I liked this little booklet. It was an easy read, straightforward, and informative regarding its topic. It explains a small business' need to create an Internet Presence. And it goes through the basic ways to create such a presence. Obviously you will need a Web site. A blog would be nice to have, too. And then getting involved in the LinkedIn site was also suggested and explained pretty well, too. A few other social media sites were mentioned like Facebook, but not overdone. I appreciated this since I am not a Facebook fan.

The author is a fan of Wordpress.com, or at least I think he is. I know I am, and I agreed with all he said about it. You can create your Web site using Wordpress.com. You can create your blog or blogs using Wordpress.com. Or you can create all your sites (Web site & blogs) using Wordpress.com.

The author is a consultant to companies needing help with their Internet Presence. So the book is clearly a marketing piece to help promote his practice. Although I thought the booklet was well organized and well written, I thought it was kind of short to be called a book. I've been doing some reading lately on selling books through Amazon as ebooks and based on what I have read the Kindle edition of this book probably should have been no more than $3.99 and probably should have been priced at $2.99. This brings up an interesting point regarding this book - the use of Amazon as a way to sell content ( information & marketing materials) is yet another consideration when creating an Internet Presence mix. The author failed to discuss this, and I think it probably should have been discussed. Do you price such products at a higher price to make much money? Or do you price them so they will sell and be read at a lower price? 4 stars!

Really a nice book. I won't say I loved it, but I liked it a lot. The book does a wonderful job of giving an overview of the process to convert raw video from a digital video camera into an actual movie of some sort. It uses Apple's Final Cut Pro X, a standalone program split off 2+ years from Final Cut Studio, as the software to do the explanations. As a result, the book is a kind of user's manual for FCPX. I still use Final Cut Studio, so I could not actually follow the book by referring to an actual copy of FCPX. But the book is really supposed to be a How-To with regard to video editing.

I liked the organization of the book. I found the book easy to read; it was well written. The page count was sufficient to qualify it as a real book. And the contents included on the attached DVD made the book complete and possible for the reader to really get loads from the lessons. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning the basics regarding the ins and outs of video editing. 5 stars!

I loved it. It wasn't awesome, but I really liked this book a lot. The author has written it the way my father told me reports are supposed to be written: (1) Tell them what you're going to tell them, (2) Tell them, and (3) Tell them what you told them. As a result of this style of writing, the book felt a little redundant at times. The are many pages devoted to trying to get the reader to understand what a White Paper is (and is not). I like to think of a White Paper as a Legal Brief (as opposed to a Legal Memorandum), but instead of arguing persuasively for a legal outcome as in a Legal Brief, the White Paper is arguing or educating the reader to be convinced of something. That something might be the author is highly credible, or the product/service the author sells is worthy of being purchased.

The book is written as an accounting of what the author himself has done and is doing to make money by selling his writing services to produce White Papers. In a way, the book is really a career guide for writers who want to add a potentially lucrative aspect of a writing career to their list of professional offerings. My recommendation is that the book really can benefit a much broader range of readers. Especially the small business owners and self-employed professionals, consultants, educators, trainers, and coaches who should produce every conceivable vehicle through which to deliver content that will get them indexed in Google. Content is king. And White Papers are a way to deliver content.

The author provides a little history regarding White Papers. He says there was a first generation, now we are mostly using second generation, and that there is a third generation that is coming. I read what he had to say, but I disagree that a third generation will ever come. If it does, then the new concept of a White Paper will be so different from that of Generation II, that Generation III will hardly be called a White Paper. Interestingly, as we sit here trading ideas a large number of the videos businesses post on YouTube are really multimedia White Pages. But I'm not going to call them White Pages, and I don't think you should either. Such video if done well give the author credibility. They help sell a product or service. And they provide information for decision-makers in business to use to do their jobs. This is what White Papers do, too!!

White Papers are self-promotion or marketing tools. They can be written by the person seeking to self-promote or market, or they can be written by a self-employed writer who will ghost-write them. The book emphasizes the latter, but the reader will get a lot from the book if they are of the former. 5 stars!

I liked this book. I'm not sure I would call it a book about innovation as much as I would call it one about strategic planning and business planning. From the book's title I figured I was going to hear a lot about "innovation," and how to create it. But when I got into the material between the covers I found a ton of stuff that relates to putting together a great business plan for a startup or tweaking an existing company's business plan to improve or save that company. Anybody who has a few How-To business planning books in front of them would do themselves a favor to get this tome to supplement their readings. I especially like Chapter 19 in this book regarding Innovation Tactics. It includes a wide variety of "modules" you can pick and choose from to plug into your new business plan.

Chapter 3 covers the first of the ten "types" of innovation the book discusses. Just as I was not happy with the title of the book, I was not happy with the title of Chapter 3 that really deals with "Pricing Models" and not "Profit Models." Everything in Chapter Three had to do with ways to price a produce or service, and profit models consider price, but also are mostly about revenue streams and expenditures and expenses that eat up those revenues to some extent leaving a profit.

Lately I've been doing a fair amount of reading using my Kindle and my Nook, both of which kind of standardize the reading experience. I was not particularly happy reading the instant book being reviewed since it is wider than it is tall. And the page formatting left a bit to be desired. Sometimes the font size was pretty small and often it was pretty big. In a way it felt like the publisher was a 5th grader who had an English class essay to hand in and there was a page count to be met. The 5th grader played with the font size to make the quota.

I wonder if the authors can put together something in an executable program kind of like Turbo Tax for filling out tax returns? The program that could be written would be one that helps create a business plan or a new strategic plan. After reading this book I kind of saw that there is such a possibility.

There is a lot of great content in this book. I'd love to be able to give it the highest star rating, but as you see above I have had a few gripes. It's definitely not just an OK book. 4 stars!

I received this super thin, super fast, and super light 500 GB external hard drive in the mail today. I pulled it out of its protective wrapping and plugged it into my speedy MacBook Pro to see if it performed well. No complaints. It worked like a charm!!

If I knew much about portable hard drives, then I would go through a bunch of metrics with you in this review. But I'm pretty much a simpleton when it comes to such devices. Either they work or they don't. And this one works really good as far as I can tell. 5 stars!

I received this book in the mail on March 5 of this year. I gave it a quick skim initially soon after I got it, and decided the book did not deserve a particularly good rating. Often when this happens I do not rush to writing a review.

I have since then gone back to the book and gone through it much slower to get a handle on particularly why I'm not a fan of this book. The title informs the reader that this book is where someone who is interested in learning HTML5 should start. I assume that means the reader is a novice when it comes to HTML5. I think this is a fair assumption!! So if the intended audience is a novice, then I was totally confused seeing the inclusion of chapters 14 (forms) and 15 (audio & video). These are not beginner topics as far as I am concerned. I also did not appreciate seeing Chapter 16 that was little more than an advertisement for Microsoft's html editing software called Expression Web. So three chapters of sixteen shouldn't have been included. And the three appendices were about Web Design rather than coding in HTML5. So they should not have been included either. This brings the length of the book down to a mere 240 pages. Page count matters to me when it comes to calling a mere term paper a book.

Unfortunately I'm not done criticizing this book. HTML5 does not exist in a vacuum. It kind of piggybacks on top of HTML4 and the predecessors to HTML4 since the World Wide Web where HTML (whatever version exists out there) hangs out, depends on Web browsers to be read. Some browsers can read HTML5, and many can only read part of it. So this book should have talked some about HTML in general, and then gone to more specifics about HTML5 since this book is for novices with regard to HTML5. I didn't see that this book moved from basics to more specifics with regard to HTML5, and that was a problem. Other problems were the many references to XHTML. And you are probably saying what is XHTML? Maybe you aren't, but in either case, you should be saying XHTML has nothing to do with HTML or HTML5, so why include a discussion of it.

With regard to the remainder of the book I noticed the author certainly knows there is a difference between CREATING Web pages and FORMATTING the content of Web pages. See chapters 13 and 14 that deal with creating Tables (13) and formatting Tables (14). The same holds true for creating Web pages, and formatting Web pages. However, IMHO the author has not made it easy for the reader to see the line between creating pages and formatting them. If I were putting the book together I'd break it into four parts: (1) The Basics of Creating HTML Pages, (2) Special Topics Regarding the Creation of HTML Pages, (3) Formatting HTML Pages with CSS, and (4) HTML5. Part 1 would include chapters 2, 3, 4, 11 (but only the part about non HTML5) and 12. Part 2 would include chapters 5, 9 and 10. Part 3 would include chapters 6, 7, 8 and 13. And Part 4 would include part of the contents of Chapter 11 regarding division-based layouts.

I also did not like the references to "tags." The reader should have been told about "elements" and attributes. And I did not like the recommendation that Tables are a useful tool for page layout purposes. All in all, I don't think this book is all that helpful to a novice wanting to learn about HTML5. I am specifically recommending that a reader look elsewhere for initial counsel regarding HTML5. 2 stars!

This book was just OK. I have trouble even calling it a book since it is so short. There are a ton of pictures, lots of white space, and the last chapter (Chapter 10) ends on page 164. Quite frankly, this book could easily have been put in a skinny magazine format since magazine pages are larger than the ones used to create this "book." In all fairness, I will mention that there is an appendix from pages 165 to 188. So there is a little more to this booklet than just 164 pages.

Infographics are an alternative way to communicate. They typically require more effort to create than writing things out in text, but they often times are more easily and quickly understood than text communication.

The topics covered include:

1. What are infographics?
2. What are infographics good for?
3. What are the different types of infographics?
4. Can you imagine/think up good infographics?
5. Can you create/draw good infographics?
6. Does their cost justify their creation?

I think all of these 6 questions could have been answered much better and more thoroughly by the author. Questions 1-3 were the simplest to cover, and I suppose the author did his best work as a writer covering them. Questions 4 and 5 would have been very difficult to cover well since each could easily be handled in their own 300+ page book. Question 4 is similar to a question about how to write a good essay, article, or book. It is a process, and it is kind of complex if fully described. Question 5 is similar to a question about how to make charts in Microsoft Excel, paint using Adobe Photoshop, and draw with Adobe Illustrator. There are large books that cover each software application just mentioned.

Question six was a tough one to answer. It is kind of like the question many business owners ask: How much of a Web site can I afford to create and maintain for my business? Many many business owners do not have the know-how to create and maintain their Web site. As a result, the site can become an expensive proposition. Likewise, many business owners do not have the know-how to create great infographics using Excel, Photoshop and Illustrator. And the author did not provide a good solution for easily learning how to create infographics on your own. 3 stars!

This book is short, simple, and only available in hardcover at this time. It appears to me to be written by a mere housewife who is married to a successful information technology project manager who works in the goofy world of Silicon Valley - formerly of Adobe, and now of IBM. It also appears the author has tried to cover up her lack of work experience by claiming to be a nondescript consultant for several years on her LinkedIn page. Now she wants to get serious as a marketing consultant who specializes in helping unemployed, self-employed, or job-hopping people market their skills.

I suspect the author's bread and butter consulting gigs over the years have been training classes her husband helped her get in Silicon Valley. I say this because the book is not written from the perspective of someone that has moved and shaken the world in order to rise to some level of high professional reputation for providing value. And she says she is not only a consultant, but a trainer and professional speaker. On top of it all, she has a pretty impressive number of contacts accumulated in her LinkedIn account. Normally those people could be tapped to help her promote her new book. But the number of book reviews for this tome at present is still in the single digits.

Probably the biggest misstep the author has done is mess up her brand. She claims on her Web site to be a consultant for both corporate branding and personal branding. The instant book being reviewed focuses on personal branding. I'd say it is not so much about personal branding as it is about shameless self-promotion. So if the author wants to market herself as a self-promotion expert she really should drop the tag lines that indicate she is also a corporate branding expert. And she should also probably do a little better job making her message clear regarding her expertise as a personal branding expert.

The book's cover indicates the reader will find a 5-step system inside its covers regarding how to reinvent his or her personal brand. Chapters two through six cover the steps. But I wonder if they are really the steps? The chapter titles are listed in the Search Inside feature Amazon provides. You tell me if those chapter titles really describe steps to reinvent yourself from a marketing perspective. I think the steps the author was trying to layout were as follows:

Step 1. Identify your current personal brand
Step 2. Figure out the personal brand you need in order to get what you want
Step 3. Determine what you have to change about yourself in order to become the new you
Step 4. Create a strategic plan that you can follow to become the new you
Step 5. Implement your strategic plan and become the new you

There is a list of books at the end referred to as "Further Reading." I expected a list of books the author used to help her write the instant book. Unfortunately I did not like the list. None of them seemed to me to really relate to the instant book that was about how a person can be a better self promoter of themselves. Books that I think should have been in the list include:

1. Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself (2nd Edition) (Que Biz-Tech)
2. Personal Branding For Dummies
3. You Are a Brand!: In Person and Online, How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success
4. The 10Ks of Personal Branding: Create a Better You
5. The Brand Called You: Make Your Business Stand Out in a Crowded Marketplace
6. Self Marketing Power: Branding Yourself As a Business of One

I must admit that I have been critical of this book, and I suppose of its author, too. But when a self proclaimed marketing expert creates a marketing piece for her consulting firm by writing a book, then this goes hand in hand with the territory. I can see that the author knows quite a bit about marketing from reading this book. She is just NOT all that slick when it comes to putting a book together. The book is better than OK, so I'm bumping its rating up to one notch higher than a 3. 4 stars!

Cases for ebook readers are just cases. This one is nothing special. I like to read my Kindle out of its case. The device is secured in the case with elastic bands on each corner. And the bands definitely secure the device, but it is kind of difficult to stretch them to get the device in and out of the case. There is no magnetic clasp that keeps the case closed when I store the device in the case. So that is a negative for me. However, if I were a person who liked to leave my device in the case while reading, then I think the lack of a magnetic clasp might be a positive regarding this case. Clasps tend to get in the way of the reading experience. The flashy cover to the case is kind of loud for my tastes, and it tries to appear to be simulated leather but fails. As a result the color combination and plastic-looking cover makes it appear cheap. Someone seeing you with this case might question whether or not you have good taste. 3 stars!

Cases for ebook readers are just cases. This one is nothing special. I like to read my Kindle out of its case. And this case lets me take it in and out pretty easily. The device is secured in the case with elastic bands on each corner. And the bands do secure the device, but it is not all that difficult to stretch them to get the device in and out of the case. I liked the magnetic clasp that keeps the case closed when I store the device in the case. If I were a person who liked to leave my device in the case while reading, then I don't think I would like this case because the magnetic clasp would get in my way. The plaid cover to the case and the magnetic clasp make the case look very good. Someone seeing you with this case would think you have good taste. It does not look cheap or tacky. 3 stars!