For years, those who’ve wanted to teach themselves programming have been caught between the trusted content found in books and the ease of use with online materials. Now, O’Reilly Media and Inkling have teamed up to reimagine the world’s most trusted technological resources for iPad, iPhone, and the web.

From embedded coding sandboxes to notes with web links, syntax highlighting, and more, books in the Animal series, Missing Manual series, and others are amplified with Inkling-only features not found in any other e-book version. Copy-and-paste bits of code as you go on your laptop, or drill down into the logic behind the syntax when reading on your iPad or iPhone.

Budding developers and tech enthusiasts alike now have some of the world’s best tech resources right at their fingertips. Watch a video that shows how it all works, and shop for books.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

My thanks to Igloo for sponsoring the RSS feed this week.

“That’s no moon. It’s a corporate intranet!”

… 6 months later …

“I felt a great disturbance in our company — as if hundreds of employees cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

Your intranet doesn’t have to suck. At Igloo, we built a new intranet platform that combines social technologies with document management in a beautiful, usable digital workplace.

In your day, you might give updates, have discussions and share files with your team. With Igloo, that all happens in one place. The tools you want to use, like blogs, comments, ratings, status updates, and more, are already there. Right beside your documents.

No more searching email threads. No more bolt-ons to legacy platforms.

It just works.

Plans start at just $99 a month for up to 25 users and scale to intergalactic sizes. Get started with a demo and you could win a Field Notes Brand National Crop set.

Sponsorship by The Syndicate

This week’s RSS Sponsor is OmniPlan, an app that rethinks project management. I use this app all the time and absolutely love it.

Sarah wakes up, prepares a full breakfast, and fires up her standard suite for design. Two new, time-consuming projects this week — it’s time to start planning much further than was previously warranted. Should’ve started yesterday.

OmniPlan for iPad is perfect for this. An intuitive interface keeps unnecessary controls out of your way until you need them, and you don’t have to become an expert in another field.

It’s just Sarah, three months of work, and a beautiful timeline to keep her studio of one on track. Available in the App Store for $50.

I firmly believe accounting and time-tracking are all heading online. Harvest is a painless time tracking tool for creative professionals available anywhere you find yourself working. Track time via the web, desktop or your mobile device. Within seconds, turn your billable hours into an invoice.

Get started with a free 30 day trial today.

An Atlanta design firm uses Minigroup to work smarter and keep its clients happy

Braizen uses Minigroup to manage projects and collaborate and communicate with their clients.

A minigroup is a private, secure online space where members communicate with posts and comments, share large files, and manage projects.

Braizen uses one minigroup like an intranet, to discuss business and assign tasks. They also create separate minigroups for each client, where employees working on various accounts present comp designs and drafts.

“Telling potential clients that we use this tool, where we’ll keep in constant contact with them, definitely helps seal the deal,” says Tyrie, the copywriter at Braizen.

Watch the full interview with Braizen.

Minigroups start at just $3 per year for owners, with plans up to 100 minigroups and 100GB of storage. There are no user/member fees.

Find out more or try it free for 30 days.

Inspired by true events, World War Hack is a graphic novel that tells the story of how the U.S. Government gathers top computer hackers from around the country, under the guise of a hacking competition, to unknowingly help solve a pressing national security crisis. Little does the government know that eighteen-year-old hacker, Wyatt Dyer, is both the cause and solution to their crisis.

As a special for the readers of MacSparky, you can preview the first full chapter online for free. Pre-order before May 6 and you’ll also receive free shipping.

I’m finally starting to get graphic novels and this is a good one.

This week’s RSS sponsor is Byword for iOS and Mac. Byword’s simple and clean interface combined with some wicked iCloud syncing makes this suite of apps my “go to” place for any serious text I’m currently cooking up. Today I’ve got a half-written Macworld article, a few posts for this site, notes from a deposition, and legal billing notes all jumping between my Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions of Byword. It feels like living in the future.

Don’t believe me? Watch my screencast.

iOS Byword Introduction from David Sparks on Vimeo.

Byword is available on the Mac App Store for $9.99, and for iOS on the App Store at the introductory price of $2.99. Check it out.

When Apple announced they were bringing iOS features “Back to the Mac” with OS X Lion (and doubled down on it with Mountain Lion), the iOS implementation of copy and paste was not included.

PopClip is a clever Mac app that brings iOS-style copy and paste to OS X, and raises the question of why Apple hasn’t done this already. If you’re curious as to how well it works, the answer is: pretty well. The most common sentiment in the user reviews is: “I’m hooked.”

If you have a Mac, you should check this out. You can download a free demo at Pilotmoon Software. The full version costs $4.99 on the Mac App Store.

I’m so pleased to have TextExpander as the RSS sponsor for a second week.

TextExpander can be as simple or as geeky as you want. Whatever your level of experience, there’s a TextExpander tip for you:

Getting Started: Make a snippet for your email address. You’ll be amazed at the keystrokes you’ll save not having to type that over and over.

Intermediate: Add one of the Predefined Groups, like HTML/CSS snippets or instant URL shorteners. There’s even an AutoCorrect group to fix your typos.

Advanced: Try fill-in snippets, which have multiple variable fields. For example, you could have a form letter with blanks for name, product, company, etc. Type your abbreviation, fill in the fields and you’re done.

Even More Advanced: Create your own AppleScript and shell script snippets.

Get the free demo. Don’t miss the 20% off special discount. Use the coupon code SYN0312 in the Smile store (Expires March 31, 2012).

This week’s RSS Sponsor is TextExpander and, dear readers, this is one essential app in my toolbox. I use TextExpander snippets to answer e-mail, create OmniFocus entries, prepare legal forms, pleadings, and billings, fill in forms, create meeting agendas, and just about everything else I do with a keyboard. TextExpander is my killer app.

Do you type the same things again and again? TextExpander will save you time and keystrokes.

Just assign short abbreviations to your frequently-used snippets of text and TextExpander does the work for you. You can also use one of the included snippet libraries for HTML, CSS, autocorrection, accented words and URL shorteners.

Try it out – there’s a free demo at Smile Software. And you can get 20% off TextExpander through March 31. 2012. Use the coupon code SYN0312 in the Smile store.