Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Review: Pandora’s Temple – Jon Land

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013
Paperback: 412 pages
Publisher: Open Road E-riginal (November 20, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: ISBN-10: 1453224653
ISBN-13: 978-ISBN-13: 978-1453224656
Order book here:

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Order E-book here:
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Characters:

Katie DeMarco – Environment Activist
Sebastian Roy – Energy Corporation Mogul
Shinzo Asahara – A man bent on revenge for the death of his father
Johnny Wareagle – Partner to Blaine McCracken
Blaine McCracken – DHS Agent

Synopsis:

What if Pandora’s box was real. That’s the question facing Former Special Forces commando and rogue agent Blaine McCracken who returns from a 15-year absence from the page in his tenth adventure.

McCracken has never been shy about answering the call, and this time it comes in the aftermath of deepwater oilrig disaster that claims the life of a one-time mem-ber of his commando unit. The remnants of the rig and its missing crew lead him to the inescapable conclusion that one of the most mysterious and deadly forces in the Universe is to blame—dark matter, both a limitless source of potential energy and a weapon with unimaginable destructive capabilities.

Joining forces again with his trusty sidekick Johnny Wareagle, McCracken races to stop both an all-powerful energy magnate and the leader of a Japanese dooms-day cult from finding the dark matter they seek for entirely different, yet equally dangerous, reasons. Ultimately, that race will take him not only across the world, but also across time and history to the birth of an ancient legend that may not have been a legend at all. The truth lies 4,000 years in the past and the construction of the greatest structure known to man at the time:

Pandora’s Temple, built to safeguard the most powerful weapon man would ever know.

Now, with that very weapon having resurfaced, McCracken’s only hope to save the world is to find the temple, the very existence of which is shrouded in mystery and long lost to myth. Along the way, he and Johnny Wareagle find themselves up against Mexican drug gangs, killer robots, an army of professional assassins, and a legendary sea monster before reaching a mountaintop fortress where the fi-nal battle to preserve mankind will be fought.

The hero of nine previous bestselling thrillers, McCracken is used to the odds be-ing stacked against him, but this time the stakes have never been higher.

Review

Parts of this book reminded me of Jurassic Park. Not in the sense of dinosaurs run amuck, but there were a lot of similarities. There was the greedy corporate executive bent on controlling a new technology. There was the person who knew the danger that technology presented. There were those whose purpose was to discover and stop this technology from being released on the world.

This was my first time reading one of Mr. Lands novels, but it really had me hooked into the story. I love techno thrillers and this one kept a good pace throughout the story. Just when it started to slow down a bit, an event would happen and just ramp up the action even more.

If you like Crichton’s novels or like techno thrillers, then you should definitely pick up a copy of Pandora’s Temple. I’d rate it PG-13, while there doesn’t seem to be any strong language, there is a lot of shooting and other violent acts. It’s definitely recommended, and I’m almost certain I’ll go back and check out the rest of the books in Mr. Lands Blaine McCracken series. If you give it a read, stop back by and let us know what you thought. Also be sure to enter our giveaway for a copy of Omega Command.

Excerpt

The Mediterranean Sea, 2008

“It would help, sir, if I knew what we were looking for,” Captain John J. Hightower of the Aurora said to the stranger he’d picked up on the island of Crete.

The stranger remained poised by the research ship’s deck rail, gazing out into the turbulent seas beyond. His long gray hair, dangling well past his shoulders in tangles and ringlets, was damp with sea spray, left to the whims of the wind.

“Sir?” Hightower prodded again.

The stranger finally turned, chuckling. “You called me sir. That’s funny.”

“I was told you were a captain,” said Hightower

“In name only, my friend.”

“If I’m your friend,” Hightower said, “you should be able to tell me what’s so important that our current mission was scrapped to pick you up.”

Beyond them, the residue of a storm from the previous night kept the seas choppy with occasional frothy swells that rocked the Aurora even as she battled the stiff winds to keep her speed steady. Gray-black clouds swept across the sky, colored silver at the tips where the sun pushed itself forward enough to break through the thinner patches. Before long, Hightower could tell, those rays would win the battle to leave the day clear and bright with the seas growing calm. But that was hardly the case now.

“I like your name,” came the stranger’s airy response. Beneath the orange life jacket, he wore a Grateful Dead tie dye t-shirt and old leather vest that was fraying at the edges and missing all three of its buttons. So faded that the sun made it look gray in some patches and white in others. His eyes, a bit sleepy and almost drunken, had a playful glint about them. “I like anything with the word ‘high.’ You should rethink your policy about no smoking aboard the ship, if it’s for medicinal purposes only.”

“I will, if you explain what we’re looking for out here.”

“Out here” was the Mediterranean Sea where it looped around Greece’s ancient, rocky southern coastline. For four straight days now, the Aurora had been mapping the sea floor in detailed grids in search of something of unknown size, composition and origin; or, at least, known only by the man Hightower had mistakenly thought was a captain by rank. Hightower’s ship was a hydrographic survey vessel. At nearly thirty meters in length with a top speed of just under twenty-five knots, the Aurora had been commissioned just the previous year to fashion nautical charts to ensure safe navigation by military and civilian shipping, tasked with conducting seismic surveys of the seabed and underlying geology. A few times since her commission, the Aurora and her eight-person crew had been re-tasked for other forms of oceanographic research, but her high tech air cannons, capable of generating high-pressure shock waves to map the strata of the seabed, made her much more fit for more traditional assignments.

“How about I give you a hint?” the stranger said to Hightower. “It’s big.”

“How about I venture a guess?”

“Take your best shot, dude.”

“I know a military mission when I see one. I think you’re looking for a weapon.”

“Warm.”

“Something stuck in a ship or submarine. Maybe even a sunken wreck from years, even centuries ago.”

“Cold,” the man Hightower knew only as “Captain” told him. “Well, except for the centuries ago part. That’s blazing hot.”

Hightower pursed his lips, frustration getting the better of him. “So are we looking for a weapon or not?”

“Another hint, Captain High: only the most powerful ever known to man,” the stranger said with a wink. “A game changer of epic proportions for whoever finds it. Gotta make sure the bad guys don’t manage that before we do. Hey, did you know marijuana’s been approved to treat motion sickness?”

Hightower could only shake his head. “Look, I might not know exactly you’re looking for, but whatever it is, it’s not here. You’ve got us retracing our own steps, running hydrographs in areas we’ve already covered. Nothing ‘big,’ as you describe it, is down there.”

“I beg to differ, el Capitan.”

“Our depth sounders have picked up nothing, the underwater cameras we launched have picked up nothing, the ROVS have picked up nothing.”

“It’s there,” the stranger said with strange assurance, holding his thumb and index finger together against his lips as if smoking an imaginary joint.

“Where?”

“We’re missing something, el Capitan. When I figure out what it is, I’ll let you know.”

Before Hightower could respond, the seas shook violently. On deck it felt as if something had tried to suck the ship underwater, only to spit it up again. Then a rumbling continued, thrashing the Aurora from side to side like a toy boat in a bathtub. Hightower finally recovered his breath just as the rumbling ceased, leaving an eerie calm over the sea suddenly devoid of waves and wind for the first time that morning.

“This can’t be good,” said the stranger, tightening the straps on his life vest.

* * *

The ship’s pilot, a young, thick-haired Greek named Papadopoulos, looked up from the nest of LED readouts and computer-operated controls on the panel before him, as Hightower entered the bridge.

“Captain,” he said wide-eyed, his voice high and almost screeching, “seismic centers in Ankara, Cairo and Athens are all reporting a sub-sea earthquake measuring just over six on the scale.”

“What’s the epi?”

“Forty miles northeast of Crete and thirty from our current position,” Papadopoulos said anxiously, a patch of hair dropping over his forehead.

“Jesus Christ,” muttered Hightower.

“Tsunami warning is high,” Papadopoulos continued, even as Hightower formed the thought himself.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, we are in for the ride of our lives!” blared the stranger, pulling on the tabs that inflated his life vest with a soft popping sound. “If I sound excited it’s ‘cause I’m terrified, dudes!”

“Bring us about,” the captain ordered. “Hard back to the Port of Piraeus at all the speed you can muster.”

“Yes, sir!”

Suddenly the bank of screens depicting the seafloor in a quarter mile radius directly beneath them sprang to life. Readings flew across accompanying monitors, orientations and graphic depictions of whatever the Aurora’s hydrographic equipment and underwater cameras had located appearing in real time before Hightower’s already wide eyes.

“What the hell is—“

“Found it!” said the stranger before the ship’s captain could finish.

“Found what?” followed Hightower immediately. “This is impossible. We’ve already been over this area. There was nothing down there.”

“Earthquake must’ve changed that in a big way, el Capitan. I hope you’re recording all this.”

“There’s nothing to record. It’s a blip, an echo, a mistake.”

“Or exactly what I came out here to find. Big as life to prove all the doubters wrong.”

“Doubters?”

“Of the impossible.”

“That’s what you brought us out here for, a fool’s errand?”

“Not anymore.”

The stranger watched as a central screen mounted beneath the others continued to form a shape massive in scale, an animated depiction extrapolated from all the data being processed in real time.

“Wait a minute, is that a . . . It looks like— My God, it’s some kind of structure!“

“You bet!”

“Intact at that depth? Impossible! No, this is all wrong.”

“Hardly, el Capitan.”

“Check the readouts, sir. According to the depth gauge, your structure’s located five hundred feet beneath the seafloor. Where I come from, they call that impos—“

Hightower’s thought ended when the Aurora seemed to buckle, as if it had hit a roller coaster-like dip in the sea. The sensation was eerily akin to floating, the entire ship in the midst of an out-of-body experience, leaving Hightower feeling weightless and light-headed.

“Better fasten your seatbelts, dudes,” said the stranger, eyes fastened through the bridge windows at something that looked like a waterfall pluming on the ship’s aft side.

Hightower had been at sea often and long enough to know this to be a gentle illusion belying something much more vast and terrible: in this case, a giant wave of froth that gained height as it crystallized in shape. It was accompanied by a thrashing sound that shook the Aurora as it built in volume and pitch, felt by the bridge’s occupants at their very cores like needles digging into their spines.

“Hard about!” Hightower ordered Papadopoulos. “Steer us into it!”

It was, he knew, the ship’s only chance for survival, or would have been, had the next moments not shown the great wave turning the world dark as it reared up before them. The Aurora suddenly seemed to lift into the air, climbing halfway up the height of the monster wave from a calm sea that had begun to churn mercilessly in an instant. A vast black shadow enveloped the ship in the same moment intense pressure pinned the occupants of the bridge to their chairs or left them feeling as if their feet were glued to the floor. Then there was nothing but an airless abyss dragging darkness behind it.

“Far out, man!” Hightower heard the stranger blare in the last moment before the void claimed him.

About The Author

Jon Land is the critically acclaimed author of 32 books, including the bestselling series featuring Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong that includes STRONG ENOUGH TO DIE, STRONG JUSTICE, STRONG AT THE BREAK, STRONG VENGEANCE (July 2012) and STRONG RAIN FALLING (August 2013).

He has more recently brought his long-time series hero Blaine McCracken back to the page in PANDORA’S TEMPLE (November 2012). He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Website

www.jonlandbooks.com

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to Gina at Partners In Crime Tours for a review copy of this book. It in no way influenced my review. You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.

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Giveaway: Jon Land – The Omega Command

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

Thanks to Gina at Partners in Crime Tours and Mr. Land I’m able to offer my readers 1 copy of this e-book. To enter, follow these simple rules:

1) One Entry if you’re a follower [You can follow through Google Friend connect to the right, you can also sign up to follow through Twitter or Facebook].
2) An Additonal Entry if you blog about this contest.
3) An Additonal Entry if you’re a new follower.
4) One entry each for posting on facebook and/or twitter.
5) Must leave a comment letting me know how you follow me, blog link to this post, facebook/twitter link, etc.
6) Contest will continue until 2/19/2013.
7) This giveaway is open to residents of US and Canada. No PO Box addresses (street mailing only).

See our review here.

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Review: Publish Like The Pros – Michele DeFilippo

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012
Paperback: 88 pages
1106 Design (June 10, 2012)
English
ISBN-10: 985489901
ISBN-13: 978-0985489908
Order book here:

amazon

Order E-book here:
amazon

Synopsis:

Have you ever wanted to write a book, but wasn’t sure how to publish it. Self-Publishing is a big trend now in book publishing, and this small guide shows you how to do it, and avoid some of the pitfalls at the same time.

Review

I found this book to be very interesting and easy to read. I learned a lot about the various jobs that occur in the publishing process, such as the difference between an edit and a substantial edit, or a proofreader vs. a copywriter. The book was very informative in these areas, and if you are an author or dream of being an author, I’d suggest it as a good place to get started.

There were some slight drawbacks. The book is published by a company that works with you to self-publish, so of course they are going to mention throughout the book that they offer these very services. So while the information is valuable, I think the reader has to take it with a grain of salt and still do their own investigations and decide what works well for them.

I would say that it’s suitable for any age.

About the Author

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to Rebecca at Cadence Marketing for a review copy of this book. It in no way influenced my review. You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.

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Review: The Violinists Thumb – Sam Kean

Thursday, August 9th, 2012
Hardcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (July 17, 2012)
English
ISBN-10: 0316182311
ISBN-13: 978-0316182317
Order book here:

amazon

Order E-book here:
amazon

Review

DNA and how we’ve come to be. Sounds like one of the driest topics you could possible imagine. But in The Violinist’s Thumb by Sam Kean he takes the reader on an entertaing and informative ride through the history and discovery of DNA.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I discovered a lot about myself, genetics, evolution, and just the overall mystery of being part of the universe around us.

If you are interested in science, biology, genetics, or just love learning new things, then you should definitely pick this up. I think like I did, you’ll find many of the stories within it to be fascinating and informative.

About the Author

Sam Kean spent years collecting mercury from broken thermometers as a kid, and now he’s a writer in in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Mental Floss, Slate, and Science, and has been featured on NPR’s “Radiolab” and “All Things Considered.” The Disappearing Spoon, his first book, was a New York Times national bestseller. Read excerpts at http://www.samkean.com.

(un)Official bio: Sam Kean gets called Sean once a month. He grew up in South Dakota, which means more to him than it probably should. He’s a fast reader but a very slow eater. He went to college in Minnesota and studied physics and English. He taught for a few years at an experimental charter school in St. Paul, where the kids showed up at night. After that, he tried to move to Spain (it didn’t take) and ended up in Washington, D.C. He has a master’s degree in library science he will probably never use. He wishes he had a sports team he was passionate about, but doesn’t, though he does love track & field.

See our Giveway here for your chance to win one of 2 copies. This giveaway is courtesy of Hachette Book Group.

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to at Anna at Hachette Book Group for a review copy of this book. It in no way influenced my review. You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.

Guest Post: Words with Friends – Larry D. Rosen

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

Words With Friends: Another Stupid Game — or an Obsession?
We are becoming obsessed with our smartphones and all that they can do.
By Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D,
Author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us

The New York Times Magazine ran a fascinating cover story on April 4, 2012 written with wisdom, humor and insight by Sam Anderson. Anderson’s basic premise is that the concept of gaming has changed. For decades, a special class of teen or young adult gamer would use specialized systems, to play complex multi-player, multi-level games that might last from a few hours to many days or even weeks. Now, however, anyone can play a quick game — what Anderson terms a “stupid game” — any time of the day or night right there on their smartphone that rests somewhere next to their body 24/7. And this, Anderson argues, has changed the world of gaming to ” . . . not just hard-core gamers, but their mothers, their mailmen and their college professors. Consumers who never would have put a quarter into an arcade or even set eyes on an Xbox 360 were now carrying a sophisticated game console with them, all the time, in their pockets or their purses.

For decades I scrupulously avoided video games even when my four children delighted in playing them. I think that I once played Pong and perhaps Donkey Kong in a bar somewhere but that was under duress and the influence of a few beers. I have never played a video game that resides on a console although I have watched, fascinated, as young children seem to understand intuitively what actions to take to make the next level or win the game. Just last night I watched my friend’s 9-year-old son sit down at a game console in a restaurant as we were waiting to be seated and without even glancing at the instructions, he popped in two quarters and played.

I have, however, always enjoyed card games and board games, particularly those that required thought or cunning to win the game. I consider myself a pretty good Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit player and delighted in winning nearly every Monopoly game with my children (I used a unique strategy that I refuse to divulge as I plan to use it with my grandchildren!). My iPhones (I have owned four of them) have always come with a hefty game center in the App Store, which, as you might guess, I have avoided like the plague. Until someone pointed out Words With Friends!

Arghhhh! I shall mark that day on my calendar as the day that my life — and my brain — changed. And I am pretty sure that it changed for the worse.

As soon as I downloaded WWF I was hooked. Now I am playing a dozen games with multiple players (all of my opponents are personal friends, as I think it is a bit bizarre to play with people you don’t know, although it is a good way to meet new people). In his NYT article Sam Anderson relayed a similar situation with his wife: “My wife, who had never been a serious gamer, got one and became addicted, almost immediately, to a form of off-brand digital Scrabble called Words With Friends. Before long she was playing 6 or 10 games at a time, against people all over the world. Sometimes I would lose her in the middle of a conversation: her phone would go brinnng or pwomp or dernalernadern-dern, and she would look away from me, midsentence, to see if her opponent had set her up for a triple word score.”

That is so true! Anderson’s wife sounds like me, and like everyone else that I play with. I am beginning to see patterns in my WWF friends (I call them that even though two are colleagues, one is my partner, one is a student in my lab and two are other people that I know very well). At first I said that I was going to “just play at night” after watching Rachel Maddow and Anderson Cooper but before The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Pretty soon I found myself pausing the news and jumping in and making a few plays, and then returning to the news. Then, I think I said “to heck with it” and left the news on and played WWF with the news as background. Now, who cares about the news. Who cares about anything. WWF RULES!

I confess that I am now addicted. But is it truly an addiction or is there more to it? I don’t feel like an addict. I am not shirking my responsibilities at home (I still cook every night although one night I had to grab a cooked chicken because I got into a vicious back-and-forth WWF game with someone — and I WON!) nor is my work suffering. I still teach, still write, but something is happening and I think that I know what it is. What I am feeling, I believe, is a compulsion. Somewhat like Jack Nicholson in “As Good As It Gets,” I feel as though if I don’t do a certain behavior — i.e., play WWF — I will meet with some dire consequence. I am not washing my hands constantly or locking and unlocking my doors, nor am I avoiding cracks when I walk in the neighborhood. But I feel anxiety much as Jack did when I spot my smartphone. And the anxiety is “I wonder if so-and-so played a word and I better check and play one, too.”

As I sit and stare at my phone wondering about WWF, I am not feeling the discomfort that someone feels when he or she has a true psychological addiction. I am not even hoping that playing will bring me pleasure. What I am feeling is an intense NEED to play or rather to check in to see who has played. And when I do play I don’t feel that rush of dopamine, which feels like pleasure. What I feel is . . . nothing. But then my phone beckons to me and I slide to the last page of apps (I made myself put the WWF app on the last page to make it more difficult to get to. What a fool! It must take me all of a second to flick a few times and it literally pops out at me when I get to that page) and press my finger on the icon and, voila, my games appear!

So, what do I think is happening? I had some time to think about this the other day. I was at public radio studio, waiting to go on a noontime radio broadcast followed by a TV taping. Since I always arrive early I had lots of time and only my phone to keep me busy. I knew that I was going to talk about this on the air so I spent some time with my phone in front of me trying to analyze what might be going on in my brain. Wow! After just a few minutes of “thinking” I somehow found myself looking at a WWF screen of 12 ongoing games. How did I get there? Well, partially I think it was a habit and partially I think I was compelled to do so in a way that resided just below the surface of conscious activity. Sure sounds like a compulsion to me.

How do I plan to break this compulsion? I have started giving myself “WWF Time” where I grant myself the option to play for 15 minutes and no more and then put my phone away, out of sight, and do something else for 45 minutes. I set a timer (on my phone, of course) and when it rings I play and when it rings again I stop. Not sure if it will work as I have only been doing this for a week but I am finding that the 45 minutes is going by pretty quickly now compared to the crawling seconds and minutes that appeared to barely move the first few times I waited for my WWF Time.

Do you feel compelled by your technology? Do certain games or activities that you do on the phone beckon to you? This is one of the main points of my new book, iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us, where I devote two chapters to obsessions and compulsions surrounding technology. Let me know what you think.

© 2012 Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D, author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us

Author Bio

Larry D. Rosen, Ph.D., author of iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession with Technology and Overcoming its Hold on Us, is past Chair and Professor of Psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He is a research psychologist and computer educator, and is recognized as an international expert in the “Psychology of Technology.” Over the past 25 years, Dr. Rosen and his colleagues have examined reactions to technology among more than 30,000 children, teens, college students, and adults in the United States and in 23 other countries. He has been quoted in numerous media outlets, including The New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, CNN, and Good Morning America and writes a regular blog for Psychology Today.

For more information please visit http://us.macmillan.com

Review: Safe Text: Protecting Your Teen – Diane Griffin

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012
Ebook: 54 pages
Publisher: Smashwords, Amazon, B&N
Language: English
Order book here:

amazon

Review

Do you have a teenager?  Do they own a cell phone?  If the answer to both of these questions is Yes, then this book is for you.

Some statistics from the book:

1 in 5 teens have sent a nude or semi nude photo of themselves via their cell phone.

24% of all fatal car accidents of teens were due to cell phone usage.

42% of teens have been bullied while online, and 58% of those have not told their parents.

Not only this you can be held legally liable for your teens actions regarding texting. For example, if you know your teen is sexting, and don’t do anything to stop it, you could be charged with contributing to delinquency of a minor, negligent supervision, and be sued for monetary damages. Forwarding such images can result in child pornography charges, jail time, and registry as a sex offender.

Sexting is not the only area covered, it also covers bullying, and texting while driving.

Ms. Griffin gives a lot of internet links for more information, actual legal examples, some of the laws for your state, and advice to parents. There is also a family cell phoen use agreement for you and your teens to fill out and sign, and a long list of resources.

I’ve seen a lot on the dangers of these different aspects, and to have it all in a nice concise format I think is a great thing. All the information is useful, and for that I’d recommend it to any parents out there.

About the Author

Diane Griffin is the founder and President of Security First and Associates. Ms. Griffin works with a variety of clients throughout government and industry. Ms. Griffin has also worked in a wide array of fields to include training, facilitation, communications, human resources and industrial security management.

Diane is the author of Everything You Wanted to Know About the Security Clearance Process… but are afraid to ask, Get a Security Clearnace Job, How a Security Clearance Can Change Your Life, and Safe Texting.

Safe Texting is the first in a series of books about Internet and Technology safety for parents, teachers, and teens. Each book will have a hands on Internet Project to go with it for students both in the classroom and home schooled to explore these important topics. The projects will be based on the Webquest model and will include standards based, best practices in education. The projects are being developed by Janis Friesler, an educator with many national award winning projects under her belt. The launch of the project, Safe Texting will be announced by May, 2011 on Diane’s Facebook Page, Technology Safety for Teens.

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to Brandi at BK Walker books for a review copy of this book. It in no way influenced my review. You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.

Review: Anywhere: How Global Connectivity is Revolutionizing the way you do business – Emily Nagle Green

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

 

 

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 14, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0071635149
ISBN-13: 978-0071635141
Order from here:
amazon
 
 
 

What is anywhere? Quite simply, it’s what we as people are moving toward as a civilization. Most of us are connected to the world in one way or another. There are some with their wireless phones, laptops. We have devices to track our locations from satellite and tell us where we need to go. This book sets out to inform businesses of what anywhere (connectivity) is, how they can achieve it, and where it could be heading in the future.

I’ve seen the changes that are leading to what this book describes.  My first job was involved in eletronic banking.  A person would boot up software on their PC, click a button to make payments, then a file was transferred via a modem to a database somewhere, where it would the be processed and paid.  Today, you can flip open your cellphone, go to almost any banking site, transfer funds, send payments, or check balances. 

The book while giving a lot of detailed information, keeps things simple enough for even a non-technical person to appreciate. The thing that grabbed me the most was some of the examples. One example, was of a pharmaceutical company that was manufacturing a pill bottle. This bottle would alert medical personnel and others when doses were missed.  While it sounds a bit out of an Orwellian Fantasy, I could see the value in this.  You have people who forget as they get older.  With costs of medicine running so expensive, you also have people skipping doses.  This would help curb that.  There were other examples though, such as being able to pay for parking, from your cell phone, or as happens now in some places with e-readers, going into a store and getting offers for specific products.

One section of the book focuses on the types of people to look for in anywhere.  As in marketing, there are those who have to be kicked dragging and screaming into using the new technologies.  There are those who want to use them, but will wait and see where things are going.  There are those who will be waiting in line the night before products go on sale. 

I found the book very interesting.  The most interesting part to me was all the thoughts about where the future could take us.  I could see this book being a real benefit to those involved in tech business, and even those in other businesses that could use technology to help them reach more customers.  For the average person, I’m not sure this book would hold a lot of interest, but for those like me who are interesting in tech products, I think you’d enjoy this book.

*Disclaimer* A special thanks goes out to Anna at FSB Associates for providing a review copy of this book. It in no way influenced my review.

You can discuss it here or join my facebook page and discuss it there.