Digital Dharma: A User's Guide to Expanding Consciousness in the Infosphere Review

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(More customer reviews)As a teacher of middle schoolers, I am amazed when watching kids use their cell-phones and other assorted gizmos. Teenagers, more than most of us, have an insatiable need to connect with others--literally and virtually--it is a constant in their lives. Steven's book helped me put their behavior (as well as my own and others) into a much larger frame--one that connects the deepest human needs (and the ancient ways of meeting these) with today's technology.
An acknowledgement, I am Steven's sister-in-law!

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Digital Dharma has something for everyone. It is for technology experts and yoga fanatics alike. Whether you're simply seeking the spiritual, already practicing a spiritual tradition, or a Body-Mind-Spirit reader with ambivalent feelings about your computer and cell phone, this book will guide you on the path toward a new consciousness. Similarly, novices of the digital world, media junkies, and technology "utopians" who understand at some level there is much yet to be learned from the Infosphere, will all find intriguing, useful material here.

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Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future Review

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(More customer reviews)I've read or seen most of the material in this book online and am a big fan of Cory's work. I thought this would be a great resource to have instead of a bunch of print outs or bookmarks. Cory Doctorow has some of the best thought out arguments against DRM and for digital freedoms, pointing out tons of interesting historical examples along the way. Great read!

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Dot Cloud: The 21st Century Business Platform Built on Cloud Computing Review

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(More customer reviews)Technology tools can fundamentally change how we do things, both in
business and in our personal lives. For example, the advent of the
spreadsheet changed how business people keep track of things,
email changed how we could communicate with one another, and the Web
revolutionized how we could communicate with the world at large.
Technology changes, businesses adapt. Some business exploit new technologies and disrupt their industries. Some businesses keep their heads in the sand and get left behind. Though you've no doubt heard of clouding computing (it's all over the press these days) what you may not realize how cloud computing is going to change the way you work and the way you do business.
This book isn't for geeks, it's for business people who want to know how cloud computing will facilitate new breakthroughs in business innovation, how work gets done in organizations, how companies will interact with each other in value chains, and what we now call `management' will change. One of my favorite chapters is The End of Management, which is about unleashing human potential in organizations. If you are in some way responsible for the success of your company, you should read this book. If you are a CEO or CIO, you should definitely read this book.


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Shift happens. The unexpected matters. Remember how the retail book industry was slow to grasp an understanding of the Internet before it got ''Amazoned?'' Well, here we go again, only this time the shift could be even greater, and it's happening in the midst of economic turmoil. Right now, there's something in the air, something really big. It's so big that to many it's hidden in plain sight. To others it's as clear as seeing a cloud in the sky. In fact, that something is indeed the Cloud, the 21st century business platform.
Just as it was with that new-fangled ''Internet'' thing a decade ago, the Cloud and the technologies of Cloud Computing suffer from confusion and hype. And pat definitions won't do when it comes to understanding these two new buzzwords. But, as they are game-changing phenomena, business leaders--and the rest of us--must gain an understanding of what these terms really mean and how they will affect us, just as much as the Internet affected us all. In Dot.Cloud business strategy expert and former CIO, Peter Fingar, explains the main ideas of Cloud Computing in lay terms. Peter also does some old-fashioned reporting to bring together the ideas of the movers and shakers who are actively building the Cloud.
But this is not a technical book about Cloud Computing technologies; it's a business book. It's about what the Cloud portends for business ... about transformation in the ways companies are managed ... about business models for the 21st century. It's about how companies carry out their work in the Cloud instead of office buildings and skyscrapers, and how they manage their business processes in the Cloud. It's also about human interactions in the Cloud, and about the end of management and the rise of self-organizing, self-managed ''Bioteams.'' Even more, it's about unlocking human potential in business, about unleashing passion. All this points to your company's future, and your future, set in the context of the biggest economic downturn since World War II. So ultimately, it's about lighting a fire in you.
According to Jim Sinur, Vice President of Gartner, ''To say that we are living in interesting times is an understatement, and Peter has captured the essence of how business will work going forward. Dot.Cloud is both visionary and realistic in that each of the pieces of the vision have working examples today, but not woven together like in this writing. The goal of the virtual business platform is not just a dream, but attainable once all the contributing pieces are brought together. Peter brings them together here in a way that will work under any number of situations, across just about any industry.''
Gregory Simpson, Chief Technology Officer of GE, remarked, ''Dot.Cloud isn't just about the Cloud; it's really about embracing change in the workplace. It pulls together elements of Web 2.0, BPM and other dreaded three-letter acronyms, as well social and economic trends, to give you a vision for how harnessing the Cloud can transform the way your company works. Peter's unique ability to pull all of these concepts together in an understandable fashion make this a business book for the future, and the future is now!''

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The Fast Track Photographer Business Plan: Build a Successful Photography Venture from the Ground Up Review

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(More customer reviews)Unlike any other, this book is about fitting "YOU" to the market place! Sub Titled Build a Successful Photography Venture from the Ground up by Dane Sanders. I consider this a Revolutionary and much needed book in the Photography Industry with these ever changing current times of internet and social media.
As Dane says in this book there is, "no one size fits all business plan". Emphasis is on defining your business vision and having it tied to a sound business plan of which he details through out the book. Included are step by step exercises and charts to help one get clear with their business goals.
What I really like about this book is that Dane starts the first 3 chapters on vision alone. And how important that is! I needed this book as I sometimes get side tracked from looking at the "Big Picture" as I am constantly dealing with the ever increasing technology that is now available for my photography business. Its practically a full time job in itself! I have many books on how to be a specific photographer but currently have been changing my goals, and needed a book that does not presuppose a direction. This book fills the bill!
Along with Vision Dane introduces new concepts in, Finding your Sweet Spot, Sales and Marketing, Focusing on your Strengths, Systematizing your work, Creating the right team and much much more! All the nuts and bolts of how to figure the numbers and creating an actual business plan that fits you are included.
On the back inside cover of the book is a code that you can punch into his web site to take a Business Stress Test (BST) test for free (which is normally $15.00). I'm looking forward to taking that test to see how my business shapes up!
CONCLUSION:
I highly recommend this book to anyone, photographer or otherwise, that is interested in starting, or restarting, a service based business!
Thanks Dane!
Dave Likes
L. David Likes Photography

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NEW RULES FOR A NEW BUSINESS WORLDThinking about starting a photography business? The first thing you need to know is that the rules have changed. Yesterday's business models have collapsed. Creating a successful business in today's "Digi-Flat" era requires a sharp new approach, one that Dane Sanders has practiced successfully and taught at Fast Track workshops and seminars all around the world. Some of the things you'll learn in this book:How to turn the very technologies that are "killing" professional photography—such as the Internet—into your tools of success-How to lead your business, not let your business lead you -How systematizing, scaling, and outsourcing are critical concepts even for a one-person business-How to radically rethink marketing, sales, and customer service for the 21st century-How to hone a creative vision that works—the most powerful step you can take as a businessperson The Fast Track Photographer Business Plan is not about building a "traditional" business plan that looks good on paper and impresses investors. It's about creating a vibrant, living business plan that will help you thrive in today's digital "Wild West," where creative content is freely distributed, where no one plays by the rules anymore, and where customers have unprecedented freedom in choosing what to buy and whom to hire. It's a groundbreaking look at running a creative business. Whether you're an amateur looking to go pro or a professional whose business has stalled, Dane's practical, on-the-ground advice will launch you on the fast track to business success. Includes free access to Dane's online "stress test" to diagnose your business's strengths—as well as where it needs help!

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The Myth of Digital Democracy Review

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(More customer reviews)I read in threes and fours, this book is part of the set that includes SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa and Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful.
This book educated me. It challenged and soundly negated some of my assumptions, but it also reinforced my view that the Internet at this time is a communications network, not a knowledge network or an action network.
Here is the last paragraph:
"Yet where the Internet has failed to live up to its billing has to do with the most direct kind of political voice. If we consider the ability of ordinary citizens to write things that other people will see, the Internet has fallen far short of the claims that continue to be made about it. It may be easy to speak in cyberspace, but it remains difficult to be heard."
Totally awesome. This is an impressive piece of work. At Phi Beta Iota I am posting four web diagrams showing top news and political sites and a couple of other things (I no longer post images to Amazon after they removed 354 images as a lazy way of censoring twelve copies of Obama-Bush sharing the same face--I no longer trust Amazon with my work, hence Phi Beta Iota--and a lesson about Internet abuse).
Behind this elegant book is a great deal of hard work with lots of math, lots of elbow grease, and lots of time spent making sense of massive amounts of data. I am totally impressed.
High points for me, having earlier raved about Joe Trippi's The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything as well as Cass Sunstein's Republic.com:
01) Digital divide is not the only divide--Internet is a winner take all environment
02) Liberals predominate online
03) Googlearchy has replaced meritocracy...top ten sites rule, everyone else go fish
04) Pornography and webmail are the two big dogs on the Internet, followed by search engines and a very small news set. In comparison to webmail, news is less than 20%, and in comparison to news, politics is perhaps 1% at best (of news--a tiny tiny fraction of it all).
05) The author does not really get into the deep web, the reality that there are over 75 search engines and Goolge is losing marketshare, or the fact that China and India and Brazil are creeping up and will one day soon hit a vertical rise in their web presence, especially now that kanji and other webname character sets are accepted.
06) The heart of the book, but not the bulk of the book, is about the "missing middle" and the very real fact that ordinary citizens are neither seen nor heard within the Internet overall and within the political chambers of the Internet particularly.
My review does not do this book justice. It is profoundly deeper than my summary above.
The book does reinforce my view that we must get all research and all budgets online, and that we must create the World Brain Institute and the Global Game, mandate true cost information online, and start using citizen buying power to move capitalism in a more moral sustainable useful direction (see my review just posted of Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country and my many other reviews of books on capitalism, one more of which I will mention here, The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism.
Four more links within my Amazon "allowance":
Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change
Don't Bother Me Mom--I'm Learning!
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace


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Arts America Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is "everything you ever wanted to know" about the ARTS in the best cities of America. What a GEM! Do you want to know about the performances, costs, handicapped accessibility, public transportation, ways to save on discounts, telephone numbers and e-mails...........just pick up a copy of this very affordable book and detailed resource. You will love it!
A friend told me about this book and after purchasing if for myself, I bought several other copies for gifts.
Marilyn from Cleveland

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The Best, and Affordable, Arts in America! Arts America is the only book that gives you the inside arts scoop on the 20 best cities for the fine and performance arts, as well as major arts festivals, in the United States. Arts America provides the practical details for hundreds of arts organizations across the country, including the websites, public transportation options, handicapped access, hours, and admission fees, as well as such cost-saving tips as free days, discounted performances, subscriptions and memberships, and half-price opportunities. For many listings, the knowledgeable editors of Arts America share their observations and discuss important background information, which all adds up to why you ll want to go. There s more: Successful strategies for saving money and enjoying the arts at the same time. How and why to prepare (or not prepare) for cultural events. Where to find current arts information in all the Arts America cities. City-specific arts discounts. Whether you re an experienced arts buff or need a little encouragement to enjoy the arts, whether you re on a tight budget or in the mood to splurge, and no matter where you live, Arts America has something for you.

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Teach Your Child Spanish Through Play, A Guide and Resource for Parents or Spanish for Kids, Games to Help Children Learn Spanish Language and Culture Review

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(More customer reviews)I was lucky enough to receive a pre-released copy of this wonderful resource! If you're a parent that understands the importance of second language acquisition, and really WANT to teach your child Spanish, but, but, but... This is the place to start! The author has written in a manner that flows and is easy to understand (none of that educator jargon) and truly gives practical, fun, and simple ways to experience Spanish with your child.
As you read, you feel like you're sitting at your kitchen table and she's just giving you some great advice!
Starr includes vocabulary lists in different sections, and the five different sections listed in the Table of Contents make it easy to use as a reference as well as a basis for HOW to teach Spanish (even if you don't know Spanish yourself). There is even a resource section that includes how to evaulate material, websites, books, language centers, camps, addresses for embassies, the works! For that section alone, the purchase is worth it!
Whether your child is a wiggly one, or a "sit and do worksheets type," this guide is a must-have. I'm impressed, somehow, she covers it all!
Sra. Gose, creator of Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 1 & Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 2

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Teach Your Child Spanish Through Play is a valuable resource for parents, home educators and teachers which includes tips for parents who don't speak the language, creative games and activities that cater to each learning style, a guide to teaching culture, ideas for building and maintaining bilingual communities through playgroups and language clubs as well as a voluminous resource directory. This book is a must have for anyone who wants to teach a child language and culture.

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Being Virtual: Who You Really Are Online (Science Museum TechKnow Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Davey Winder's book manages to do something that most books on the same subject as his do not: He's very personal. Even confessional. The title of Chapter One -- Identity Crisis - sums up not just the theme of the book, but what seems to have been a driving theme in the life of Winder. Having gone from a killer career Sports manager, to a home-bound, wheelchair bound web junkie, Winder's makes the strongest case for the credibility of a digital selfhood. The best part is that he introduces the disabilities factor, which is usually only allowed a footnote in most digital reporting. In fact, I would strongly recommend this book to any organization that works with the disabilities community that has a lending library program. Aside from Winder's own accounts, there are other anecdotal stories in here of disabled persons reinventing themselves or simply recreating themselves, as is -- wheelchair and all -- in the virtual landscape. The back-story of each anecdote is poignant and well told. All of them extremely personal.
Not all of the stories of are from persons with disabilities. The others are from self-seeking souls looking for the right vehicle for self expression, which they find online.
The personal touch of the book is well balanced with an informing narrative that qualifies the book as a primer for Second Life and other Virtual World platforms. The cover of the book speaks to this element and, unfortunately, only this element. If I were to judge the book by the cover, which I initially did, the autobiographical element was not something I expected to encounter within these pages. They appeared almost as easter-eggs that wanted to be found. In that sense, the book cover is the only liability.
I'm not sure what the mood is these days on Second Life. But Winder's presents the best argument so far that this is more than just mere novelty.
[...]

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Thanks to the Internet, it has never been so easy to become the person of your wildest dreams. Immersive 3D worlds such as Second Life and THERE.com provide an escape route from the ordinary, into a virtual world where you have the power to mould your life in any way you please. Forget about walking, wheelchair users can fly. Pensioners wipe away the pains of age, discovering youthful exuberance and making young friends once more. No wonder it has become harder than ever to honestly answer the question: who am I?
In Being Virtual, Davey Winder looks at how an increasing number of us are living part-real, part-virtual lives, and how it affects who we are. He looks at the opportunities and dangers that a virtual identity offers us, how we juggle our real and online lives, and what happens when one spills over into the other… He uses his own personal experiences to bring the issues to life, and backs them up with the real-life stories of others and testimony from the experts. Along the way, he looks at some fascinating questions such as:
Are you a virtual liar?

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Cross-Media Communications: an Introduction to the Art of Creating Integrated Media Experiences Review

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(More customer reviews)THE GOOD:
Content in the book is quite accessible and easily understandable by anyone new to the cross-media concept. It is an attractive combination: A list of renowed "contributors" and useful appendix contents.

The whole book in plain text is available online for free at the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase.
THE BAD:
If you go for the Kindle version, you'll pay a small amount. Surprisingly, it is actually the same as the free version online from the Carnegie Mellon Research Showcase (plain text, no hyperlinks, no figures nor additional features available).
Printed version is different from the one at the "look inside" mode (the Taxonomy of Entertainment Technologies from the ETC figure -preface, page x- appears in color, while in the printed version everything in black and white). No proofreading work reflects in continuous typographical errors along the book.
Image quality in printed edition is very poor (like a printed gif image). Original figures were designed to be in color, so being in a black and white printed version, there is an extremely wide range of gray levels which are nearly impossible to distinguish as color codes. Pages 56 and 57 are left in blank without reason.
THE UGLY:
Author and ETC Press state that while there is a separate Cross-media DVD ROM available, it is not necessary to follow the exercises suggested along the book. Unfortunately, the truth is that the book is actually based on the DVD ROM contents. If this wasn't enough, every black and white figure in the printed version reads: "(full color version on the DVD ROM)", so the "optional" status of the DVD ROM is very questionable.
CONCLUSION:
In theory this book is a good starting point to understand the basics behind the cross-media communications concept. However, some of the contributors texts feel quite low in "substance" compared to their regular writings and interviews in other spaces. It has a bit of the "Aldrich Factor" in his book "Learning Online with Games, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds" where contents remain quite low to what the title and "authorities" recommendations at the front and back covers say it should be.

Ironically, in practice "Cross-Media communications: an introduction th the art of creating integrated media experiences" is an awful example of a cross-media implementation. Neither printed, nor Kindle or DVD ROM versions are designed to take profit of their real potential or even to make it useful.
LAST UPDATE (May 2011)
Browsing in Amazon recently, it seems that this titlte is being re-published by Thomson / Delmar Learning with an approx. retail price of USD $64.95. Expected publishing date was announced March 2011, but no information about the book release date is currently available (at least in Amazon). On "product details", it seems to have about a hundred more pages than the edition I have now (I'm not sure if this means more content).
If this new release means a quality updated (and revised) version of the edition I have now (which, for the suggested retail, it should be a "must"), great news for you all. As for me, It would mean an abuse in what seems has been the selling of a careless "draft version", in pieces (the "printed version" and the separated "DVD ROM"), before a decent publishing release.

Not a good experience.
Hope the author and the editor get this comments.


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This text is an introduction to the future of mass media and mass communications - cross-media communications. Cross-media is explained through the presentation and analysis of contemporary examples and project-based tutorials in cross-media development. The text introduces fundamental terms and concepts, and provides a solid overview of cross-media communications, one that builds from a general introduction to a specific examination of media and genres to a discussion of the concepts involved in designing and developing cross-media communications. There is also an accompanying DVD-ROM full of hands-on exercises that shows how cross-media can be applied. For the DVD-ROM: http://www.lulu.com/content/8179270

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A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution Review

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(More customer reviews)A slim book, but not an easy read. Lots of repetition of ideas and content, as if the book had been written as separate essays and then stitched together without the aid of a good editor. He goes off on tangents within chapters which often had me re-reading pages to see if I had missed a transition.
Pitched as a book about how people have reacted to and adopted new communication technologies, it is really more a light historical overview of the topic. Disappointing. If you like technology and history you've already read most of this book elsewhere. Lots of rehashing of Petroski's book on the pencil and on Thoreau. Chapters on handwriting and Wordstar don't really add much. The last few chapters begin to get at what I thought the book was about -- how people react to and adopt new writing/communication technologies. The illustrations are also not the best, although some are at least interesting. The early Photoshop ad showing Marilyn Monroe holding Abraham Lincoln's arm is something I had not seen before.
If you haven't any background in the history of technology and want a very brief overview, this might be of interest. For me there are better sources and better edited books written in a more engaging style.I expected a lot more than I got.

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Computers, now the writer's tool of choice, are still blamed by skeptics for a variety of ills, from speeding writing up to the point of recklessness, to complicating or trivializing the writing process, to destroying the English language itself. A Better Pencil puts our complex, still-evolving hate-love relationship with computers and the internet into perspective, describing how the digital revolution influences our reading and writing practices, and how the latest technologies differ from what came before. The book explores our use of computers as writing tools in light of the history of communication technology, a history of how we love, fear, and actually use our writing technologies--not just computers, but also typewriters, pencils, and clay tablets. Dennis Baron shows that virtually all writing implements--and even writing itself--were greeted at first with anxiety and outrage: the printing press disrupted the "almost spiritual connection" between the writer and the page; the typewriter was "impersonal and noisy" and would "destroy the art of handwriting."Both pencils and computers were created for tasks that had nothing to do with writing. Pencils, crafted by woodworkers for marking up their boards, were quickly repurposed by writers and artists. The computer crunched numbers, not words, until writers saw it as the next writing machine. Baron also explores the new genres that the computer has launched: email, the instant message, the web page, the blog, social-networking pages like MySpace and Facebook, and communally-generated texts like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary, not to mention YouTube.Here then is a fascinating history of our tangled dealings with a wide range of writing instruments, from ancient papyrus to the modern laptop. With dozens of illustrations and many colorful anecdotes, the book will enthrall anyone interested in language, literacy, or writing.

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