In the latest Publishing News: Scribd's Float app aims to be Netflix for reading, the TapIn Bay Area app empowers citizen journalists, and Amazon dips into the e-textbook rental market.

Open source innovators, builders, and pioneers from across the globe are coming together this week in Portland, OR for OSCON. If you can't be there in person, you can still follow along with the our live keynotes and broadcast all week.

This week on O'Reilly: We examined the deeper and broader implications of Google+, four solutions to the patent quagmire were offered up, and we learned about the "art of mass organizational manipulation."

This year we're looking more at what you--patients, clinicians, and researchers--can do with the data you collect, while we continue our coverage of critical IT parts of the health care system.

Researchers are looking at mobile phone data to see if our relationships and communications are restricted by geographic boundaries.

New usage patterns are emerging as streaming services go mainstream. With that in mind, I'd like to find out how Radar readers puts streaming products to use.

Competitive Advantage Through Data -- the applications and business models for erecting barriers around proprietary data assets. Sees data businesses in these four categories: contributory data sourcing, offering cleaner data, data generated from service you offer, and viz/ux. The author does not yet appear to be considering when open or communal data is better than proprietary data, and how...

"Mac OS X Lion Pocket Guide" for only $5.99. You save 50%. Use discount code DDXNG to get your savings....

James Turner says the notion that proprietary software is somehow dirty or a corruption of principles ignores the realities of competition, economics, and context.

Wolfram, makers of Mathematic and Wolfram Alpha, unveiled a new set of tools today for embedding mathematical formulas and charts into documents. It could make a big difference to publishers in the sciences and social sciences.

In the latest ePayments Week: 10 iPhone passcodes make up 15% of all those in use. Also, Google In-App spreads its wings beyond the Chrome store, Isis signs deals with major credit cards, and execs expect mCommerce to be mainstream in 4 years.

Happening Tomorrow – Jonathan Lightfoot will delve into how SharePoint Designer 2010 can be used to quickly put together custom workflows to automate business processes. The out of the box and SharePoint Designer 2010 workflows are great if you have an already established and documented business process. On the other hand, what do you do when the business process is not clearly defined or documented? This session will wrap up with how Visio 2010 can be used to flowchart a business process and then we will take this flowchart and use SharePoint Designer 2010 to create a workflow. Register for the webcast now.More upcoming webcasts: The Changing World of Digital Rights and Publishing AgreementsPresented by Jenny Bent, Dana NewmanJuly 28, 2011 @ 10 PT Securing Your Files and Data in WindowsPresented by Mike HalseyAugust 4, 2011 @ 10 PT Building Access Applications with SQL Server DatabasesPresented by Andrew CouchAugust 9, 2011 @ 10 PT Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events.

Ben Collins-Sussman, tech lead and manager at Google, and Brian Fitzpatrick, engineering manager at Google, explain the importance of maintaining relationships with non-programming colleagues. Read more.More from O'Reilly Answers:What audio transcription software would you recommend?How to route HD video long distances using the TeradekHow can I recover a disk from a failed RAID 0 setup?How to navigate the pages of your app with jQuery Mobile Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

Interested in hearing what other people in the Great Lakes region are passionate about but don't want to listen to a rambling talk? Check out Ignite: a series of 5-minute presentations. Ignite Great Lakes will feature 12-15 of the best presentations from the Midwest on July 30 at the Fillmore Detroit. Learn more.

Facing info overload, Peter Meyers ponders more efficient ways to find what’s newsworthy. What works for you?

Aaron Swartz faces felony charges for downloading "big data" (more than 4 million academic journals) from the MIT library, Microsoft's new data tool is aimed at scholars, and David Eaves looks at open data efforts in Canada.

Opening up clinical trials can accelerate findings, reveal more data of value to future trials, and--perhaps most important--make participants feel really good about doing it. An interview with OSCon speaker Greg Biggers.

BioCurious is a Silicon Valley gathering place for biologists and other people such as artists who are fascinated by biology. It serves for learning, sharing, and an incubator for products and ideas.

Sugar -- a Javascript library that fixes inconsistencies in built-in classes (Strings, Arrays, etc.) and extends them with much-needed time-saving functionality (e.g., automatic iterators over regular expressions; Date creation from strings; binding scopes to functions). Tilt -- clever Firefox plugin that lets you view the DOM on your page in 3D. Excellent for visually understanding the structure and layout...

Seattle is where it's at, at least for the recently launched annotation application Highlighter. Co-founder and CEO Josh Mullineaux talks about the company, where it's headed, and why Seattle is home.