Computers, Internet & the Web

The Big Red Fez - by Seth Godin

A book of essential truths about building better websites. Everyone who surfs the web knows that some sites are better than others. Now marketing guru Seth Godin, the author of the business bestseller Permission Marketing and the man Business Week called the 'Ultimate Entrepreneur for the Information Age', identifies and illustrates the crucial guiding principles behind creating websites that satisfy visitors and keep them coming back for more. Once upon a time it was believed that web surfers had plenty of time, knew exactly what they wanted, and made considered decisions with each click. Before long, however marketers asserted that surfers that surfers were busy, ill-informed and impatient. Data would later reveal that the marketers were right. Thus, according to Seth Godin, anyone building a website should think of every visitor as a monkey - in a big red fez. Monkeys want to know one thing: Where's the banana? If the banana isn't easy to see and easy to get, the monkey is as good as gone. Expanding upon this premise, Godin uses real-life examples to explain why no website sould try to be all things to all visitors, how and why the mantra 'customers first' applies to websites, why it's incredibly important to think proactively about serving online customers, and more. Packed with wisdom and practical applications, The Big Red Fez is an essential tool for anyone involved in the web.

Blown to Bits - by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster

Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster think that the Internet can blow away practically any business and in Blown to Bits they examine how the new economy is "deconstructing" industries such as newspapers, auto- retailing and banking while creating new opportunities for others. They write that the "glue that holds today's value chains and supply chains together" is melting and that even "the most stable of industries, the most focused of business models and the strongest of brands can be blown to bits by new information technology."

Evans and Wurster, both executives of the Boston Consulting Group, argue that the Internet demands new business strategies because it provides companies tremendous "reach" for customers without sacrificing "richness" or the quality of the information about products and services. The book shows how some businesses--Microsoft and Intuit in personal finance, Dell Computer in retailing and the Automotive Network Exchange in manufacturing supply--are thriving amid a rapid expansion of connectivity and thewidespread acceptance of new technical standards on the World Wide Web. Clearly written and tough-minded, Blown to Bits is required reading for business leaders, entrepreneurs, strategists and others concerned about the new economics of the information age. --Dan Ring,Amazon.com

Dot Con: the Real Story of Why the Internet Bubble Burst - by John Cassidy

John Cassidy's Dot.con is the most sweeping and definitive assessment published thus far of the stock market mania that swept this country in the late 1990s. Cassidy, who covers economics and finance for The New Yorker finds many seeds for the boom: Vannerver Bush's "memex" machine, the "intellectual forerunner of the World Wide Web"; increasing popularity of 401K and IRAs, which introduced millions of Americans to the equity markets, giving rise to a "stock market culture"; and the attention and hype in the late 80s and early 90s surrounding the "information superhighway" promoted by the likes of Al Gore, Newt Gingrich and Nicolas Negroponte. When Netscape went public in 1995, the Internet-mania began a five-year run that was fueled in part by the media, the policies promoted by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, the rise of day trading and the deluge of IPOs brought to market by firms such as Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch and their analyst cheerleaders Mary Meeker and Henry Blodget. For anyone who got caught up in the mania and foundered in its eventual crash, Dot.con is a bittersweet trip down memory lane that Cassidy captures just perfectly. -- Harry C Edwards

Mac OS X: the Missing Manual - by David Pogue

Widely esteemed Mac authority David Pogue weighs in on the latest offering from Cupertino with Mac OS X: The Missing Manual . It's a fact-packed romp through the operating system and the extras that come with it, made resoundingly more readable by the depth of Pogue's knowledge, his familiarity with Mac history, and his eagerness to engage novices as members of the Mac user community. Unlike most books about Mac OS X, this one explores its Unix-like underpinnings (the Apple implementation is called Darwin) pretty thoroughly. However, on the logic that if you wanted to use Unix, you would, Pogue emphasises the traditional, graphical Mac interface over the Terminal window.

Pogue, who's written about Macs for years writes about Macs at the user level with clarity. He's also quite good at dealing with the numerous options and variations that apply to Mac procedures, and makes very good use of sidebars for clarifying details. In a section on printing, for example, Pogue explains why there's no longer an option to turn off background printing (true multitasking has rendered the option obsolete). There's also good coverage of the online iTools, tailored to people unfamiliar with integrating remote resources into their personal computing environments. --David Wall

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book - by Adobe Creative Team

The best-selling Photoshop tutorial, now fully updated for version 7. This book covers all the new features of Photoshop 7, including the new File Browser, Healing Brush, the Rollovers palette, and more.
A lesson-based curriculum is designed to let readers learn at their own pace.
Easy-to-use project files on CD-ROM provide the perfect complement to the text. Photoshop 7, Adobes latest release of its powerful digital imaging software, continues to set the standard in the world of print, Web, and graphic design. Adobe Photoshop 7.0 Classroom in a Book is thoroughly updated to cover all the new features of Photoshop 7, including new brushes, color correction commands, and file management tools. After an introductory tour of the software, the books sixteen lessons, complete with step-by-step instructions, helps readers create specific projects while review questions at the end of each chapter help reinforce these new skills. The introductory lessons help new users become comfortable with the Photoshop interface, while experienced Photoshop pros will appreciate the more complex projects involving production issues, color management, Web graphics, and photo retouching.
The Adobe Creative Team is made up of members of Adobes User Education Group. They take their expertise in training users to work with Adobe products, combine it with the creative talents of the Adobe Photoshop team, and add the valuable content of the CD-ROM to make a unique learning package from Adobe Systems