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Resources - Book Bytes |
| by Stephen M.H. Braitman - NBMA Director of Communications Book Bytes announces new publications of interest to our members and community in multimedia, technology, business, and culture. First appearance of each Book Bytes column is in the NBMA email events newsletter. To subscribe, send a blank email message to: nbmaevents-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. If you have a recommendation for review — and, especially, if you have published a book — send the information to . |
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June 2004 DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY HACKS Derrick Story 310 pages, $29.95 O'Reilly www.oreilly.com O'Reilly's "Hacks" series has hit paydirt with the vast audience of both technophiles and technophobes. Almost everyone loves to jam the works in some way to get a better result. No one better than Derrick Story, therefore, could approach the subject of "hacking" for better digital photography results. However, as inevitable with any pop phenomenon, the original sense of "hack" has been enlarged to encompass, as he states in the preface, "a clever solution to an interesting problem." Not quite the image of cutting-edge geeks rewiring computer innards, cracking security codes, and interfering with FAA flight paths! But just a little outlaw sensibility yields great results as Story challenges you to take risks to create better photographs. For instance, I had no idea there were so many different tripods and monopods, and their considerable advantages! (Car mount, anyone?) There are 100 tips and tricks here, everything from ending the red-eye blues, how to deal with shooting fireworks, to finding practical purposes for all the old lenses sitting in a closet. Profusely illustrated, eminently useful. SECRETS OF THE iPOD, 4th Edition Christopher Breen 364 pages, $19.99 Peachpit Press www.peachpit.com How quickly some technologies become ingrained in the social fabric. The iPod is no longer a new toy; it's an essential partner in modern life. At least for some parts of the population. Whether it truly signals the end of the music artifact-as-we-know-it (no more LPs, no more CDs), remains to be seen. But the 4th edition of Breen's "Secrets" continues to marvel at the capacity and flexibility of these little culture shifters. Portable music, and now portable images and movies, get detailed examination of the robust functions the iPod and the new iPod mini have to offer. Also includes the recent Windows and Mac versions of iTunes. But, it does NOT include information about AirPort Express and wireless streaming. But, heck, that's in today's newspaper. And probably in the 5th edition of the book. WEB DESIGN WITH MACROMEDIA STUDIO MX 2004 Eric Hunley 558 pages, $49.95 Charles River Media www.charlesriver.com This is a fluid, very approachable, comprehensive tutorial of all the major Macromedia Web building tools - Freehand, Flash, Fireworks, Dreamweaver. It presupposes no inherent knowledge of the software, but doesn't speak to ignorance either. Web designers will find this a useful resource as adjunct education to their existing skills, while those who toil in networking, coding, and content will enjoy its approach also. This will be a well-thumbed manual for both beginners and experts. REAL WORLD ADOBE INDESIGN CS Olav Martin Kvern and David Blatner 789 pages, $44.99 Adobe/Peachpit Press www.peachpit.com No messing around here. This mammoth undertaking gets right to the heart of Adobe's InDesign desktop publishing program with the opening page: "Not everything in InDesign is clearly labeled." ! There are 789 pages here of clear labeling, tight instructions, functional diagrams, professional tips, and remarkably little humor. That last item is no problem, since InDesign has serious implications for both cross-media publishing, and this book instructs to the highest level of page layout design UNDERSTANDING ME: LECTURES AND INTERVIEWS Marshall McLuhan 343 pages, $27.95 MIT Press mitpress.mit.edu Previously unpublished lectures and interviews by the media guru to end all media gurus. Marshall McLuhan provided the touchstone theories and epiphanies for the communications revolution that started in the '60s and accelerated with the coming of the digital age. Now is not too late to familiarize yourself with the man's discourse on popular culture, technology, media "massage," and subversive commercialization. In fact, now is the time. More than ever. Foreword by Tom Wolfe. ADOBE CREATIVE SUITE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS Guy Hart-Davis 184 pages, $12.99 McGraw-Hill Osborne www.osborne.com Those professionals who use Photoshop, Illustrator, and the other tools in the Adobe Creative Suite REALLY use them. And usually their workloads don't give them a lot of time to read thick, expensive manuals to ferret out the particular tasks or techniques they need to make their life easier. This guide is absolutely no nonsense - literally, it is a list of hundreds of keyboard shortcuts that save time in the myriad functions that users are doing over and over and over and over again. The arrangement is practical, and won't require much effort in finding what you need. In fact, this book and Post-It notes will work together just splendidly! |
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