Josette Garcia is O’Reilly‘s UK Press Office – and before that she worked for another, significantly less groovy, tech publisher. She worked there, in fact, when I got my first (and only) book deal. I was paid an advance (the figure £400 comes to mind) to write a book about Mosaic. Yes, Mosaic. Naturally enough, by the time I’d written the first couple of chapters Mosaic was no more. And so was my book deal.
Anyway, Josette has sent me another box of lovely books for review so here are the highlights: I reckon you could actually do the whole podcasting thing using just Kirk McElhearn, Richard Giles & Jack D Herrington’s very slim Podcasting Pocket Guide without going out and buying its companion – the much fatter Podcasting Hacks (and it’s got a mini-directory of podcasts at the back like those directories of web sites we used to buy in the old days).
I really want to have a go at learning to program in Ruby using Chris Pine’s Learn to Program but I think his informal, not to say chummy, style might drive me crazy before I can (not that I could anyway – I’ve tried to learn to program several times going all the way back to an effort with Modula 2 in about 1990). Rich Gibson & Schuyler Erle’s Google Maps Hacks is deep, very deep. Too deep for me but probably right up your street for that mash-up you’ve been banging on about in the pub. Get on with it.
Funnily enough I had a book contract from them as well. I found the contract the other day, and it had an additional part that offered extra advance for fast delivery. Never wrote it though – can’t even remember what it was about.