Much hype accompanied Google's takeover of the Urchin Web analytics package and its subsequent free offering of a low-end version of Urchin to anyone who wanted to sign up. There's a lot to dislike about Google Analytics, but its quality and availability have improved somewhat since its initial release, and for those who can't afford a high-end analytics package that can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month, there are few reasonable alternatives. Wiley Publishing's Google Analytics is a good, in-depth guide to this service and all of its various settings.

Midnight on January 16 marked the official release of The Burning Crusade, the first official major add-on for the blockbuster massively multiplayer online roleplaying game World of Warcraft. Computer stores across the country re-opened at the stroke of midnight to sell the expansion pack to Warcraft die-hards. The really big events hosted by the game's manufacturer, Blizzard Entertainment, are all in California, complete with signings by some of the game's developers. Here in Orlando, FL the launch didn't arrive with quite as much heraldry, but crowds gathered and lines formed at every GameStop and EBGames store in the area. Read on for the full report.

I've spent the last several weeks writing, revising, and editing a project called The OpenBSD 4.0 Crash Course for O'Reilly Media. It is designed to quickly teach you the basics of how to install, configure, use, and upgrade the OpenBSD operating system as a desktop or server. It's specific to version 4.0, and I plan on writing a new version for each future OpenBSD release. If you've wanted to learn OpenBSD or are anxious to get into the BSDs in general, this is your best starting point. I decided to pitch it as an electronic guide because it doesn't need to be particularly long, it's possible to copy-and-paste commands from it to your terminal window, and you can print out a hard copy if you want. It's now available for download for U.S. $9.99 from O'Reilly, and I plan on donating a portion of my royalties to the OpenBSD Project so that it can continue to produce great software. Each section is designed to be like my how-to articles -- concise and easy to understand. There are no preambles or politics; just good information. Below is a sample from the book to show you what you can expect from it.

Recently an issue over the vBulletin license arose over an animation site that an agent of Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd. (the company that owns the vBulletin forum software) reportedly found distasteful. According to the email text, a man named Howard G. Spinks of Pirate Reports, a company that investigates unlicensed software use for Jelsoft, told the animation site's administrator, "having seen the content of your forum and some of the depraved comments that obviously it is time for you to moderate the forum to avoid a likely revocation of license." At that, the site's actual content became a background issue -- the real question in the minds of many forum administrators was, "Can Jelsoft demand editorial control or censorship of my site just because I use its software?"

BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips. To find out more about this situation, I interviewed representatives from network chip manufacturers and programmers from free software operating systems. Their answers are below.

Many people who have been involved with the more technical aspects of home computers have at least heard of things like cable modem "uncapping" or "hacking." Some may have even tried to do it once or twice. Before now there hasn't been a comprehensive guide to modifying cable modems -- just an array of tutorials and small programs scattered around the Internet. No Starch Press' Hacking the Cable Modem is an attempt to satisfy the documentation needs of cable modem hackers everywhere. Unfortunately, none of the information in this book is at all useful to people who aren't either designing cable modems or intending on executing the hacks, which even the author says will get you in trouble with either your ISP or the police.

Though there are a deluge of Ruby-related books being published lately, few deal specifically with Ruby on Rails. O'Reilly's Ruby on Rails: Up and Running deals with nothing but Rails, however, and though it requires a significant amount of prerequisite knowledge and is limited to one specific Web platform (Apache/MySQL), it's still an outstanding guide for experienced developers who want to start creating Rails applications immediately.