'Take Control of Your Domain Names'

Adam Engst at Take Control Books passes along word about their latest ebook, Glenn Fleishman's "Take Control of Your Domain Names." Says Adam: "It covers a topic that has perplexed even the best of us at times. Glenn demystifies the jargon, explains how domain names work behind the scenes, and gives readers the advice they need to register, configure, and manage domain names. Other sections cover using dynamic DNS, troubleshooting common DNS-related problems, changing registrars or DNS hosts, and buying or selling a domain name. Whether or not readers already have a domain name, they'll learn what's necessary to work with domain names.

The 103-page book costs $10 (more than reasonable), and you can check out a 24-page PDF sample here.

'The Future of Web Video'

From Scott Kirsner:

After a year of work, and more than 100 interviews, I've just published a book called The Future of Web Video: New Opportunities for Producers, Entrepreneurs, Media Companies and Advertisers. It's available in eBook/PDF form (which you can download immediately), or as a paperback, which requires a few days for shipping.

The future of books

Author Cory Doctor has an op-ed, Giving It Away, in the new special issue of Forbes magazine on the future of books. He writes about it in BoingBoing.

Take that, National Book Awards!

MediaBistro: Take That, National Book Awards!

3 books worth a read

Over the past month I've been reading these books -- and enjoying them all:

Informal Learning, by Jay Cross. I met Jay -- who coined the term eLearning -- a few weeks ago, and he just had his book release party in Berkeley. Informal Learning is a breezy read,  chronicling what we all intuitively know: that the most deep-seated learning takes place outside of structured, formal education settings. For the techie crowd I run with, the chapters on unconferences, unworkshops and Web communities are both enlightening and fun, with lots of familiar names. This is a book that start-up executives and managers will find useful in helping to enhance the productivity of knowledge workers.

Hacking the Cable Modem, by the pseudonymous hacker DerEngel. Here's a techie tome that looks at how cable modems work -- and how to hack and modify your cable modem. (Yes, I have a Comcast cable modem. No, I'm not a particularly happy customer.) The author is a certified geek (a good thing), and he makes accessible some of the industry's dirty secrets, like this:

In the early days of cable modems, only the upstream speed was capped; the downstream speed was usually left unrestricted. I believe this was because, for an Internet Service Provider (ISP), the cost of uploads is far greater than the cost of downloads. Providers such as @Home (which later went bankrupt), Road Runner (a division of Time Warner), Opt Online, and so on, didn't originally cap the downstream connection, but they did impose a downstream cap later. My guess is that these later caps were imposed so that the ISP could sell the withheld bandwidth back to you as a tiered service.

The Only Sustainable Edge, by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown.
(Disclosure: JSB is a member of Ourmedia's Board of Directors.) The authors of this 2005 book write that argue that marketplace advantage comes from outperforming business rivals, chiefly through dynamic specialisation and productive friction that are coming to reshape the competitive landscape. The authors map out hard-headed approaches to developing business strategies and taking advantage of new technologies.

New children's fables

My friend, blogger Terry Heaton, has three children's books just out: Princess of the Pond is a lesson in the dangers of self-pity. Donata, the damselfly princess, emerges from the water as a cripple and quickly becomes the laughing stock of the dragonflies and damselflies. Rejected even by her prince, she's befriended by lovable misfits and eventually becomes the pawn of the evil scorpion Beelzebug in a plot to destroy the balance of life in the meadow. To prevent disaster, she must overcome her obsession with self.

There's also The Hoppers of Palmer's Meadow and The Butterfly Tree. Head here to order one or more.

'Take Control of Passwords in Mac OS X'

From Adam Engst at TidBITS Electronic Publishing and Take Control Books:

Take Control of Passwords in Mac OS X by Joe Kissell 
PDF format, 96 pages, free 22-page sample available
Publication date: October 30, 2006
Price: $10

It's easy to keep track of a few passwords, but for any Macintosh user feeling overwhelmed by all the passwords asked for by the Mac and by many Web sites, help is now at hand in the form of a new ebook - "Take Control of Passwords in Mac OS X."

Readers will learn to assess risk factors and devise a personal plan for generating different types of passwords, using a special system for creating strong passwords that are easy to remember but virtually impossible to crack. Once that's done, the ebook explains how to set appropriate passwords for the Mac (account login, master, root, firmware, email, AirPort, keychains), and how to use Apple's built-in password manager Keychain Access.

The Times on 'State of Denial'

Michiko Kakutani reviews Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, in the Sunday NY Times: A Portrait of Bush as a Victim of His Own Certitude.

'Cable News Confidential'

New book from Jeff Cohen of the national media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting: Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media (Paperback).

'Ghost Hunters'

I edited science writer Deborah Blum's stories for years at the Sacramento Bee. (Deborah won a Pulitzer Prize for one particularly outstanding series, The Monkey Wars, in the early '80s.) Now Deborah has a new book out, “Ghost Hunters," which the New York Times reviews today.