Pour Your Heart Into It - Starbucks

The book I read to research this post was Pour Your Heart Into It by Charles Schultz which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. A while back I reviewed Onward also by Charles Schultz about how he came back into the CEO job at Starbucks and helped make the company much more successful. This book is the prequel to that book and is about how he started the company and follows his first stint as CEO. Charles had a holiday in Italy and came up with the idea of trying out having restaurants that specialized in gourmet coffee. In Italy they had these places where they had newspapers for you to read and had gourmet coffees like espresso which served a discerning clientele. He thought the same could be done in Seattle, Washington. Seattle was facing a bad recession with one of there major employers slimming down its workforce from over 100,000 to just 38,000. Initially when he was working in a restaurant he talked the boss into turning part of it into a gourmet coffee section but had only been given a small area which was so tiny customers had to stand and there was no tables. They did however get some coffee machines. He left this company and started his own gourmet coffee restaurant. He had difficulty getting financing. They ran at a loss for the 1st 3 years due to the amount of financing needed. After that they made a profit and later he was able to buy the company he used to work for and he took their name Starbucks as the name of his company mainly because it was better known but also because he liked the name. Later on they started a mail order business for discerning coffee drinkers. Eventually they even invested in their own research and development centre where scientists would try and develop new products centred around coffee. I really enjoyed this book and it's a reasonable length at around 340 pages but is also a wealth of information. I think this book is even better than Onward.

Pinterest Marketing

The book I read to research this post was How To Use Pinterest For Marketing Purposes A Beginners Guide by Jeff A Hamilton et al which is a very good guide which I bought from kindle. Pinterest has 21 million members and is the fastest growing social network on the planet behind Facebook & Twitter. It's even bigger than linkedin & google+. Added to that where is an unusually high proportion of women and people into things like crafts, the right product can really sell like hot cakes. To get an account with Pinterest they have to give you an invite which isn't a problem and you have to link it to your twitter and facebook accounts to help them avoid spam accounts. When you go on the website there is a kind of revolving display of popular repins and you can either repin, follow or comment on an item you are interested in. A lot of people look for a narrow niche they are interested in and concentrate on that. Whatever you offer on this site has to be interesting and avoid spam as this site is very much geared up to penalize that and most members are very much against it. With the right product marketed in the right way you can get a lot of business. A lot of what this site is about is giving something back whether that be special offers, free gifts or free information etc. One word of caution be careful what you repin, you can repin ie someones website but that can infringe on copyright and the same goes for images. Pinterest make it clear in the event of a lawsuit you are responsible for any legal costs etc although if they are sued they will defend their interests. There is no cut legal agreement as tried and tested in the courts so you must be careful. I don't currently have a pinterest account as I think it would be difficult promoting my blogs on there but it does look interesting as a source of information. I did really enjoy reading this book which I think was free and I would recommend it

Samsung Galaxy S4

The book I read to research this post was The Samsung S4 Manual The Complete Galaxy S4 Guide To Conquer Your Device by Daniel Forrester which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is written in an easy to understand way and although it's only 68 pages certainly covers all the basics with this smartphone. The processor is a quad core 1.6 GHZ so is only a small upgrade on the S3 but the memory has gone from 1 GB to 2 GB and the software is much more efficient so the phone is much faster at doing things. It has a rear 13 MB camera and a front 1.9 MB camera and has technology incorporated to let you take several shots and combine them into 1 photo and also there is a built in eraser app that lets you remove moving objects from the background if they are a bit blurred for example. It runs the Android 4.2.2 operating system called Jelly Bean. I think as updates become available you can upgrade that as time goes on as with most smartphones. The case and the bezel to this phone are smaller but the screen is actually bigger which does mean things like the keyboard might take a bit of getting used to as they are bigger than the previous version. I did see a review of this phone in a technology magazine and it was rated as the best smartphone available. I enjoyed reading this book and I know it's quite a new phone but there doesn't appear to be that many books and ebooks available about it although I am sure that will gradually change.

Tamara Mellon

I am reviewing the business autobiography In My Shoes: A Memoir by Tamara Mellon which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Tamara is famous as the part owner of Jimmy Chou Company in which she designed a lot of the shoes and boots they sold. Before that she worked for a women's magazine and did a backpage feature on footwear. She got made redundant from that job and had a bit of a drug and drink habit which had to be sorted out. She did go to a rehab centre. She had by then met up with a shoemaker and suggested she could look after the day to day operations of the business and this man, Jimmy Chou could make the shoes. They had a hell of a job getting funding and later they focused on breaking into the American market. They tried to get celebrities to wear their shoes at functions like the Oscars. Kate Winslett almost unbelievably mentioned her Jimmy Chou boots during her acceptance speech. Sales then really took off. At this point Tamara was just drawing a salary of $15,000 per year although later on she would become extremely rich. Funnily enough in those days when Jimmy learned to make shoes, little emphasis was put on designing them. Eventually after the company had been going for a few years and was one of the designer label toasts of the town, Tamara had a cut from the $101 million it was valued at when it went public. She eventually got annoyed that the new set up skimped on materials which she thought would ruin the companies success. She currently has her own new fashion label called Tamara Mellon which will focus on limited edition fashion goods which she is expanding on the shoes and handbags the previous company did. 

Malware Forensics

The book I read to research this post was Malware Forensics Field Guide For Windows Systems by Eoghan Casey et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at the legal aspects mostly according to American law and also looks at the technical aspects of dealing with a virus infestation on either a network or desktop pc. It lists loads of software that can do the various jobs, far too many to list here and looks at doing the basics with some of this software. Eoghan is a bit of a legend in Digital Forensics and I have read quite a lot of books by him. There is also quite a lot of posts on different aspects of digital forensics at my computing blog at http://scratbag.me & my technology blog at http://scratbagroberts.com

If your computer is attacked by malware it's best to analyze it in a live state which means with out re booting it which will often destroy any evidence. Many professionals use MD5 or Memory Digest 5 to copy the hard drive. One problem facing you in this job is there is various types of memory that all need to be copied. Another problem is what you copy it to, in most cases it will be an external hard drive due to the enormous amount of data. Also copying it to writable media like dvdr's takes longer. A good program that will copy a network to another network hard drive is Encase Enterprise. A lot of malware nowadays contains keyloggers to find things like passwords, something to locate credit card numbers & an email address for this information to be sent to. One way you can spot malware is you use a port sniffer like wireshark it will constantly try to access the internet to send its newfound information. This book is nearly 1,000 pages and covers every aspect of malware and I really enjoyed reading it.

Railway Signalling

The book I read to research this post was British Railway Signalling by Alan Williams et al which is an excellent book which I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book is probably not one that anyone is likely to see for sale so I focus on railway signalling rather than reviewing the book. Currently in Britain they are changing the old fashioned signally methods to computerized regional railway control centres like at Crewe & at Saltley near Birmingham. A lot of things like the types of signal used remains unchanged however. At one time when a train passed a signal it stayed on go until just before the next train arrived then would signal that a train had passed as that train passed. There was an accident however when due to ice the signal couldn't go back to stop so now the signal always go to stop until it needs to go to go. Black & yellow signals indicate distance and black and white signals indicate whether the way is clear or not. If the signal is in a horizontal position it's unsafe to proceed and vertical indicates it's safe. On an ordinary line a train will have to stop if a train has gone by in the last 5 minutes or slow down if in the last 10 minutes. Of course this would tend to be where routes converge. Similiarly if you are at a station the signals will go to a vertical state if the train is within 5 minutes travel time. On single stretches they used to give a driver a token to indicate he was the only user on that track and that token would be handed in at the end of the single stretch. Only 1 driver at a time would have a token. The token can take many forms but generally is shaped like a key and comes out of a special machine.

Starbuck's

The book I read to research this post was Onward by Charles Schultz which is an excellent business autobiography which I bought from kindle. Charles is the ceo of Starbuck's, they always express job titles in lower case letters at that company and later on he was brought back into that role to turn the company around. Charles went on holiday to Italy in the early 70's and was impressed by the specialist coffee shops in Milan & Verona. He then started learning all he could about specialist coffee and how it should be prepared. He worked in a cafe that served instant coffee so he left his job and started his own coffee shop. 10 months later he earned enough to buy out his former employer and their name which was Starbuck's became the name of his company. This book is a kind of a sequel and is primarily about when he was brought back as ceo. One thing he discovered was that the employees didn't make the coffee properly. When they made cappucchino they often put the milk in the milk frother more than once which broke down the sweetness of the milk. When they made espresso they either poured it to quickly or too slowly which spoilt the consistency which should be similiar to that of honey. He closed down all his shops in America and retaught his workers their job which many thought was corporate suicide and cost the company millions but paid off in the long run. They also reintroduced sandwiches at breakfast which they had previously only been doing on request which resulted in a cut in their revenue. This many people requested be reintroduced. Starbuck's is one of the best employers anywhere and even gives shares to it's part time employees. Employees are called partners. It has a very strict but fair policy on the products it buys where it pays more than the market price but the highest standards are expected. Workers don't wear after shave or perfume in case it taints the coffee. Starbuck's has also become a cyber-cafe and was among the first to see the benefits of social networking. Believe me this is a heck of a good read and I think any business person will love this book.

Google Nexus 7

The book I read to research this post was A Newbies Guide To Nexus 7 by Minute Help Guides which is fairly short but a very good book which I downloaded from kindle. I have done a couple of posts on the Nexus 7 at my technology blog at

http://scratbagroberts.com

This is my computing blog but I thought this is a relevant subject for this blog too. The Nexus 7 is a digital tablet which is much cheaper than the current leading tablet the iPad by Apple but has a similiar amount of processing power and on the whole does away with some of the more superfluous features like a sim card in favour of wi-fi & bluetooth which it still uses but also is very cheap for a tablet especially with the features it has. It generally needs a wi-fi network to do things like install apps via your computer or a wireless hotpoint. It's worth mentioning Google were giving away $25 away in the form of a voucher if you joined Google Play for you to download apps and I know currently give away 1 paid app free every day. It's worth noting Google remove any apps that get a lot of negative reviews but don't check them as such like Apple do with the Appstore. It's best to check reviews prior to downloading an app to make sure it's value for money.

The Nexus holds a charge for 300 hours, lets you watch 9 hours of video & lets you read a book for 10 hours when fully charged. It has a 7 inch screen measured diagonally. You can watch video in high definition. I noticed in a technology magazine that rated digital tablets it was 2nd behind the iPad and it has the latest form of the Android Operating System 4.1 and as new features are rolled out you can update that via a wireless connection to the internet.  This book keeps it simple & I think was a free or very cheap download but I think if you want something more detailed on the Nexus I would recommend the book Google Nexus 7 For Dummies by Dan Gookin.

Belinda Carlisle - Live Your Life Be Free

I am reviewing the album Live Your Life Be Free by Belinda Carlisle which is a very good album. I did pay a visit to the Wikipedia page on Belinda Carlisle to research this post which is worth a visit. The best way to find it is to enter her name into Google and it is one of the top results. Belinda was the lead singer with the Go-Go's who were one of the most successful all girl groups of all time and were a prominent new wave group. She is probably best known as a female soloist however. Her 2nd solo album was a kind of soft rock and featured Heaven On Earth which topped the singles chart in lots of countries including the USA & UK. She has had a very successful career since and Live Your Life Be Free continued in the soft rock direction. There are 2 really good singles the title track & I Plead Insanity. The title track is probably the best track on the album. There is some alternate versions of these songs on these songs on there to. Nowadays Belinda is very much into Buddhism, spends much of her time in France & even released a French language recorded album in 2007. She did also have a reunion with the Go-Go's which resulted in an album and single but as with a lot of reunions the music wasn't as good as their earlier stuff. 

Promoting Your Business Or Cause Using Social Media

The book I read to research this post was Promote Your Business Or Cause Using Social Media by Dennis Smith which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book which is around 170 pages is a reasonable length and a good introduction to this subject although if like me you are quite savvy about social media it might not offer that much new information. There is quite a large section on Facebook which is quite interesting and something I didn't know is if you promote a business or cause on a personal profile page which is quite common that is a serious infringement of their rules. Also if you have a page like a product you don't need to authorize every like button message you get which is the equivalent of a friend's request on a personal profile. There is a substantially shorter section on pinterest and this site boasts predominantly women users and apparently the average user clocks up 89 minutes on this site every month. The figure for Google+ is 3 minutes per month. Twitter is another powerhouse on the social media front with micro blogging which they call tweets which has now become a part of our language. I did quite enjoy reading this book and there is some interesting stuff on BlogTalkRadio where you can upload a podcast and there is the option of using the website which is free or downloading the software which you pay for but has additional features. There website is http://blogtalkradio.com. 

Digital Disruption

The book I read to research this post was Digital Disruption by James McQuivey which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at a growing trend in marketing for businesses where they are becoming more focused on pleasing customers above else. At one time what dictated the markets was the scale a company could manufacture something on and the price but now we are getting into a level playing field where a small company with a good product can compete on equal terms. This is scary for big companies but also you can compete using social media and with a small budget but still market a product successfully. The book mentions an author of thriller ebooks priced at 99 cents called Amanda Hocking who is making more than many established authors. Also a 12 year old boy who is writing iphone apps from the software development kit or SDK and got his parents to pay the $99 to sell them on itunes but who is making a nice profit and for him his age is a bonus because many youngster buy his apps. I enjoyed reading this book although it is only around 150 pages but I think was only free or quite cheap on kindle. Of course many people start using computing as a hobby and then move on to developing a product and marketing it. This means that the competition a well established company faces can come from anywhere not just within the industry. We are also seeing products that have always demanded a high price losing a few features and a product that is still quite good being marketed at a much lower price.

The HTC Guide

The book I read to research this post was The HTC Guide which is a very good guide which I bought from a local newsagents. This guide is probably only available in Britain and is published by Android Magazine although hopefully even if You can't buy this guide you will find this post interesting. The company HTC formed in 1997 and has been at the forefront of Android smartphones from the start. The current really popular one is the One X but they were also given the first Google named franchise with the Google Nexus One which was also very popular. There are some 600,000 applications available for Android smartphones and many of them are free. We are seeing the price of smartphones come down to a reasonable level a process we saw with mobile phones in general some years ago. With these smartphones they do far more than just place phonecalls and also do MMS & SMS messaging, skype, integrating with social media and even do video calls either directly or via your wireless network. Skype is good because you can download the program free of charge and can call other skype users free of charge. There is even an integrated office program called polaris and there are also alternatives you can download like one called write. You can download or rent movies,listen to internet radio, download podcasts and even read ebooks many of which are free and open source. One program I'd particularly recommend is spotify where you get a free download but then for £9.99 per month can access a huge catalogue of music albums over the internet. They seem to have most of the latest albums and their catalogue is enormous and particularly good for niche music. 

Dropbox

The book I read to research this post was Dropbox For Beginners by Lisa Thompson which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. Dropbox was the first website to be a cloud service provider. It does this in 2 ways one is it provides Dropbox desktop software that synchronizes your computer with any devices like tablets and the other is it provides online storage which will work with your computer and any devices. You can back up a wordpress website to this site via the plug in that is available. You can also back up your computer hard drive but the free service is only 16 GB so is probably not enough. Above that amount it is a pay as you go service. They do encourage you to use this cloud service with twitter, facebook & linkedin and give you an extra 125 MB free for each of these you connect to this website. Also there are various options for what security like passwords you have protecting your storage space. I think this service is ideal for storing things like mp3s, video and ebooks. You can set it to upload stuff by default via the desktop program to your cloud space. They have well over 100 million users worldwide. The website for dropbox is www.dropbox.com. This is an informative book although it is maybe a little short. 

The Aftermath Of Surface Coal Mining

The book I read to research this post was The Remediation Of Abandoned Surface Coal Mining Sites by Alena Mudroch et al which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book or rather ebook was very expensive and aimed at professionals in this field. I bought it because it looked like an interesting subject. Most surface mining is done in the former republic of East Germany and that along with an area in Poland & the Czech Republic is called the Black Triangle of Europe due to the mishandling of converting former surface coal mining back into something broadly of environmental use. In East Germany in particular huge amounts of coal called lignite have been mined so the best solution is to turn it into a lake. In parts of that country the water table has dropped by 30 metres due to the huge amount of mining. In parts they have seams 50 metres deep and subsequently industrial waste has been dumped there. Where coal is exposed to the water in these lakes there can be toxicity so they need a soil layer to cover it. Also studies have shown these lakes do best where there is a good variety of plant and animal life which have to be introduced. The water in these lakes has to be pumped in quite quickly to avoid it going toxic. Wheat has been found to be good for planting in these areas because it will grow in little soil. In Alberta, Canada where they had similiar surface coal mining and turned it into lakes they found the rainbow trout grew bigger and were healthier than in the natural lakes. They did have problems with there not being enough cover to protect them from predators but that has been resolved. This book is only around 150 pages but makes very interesting reading. 

Strategy & Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Strategy & Marketing A Case Approach by Kenneth Simmonds which is an excellent book which I bought from a car boot sale. I struck lucky with this book because I bought it for just 50 p at the car boot sale in question & the same chap had lots of books on business all for the same price so I did buy 4 all together. If you see this book and it is reasonably priced I would suggest buying it as it is interesting even though it was published in 1988 & a lot of the information about the business climate has probably changed since. This book teaches marketing by example in the form of a case by case approach of quite a lot of companies. There is a company that has 85 % of the filtration business sewn up and they find that in terms of performance and price they are the best. There filters last for 6 years which is better than any of their competitors although some customers resent their success and go with a competitor anyway. They also find that some of their competitors concentrate on small niches in the market where they can out perform them. Another company has a major share of the plastic bathroom market and find that the stainless steel market price wise is narrowing the gap on price. Many people like the kind of novelty bathrooms with things like unusually shaped baths which they excel at. Many people also upgrade their bathroom to include a shower or bidet which they need to focus more on. At the time this book was written copper baths were being edged out due to their excessive price. This book is around 240 pages so isn't that long but is an interesting read. 

T-Mobile G1

The book I read to research this post was T-Mobile G1 For Dummies by Chris Ziegler which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book was published a while back so this type of smartphone is probably a bit dated. It was the first retail Android smartphone which meant it could be bought rather than having to sign up to a contract. I think this book would be of interest to anyone with this type of phone and may be of interest to someone with another type of Android smartphone because there is a lot of information on the Android operating system in general. There is a book available called Android Phones For Dummies which might be of more interest to the latter. At the time this book was published Android wasn't compatible with either Blackberry Enterprise Server or Microsoft Exchange Server but it's thought there might be a third party software solution on the horizon. One possible solution is to use an account like Gmail and have a copy of your emails sent to that. Android does seamlessly integrate with the many cloud computing services offered by Google and they're worth checking out because most are free. Android is based on the Linux operating system and using one of these phones is very much like a computer with even making a phone you have to use a built in app. Something that helps the Android customer base is the Chinese Android operating system is used by over 400 million people in that country making it the biggest smartphone provider in the world.

Google Nexus 7

The book I read to research this post was The Amazing Nexus 7 by Paul Walmsley which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is a little bit longer than some books on the same subject. It also has all the essential tasks you need to do to set your nexus up, nicely grouped at the beginning of the book. The Nexus only works with a wireless network although some come with a sim card as well. Although very cheap compared to other tablets on the market, it can punch above it's weight and has garnered a lot of favourable reviews. Interestingly you can get a different paid app for free every day on sites like Amazon & the Google Android Appstore. Of course the Nexus runs an Android operating system. It also uses by default a version of Chrome as a web browser and Google as a search engine. You can read ebooks, watch movies, play music, play games and run apps on it. It has got good graphic ability highlighted by the games it can play. These tablets are essentially computers with touch screens and have consider computional capabilities. Although the tablet is named after Google it isn't manufactured by them. Finally the Apple IPad leads the way with the most apps that are compatible with that but Android is gradually catching up. 

iPad in Education

The book I read to research this post was iPad In Education For Dummies by Sam Gliksman which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is about using the iPad from Apple and the many resources available like websites and apps to support education and is mainly aimed at educators. There is a ning social networking site at http://ipadeducators.ning.com which is aimed at people like teachers who want to keep abreast of the latest apps for the ipad. There are lots of online storage cloud sites like http://box.com , http://dropbox.com & http://evernote.com. Many of these sites offer at least free basic accounts and especially in the case of evernote offer storage for things like video and audio as well as a streaming ability to lots of compatible portable devices. Most people who use an iPad use http://iCloud.com the storage service from Apple. There are also photo services like http://photosync.com which lets you convert photos for free to lots of different formats that are used by compatible devices, websites and software. There is also an online educational resource at http://itunesu.com which has more online courses, lectures and curriculums than any other website. There are many ebook resources and some of the best are at http://gugenheim.org, http://kindle.com, http://kobo.com, http://nook.com & http://ibookstore.com. Gugenheim is a free resource of thousands of free ebooks. Kobo, Nook & Kindle all have free ebook reading apps and of course have their own ebook readers which are worth checking out. I really enjoyed this book which I think is indispensible to anyone interested in learning.