Bored Bookworm | Computer

Building a simple but powerful recommendation system is much easier than you think. This report explains innovations that make machine learning practical for business production settings—and demonstrates how even a small-scale development team can design an effective large-scale recommender. The style of the report makes this subject approachable for all levels of expertise.

Authors Ted Dunning and Ellen Friedman walk you through a design that relies on "careful simplification." You’ll learn how to collect the right data, analyze it with an algorithm from the Apache Mahout library, and then easily deploy the recommender using search technology with Apache Solr. This powerful and effective combination is efficient: it does learning offline and delivers rapid response recommendations in real time.

• Understand the tradeoffs between simple and complex recommenders
• Collect user data that tracks user actions—rather than their ratings
• Predict what a user wants based on behavior by others, using Mahout for co-occurrence analysis
• Use Solr to offer recommendations in real time, complete with item metadata
• Watch the recommender in action with a music service example
• Improve your recommender with dithering, multimodal recommendation, and other techniques

"It’s our thesis that privacy will be an integral part
of the next wave in the technology revolution and that innovators who are
emphasizing privacy as an integral part of the product life cycle are on the
right track." --The authors of The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto

The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto: Getting from Policy to
Code to QA to Value is the first book of its kind, offering industry-proven
solutions that go beyond mere theory and adding lucid perspectives on the
challenges and opportunities raised with the emerging “personal” information economy.

The authors, a uniquely skilled team of longtime industry
experts, detail how you can build privacy into products, processes,
applications, and systems.  The book
offers insight on translating the guiding light of OECD Privacy Guidelines, the
Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs), Generally Accepted Privacy
Principles (GAPP) and Privacy by Design (PbD) into concrete concepts that
organizations, software/hardware engineers, and system administrators/owners can
understand and apply throughout the product or process life cycle—regardless of
development methodology—from inception to retirement, including data deletion
and destruction.

In addition to providing practical methods to applying privacy
engineering methodologies, the authors detail how to prepare and
organize an enterprise or organization to support and manage products, process,
systems, and applications that require personal information. The authors also address how to
think about and assign value to the personal information assets being
protected.  Finally, the team of experts offers thoughts about the information revolution that has only just begun, and how we
can live in a world of sensors and trillions of data points without losing our
ethics or value(s).... and even have a little fun.

The Privacy Engineer's Manifesto is designed to serve
multiple stakeholders: Anyone who is involved in designing, developing,
deploying and reviewing products, processes, applications, and systems that
process personal information, including software/hardware engineers, technical
program and product managers, support and sales engineers, system integrators,
IT professionals, lawyers, and information privacy and security professionals.  This book is a must-read for
all practitioners in the personal information economy.

Privacy will be an integral part of the next wave in the
technology revolution; innovators who emphasize privacy as an integral
part of the product life cycle are on the right track.

Foreword by Dr. Eric Bonabeau, PhD, Chairman, Icosystem,
Inc. & Dean of Computational Sciences, Minerva Schools at KGI.

•     What's at stake as
  concerns data privacy become critical considerations for users, developers, and
  enterprise stakeholders
•     Comprehensive
  foundational understanding of the issues and how they are interconnected
•     What the emerging
  job description of "privacy engineer" means
•     Key development
  models for privacy architecture
•     How to assemble an
  engineering privacy tool box (including developing privacy use cases and
  requirements
•     Organizational
  design implications of privacy engineering
•     Quality Assurance (QA)
  methodologies for privacy policy compliance
•     Models for valuing
  data
•     The 10-point
  Manifesto of the Privacy Engineer

1. inspirational doses of how brands can publish news


2. actionable tips and how-tos on getting more publicity in mobile and social news streams


3. real-time resources, tools, platforms, and applications to distribute and amplify your brand's news


4. timing, frequency, and recipes to avoid Social PR disasters


5. tips on jumping into trending news

Wholesaling is by far the quickest and easiest way to make a killing in the world of real estate investing. Think of it as the "day trading" of real estate, except it is far simpler and less risky. In fact, when you learn how to do it the right way, you won't take on any risk at all. The Real Estate Wholesaling Bible teaches you everything you need to know to profit from real estate wholesaling, without any money, credit, or experience to get started. This rapidly expanding business is simple, profitable, and perfect for today's real estate market. Plus, it's an ideal system for making money even in the toughest of real estate markets. All you will need to get started is a computer, an Internet connection, this book, some passion, and a lot of curiosity.

• Teaches the mechanics of how to wholesale real estate, including exactly how to find, analyze, finance, and sell wholesale deals like clockwork
• Explains how to actually build a business and develop systems that are not dependent on you as the business owner
• Shows how to develop a turn-key, systems-dependent business that serves as a vehicle to all the people it touches: the owners, employees, and the community

Many real estate investors idea of success focuses squarely on profitability. Author Than Merrill believes success happens when your real estate investment business is not only profitable, but also gives you the time to enjoy your life and fulfill your passions and dreams.

• How to select the best treatment for your busy life
• How to decrease your stress levels and have a greater degree of clarity
• How to talk to partners or family members about ADD
• What most people are doing incorrectly with their treatment routine
• Consistently reframe your situation into a useful outlook or system of thinking
• Start to take these actions on the very first steps after getting the confirmed diagnosis
• No longer be afraid of a lifetime anxiety

This all-new edition of How To Do Everything: iCloud fully covers iCloud’s versatile features and offers step-by-step directions on how to use each one, including Shared Photo Streams, the iWork for iCloud apps, and iCloud Keychain. You’ll learn how to set up iCloud, transfer and sync app-specific data, documents, files, photos, music, and other content among your computers and iOS mobile devices.

• Use iCloud with your Mac, iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, and iPod touch
  
• Migrate from Apple MobileMe to iCloud
  
• Learn new iCloud features, including Shared Photo Streams, iWork for iCloud online apps, iCloud Keychain, and much more
  
• Manage your digital music library and iTunes purchases with iCloud
  
• Use the Premium iTunes Match service
  
• Store and manage your digital photos with My Photo Stream
  
• Share your digital images with others using iCloud’s Shared Photo Streams
  
• Sync files and documents among computers and iOS devices
  
• Manage and sync your Safari bookmarks, reading list, and passwords using iCloud and iCloud Keychain
  
• Work with iWork for iCloud
  
• Learn about other cloud-based services
  
• Sync and share apps, app-related data, and eBooks among iOS mobile devices and your computer(s)
  
• Back up your iPhone and iPad with iCloud
  
• Stream Apple TV content to your HD TV
  
• Locate a Lost Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch with iCloud’s Find My… feature
  
• Manage your iCloud email account
  
• Troubleshoot iCloud-related problems

Want to learn even more about electronics in a fun, hands-on way? If you finished the projects in Make: Electronics, or if you're already familiar with the material in that book, you're ready for Make: More Electronics. Right away, you'll start working on real projects, and you'll explore all the key components and essential principles through the book's collection of experiments. You'll build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them!

This book picks up where Make: Electronics left off: you'll work with components like comparators, light sensors, higher-level logic chips, multiplexers, shift registers, encoders, decoders, and magnetic sensors. You'll also learn about topics like audio amplification, randomicity, as well as positive and negative feedback. With step-by-step instructions, and hundreds of color photographs and illustrations, this book will help you use -- and understand -- intermediate to advanced electronics concepts and techniques.

I'm Lexi Carmichael, geek extraordinaire. I spend my days stopping computer hackers at the National Security Agency. My nights? Those I spend avoiding my mother and eating cereal for dinner. Even though I work for a top-secret agency, I've never been in an exciting car chase, sipped a stirred (not shaken) martini, or shot a poison dart from an umbrella.

Until today, that is, when two gun-toting thugs popped up in my life and my best friend disappeared. So, I've enlisted the help of the Zimmerman twins—the reclusive architects of America's most sensitive electronic networks—to help me navigate a bewildering maze of leads to find her.

Along the way, my path collides with a sexy government agent and a rich, handsome lawyer, both of whom seem to have the hots for me. Hacking, espionage, sexy spy-men—it's a geek girl's dream come true. If it weren't for those gun-toting thugs...

112,000 words

• How to select the best bank and line of credit to start building credit again
• How to decrease your stress levels and focus on positive outcomes
• How to set a schedule that guarantees compliance and progress
• What most people are doing incorrectly with their bankruptcy process
• Consistently reframe your bad situation into one of opportunities
• Start to take on more in your daily life because you feel incredible
• No longer be afraid of a lifetime of financial burden

"The Freakonomics of big data."
—Stein Kretsinger, founding executive of Advertising.com; former lead analyst at Capital One

This book is easily understood by all readers. Rather than a "how to" for hands-on techies, the book entices lay-readers and experts alike by covering new case studies and the latest state-of-the-art techniques.

You have been predicted — by companies, governments, law enforcement, hospitals, and universities. Their computers say, "I knew you were going to do that!" These institutions are seizing upon the power to predict whether you're going to click, buy, lie, or die.

Why? For good reason: predicting human behavior combats financial risk, fortifies healthcare, conquers spam, toughens crime fighting, and boosts sales.

How? Prediction is powered by the world's most potent, booming unnatural resource: data. Accumulated in large part as the by-product of routine tasks, data is the unsalted, flavorless residue deposited en masse as organizations churn away. Surprise! This heap of refuse is a gold mine. Big data embodies an extraordinary wealth of experience from which to learn.

Predictive analytics unleashes the power of data. With this technology, the computer literally learns from data how to predict the future behavior of individuals. Perfect prediction is not possible, but putting odds on the future — lifting a bit of the fog off our hazy view of tomorrow — means pay dirt.

In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction:

• What type of mortgage risk Chase Bank predicted before the recession.
• Predicting which people will drop out of school, cancel a subscription, or get divorced before they are even aware of it themselves.
• Why early retirement decreases life expectancy and vegetarians miss fewer flights.
• Five reasons why organizations predict death, including one health insurance company.
• How U.S. Bank, European wireless carrier Telenor, and Obama's 2012 campaign calculated the way to most strongly influence each individual.
• How IBM's Watson computer used predictive modeling to answer questions and beat the human champs on TV's Jeopardy!
• How companies ascertain untold, private truths — how Target figures out you're pregnant and Hewlett-Packard deduces you're about to quit your job.
• How judges and parole boards rely on crime-predicting computers to decide who stays in prison and who goes free.
• What's predicted by the BBC, Citibank, ConEd, Facebook, Ford, Google, IBM, the IRS, Match.com, MTV, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Pfizer, and Wikipedia. 

A truly omnipresent science, predictive analytics affects everyone, every day. Although largely unseen, it drives millions of decisions, determining whom to call, mail, investigate, incarcerate, set up on a date, or medicate.

Predictive analytics transcends human perception. This book's final chapter answers the riddle: What often happens to you that cannot be witnessed, and that you can't even be sure has happened afterward — but that can be predicted in advance?

Whether you are a consumer of it — or consumed by it — get a handle on the power of Predictive Analytics.

Masterminds of Programming features exclusive interviews with the creators of several historic and highly influential programming languages. In this unique collection, you'll learn about the processes that led to specific design decisions, including the goals they had in mind, the trade-offs they had to make, and how their experiences have left an impact on programming today. Masterminds of Programming includes individual interviews with:

• Adin D. Falkoff: APL
• Thomas E. Kurtz: BASIC
• Charles H. Moore: FORTH
• Robin Milner: ML
• Donald D. Chamberlin: SQL
• Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan: AWK
• Charles Geschke and John Warnock: PostScript
• Bjarne Stroustrup: C++
• Bertrand Meyer: Eiffel
• Brad Cox and Tom Love: Objective-C
• Larry Wall: Perl
• Simon Peyton Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, and John Hughes: Haskell
• Guido van Rossum: Python
• Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Roberto Ierusalimschy: Lua
• James Gosling: Java
• Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh: UML
• Anders Hejlsberg: Delphi inventor and lead developer of C#

If you're interested in the people whose vision and hard work helped shape the computer industry, you'll find Masterminds of Programming fascinating.

• Compare and contrast the Chromecast with its rivals Apple TV and Roku
• Step by step basic set-up
• Get started with Chromecast’s officially supported media partners
• Chromecast guides for smart phone and tablet users
• Chromecast guides for Kindle Fire Tablet owners – including Amazon Instant Video
• Optimize the quality of your video streaming
• How to cast media from all the other great websites you love
• How to cast pre-existing films, music and photos stored on your computer
• How to mirror your computer screen onto your HDTV
• Discover, set-up and use all the best new Chromecast apps and services to take your enjoyment to the next level - Including Plex, Videostream, Avia, Photowall and many more!

From ancient currency to Adam Smith, from the gold standard to shadow banking and the Great Recession: a sweeping historical epic that traces the development and evolution of one of humankind’s greatest inventions.

What is money, and how does it work? In this tour de force of political, cultural and economic history, Felix Martin challenges nothing less than our conventional understanding of money. He describes how the Western idea of money emerged from interactions between Mesopotamia and ancient Greece and was shaped over the centuries by tensions between sovereigns and the emerging middle classes. He explores the extraordinary diversity of the world’s monetary systems, from the Pacific island of Yap, where value was once measured by immovable stones, to the currency of today that exists solely on globally connected computer screens. Martin shows that money has always been a deeply political instrument, and that it is our failure to remember this that led to the crisis in our financial system and so to the Great Recession. He concludes with practical solutions to our current pressing, money-based problems.

Money skips nimbly among such far-ranging topics as John Locke’s disastrous excursion into economic policy, Montesquieu’s faith in finance to discipline the power of kings, the social organization of ancient Sparta and the Soviet Union’s ill-fated attempt to abolish money and banking altogether. Throughout, Martin makes vivid sense of a chaotic and sometimes incoherent system—the everyday currency that we all share—in the clearest and most stimulating terms. This is a magisterial work of history and economics, with profound implications for the world today.

Answers found here!

In iOS 7, Apple gave the iPhone the most radical makeover in its history. The new software is powerful, sleek, and a perfect companion to the iPhone 5s and 5c—but it’s wildly different. Fortunately, David Pogue is back with an expanded edition of his witty, full-color guide: the world’s most popular iPhone book.

The important stuff you need to know:

• The iPhone 5s. This book unearths all the secrets of the newest iPhone—faster chip,
  dual-color flash, fingerprint scanner, and more—and its colorful companion, the 5c.
  
• The iOS 7 software. Older iPhones gain Control Center, AirDrop, iTunes Radio, free Internet phone calls, and about 197 more new features. This book covers it all.
  
• The apps. That catalog of 1,000,000 add-on programs makes the iPhone’s phone features almost secondary. Now you’ll know how to find, manage, and exploit those apps.
  

The iPhone may be the world’s coolest computer, but it’s still a computer, with all of a computer’s complexities. iPhone: The Missing Manual is a funny, gorgeously illustrated guide to the tips, shortcuts, and workarounds that will turn you, too, into an iPhone addict.

The Craft of Scientific Presentations, 2nd edition aims to strengthen you as a presenter of science and engineering. The book does so by identifying what makes excellent presenters such as Brian Cox, Jane Goodall, Richard Feynman, and Jill Bolte Taylor so strong. In addition, the book explains what causes so many scientific presentations to flounder.

One of the most valuable contributions of this text is that it teaches the assertion-evidence approach to scientific presentations. Instead of building presentations, as most engineers and scientists do, on the weak foundation of topic phrases and bulleted lists, this assertion-evidence approach calls for building presentations on succinct message assertions supported by visual evidence. Unlike the commonly followed topic-subtopic approach that PowerPoint leads presenters to use, the assertion-evidence approach is solidly grounded in research.

By showing the differences between strong and weak presentations, by identifying the errors that scientific presenters typically make, and by teaching a much more powerful approach for scientific presentations than what is commonly practiced, this book places you in a position to elevate your presentations to a high level. In essence, this book aims to have you not just succeed in your scientific presentations, but excel.

About the Author

Michael Alley has taught workshops on presentations to engineers and scientists on five continents, and has recently been invited to speak at the European Space Organization, Harvard Medical School, MIT, Sandia National Labs, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Simula Research Laboratory, and United Technologies. An Associate Professor of engineering communication at Pennsylvania State University, Alley is a leading researcher on the effectiveness of different designs for presentation slides.

• How to build a visualization routine
• How to create a lasting routine of using a vision board an goals
• How to create a better attitude that other people notice
• What exact details and specificity must be used during visualization
• How to start taking action on those visualizations

Written by renowned data science experts Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett, Data Science for Business introduces the fundamental principles of data science, and walks you through the "data-analytic thinking" necessary for extracting useful knowledge and business value from the data you collect. This guide also helps you understand the many data-mining techniques in use today.

Based on an MBA course Provost has taught at New York University over the past ten years, Data Science for Business provides examples of real-world business problems to illustrate these principles. You’ll not only learn how to improve communication between business stakeholders and data scientists, but also how participate intelligently in your company’s data science projects. You’ll also discover how to think data-analytically, and fully appreciate how data science methods can support business decision-making.

• Understand how data science fits in your organization—and how you can use it for competitive advantage
• Treat data as a business asset that requires careful investment if you’re to gain real value
• Approach business problems data-analytically, using the data-mining process to gather good data in the most appropriate way
• Learn general concepts for actually extracting knowledge from data
• Apply data science principles when interviewing data science job candidates

IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: “I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.”
 
What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.
 
In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story—from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story—touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector—while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.

• Catalogs
• Basic and Advanced settings and preferences
• Importing/Exporting
• Basic and Advanced Keywording
• Workflow Methods
• Tethered Capture
• Everything you need to know about Presets
• ... and much more!

Who needs expensive, old-fashioned office software? Now, you can do everything online, free, with Google Docs! Experts Steve and Nancy Holzner offer simple, step-by-step instructions and great insider tips for making the most of Google’s powerful online word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools. You’ll get started fast... learn how to create and format professional-quality documents of all kinds... collaborate with colleagues to build better proposals and presentations... use advanced tools like revision history, templates, and charts... discover Google Docs’ latest features and shortcuts... and a whole lot more! No matter what kind of documents you create, this book can help you do the job better, faster, and more efficiently... and you’ll never pay for office software again!

You’ll Learn How To

            •           Get your free Google account and set up iGoogle for instant access to your documents

            •           Upload and use the documents you’ve already created with Microsoft Office

            •           Use Google Spreadsheet to create charts to display spreadsheet data

            •           Master Google Docs’ easy, powerful document-editing and formatting tools

            •           Insert images into your documents and presentations

            •           Share documents securely with your colleagues

            •           Back up your documents offline and edit them when you don’t have an Internet connection

Steven Holzner, former contributing editor at PC Magazine, is author of 108 computer books
that have sold more than 2.5 million copies. His most recent Pearson book is Facebook Marketing.

Nancy Holzner writes and edits technology books from her home in central New York state.
Her recent publications include books on Intuit QuickBase and Zoho. Nancy has also worked as
a medievalist, a high school teacher, and a corporate trainer.

CATEGORY:  Productivity Suites

COVERS: Google Docs

USER LEVEL: Beginning-Intermediate

Move leadership into the digital age

Digital leadership is a strategic mindset and set of behaviors that leverages resources to create a meaningful, transparent, and engaging school culture. It takes into account recent changes such as ubiquitous connectivity, open-source technology, mobile devices, and personalization to dramatically shift how schools have been run and structured for over a century.  Leading in education becomes exponentially powerful when using technology to your advantage.



Eric Sheninger—“Principal Twitter”—shares his Pillars of Digital Leadership to help readers

• Transform school culture by initiating sustainable change


• Use free social media tools to improve communication, enhance public relations, and create a positive brand presence 


• Integrate digital tools into the classroom to increase student engagement and achievement


• Facilitate professional learning and access new opportunities and resources

The time is now, whether you are a building level or teacher leader, to boldly move schools forward in the digital age.