In a world full of services like delicious, FriendFeed, and Twitter -- services that can route feeds of data based on user-defined vocabularies -- you don't have to be a programmer to create useful mashups. You just have to understand, and find ways to apply, something Jon Udell calls the "Principle of Informal Contracts." He expands on the concept in the second part of his elmcity series. Read more.

To better align the venue with our vision for Web 2.0 Expo New York and our attendees' needs, we're moving to the Sheraton Hotel & Towers in midtown. It's better suited to fostering the kinds of connections we care about and, excitingly, it lets us hold evening program onsite. Learn more about what we have planned. Read more.

For his recently released book, Cooking for Geeks, author Jeff Potter interviewed prominent researchers, food scientists, knife experts, chefs, writers, and more. The excerpt from Cooking for Geeks that follows includes a recipe for Tim O'Reilly's now-famous homemade scones. Read more.

Waze, the company behind the free turn-by-turn navigation app of the same name, is upping its game with their latest release. It has long made referred to itself as a community mapping app, but there was no really way to be a part of a community within the app -- until now. Today's release is going to add Groups to the Waze iPhone and Android apps. Read more.

This Smithsonian Commons project is a marriage of government resources and the web's capabilities. It combines offline and online information, makes experts available in any topic you could want, provides global collaboration, and gives everyone access to valuable knowledge. And since it's driven by iteration and immediate feedback, the Commons is bringing a Web 2.0 approach to the Gov 2.0 world. Read more.

There's nothing wrong with taking a strong position, assuming the underlying data and facts are accurate. But it's important for the audience to recognize it as advocacy, not as strict science, even when it comes wrapped in a really cool visualization. Read more.

As the Web has moved onto mobile devices, developers have told themselves a lot of stories about what this means for their work. Some of those stories are true and others are misleading, confusing, or even dangerous. While the contexts in which we use our mobile devices are often extremely different from where and how we use our comfortable desktops, this doesn't mean that, as developers, we need to create two, three, or dozens of versions duplicating our work. It's not the mobile web; it's just the web! Read more.

More from O'Reilly Answers:

• How to make use of the tab bar in your iPhone app
• How to use your mobile phone as a modem
• How to understand and communicate with your manager
• How to update your iPhone app for multitasking with iOS 4

Share knowledge, ask questions on O'Reilly Answers today.

In different ways, CouchDB and MongoDB are both using replication for some valuable enhancements to their open source products. I'll describe the new feature for each in this blog entry. CouchDB announced an Android app that downloads a CouchDB database to the device, while MongoDB adds auto-sharding and replication sets. Read more.

If you've been reading my blog posts, you know that I try to help novice and intermediate C# programmers improve their skills, and help progress along the developer career path. I think this goes beyond simply getting better at programming C# and .NET. There are additional skills that, in my opinion, really make a difference in your ability to code. It's possible to become an advanced programmer without them, but it's a lot easier with them. Refactoring is one of those skills, and I think that any C# developer—even a novice one—can benefit from it. If you're a C# developer looking to take the next step on your career path and you don't refactor your code regularly, this is a great starting point to help move to the next level. Read more.

Leonard Lobel, lead author of the Microsoft Press book Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008, will guide you through detailed demos that showcase the new "beyond relational" features introduced in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. Register for the webcast now.

More upcoming webcasts:

• Best Practices for Upgrading and Migrating to SharePoint 2010
  Presented by Joel Oleson, Dux Raymond Sy
  August 20 @ 10am PT
• Asynchronous architectures with the CouchDB _changes feed
  Presented by Jan Lehnardt
  August 25 @ 10am PT
• Self-Service Business Intelligence with Microsoft PowerPivot
  Presented by Andrew J Brust
  August 26 @ 10am PT

Check out our Webcast page for on-demand videos of past webcasts and more upcoming live events.