#tweets­mart by Jesse McDou­gall adopts the premise that many people dis­miss twit­ter as idle chat­ter and can­not fathom why they would want to engage with it. Although I have encountered many col­leagues that per­son­ally are some­what dis­missive (and in many cases rightly so) I am not sure that busi­ness dis­misses it as read­ily and cer­tainly doesn’t do so as quickly as it once might have. How­ever adopt­ing the tact of prov­ing a series of mean­ing­ful ‘pro­jects’ to demon­strate how twit­ter can be used for build­ing an online com­munity piqued my interest and is some­thing that I read­ily sub­scribe to. After read­ing this book how­ever I am of rather mixed opin­ion and would cau­tion that this book does seem tar­geted spe­cific­ally at online mar­ket­ing of a product or ser­vice. I find writ­ing this review dif­fi­cult as I was raised very strictly under the premise that if you don’t have any­thing good to say, then don’t say anything…but I will say a few things and some of them good. Read the rest of this entry »

The Linux Com­mand Line: A Com­plete Intro­duc­tion by Wil­liam Shotts jr is as com­plete as you might desire / ima­gine and deliv­ers much more than it prom­ises. This is simply the most fun, yet strik­ingly com­pre­hens­ive, intro­duc­tion to Linux that you could want. As the title states it focusses on inter­ac­tion via the Linux com­mand line yet delves into pop­u­lar GUI’s at times and provides such com­pre­hens­ive cov­er­age that you will go from new­bie to pro in no time. Read the rest of this entry »

If there was ever a product need­ing a manual, frankly it’s Google Plus. It remains a rather obtuse beast — at least to my way of see­ing things. Google Plus: The Miss­ing Manual attempts to rem­edy this by provid­ing a com­pre­hens­ive review of all the pos­sible inter­ac­tions you’d have with the web ser­vice from a user per­spect­ive. So, do I feel like I know the ser­vice any bet­ter after read­ing the book. No, not really, unfor­tu­nately maybe it’s just the case that G+ doesn’t work the way I do. The book makes a vali­ant effort, but I have a sense that I per­son­ally would be bet­ter served by a pure cook­book approach. Read the rest of this entry »

Head First by Jeff Siarto is one of a superb series of Head First books that adopt a visual approach to teach­ing. This par­tic­u­lar volume is very well done and offers a deeply basic intro­duc­tion to set­ting cup, con­fig­ur­ing and man­aging a Word­Press blog. It takes a new user through the basics and then provides a hands-on prac­tical exper­i­ence with all the appro­pri­ate skills to meet basic to inter­me­di­ate user demands. It is well writ­ten and com­pre­hens­ively delivered and if you are either a visual learner or a per­son who does not want to sit down with a stock manual than this is the approach for you. Read the rest of this entry »