Title: No Exit Author: Taylor Adams My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: June 25, 2017 (Joffe Books) on Amazon On my cruise to Central America last month, I loaded up my Kindle Paperwhite with a dozen suspense novels, nearly all of them by independent authors. The story that stays with me one month later is that of the protagonist in “No Exit.”
Title: “A Crack in Creation” Authors: Jennifer A. Doudna & Samuel H. Sternberg My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Release date: June 13, 2017 on Amazon More often than not, it’s difficult to determine which new titles will have staying power 10, 20 or 50 years from now. But “A Crack in Creation” deserves to be on any short list of decidedly important nonfiction books of 2017. The reason is not simply because of the authors’ pedigree — co-author Jennifer Doudna is credited as the chief pioneer behind CRISPR, the potentially world-changing gene-editing technique. The book’s impact is also buttressed by the authors’ scientific rigor, deeply felt passion, and understanding of the world-changing consequences of their research. Doudna and
Title: “Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000″ Author: Jason Calacanis My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: July 18, 2017 on Amazon (hardcover & Kindle), in bookstores and at angelthebook With Silicon Valley at the center of tech culture – and much of pop culture these days – you might be tempted to get in on the startup action. Not founding a startup but investing in one … or a dozen … or, as Jason Calacanis advises in his new book “Angel,” investing $1.5 million in 50 startups over a three-year span. Now that’s a bold and provocative set of marching orders. Which is what we have come to expect from Calacanis, the Brooklyn-bred journalist turned entrepreneur turned podcast impresario—and one
A clear-eyed look at the mind-blowing changes in spatial computing dead ahead Title: “The Fourth Transformation: How Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence Change Everything” Authors: Robert Scoble & Shel Israel My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: December 7, 2016 on Amazon At the Launch Scale conference in San Francisco on Nov. 14, technologist-futurist Robert Scoble held forth for 20 minutes wearing a mixed reality headset, allowing him to interact with the attendees (startup founders, angels and techies) while projecting a presentation behind him. “Within two years,” he said at one point, “everybody in this room will be wearing a glass. And you might say ‘I’m never going to do that,’ but I’m telling you right now, you will.” A few minutes later he insisted: “You all are
Randi Zuckerberg’s new book offers wise advice on how to balance our personal & professional lives online Target audience: Small and mid-size businesses, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, social media managers, college students, job seekers, Facebook users and anyone navigating the social media landscape. Cool your online jets, kids. You too, mom and pop. Step away from the habit of 24/7 smartphone gratification. Friend only real friends. Treat others with respect. And don’t try to carve out an Internet persona different from your real-world self. Those are a few of the common-sense prescriptions Randi Zuckerberg offers for the legions of always-on overindulgers bingeing on a social media sugar high in her new book Dot Complicated (249 pages, HarperCollins), coming out tomorrow.
New book, out today, identifies ‘five forces’ animating modern culture Title: “The Age of Context” Pages: 248 Publisher: CreateSpace Release date: Sept. 25, 2013 Every few years someone comes along and pulls the camera back to reveal a wider view of the technological changes coursing through the business world and larger culture. Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have done just that with their new book, “The Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy” (paperback, self-published). The authors nicely contextualize what they call the “five forces” in what amounts to a technology megatrend: mobile, sensor devices, social media, big data and location-based technologies. These forces add up to a formidable package, one that deserves scrutiny far beyond the boundaries of
Title: “Your Network Is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age” Author: Porter Gale Pages: 306 Release date: June 4, 2013 While other books in recent years have jumped on the trendy anti-social media bandwagon, Porter Gale’s “Your Network Is Your Net Worth” goes in a different direction. The book makes an optimistic, hard-headed, clear-eyed case for the simple reality that social networking is not just about people and our connections to them – it’s also, at bottom, about how we shape our own identities and, ultimately, our destinies. In the book’s 13 chapters, the author mixes personal anecdotes and frank revelations with a series of exercises that propel readers
Review of ‘The Intention Economy’ by Doc Searls Review by J.D. Lasica Title: “The Intention Economy″ Author: Doc Searls My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: May 1, 2012 In “The Intention Economy” (Harvard Business Review Press), Doc Searls picks up where he left off as co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” the seminal 2000 book that coined the phrase “conversations are markets” and ushered in a new understanding of how the Internet has changed the power relationship between institutions and individuals. In his new book, Searls takes things a step further, painting a picture of what happens “when customers take charge” of this often dysfunctional relationship. Searls describes the tiny buds and sprouts of an emerging Intention Economy driven by customer demand
Imet Andrea Syrtash — author, advice columnist and life coach — at last year’s 140 Characters conference in New York, so when she swung into San Francisco as part of her book tour for “He’s Just Not Your Type,” I caught up with her after her talk at Book Passage along the Embarcadero. “He’s Just Not” isn’t the typical fear-based dating advice book (You’re not getting any younger! Settle!). Mostly, it’s about discovering things about yourself, including unsuccessful dating patterns. “If you keep dating the same kind of person and it’s not working, you might want to mix it up,” she said.
Title: “Brand Name Bullies″ Author: Peter Bollier My rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ Release date: Jan. 1, 2005 For the past few years, intellectual property law has been the playground of lawyers, geeks and scholars. Now comes David Bollier to explain why this seemingly arcane field should matter to the rest of us. In “Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture (Wiley & Sons),″ released this month on Amazon, the author of Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of Our Common Wealth is back with a painfully comic look at how big corporations are bullying the little guy and locking down culture with the backing of one-sided copyright, patent and trademark laws. Bollier, a co-founder of the public interest group Public
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