The Facebook Effect

I’ve been considering the privacy concerns raised by the new Facebook Friendship Pages after having read “The Facebook Effect.” It’s a history and analysis of Facebook written by technology reporter David Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was able to interview most of the players in the development of Facebook, including founder Mark Zuckerberg, but the book isn’t your usual “authorized biography” puff piece. Kirkpatrick doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the controversies and missteps that have surrounded the social network.

Kirkpatrick’s access to those at Facebook’s higher echelons leads him to some fascinating insights. It turns out that many of Facebook’s strengths, but also many of the controversies the network has found itself in, are directly related to Zuckerberg’s notion of “radical transparency,” which is nothing less than a society where individuals don’t put on a professional face for some people, and a personal face for others. In such a society, nothing (or at least very little) is private. For those of us who are older, andused to being able to compartmentalize our lives, “radical transparency” feels threatening. But there is evidence that younger people are comfortable in a world where everyone knows everything about everybody, like an old-time small town but on a global scale.

The book was written in the early months of 2010 and published in June, so it’s already falling behind the most recent events, but “The Facebook Effect” is still full of insights about how what started as a student website may be changing our society.

Take Control of iPhone Basics, iOS 4 Edition

Since I don’t always feel like thinking about the future of civilization, I’ve also been reading something a bit more down-to-earth: “Take Control of iPhone Basics“, by tech writer Karen G. Anderson.

Per the title, this books covers the basics, and if you’re an experienced iPhone user, much of its content will already be familiar. But if you’re thinking about getting an iPhone for someone as a holiday gift, this book will be a great accompaniment. In fact, you might want to get the book early, as the author includes a useful “Decide What to Buy” chapter that helps you select the model and accessories that are right for you.

For the novice, this book goes through how to use the phone in clear, friendly prose, explaining everything from the difference between a touch and a tap, to how to use the iPhone 4′s FaceTime. I was pleased to note that the author has has laid out the book so that it can be read in sequence, or used as a reference if you need help with a specific issue.

The PDF e-book version takes advantage of its medium, with embedded links to the publisher’s website, where the author publishes a blog, and where updates and alternative formats (including EPUB and MOBI) can be downloaded. The MOBI version works very well on my Kindle.

And oh, yes, I’m also re-reading Roger Zelazny’s “A Night in the Lonesome October,” which I do every year around this time. It’s a slightly macabre fantasy that’s told from the point of view of a dog who’s… well, I don’t want to give anything away, but this is a great book for getting me in the mood for Halloween.

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The Text At A Glance

Aaron has a great, teaching-writing style. You definitely get the feel of being in the classroom, learning right from the professor. The preface makes at least two, fairly substantial claims. First, that the nook covers the Objective-C language, Cocoa design patterns and how to use Xcode, Interface Builder and Instruments. And, second, that you will learn 80% of what you need to know to get started programming for the Mac. I have to agree with both claims as you will definitely learn a great deal of the fundamentals of the language and tools and that the book can be used as a reference post-read.

This third edition has been updated to cover Leopard-only technologies (such as garbage collection and Objective-C 2.0) and does a decent job showing where to utilize the new language features and delves into the depths of intricacies of the new memory management facilities in Leopard (and how to code for both Tiger & Leopard). Covering tools like gdb and Instruments is an amazing thing to do, since many programmers are still rely solely on printf or (in the case of Mac programming) NSLog.

The sample applications range from trivial to pretty neat & indicative of real-world Mac programming, error-logic and all. I especially like the challenges in the exercises, many of which have you modify example code, sometimes accompanied by the mantra: “This is hard, and you are not stupid.”

If you are interested at all in programming for OS X or have programmed for the Mac and want to pick up some hints on how code specifically for features in Leopard, Aaron’s books is a must-buy. I’d definitely recommend keeping all of Apple’s updated Objective-C 2.0 information handy as it will fill in the 20% Aaron doesn’t cover and go a bit deeper as well.

The Gory Details

Here is a breakdown of the chapters and what each covers:

• Chapter 1. Cocoa: What Is It?
• Chapter 2. Let’s Get Started
• Chapter 3. Objective-C
• Chapter 4. Memory Management
• Chapter 5. Target/Action
• Chapter 6. Helper Objects
• Chapter 7. Key-Value Coding; Key-Value Observing
• Chapter 8. NSArrayController
• Chapter 9. NSUndoManager
• Chapter 10. Archiving
• Chapter 11. Basic Core Data
• Chapter 12. Nib Files and NSWindowController
• Chapter 13. User Defaults
• Chapter 14. Using Notifications
• Chapter 15. Using Alert Panels
• Chapter 16. Localization
• Chapter 17. Custom Views
• Chapter 18. Images and Mouse Events
• Chapter 19. Keyboard Events
• Chapter 20. Drawing Text with Attributes
• Chapter 21. Pasteboards and Nil-Targeted Actions
• Chapter 22. Categories
• Chapter 23. Drag-and-Drop
• Chapter 24. NSTimer
• Chapter 25. Sheets
• Chapter 26. Creating NSFormatters
• Chapter 27. Printing
• Chapter 28. Web Service
• Chapter 29. View Swapping
• Chapter 30. Core Data Relationships
• Chapter 31. Garbage Collection
• Chapter 32. Core Animation
• Chapter 33. A Simple Cocoa/OpenGL Application
• Chapter 34. NSTask
• Chapter 35. The End

(Choosing to cover topics such as threading is a huge plus and not the normal faire for this type of text)

Full book reference information:

You can find it at Amazon (they even have a Kindle-ready version), Safari Books Online and (most likely) at your favorite local bookstore.

List price is $49.99 USD but you can find it in the low $30′s if you poke around.

If you snagged a copy of the tome, drop a note in the comments with your take on the text.

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• Is Software the Key to Green Data Centers?

Fortunately for all of us, James Edward Gray II’s book TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac does a bang-up job of making even the most advanced TextMate functions accessible. Gray begins with simple topics like navigating the editing window, creating projects, and easy keystrokes — copy, paste, select all, etc. He wisely instructs his readers early in the book to learn keystrokes for as many commands as possible, but, at the same time, not to fill their memory with the lesser used ones at the expense of the others. Depending on the bundles one has active, TextMate could have as many as several hundred keystroke sequences available at any given time.

Before long, Gray moves into automation: what TextMate does best. Beginning with an introduction to some of the built-in bundles and how to use them, he soon shows us how to define snippets: blocks of text or programming code or bloggery that are automatically inserted whenever a given trigger is activated, like a built-in version of TextExpander, only more powerful.

From there, Gray does an excellent job of leading into macros, bundle editing, the built-in support tools, calling UNIX commands and Ruby scripts, and theme customization. TextMate doesn’t have a bundle for groff? Gray will show you how to build one.

While TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac doesn’t cover every aspect of TextMate, for less than 200 pages it is extremely efficient in providing readers with everything they need to know to accomplish approximately 99 percent of the tasks that TextMate can perform. The other one percent? You’ll just have to ask around on the TextMate community forum.

The old vi versus emacs text editor holy wars are still alive on the Mac in the form of BBEdit versus TextMate, and while TextMate has been called “emacs meets the Mac,” I was a staunch vim user until I met TextMate. I still keep vim around, but it’s collecting a lot of dust — especially since I read Gray’s excellent book that helped me develop all the snippets and keystroke preferences I needed in TextMate.

TextMate: Power Editing for the Mac retails for $29.95 USD / $41.95 CDN / £20.99 GBP / €29,00 EUR.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Let me emphasize it now – make sure you go through the O’Reilly and/or Hillegass books of Cocoa and Objective-C, before you go on to this book. This isn’t an introduction to Cocoa, that’s for sure. In fact, though I had been through both of those previously mentioned books, I found myself lost at times. Due to the fact that the book is one continuous project, if you get lost in one part and can’t figure out how to debug it, you won’t be able to continue on. Fortunately, they provide some code examples for you to use if you’re stuck.

In the second chapter, he tells you about all of the different possibilities and stuff like APIs. In chapter 3, he starts you in on the prototype – the design, the keypresses, and the monsters. In the following chapters, he has you “refactor” the project – that is, organize and clean up the code. In chapter 5, you add sound. The provided sound clips are kind of annoying, so try to use something from Star Wars or something instead. In the remaining chapters after that, he shows you more that you can do with images and making it look nicer, and helps you finish the project.

From what I can tell, the book doesn’t have any glaring issues, and covers a pretty good amount of material considering the length of the book. Since his goal isn’t to give you a primer on Objective-C, the book jumps right into the material. He starts by laying out the goal of the book, and then leads the reader into building a “prototype” – a very basic run-through of the game. You slowly add the controls, monsters, bullets, pick-ups, etc. Following the working prototype, you go through the code, making separate classes, and adding things like sound, and the ability to add in more cool stuff, and then “polish” to the finished game.

The only irk that I don’t like about the book is that it may not be accessible to all of its target audience, as readers have to understand Objective-C and Cocoa to keep up with the author. If he would just add a bit more material to help explain more, and ease the reader into the material. Considering that the book is only 152 pages, and it’s not like we have a lot of books that cover Cocoa with Objective-C anyway, it wouldn’t hurt for him to cover a little more material.

All in all, the $10 price isn’t too bad for this eBook, though you’ll want to read up on Cocoa basics first. If you’re looking for a regular paper book, unfortunately, the publisher isn’t making one yet. You can find out more about the book at their site – www.spiderworks.com.

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• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
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• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks