The book that I choose to read for this review is called, Create Your Own Website: 6 Easy Projects. This book is written by Scott Mitchell, this is one of many book like this that Mr. Mitchell has written. I choose this book because I am really interested in building my own website that I can share stories and pictures with my family and friends. This book also goes in to how to sell products with an eBay store. This will allow me to learn more about how to effectively create and manage an online eBay store, this is something I have thought about doing on numerous occasions and when we had our guest speaker Jim Reeder from ConsiderItSold it sparked my interest more. Another thing that I hope to gain from this book is learning how to create a blog on my personal website so that I can share events with my family all across the country. Lastly I hope to gain the knowledge on how to share images with Snapfish with my family and friends. This book seems to have a little bit of everything for me to learn about using the web for my enjoyment.
I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get familiar with using the internet to stay connected in many different ways. I will certainly be rereading this book a couple of times when I want to get my website up and running so I can make it presentable for my friends and family. I have already used it to customize my MySpace more to my liking. My mom has used the Snapfish website before but his book has shown both of us more of the tools that they provide to us to use on the website to share our photos.

Promoting Your Podcast

How are people supposed get updated information about their favorite topics when they are always busy and on the go? If only there was some technology that allowed people to keep informed and still keep up with their fast paced lives. Questions like these are easily answered with one word, podcasts. This amazing medium is used for many purposes nowadays such as; providing information, expressing opinions, sharing knowledge or simply complaining about the first thing that comes to one’s mind. The reason that I choose Promoting Your Podcast by Jason Van Orden was because I always wondered how someone would obtain an audience base once the podcast is established. I selected this book in hopes of understanding how a podcast owner could become noticeable amongst the copious number of already existent and constantly growing podcasts; also to learn the basic required tasks of maintaining a prosperous podcast.

This book is a very informative piece of work that serves as an excellent guide for any podcaster no matter their level of experience. The author provides numerous examples and detailed instructions throughout the book that help to alleviate the sometimes overwhelming amounts of information required to sustain a healthy podcast. The optimal audience is someone who already has a podcast or is just starting to create one. The author assumes that the reader has established their podcast purpose and intentions and therefore this book is not for someone who is looking to find help with creating a podcast, but rather help those with existing feeds develop into vigorous and fit podcast. Jason Van Orden proves himself to be a resourceful author and an informative writer. A former Microsoft employee Jason ventured off to pursue the life of podcaster and eventually a podcasting consultant. As the founder of Podcasting University, a prominent online podcasting resource, and the man behind three of his own popular podcasts Jason proves himself to be a skilled authority in the podcasting world.

The concept of podcasting has many different applications and is available to almost anyone interested. The ease of access and lack of start up expenses makes starting a podcast relatively easy. The only setback for some people could be understanding the functions and technology required to maintain a healthy podcast. The details that need to be understood can be quite a responsibility and sometimes overshadowing, but Orden does an excellent job of suppressing these overwhelming feelings by providing the reader with examples and resources that help one to grasp these vast amounts of information. Despite the reader’s knowledge of the discussed topics, Orden successfully creates an easy to read and understand book that does not overwhelm the reader with too much information.

After completing the reading I feel confident that if I ever decided to start up my own podcast, I would have a running head start on the game with this book being an excellent resource along the way. I would recommend this book to any and all podcasters whether they are just beginning or have been doing it for some time. Even the most seasoned podcast could benefit from reading this book as it provides many recourses for growing and maintaining a consistent audience.

The Everything Blogging Book

This is an informative book and also a hands-on book. It not only supplies a lot of information about blogging, but also gives you step by step instructions on how to write your own blog. When I looked inside it, I liked the format of the book. It has main topics written in bold letters, which makes it easy to read the main ideas in each chapter. It also contains useful boxes such as: e-facts, e-essentials, e-alerts, and e-questions, which give the reader hints, advice or just interesting information and facts.
The book takes the reader step by step through the blogging process, which includes planning your blog, finding a blog host, blog design, blog content development, popular blog topics, who is blogging, and popular blog tools. It also explains that blogging creates a culture and a sense of community, where people get together to express their opinions, exchange information, give each other advice, comment on other’s blogs or just read them. It mentions popular blog topics like news, politics, health issues, business and careers, family and relationships issues, travel and recreation, sports, arts and culture. The book was written to help people who don’t know much about blogging understand what blogging is, how it works and why people blog. “It was written as a guide into the world of blogs and blogging.”
A great benefit of this book is listings of links to different Web sites that can be found throughout the text. The resources section also provides many additional Web sites about blog hosts or providers, blog search engines, blog feeds, feed readers and subscription services and photo blogging resources, which are very handy especially for the beginners.

I would recommend this book to anybody who doesn’t have much knowledge about blogging and who is interested in learning the basics about the subject.

The Web Collection Revealed

“The Web Collection Revealed: Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, Flash 8, and Fireworks 8”

Authors: Sherry Bishop, Jim Shuman, and Barbara M. Waxer

Review: Scott Lawrence

I have been designing websites as a hobby/part time job since the age of 9. I had a running gag with my parents every year during Christmas where I would create a version of my Christmas list that was always improved upon the previous year. It got to the point where the items I wanted became irrelevant and I looked forward to Christmas simply to try and out-do my previous attempt and create a list that would impress everyone. Eventually I decided that a physical list would no longer suffice, and I opted to create a web version using the long since dead free hosting site, Angelfire.com. My first site was terrible looking, and obnoxious in every way and broke every rule of thumb for web design. Over the course of the next few years, I began to gather ideas on how to create a new and improved site, but had little knowledge of how to complete these great ideas. Out of necessity, I slowly began to teach myself HTML coding, JavaScript, and how to use editors such as Photoshop, FrontPage, and others. I eventually started making sites for $400 a piece for local companies or local bands that had absolutely no idea what HTML even was. Eventually I burned out and quit trying to keep up with the technology advances moving faster than any one person could learn.

I ordered this book from the internet because of my interest in the subject of Flash. When the book arrived I saw a note that was absent from the website, “Beginner to Intermediate”. Instantly I wrote this book off as a total waste of time. Fortunately I was wrong. There were clear gaps in my self-motivated web design education that this book finally was able to fill. Furthermore, there have been huge strides in technology advances since I hang up the web design towel only a few years ago. For the majority of this book, I found myself glancing at pages and skipping them as it went into vivid detail about how to create tags, tables, and other aspects of web design that have not changed and had become second nature of the years. However, the topic of Cascading Style Sheets shows up, a concept that was so new that most browsers would not support them at the last I had heard of such a thing. CSS is a way to create an outside source file that tells all of your web pages how to look, act, and position themselves, allowing large websites to be much simpler. As I read through a concept I knew practically nothing about, I found the authors explanations extremely easy to read and understand. These simple explanations were followed up by pictures that finally helped me understand what some of those buttons in Dreamweaver were actually supposed to do. By the end of the book I actually found myself saying out loud, “Wow I had no idea you could do that!”

My main interest was in learning Flash, which I already own several books on the subject, but I have gained very little knowledge from any of them. What little I did know I had discovered by playing around with the software myself in my free time, like trying to make a ball bounce across the screen. There were amazing things such as “Shape Tweens” and “Text Animations” that I knew were available, but had no idea how to use. The book again clearly explained how to create a navigation bar instead of a simple animation. It demonstrates the main concepts behind Flash that were the essential reasons I was unable to utilize this powerful software to its full extent. I would greatly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in making powerful, engrossing websites but has very little core knowledge of how to do so. The more advanced users will notice that the book lacks any real explanation of Action Script, one of the most powerful aspects of Flash. However, for someone who has dabbled in web design, this book will help you start making websites like a pro in no time at all. Clear to the point explanations, plenty of images, a project guide included on the disc, and a straight forward approach to using the three programs as well as integrating them together makes this one of the best technical instructions books I have read. As you recall, I taught myself at least 3 or 4 coding languages, so I have read well more than my fair share of technical books, and this one stands above the rest.

The book Mastering Online Marketing by Mitch Meyerson is a phenomenal book and toolkit for any up starting Internet business to read. Not only is this a great guide but also there are interactive charts, assessments and tables that the reader will do and it will help guide them in improving their marketing strategies.

Mastering Online Marketing is about marketing, specifically online marketing. It also has many tools as well as examples, in it to help its readers get websites started and how to get marketing online done right at the very beginning. The author of the book is Mitch Meyerson. He used to be a psychotherapist in Chicago. He has made a lot of money through his online coaching programs and this book teaches the readers how to go about improving their online marketing skills and driving people to their website.  Mitch is also an author in four additional business development books and three personal development books. Mitch partner, Jay Conrad Livingston created Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Program. With another partner, Michael Port he created 90-Day Product Factory as well as the Traffic School. All in all I would recommend this book to a lot of people starting off with a new website or wanting to enhance their current website to drive traffic to their sites. But I would also recommend that read other marketing books are researched and taken into consideration before any marketing idea/strategy is put into operation. This was a great book for a “How-To” book and it was an easy read. I enjoyed it and think it should be in any private website owners library.

How to Use the Internet

How to Use the Internet to Advertise, Promote, and Market Your Business or Web Site with Little or No Money

By Bruce C. Brown

I chose this book because I wanted to learn more about promoting a website. Also it came highly recommended from other readers on Amazon.com.

About the book

This book is about promoting and advertising on the Internet. First it tells you the basics of what you need and how to get it, and then has information on where to find it for free or at a low cost. It helps define e-commerce terms, what you will need in creating a website, the importance of Internet advertising, how to generate more traffic to your website, and how to make it easier for you to run your online business with different types of software. Most of the ideas or topics mentioned have websites to go to get the software or application you need for little to no cost. It has clear steps on how to start a marketing plan that will work best for your company and how to implement the plan. Some of the ideas and techniques the book mentions are to:

Design an easy, well managed web site
Use Newsletters and e-zines
Try Google or Yahoo advertising- the book states that using Google is one of the smartest decisions you can make in advertising your business
Use Affiliate programs
Get Media Exposure
Use Automation for responding to customers and database marketing
Use your expertise to speak at functions or write articles

The book was written to help the reader find all the information in one source.

Recommendation

Yes I would definitely recommend this book. It was an easy read, not too complicating. It had great information and ideas. Ideas that you would never think of. It was a great book for anyone who is interested in promoting a website and doesn't know much about Marketing. I also loved how the book had recommendations on websites to use which most all of them where free or low cost. The only down side to this book is it was very repetitive. However, It was very thorough. If the ideas were used and implemented correctly I believe that you would have a very successful business that would be profitable.

BLOGOSPHERE by Michael Keren

Overview
The world of blogging has grown into a cult phenomenon with thousands of individuals posting their thoughts, stories, beliefs, and rampages all over the web for viewers to observe and discuss. In this book by Michael Keren, the stories of nine individual and very diverse bloggers are examined and analyzed through Keren’s dissection of the blogging community and the politics associated with it. In the introduction of the book, Keren discusses the importance of the “blogosphere” and how exploration in it can harm those who are not politically and socially knowledgeable enough to recognize the difference between a web log with factual and relevant information, compared with the ranting of a meaningless individual with mindless information flow. Keren gives us insight into the lives of nine twenty-first century characters and tries to merge the reasons why they, and so many others like them, choose to blog. The first story is of a web designer named Jason Kottke. Kottke’s assortment of blogs ranges from daily morning rituals and recommendations of local restaurants to technology and design. Megnut.com, or Meg.Hourihan.com, is the blog about a woman named Meg Hourihan who is known as innovator and an icon to women. . Hourihan’s online diary supports her conviction of female superiority and serves as an all-purpose blog. The third blog was created by an anonymous Iranian girl to inform the world about the ongoing condition in Iran and the problems that the women in Iran face on a daily basis. “Not a Fish” is a blog written by “Imshin” who was described in an online profile in June 2004 as a thirty-nine- year old Israeli working mother. This blog illustrates the daily life and struggles of a mother trying to raise her children. The fifth story is of a lady named Marn and her blog, "Marn's Big Adventure" has become the catalyst for this baby boomer to discuss her affection for her cats, her everyday rituals on a dairy farm in Canada, and her space to gossip on everything. The next blog is the story is of an American soldier, nicknamed Lt. Smash, serving in the Naval Coastal Warfare Group providing security to coalition ships unloading military cargo in the Kuwaiti Port of Shuaibaon. This online diary served as a means of keeping his family and friends updated on his adventures, and eventually he began engaging with thousands of citizens at home who sent their questions, comments, greetings, and blessings. Pamela Ribon is an author, TV writer, actor, screenwriter and the figure behind the popular pop culture blog, pamie.com. ). “A Mother in India” tells the tale of a woman living in India and her “experiences and challenges in getting help for her daughter who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia”. Lastly, the blog of a man named Rethabile Masilo. An African exile living in France. This story is an example of how blogging has a way of expressing an individual voice to have a justly liberating role.

Review
Some of the stories covered in the book were very compelling and inspiring while others I found irrelevant and boring. Keren’s evaluation of the author’s I found to be judgmental and rude. There are thousands of individual “online diaries” on the web and these are the nine that Keren chose to write a review on. Not every blog is going to be politically correct or even valuable, not every blog has to be. The purpose of a blog is for people, real or imaginary, to create and manipulate their identities and remark on what they find to be important and to share it with others. It is not one’s job to criticize what is in someone else’s mind. I found Keren’s critiques to be unjustly and the handful of examples he chose to examine to be an incomplete sample of the world of “blogosphere”. I would not recommend the book, however, I would recommend taking a look at the individuals blogs discussed in this book.

On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders

By Michael A. Banks

Overview: This book shows how history was changed through the use of computers and the Internet. How everyday life now, relies on the Internet and the way we find information. The book talks about many of the start-up companies the Internet was founded on such as: Prodigy, GEnie, AOL, Apple Link, PC-Link, CompuServe, Lockheed, DELPHI, Apple, IBM and many more. Banks takes you through 30 years of the Internet and how it's developed and changed since the 1970's. The book has really good Appendix's that show the start of the companies and a great timeline. "This book introduces you to failed entrepreneurs, people who built empires out of little more than empty time, the innovators who laid the foundation for the Internet and the World Wide Web, the man who invented online chat, and the people who invented the products all of us use online every day!" If you want to know about the Internet and how it really started this is the book for you.

Recommendation: This book was very interesting because of all the information presented. The author, Michael A. Banks, really did his research for writing this book. No wonder he is considered an expert in his field. He gives very detailed information and a lot of it. It takes a little bit of time to read it because of all the names and companies he goes through. I liked that he included little subtext in the book of specific information that was interesting. I would not suggest this book for light easy reading unless you are really interested in the beginning of the Internet. It can be a little dry in some areas and can jump around very quickly. If you know nothing about computers this book can be a little difficult. Overall, I would not recommend this book unless you are extremely interested in the material.

The Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords

Overview:

The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords is a must read for any business owner that is looking to drive traffic to their website.  The book is a fairly easy read that uses a lot of examples and takes you on a step by step process through setting up, maintaining, and converting business off of internet.  It has helpful tips throughout as how to develop or improve your current AdWords campaign.  The book is broken down well into short chapters that have enough information with a good combination of examples and images throughout.  Overall it is a well laid out book that is helpful to the business owner that wants to get more traffic to their website.

Personal Review:  

Overall I think the book was written very well for the purpose that it was intended.  I could sit down and pick up this book and start from scratch creating an AdWords campaign, develop it, know how to test it, and also some of the things I may need to do once I drive the traffic to my website.  Even for someone that has been doing this for awhile the book does have some helpful tips as to how to improve your campaign and test it as time goes along.  The only individuals that would see no value out of this book is someone that already does a lot of SEO work.  Overall I would recommend the book!

The Google Story

Lisa Neal
"The Google Story"
by: David Vise & Mark Malseed

Overview:
The book “The Google Story,” written by David Vise and co-authored by Mark Malseed, is a in depth account of how the massive Google company leads the way in the search engine business, got its start in a rented garage in Silicon Valley. The book gives detailed accounts of every process Google went through to be the major success they are today, all the way from Stanford University were the two Google inventors Larry Page and Sergey Brin first met. I choose this book in order to understand how this company outperformed similar companies and overcame many obstacles to obviously become a very wealthy and unique business. I wanted to see the process that came about in order to produce such a radically different technology and who the unique and talented minds behind Google, who dreamed it up, were.

Personal Review:
Overall, “The Google Story” is a must read for anybody who uses Google or is interested in their business strategies or who just are curious how they made it big. This book has more to offer than any of the competitor books on the same subject because it has a nice balance of history and technical information as well as interesting stories and facts and the authors are obviously more than qualified to produce this type of read. The depth of this book is really attention-grabbing, informative as well as entertaining. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a better understanding of the technology and history behind Google as well as anyone who wants innovative ideas for the running of a business.

Starting an eBay Business

This book is demonstrating to individuals and traditional businesses how they can start an eBay business. It gives you information on how to price your products, and understand the costs associated with an eBay business and how to write compelling listings. There are so many people that try to sell products on eBay but they don’t have any success. There is several different ways of why you could sell on eBay including if you have a low-cost product, you are a manufacturer, hobbyist, collector, or you want to expand your traditional business. The Better Business Bureau wrote this book in collaboration with the Planning Shop, which specialize in creating business resources for entrepreneurs.

The book goes in to great detail regarding the different options of selling on eBay that are available to you. These include Standard Auction, Buy It Now, Best Offer, eBay Stores, eBay Express, and Want It Now. In addition the book covers topics such as how to plan your eBay business, getting started, pricing and profit, after the auction, and beyond the auction.

If you don’t know anything about eBay but have a desire to start an eBay business, then this book is for you. It tells you exactly what to do and when to do it. It covers everything from planning your eBay business to how to accept your payment and ship the item to the customer.

I strongly recommend this book for anyone with the aspiration of selling on eBay but who have not materialized their dream due to lack of knowledge and tools. This book will provide you with everything.

The Secret Power of Blogging

Matt Julsonnet
The Secret Power of Blogging
By Bruce C. Brown
MKTG 470 - Book Review

Overview of Book
The Secret Power of Blogging, or SPB, is an incredibility informative book that is written in the same fashion as the "For Dummies" style books, or any general "How-To" or "Do-It-Yourself" book. The writing style of SPB is very simple, explicit, and easy to understand. As the title states, SPB is a book about the "secret power of blogging." As it states in the subtitle, this book explains “How to promote and market your business, organization, or cause with free blogs.” This book gives readers a step-by-step introduction into how to create a blog. However, this book was not written with the idea of personal blogging in mind. The entire purpose of this book is encapsulated in its subtitle. The idea of the book is to simply help individuals and small organizations make money and create awareness through their own blogs.

Personal Review
On the whole, I thought that SPB was a relatively interesting and informative book. There is an abundance of useful information contained within its pages. In comparison with other books of this type, “How-To-Use-Computers” etc, I would highly recommended SPB. It is an excellent resource when establishing a blog for business purposes. Therefore, although there are a few weaknesses within the book, namely juvenile writing and some incorrect assumptions by the author, I would recommend the Secret Power of Blogging to anyone interested in learning about the art of blogging.

Start Your Own e-business: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Success

This book was written to help both individuals and existing traditional businesses to engage in e-commerce. If you are interested in starting a successful e-business but have limited or no knowledge with reference to e-commerce, then, this book is for you. The book contains highly detailed information and provides a step-by-step approach regarding every aspect of developing a successful e-business, including web site building, web design, web hosts, domains, ads, affiliate programs, funding, and search engines.


If you are wondering how you build a web site and how you make it show up on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, then wonder no more. This book will cover everything and even inform you of all costs. It will provide both the knowledge and the tools you need to develop a fully operational e-business.


The strongest aspect of the book is the Appendix containing the so called “e-Business Resources.” This is a section referencing companies and organizations which can provide tremendous information in every aspect of what is needed in order to start a successful e-business. The appendix contains resources for marketing research, financial status of existing companies, publications, statistics, web site building, and traffic report and ratings, among other topics. Organizations mentioned include: hoovers.com, thomasregister.com, bbbonline.org, and planetbiz.com. Additional sources are networksolutions.com and tophost.com. This appendix is invaluable not only in terms of research but also in terms of growing your e-business.