Publications and Media Books

I have some programming skills and a budding web designer. I was really impressed with this body of work, especially considering the time frame it covers. The value for me was that the reader gets an understanding of what the "artist" has rendered. You you have read any of Paul Rand's essays, you can identify the significance of this work. This book is not a quick read, but a meal of ideas to be savored. I am still savoring this book, and it is really one of the best books I have enjoyed.

Thanks!

I hate to be the one to go against the other reviews, but I had to with this one. I just didnt see why people liked the book. I found the designs to be very techy and old school...mostly examples of what computer design used to encompass. I wasnt inspired by any of the work in the this HUGE book. If you want cutting edge inspiration, look elsewhere.

I have always been impressed with John Maeda's work: "Tap, Type, Write" is beautifully interactive, "Design By Numbers" is extremely innovative. Professor Maeda's newest endeavor, Maeda@Media is no different. It is a monument to Information Aesthetics and an icon for Information Society at large. The book itself, is painstakenly crafted with different types of papers. The images inside evoke a million poignant words. Professor Maeda's insights are invaluable. John Maeda uncovers a rare beauty in computing.

I have nothing but respect for John Maeda.

He's one of those rare people who stands at the cusp of three or four disciplines - say graphic design, programming, information architecture, and fine art - and exerts a gentle gravitational attraction on the long-sundered fields. He's a true practitioner of what E.O. Wilson calls "consilience," and I find his work unfailingly beautiful.

"Maeda@Media" is a far more comprehensive introduction to and summary of his work than his earlier ""Design by Numbers." It is also an exquisitely produced volume, and if it is occasionally self-indulgent (spending 60-odd pages on a graphic that spells out "IT IS CUSTOMARY THAT THE SIDES OF A PAGE BE NEGLECTED IN FAVOR OF ITS FRONT AND BACK" on their edges) - well, I'll forgive that. It's a gorgeous tome.

Maeda is doing vital and inspiring work; this book should be a kick in the pants to all those of us who work in any of the disparate fields his work touches upon: only connect.

This book directly addressed my thesis. I found it incredibly comprehensive and informative. It was direct, to-the-point, and easy to read and analyze. Perfect source for a research paper that focuses on mass media and political science questions. Authors cited are strong and reputable. Overall, a wonderful book that every journalism student should read and consult.

While it is apparent that the authors are knowledgable about the subject of media and the effects on population, it is also readily apparent that they do not posess an English degree. Put bluntly, the text is difficult to read and sentences lack fluidity and eloquence. In addition, the studies mentioned are often repetitive and do not offer anyhting new to the subject being presented. It's informational but arduous reading.

UCLA political science professor Shanto Iyengar and veteran journalist Richard Reeves deliver a great read filled with thought-provoking contributions and commentary. The book is balanced with delightfully entertaining (and revealing) personal experiences from seasoned reporters such as Lou Cannon, and scholarly analysis on the impact of the media on the political landscape of today.
Reeves' lifetime of experience endows this book with a depth of understanding rarely found in books on the media. His easy-to-read introductions set against the backdrop of Iyengar's comprehensive exegisis of the science of journalism provide a complete picture the fourth branch of government.
In addition to being a great journalism textbook, this volume is a page-turner for anyone interested in the complex interrelationships between those that make the news and those that report it.

This book is for those who wants to teach their student or children very basic drawing.

I bought this as a present for my six year old. She loves to draw and has a passion for art. I feared the book might be too advanced for her skills however I was wrong. The book was a hit! In fact the whole family is having fun drawing pictures!

The audio book is a great addition to my listening collection. With the changes in the PMBOK regarding risk management, this audio book gives an overview of the subject that is an excellent accompaniment to your other reading. I definitely recommend this selection.

Reviewed by Regan Windsor for Reader Views (9/06)

An essential component to any project is a strong understanding of risk. However, the components of risk are often misunderstood and subjective. Not so anymore! In this live recording of "Innovative Strategies in Risk Management" David Hulett provides the listener with the tools and processes necessary to understand and quantify risk from both the Project Management team and customer perspective.

With a strong focus on the probability component of risk, the impact is often overlooked. However, many people and corporations may be impact adverse, meaning they are more interested in minimizing or negating the impact with less regard for the probability. The example given involved the presenter going into his doctors' office for immunizations before travelling abroad. The doctor let him know what immunizations were recommended, stating "Oh, and you can have this other one but your probability of getting it is low." When asked what would happen if he were that 1 in 1000 the doctor stated "Oh, you'd die. But the probability of getting it is only 1 in 1000." He got the immunization.

The presentation serves as a strong reminder of the importance of understanding the customer and minimizing assumptions. By increasing your knowledge of risk and the tools available to better understand and manage risk, you increase the likelihood of customer satisfaction and decrease the likelihood of failure. The presentation goes into some additional detail on Critical Path Methodology and the importance of using the right tools to manage the schedule. Of key importance is staying alert to activities with a high risk of delaying the project. There would have been some value in providing access to the slide presentations as reference is often made to some of the detailed components, however, the listener can still derive much value without them.

"Innovative Strategies in Risk Management" highlights the importance of developing a quantitative process for analyzing and managing risk. Breaking the analysis down into the three main components of a project, Schedule, Cost, and Scope, further increases value as each project can then assign more importance to one or more areas depending on the needs of the customer. This presentation provides valuable insight and informative tools for understanding and managing risk in projects.

The audio book is a great addition to my listening collection. We all know what it is like to finish a project behind schedule and over budget... This audio book focuses on was to handle an ever changing WBS. I definitely recommend this selection.

Reviewed by Stephanie Rollins for Reader Views (8/06)

"Managing in the Face of Ever-Changing Requirement" by Kevin Aguanno deals with the inevitable forces of change. He tells how to actually finish a project with all the adjustments change requires. His background is in software design management. His examples are based upon his experience in the software industry, but the lessons are for all to learn.

Aguanno points out that we must adjust projects to the internal and external forces that produce change or else customer satisfaction will decrease. He also acknowledges the financial impacts of change. How much value is the change going to add? Do the customers really need this change? Do they still need the project? Asking questions such as these will keep the project in alignment with the company's goals and objectives.

Aguanno explains the aspects of agile management and how they help adapt a project to changes. The backbone to this paradigm is to focus on the outcome rather than the processes. The focus should be taken off of documentation and put on the end result of the project. Most importantly, project managers need to be a liaison between the team members and the barriers that are hindering project progress.

In order to keep management's confidence in the project team, Aguanno recommends routinely showing the executives the project's progress. This lets them know of the impacts of change, also. When the project has ended, there will be no surprises.

There are two project flows that address change. One requires finishing the project as designed initially. Then make necessary changes. The other requires that the project development stop whenever a change may need to take place. The project design is analyzed, changes are made, and progress proceeds.

Since change is universally inevitable, all project managers will benefit from Aguanno's helpful hints. "Managing in the Face of Ever-Changing Requirements" is a perfect way to make the most of a long commute or work-out.

McQuail's masterful tome on communications theory is a respected standard for college students, and there's a reason this book has gone through so many editions. Just about everything a communications major will ever study is introduced and summarized here, and the number of different subjects covered is quite impressive. But on the flip side of that coin, there is a structural problem with cramming the material from four years worth of college courses into one book, no matter how robust it is. This text suffers from two inverse problems - there are too many subjects covered, while each one is not fleshed out enough. In short, it's impossible to be as inclusive as McQuail is attempting to be. Meanwhile, McQuail's writing is not only rushed and indistinct, which is predictable for a book that tries to consolidate an entire field of knowledge, but he is also guilty of dry, wooden prose and a severe shortage of elaborative examples. McQuail is also prone to textboxes and tables that appear helpful and illustrative at first, but are actually useless tabulated reproductions of exactly what has already been stated in prose form. This book's sheer exhaustive inclusiveness still makes it a useful encyclopedic reference work that communications students will find useful over the long term. But in the short term, this book merely offers indistinctness and confusion. [~doomsdayer520~]

Well, if you are either a media study student or an orninary citizen, this book will be a fundamental guide for your understanding of the various social activities. Once you read the theories simply explained, you will notice what you have not realized how much you were influenced by the media themselves.

With the deep understanding of the media theories in the book, I bet you could enrich your life and prepare for the better life ahead.

In reviewing the audio CD from Mark Kozak-Holland I was very interested in how he relates Winston Churchill's methods to modern day techniques such as the "dashboard". Knowing little to nothing about Churchill before listening - I now want to read more. On the negative side - the audio CD had a few moments where there was a reference to slides that you cannot see when listening to the CD. If you look beyond the quality of the audio and listen to the content - you will be pleased.

Reviewed by William E. Cooper for Reader Views (8/06)

In listening to this CD, which is less than an hour long, Mr. Kozak-Holland makes the attempt to create a comparison with Winston Churchill's management style and decision making skill with today's organizations and issues and challenges they face. He succeeds. Using the crisis faced by England at the start of World War 11, and the absolute requirement to make decisions at unprecedented levels, Mr. Kozak-Holland makes a compelling case for using the Churchill leadership style in today's organizations. He describes the need for true leadership in times of rapid growth and change, for people, systems, and finances.

Churchill succeeded in circumstances that were far more critical and dangerous than faced by many businesses today. His entire country and its people were at severe risk and he won. He won because of the character and principles he brought. By applying them in our world today, under important but far less critical circumstances, we can demonstrably show one success after another.

There is a real learning opportunity in listening to this CD. Good job Mr. Kozak-Holland.

Reviewed by Vicki Landes for Reader Views (3/08)

For authors Peter and Nancy Garber, their over-30-year marriage has provided them with more than just love and companionship - it's also given them 101 reasons to write a book. By combining common sense and good-natured humor, their new release "101 Things You Should Never Say To Your Spouse" lists some of the `don'ts' with regard to communicating with your loved one.

"101 Things You Should Never Say To Your Spouse" is an entertaining look at some potentially serious issues that can come up during the course of a marriage. From more minor infractions such as an unhealthy attachment to the television control to ultimate romance killers like "you look fat in that," the Garbers list each tabooed comment with a short reason why it should be avoided. Sayings are also organized into `feelings,' `opinions,' `tastes,' `communication,' `schedules,' `time off,' `roles,' `compatibility,' `lifestyles,' and `romance' for easy reference.

Super quick to read and fun to share with your significant other, "101 Things You Should Never Say To Your Spouse" is a great gift idea for engagement or wedding parties. With advice based on good common sense and a level of respect for the other person, the information given is extremely brief before moving on to the next item - not adequate for those couples in need of more professional marital assistance. However, those in healthy relationships will probably find the book very enjoyable and affable to peruse together...while maybe even learning they are guilty of using a few of the offensive statements themselves. Straightforward and honest, the Garbers present some good advice on how to love another person while ensuring they see that love in action. Further, "learning to be more aware of what you say and more sensitive to your spouse's feelings can only serve to strengthen your marriage." And that's the most important thing.

Peter and Nancy Garber have learned a thing or two about how to make a marriage work but just as important, they've learned what not to do! Avoid 101 different `open mouth, insert foot' scenarios with their helpful book, "101 Things You Should Never Say To Your Spouse." You just might end up with an entirely new way of looking at your communication!

A bit dry and not exactly riveting reading, this book worked well as a source for my masters thesis on women advertising copywriters. For that application is was outstanding. Anyone reading this book would pretty much have to enjoy saturating themselves workings ad agencies and creative departments. This is a highly specialized that book and does not look at ad agencies in a general way, but explores the dynamics of creative teams (copywriters/art directors) in London using interviews, research and analysis very specifically. This book is academic in tone. I found this book extemely helpful to my research and recommend it to anyone who needs to a source for the inner workings and sexual dynamics of advertising creative departments.

Reviewed by Regan Windsor for Reader Views (3/07)

Agile methods have gained momentum in the software development world but have been slow to penetrate the database development world. Scott Ambler describes how this is slowly changing and what database developers can do to embrace and introduce agile methodologies.

"Agile Database Development" describes the current collection of philosophies around agile database development, the challenges and misconceptions around agile methodologies, and what needs to happen to bring the data community up to speed with the software development world.

A large problem that database developers run into when trying to implement agile methods is a direct result of tools are not flexible enough to align with the agile methodologies. There is a need for automated database re-factoring and testing tools that allow developers to embrace JIT modeling and iterative methodologies. This isn't to say that agile methods cannot be currently incorporated - they can - but it often means manual database re-factoring.

The biggest area that database developers can benefit from agile philosophies without requiring a lot of development changes is around documentation and modeling. Increased efficiencies can be gained through the utilization of whiteboard modeling, brainstorming, JIT requirements gathering, and minimizing unnecessary or untimely documentation.

"Agile Database Development" takes a critical look at how database development can benefit from agile methodologies and what needs to happen to fully embrace these concepts. While traditional methods may still play a large part it is important for the database community to understand and evolve its methodologies. The world is moving at the speed of change - it is better to keep up than try to catch up!