The AdSense Code

Book Description
Hidden on the Internet, scattered among billions of Web pages, are the clues to an incredible secret. For those who know the secret, the result is untold wealth. Each month, a small group of people - an elite club who have uncovered the mysteries of The AdSense Code- put their knowledge to use and receive checks for tens of thousands of dollars from Google. And untold numbers of additional site owners are regularly generating supplemental income via AdSense while they play, sleep and eat. The AdSense Code is concise and very focused on the objective of revealing the proven online strategies to creating passive income with Google AdSense. The AdSense Code reveals hands-on solutions to many of the concerns and challenges faced by content publishers in their quest to attract targeted traffic, improve content relevance and increase responsiveness to AdSense ads - using easy and legitimate techniques that have worked for those who know the secrets. Google AdSense expert, Joel Comm, provides you with the keys you need to "crack" The AdSense Code and unlock the secrets to making money online.

The Google Story

Amazon.com
Social phenomena happen, and the historians follow. So it goes with Google, the latest star shooting through the universe of trend-setting businesses. This company has even entered our popular lexicon: as many note, "Google" has moved beyond noun to verb, becoming an action which most tech-savvy citizens at the turn of the twenty-first century recognize and in fact do, on a daily basis. It's this wide societal impact that fascinated authors David Vise and Mark Malseed, who came to the book with well-established reputations in investigative reporting. Vise authored the bestselling The Bureau and the Mole, and Malseed contributed significantly to two Bob Woodward books, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. The kind of voluminous research and behind-the-scenes insight in which both writers specialize, and on which their earlier books rested, comes through in The Google Story.

The strength of the book comes from its command of many small details, and its focus on the human side of the Google story, as opposed to the merely academic one. Some may prefer a dryer, more analytic approach to Google's impact on the Internet, like The Search or books that tilt more heavily towards bits and bytes on the spectrum between technology and business, like The Singularity is Near. Those wanting to understand the motivations and personal growth of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, however, will enjoy this book. Vise and Malseed interviewed over 150 people, including numerous Google employees, Wall Street analysts, Stanford professors, venture capitalists, even Larry Page's Cub Scout leader, and their comprehensiveness shows.

As the narrative unfolds, readers learn how Google grew out of the intellectually fertile and not particularly directed friendship between Page and Brin; how the founders attempted to peddle early versions of their search technology to different Silicon Valley firms for $1 million; how Larry and Sergey celebrated their first investor's check with breakfast at Burger King; how the pair initially housed their company in a Palo Alto office, then eventually moved to a futuristic campus dubbed the "Googleplex"; how the company found its financial footing through keyword-targeted Web ads; how various products like Google News, Froogle, and others were cooked up by an inventive staff; how Brin and Page proved their mettle as tough businessmen through negotiations with AOL Europe and their controversial IPO process, among other instances; and how the company's vision for itself continues to grow, such as geographic expansion to China and cooperation with Craig Venter on the Human Genome Project.

Like the company it profiles, The Google Story is a bit of a wild ride, and fun, too. Its first appendix lists 23 "tips" which readers can use to get more utility out of Google. The second contains the intelligence test which Google Research offers to prospective job applicants, and shows the sometimes zany methods of this most unusual business. Through it all, Vise and Malseed synthesize a variety of fascinating anecdotes and speculation about Google, and readers seeking a first draft of the history of the company will enjoy an easy read. --Peter Han --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly
If Google's splashy IPO and skyrocketing stock haven't revived the dotcom sector, they have certainly revived the dotcom hype industry, judging by this adulatory history of the Internet search engine. Billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, their countercultural rectitude imbibed straight from the Burning Man festival, are brilliant visionaries dedicated to putting all information at mankind's fingertips and "genuinely nice people" who "didn't care about getting rich." Their company motto, "Don't Be Evil," is not just PR boilerplate rendered in fantasy-gaming rhetoric, but a deeply-pondered organizing principle. Washington Post reporter Vise, author of The Bureau and the Mole, and researcher Malseed give a serviceable rundown of the company's rise from grad-student project to web juggernaut, its innovative technology and targeted advertising system, its savvy deal-making and its inevitable battles with Microsoft. But while they raise the occasional quibble about controversial company policies, they generally allow Google's image of idealism to overshadow the reality of a corporate leviathan. Worse, the bloated text feels like the product of an overly broad web search: anything with keyword Google-executives' speeches, seminar talks, informal Q and A sessions with students, company press releases, legal documents, SEC filings, even the company chef's fried chicken recipe-comes up, excerpted at inordinate and rambling length, drowning insight in a flood of information.

Performance Improvement

Book Description
While organizations differ from each other, they are also alike in many ways. Regardless of whether they are large or small, not-for-profit or profit driven, these organizations usually face similar challenges, problems, and opportunities pertaining to performance. Based on the experiences of over 300 organizations, Performance Improvement: Making it Happen, Second Edition details an effective step-by-step approach toward improving organizational performance. It combines state-of-the-art knowledge and techniques in organizational development with many actual cases and experiences. The book is organized into three parts that are targeted at gaining the most from organizational performance: Getting It Started, Taking Action, and Making It Permanent. This second edition features real-world examples dealing with issues representative of those found in a variety of industries and the concepts and methods of improvement used. The final part provides readers with a plan for integrating many of the performance improvement interventions and programs previously discussed into an overall approach for making improvements successful and continuous. This final section also features three very different organizations that have used many of the performance improvement programs discussed in the book. Their measured progress in performance is highlighted.

A Long Way Gone

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This absorbing account by a young man who, as a boy of 12, gets swept up in Sierra Leone's civil war goes beyond even the best journalistic efforts in revealing the life and mind of a child abducted into the horrors of warfare. Beah's harrowing journey transforms him overnight from a child enthralled by American hip-hop music and dance to an internal refugee bereft of family, wandering from village to village in a country grown deeply divided by the indiscriminate atrocities of unruly, sociopathic rebel and army forces. Beah then finds himself in the army—in a drug-filled life of casual mass slaughter that lasts until he is 15, when he's brought to a rehabilitation center sponsored by UNICEF and partnering NGOs. The process marks out Beah as a gifted spokesman for the center's work after his "repatriation" to civilian life in the capital, where he lives with his family and a distant uncle. When the war finally engulfs the capital, it sends 17-year-old Beah fleeing again, this time to the U.S., where he now lives. (Beah graduated from Oberlin College in 2004.) Told in clear, accessible language by a young writer with a gifted literary voice, this memoir seems destined to become a classic firsthand account of war and the ongoing plight of child soldiers in conflicts worldwide. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School—This gripping story by a children's-rights advocate recounts his experiences as a boy growing up in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, during one of the most brutal and violent civil wars in recent history. Beah, a boy equally thrilled by causing mischief as by memorizing passages from Shakespeare and dance moves from hip-hop videos, was a typical precocious 12-year-old. But rebel forces destroyed his childhood innocence when they hit his village, driving him to leave his home and travel the arid deserts and jungles of Africa. After several months of struggle, he was recruited by the national army, made a full soldier and learned to shoot an AK-47, and hated everyone who came up against the rebels. The first two thirds of his memoir are frightening: how easy it is for a normal boy to transform into someone as addicted to killing as he is to the cocaine that the army makes readily available. But an abrupt change occurred a few years later when agents from the United Nations pulled him out of the army and placed him in a rehabilitation center. Anger and hate slowly faded away, and readers see the first glimmers of Beah's work as an advocate. Told in a conversational, accessible style, this powerful record of war ends as a beacon to all teens experiencing violence around them by showing them that there are other ways to survive than by adding to the chaos.—Matthew L. Moffett, Pohick Regional Library, Burke, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

You Can Buy

Guinness World Records 2008

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
Guinness World Records 2008 continues to builds on the intriguing, informative, inspiring and instructional records and superlatives that have made Guinness World Records one of the most famous brands and books in the world. This year, we've created a revolutionary new design and filled it with more records than ever before.

New content areas include:

• FORENSIC SCIENCE: An insight into the real-life superlatives of the crime-scene investigators... A must for CSI fans!
• THE ENVIRONMENT: How real is the threat of global warming? A look at some of the recent environmental records...
• HEALTH OF THE NATION: We take a snapshot of human health today and ask: who's the fittest and who's the fattest?
• GAMES & PUZZLES: An interactive spread that allows you to test your smarts: from the first ever crossword question to the fastest sudoku, how will you fare?
• EPIC ENDEAVOURS: Our largest-ever celebration of the superheroes who head for the poles, scale the heights, cross the globe and probe the depths...
• TERRORISM & CONFLICT: Hard-hitting records and reportage on the deadliest threats to our modern society
• BRANDS & ADVERTISING: The biggest names and even bigger budgets behind the brands and adverts we're exposed to every day
• HOME ENTERTAINMENT and CONSUMER TECH: The gadgets and media that we simply can't live without - from the best-selling DVDs to the most powerful computer games consoles.

As well as all the updated annual favorites including; ACTION SPORTS, CUTTING EDGE SCIENCE, INCREDIBLE STUNTS and INSPIRATIONAL PEOPLE.

iPod & iTunes For Dummies

Editorial Reviews
Review
This beginner's guide in the usual "Dummies" format shows how to set up, acquire, and manage media content; how to play with the iPod, hook it up to other components, and take it on the road; how to use advanced techniques; and how to troubleshoot common problems. Online bonus chapters (available at http://www.dummies.com/go/ipod4e/) cover MusicMatch Jukebox and online resources. Clear, with just enough background information; recommended for all libraries. (Library Journal, January 15, 2007)

Burton Mail, January 04
"...an invaluable tool to help you get the most out of your iPod..." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing's "old rules" is vital to thriving in the new media jungle. Already apparent in newspapers and magazines (with sharp downturns in circulation and ads), radio (on the losing end of the iPod revolution) and direct mail (digitally replaced by spam), the imminent fall of traditional mass media marketing means new opportunities for legions of smaller companies and independent professionals who need to reach niche markets cheaply and effectively. The way Scott sees it, this is also good news for consumers: the online culture of integrity and information tends to produce quality content for less, as opposed to the vapid, one-sided and pricey advertising of print media and television. Scott provides the technical novice a thoughtful and accessible guide to cutting-edge media arenas and formats such as RSS, vodcasts and viral marketing, without neglecting the fact that technological wizardry can't substitute for a well-thought out marketing program. Besides emphasizing fundamentals like defining one's audience, Scott also drills home the ethos and etiquette of the web, encouraging content that's both useful and unobtrusive. This excellent look at the basics of new-millennial marketing should find use in the hands of any serious PR professional making the transition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
Though it may not yet have affected the value of 30 seconds of Super Bowl advertising, PR insider Scott argues that understanding the growing irrelevance of marketing's "old rules" is vital to thriving in the new media jungle. Already apparent in newspapers and magazines (with sharp downturns in circulation and ads), radio (on the losing end of the iPod revolution) and direct mail (digitally replaced by spam), the imminent fall of traditional mass media marketing means new opportunities for legions of smaller companies and independent professionals who need to reach niche markets cheaply and effectively. The way Scott sees it, this is also good news for consumers: the online culture of integrity and information tends to produce quality content for less, as opposed to the vapid, one-sided and pricey advertising of print media and television. Scott provides the technical novice a thoughtful and accessible guide to cutting-edge media arenas and formats such as RSS, vodcasts and viral marketing, without neglecting the fact that technological wizardry can't substitute for a well-thought out marketing program. Besides emphasizing fundamentals like defining one's audience, Scott also drills home the ethos and etiquette of the web, encouraging content that's both useful and unobtrusive. This excellent look at the basics of new-millennial marketing should find use in the hands of any serious PR professional making the transition. (July) (Publishers Weekly, August 6, 2007)

"a valuable source of inspiration" (Brand Strategy, November 2007)

"This book is useful if you would like to learn more about new formats such as RSS, vodcasts and viral marketing." (Gulf Business, Vol. 12/ Issue 7)

Photoshop CS2 Killer Tips

Book Description

Scott Kelby and Felix Nelson (the creative team behind Photoshop User magazine) take their best-selling Photoshop Killer Tips books to a whole new level with their update for Photoshop CS2.

Okay, why a book of nothing but tips? Because that's where all the really slick, really useful, and really fun stuff is. It's true! If we're looking through a book and we see the word "Tip" we're all immediately drawn to it, because we know we're about to learn something great. Maybe it's an undocumented keyboard shortcut, a hidden inside secret, or just a faster, better way to do something we do every day. The only problem with the tips in these books is that there are never enough of 'em. That is, until now.

That's because this book is packed cover-to-cover, wall-to-wall with nothing but those cool Photoshop CS2 sidebar tips. Every tip is designed to make you work faster, smarter, and have more fun using Photoshop CS2. There are no detailed descriptions of CMYK separation set-ups, or long boring discussions on color management theory. It's just tips--short, sweet, and to the point.

But we've done the "tip" idea one better, because every tip has a full-color graphic to make the tips even more accessible, even more fun, and even easier to use. Most importantly, to get in this book they've got to be "Killer Tips." The kind of tip that makes you smile, nod, and then call all your friends and "tune them up" with your new status as Photoshop guru.

If you've wondered how the pros get twice the work done in half the time, it's because they know all the tips, and all the tricks. Now with this book, so will you.

About the Author

Scott Kelby is President of NAPP and is Editor-in-Chief of both Photoshop User magazine and Layers magazine. Scott serves as training director for the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and is the technical chair for the Photoshop World expos. Scott is the author of the best-selling Photoshop Down and Dirty Tricks books, The Photoshop Book for Digital for Digital Photographers, and other titles. Felix Nelson is the Creative Director of Photoshop User and Capture User magazines. He is a guest speaker on the Adobe Photoshop Seminar Tour and is a member of the Photoshop World instructor Dream Team.