This is the latest collection of biographies for my kids. The reason I love biographies is that they inspire you in a real way – there people were able to push the limits and utilize their talents.
I enjoy such books as much as my kids do. The other reason is being written for kids, the books are simple and not voluminous.
Late last year, Ben Forta asked me about an opportunity to tech review ColdFusion 10 book. This was not a difficult task as I had some experience being a tech reviewer of 3rd edition of Enterprise JavaBeans by O’Reilly, one of the most popular book at its time. However, I soon got completely involved with the project as a co-author. I want to share my experience that can help other folks in a similar pursuit with their first book.
What I found most effective is to write down high level sections of the chapters in a top-down approach. This allowed me to ensure that I will be covering the right amount of technical information and a logical flow is already established. The remaining work, then is mostly about filling those sections and fine tuning the sub sections.
With this high level – breakdown approach I was able to achieve a good momentum in finishing the chapters. And this is the second thing that I found effective – riding on a momentum and not getting stuck up with something like an example or a particular section. Since I was always working with a top-down approach, I was able to park sections that were slowing me down. Finishing parking lot items at a later time or on a new day when you are fresh, was much easier and faster.
So, if you are a ColdFusion programmer and have not already bought this book, I strongly recommend the book. It is great addition to ColdFusion 9 WACK series and a relatively thin book focusing on finding what’s new and changed in ColdFusion 10 at a single place. Access additional details on book are here.
Go grab the book from here.
I recently completed analysis of Big six publishers to understand eBook market that they represent. I decided to summarize my analysis using my first ever infographics using piktochart. I will summarize my experience in detail later but it suffice to say that infographics tool have way to go before they are ready for wider adoption.
Some interesting observations – while the revenue seems to be increasing, there is a decline in profit because of larger share of eBook. I have used data from 2012 when Penguin and Random House were still separate entity. The data is collected for various public reports available on internet.
What does the future hold for the bigwig publishers of eBook industry – now Big Five?