Barbara Boyd

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About Barbara Boyd
Barbara Boyd writes about technology, gardens, food, and travel. She's the co-author (with Joe Hutsko) of iPhone All-In-One for Dummies (1st, 2nd, and 3rd editions) and Macs All-In-One for Dummies, (3rd and 4th editions). Barbara wrote iCloud and iTunes Match In A Day for Dummies and AARP iPad: Tech to Connect. Barbara also co-wrote The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pinterest Marketing with Christine Martinez. She's written for ChilePepper Magazine, Islands, and BeeCulture.
Barbara worked at Apple from 1985 to 1990, followed by jobs in marketing and publishing at IDG (International Data Group) and later for a small San Francisco design firm. In 1998, she left the corporate world to study Italian, write, and teach.
Barbara divides her time between city life in Rome and country life on an olive farm in Calabria. She stays busy writing, keeping up with technology, growing olives, and making pizza.
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Blog postMy friend and country neighbor, Rosario, and I got to talking about chickens the other day. Rosario is a small town, entreprenurial small business owner. He owns a carwash on a highway that's heavily travelled, especially in summer when people flock to our beautiful Mediterranean coast. He's adding on a gas station and café this year but his heart and home are in the country, 3 miles up the hill. Rosario rises when dawn breaks to plow his fields, plant wheat, cure his vineyard, tie up the11 years ago Read more
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Blog postI spent yesterday and today in my friend Rita’s apiary or bee yard. Rita has been a beekeeper for over ten years and recently became a certified apistic technician, hand-picked among beekeepers to help other, less-experienced beekeepers. Lucky for me, she’s a generous teacher and allowed me to help her with spring beekeeping tasks this week. I admire how she treats the bees, as if each one of the 3.5 million bees in the apiary were her child. She moves methodically from hive to hive and can tell11 years ago Read more
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Blog postI haven’t stopped making pastries but I am discovering how undisciplined and/or distracted I am when it comes to writing the blog. I have it all in my head (along with several others) and tell myself “as soon as I…make dinner, empty my e-mail inbox, take out the trash, finish this week’s lesson plan…” and then it’s bedtime. Would it be cheating if I write several in one session and then post them one day at a time?
The penultimate pastry was the Tarte Bavaroise au Chocolat, aka Chocolate11 years ago Read more -
Blog postI remember a scene in the Sandra Bullock movie where she’s a detective who goes undercover at a beauty pageant (saw it on a plane, don’t remember the title) and during the interview part of the pageant, she says, almost crying “I really do want world peace.”
Earlier this year, a man named Stephen Danger Shoemaker aka DJ Marmalade (don’t know if it’s his real name) created an event on Facebook inviting people to a worldwide day of peace. Even though, as one of the comments he receive11 years ago Read more -
Blog postMarch 1 was my step-daughter’s 29th birthday, and one of the few family traditions we have is that I bake a chocolate birthday cake for her. Every year, I go through my cookbooks and a few Websites trying to remember which cakes I’ve made in previous years, which were good, which weren’t. Luckily, I do remember the ones that weren’t up to my standards: dry, not chocolate-y enough, too sweet. You’d think I would have used a recipe from my new pastry book but I haven’t gotten to the cake chapter a11 years ago Read more
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Blog postLast week, two of my four families flew the hive. During the prior two weeks, two of them had been blown over by the wind, seems a freak hurricane or tornado blew down from the mountain and knocked them right off their stand. Antonio, our farm hand, donned the bee suit and put them back. I got to the farm last weekend and as soon as the sun came out, Ugo and I went to check on them. Two of the hives were empty! One completely sacked (when bees from other hives come and steal the honey), not a dr11 years ago Read more
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Blog postthose two little holes at 1 o'clock, that's where the caramel bubble throughthe slice is more attractive than the tart as a whole, especially on my friend's pretty plate
As promised, here are the photos of the Caramel-Nut Tart. It's not as pretty as some of the others I've made this month but it was a success at dinner last night. It's a sweet caramel - I'm glad I omitted the tablespoon of corn
syrup (an ingredient that's difficult to find in Italy). The taste conjured memorie11 years ago Read more -
Blog postI’ve been looking forward to this since I began the tart chapter because I love caramel, and here there are walnuts and almond cream — what more could you want, okay, maybe a little chocolate, I’ll have to experiment.The recipe begins as do the others with the list of ingredients and equipment needed. It includes the tart ingredients then two separate headings, one for the optional nappage (that apricot glaze that is often brushed over the top of pastries) and French meringue. The lists are foll11 years ago Read more
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Blog postI don’t like copying. Some do, I don’t or didn’t. I want, or wanted, to be original, different. From elementary school, we’re taught not to copy from our classmates and heaven forbid we commit plagiary. I’m against plagiary, but lately I’ve been re-evaluating my capacity to be original and whether or not I really desire to be different, and whew, a lot of pressure has been lifted. With that in mind, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are few new ideas but there are many new experiences11 years ago Read more
Titles By Barbara Boyd
Want to keep your calendar, contacts, e-mail, and iWork documents up to date and in sync--no matter where you are or which iOS device you’re using? Want access to your photos or music library everywhere? Apple's iCloud and iTunes Match services make it simple and automatic--and this In A Day For Dummies e-book will help you get up and running with iCloud and iTunes Match quickly.
- Covers the basics of setting up iCloud on your devices and syncing your e-mail, contacts, calendars, notes, to-do lists, reminders, and more
- Shows you how to subscribe to iTunes Match, scan and match your music library, and start streaming your favorite songs
- Walks you through using iCloud to retrieve a lost or stolen iPhone or iPad
- Includes access to "Beyond the Book" online bonus content to help you put your iCloud and iTunes Match skills into practice
Download iCloud & iTunes Match In A Day For Dummies and get your head in the iCloud today!
Innovative Presentations For Dummies is a practical guide to engaging your audience with superior, creative, and ultra-compelling presentations. Using clear language and a concise style, this book goes way beyond PowerPoint to enable you to reimagine, reinvent, and remake your presentations. Learn how to stimulate, capture, and hold your audience in the palm of your hand with sound, sight, and touch, and get up to speed on the latest presentation design methods that make you a speaker who gets audiences committed and acting upon your requests. This resource delves into desktop publishing skills, online presentations, analyzing your audience, and delivers fresh, new tips, tricks, and techniques that help you present with confidence and raw power.
Focused and innovative presentations are an essential part of doing business, and most importantly, getting business. Competition, technology, and the ever-tightening economy have made out-presenting your competitors more important than ever. Globally, an estimated 350 PowerPoint presentations are given every second. When it's your turn, you need to go high above and far beyond to stand out from the pack, and Innovative Presentations For Dummies provides a winning game plan. The book includes extensive advice on the visual aspect of presentations and, more importantly, it teaches you how to analyze your audience and speak directly to them. A personalized approach combined with stunning visuals and full sensory engagement makes for a winning presentation.
- Learn how to be an innovative, not just "effective" presenter in any situation
- Understand how to read and cater to specific audiences
- Create captivating visual materials using technology and props
- Creative customize presentations to best communicate with audiences
More and more employees are being called upon to make presentations, with or without prior training. With step-by-step instruction, vivid examples and ideas and a 360-degree approach to presentations, Innovative Presentations For Dummies will help to drastically improve your presentation outcomes as never before.
Pinterest is a social media site that enables users to create online pinboards of compelling images they find online by "pinning" the images and curating them into various categories. It has exploded into American consciousness with big media attention and exponential growth-most notably reaching 10 million unique monthly visitors more quickly than any social media site in history. The vast majority of early devotees have been women of higher income between the ages of 25 and 49, and the images they pin frequently fall into the categories of clothing, crafts, food, and home décor. This represents a significant opportunity for companies and brands whose products are targeted to this market; however, Pinterest has value far beyond its initial popular use. Companies large and small are hearing the hype and hoping to get an early start with a site that shows signs of continued growth and influence. The Complete Idiot's Guide® to Pinterest Marketing helps small business owners as well as marketing experts at larger companies get on the Pinterest bandwagon and learn how to use this exciting new phenomenon to increase online exposure for their products, strengthen their online presence, and connect with customers in a place where they are now flocking. In it, readers learn how to:
- Use the basic features of Pinterest, including setting up an account, creating boards, and pinning images
- Develop a Pinterest marketing strategy and integrate it with other online and offline presences
- Project a brand voice onto Pinterest through strategic pinning and writing compelling pin copy
- Create pins that get repinned
- Grow a following organically and understand the importance of whom a brand follows
- Engage an audience through contests, collaborative boards, and more
- Determine who in the organization will pin, or whether to outsource it
- Gauge and quantify the success of a brand's marketing efforts on Pinterest