Business & Culture Books - Page 16

Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age

Maggie Jackson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

We have vast oceans of information at our disposal, yet increasingly we seek knowledge with brief glimpses at the Yahoo headlines while juggling other tasks. We are networked as never before, but we tend to communicate even with our most intimate friends and family via instant messaging, email, and fleeting face-to-face moments that are rescheduled a dozen times, then punctuated when they do occur with pings and beeps and more multitasking. Welcome to the land of distraction. Despite our wondrous technologies and scientific advances, we are nurturing a culture of diffusion, fragmentation, and detachment. In this new world, something is amiss. And that something is - attention.Journey with Maggie Jackson as she explores the many ways in which we are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained attention - the building block of intimacy, wisdom, and cultural progress. In her sweeping quest to unravel the nature of attention and detail its erosion, she introduces us to scientists, cartographers, marketers, educators, wired teens, virtual lovers from the telegraph age, and roboticists building smart machines to comfort and care for us. She takes us from the nineteenth-century roots of our mobile, virtual multitasking ways into a darkening future of snippets, glimpses, skimming, McThinking, and mistrust. Taking us beyond "Blink and Faster", Jackson makes it clear that if we continue down this road of scattered attention spans and widespread societal ADD, we will be in danger of squandering and devaluing the essence of humanity, and our technological age could ultimately slip into cultural decline.But we are just as capable of igniting a renaissance of attention by strengthening our varied powers of focus and perception, the keys to judgement, memory, morality, and happiness. She describes some of the exciting new scientific research that shows how these skills can be nurtured. "Distraction" is unique in being simultaneously an original expose of the multifaceted nature of attention, an engaging and often surprising portrait of post-modern life, and a compelling roadmap for cultivating sustained focus and nurturing a more enriched and literate society. Pull over, hit the pause button, silence the ringer, and prepare to encounter our land of distraction - this may be your first, and maybe your last, chance to really fathom it.

Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ

Richard Dooling

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Artificial Intelligence -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Will the Geeks inherit the earth?

If computers become twice as fast and twice as capable every two years, how long is it before they’re as intelligent as humans? More intelligent? And then in two more years, twice as intelligent? How long before you won’t be able to tell if you are texting a person or an especially ingenious chatterbot program designed to simulate intelligent human conversation?

According to Richard Dooling in Rapture for the Geeks—maybe not that long. It took humans millions of years to develop opposable thumbs (which we now use to build computers), but computers go from megabytes to gigabytes in five years; from the invention of the PC to the Internet in less than fifteen. At the accelerating rate of technological development, AI should surpass IQ in the next seven to thirty-seven years (depending on who you ask). We are sluggish biological sorcerers, but we’ve managed to create whiz-bang machines that are evolving much faster than we are.

In this fascinating, entertaining, and illuminating book, Dooling looks at what some of the greatest minds have to say about our role in a future in which technology rapidly leaves us in the dust. As Dooling writes, comparing human evolution to technological evolution is “worse than apples and oranges: It’s appliances versus orangutans.” Is the era of Singularity, when machines outthink humans, almost upon us? Will we be enslaved by our supercomputer overlords, as many a sci-fi writer has wondered? Or will humans live lives of leisure with computers doing all the heavy lifting?

With antic wit, fearless prescience, and common sense, Dooling provocatively examines nothing less than what it means to be human in what he playfully calls the age of b.s. (before Singularity)—and what life will be like when we are no longer alone with Mother Nature at Darwin’s card table. Are computers thinking and feeling if they can mimic human speech and emotions? Does processing capability equal consciousness? What happens to our quaint beliefs about God when we’re all worshipping technology? What if the human compulsion to create ever more capable machines ultimately leads to our own extinction? Will human ingenuity and faith ultimately prevail over our technological obsessions? Dooling hopes so, and his cautionary glimpses into the future are the best medicine to restore our humanity.

Online Marketing Success Stories: Insider Secrets, from the Experts Who Are Making Millions on the Internet Today

Rene V. Richards

Amazon Price: $14.93 List Price: $21.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Atlantic Publishing Company Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $10.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This new book by Atlantic Publishing Company entitled Online Marketing Success Stories Insider Secrets, from the Experts who are Making Millions on the Internet Today, will give you real life examples of how successful businesses market their products online. The information is so useful you can read a page and put the idea into action today! Standing out in the turmoil of today s internet marketplace is a major challenge. There are many books and courses on internet marketing; this is the only book that will provide you with insider secrets. The reason we asked the marketing experts who make their living on the internet every day and they talked! With e-commerce expected to reach $40 billion and online businesses anticipated to increase by 500 percent through 2010, your business needs guidance from today s successful internet marketing veterans. Learn the most efficient ways to bring consumers to your site, get visitors to purchase, how to up sell, oversights to stay away from, and how to steer clear of years of disappointment. We spent thousands of hours interviewing, e-mailing, and communicating with hundreds of today s most successful e-commerce marketers. This book is a compilation of their secrets, and proven successful ideas. If you are interested in learning hundreds of hints, tricks and secrets on how to make money or more money with your Web site than this book is for you. Instruction is great, but advice from experts is something else, and the experts chronicled in this book are earning millions. This new exhaustively researched book will provide you with a jam-packed assortment of innovative ideas you can put to use today. This book gives you the proven strategies, innovative ideas, and actual case studies to help you sell more with less time and effort.

Applied Security Visualization

Raffael Marty

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

APPLIED SECURITY VISUALIZATION

 

“Collecting log data is one thing, having relevant information is something else. The art to transform all kinds of log data into meaningful security information is the core of this book. Raffy illustrates in a straight forward way, and with hands-on examples, how such a challenge can be mastered. Let's get inspired.”

–Andreas Wuchner, Head of Global IT Security, Novartis

 

Use Visualization to Secure Your Network Against the Toughest, Best-Hidden Threats

 

As networks become ever more complex, securing them becomes more and more difficult. The solution is visualization. Using today’s state-of-the-art data visualization techniques, you can gain a far deeper understanding of what’s happening on your network right now. You can uncover hidden patterns of data, identify emerging vulnerabilities and attacks, and respond decisively with countermeasures that are far more likely to succeed than conventional methods.

 

In Applied Security Visualization, leading network security visualization expert Raffael Marty introduces all the concepts, techniques, and tools you need to use visualization on your network. You’ll learn how to identify and utilize the right data sources, then transform your data into visuals that reveal what you really need to know. Next, Marty shows how to use visualization to perform broad network security analyses, assess specific threats, and even improve business compliance.

 

He concludes with an introduction to a broad set of visualization tools. The book’s CD also includes DAVIX, a compilation of freely available tools for security visualization.

 

You'll learn how to:

• Intimately understand the data sources that are essential for effective visualization

• Choose the most appropriate graphs and techniques for your IT data

• Transform complex data into crystal-clear visual representations

• Iterate your graphs to deliver even better insight for taking action

• Assess threats to your network perimeter, as well as threats imposed by insiders

• Use visualization to manage risks and compliance mandates more successfully

• Visually audit both the technical and organizational aspects of information and network security

• Compare and master today’s most useful tools for security visualization

 

Contains the live CD Data Analysis and Visualization Linux (DAVIX). DAVIX is a compilation of powerful tools for visualizing networks and assessing their security. DAVIX runs directly from the CD-ROM, without installation.

 

Raffael Marty is chief security strategist and senior product manager for Splunk, the leading provider of large-scale, high-speed indexing and search technology for IT infrastructures. As customer advocate and guardian, he focuses on using his skills in data visualization, log management, intrusion detection, and compliance. An active participant on industry standards committees such as CEE (Common Event Expression) and OVAL (Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language), Marty created the Thor and AfterGlow automation tools, and founded the security visualization portal secviz.org. Before joining Splunk, he managed the solutions team at ArcSight, served as IT security consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and was a member of the IBM Research Global Security Analysis Lab.

 

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

Jerri L. Ledford

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Lots of words and poorly organized 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

The essence of this book could have been covered in less than 50 pages. Lots of fluff and poorly organized with topics covered in multiple places. Best practices for organic search and PPC were intermingled so those focused on organic search had to pull it apart. Would have been helpful to have an SEO punch list/summary to follow for building a site or product category.

Did have some useful links to SEO tools but the interviews with industry guru's were worthless. Ultimately, the four page checklist we received from our SEO consultant was much more helpful than this entire book.

Editorial Review:

• This in-depth Bible delivers the holy grail of online marketing: how to influence search engine results to drive online shoppers to specific Web sites; the process is called search engine optimization (SEO) and it is a hot topic
• One-stop resource offers readers what they need to plan and implement a successful SEO program, including useful tips on finding the shortest routes to success, strategy suggestions, and sidebars with more information and additional resources
• Features interviews with executives from top search companies, plus appendices on creating successful listings with Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and others
• Topics include creating an SEO plan; managing keywords; maximizing pay-per-click strategies; understanding the role of links and linking; robots, spiders, and crawlers; maintaining SEO; analyzing success rates; and much more

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

Michael Lewis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 215 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A distorted view of Silicon Valley technology startups 3 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

"The New New Thing" tells two stories. The first is the story of Jim Clark, a technical entrepreneur who founded three companies -- Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon -- that achieved phenomenal heights during the Internet boom of the 1990's. Clark is, to say the least, an interesting character; at least two of Clark's business associates are quoted in the book calling him a "maniac". Clark is driven almost entirely by an unending greed, so for me at least, he quickly became an unsympathetic character around which to hang an entire book. Another criticism I have is that far too many pages of the book are spent on Clark's quest to build and debug Hyperion, the world's largest computer-controlled sailboat. These sections were a distraction from the rest of the narrative. (By the way, it's pretty clear that although they may have been smart, the people writing the software for Hyperion -- including Clark himself -- were all pretty lousy software engineers.)

The second story is that of Silicon Valley, and it doesn't come off looking much better than Clark. Lewis seems to have been granted incredible access to Clark's life, which included the ability to interview and attend meetings with the Valley's top movers and shakers -- the engineers, senior managers, and venture capitalists who fund them. As a computer scientist who has lived and worked in the Valley since 1991, I found this material to be enlightening, and certainly the strongest part of the book. Perhaps most fascinating is the way the decisions of the venture capital (VC) firms and investment banks are based so much on perception rather than sound reasoning. For example, one minute the VCs are writing off their Healtheon investments as a total loss, but the next minute -- when Clark offers to invest $40M of his own money in the failing venture -- they all clamor to invest more in it. Sadly, during the "irrational exuberance" of the late 1990's, this was actually a winning strategy.

One danger in writing a book about the new new thing -- at the height of the Internet bubble no less -- is that it can quickly become old. And this book has not aged well. Yes, Jim Clark was the first person in Silicon Valley to have founded three companies with a market capitalization exceeding $1 billion, and yes, he made himself and many others around him obscenely rich. But most of the companies he started have not been lasting successes: as of this writing in 2007, Silicon Graphics is dying, having lost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in each of the last four fiscal years; Netscape was acquired by AOL, whose subsequent acquisition by Time Warner nearly killed the latter company; Healtheon merged with WebMD, whose business model is substantially less ambitious than Clark's original concept for the company; and myCFO, the newest new enterprise mentioned at the end of the book, morphed into a company that offered illegal tax shelters to wealthy clients, came under investigation by the IRS, and was eventually sold for only one third of the original money poured into it. Toward the end of the book, Lewis also wryly mocks John Doerr's VC firm Kleiner Perkins for paying $25M for a 33% stake in Google, which he writes "consisted of a pair of Stanford graduate students who had a piece of software that might or might not make it easier to search the Internet." Poor Kleiner Perkins. Their Google investment was obviously a terrible mistake.

Michael Lewis is a great writer, but I enjoyed two of his other books far more: Liar's Poker: Rising Through the Wreckage on Wall Street and Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game.

All in all, "The New New Thing" does a good job of exposing the underbelly of Silicon Valley capitalism. But its focus on Clark and companies born out of the Internet bubble gives a distorted picture of the challenges in founding and running a technical startup. For a more accurate depiction, I recommend Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure.

Editorial Review:

As American capitalism undergoes a seismic shift, Michael Lewis, author of the bestselling Liar's Poker, sets out on a Silicon Valley safari to find the true representative of the coming economic age. All roads lead to Jim Clark, the man who rewrote the rules of American capitalism as the founder of (so far) three multi-billion dollar companies-Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon. Lewis's shrewd, often brilliantly funny, narrative provides ahead-of-the-curve observations about the Internet explosion and how the success of Silicon Valley companies is forcing a reassessment of traditional Wall-Street business models.

Weaving Clark's story together with that of this new business phenomenon, Lewis has drawn us a map of markets and free enterprise in the twenty-first century and blown the lid off the changing economy.

Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the World's Most Colorful Company

Owen Linzmayer, Owen W. Linzmayer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 102 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

well-written and well-researched 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

After reading the insufferable iWoz, I wanted a book about the early days of Apple that didn't suck. A friend gave me Apple Confidential 2.0 for my birthday, and it was just what the doctor ordered. It emphatically didn't suck.

This is a well-written account of Apple, from the early pre-Apple blue box days through the book's 2004 publication. Instead of taking a traditional day-by-day walk through the company's history, Linzmayer arranges his chapters by topic. This makes following the individual threads of Apple much easier. Extra quotes and notes are included in the margins, which add colour and depth to the story. Jef Raskin, who unabashedly called himself the father of the Macintosh, said that this book was the most accurate depiction of how the original Mac was created.

Each chapter mostly stands alone. Since each chapter covers only one topic (say, the development of the Newton), some of the chapters in the tumultuous 90s are a bit hard to follow if you're not already aware of certain pieces of Apple history. Many topics are referenced without a word of explanation, just an occasional pointer to the later chapter. The most glaring examples of this are the references to Be, the Star Trek project, and Copland.

The chapter about the Star Trek project is a great example of another problem of the book. It's too early to talk about more recent developments. Star Trek was the project started in 1992 to bring the Mac OS to Intel. According to this book, the project was shelved in 1993. Typing on a MacTel today, it's obvious that the project was resurrected. I know that I'm not alone in wondering how this actually came about.

Even with those complaints, I recommend the book. The early days of Apple are interesting indeed, and understanding them is critical to understanding Apple today.

Editorial Review:

Apple Confidential examines the tumultuous history of America’s best-known Silicon Valley start-up – from its legendary founding almost 30 years ago, through a series of disastrous executive decisions, to its return to profitability, and including Apple’s recent move into the music business. Linzmayer digs into forgotten archives and interviews the key players to give readers the real story of Apple Computer, Inc. This updated and expanded edition includes tons of new photos, timelines, and charts, as well as coverage of new lawsuit battles, updates on former Apple executives, and new chapters on Steve Wozniak and Pixar.

How to Cheat at Configuring Exchange Server 2007: Including Outlook Web, Mobile, and Voice Access (How to Cheat) (How to Cheat)

Henrik Walther

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Best Installation Guide 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Having worked with Exchange since 5.0 I have read many installation guides and administrator's handbooks and I would rate this one as the best. I acquired this book after teaching how to configure and install Exchange 2007 to corporate clients and I have since done away with delivering them my own notes and simply recommend that they purchase this book. It is the ultimate guide to installing and configuring Exchange from a technical perspective. Way to go!

Editorial Review:

According to Microsoft, Exchange Server delivers over 75% of all corporate e-mail. The 2007 release is the fist major overhaul since 2003. It attempts to address the challenge of delivering greater performance and accessibility while increasing protection against a new generation of high risk security threats. Microsoft has added many new features that dramatically improve the scope of Exchange Server and the Outlook web client, positioning the platform as a groupware and collaboration tool that is accessible to remote and wireless users as will as those wired directly to the corporate intranet. The typical SysAdmin needs a reference that cuts through all the complexity and seldom-used features to get the product successfully deployed as efficiently as possible---exactly the job of the "How to Cheat" series.

Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Peter Kent

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Peter Kent is a star! 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Titles in the Dummies series range from very, very bad to very, very good. "Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing for Dummies" is definitely very, very good. Peter Kent also wrote "Search Engine Optimization for Dummies" which is also very, very good and should be read before "Pay Per Click".

"Pay Per Click" shows off Kent's talent for leading the reader step-by-step through some moderately complex territory. Kent writes in a clear and concise style, without a condescending attitude and, happily, without corny jokes. He walks through the concept of pay per click advertising, calculating ROI, selecting and bidding on keywords, creating landing pages (a very important concept), finding the right words for your ads (a very tricky) concept and then the pluses and minuses of the various services.

Kent truly does cover the waterfront of pay per click advertising. If you're looking for a highly readable and information introduction to the subject, this is it.

Jerry

Editorial Review:

Plan and launch your PPC campaign and keep track of its progress

If you want potential customers to form a traffic jam at your Web site, Pay Per Click just might do the trick. This book will help you decide! It tells you all about Google AdWords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search, targeting your customers, watching out for fraud, assessing the pros and cons of Pay Per Click, and making Pay Per Click work for you.

Discover how to

• Use the right keywords to trigger your ads
• Figure your breakeven point
• Write ads that reach your customers
• Calculate return on investment
• Use geo targeting
• Track your ad results

Business Intelligence For Dummies (For Dummies (Business & Personal Finance))

Swain Scheps

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

You're intelligent, right? So you've already figured out that Business Intelligence can be pretty valuable in making the right decisions about your business. But you’ve heard at least a dozen definitions of what it is, and heard of at least that many BI tools. Where do you start?

Business Intelligence For Dummies makes BI understandable! It takes you step by step through the technologies and the alphabet soup, so you can choose the right technology and implement a successful BI environment. You'll see how the applications and technologies work together to access, analyze, and present data that you can use to make better decisions about your products, customers, competitors, and more.

You’ll find out how to:

• Understand the principles and practical elements of BI
• Determine what your business needs
• Compare different approaches to BI
• Build a solid BI architecture and roadmap
• Design, develop, and deploy your BI plan
• Relate BI to data warehousing, ERP, CRM, and e-commerce
• Analyze emerging trends and developing BI tools to see what else may be useful

Whether you’re the business owner or the person charged with developing and implementing a BI strategy, checking out Business Intelligence For Dummies is a good business decision.