Category: General

General

Imagine living in 1958, and knowing that the integrated circuit–the microchip–was about to be invented, and would revolutionize the world. Or imagine 1992, when the Internet was about to transform virtually every aspect of our lives. Incredibly, this book argues that we stand at such a moment right now–and not just in one field, but in many.

In 2030, authors Rutger van Santen, Djan Khoe, and Bram Vermeer interview over two dozen scientific and technological experts on themes of health, sustainability and communication, asking them to look forward to the year 2030 and comment on the kind of research that will play a necessary role. If we know what technology will be imperative in 2030, the authors reason, what can we do now to influence future breakthroughs?

Despite working in dissimilar fields, the experts called upon in the book – including Hans Blix (Head of the UN investigation in Iraq), Craig Venter (explorer of the human DNA), and Susan Greenfield (a leading world authority on the human brain), among many others – all emphasize the interconnectedness of our global networks in technology and communication, so tightly knit that the world’s major conflicts are never isolated incidents. A fresh understanding of the regularities underlying these complex systems is more important than ever.

Using bright, accessible language to discuss topics of universal interest and relevance, 2030 takes the position that we can, in fact, influence the course of history. It offers a new way of looking forward, a fresh perspective on sustainability, stability and crisis-prevention. For anyone interested in modern science, this book will showcase the technologies that will soon change the way we live.

Book Details:

Hardcover: 304 pages

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 16th, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Rutger van Santen, Djan Khoe and Bram Vermeer

Category: Business Books, Technology Books

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Writing effective business English is about creating clear, concise messages and avoiding verbosity; but the fewer words there are, the more important it is to get them right.

This volume in the “Better Business English” series focuses on presentations, reports, note-taking, PR writing, technical writing, and writing for the web.  Make an Impact with Your Written English helps non-native speakers write business English in a confident and competent voice.

Book Details:

Paperback: 160 pages

Publisher: Kogan Page (October 28, 2009)

Language: English

Editor: Fiona Talbot

Category: Business Books, Business Writing Books

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Start a fun hobby or a new career — create cool games for the hottest devices around!

Got an idea for a fun iPad or iPhone game but don’t know what to do with it? Read this book and you will! You’ll see how to design games that play wonderfully on the small screen, what’s involved in becoming a registered developer, how to work with the SDK, key features of game architecture, how to market your games, and more. Get your game on!

• What makes a good game? — learn the fundamentals of good game design
• Put on your developer’s hat — become a registered Apple developer, learn how iOS games work, and understand the SDK
• The stuff games are made of — build a native user interface, explore game architecture fundamentals, learn to animate objects in iOS, and grasp the basics of OpenGL
• Keep score and get social — set up a scoring system and learn to tie your game into social networks like Facebook
• To market, to market — get your game into the App Store and boost marketability with such bonus features as gestures, shaking, external displays, and ad-supported revenue

Book Details:

Paperback: 504 pages

Publisher: For Dummies (November 9, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Neal Goldstein, Jon Manning and Paris Buttfield-Addison

Category: Business Books, Game Development Books

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In a world where anyone can become a media producer, everyone should know something about media law – both to protect their own rights and to avoid violating the rights of others.  Digital Media Law is the first media law text to respond to digitalization and globalization–the two most significant agents of change in the 21st century.

Book Details:

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (May 24, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Ashley Packard

Category: Business Books, Digital Media Books

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A hands-on on guide to digital photography, with a practical focus on the Web. Readers will learn how to make the most of their digital camera, while learning the basics of composition, exposures, filters and more.

Step-by-step guides will walk readers through advance techniques like using long exposures, photographing items in motion, and the importance of the RAW data format.

“Photography for the Web” will also offer helpful advice on editing images (levels, colors, histograms), correcting for barrel distortions and vanishing points, removing blemishes, going black & white and stitching panoramas.

Finally, the book will discuss sharing images online, utilizing online communities like Flickr & Fotalia, competitions for amateur photographers and selling photos on stock image sites like iStockPhoto.

Book Details:

Paperback: 200 pages

Publisher: SitePoint; 1 edition (May 28, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Paul Duncanson

Category: Business Books, Photography Books

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Technical Support Essentials is a book about the many facets of technical support. It attempts to provide a wide array of topics to serve as points of improvement, discussion, or simply topics that you might want to learn. The topics range from good work habits to the way technical support groups establish their own style of work.

This book applies theories, models, and concepts synthesized from existing research in other fields—such as management, economics, leadership, and psychology—and connects them to technical support. The goal is to build on the work of others and allow their success to evolve the profession. The book’s broad perspective looks at proven practices, legal issues, dealing with customers, utilizing resources, and an array of other topics of interest to tech support professionals.

Book Details:

Paperback: 260 pages

Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (January 6, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Andrew Sanchez

Category: Business Books, Technical Support Books

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Why do I need a teacher when I’ve got Google? is just one of the challenging, controversial and thought-provoking questions Ian Gilbert poses in his long-awaited follow up to the classic Essential Motivation in the Classroom.

Book Details:

Hardcover: 240 pages

Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 19, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Ian Gilbert

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This book, a collection of articles written by leading experts in the field of audiovisual translation, introduces the reader to some of the main linguistic and cultural challenges that translators encounter when dealing with films and other audiovisual productions. The volume raises awareness of current issues and debates in the study of dubbing and subtitling and offers new insights on these complex and vibrant areas of the translation discipline.

Book Details:

Hardcover: 216 pages

Publisher: Multilingual Matters (April 15, 2009)

Language: English

Editor: Jorge Daz Cintas

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In the workplace, good punctuation is much more than a matter of correctness. It’s a matter of efficiency. Professionals who aren’t sure how to punctuate take more time than necessary to write, as they fret about the many inconsistent and contradictory rules they’ve picked up over the years. Good punctuation is also a matter of courtesy: In workplace writing, a sentence should yield its meaning instantly, but when punctuation is haphazard, readers need to work to understand – or guess at – the writer’s intent. Weak punctuation results in time-wasting confusion, questions about professionalism, and some times even serious and costly miscommunication.

Without using the jargon of grammar — and providing 18 common sense principles to live by — Punctuation at Work shows busy professionals exactly how the marks can be used to make meaning clear and emphasize ideas. All the marks are covered, with hundreds of examples taken from today’s workplace. From hyphens and semicolons to brackets and quotation marks…all the way to ellipses (and the eternal struggle between “that” and “which”), this book explains the many ways punctuation makes things plain.

Book Details:

Paperback: 208 pages

Publisher: AMACOM (February 17, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Richard Lauchman

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This book puts all the pieces together, offering a definitive account of BP’s pursuit of outsized profits as the industrial world awakens to the grim realities of Peak Oil.

Drowning in Oil, by award-winning Houston Chronicle business reporter and columnist Loren Steffy—considered by many to be the writer with the best access to the story—is an unprecedented and gripping narrative of this catastrophe and how BP’s winner-take-all business culture made it all but inevitable.

Through never-before-published interviews with BP executives and employees, environmental experts, and oil industry insiders, Steffy takes us behind the scenes of 100 years of BP corporate history. Beginning with the conglomerate’s early gambits in the Middle East to its recent ascent among energy titans, Steff unearths the roots of the Gulf oil spill in the unwritten bargain between oil producers and consumers, whose insatiable appetites drive the search for new supplies faster, farther, and deeper.

Book Details:

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (November 5, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Loren C. Steffy

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In Making Things Move, you’ll learn how to build moving mechanisms through non-technical explanations, examples, and do-it-yourself projects–from art installations to toys to labor-saving devices. The projects include a drawing machine, a mini wind turbine, a mousetrap powered car, and more, but the applications of the examples are limited only by your imagination.

Book Details:

Paperback: 368 pages

Publisher: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics; 1 edition (November 17, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Dustyn Roberts

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This extremely helpful guide takes the guesswork out of more than 50 commonly used business documents, including: Reports Proposals; Business plans; Presentations; Press releases; Memos; Email Newsletters; Collection letters; and, Sales materials.

Arranged alphabetically and cross-referenced for easier use, the book presents clear examples of how to (and how not to) create winning materials every time. The authors’ step-by-step instructions begin with an overview of the writing process, from preparation and research right through to final review and publication. Sample documents show you how your pieces should look and read, and close to 300 individual entries cover key points of grammar, style and spelling, and present strategies for writing more clearly, avoiding bias, eliminating cliches, and much more.

Book Details:

Hardcover: 637 pages

Publisher: AMACOM (August 4, 2010)

Language: English

Author: Kevin Wilson and Jennifer Wauson

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The Business Week has recently listed what they claimed the ugliest fifty cars in half a century. So much rebuke to the makers and designers who afflicted nice consumers like us with those “design duds” and “automotive eyesores”.

Well, most of those designs are really heart-breaking pieces of junk. But a few others I do find nice and quite acceptable (like the Jeep Compass and the Toyota Prius). What do you think?

Check the nice slideshow here.

(I like how they described the Corbin Sparrow!)