How to Use Linkedin to Sell More Books

The book I read to research this post was How to Use Linkedin to Sell More Books which is quite a good book which I bought on kindle. Actually I think this book was a free download. This book focuses on a very narrow field namely selling books on Linkedin and there is very little telling you how to actually use the site. If you want to learn how to use the site I recommend Linkedin For Dummies. This book which is very short just tells you how to make new contacts on the site. Mostly via contacting someone who knows the person or joining a group the person is a member of. There is also a little on how to do searches in Linkedin via the search box at the bottom of the page. There is a little on marketing books and e-books in general. If you are lucky enough to get a publishing contract publishing houses in general do little or no marketing especially for new up and coming authors. I think this is more of an inspiration piece for budding authors than a how to manual. I'd recommend this if it is free but I think even if it is for sale for 99 p there are better books available for the same money. The authors haven't put much effort into it. I also think there are too many books available on selling e-books & I have read lots and found little new here.

Death of the PC

The book I read to research this post was Death of the PC by Matt Baxter-Reynolds which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Apparently it was the case that every 10-15 years there was a game changing event in computing like Windows or the internet irreversibly changing things. That now in the ever more rapid rate of technological change of things is becoming every 7-10 years. Currently there is an invasion of digital devices mainly tablets and smartphones that threaten take away the Windows PC's dominance over the consumer computer industry. In business Windows and computers are still very much the dominant force. Microsoft makes most of its income from the Windows and Office products. They very much still dominate enterprise computing. It's too early to say what the next revolution in computing estimated to be around 2018-2020 will be but we are very much at a junction currently where digital devices are becoming very much lifestyle devices and part of peoples lives. Surprisingly the Chromebook which combines the easy boot up, low risk of virus infection and ability to work from resources like Google Docs on the internet. It has no hard drive and instead uses a cloud service with 100 GB free but has the advatage in common with computers of a keyboard. Currently buyers have been cautious about buying these but that may change as time goes on. One problem is buyers have to learn a new operating system. The dominance of digital devices started with Blackberry which were heavy duty smartphones with minature keyboards ideal for going on the web and answering e-mails. In the future social media is set even more closely with our lives. Android of course dominates the tablet and smartphones probably in part because it is open source and it is possible to buy tablets which are like unofficial products for around $50. Many of these are made in the far east. There are also devices officially endorsed by Google which pay them commision for the privilege.  This book looks at the major products and developments in the digital device industry and I must admit I learned a fair bit from it despite being quite tech savvy. I really enjoyed reading it. It's around 200-250 pages so is a reasonable length.

Typepad

The book I read to research this post was Typepad For Dummies by Melanie Nelson et al which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Typepad came about as a blogging engine developed for someone's blog which they realised there was demand for and formed a company called Six Apart. The company name is because the couple had their birthdays 6 days apart but anyway it has become a popular blogging service that can be either hosted or self hosted by a company like Go Daddy for which there is a version called Movable Type which is similar in terms of features and the software itself is free. Typepad is particularly good in that it is configurable especially in the Movable Type version and as in a lot of blogging programs is composed of modules. In the Typepad version you can configure it in HTML. In the other version there are other programming languages like Python you can use. This book is a little bit out of date being written in 2010 but does include the substantial upgrade to Typepad in 2009. The biggest upgrade of features to date. There is a basic free option where you get a single blog with 3 GB of space and various paid options which also let you have a customized URL among other things. This is a very good and interesting book I enjoyed reading. In the basic version you are stuck with one theme called Chroma. I think Typepad is better suited to business blogs than personal blogs but it does have various social media modules so you can integrate it with the various sites. In particular there is a friendfeed module which even informs followers of your activity on Amazon. You can do podcasts although due to the increased space involved will probably need a paid membership. I must admit I'd probably have no need to use Typepad but I do find books about the different platforms quite interesting.

How To Make A Killer Linkedin Profile

The book I read to research this post was Linkedin Gold: How To Make A Killer Linkedin Profile by Lance Willis which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is quite short and concise but makes interesting reading and I think is essential reading for anyone interested in getting another job. The book covers a lot more than just creating a Linkedin and covers a whole plethora of useful websites along with their being sections on Twitter and Facebook. If you do a search in a search engine for yourself your Linkedin profile is likely to be highly placed and is important you get it right. You should aim to get at least 500 contacts on Linkedin as then it will display it as 500+ and don't pick people at random but rather give yourself about 4 months to reach it and pick in the same industry who can help you. You should have a professionally done photo, many trade shows have photograpers who will take a photo and post it online for you for a fee. Your profile should look intelligent and include things like a mission statement and where you want to be in 5 years. You should keep abreast of developments in your industry and mention this in your profile. Your current job should offer opportunities to train if not you definitely need to change jobs. More people use Facebook to search for a job than Linkedin which isn't surprising considering the former's popularity. You shouldn't be afraid of asking for recommendations but avoid spamming people. The job seeker subscription on Linkedin is worth getting and allows you to add contacts on the site. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can tell he really knows what he is on about. It isn't a how to guide to using Linkedin for that he suggests get Linkedin For Dummies but is informative all the same. Finally bear in mind your shouldn't post anything on the web you wouldn't want an employer to read and you should always maintain professional standards.

Coming Up - Suede

I am reviewing the album Coming Up by Suede which is their most successful album both commercially and critically and an excellent album. It featured 5 top ten hits including Trash which made number 3 in Britain and was there joint biggest hit. They were an indie band from London who won the Mercury Prize for their debut album and it was also the biggest selling debut by an artist in 10 years. They are probably more of an albums band than a singles band. Fans had high hopes for the follow up to Coming Up which though turned out to be a disappointment and the band split up soon afterwards  reforming for some concerts in 2010. Brett Anderson the lead singer did do some solo albums. Brett had a relationship with Justine Frischman who later had a relationship with Damon Albarn of Blur and would later join all girl group Elastica. My favourite track on this album is probably The Beautiful Ones which iis quite haunting and widely regarded as their best song ever. Suede did later on have problems with drugs but for a while were one of the most promising indie and britpop bands.

Amazon Web Services Part A

This is the 1st installment in my blog post series on Amazon Web Services based on what I learn on the video training course by Infinite Skills on this cloud computing service. Cloud computing is at a stage electricity was at over a hundred years when factories needed to run their own generators to provide power to machinery. This machinery was very expensive and anything but cost effective with any repairs having to be done by specialists who were also expensive. Nowadays we have electricity boards that provide almost infinite power at low cost and we don't have the hassle of repairing generators. In the same way cloud computing offers huge computing power at low cost and in many instances does away with having to build servers and buy associated software. AWS is the biggest cloud provider in the world and is years ahead of its closest rivals. There is even a free tier with any of Amazon's services letting you try before you buy and you are only charged for what you use with things like storage used being averaged out for the whole month allowing for surges in demand. Generally you limit how much you use EC2 or elastic compute cloud which is the most expensive and typically 70% of your bill. Generally Amazon automate what services they provide you in a way that minimizes your bill. There are over 30 services provided by AWS with lots of new ones coming out all the time. Amazon gets a good deal on the hardware they buy for their server farms and do their best to pass these savings on to their clients. They call their server farms availability zones or AZ's and they have them in different geographic zones with the default one you use being in Virginia, USA and a company will typically use at least 2 of these AZ's in case one goes down. Amazon do have very tight security at these locations and operates redundancy which means everything is backed up to several servers so if one goes down there is no outage. EC2 is a virtual server with you needing to provide your own operating system and software. They charge for EC2 hourly. Simple storage service or S3 is your main storage and is used where something needs to be written once and read multiple times. You could run everything with in EC2 but it would relatively be very expensive. You are generally better off letting Amazon sort what services you have to use and charge you accordingly. Some companies even write their own applications to do a similar job to the services with in AWS although you need a very good reason if you do that.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part J

This is the 10th and last installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. First we are starting off with publishing from Visio to a web page. You have the work open on your desktop and choose file/ export and choose change file type. You choose the web page option which converts it to HTML. You name the file and click publish. It can then be imported into web design software. You can also save a file as a PDF or a XPS files and there are various software viewers free on the internet for these. You go into file/ export/ pdf or xps and then choose whether you want pdf or xps and there are various options. If you go into review/ new comment you can make comments on a drawing, useful if there are co workers working on the same project. You can also add information to a drawing by using review/ ink which lets you add stuff freehand. This information comes up like a tool tip. You can also click the shape choose pen/ then type of pen ie ballpoint pen. This lets you add information freehand either with the mouse or a dedicated tablet and pen. It can be converted to text or a shape. Using a mouse to enter text is a bit unreliable. If you convert it to a shape which is also under the pens tab it is treated with in the program as a shape and you can apply quick styles or comments to it. To co author with in Visio you need either Skydrive or Sharepoint Server. Several of you can work on the same drawing at the same time but you give co workers permissions to only change what is necessary and protect the rest. There changes come up as updates on their co workers screens. The permissions are normally set by the administrators and the file they work on will often also be a template to protect certain aspects of it in addition. To search for a particular shape you click on the search tab and enter a word in the search box. Various stencils meeting that criteria appear and also their stencil family tab for each stencil displayed will appear. You can click on a particular stencil family or group to be taken there. You can drag a stencil shape to favorites which is empty by default or right or left click the shape bringing up the various menu commands. You can use the save as command to take a stencil shape and customize it and save it in a different folder. It's worth noting Microsoft have various templates which have a vsd extension and stencils which have a vss extension on their website that are often free and quite specialized that you can add to Visio and if you have an earlier version they are frequently compatible with that too.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part I

This is the 9th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. The types of stencils or shapes you put on your workspace often have options specific to them. When you right click the shape these are among the commands that come up. Find and Replace is under home/ editing and you will usually enter the text to find and whether or not to replace each instance before moving on the next instance. If you left click a diagram you can go into process/ diagram validation. There are various options to check a diagram and you either repair it and then re check it to make a warning go away or click ignore this issue. You can turn several shapes in a diagram showing several processes which might be in something like manufacture. You select the shapes and click process/ subprocess/ create from selection. The other processes shown will normally be relegated to subprocesses or a single process. You can use subprocess shapes but that is optional. In the file tab is the print dialog box. A dotted line diagram compares the workspace to the print paper. This is shown in page set up with the other various options. There is an edit header and footer option that can put it on either every page or alternate pages. You go into that dialog box and just delete the text to remove a header or footer or both. File/ info has the options for deleting personal information or metadata from a drawing. This might be information like the author's name and address of work. The various information is displayed on the right and you can click on a field and edit it or select the remove personal information where you just select the options. If you use a template it prevents the initial drawing being modified which can happen if the person clicks save rather than save as. If you go into file/ save as in save as type choose visio template  and then to get it displayed in the templates folder you have to go into new/ options in file and select the various options to say what is locked in the template and name it. The next installment in this series will be the end and I'll try and do that later tonight.

Windows Azure

The book I read to research this post was Introducing Windows Azure For IT Professionals Technical Overview by Mitch Tulloch which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. There is a version in book form of this and Microsoft Press have released it free on kindle so people who are likely to implement Azure have a way of getting up to speed without having to shell out loads of money. There have apparently been 750 thousand downloads and of course there are lots of more specialist books about Azure by Microsoft Press that people can but. It is an online database that is a cloud computing offering and strictly speaking the software is run on the online server and you are not given a disc to run on a local machine so it isn't classed as a hybrid cloud. It works with Windows 2012 R2 & other software such as Sharepoint. Microsoft are constantly bringing out add ons for this online service such as Biz Talk and also it does all work with some versions of Linux. A lot of people use the Visual Studio Online Cloud Service with Azure as it lets them write their own addons and customize it. A lot of people use Hadoop with the database and I think that also works with the Amazon Web databases. There are 8 regional data centers around the world and in Europe they are based at Dublin & Amsterdam. This book is a decent length and goes into using Azure in quite a lot of detail. When using the cloud service your first 5 GB is free but you are also charged on things like the number of instances running. For a company it is quite competitive when you consider the cost of having an onsite server and things like software to. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book although in places it was a little tricky to understand but I definitely recommend downloading it on kindle and Microsoft are releasing free e-books about a lot of their products which I will be reviewing and would recommend.

Scrivener

The book I read to research this post was Scrivener For Dummies by Gwen Hernandez which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. Scrivener is a writing software initially released for the Apple Macintosh and particularly for the OS X Lion operating system and I think the version in this book is a previous version which at the time had a cut down Windows version although in future both versions will have similar features. I did look on Google to see how much this software is and it is free for 30 days and $40 thereafter. The company that make it is literature and latte. It is particularly suited to writers as they can keep all there work in one place which it does with folders and subfolders. It also allows you to do e-books particularly in pdf and you can import your work including notes and annotations into Microsoft Word. There is a kind of add on at http://crowl.info which is a word counter useful for editing for things like magazines and newspapers. The book does a decent job of explaining how to use it although this software has been superceded by Scrivener 2 which hopefully there will be a follow up book on. The book explains where there are differences between the windows and mac versions although in the later version the features in the windows version are comparable. I really enjoyed reading it and think the price of the software does sound quite reasonable. I'd never heard of this software prior to reading this book and apparently the word scrivener is a fancy word meaning writer. It's an interesting book.

Visual Social Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Visual Social Marketing For Dummies by Krista Neher which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com. This book is about marketing your business through visual mediums like photographs, videos and presentations. Slideshare is the biggest social network devoted to presentations which most people do in Microsoft Powerpoint. Video is mostly shown through sites like Vimeo & YouTube although you can use mainstream sites like Facebook. There is a site called Instashare that lets you put on it up to 15 seconds of video. Of course many of these sites have pro packages you pay for and get additional features. There is also Pinterest where you get a tiny program which is a virtual pin that goes into your browser and when you see something you like you click it and it is embedded into your page on Pinterest. There are social bookmarking sites that work in a similar and it is worth bearing in mind a lot of what you see on the internet is copyright and you should embed it rather than copy it which infringes the copyright. This book is quite interesting but didn't have that much knowledge I didn't already know although I have read lots of similar books. I think most people would find it interesting. A lot of marketing is done with smartphones and there are apps like Vine for video editing & Photoshop Express for photo editing to help with this. Even laptops are a bit cumbersome so most people use a phone or tablet for this purpose. There is also sites like Google + and Twitter that are mainstream social media sites but have a very receptive audience for photos in particular. I did enjoy reading this book and I think it gives you the nuts and bolts for promoting your business. There is also in the Part of Tens lists of 10 types of photos and 10 types of video you can use for promoting your business. It would work equally well with promoting something like your charity or even song.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part H

This is the 8th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC about that software. In this post I am going to continue my look at containers. These are similar to groups in that both turn objects into a single item at a particular level. If you click on a container with objects inside it the format tab appears which is context sensitive. If you click format/ select container it selects the container and everything in it. You can drag objects out of a container which then become separate unlike groups. You can click format/ disband container which gets rid of the container but leaves the contents intact. There are also on the format ribbon various options for changing the heading. You can drag shapes into a container which then automatically become part of it unlike groups. You can select the container or its contents and apply quick styles to them. When you lock a container which is on the format ribbon you can't disband it or drag shapes out of it but can delete it with the delete key.

You can apply a callout to a picture with the command insert/ callout. That is the best way as you can apply the callout to the picture it is attached to. There are other methods but they don't apply it to the picture it's attached to and you have to be carefull if you move it around. A callout is like a thought cloud or speech box which are both types of callout. There are other types too. Basically it's a kind of text box. A hyperlink links text to information which can be a URL or other type of information. You can link a diagram or text including a local file with a hyperlink. The hyperlink command is insert/ hyperlink. You usually click browse in the dialog box to add the location automatically. You can enter a description which appears as a tool tip when someone's mouse hovers over it. To delete a hyperlink go into the dialog box and select the hyperlink address and click delete and then ok. If you connect the subaddress to the hyperlink with the browse button specifically for that it lets you attach a part of the page or document to it. You can attach it to a drawing but must name it and put the exact name in the subaddress box. There is also a zoom feature and you will choose the width feature that only zooms to the width of that page. By using control+click you can bring up multiple hyperlinks where they are set up for a single bit of text. You then choose one from the pop up menu. To set up multiple hyperlinks merely use the add key and enter the hyperlinks into the box in the dialog box.

Stealth Warplanes

The book I read to research this post was Stealth Warplanes by Doug Richardson which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book was published in 1989 so is probably a bit out of date but is quite interesting because there is a whole plethora of aircraft incorporating stealth technology including the quite well known F-117A Stealth Fighter. It does have other aircraft like the U2 & Blackbird but a lot of the aircraft I had never heard of and a lot never made it past the prototype stage. Of course the aircraft we know about are mostly out of service or old and the latest technology often referred to as black ops is mostly top secret. Most of the stealth aircraft fly at less than the speed of sound because things like having quiet engines and appearing insignificant on radar wouldn't work. Often they are used over fairly short distances for detailed reconaissance although there are some super quick aircraft where the aim is to out run missiles. An example is the SR-71A Blackbird where for many years the only country that could shoot it down due to their incredible speed and flight altitude was the Soviet Union although there were reports the North Koreans did their best to shoot them down. The Stealth Fighter is composed of a low density carbon composite that doesn't show up on radar. In the Second World War the Japanese Warships painted to resemble smaller less significant ships from a distance and the British painted their Canberra's camouflage green on top and sky grey underneath so the roots of this go back quite a long way. There are aircraft that have the heat from their engine outlets diffused and often have quietened piston engines. There are various decoy measures to fool missiles and another system is to flood the air defences with decoy missiles so genuine ones can get through. Of course yet another measure is spy satellites but to get the right information often requires a closer look and these satellites can often be fooled. If you see this book being sold cheaply secondhand it is worth reading and I did learn quite a bit from it as well as enjoyed it.

Corporate Blogging

The book I read to research this post was Corporate Blogging For Dummies by Douglas Karr which is a very good book which I read at http://safaribooksonline.com . This book is about blogging as it relates to big companies. They normally use a specialist blog platform like Wordpress VIP or Compendium and will have a theme specially written for the job. One thing it says in the book is you must give the bloggers time to settle in and develop their style as bloggers. I know when I initially started blogging I tried to write about subjects and gradually found doing book reviews where I tried to give people an idea of some of the things that were in a book was better. Quite a bit of this book is on SEO, Google Analytics and landing pages, much of which I have covered in other books. They are important in corporate blogging where you want what you write to be read by quite a large audience. Google Analytics can be linked to many blogs and gives feedback on things like what people read and demographics of your audience. Of course with a big company you might want something more heavy duty like Omniture. An important thing is don't just regurgitate your sales spiel but try and put information in that people can't find elsewhere particularly about your products. You can compare your company to your competition although you have to be realistic about this and make sure the competition doesn't ridicule what you say. You should try and develop a chatty style where you tell people about every aspect of your company. It isn't just buyers you will visit your blogs and you should have a customized URL and preferably have blogs in the name to let people know what it is. Smaller companies might use a platform like Typepad or Moveable Type or even a self hosted Wordpress blog. You can get the Wordpress software which is open source and free at http://wordpress.org . Many like this option because of the huge amount of potential customization available and plug ins. I did quite enjoy this book which covers the topic well.

Mind Mapping Secrets For Business Success

The book I read to research this post was Mind Mapping Secrets For Business by Katie Darden which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is quite short but succinct and is informative on this topic. Apparently Katie has taught mind mapping to students so does seem to explain it quite well. The British psychology author Tony Buzan came up with the idea of mind mapping and was inspired by ideas in science fiction novels of a technique of showing relationships between things and doing it in a visual way. A mind map typically will have a photo or picture in the centre showing the key subject and will have wider branches coming out of the centre narrowing as you go further out. The key thing is for it to be visual and pictures tend to be used to symbolize things along with keywords running along many of the branches. Many people use software to do mind maps and they certainly make it neater and are especially good for the beginner. This book does promote freemind a free open source mind mapping software and even includes how to install it. There is a whole list of free mind mapping software in the book. Some applications mind mapping is particularly good for are SEO, website design, planning your day, studying and revising and anything where you need to plan out your thoughts. Everything in a mind map is put in categories so that you don't miss anything out. The human brain can remember between 5-9 items in any one go and this retention improves if the items are put in groups or any kind of logical order. Another technique is of course mnemonics where you come up with a sentence that the first letter of each word represents an item. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would probably read other books by this author and think it is a pretty good book if a little bit short.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part G

This is the 7th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to look at themes mostly in this post. If you press shift and left click on the corner of some shapes it works differently but only on certain shapes. With triangles for example it changes its constraining proportions and with a square it will let you change it to a rectangle. If you click on design/ themes there is a variants option next to it that changes according to what theme is selected. There is flyouts in both themes and variants with various selections. On themes is a setting called apply to new shapes which is selected by default but when unticked the theme has to be manually added to each shape you draw and doesn't inherit anything you previously drew. There is effects, connectors and embellishments options in themes. Embellishments is normally best set to automatic. Effects does things like drop shadows and connectors changes the appearance of selected connectors between shapes. The theme you set up is automatically set up in themes flyouts for re use. There is a setting to apply it to all pages in a document. File/ paste just pastes a shape minus the formatting information. File/ paste special has various options for pasting the formatting settings for text and shapes. This includes themes. Home/ shape styles concentrates on settings for the shape. You can set things like fill color and a gradient if needed. You can cut, copy and paste with in this program using the shortcuts control+ x for cut, control + c for copy and control + v for paste like in most other programs. When you do some text somewhere and do some in another shape only the font color is stored and passed on by default. The command to copy formatting information is home/ paste/ format painter. You normally select what you want copied and have to select what you want copied and where you want it to go to. If you double click on the format painter it copies all the formatting information.  When you select shapes going onto something else you can put them in containers or groups. Home/ group does grouping and insert/ container is the container command. Groups using a default visual boundary around the group but containers let you choose a boundary from the options. In groups you can double click a shape and move it outside the boundary but if you move the group the shape will follow. In containers the shape can be selected by a single click and moved outside but then becomes separate and follow the boundary if moved. Also you can add text to containers in predefined titles specially for that purpose. In groups text is normally just put into the centre space in between the group.

AKA - Jennifer lopez

I am reviewing the album AKA by Jennifer Lopez or JLO as she's often called. It is very much a dance album and I think a good addition to her collection. It is an excellent album. Her career does appear to have hit a renaissance since he featuring on American Idol as a judge. It's amazing how good she still looks at nearly 45. She first hit the big time with the film Selena & with the film Out Of Sight, directed by Steven Soderburgh and also starring George Clooney she was the first latin actress to be paid over $1 million for a film. She was born in New York of Puerto Rican descent and her parents didn't want her to work in the entertainment industry to the extent that she had to move out of the family home. She was the first person to be number 1 on the US Cinema Chart and have a number 1 single on the Billboard Chart in the same week. She topped the FHM Chart of sexiest female twice. She is very much a business woman in addition to her acting and singing with her retailing fragrances and fashion clothes among other things. Her career did go through the doldrums prior to her being on the American Idol. She did feature in a couple of films with Ben Afleck and had a high profile affair whilst being married to someone else. The films weren't well received with one critic quipping nobody will go and see the one film unless they show her on the movie poster in a coffin. She died in the first 15 minutes and her relationship with Afleck was attracting controversy in the press. Apparently she has a fortune of $250 million and I did look at the wikipedia article which I do recommend.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part F

This is the 6th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn doing the video training course by VTC on this software. If you click on review/ shape reports it lets you configure reports to get them just right. There is an autocomplete feature to help you find preselected fields. Selecting and clicking add lets you add a field. Similarly using the remove button lets you delete it. Clicking finish takes you into the wizard where you can configure it. If you select view/ then tick dynamic grid and connection points it lets you see potential connection points on a shape that you can add. Home/ align,  aligns shapes. There are various options on the fly out like align left. If you have several shapes one will be designated an anchor shape with a slightly darker outline and the other shapes will align to it. Autoalign aligns shapes to a set amount and lets you choose another anchor shape. The position button also under home has various options and aligns and spaces out shapes. There is an option where you can specify figures for alignment and spacing and a position/ autoalign and space which uses default values. If you hover over the button with the mouse it gives you a preview. Home/ connection which is an x button lets you add a connection point. These are dynamic and adapt to you moving shapes around with the connection point remaining the same. If you right click on the connection point of a shape you can select whether you want it to be inward, outward or inward and outward. Using control and the scroll wheel zooms in and out. Using just the scroll wheel on the mouse lets you scroll up and down on the page. Pressing control, shift and w lets you zoom to the extents of the image or images. View/ task panes brings up a floating panel which you can drag around the screen. You can choose a region on the screen to go to by simply clicking and dragging towards it. The x icon closes the pane. Finally some shapes like a triangle have various handles where you can do things like drag the point to somewhere different. Not all shapes have this.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part E

This is the 5th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 which is based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to write about linking shapes to data. If you right click a shape in visio and select from the menu data/ define shape data it lets you specify data for that shape. If you drag a shape partly off a page it expands to accommodate that shape by default. File/ auto size sets whether this is default or not. File/size changes the page size either to a predefined size or a custom one. File/ orientation selects whether the page is in landscape or portrait mode. Properties are copied from what you have set up and what the last page you had, had for its properties to any new page you create although you can still change these properties. If you choose insert/ new page it creates a new page. You can have a watermark on a page which is useful for security or copyright reasons. You generally have to create the watermark although there are some predefined ones you can select. When you create a watermark it is automatically imported into the page set up dialog box. Design/ backgrounds brings up a background page normally on its own layer. You select a blank background in with the foreground page selected to get rid of a watermark. Data/ refresh all refreshes the shape properties and links connected to a shape. You will often specify a frequency for how often you wish it to be refreshed. Review/ shape reports lets you do a report on the properties of a shape. You normally select what fields you want displayed and the format ie excel workbook or visio shape for it to be displayed in. You can also link data to a excel workbook in either a single page which is done by default or by selecting various pages.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part D

This is the 4th installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. I am mostly going to look at org charts. In org chart mode mostly there are either actually in the workspace or about to be displayed some org charts, there is an org chart tab which appears. You can apply any shape to the elements of the org chart and it is infinitely configurable. If you select one of the shapes and click  position you can select a predefined job title which is then applied. If you click the photo icon you can select a photo which is then applied to that person's shape. You can apply photos en masse but it is essential they are labelled so they can automatically be applied. This won't work with a digital camera where most photos are numbered rather than labelled. You also to do this use a multiple selection of the shapes. If you click on home/ layer/ assign to layer you can assign several selected shapes to the same layer. If you still click on layer but also click on layer properties on the same button, you can configure the properties for that layer. You can lock a layer in properties to preventing accidently selecting it. You can click on home/ select/ select by type and can select the constituent parts of a layer. When you delete a shape the properties for that shape remain and you can apply them to new shapes. Simply select active then draw shapes. You can select a layer with in select by type or select something with similar properties ie shapes. You can set properties for a shape although not all shapes have this type of data. One that does is flowcharts. This data isn't generally displayed but is attributes. The command for this is data/ shape data and you can tab between the fields or left click them. The attributes can be things like currency, a serial number or boolean. The last is typically true or false values.

Eurostar

The book I read to research this post was From the Footplate: Eurostar by Peter Waller which is an excellent book that I bought from a local secondhand bookstore. This book is quite succinct at around 110 pages and much of that is photos but what information there is, is quite interesting. It was also published in 1998 so some stuff might be a bit dated. The Eurostar was built by a French, Belgian and British consortium overseen by GEC-Alsthom with various contractors in the 3 countries. Much of the British work was done at Washwood Heath in Birmingham which I think also did work on the Pendolino's used by Virgin Rail for high speed cross country travel in Britain. The Eurostar is essentially a form of TGV but is one of the most technologically advanced trains in the world largely because it has to handle 3 sets of voltages in the 3 countries. The supply inside the Chunnel itself is 25 KV the same as in France. All 3 countries have intermediate towns for people not travelling to either London, Brussels or Paris. The 3 destinations it travels between. Of course in Europe there is an extensive TGV network. The intermediate stations are Ashford in Britain, Calais in France & Lille in Belgium. In Belgium & France they have built dedicated high speed line with the result it can go faster. In Britain various work has been done including a cross train train route through London for conventional trains and a new station called St. Pancras International for Eurostar passengers. Previously the trains left from Waterloo but the line overall the Eurostar travels on is slower than on the continent. I think when they upgrade the line for faster speeds the main consideration is allowing for the drivers reaction time to signals at these higher speeds. Obviously he has less time to react and they have to be placed further from where he must stop. The Eurostar cab has no side windows and the driver is centrally located to prevent him becoming disoriented by things passing by the side of him. This is especially the case in the Chunnel. The drivers also had to learn the routes and the systems used in the other 2 countries which was a steep learning curve. I really enjoyed this book and would wholeheartedly recommend it.

How To Secure Your Website From Hackers

The book I read to research this post was How To Secure Your Website From Hackers by Ashish Ghanti which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is about the various techniques hackers can use to damage your website but even more importantly how they can gain access to passwords and financial information via your website. The latter is the priority with most hackers and they will mostly not damage your website as such and try to hide their tracks and not get caught. Your website for a start must always require passwords before doing any functions and must require the exact URL. Many hackers don't know the exact URL and it's amazing how many this will trip up. Often they will do HTTP injecting where they enter the known part of the URL and an extension they think will take them to a part of the website that maybe is a database or stores credit card info. Another very frequent method is social engineering and another similar one is phishing where they try and get an employee to part with the password. You need to educate your staff to prevent this and in thinks like emails look at the language carefully and study the links. What this book doesn't say but is the case is nowadays they can use a genuine link that seems okay when you hover over it with the mouse but which uploads software onto your computer like malware and you best bet is enter the address manually into the address box. Ashish is from Nepal and is a blogger and SEO consultant. I think this book is well written although one problem is I think it says hacker not hackers in the title and I suppose English isn't his first language. The information on securing your website is good although the book is somewhat short. It does suggest using open source tools Nessus and Nmap to test the integrity of your site and I think I learned quite a lot from it. There is obviously a lot of information in the book I've not covered. I've just included it a taster. I think I recommend it.

Rockferry - Duffy

I am reviewing the album Rockferry by Duffy which is an excellent album. The album is soul and alternative music influenced and Duffy was the first Welsh lady to top the British singles chart since Bonnie Tyler with Total Eclipse Of The Heart in 1983. She was born in Bangor in North Wales in 1984 and her parents separated when she was 10. Apparently her stepfather's life was in danger and they had to live in a safe house for a while and she ran away to be with her father. Several members of her family wouldn't speak to her for years afterwards. Her father's partner had taken out a contract on her stepfather and as a result had to serve a prison sentence. She doesn't play any particular musical instrument. The best track is probably Mercy  but she also had a huge hit with Warwick Avenue. The latter was based on an experience in London when she struggled to make sense of the London Underground system. She won 3 Brit Awards & 1 Grammy for the work on this album. Adele cited her as a major influence in her acceptance speech at the 2009 Brit Awards. She did have an acting role in the 2010 film Patagonia and is currently taking a extended break from her work. The film is about someone journeying from Patagonia in Argentina to Wales. There is a huge Welsh community in Patagonia with many people still speaking Welsh there. This is one of my favorite albums and she did do a follow up album which wasn't as successful but still pretty good. She has a university degree in commercial art.

Meet The Vamps - The Vamps

I am reviewing the pop album Meet The Vamps by The Vamps which is a very good album. The Vamps are a new group who have recently achieved  quite a lot of success. Their debut single charted at number 2 on the UK Singles Chart and was kept off the top by One Republic. Their follow up single reached number 3 in the UK Chart. Their album also charted at number 2 on the UK Album Chart and was kept off the top by Paolo Nutini. Two of the members met on You Tube and they subsequently met the 3rd on Facebook and met the 4th member through a mutual friend. They have released their 1st single in the States and very much used social media sites to get exposure and subsequently a recording contract. Their 2 singles were nominated for Best Singles at the World Music Awards. They have recorded a track with Demi Lovato whom they have also been a supporting act to at her concerts and it looks set to be their next single. They have also supported The Wanted. They are signed to Mercury Records and this album is better than I expected. Wild Heart is probably the best track on it and there is a good variety of different types of songs. It's probably not a classic album but is really good. There is a nice bit in the video to Wild Heart when someone is lying still made up to look like a corpse and it turns out he is merely sleeping off a wild party and just been done up to look that way for a joke. It's quite original. I think I would recommend this album and I am sure The Vamps are going to be huge.

Facebook For Business Owners

The book I read to research this post was Facebook For Business Owners by Tom Corson-Knowles which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This is a fairly short book about running business and fan pages on Facebook and also advertising on there. If you run an advert it is cheaper if the link connects to another page with in Facebook and also the country of the customer is a major factor on the price of the ad. For example Mexico is much cheaper than the USA. It's probably better to advertise for sales rather than for fans or followers as Facebook ranks the page lower if you do that. If you start a business page and get 25 fans straight away Facebook gives you that URL name officially which is important as otherwise someone can take it. It's not just businesses either that have fan pages, many authors and charities do too. It is also possible to use an ecommerce plug in on your business or fan page like Payvement and many of these are free to set up and just pay a commision on sales. This book is well written and I did quite enjoy reading it. It's the kind of book that fires you up with enthusiasm to run a business on Facebook. All the Fortune 500 companies market themselves on Facebook and it is much more cost effective than conventional advertising. The author Tom is only 22 but a highly successful business man who has published quite a lot of books on Kindle. I think I'd recommend this book probably mostly to people considering marketing something like a business on Facebook.

Marketing

The book i read to research this post was Marketing: An Introduction by Philip Kotler et al which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book was published in 1987 so for example doesn't contain anything about online advertising. It is a specially low priced book aimed at the student market and does a credible job of explaing the basics of marketing. Marketing is a lot more than simply selling stuff, as it encompasses things like pricing, customer care and after service, not to mention advertising and branding. An interesting example of how marketing could would was the merger of Dart & Kraft Foods in the early 80's where the latter wanted to diversify away from foods which could be a volatile market. Both companies had a wide range of products with Dart tending to do household products like superglue for example. They poured money into the lines that were profitable and saw there profits increase and the lines that weren't making money they sold. The latter happened to such an extent many questioned whether the merger was a good idea but the share price for Kraft went up 5 fold between 1982 and 1986. Many large companies have specialists in things like PR, advertising, branding as well as marketing and I think they are the kind of people who should read it. The book is almost 600 pages and while it is a bit dated is certainly interesting. I quite enjoyed reading it and if like me you see it being sold cheap is a good buy.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part C

This is the 3rd installment in my blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn doing the video training course by VTC on this software. I am going to be looking at dynamic connectors and flowcharts. Control + 3 is the shortcut for connector which does the dynamic connections. Alternatively you can use home/ connector. If you drag a connection to the outer part of a shape it will always be connected to that point even if you move it around. If you drag to the centre of the shape it will take the shortest route and the attachment point will move if the shape is moved. If you look in view/ autoconnect and tick the check box you will get the autoconnect feature and if the mouse cursor comes close to a shape arrows will appear to signify it can connect to that shape. You simply click on the arrow. The shape menu lets you click on a shape and if click home/ change shape it will change the shape but retain the properties like colour etc. Quick styles lets you change the properties to something pre defined and is also under home. If you click file/ new it takes you into the templates and predefined drawings including flow charts. Obviously there are more options for this in the professional version. You choose a predefined flow chart and then drag and drop the shapes on to the workspace. There is a design/ orientation command which can position the shape either landscape or portrait style. You usually click on a shape and then type to add text. Many of the flowcharts have their own tab when selected. The cross functional flowchart or swim lane flowchart on account of its similarity to swim lanes is a chart that shows who is responsible for what in addition to showing processes and each swim lane is labelled with the person's name and the person's tasks are placed in the relevant swim lane or column. In file/ new you can do a search for a particular flowchart in the search box. If you click on chart/ import the command is a wizard where you can either import data from something like a database or enter it manually. You locate the file and it tries to make sense of it automatically so if for example you do this with job titles it is important the titles aren't changed as it will look for matches.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part B

This is the 2nd installment in my blog post series on Visio 2013 based on what I learn from the video training course by VTC on this software. In this post we are going to look at shapes and text. You can align a shape with a certain position on the screen with the dynamic grid. You can also align a shape with another shape by dragging one of the points on the ruler to line up with the shape you are aligning to. By default when you align 2 shape a set distance from each other, the 3rd shape can be aligned the same distance from one of the shapes by a marker that appears when it is at the right distance. Right clicking a shape brings up a menu of common commands like cut and copy. Control + d duplicates a shape and does so without the need for the paste command. You simply drag and drop it. The pointer tool places connection points on the lines of a shape that can have a line connected to. If you glue the line to the point the line becomes dynamic moving with the shape. If you don't the line becomes static staying in one place even if the shape is moved. You can add text to a shape by simply single clicking the shape and typing text. If you double click it, it does the same but enlarges the shape so you can see what you are righting. The insert/ text box command inserts a holder for the text in the shape you select. The escape key gets you out of text edit mode. Insert/ line changes the line colour of the selected line and insert/ fill changes the fill colour of the selected shape. The home/ connector command adds a connector to a point. You hit escape to return to normal mode. Otherwise it keeps adding connectors. The command home/ pointer can be used to reposition text. Under home are also paragraph and text editing options. They are similar to in programs like word. You can drag and adjust the size of a text block with the mouse. The command home/ group objects groups several selected objects so they become as one. If you click insert/ online pictures there is various clip art and photos etc. Photos once inserted can be formatted like shapes. Under format are the formatting options like brightness and line weight that can be applied to a shape. You can use insert/ screen tip to customize a screen tip which appears when you hover over something with the mouse. There are some screen tips that appear by default and if you go into the screen tip command and delete the text in the screen tip text box it will delete the screen tip. If you go into the settings under file you can also turn screen tips on and off.

Signals and Systems

The book I read to research this post was Signals and Systems For Dummies by Mark Wickert which is quite a good book which I bought from kindle. I might be being a bit unfair on this book as in the intro it says you need knowledge of engineering and things like calculus to understand this book. I probably am not knowledgeable enough on these topics so most of it I didn't understand. What I did understand was interesting though. From what I understand of calculus the basic principle is x and y are related but variable amounts and you are given an equation which shows this. You draw a graph to show when x equals one amount, y equals another and this can be over an infinite scale. When you look at things like voltage and current you can see a similar relationship although it is quite a simple one. Some interesting things it says in the book are if you have 2 amplifiers set to the same frequency, they will cancel each other out. Also if you do a pop concert you may need a linear amplifier to take the vocals and music and broadcast it together without distortion. Of course some pop groups want distortion so use a non-linear amplifier. Another interesting thing is if you are doing a course in signals and systems, maybe as part of electrical engineering and it leads to an exam, there will normally be a few easy questions and it is a good idea to read the paper through and answer these questions first & it's amazing how many students over look this. I think this book is for students doing something like applied maths or physics and I am sure it would help them. I have to say like another book I read a while back, Physics For Dummies, both books aren't typical Dummies in being like anyone can read them, which seems a shame to me. Maybe an idea would be if Mark the author wrote a basic book explaining what you need to understand to grasp this book, that might be an idea. Maybe a Basic Signals and Systems For Dummies.

Raspberry Pi

The book I read to research this post was Programming The Raspberry Pi by Simon Monk which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. The Raspberry Pi is a low powered computer kit that can be used with various distributions of Linux in this book they use Wheazy. This book tells you about how to program your Raspberry Pi for various things using the Python programming language which is supported in Linux so no 3rd party software has to be installed to work with it. The Raspberry Pi is only around $35 and it will use a 2 GB SD card for storage and will work with any USB keyboard and most wireless ones. To work with wireless a 3rd party bit of hardware has to be added and a driver installed. Many people use there Raspberry Pi as a media center and it will work with the more rugged and more configurable Arduino to control stuff. Usually the Pi controls the Arduino and the latter is able to read things like voltages that the Pi can't. This book is only short and primarily an introduction to this topic but is well written. Often when you buy an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi they come in a kit form at a higher price but you get a load of stuff like a USB keyboard, a computer case and other accessories. They have both revolutionized home automation in particular and if you are tempted to write a script in Python before doing so see if their is a script available on the internet either free or to buy and may only need minor alteration. You will save yourself lots of work. I did quite enjoy reading this book and I think I would recommend it especially to people new to the subject.

A Lonely Place - Sam Smith

I am reviewing the album In A Lonely Place by Sam Smith which is an excellent album. Sam is the 3rd cousin of Lily Allen & Alfie Allen and has recently come to prominence as a British singer-songwriter in the last couple of years. He was born in London in 1992 and his mother was an investment banker with a huge salary. She did spend quite a bit of time focusing on Sam's career and did lose her job. She took the company to court for unfair dismissal but lost her case. Sam was first featured on a single by Disclosure which peaked at number 11 in Britain. He subsequently did the single with Naughty Boy which gave him his first British number 1. That is probably the best single on the album. His songs tend to be about unrequited love of which he has had his fair share apparently. He also suffers with OCD or obsessive compulsive disorder. Apparently he does things like check all the taps are turned off prior to leaving the house for fear of flooding. He has had some huge solo singles which are featured on the album and the Critics Choice Brit Award. I think he is the kind of popstar who looks like having a very successful career ahead of him.

Microsoft Visio 2013 Part A

This is the first installment in a blog post series on Microsoft Visio 2013 based on what I learn on the video training course by VTC on this software. Visio comes in 2 versions, standard which does any kind of ordinary drawing but has less templates and professional which lets you link outside pages to your drawing and is a much more heavy duty version complete with a whopping 76 templates. For most people the standard version is fine but the version we are doing in these lessons is professional. Visio is a chart creating tool with drawing and some CAD abilities. Most of your designs will be done at least in part using the shapes and stencils templates. This program has a ribbon much like Microsoft Office 2007 but like 2010 has a back end where if you click File there is a menu but also a whole page of options including settings for setting up the program the way you want. Show/ Grid displays a grid which was shown by default in earlier versions and there is still rulers by default to help place work. If you right click the status bar you can select and deselect toolbars and whether they are shown. Pressing escape brings you back to the standard view although you may have to press it more than once. If you double click on what is being drawn it will fill the page. The stencils and shapes templates are on right of the screen and you can drag and drop these and there is an alignment point surrounding the template to help position it. There are diagonal points to help resize it. Some commands are context sensitive meaning they change according to what work you are doing. Live Preview if you hover over a button temporarily shows the results of pressing it. There is a zoom button complete with pop ups at the bottom of the screen. The one you will use most is zoom extents which shows the full drawing on the workspace.  Pressing the control+ shift + w keys is a short cut to zoom extents. The scroll button on the mouse moves you up and down the screen. If you select a shape with the mouse you can add text to it in a default way. Pressing the control button and using the scroll wheel zooms in and out. Pressing View/ Dynamic Grid turns the alignment line on a selected shape on and off. Finally pressing control + clicking shapes lets you select at one time. I will try and do a 2nd installment later on tonight.

Salesforce.com Part D

This is the 4th and last installment in my blog post series on Salesforce.com based on what I learn from the video training course by live lessons on this SaaS cloud product. I am first of all going to look at editing fields with in this program. You select Accounts/ New choose the type of record and then click save. You can attach an account to social media accounts and also your Chatter feed which is the virtual contact with in Salesforce.com. Edit Layout adds properties to the fields. The read only option displays a field with no editing possible. Normally you can edit a field by double clicking the pencil icon next to it. The recycle bin which prevents immediate loss of data unless emptied stores items for 15 days or until it becomes then auto-deletes. You can drag and drop fields to re-locate them. You can drag them off the screen to delete them. You can also drag and drop sections and fields from the toolbar. If you click the - symbol next to a field it's deleted. I am now going to look at e-mail. Salesforce.com only lets you e-mail contact which should be with in the database in this program anyway. You usually click the recipients name and then send email, then you fill in the fields and click send. There are carbon copy and blind carbon copy options. With the former they can see the other recipients but in the other they are hidden. There is a mass email button where you check or uncheck potential recipients. Apparently e-mails are most likely to be read on tuesday and wednesday mornings. To set a e-mail template click Set Up/ Communication Templates/ E-mail Templates. Fields in brackets auto fill with selected recipients personal details. They call these merge fields. Clicking Products displays the products and you can add products individually or more likely price books. You might have one for wholesale and one for retail. They also might have a minimum price book for sales people who can price something at their discretion but need a minimum price.

Salesforce.com Part C

This is the 3rd installment and continuation in my blog post series on Salesforce.com based on what I learn on the video training course by Live Lessons on this SaaS cloud product. Salesforce.com lets members of your company especially sales people and managers stay in touch. It integrates information so it is easily accessible to any member who needs it. If you look under Home/ Manage Users / Users you will find you can assign permissions to users. A word of caution keep the job titles relevant so that even in several years they still make sense. Different job titles have different permissions. There is also a Queque tab under Manage Users which prioritizes whose work is processed first. If you look in Personal/ Grant Log In Access you will see it grants permission to log in to users. There are various time periods access can be given over normally 1 month is the default. There is also a log in access for technical support for Salesforce.com staff as well as one for 3rd party companies who produce apps. Of course these are for to fix any problems and will normally have a 1 day limit depending on the job being done. If you are on a new computer and when you first sign up and activation e-mail is sent out with a code you must enter. If you log in from somewhere like Starbucks an activation code will be used each time you log on there and the IP address will have to be deleted afterwards. Otherwise it will be stored automatically. If you contact technical support you fill out a case file each time to let them know the problem and this is stored by them. Sales / App Exchange brings up apps which you can download. At the top of the page is also a search box for developers, apps etc. Developers tend to be cheaper than consulting partners who act as middlemen. The latter offer ongoing support for any problems where as developers only deal with that particular app. Developers charge from $50-$125 per hour. In the Salesforce.com help portal  is advice on training. Many of these are thousands of dollars and held as residential ones in lots of places. The classes which are greyed out are for premier support customers only.

Google Drive

The book I read to research this post was An Essential Guide To Google Drive by Murat Yilmaz which is a very good book which I downloaded for free from kindle. One quibble I do have is this book is rather but is very interesting nonetheless. Google Drive is a cloud computing service where you get 5 GB of free storage and pay for anything above that. It integrates with Google Docs which is similar to Microsoft Office and even lets you save in MS Office compatible files. It also contains a form builder by default and there are various other free apps like a map builder and floor plan designer. There is no save button in Google Docs as it saves every step immediately. In Google Drive itself there is various buttons pertaining to things like new folder etc. Going down the screen are opens for displaying files like recent for recently opened etc. You can save any kind of file in there and there are free apps that let you edit many of files like Pixlr which edits photos. I think Google Docs which is particularly suited for home use provides serious competition to Microsoft Office which charges a small monthly fee and OpenOffice which is also free. I did read somewhere else Google brings out several products every month and are one of the biggest technology firms in the world. Google Search is the most visited website in the world. A lot of their wealth though comes from Adsense & Adwords. I really enjoyed this book & I think it is a must have especially when it's free.

Building the Infrastructure For Cloud Security

The book I read to research this post was Building the Infrastructure For Cloud Security by Raghuram Yeluri et al which is an excellent book which I downloaded for free from kindle. This book is about the infrastructure and security that must be provided by Cloud Computing Providers. They are companies that rent out space on their servers to other companies or individuals and often will either provide it free or for a few dollars per month especially with small companies. Some big companies may pay a lot more and may even require an entire server or several servers. These data centers will typically cost around $200 million and have thousands or even millions of clients most of whom will be small companies. One issue is bandwidth and if one client has a lot of traffic will it affect other clients. One way around this is servicing 2 regions from the same data center so that when one region experiences heavy traffic the other region in another part of the world is relatively light. This only works for the biggest providers. Some cloud providers only work with linux while others give several options. Another issue is if one user uploads a virus or worm it can potentially attack other users at least on the same server. Intel have developed open attestation which as the name suggests is an open source standard program for dividing and protecting different clients. Of course things like anti virus and anti spyware software are even more crucial in this kind of situation. A lot of the security is provided by the Cloud Provider. This makes it more difficult but not impossible for potential criminals to hack companies servers due to the huge amount of financial clout these Cloud Providers have and can spend on security. A lot of businesses are starting to use virtualization like VMware. These help limit the damage a virus can do by limiting permissions assigned to that account to just what the user needs. I really enjoyed reading this book which is a decent length and quite informative. Some like me who don't specialize in Cloud security might find it a bit difficult to follow but it's still interesting.

Enterprise Storage

The book I read to research this post was Rethinking Enterprise Storage by Marc Farley which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Note I think this book was free. It is also around 150 pages so is a reasonable length and Marc works for Microsoft so the book tends to be about Windows Azure Storage. Legally a company has to store things like e-mails in case of litigation and until recently many companies thought they were better off not using the cloud for this purpose and used either off-site servers or tape drives. A fairly recent development has been CiS or cloud integrated storage which is where storage software is provided as well as a cloud storage service and with broadband going forward with leaps and bounds with access speed it makes it a viable option. Cloud Computing is where instead of using a server and maybe software etc it is all provided over the internet so you have a virtual machine maintained and regularly upgraded by the cloud provider and merely have to access it on a machine at your company or home. Hybrid Company is even newer and is where maybe software is provided and you can run that your machine in your workplace and that works in conjunction with the cloud service so the might provide storage etc. It's worth noting often versions of these cloud services are provided in a basic version free of charge with a premium version you can upgrade to and pay for. So you can save a lot of money. This book tells you all about the Microsoft products although I think it's a shame it doesn't give you some idea how it compares to Amazon Web Services and what they offer. Also some like healthcare providers might find this kind of service unsuitable as they have to follow more stringent guidelines about things like information disclosure and could be sued if they use a cloud service that might not have to follow the same strict rules. The rules aren't as strict for companies. I did really enjoy this book and think it is well written. Finally the book does delve a little into all the data collected on social media sites like Facebook and how that is potentially providing companies with huge amounts of data about there products which is still in its infancy but the marketing opportunities for companies are huge.

3D Printing

The book I read to research this post was 3D Printing An Introduction by Michael Wiechert which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is only intended as a brief introduction to what is quite a complex subject. This is a very new technology and 3D Printers start from $500 but are coming down in price all the time. The smallest ones are the size of a microwave oven but I have seen a handheld one. They normally only work with one material but are revolutionizing the field of design and building a prototype of something which can be done at a fraction of the price where previously machines had to be specially built to manufacture each part. We are a long way off seeing the replicators that can manufacture and copy anything like in Star Trek. There are very expensive ones though that work with things like living tissue and titanium. If possible you are better off buying something from a shop than 3D printing it as it is much cheaper and requires a lot of work to design it. Some people who design things in this way use programs like AutoCAD & Photoshop depending on what they are printing but there are many ready done designs you can use as well as 3D Scanners which simplify the process but are also expensive. If you use software to do 3D printing there is a lot to learn which puts many off. There are also software plug ins required like 123D. This is a very interesting book and this is probably something that will become more and more mainstream as time goes on. I did really enjoy this book.

Ethical Hacking

The book I read to research this post was Ethical Hacking Secrets Guide by Govind Parihar which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book is a kind of manual to an educational course in ethical hacking that takes you through it step by step. It's ideal for people new to the subject and is fairly easy to follow. Govind teaches a course in this subject. There is good advice for people trying to secure their computers against attack like using specialist dictionaries like star wars ones to come up with secure but memorable passwords. The book is primarily for pen testers who are paid to try and hack a computer network and tests its secureness. It tells you all about your options regarding tools. One of the best is lophtcrack which looks for clues to try and enable you to crack the password. It tells you all about the legal aspects and how someone can't be prosecuted for a hacking crime unless they can prove that person knew he was trespassing on a network he wasn't supposed to. Some hackers say they are doing it for educational means but it causes a lot of trouble for the system administrator who can only assume the hacker is malevolent. The book is a decent length but the writing on each page tends to be quite brief. I did really enjoy reading this book which helps make a difficult subject readable. Some hackers cause damage by using low level languages like python and C to create huge files to flood a network called a denial of service attack. Higher level languages check file sizes. Most viruses are written in java and many computers use a java sandbox which limits the virus to a small area on a computer where it can't do any damage. Some viruses use active x controls which can't be limited in this way. This idea of limiting what something can do on a computer is often referred to as virtualization. This is becoming very big especially in business computing.

Warfare At Sea

The book I read to research this post was Warfare At Sea edited by Peter Darman which is a very good book which I bought at a car boot sale. This book was published in 1997 so you might see it for sale secondhand and I think is probably a good buy. It looks at the various technologies used by the major navies around the world. Stuff like Exocet missiles which were responsible for causing the Royal Navy problems during the Falklands War. They went on to become one of the top selling surface to surface missiles due to their effectiveness. Also it looks at things like the Super Aircraft Carriers like USS Nimitz & SSN Submarines which were so expensive only five countries had the latter in their navies. This book came probably before China started to emerge as a potential superpower. In fact in 1991 she only had 4 SSN's. It also looks at Trident and Polaris and how Britain replaced the ailing rocket motors on her Polaris missiles in order to keep them in service although has since purchased Trident. It looks at the amphibious assault ships like HMS Fearless which are designed for landing troops and equipment complete with helipad although rather ugly to look at. Obviously priority goes on it being functional. Apparently a Trident submarine in one missile can deliver more kilotons of damage than was dropped on Kuwait & Iraq during the First Gulf War & the payload of the submarine in total is more deadly than the total bombing of World War 2, Korean War & Vietnam War combined. One thing that concerns the various navies is the airspace will be saturated with missiles in a time of war that will overwhelm there defences so that whatever they do some will get through. Something that will partly deflect this is the ability of the ships to fire chaff to confuse the missiles incoming. I really enjoyed this book which is quite interesting and if I had to pick a fault it would be it is somewhat short at only around 90 pages. The technology in the book is quite fascinating.

Thrive

The book I am reviewing is Thrive by Arianna Huffington which is a very good book which I bought on kindle. This book is semi-autobiographical and Arianna is famous for creating the Huffington Post which started out as a current affairs blog and she got lots of guest writer's to write posts often for a relatively small fee but the site became extremely and nowadays it is seen as quite an honor to write a post for them and can increase traffic to your blog quite considerably. Prior to writing this book she had been working all hours and getting little sleep mainly because they were trying to launch international versions of the Huffington Post in countries like Germany, Canada & South Korea. She subsequently had to do a talk for graduating students at a college which she takes very seriously on account of having children herself at college and it made her question if she was right to be working all hours and she subsequently sold the Huffington Post and has written this book about her attempts to get her life back on track and some of the techniques she used. She does talk about women traditionally have lived longer than men and with competition in the workplace and more in general being expected from women, this gap is narrowing all the time. You have to find a balance between work and what matters in your life and rest and relaxation. It's no accident the current epidemic of hyperactivity and ADHD among children and in general they get 1 hour less sleep every night and we put them under more and more pressure to be productive in their waking hours. This means they have less time to wind down before bedtime and they are less likely to get enough deep or REM sleep a major factor in ADHD. She does write about a lot of the things she finds has helped her relax and sleep, things like no caffeine after 2pm, keeping your bedroom cool and darker and in general pampering yourself a little so your subconscious knows you are preparing to go to bed. Another thing she mentions is the abuse of technology where people repeatedly check their e-mail and social media accounts and often don't have many proper friends because they spend so much time on sites like Facebook and Twitter with their followers. It is a really good book that I quite enjoyed.

The Internet Underground

The book I read to research this post was The beginners Guide To The Internet Underground by Jeremy Martin which is an excellent book which I bought from Kindle. This book encompasses all the dark side of the internet like the darknet, hacking and internet anonymity in general. There is a legitimate side to all this in that people living in oppressive regimes might want to hide their internet activity and might want unbiased news. There is something called the onion ring or tor browser that helps keep you anonymous and can be found at thetorproject.org. There are also live operating systems that run from a cd and don't leave any trace even on the local hard drive. Two of these are Whoix & Tail OS. On the daker side you can find almost anything imagineable on the darknet sites even assassination services that can be purchased with anonymous bit coins and the author does recommend reporting anything dodgy you come across even if only to keep yourself out of trouble with law enforcement. Probably the most well known darknet storefront is at The Silk Road at http://silkroad6ownowfk.onion. This has cleaned up its act a bit recently to avoid being shut so there are much dodgier sites. There is a website at www.portableapps.com that lets you set up your own darknet storefront. I've only included this stuff for information purposes and there are far more sites in the book. Many of the darknet sites use the onion extension and of course they aren't indexed by Google etc. I think these kind of books are worth reading if only to keep you safe from things like identity theft on the internet. It does go into hacking and how practically every political or terrorist group has its own hackers. Sometimes hackers just leave a message on websites saying you need to upgrade your security and other times of course it's a lot more sinister. Nobody knows how much money is lost through companies being hacked and often they are reluctant to report it for fear of bad publicity. I really enjoyed reading this book and found it really interesting.

This Machine Kills Secrets

The book I read to research this post was This Machine Kills Secrets which is one of the best books I have read connected to computing and which I bought from a local bookstore. This book is about the emergence of websites like Wikileaks and how hackers and cypherpunks have released lots of secret information into the public domain. Even the Russian Mafia haven't been safe from these disclosures which have been on a worldwide scale. Julian Assange one of the founders of Wikileaks is one of the best hackers in the world and prior to running that website which was at least partly responsible for the Arab Spring Revolutions and has apparently hacked many computers in his pursuit of secret information. A lot of what hackers do is mostly social engineering where they phone an organisation's help desk and try to get them to disclose passwords and other information. Wikileaks for example released that the US State Department disliked the President of Tunisia and probably wouldn't support him. For people in countries with totalitarian regimes visiting sites like Wikileaks is vital for them to know what is going on but risky as they can be taken away and tortured. The Tor browser was vital for these people as on most sites it hid your IP address and location and there are volunteers who contribute their IP address and locations to be used as a mask. Another important thing was the release as open source of PGP or pretty good privacy which allowed files to be encrypted in a way that was mostly secure. Another protocol worked by having a kind of false layer where you could give an alternate key and there would appear an apparently innocent designed to fool interrogators in totalitarian regimes who might torture someone for the key to his encryption. I really enjoyed reading this book which also looks at the problems faced by websites like Wikileaks like companies like the Bank of America & Paypal refusing to process donations being sent to them effectively cutting off most of their funding. Also some people who passed on information to Wikileaks have been prosecuted for various reasons or are awaiting trial. Wikileaks itself was hacked and all it's files were placed on Pirate Bay a file sharing site in a downloadable form because someone failed to use a secure enough password.

Android Tablets

The book I read to research this post was Android Tablets For Dummies by Dan Gookin which is a very good book which I bought on kindle. This book looks at the manner different types of Android tablet and describes some of the differences. Android is the most popular operating system for tablet or smart-phone. Google bought a company called Android that more or less had developed this operating system although they have since added to it. It is based around Linux which many think is superior in many ways to Windows. Like Linux there is a whole community developing software and apps for these often free of charge. At the time this book came out there was a social media app that was included and was integral to the operating system but with apps like Twitter & Facebook they were free downloads but they could be included in later versions. Some Android tablets require you to set up a Google account in the initial set up, others require you to download the latest version of Android and others merely require that you connect to a wireless network. There has been some controversy over very cheap Android tablets with limited features and I think you are better off getting a decent model if only so most apps are compatible with it. Some apps only work with certain models like the Nexus 7 and I think if there is a specific for dummies book on your model of Android tablet you are probably better off getting that. I think Dan has authored quite a few similar for dummies books to this on various Android devices among others. I really enjoyed reading this book and think it might even be of interest if you want something to keep you abreast of the latest technology which is mainly why I read it. The documentation that comes with Android tablets is generally poor and this book also fulfills a need there. Generally speaking I find the for dummies books helpful and they do present information in a light-hearted and easy to understand manner.

Adobe Illustrator CS6 Part L

This is the 12th and last installment in my blog post series on Adobe Illustrator CS6 which is based on what I learn from the video training course by Infinite Skills on this software. If you want to create a blend from one shape to another choose Object/Blend/Make & you also have the option of Object/Blend/Options, which is more configurable. You can specify how many steps it should take and this has applications in animation in Flash Movies where you export to Flash but we won't cover that here. The Mesh tool can create a kind of 3d type gradient usually in white when applied to a shape. It uses complicated algorithms to achieve this. The steps are you select the Mesh tool, then the color & then where you want it applied. You can shift click and apply the mesh effect to more than one area at once. The Save For Web option is to optimize a page for the web or for a program like Powerpoint. As part of the process it compresses the file and shows a preview so you can see if the quality is degraded. A web page will usually use RGB color. Commercial printing requires CMYK color. As part of the process in optimizing your page you choose a filetype. GIF is likely to be phased out soon in favor of PNG-8 and both have a transparency option but it is a matter of the web browsers supporting it. You can reduce the colors especially where a drawing is predominantly solid colors. You click save when finished. If it is a photo or photo-like you normally use JPEG although it doesn't have a transparent option so normally you will choose white or black instead. PNG-24 is lossless and keeps the quality but does reduce the file size although not to the same extent as other file types. If you save something as a PDF you choose Save As and select PDF from the file type. To print something you will usually double click the artboard tool and configure the various options. That brings us to the end of this series and I hope you have enjoyed reading it.

Adobe Illustrator CS6 Part K

This is the 11th installment in my blog post series on Adobe Illustrator CS6 which is based on what I learn from the video training course by Infinite Skills on that software. The effects with in Illustrator are split between Photoshop effects & Illustrator effects with the former working with imported photos although the latter won't work. The feature clipping mask can be found at Object/Clipping Mask/Make, and it protects part of an image although is on a separate layer. You have to convert photos into vector images to edit them. You can use clipping masks with text and simply enter the text then select it and convert it. Generally you can apply a gaussian blur to something to make it blurred but it doesn't with the clipping mask because it is vector based so always has sharp edges. You have to use the opacity mask with in the transparency palette. Only one item at a time can be used as a clipping mask. If you group several objects and try to apply a clipping mask it is only applied to the last selected object. The way around this is to group them, then select Object/Compound Path/Make, and make it into a compound path then apply the clipping mask. Photography on an experimental level is going vector based and when you think of it a photo isn't that different to a picture. Future versions of photo-editing software will probably be vector based. You can use auto trace on your toolbar near the top to trace a photo and use the auto color option to include the color. This is called live trace. There is also some advanced options. Image trace converts the photo into a sketch and you can use live color to paint it. To convert it to a live paint compatible picture choose Object/Live Paint/Make . To close the shapes so you can paint them like when the lines are too faint to register choose Object/Live Paint/Gap. The next installment which I'll do later today will be the last in the series.

The New Google Underground

The book I read to research this post was The New Google Underground by Marc Charles which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book makes the mind boggle with all its ideas on how to make money online. Apparently lots of people are writing books and e-books on internet marketing but things are moving so fast that many of these publications are getting out of date. This book is a wealth of information and much of it is about using mini websites typically less than 10 pages to sell a product per site. Many of these sites can be set up free if you don't mind compulsory adverts. Another good idea is reviewing books on sites like Amazon as an affiliate and getting commission for selling them. This includes best sellers. There is also pay per click sites like Google Adsense & Ask.com where you bid for search terms and your ad appears when someone does a search for that term. There are also flat rate PPC sites like Exact Seek & Tygo. There are also second tier and cheaper PPC's which can be as little as a 1/10 cent per search term per click. Try Look Smart, Go Click & Epilot.  Google typically introduces 4 new products or services per month which includes Orkut, Google + &  Blog Search. You can try putting a relevant article in an e-zine which can drive some serious traffic although normally they want a unique article. Try these e-zine directories http://www.ezine-dir.com & ezinelisting.com. There is also last minute remnant advertising a cable and satellite tv one is http://advertisingconnection.com. Some newspaper remnant ads are at http://www.usnewspapers.com. You can get e-zine remnants at http://marksmalley.com. There are absolutely loads of resources like these in the book.  There is also newswire services like http://www.ereleases.com, http://www.businesswire.com & one I use is http://copromote.com. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I think it is one of the best books I've read on this topic.