Multimedia Books

Audio book lovers unite - this is a great example of a book made better by the narrator. Alan Dean Fosters colorful descriptors, the chapters and carry over themes are timed perfectly, and might just make you want to go on a road trip.

Ben Browder does an excellent job of getting his tongue around some pretty tough Incan technobabble, his enthusiasm for the job is never failing, and the variety of voices and inflection he puts to each character is admirable.

At the end of this one you'll want to listen again, and wonder when the sequel is coming out!

This is a very, very interesting and useful book for all grown-up people that are interested in learn Informatics for the first time having some previous knowledge (not that much)of internet and computing. I highly recomend this book. Very well done.
Este es un libro que yo recomiendo muchisimo para todas aquellas personas con cierta edad que deseen internarse en el campo de la programacion, les sera muy ameno, asequible e instructivo a la vez. Adquieralo si de veras quiere comenzar con algo bueno.Excelente libro.

Dean has worked with stations first hand so he knows his stuff. Great way to get started and start thinking about database marketing.

I'm fairly new to poker, being more of a blackjack guy, so I figured I should try out some reading material before going online and losing all my money. I read a few books that weren't very good and then in the bookstore I found this one. Right now on Amazon the cover is wrong, I know because that's what drew me to the book. It's a great cover (hands coming out of a laptop holding poker chips, you have to see it). I flipped through the book and saw that it actually had some good advice, starting from the basics of poker, which was very helpful. There's also a lot of stuff in the book geared toward experienced and advanced players but I'm not going to get into those parts.

The book showed me how to play the game and what differences there are online. Even online tells! I didn't think those existed but now I seem to have a pretty great advantage everytime I play. It even has diagrams to show you exactly what to do. It has so many example plays and tells you what to do for specific hands, flops, and opponents. The book is easy to read and navigate through and the writing is very clear and concise (the book is short but has a lot of information). It also has some information on non-hold'em games, like omaha and 7-card stud.

I've read a lot of poker books now that I started playing and this one was definitely one of the most thorough and helpful. I now win money almost every time I play hold'em online. I'm really glad I found this book.

This book has 20 projects which guide a person through the steps to create a personalized career plan. It was originally intended for a classroom where teachers could duplicate the projects. One book for the whole class.

Any adult, young or mid-life, who wants to take charge of their career plan can do this following the activities in the projects. The activities can easily be done individually or with a spouse or friend.

A real bargain when considering the cost of NOT having a good career plan.

Feel free to contact the author if you have additional questions.

Eileen Dittmar
edittmar@charter.net
www.eileendittmar.com

The comments on the outside of the book with all of the quotes praising the work were well-justified. Although almost ten years old the book still goes straight to the heart of the key issues in the field of human-computer interaction.

MPEG-1,2,and 4 make multimedia content available, while MPEG-7 makes content accessible, retrievable, and filterable. This book is all about the MPEG-7 standard, its implementation, and its applications. The book is divided into six sections which I describe as follows:
Section 1, the introduction, introduces the MPEG-7 standard, history, and its motivation.
Section 2, "Systems", covers system architecture, the description definition language (MPEG-7 is expressed in XML), and the binary format for MPEG-7.
Section 3, "Multimedia Description Schemes", describes the organization of multimedia features that can be described with MPEG-7. This section shows how search, retrieval, filtering, navigation, and browsing are supported by certain MPEG-7 tools. The next two sections are the most fascinating for people involved in multimedia description and retrieval.
Section 4, "Visual Descriptors", discusses how MPEG-7 can describe visual components of images and video for efficient retrieval. Color is described in multimedia via color histograms, dominant color, and color layout. There are also texture descriptors as well as shape descriptors and motion descriptors all present in MPEG-7 to "describe" visual information.
Section 5, "Audio Descriptors", likewise, describes how audio can be indexed via specific descriptors of its content that are far less obvious than those for vision. These include automatic speech recognition techniques, finding spectral similarities, and the use of hidden Markov models. The descriptors are both high and low level. Low level descriptors use the power and the spectrum of the audio signal for data matching and description. High-level tools include melody descriptions in the case of music, recognition of words spoken, log attack time, and even "query by humming".
Section 6, "Applications", shows applications for MPEG-7 that are broadly classified into search/browsing applications and mobile applications. The browsing applications mentioned include real time video retrieval, browsing TV news broadcasts, and audio music retrieval.
A DVD is included that contains technical reports, working demos, and the official MPEG-7 reference software. The DVD demos include using MPEG-7 for video browsing and also searching for images using texture as a descriptor.
The tone of the book is academic, but there are many examples in the book that really clarify the use and expression of the standard. I recommend it to anyone interested in MPEG-7. To get the most out of the book you should already be familiar with XML, information storage and retrieval techniques, and the field of computer vision. Due to the diverse background required to really understand the book, I wouldn't let the low Amazon sales rank scare you - it really is a five star book on the subject! Also, notice that used copies can be found on Amazon Marketplace for a fraction of what a new book costs.

I really loved this book and found it very useful. If anyone is into multimedia systems, this is a must have book.

Max Highstein's Intuition Retreat has broken new ground for those wishing to connect their inner and outer lives. Full of humor, insight, and practical guidance, beautiful music and words, Max is able to share his deep love of spirituality along with his worldliness. The book and CD's give you the teacher you always wished you could have. He takes you on a journey inward that will expand every part of your outward life. The real thing. - Racquel Palmese, spiritual life coach and writer.

IPTV and Internet Video explains what is happening today in the converging world of TV, Internet and communications. It turns out IPTV is really the ability to deliver programming using the IP over a private network rather than the public Internet. And those private networks are the cable, DSL and satellite networks constructed by the large companies providing these services today.

If you are like me you look forward to the day when you can interact with your TV instead of just sitting there and passively watching it. Tivo and other brands of DVRs are a start. They let you record programs and watch them when you want to, and of course you can skip the commercials. I even skip the lulls and often lame commentary between baseball pitches and football plays.

But when will we be able to watch a show and look up other information on the Internet related to what we are watching? What is that batter's average again? What other movie was this actor in? Where can I blog about that news item?

Today I can do that with a laptop while watching TV but I have to type everything in to do a search. That's not the integrated environment that is possible if I could interact with the TV program directly on my computer or computer-based TV. IPTV is what I want!

Or is it?

The book covers the differences between IPTV programming, delivered over a private network and viewed on a TV through a set-top box, and Internet Video which is usually small clips delivered on-demand through the public Internet.

The authors do an excellent job of explaining the technical and business reasons for what is happening now and in the near future of IPTV. Technical details including the various MPEG standards, multicasting and network layer reference model are discussed in this context. Business aspects are also discussed and include business models, subscription costs and "Corner Office View" sidebars that quote industry leaders on the impact of IPTV and Internet video developments.

This is an excellent book if you are in the business and want an overview of IPTV with a good balance of technical and business detail. I rate the book at 5 stars in this case. If you want a description of the gory details of UDP vs. TCP and how multicasting on IP works then this book probably doesn't have enough of those details for you.

You will also have to look elsewhere if you want to know what the next Web 2.0 or YouTube-like video craze will be. OTOH, you might just detect an opportunity not adequately addressed by the IPTV services offered by the powers-that-be and soon-to-be that are discussed in this book.