Fifty Dangerous Things (You Should Let Your Children Do) Review

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(More customer reviews)I discovered Gever Tulley on [...] and was fascinated by his speech entitled "5 Dangerous Things you Should let your Children do." Among the list of five things that Mr. Tulley suggested that children should do: play with fire, drive a car and own a pocketknife. Let me say that these suggestions initially tormented this helicopter mom.
Yes, fellow parents, I can feel the cringes now. But, let's think about it. We used to be free-range children. We rode our bicycles without helmets. We played in the neighborhood/woods all day long, only returning home for dinner refueling. We whittled with pocketknives, and yes, most of us probably played with fire. We probably survived these experiences unscathed or with minor scrapes.
The "5 Dangerous Things" lecture was the precursor to his new book which has just been published, and it is called "50 Dangerous Things (you should let your children do)." My tween daughter and I are working our way through this hands-on activity book, which has space for your own field notes.
Mr. Tulley's book promotes learning, and believe it or not, safety. Quote from his website: "There are many "dangerous" things that are interesting, eye-opening, enlightening or just plain fun! And while there are aspects of danger in virtually everything we do, the trick is to learn how mastery actually minimizes danger."
As parents, we need to give our children opportunities to tinker, explore and experiment. We must endeavor to raise the next generation of great thinkers. We already have our copy...where's yours?


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NOTE: This is the self-published edition of the book, which is now discontinued. Please visit the page for the new edition from New American Library (a Penguin imprint): amazon.com/Dangerous-Things-Should-Your-Children/dp/0451234197Fifty Dangerous Things (you should let your children do) is the first book from the people who created Tinkering School. With projects, activities, experiences, and skills ranging from "Superglue Your Fingers Together" to "Play with Fire," along with 48 other great ideas, the book is a manifesto for kids and parents alike to reclaim childhood. Easy to follow instructions, fun facts, and challenging undertakings that will engage and inspire whole households.Why Fifty Dangerous Things?First off, Five Dangerous Things just weren't enough (although the audience at TED thought it was a good starting point).More importantly, there are many "dangerous" things that are interesting, eye-opening, enlightening or just plain fun!And while there are aspects of danger in virtually everything we do, the trick is to learn how mastery actually minimizes danger.Most of us learn how to walk without toppling over at a very young age, so that walking is no longer dangerous.Next we learn to negotiate stairs.Why stop there?Why not practice and become proficient at walking on the roof or walking on a tightrope?These are just a few of the Fifty Dangerous Things that we invite you to try.Take a peek and step into a world of danger and discovery.

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Learning iOS Game Programming: A Hands-On Guide to Building Your First iPhone Game Review

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(More customer reviews)Having nearly finished the book I thought it would be a good idea to write a review.
Reading the last review I felt even more compelled to write my own. The last reviewer really hasn't got a clue about what this book is about! He tries to pitch it as a book that covers many different technologies in great detail and fails. There is a note on the first page of chapter 2 that tells that totally contradicts what he says.
Note
It is not intended that this book will teach you how to develop in Objective-C or C or teach you everything you need to know about the other technologies in their own right; there are many excellent books and online resources that cover OpenGL and OpenAL in greater detail. We will however cover these topics in enough detail to allow you to understand why we are using them and how.
Thats what I love about this book! It tells you how to write an entire game from start to finish and doesn't bore you with incredibly complex algorithms or low level code or the ins and outs of every technology.
As for the game engine you write, it's very modular so you can include only the bits you need in your game. I wanted to recreate the JetPack game I played when I was younger. With this book I'm well on the way. It's saved me a huge amount of time trying to learn from other resources on the net.
Their forum and blog is quite active too, I've posted a few questions and they've answered promptly.

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Get Started Fast with iOS Game ProgrammingSince the launch of the App Store, games have been the hottest category of apps for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. That means your best chance of tapping into the iPhone/iPad "Gold Rush" is to put out a killer game that everyone wants to play (and talk about). While many people think games are hard to build, they can actually be quite easy, and Learning iOS Game Programming is your perfect beginner's guide. Michael Daley walks you through every step as you build a killer 2D game for the iPhone. In Learning iOS Game Programming, you'll learn how to build a 2D tile map game, Sir Lamorak's Quest: The Spell of Release (which is free in the App Store). You can download and play the game you're going to build while you learn about the code and everything behind the scenes. Daley identifies the key characteristics of a successful iPhone game and introduces the technologies, terminology, and tools you will use. Then, he carefully guides you through the whole development process: from planning storylines and game play all the way through testing and tuning. Download the free version of Sir Lamorak's Quest from the App Store today, while you learn how to build the game in this book.Coverage includesPlanning high-level game design, components, and difficulty levels

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Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing Review

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(More customer reviews)The Google Maps API lets developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed "info windows" just like in the maps section of Google. "Google Map Hacks" shows you how to use the power of the Google Maps API to perform useful tasks via your web pages. A key is required to use the API, and a single Google Maps API key is valid for a single directory on your web server, so the key you get will be good for all URLs in that particular directory. You must have a Google Account to get a Maps API key, and your API key will be connected to your Google Account.
The book starts out with a simple "Hello World" map application and moves on to show you how to map local weather conditions, find the best prices on a particular product, share pictures with your community, and add interactivity by causing a map to pan or zoom in response to user input. There are a total of 70 hacks that are actually map projects rather than just tips, which is often the case in other O'Reilly Hack books. I particularly liked the set of hacks in chapter 4, "On the Road". Since I live in the uber-congested Washington DC metro area, it is helpful to have hacks that tell me how to avoid traffic jams and how to find out "why my cell phone doesn't work there". Because using the Google Map API depends on inserting the correct code into the Javascript of web pages, the reader should already be familiar with HTML and with Javascript in order to get the most from this book. Amazon does not show the table of contents (list of Hacks) so I do that here:
Chapter 1. You Are Here: Introducing Google Maps
Hack 1. Get Around http://maps.google.com
Hack 2. Find Yourself (and Others) on Google Maps
Hack 3. Navigate the World in Your Web Browser
Hack 4. Get the Bird's-Eye View
Hack 5. Driven to a Better User Interface
Hack 6. Share Google Maps
Hack 7. Inside Google Maps URLs
Hack 8. Generate Links to Google Maps in a Spreadsheet
Hack 9. Use del.icio.us to Keep Up with Google Maps
Chapter 2. Introducing the Google Maps API
Hack 10. Add a Google Map to Your Web Site
Hack 11. Where Did the User Click?
Hack 12. How Far Is That? Go Beyond Driving Directions
Hack 13. Create a Route with a Click (or Two)
Hack 14. Create Custom Map Markers
Hack 15. Map a Slideshow of Your Travels
Hack 16. How Big Is the World?
Chapter 3. Mashing Up Google Maps
Hack 17. Map the News
Hack 18. Examine Patterns of Criminal Activity
Hack 19. Map Local Weather Conditions
Hack 20. Track Official Storm Reporting
Hack 21. Track the International Space Station
Hack 22. Witness the Effects of a Nuclear Explosion
Hack 23. Find a Place to Live
Hack 24. Search for Events by Location
Hack 25. Track Your UPS Packages
Hack 26. Follow Your Packets Across the Internet
Hack 27. Add Google Maps to Any Web Site
Hack 28. How Big Is That, Exactly?
Chapter 4. On the Road with Google Maps
Hack 29. Find the Best Gasoline Prices
Hack 30. Stay out of Traffic Jams
Hack 31. Navigate Public Transportation
Hack 32. Locate a Phone Number
Hack 33. Why Your Cell Phone Doesn't Work There
Hack 34. Publish Your Own Hiking Trail Maps
Hack 35. Load Driving Directions into Your GPS
Hack 36. Get Driving Directions for More Than Two Locations
Hack 37. View Your GPS Tracklogs in Google Maps
Hack 38. Map Your Wardriving Expeditions
Hack 39. Track Your Every Move with Google Earth
Hack 40. The Ghost in Google Ride Finder
Hack 41. How Google Maps Got Me Out of a Traffic Ticket
Chapter 5. Google Maps in Words and Pictures
Hack 42. Get More out of What You Read
Hack 43. Don't Believe Everything You Read on a Map
Hack 44. You Got Your A9 Local in My Google Maps!
Hack 45. Share Pictures with Your Community
Hack 46. Browse Photography by Shooting Location
Hack 47. Geotag Your Own Photos on Flickr
Hack 48. Tell Your Community's Story
Hack 49. Generate Geocoded RSS from Any Google Map
Hack 50. Geoblog with Google Maps in Thingster
Chapter 6. API Tips and Tricks
Hack 51. Make a Fullscreen Map the Right Way
Hack 52. Put a Map and HTML into Your Info Windows
Hack 53. Add Flash Applets to Your Google Maps
Hack 54. Add a Nicer Info Window to Your Map with TLabel
Hack 55. Put Photographs on Your Google Maps
Hack 56. Pin Your Own Maps to Google Maps with TPhoto
Hack 57. Do a Local Zoom with GxMagnifier
Hack 58. Find the Right Zoom Level
Hack 59. Show Lots of Stuff-Quickly
Hack 60. Make Things Happen When the Map Moves
Hack 61. Use the Right Developer's Key Automatically
Chapter 7. Extreme Google Maps Hacks
Hack 62. Find the Latitude and Longitude of a Street Address
Hack 63. Read and Write Markers from a MySQL Database
Hack 64. Build Custom Icons on the Fly
Hack 65. Add More Imagery with a WMS Interface
Hack 66. Add Your Own Custom Map
Hack 67. Serve Custom Map Imagery
Hack 68. Automatically Cut and Name Custom Map Tiles
Hack 69. Cluster Markers at High Zoom Levels
Hack 70. Other Cool Ways to Use Google Maps


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Want to find every pizza place within a 15-mile radius? Where the dog parks are in a new town? The most central meeting place for your class, club or group of friends? The cheapest gas stations on a day-to-day basis? The location of convicted sex offenders in an area to which you may be considering moving? The applications, serendipitous and serious, seem to be infinite, as developers find ever more creative ways to add to and customize the satellite images and underlying API of Google Maps.

Written by Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, authors of the popular Mapping Hacks, Google Maps Hacks shares dozens of tricks for combining the capabilities of Google Maps with your own datasets. Such diverse information as apartment listings, crime reporting or flight routes can be integrated with Google's satellite imagery in creative ways, to yield new and useful applications.

The authors begin with a complete introduction to the "standard" features of Google Maps. The adventure continues with 60 useful and interesting mapping projects that demonstrate ways developers have added their own features to the maps. After that's given you ideas of your own, you learn to apply the techniques and tools to add your own data to customize and manipulate Google Maps. Even Google seems to be tacitly blessing what might be seen as unauthorized use, but maybe they just know a good thing when they see one.

With the tricks and techniques you'll learn from Google Maps Hacks, you'll be able to adapt Google's satellite map feature to create interactive maps for personal and commercial applications for businesses ranging from real estate to package delivery to home services, transportation and more. Includes a foreword by Google Mapstech leads, Jens and Lars Rasmussen.

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How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything Review

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(More customer reviews)First off let me say that the topics chosen as illustrative examples are hilarious. There is just the right mix of geekiness and human interest. That being said I had hoped to read more about what constitutes a reasonable assumption since I was already competent at dimensional analysis. This book is just a collection of entertaining examples.
In addition the Kindle edition has very poor proofreading. Several words are missing letters and these errors could have been caught simply by running a spelling check. I am disappointed.

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