Tag Archives | eBook

Win a Copy of “Digging into WordPress 3.1″ from Techinch and AppSumo

By Matthew Guay on May 3, 2011 in Techinch

When you need to publish anything on the web, WordPress is just about the best solution for building your site. WordPress may have started out as just a standard blog publishing engine, but today, it’s powerful enough to let you create everything from complex real estate sites to an online eBook. Best of all, it’s still simple enough to let you make cute and easy to update Tumblr style blogs.

There’s only one problem: How are you going to figure out how to do all of this on your own? Sure, you could purchase a theme and some plugins, but if you don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes, you’ll have a much harder time customizing it to your needs. That’s where the excellent Digging into WordPress eBook comes in. This eBook takes you through everything you’ll need to know to understand the basics of building WordPress themes and plugins, and customizing the core software. It’ll even help you learn how to make your site more secure, and more that we covered in our review last year. The latest edition that was just released even covers the latest features of WordPress 3.1, including custom post formats and more. Continue Reading →

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Download “The Elements of Style” for Free

By Matthew Guay on March 15, 2011 in Books, Quick Tips

One of the most celebrated texts for writers is William Strunk, Jr.’s The Elements of Style. If you’ve ever taken a writing class or done any extra studying about writing, you’ve likely seen this short book quoted or listed as recommended reading. Written initially as a short handbook for his students in 1918, Strunk’s work has remained a standard handbook of English writing ever since. It’s a brief book, but includes some of the best advice on correct English rules of usage, commonly misused and misspelled words, and

In the years since its original publishing, The Elements of Style has been updated numerous times, and in 1935 E. B. White contributed to the updating, causing the book to generally be known as Strunk and White. You can still purchase the most up-to-date version as a paper book from Amazon today, though oddly enough the latest editions are not available as eBooks. Both the Kindle Store and iBooks include copies of The Elements of Style, but they’re actually just reformatted copies of the original edition from others.

Since the original was published in 1918, though, the original Elements of Style is out of copyright in the US and most other countries. Thanks to that, the book was published fully on Wikisource, Wikipedia’s site for public domain books. You can read it online there, and since the chapters are quite short, it’s a great reference to keep bookmarked so you can check whenever you’re writing. Alternately, you can also download The Elements of Style in nicely formatted PDF, mobi, or ePub files from Feedbooks for free. These copies are great to save to your eBook library so you can read the whole book from your computer, iPhone/iPad, Kindle, or other device anytime you want.

Original 1918 edition of The Elements of Style in iBooks

The Elements of Style is definitely still a useful handbook for English writing, and I just read through the first section this afternoon as part of my required reading for my current technology communications class. Interestingly, it’s also a great companion book to the new book from A List Apart, The Elements of Content Strategy, which is written to help writers craft online content that’s as high quality as is demanded of traditional writers.

It’s amazing how timeless the advice in The Elements of Style is for it to still be relevant all these years later. Whether you’re a full-time writer or just need a few pointers to make your writing flow better, it’s a great guide that’s quick and easy to read. For free!

Download The Elements of Style in PDF, ePub, or mobi format from Feedbooks

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Review: Cooking for Geeks

By Matthew Guay on January 10, 2011 in Books

When’s the last time you did a chemistry experiment? Truth is, most of us do chemistry experiments more often than we imagine. Every time you try tweaking a recipe or try to cook something new, you’re doing a chemistry experiment. Best thing is, you can use the basic properties of food to make new dishes and recreate your favorite foods.

This can be difficult to do on your own, though, and most cookbooks are designed to just help you make individual recipes and don’t overly teach you how to design new ones. Cooking for Geeks is a great book that does exactly that. Author Jeff Potter guides you through the basic ways foods work so you’ll understand how everything from eggs to high temperature cooking works. It includes tons of recipes, but best of all, it’ll leave you with an understanding of what made that recipe tick and how you can use the ideas from it on your own. You’ll even learn better ways to make boiled eggs, of all things!

Whether you’re cooking on your own or using it with a school group to teach, Cooking for Geeks empowers you to take your cooking to the next level. Sure, cooking is not a technology centric thing, but this book makes cooking appeal to those of us who enjoy hacking and tweaking. Plus, when’s the last time you saw the Mac vs. PC debate mentioned in a cookbook? My family and I have found this book very educational and enjoyable, and if you find cooking any bit interesting, I believe you’ll be fascinated by this book, too.

Our Rating: 9/10

Checkout the Official Cooking for Geeks site

Purchase Cooking for Geeks from Amazon.com [$21.54 paperback | $15.39 Kindle Edition]

Purchase Cooking for Geeks from O’Reilly [$34.99 print | $27.99 eBook]

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A Tale of 4 eBook Textbook Systems: CourseCompass, CourseSmart, NookStudy, and Kindle

By Matthew Guay on November 4, 2010 in Techinch

eBooks are one of the hottest topics this year, with eReaders, tablets, netbooks, and even smartphones making it easier than ever to read your favorite books wherever you are. Unfortunately, it’s not just as simple as deciding to purchase an eTextbook and then getting it. The system right now is somewhat a mess, but we’ll help you wade through it and see what’s best for you.

What’s Available?

eTextbooks are just digital copies of the normal paper textbooks students have carried around on campuses for decades. Unlike dead-tree books, however, eTextbooks are often only available from one store, and then can only be used on certain programs and devices. Additionally, many eTextbook systems only rent their eBooks; you’ll pay for the book, but only be able to access it for 180 days or so.

Some of the most popular eTextbook systems with the most books available are Amazon Kindle, B&N’s NOOKstudy, CourseCompass, and CourseSmart. Between these, you can find almost any standard textbook you need. I’ve personally used textbooks from all of these systems for classes I’ve taken, and here’s what I’ve found with each:

CourseCompass:

CourseCompass is an online course system from Pearson education. It’s designed to offer extra study aids to go along with your courses, which you’ll usually access via an access code from the back of a book (a trick publishers invented to try to curb the used textbook market … another frustration I have with textbook publishers). Alternately, you can also purchase a CourseCompass subscription directly for your class. These usually include an eTextbook, and since it was cheaper than other options, I chose this for my Accounting textbook this past year since I was required to use the CourseCompass extra study aids for the class.

Unfortunately, CourseCompass eBooks are almost unusable. They are only available online, and are powered by Adobe Flash. You first have to jump through several clicks just to open the online textbook.

Once it’s open, you’ll be hard pressed to make the book comfortable to read. The fonts are somewhat blurry, and it’s hard to get the reader window the size that works best for you since the reader is Flash based.

Switching to another section of the book can be difficult, and there’s no built in search or links in the index to help you quickly jump to the section you want.

Simply switching to the next page takes several seconds. You can’t easily keep the book offline, either, since you’re only allowed to print one page at a time.

Since CourseCompass books are tied to your class, you’ll only have access to them while the class is active. Once the class is finished, you won’t be able to access the book again. I personally recommend staying away from CourseCompass eBooks as much as possible, and even if you need to use their online course companion resources, I would not recommend using it for textbook access.

CourseSmart:

CourseSmart is currently the leader in eTextbooks, as they offer over 90% of the standard textbooks used in colleges across America. CourseSmart eBooks look just like they would on paper, including images, sidebars, indexes, and more. All of their eTextbooks are available for an 180 day rental period, and you can choose to either purchase on online subscription or download a special app and have your book offline. The online reader is all HTML based, so you can read the book easily, copy text, highlight, and more.

One great advantage is that you’re allowed to print up to 10 pages at a time, and up to a total of 150% of the total number of pages in the book, so if you need a hard copy of the book or want to keep it offline, CourseSmart lets you have it.

If you purchase an online subscription to a CourseSmart book, you can access it on your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad with their free CourseSmart eTextbooks for the iPhone app. Unfortunately, the books are very difficult to read on iPhone or iPod Touch since they render the entire page of a textbook just like it would appear on paper, making it hard to read on a small screen. Additionally, you have to be online to access CourseSmart books from your device.

While CourseSmart is still not perfect, it’s my second choice after Kindle, and with the amount of textbooks they currently have available, you’re almost guaranteed to find some of your textbooks there.

Kindle:

Amazon Kindle is my personal favorite eBook platform, and it currently offers more books and runs on more devices than any other eBook system. They now offer an increasing number of eTextbooks, and would be my first choice when purchasing an eTextbook for a number of reasons. First, all books are sold, not rented, so you can keep them forever. Second, they work great on a multitude of devices, and the new Kindle for PC lets you search, highlight, and bookmark content in books.

The only problem I’ve had with Kindle eBooks is that they reflow to fit your screen, so you don’t know what the current page number is. This generally is not a problem with reading books, but makes it difficult to cite books. If this does become the standard, though, I expect that citation rules will change to accommodate this.

Kindle’s best advantage is that you can read your textbooks anywhere. They’ll work on a Kindle device, in the Kindle for PC reader, or your mobile device such as an iPod Touch or iPhone. Since Kindle books reflow to fit your screen, it’ll be easy to read your book no matter where you are, even without an internet connection. This is one case where having a book locked to a platform doesn’t limit you at all!

NOOKstudy:

Barnes & Noble has been ramping up their eBook offerings with their NOOK eReader device, and they’re also a leader in eTextbooks. They offer a very nice eBook reader for Mac and PC, the NOOKstudy, which lets you read full-quality textbooks offline on up to 2 computers. You can search for content in books, highlight and copy text, and even print a portion of the book, depending on publisher restrictions. Textbooks look very much like they do on CourseSmart, and many popular ones are avilable.

The only problem is, most of their textbooks are rentals just like CourseSmart, so you’ll only be able to use your book for 180 days. Additionally, one very odd thing is that NOOKstudy books do not work on the NOOK device or on B&N’s mobile apps, so they’re only accessible on a Mac or PC. For more info about NOOKstudy, check out my review on HowtoGeek.com.

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Other Options

Thankfully, in addition to these eTextbook publishers, there are some other options becoming available. Some publishers are selling eBooks directly in more open formats such as ePub or PDF, or via an online reader. O’Reilly Press offers almost all of their books in open PDF and ePub formats, while MIT Press offers many of their books via an online flash-based reader. Many tech, design, and business eBooks are also available through Safari Books Online, a subscription-based online library. Then, some newer publishers such as Flat World Knowledge are perusing even more adventurous publishing models, offering eBooks that are free to read online but cost to download or get the audio version. Hopefully we’ll se even more innovation in this area over the coming years, and maybe we’ll start seeing textbooks that are easier to obtain and cheaper for everyone.

Conclusion

No matter what subject you’re studying, the chances that you’ll find the textbook you need in digital format is better now than ever before. Unfortunately, varied formats, platforms, and eBook features make what would be an ideal situation into a confusing mess. And if there’s one eTextbook system to stay away from, it’s CourseCompass. Their eBooks are almost unusable, especially if your internet connection is any bit slow, and it’s painful to move through their books and find what you’re looking for. All of the other eTextbook systems are much better, so whenever possible, pick them.

Have you used an eTextbook? Please share your experiences below! We’re looking forward to the future of eBooks, and hope to see it get easier and cheaper to get the eTextbook you need.

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Free Book Giveaway! Our Review of the Digging Into WordPress 3 eBook

By Matthew Guay on September 6, 2010 in Books, Reviews, Techinch

Are you wanting to learn more about WordPress? From mainstream websites to personal blogs, WordPress is one of the most important and powerful publishing platforms today. There’s a wealth of information of information available online, but it can be very difficult to learn everything there is to know about something as big as WordPress from scattered blog posts and articles. That’s where Digging into WordPress fits in. Keep reading for our review of the latest version of this impressive book, and for an opportunity to win one of 2 copies we’re giving away this week!

Digging into WordPress is a great eBook that gives you a through WordPress education in a fun and exciting way. It is aimed at users that know at least some HTML, CSS, and PHP, but if you even have the slightest knowledge of web design and have a strong desire to push on and learn more, you’ll be able to learn a lot from this book. Best of all, it was recently updated for WordPress 3.0! Whether you’re still trying to learn your way around WordPress, are trying to hack your favorite Elegant Theme or WooTheme to work the way you want, or are trying to become the new 3rd most important person in WordPress, this is the book for you. It covers all the following and more:

Unique ways to secure your WordPress site
Great ways to incorporate Twitter and other social media into your site
In depth SEO information
Using WordPress as a CMS with custom Taxonomies, fields, post types, and more
Creating and using WordPress child themes
Over 20 pages devoted to the latest WordPress 3.0 features, including WordPress MultiSite, custom menus, and more, with WP 3.0 specific updates throughout the book

With all that content, Digging into WordPress is a massive eBook, with nearly 450 pages of tips, tricks, and instruction. It’s also a beautiful book that looks great on your netbook or eReader screen!

If you’re a visual learner, Digging into WordPress will be especially helpful. It frequently includes screenshots of websites and WordPress admin screens to illustrate what its talking about. The whole book is beautifully designed, which makes it a pleasure to read while still giving you a ton of WordPress instruction.

The book is filled with sample code that can help you do exactly you want to with your WordPress themes and backend PHP, even if you only have a basic understanding of PHP coding. You always learn more when you learn by doing, so be sure to try out the code on your own site or WordPress test install so you’ll really understand how it works. And if you’re already an advanced WordPress developer, it can be a great resource of code snippets for those little, hard-to-remember functions.

But it’s not all code, work, and study … Digging into WordPress is fun, too. It’s filled with funny and inspirational quotes, pointers, and off-the-wall remarks that break up the monotony of studying. This book is as informative as a textbook, but if you’re any bit into web development, it’ll be as fun to read as a tech book can be.

As mentioned before, the book has been fully updated with WordPress 3.0 information, so you’ll be armed with the latest tools when you set off to create your own new themes. Best of all, if you purchase a copy of Digging into WordPress (or have purchased one in the past), you’ll receive free updates to the book when they’re published! So you’ll learn about WP 3.0 today, and will also get the latest information when new versions of WordPress are released in the future. Technology changes daily, so too often, books are outdated as soon as you buy them. Not Digging into WordPress … it’s a living eBook

We’re very impressed with the content and quality of this book, and highly recommend it. If you’d like to see more, be sure to check out the free sample chapter. Or take a look around the companion site, DigWP.com; it includes an amazing amount of WordPress tips and tricks, such as this great tip on using Tumblr-style link posts in WordPress!

Usually, when I finish reading a tech book, I think I wish it’d covered *whatever* better, but this book left no room for missing information. You’re supposed to point out where books came short in reviews, but I couldn’t find anything to critique. 450 pages of content, up to date information, full-color graphics, and free updates in the future … what’s not to love? If you’re wanting to learn more about WordPress, this is the book to get!

Win a Free Copy of Digging Into WordPress

Update: Our contest is now closed, and the winners are Roger and jawshua. Thanks everyone for participating!

Best of all, we’re giving away 2 PDF copies of Digging Into WordPress! To enter, simply leave a comment below and let us know why you want to read Digging into WordPress, or follow us on Twitter (@techinch for just Techinch posts, or @maguay for more random tech stuff and interesting posts), and tweet the following or just click Tweet at the bottom of this post:

Win a free copy of Digging into WordPress from @techinch! http://bit.ly/digwp3

Important: Make sure to mention @maguay or @techinch in the Tweet, or we may not see it and won’t be able to count it in this contest!

Want a better chance at winning? Leave a comment and retweet this post for 2 entries! The contest closes at midnight Friday, September 10th, EST time, so make sure to comment before then.

And a special thanks to Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr, the authors of Digging into WordPress, for sponsoring this contest.

Purchase Digging into WordPress

If you don’t win the contest, don’t despair. You can still purchase a copy and learn all the great tips yourself. The eBook version costs $27, and comes with fully free updates. Digging into WordPress has already gone through 3 major versions, and if you purchased a previous version, you automatically got a new copy for download as soon as it came out. It even includes several WordPress themes for free! This all makes it one of the best WordPress book deals available. You’ll be able to take advantage of all the tips and information in the current version, and will be able to keep your knowledge up to date as WordPress evolves!

Find Out More and Purchase Digging Into WordPress today!

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