I recently had the opportunity to review a copy of the OS X Mountain Lion Pocket Guide from O’Reilly media. In typical O’Reilly fashion, the book is well written with friendly, conversational jargon. At some points, I found the dialogue to be a little bit distracting, but not so much to be seriously bothered by it.
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Video Nation is a down to earth handbook for improving the production quality of your videos, without breaking the bank. Author Jefferson Graham knows what he is talking about because he has over 300 productions under his belt as producer, director, videographer, and talent. Many times he is wearing all these hats just like you may be doing when you start. He’s been there and is very generous in sharing what he has learned, the hard way, so you don’t have to.
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Reading email is something everyone does with their iPad. The Mail app is arguably one of the most used apps on any iOS device. Most of the time, reading mail is a painless exercise. There are times when it can be downright aggravating too. TidBITS Publishing’s Take Control Series of eBooks has the answer to just about any question you may have about iOS Mail in Take Control of Mail on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, by Joe Kissell.
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Fitness for Geeks is a well-researched book that takes a “geek” approach to fitness and health. This is not the type of book you zip right through; you need time to think about and digest (no pun intended) the extensive information Perry dishes out.
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David Greelish is known to many in the computing community as an evangelist of classic computing.
The extent of his interest has garnered such projects as the Classic Computing blog, Retro Computing Roundtable podcast, Stan Viet’s History Of The Personal Computer podcast, and the Classic Computing Show podcast.
Clearly David has many achievements to his name but his main achievement is his magazine publication; Historically Brewed.
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I’m one of those people who signed up for a Google+ account and then had no idea how to use it. Everyone who’s anyone uses social media these days, and I jumped on the bandwagon. It turns out I’m not the only one who’s confused when it comes to Google+.
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The days of receiving a manual with a product are over. Some companies supply help by way of a PDF downloaded with an application. Others include a short Get Started guide that gives just the basics of the hardware. Amazon is no different with their Kindle devices, which is why Peter Meyers wrote Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual.
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Avid’s Sibelius 7 is new enough for there still to be a dearth of supporting materials. But James Humberstone’s substantial new book in the Avid Learning Series, Sibelius 7 Music Notation Essentials, sets very high standards and is a welcome resource.
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If you’ve been reading my reviews over the last several months, you may have noticed I’ve been on an Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 (PSE10) kick. Today I present the finale of these reviews: three books that can help you learn and enjoy using PSE10. It’s truly amazing what you can do with PSE10 and a little knowledge!
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Speedliter’s Handbook – Learning to Craft Light with Canon Speedlites By Syl Arena Peachpit Press ISBN-13: 978-0-321-71105-2 391 pages US $49.99, CAN $59.99 GUEST
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The Colorado Plateau, where Bruce Barnbaum made many photos over a period of roughly 30 years, is a place where water, silt, wind, and time have created a landscape of swirling sandstone cliffs, nearly impenetrable slot canyons, and a vast expanse of sage colored hills. People in the Western United States know the area as the Four Corners region because it’s the place where Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado meet.
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When Lion and iOS 5 were released, I timidly stepped into the Apple iCloud experience and began using some of its offerings. Although I still do not use all of the iCloud features, what I have chosen to enable has been through my own trial and error approach. For those of you that have not yet ventured into the iCloud, the iCloud: Visual QuickStart Guide will definitely allow this to happen with ease.
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The Twitter Book, Second Edition will take you deeper into the inner workings of Twitter than you ever thought was possible.
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David Pogue’s latest “missing manual” has much in common with the many other “how-to” computer books he’s produced. Like the others, it is written in plain English, it’s readable, at times mildly entertaining, plus comprehensive and marginally useful to the novice user.
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Besides death and taxes, the only other guarantee in life is Apple will never incorporate a printed manual with any release of the iPad.
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This book is all about photographing people. The author, who loves the subject, wrote a helpful book on how to take portraits and naturalistic photos of people. She describes many aspects of such types of pictures, from the equipment to use, to the composition of the frame, to how to make your subjects comfortable and connect with them.
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The book starts with an overview of iOS5, followed by a discussion of which iPad to buy, assuming you’re still in the market for one. Next is the basic and advanced setup of the iPad. I recommend reading to this point from the beginning; the rest of the book can be read straight through or in any order on an as needed basis.
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When Amazon announced the Kindle with its electronic store, then Apple introduce the iBooks Store a few years later, I was feeling happy about the fact that bricks of books would become digital. But I was fast disappointed when I saw that most digital books were simply a copy of the physical books. When something goes digital, I expect a bit of interactivity.
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Expensive, perhaps, but print quality is superb and the subject covered in such depth and with such expertise that it’s sure to appeal to just about every LEGO fan.
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A bit over three years ago I compared two Macintosh books for beginners, David Pogue’s Mac OS X Leopard Edition: The Missing Manual and Wallace Wang’s My New Mac. To cut a long story short, they’re both good books, but aimed at somewhat different audiences. The Missing Manual covers just about every aspect of the Mac operating system, giving power users the information they need to do all sorts of different things. But it doesn’t actually tell a new Mac user what they can do with their computer. To get the most from The Missing Manual, you need to have a fair idea of what you want to do first.
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