It’s been a productive 2014 already here at Wolfram with tons of new technology being released and a whole new world of possibilities opening up. One great way to learn more about these accomplishments is to join us at the 2014 Wolfram Technology Conference. The conference takes place Wednesday, October 22 through Friday, October 24, in Champaign, Illinois (our headquarters). This year's talks will highlight the Wolfram Language and the thriving ecosystem growing around it, including the new Wolfram Programming Cloud, Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, SystemModeler, and more. At the conference, you’ll hear from Stephen Wolfram himself. Plus our top Wolfram developers will cover exciting new features in-depth, while industry experts will show you how you can use Wolfram technologies in your everyday work to accomplish more--and do so more efficiently.

Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha are powerful technologies for deepening students' and researchers' understanding of complex topics in math and science. These recently published books incorporate engaging Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha examples and code into texts written for undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers. Composite Materials in Piping Applications: Design, Analysis and Optimization of Subsea and Onshore Pipelines Dimitrios G. Pavlou explains the design, analysis, and performance of composite materials in oil, gas, water, and waste-water piping. The text is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing algorithms for pipe design and analysis using Mathematica. Topology of Digital Images: Visual Pattern Discovery in Proximity Spaces James F. Peters carries forward recent work on visual patterns and structures in digital images and introduces a near set-based topology in this book. To provide a better understanding of digital images, Mathematica scripts are used to illustrate the fabric and essential features of images. Green's Functions in the Theory of Ordinary Differential Equations In this text written for graduate students and researchers interested in the theoretical underpinnings of boundary value problem solutions, Alberto Cabada provides a complete and exhaustive study of Green's functions, including two appendices with Mathematica content.

If you were one of the 72,000 highly energized people in Austin, Texas, earlier this month for the 2014 SXSW Music, Film, and Interactive Festival, you might have had the opportunity to connect with Stephen Wolfram and the Wolfram team at this year's event. Known for showcasing cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity, Stephen was invited by the SXSW committee to present a featured talk for the third year in a row. If you missed Stephen live in Austin---and even if you didn't---the "speaker's cut" of his featured talk, "Injecting Computation Everywhere," was posted to his Blog last week. In it, Stephen presents his vision of a future where there is no distinction between code and data, and showcases the Wolfram Language through examples and demos using Wolfram Programming Cloud, Data Science Platform, and other upcoming Wolfram technologies.

Before we dive completely into 2014, we'd like to take a minute to look back on some of the biggest announcements and most interesting stories that we shared on the Wolfram Blog this past year. Below are the top 10 most popular Wolfram Blog posts of 2013, with a few honorable mentions thrown in for good measure. Take a look---there are bound to be a few that you missed.