ReadWriteWeb

Big ideas aren't prevalent anymore, posited academic and author Neal Gabler in a New York Times op-ed. "We are living in an increasingly post-idea world," he wrote, "a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can't instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding."

While this could be seen as just another variation of the "Internet makes you dumb" argument, a favorite of academics and contrarian technology writers, Gabler's article touched a nerve for me. As I look around at my own industry, tech news, there is certainly no shortage of content. But ideas... those we're bereft of. Tech media today is driven by deals and speculation. There are plenty of ideas-driven people, too, but you generally won't find them at the top of Techmeme anymore.

Here's yet another resource for those learning Node.js. O'Reilly Media is now selling a video on scalable Internet applications with Node.js featuring Up and Running with Node.js author Tom Hughes-Croucher.

Preview the video after the jump.

OK, we won't bore you by telling you what Node.js is again or why it's so dang hot.

You want to learn Node.js? There's no completely finished Node.js book out there that we're aware of. But there's one complete book in rough draft form, two partial guides and several other great resources for learning Node.js.

Last week Oxford announced a joint computer science and philosophy undergraduate degree. The only thing surprising about this announcement is that it's taken this long to marry these courses of study. Although there's a bit of hostility towards philosophy in the Hacker News thread on the subject, there's a general agreement that it's a worthwhile idea.

How will the program work? And will there be any study materials for us to play along with at home? Read on.

This week, instead of a single API we're spotlighting ReadWriteWeb contributor Pete Warden's new e-book Data Source Handbook, which was just released today. Pete covers a slew of data sources including, of course, many APIs.

"These are hand-picked services that I've actually spent time using during my own work," Pete writes. "And I chose them because they add insights and information to data you're already likely to be dealing with."

He's made a list of services and a couple excerpts available here.

Vincent Van Gemert and the Floorplanner team ran into a few stumbling blocks while preparing their product for the Google Apps Market. "We found out that a lot of people were struggling with the existing Rails libraries and the OAuth authorization method," Van Gemert wrote. That's why Van Gemert created a guide for integrating Ruby on Rails applications with Google Apps and the Apps Marketplace, which Google has published on its Apps Developer Blog.

JavaScript has never been hotter, thanks to projects like Node.js, JQuery and PhoneGap. You can now use JavaScript for scripting in the browser, for creating desktop and mobile applications, and for creating server side web applications. But how do you get started? We've compiled a list of six free books and tutorials for beginning programmers, but those with programming experience may find some of these resources valuable as well. Feel free to add more free resources in the comments.

If you're in the market for an enterprise SaaS solutions or a cloud management providers, you've got few resources to evaluate the different options. You can check sites like this one, read analyst reports and or ask for recommendations from your colleagues. LinkedIn's new Company Pages opens up a new way to tap into that last option. Much like the fan pages companies can setup in Facebook, LinkedIn now has company pages. If LinkedIn Company Pages catches on, you'll be able to browse your colleagues profiles and see what companies they recommend. And when you go to a company's page, you'll be able to see how many people like it.

AppSumo, which is sort of like GroupOn or MacHeist for web apps, is offering $1,543 worth of credits towards developer tools and services like Linode, Heroku, Recurly and MongoHQ for $47. Most significantly, they're offering six months of SendGrid's e-mail deliverability service, valued at $479. If you've been meaning to check out any of these tools, this might be a good opportunity to do so, but please do note that these offers are mostly only available for new users.

How many Droids are there? How much RAM is in the Nexus One? Does the Samsung Galaxy S support Wi-Fi N? Does the Droid X have a bigger screen than the Droid 2? Can you get Android in a TV? In a car?

If these are the sort of questions you've found yourself wondering about (or even Googling about with limited success), there's a new resource out there that you should be aware of. It's this incredible spreadsheet of all known Android devices and their technical specifications. And it includes smartphones, netbooks, e-books, PMPs (personal media players), MIDs (mobile Internet devices), TVs, cars and more.