Tapworthy by Josh Clark O’Reilly Media, $39.99 How is an iPhone app different from any other program? The mobile platform means that users often have only short periods of time in which to work; to be successful, your app must be intuitive and easy to use. Josh Clark breaks down mobile apps into three purposes: [...]
SEO Warrior by John I. Jerkovic Way back in 2008, Google announced that they had found over one trillion unique URLs on the web. As the amount of available content explodes, it becomes very difficult for a new website to get noticed. The art of pushing your website to the top of the search results [...]
American Casino Guide by Steve Bourie Casino Vacations Press This book consists of three distinct parts. The first is a description of various casino games and how to play them. In my opinion, this is the weakest section of the book; while it’s good enough to get a beginning gambler up to speed quickly, it [...]
iPod: The Missing Manual by J. D. Biersdorfer A few months ago, I received my first-ever ipod, the 3G touch. I’m fairly tech-savvy, but I knew the ipod must have a lot of hidden capabilities that I could take advantage of, so I preordered this book. I have to say I was very disappointed. On [...]
Offworld by Robin Parrish As the book opens, Christopher Burke is lost on Mars, rapidly running out of oxygen, and frantically searching for his crew. Eight months later, Chris and his crew are two months away from Earth when they lose contact with Ground Control; in fact, they are unable to pick up any communications [...]
Burden of Proof by John G. Hemry Burden of Proof, although set aboard a spaceship, is not primarily a science fiction book. It could be described as “science fiction/military legal drama”, and is completely fascinating as the author intertwines the details of space travel and military law while keeping the story moving. Paul Sinclair, recently [...]
Ruled Britannia by Harry Turtledove To be free, or not to be free… In 1588, Spain attempted to conquer England, but was turned back by England’s fire ships. Had the attempt succeeded, however, the result could have been Turtledove’s Ruled Britannia. It is now 1597, and Britain has spent nearly a decade under the rule [...]
Java How to Program: Early Objects Version (8th Edition) by Harvey Deitel and Paul Deitel Background: I am a PhD student in computer science, but I do theoretical research that rarely requires coding, so I haven’t programmed in years. Recently I decided to pick up java, which I last used in 2000; rather than taking [...]
The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Humans, it turns out, are not the most intelligent life form on planet Earth. Nor, as popularly thought, are dolphins. As it turns out, the whole planet is actually one giant computer created for the mice, who are using it to find out the question [...]
Ringworld’s Children by Larry Niven I’ve always enjoyed Larry Niven’s work; even his books from the sixties and seventies read like they could have been written today. However, while I’ve read Ringworld, I’ve never gotten around to reading the sequels. Luckily for me, Ringworld’s Children, the latest book in the series, is perfectly readable without [...]
