Here are some quick impressions on a few of the books I’m reading:
Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource
By Michael Miller
822 pages (Que)
Page on Amazon
Here’s a how-to guide that covers just about the entire Google universe. Miller takes us through the basics, such as how Google works, how to narrow your search to specific file types, tips for more effective searches and searching for people’s phone numbers. Next, he guides us through more advanced features, such as clipping content from Web pages, using Google as an advanced calculator, searching for products and shopping bargains, creating map mashups, using Google Earth, viewing RSS feeds in Gmail and so on.
Miller does a nice job in keeping the reader’s interests front and center. For instance, while YouTube doesn’t let you download its videos, Miller offers a great list of third-party services that let you save and watch YouTube videos on your own schedule. Other useful sections tackle Google Desktop, iGoogle, Picasa, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google AdSense and lots more. (Yep, I use all of these.)
I usually don’t buy books like this, preferring to muddle through and figure things out on my own, but there are so many useful tips — and Google has become such a fixture in our digital lives — that I’d make an exception for Googlepedia.
iPodpedia: The Ultimate iPod and iTunes Resource
By Michael Miller
500 pages (Que)
Page on Amazon
Miller’s at it again in this surprisingly useful guide to all things iPod. I’ve had almost every generation of the iPod since I wrote about Gen 1 in Darknet. But I marked up this baby big-time. You can learn how to turn your iPod into a stopwatch. Discover a DRM workaround that lets you play a track purchased from the iTunes Stone on your non-Apple music player (take that, Steve Jobs!). Gain a deeper understanding of how to add photos to your video iPod.
And more: Connect your iPod to your TV, showing off the photos on your gizmo. Learn how to listen to your iPod tunes in your car. Clip on a Griffin iTalk Pro to turn your iPod into a microphone (bought one a few months ago for $50). Use iTunes to consolidate your music files into a single location. And learn about how to create, edit and find a host for your podcasts.
iPodpedia‘s second edition came out in September, just as Steve Jobs was announcing the iPod touch and a new generation of iPods. Still, there’s enough here to make it worth reading regardless of which generation your iPod belongs to.
Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech
By Craig Silverman
366 pages (Union Square Press)
Page on Amazon
When our team put together a list of howlers for the Principles of Citizen Journalism project, we began by visiting the top resource for journalistic gaffes and howlers, RegrettheError.com. The site is a virtual Wikipedia of blunders by the traditional media. By spotlighting different kinds of errors, ranging from misreported numbers to obituaries of living persons, Silverman offers a penetrating indictment of journalistic lapses at newspapers, magazines and broadcast television outlets.
Regret the Error works because of Silverman’s incisive but good-natured voice as an advocate for old-fashioned verities like accuracy and honesty (add transparency to the stew as well). One could fill a book just with oddball corrections, like this one in the Sentinel & Enterprise (Mass.):
A story in the July 24 edition of the Sentinel & Enterprise incorrectly spelled Sheri Normandin’s name. Also, Bobby Kincaid is not a quadriplegic. We regret the errors.
Or clever admissions from the likes of Ian Mayes, former reader editor of the Guardian, who ran this notice in the British paper in 1999: "The absence of corrections yesterday was due to a technical hitch rather than any sudden onset of accuracy."
But Silverman is going for something deeper. Regret the Error is not an indictment of the media, or an apologia, but a reminder that — in this age of instantaneous news, citizen publishing and online scoops — getting it right still counts for something.
The book offers an inventive way for readers to submit and receive corrections, principally through an Error Report Form at the back of the book. The website, which predated the book, offers a great list of resources for those interested in accessing research materials on the topic. Those of us who came up through the mainstream media can only read it and wince.
Consider the Source: A Critical Guide to 100 Prominent News and Information Sites on the Web
By James F. Broderick & Darren W. Miller
455 pages
James Broderick and Darren Miller have written the book I was sorely tempted to write. (My title would have been: But I Read It on the Internet!).
The authors plow through 100 of the best-known news and info sites online, from al Jazeera, Bloomberg and the CIA to the Nation, Rush Limbaugh, Salon and the Weekly Standard. It’s a mishmosh of a list, with news aggregators like Yahoo! News and Google News receiving equal treatment with that of the New York Times, Washington Post and BBC. Why Yahoo! News (journalists on staff: one or two?), Google News (journalists on staff: zero), the New Yorker (one Web editor) and the New Orleans Times-Picayune (mediocre online presence) rate inclusion but the Huffington Post (hundreds of journalist-contributors) does not is beyond me.
In general, the book’s easy-to-read conclusions and political even-handedness make up for such shortcomings. The authors offer ratings of each news source, with the BBC, Christian Science Monitor and NPR among those garnering top marks (hard to argue there). With a flood of new information sources, the great challenge of the digital generation is to figure out whom to trust. Consider the Source offers us a useful reality check.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
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