at least once a month
    41% use Facebook at least once a month

   Least popular sites?
    83% never use Second Life or Friendster

New Podcasts on InformIT

PDC Podcast Round-Up
Miss out on this year's Microsoft Professional Developers Conference? We've captured videocasts with Anders Hejlsberg and the C# team, the Oslo team, Paul Vick, Brad Abrams, the Concurrency team, and many others! All are published in our OnMicrosoft podcast channel: www.informit.com/onmicrosoft.

"Oslo"Microsoft's Modeling Platform
Paul Vick provides an overview of "Oslo"the tool, the language, and the relational repository. Learn what it is, how it works, and why it matters.

Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Unleashed
Matt Winkle presents concepts from Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Unleashed, the essential resource for software developers and architects working with WCF. Learn best practices or programming with WCF.

Building and Maintaining Frameworks    
.NET Team Program Manager Krzysztof Cwalina discusses his work building frameworks and offers valuable insights for developers building framework libraries.

Visual Basic 10: New Features
Paul Vick and Lisa Feigenbaum discuss the features in the latest release of Visual Basic 10 announced at PDC 2008.

In the Store

	Adobe Illustrator CS4 On Demand By Steve Johnson/Perspection, Inc.
	Creating Visual Experiences with Flex 3.0 By Juan Sanchez, Andy McIntosh
	Cyber Crime Fighters: Tales from the Trenches By Felicia Donavan, Kristyn Bernier
	Framework Design Guidelines By Krzysztof Cwalina, Brad Abrams
	Programming in Python 3: A Complete Introduction to the Python Language By Mark Summerfield
	Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ By Bjarne Stroustrup
	SQL Server Forensic Analysis By Kevvie Fowler
	The "Oslo" Modeling Language By David Langworthy, Brad Lovering, Don Box
	The Best Political Cartoons of the Year, 2009 Edition By Daryl Cagle, Brian Fairrington
	The Power of IP Video By Jennifer C. Baker
	Windows Small Business Server By Eriq Neale
	Xcelsius 2008 Dashboard Best Practices By Loren Abdulezer

Be sure you're logged in when shopping and have entered your membership code to receive your 35% discount! See all titles

User Groups of the Month

Michigan: West Michigan Cisco Users Group (WMCUG) is a non-profit, independent users group which is dedicated to the open exchange of information in the fields of internetworking and the advanced technologies that support the business goals of an organization. WMCUG focuses primarily, but not exclusively on Cisco products and solutions. Within this framework, WMCUG hopes to build a community to share best practices and provide a forum for members to grow as individual contributors in the technology arena. For more information, visit wmcug.org.

Florida: The Mount Dora Macintosh Users Group(MDMUG) aims to help, educate, inform, discuss and just plain revel in the experience of owning a Macintosh computer. MDMUG provides support and advice to anyone currently using or who is considering using the Macintosh OS. Discussions cover Macintosh computer hardware and software problems and solutions, as well as advice for the future purchase of systems and accessories. Everyone from the Mac novice to the Mac professional is invited to participate. For more information, visit www.mdmug.com.

Authors and Events: December

December 10MSDN Events Unleashed: The Best of PDC
The Southeast Valley .NET User Group (SEVNUG) is presenting highlights of this year's Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Phoenix, Arizona. Discussions include overviews of new technologies like Windows Azure, C#4.0 and ASP.NET 4.0. They will also focus on recent releases that you can take advantage of now, including the WCF REST Start Kit and the Silverlight Toolkit. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/66k3bt.

December 11Harvard Club of Washington, D.C.
Harry Lewis, co-author of Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty and Happiness after the Digital Explosion, will speak at the Harvard Club of Washington, DC.

Happy Holidays from the Pearson User Group Program Team!
Jamie Adams, Andrea Bledsoe, Heather Fox, Lisa Jacobson-Brown, and Emily Nave

Have a User Group event in your area? Let us know!
E-mail details to usergroups@informit.com for consideration in next month's newsletter. Please include "User Group Event" in the subject line.

User Group Offers
www.informit.com/usergroupwelcome

Get a $10 rebate on Que titles!
It's easy buy any two books from the list below and get a $10 rebate.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 On Demand
Adobe Flash CS4 On Demand
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 On Demand
Adobe Illustrator CS4 Professional On Demand
Adobe InDesign CS4 On Demand
Office 2008 for the Mac On Demand
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 CS4 On Demand

Official form and address information is included inside each book. This rebate is good on eligible purchases made between 12/01/09 and 01/31/09, and all submissions must be postmarked no later than 02/28/09. Visit participating retailers, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, Follets, Fry's or InformIT to purchase your books.

Affiliate Program gives back
Visit the Affiliate Program FAQ page today to learn more about an easy and effective way to put money back in your group's pocket by earning a referral fee on every purchase on InformIT.

Are you on Facebook? Do you Twitter?
See a complete list of links to Pearson pages. Join and follow us today!

Questions?
Please contact usergroups@informit.com and include your user group name, relevant topic area, and type of inquiry in the subject line (for example: "Southern California Cisco Users Group – Networking").

Save 40% on Select Microsoft titles
Use discount code DecDiscount when shopping on informit.com* to receive 40% off the following books during the month of December:

Microsoft Access 2007 LiveLessons
Microsoft Office 2007 LiveLessons
Microsoft Windows Vista LiveLessons

* Please note discount code is case-sensitive.

Safari Books Online: User Group Discount
Imagine having instant accessonline and fully searchableto books, videos, and other top resources from Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams, Cisco Press, Que, IBM Press, Peachpit, O'Reilly, Wiley, Microsoft Press, Lynda.com, and morethe brands you trust and the authors you love. Safari Books Online puts the power of your own personal, fully searchable digital library at your fingertips.

Safari Books Online offers a special 15% discount to InformIT User Group members on annual Safari Books Online subscriptions purchased before December 31, 2008. You must be a registered InformIT User Group Member to receive the discount. Subscriptions must be purchased at http://safari.informit.com/subscribe. Enter coupon LVEBQWA at the time of checkout to redeem your discount.

Offer Details: Not valid with any other offer. Coupon is good for a one-time 15% discount on a yearly Safari Library or Safari Bookshelf account. Offer valid for new subscribers only.

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