Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs


Ken Kocienda - 2018
    Creative Selection recounts the life of one of the few who worked behind the scenes, a highly-respected software engineer who worked in the final years the Steve Jobs era--the Golden Age of Apple.Ken Kocienda offers an inside look at Apple's creative process. For fifteen years, he was on the ground floor of the company as a specialist, directly responsible for experimenting with novel user interface concepts and writing powerful, easy-to-use software for products including the iPhone, the iPad, and the Safari web browser. His stories explain the symbiotic relationship between software and product development for those who have never dreamed of programming a computer, and reveal what it was like to work on the cutting edge of technology at one of the world's most admired companies.Kocienda shares moments of struggle and success, crisis and collaboration, illuminating each with lessons learned over his Apple career. He introduces the essential elements of innovation--inspiration, collaboration, craft, diligence, decisiveness, taste, and empathy--and uses these as a lens through which to understand productive work culture.An insider's tale of creativity and innovation at Apple, Creative Selection shows readers how a small group of people developed an evolutionary design model, and how they used this methodology to make groundbreaking and intuitive software which countless millions use every day.

The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace


Ron Friedman - 2014
    uses the latest research from the fields of motivation, creativity, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and management to reveal what really makes us successful at work. Combining powerful stories with cutting edge findings, Friedman shows leaders at every level how they can use scientifically-proven techniques to promote smarter thinking, greater innovation, and stronger performance. Among the many surprising insights, Friedman explains how learning to think like a hostage negotiator can help you diffuse a workplace argument, why placing a fish bowl near your desk can elevate your thinking, and how incorporating strategic distractions into your schedule can help you reach smarter decisions. Along the way, the book introduces the inventor who created the cubicle, the president who brought down the world’s most dangerous criminal, and the teenager who single-handedly transformed professional tennis—vivid stories that offer unexpected revelations on achieving workplace excellence. Brimming with counterintuitive insights and actionable recommendations, The Best Place to Work offers employees and executives alike game-changing advice for working smarter and turning any organization—regardless of its size, budgets, or ambitions—into an extraordinary workplace.

Adobe InDesign CS6 Classroom in a Book


Adobe Creative Team - 2012
    The 16 project-based lessons show readers step-by-step the key techniques for working with InDesign CS6. Readers learn what they need to know to create engaging page layouts using InDesign CS6. This completely revised CS6 edition covers the new tools for adding PDF form fields, linking content, and creating alternative layouts for digital publishing. The companion CD includes all the lesson files that readers need to work along with the book. This thorough, self-paced guide to Adobe InDesign CS6 is ideal for beginning users who want to master the key features of this program. Readers who already have some experience with InDesign can improve their skills and learn InDesign's newest features. "The Classroom in a Book series is by far the best training material on the market. Everything you need to master the software is included: clear explanations of each lesson, step-by-step instructions, and the project files for the students." -Barbara Binder, Adobe Certified Instructor, Rocky Mountain Training Classroom in a Book(R), the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does-an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts. All of Peachpit's eBooks contain the same content as the print edition. You will find a link in the last few pages of your eBook that directs you to the media files.Helpful tips:If you are able to search the book, search for "Where are the lesson files?"Go to the very last page of the book and scroll backwards.You will need a web-enabled device or computer in order to access the media files that accompany this ebook. Entering the URL supplied into a computer with web access will allow you to get to the files.Depending on your device, it is possible that your display settings will cut off part of the URL. To make sure this is not the case, try reducing your font size and turning your device to a landscape view. This should cause the full URL to appear.

Everything You Need to Know About Personal Finance in 1000 Words


C.J. Carlsen - 2014
    Do you know that everything you need to know about personal finance can be summed up in only 1,000 words? What if I told you that you can learn how to handle your money better than a majority of your peers?Now you can.In this book you learn everything you could ever want to know about your money - in less than 10 minutes. That’s all it will take for you to become a master of money.How many articles and books do you see on personal finance? Hundreds? Thousands?Blogs. Books. Podcasts. The resources you have at your disposal are limitless. You know what happens when you have limitless resources? You ignore them. All of them. But that is okay. This will be the only resource you will ever need on personal finance. That is what makes this book so special. In this brief book you will learn: How to control your spending habits Where you should focus your time when making a large purchase How to save thousands doing this one simple thing How tracking every penny does NOT make you financially responsible and what you should do instead What you should spend your money on (hint: it’s not what you think) Why saving for only 10 years is better than saving for 32 years How to make budgeting work for you, even if you hate it! How to make more money Where you should focus your time and effort on to make more money Those habits of the rich How you make money work for you How to avoid taxes legally. The specific investment you should choose The one type of mutual fund you should avoid How you can simplify your finances What you can do to save for retirement every month without lifting a finger If you do not want to learn everything about personal finance in 10 minutes or less, this book is not for you. However, if you want to take control of you money, grab this free eBook today. You’ll be glad you did. Well, what are you waiting for?! Scroll up and download your copy today!

Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams


Yevgeniy Brikman - 2015
    We are in the era of the high tech startup.This book is the "Hello, World" tutorial for building products, technologies, and teams in a startup environment. It's based on the experiences of the author, Yevgeniy Brikman, as well as interviews with programmers from some of the most successful startups of the last decade, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Stripe, Instagram, AdMob, Pinterest, and many others.If you're at all interested in startups—whether you're a programmer at the beginning of your career, a seasoned developer bored with the politics of large companies, a manager trying to figure out how to motivate your engineers, or just someone trying to figure out what this startup thing is all about—this book is for you. For more info, see http: //www.hello-startup.net"

Inviting Disaster: Lessons From the Edge of Technology


James R. Chiles - 2001
    Combining firsthand accounts of employees' escapes with an in-depth look at the structural reasons behind the towers' collapse, Chiles addresses the question, Were the towers "two tall heroes" or structures with a fatal flaw?

Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters


Ryan Singer - 2019
    "This book is a guide to how we do product development at Basecamp. It’s also a toolbox full of techniques that you can apply in your own way to your own process.Whether you’re a founder, CTO, product manager, designer, or developer, you’re probably here because of some common challenges that all software companies have to face."

How To Get To The Top Of Google in 2021: The Plain English Guide to SEO (Digital Marketing by Exposure Ninja)


Tim Cameron-Kitchen - 2020
    Whether you’ve dabbled in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and been disappointed with the results, are a complete SEO newbie looking for a large slice of the ranking pie or you’re a seasoned professional looking to stay up to date with the best SEO practices, this book is for you. How would it feel to… Understand how Google chooses which websites to rank? Know exactly what keywords to target to attract people who are ready to buy what you sell? Have your most profitable keywords hit the top spot? Confidently be able to tweak your website and its structure (no technical know-how needed!) for fast gains? Be able to write killer content that Google and your visitors love? Build relationships with key publication players in your industry and have them begging for your content? Have crafted a complete SEO strategy to laser-target your focus and get big results? What kind of results can you achieve? One of our clients came to us in 2015 asking for help. His business was making $2k per month in sales, and he was contemplating closing shop. Today, that business turns over $3.4million per month, thanks to the strategies in this book.You’ll read about this business and others in the book. Every strategy is data-backed and battle-tested by the Exposure Ninja team, who grow real businesses like yours. What's inside? Section 1: The Foundations You’ll learn: The four free ways to appear on the first page of Google How to identify keywords that will drive hordes of hungry traffic to your website The key to seeing ranking gains in just weeks Why snooping on your competitors is crucial, and how to steal the good bits. Section 2: Your Website Transform your website’s ranking by: Structuring it to make it easy for Google AND visitors to use Using content to 10x your traffic Transforming your blog into a sales generator Avoiding the SEO pitfalls that can do more harm to your website than good Section 3: Promoting Your Website You’ll find out: The exact process that took one business from 35 to 3,450 leads a month How to get links from national newspaper websites The easy way to pitch content sounding desperate How to get links from social media Section 4: Designing Your SEO Strategy SEO can be overwhelming. Replace panic with serene calm as you: Put everything into a comprehensive strategy Pick the key tasks to get results if you’re low on time Learn which metrics to track and which to ignore Implement three key practices that will ensure long-term improvement, whatever Google throws at you "But how do I know all this is possible?" Tim Cameron-Kitchen started out as a professional drummer. After building and ranking a website for his next-door neighbour, he got bitten by the SEO bug. Hundreds of clients later and with a team of 100 at his agency Exposure Ninja, Tim's story shows that anyone, even if you don't have a background in SEO, can learn what it takes to rank their website on Google.

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers


Geoffrey A. Moore - 2006
    Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, with special emphasis on the Internet. It's essential reading for anyone with a stake in the world's most exciting marketplace.

The Apple Revolution: Steve Jobs, the Counterculture and How the Crazy Ones Took over the World


Luke Dormehl - 2012
    Meet the Crazy Ones who created Silicon Valley – the hippies who started the Homebrew Computer Club; the young ad executive who first sketched out Apple’s iconic logo; the engineers who met lying down in a cardboard geodesic dome at Stanford University. From Steve Wozniak, who built the first breakthrough Apple computers, to Jony Ive, the young Brit who imagined the iPod - the designers and programmers, the geeks, creatives and dreamers, they are all here.And at the centre of it all, a bearded and barefoot Steve Jobs, whose singular vision would will Apple Inc. into a future that it would come to own …

Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age


David L. Rogers - 2016
    Rogers argues that digital transformation is not about updating your technology but about upgrading your strategic thinking. Based on Rogers's decade of research and teaching at Columbia Business School, and his consulting for businesses around the world, The Digital Transformation Playbook shows how pre-digital-era companies can reinvigorate their game plans and capture the new opportunities of the digital world.Rogers shows why traditional businesses need to rethink their underlying assumptions in five domains of strategy--customers, competition, data, innovation, and value. He reveals how to harness customer networks, platforms, big data, rapid experimentation, and disruptive business models--and how to integrate these into your existing business and organization.Rogers illustrates every strategy in this playbook with real-world case studies, from Google to GE, from Airbnb to the New York Times. With practical frameworks and nine step-by-step planning tools, he distills the lessons of today's greatest digital innovators and makes them usable for businesses at any stage.Many books offer advice for digital start-ups, but The Digital Transformation Playbook is the first complete treatment of how legacy businesses can transform to thrive in the digital age. It is an indispensable guide for executives looking to take their firms to the next stage of profitable growth.

Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon


Colin Bryar - 2021
    In Working Backwards, these two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.With keen analysis and practical steps for applying it at your own company—no matter the size—the authors illuminate how Amazon’s fourteen leadership principles inform decision-making at all levels and reveal how the company’s culture has been defined by four characteristics: customer obsession, long-term thinking, eagerness to invent, and operational excellence. Bryar and Carr explain the set of ground-level practices that ensure these are translated into action and flow through all aspects of the business.Working Backwards is a practical guidebook and a corporate narrative, filled with the authors’ in-the-room recollections of what “Being Amazonian” is like and how it has affected their personal and professional lives. They demonstrate that success on Amazon’s scale is not achieved by the genius of any single leader, but rather through commitment to and execution of a set of well-defined, rigorously-executed principles and practices—shared here for the very first time. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

Visual Merchandising: Windows and In-Store Displays for Retail


Tony Morgan - 2008
    Using examples from a range of stores from fashion emporia to supermarkets, the book offers practical advice on the subject, supported by hints and tips from established visual merchandisers. It reveals the secrets of their tool kit, and information on the use of mannequins, the latest technology, how to construct and source props, and explains the psychology behind shopping and buyer behavior.Presented through color photographs, diagrams of floor layouts, and store case studies, and includinginvaluable information such as a glossary of terms used in the industry, Visual Merchandising is an essential handbook for anyone working in and learning about this exciting area.

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time


Allen Gannett - 2018
      We have been spoon-fed the notion that creativity is the province of genius -- of those favored, brilliant few whose moments of insight arrive in unpredictable flashes of divine inspiration.  And if we are not a genius, we might as well pack it in and give up. Either we have that gift, or we don’t.  But Allen shows that simply isn’t true.  Recent research has shown that there is a predictable science behind achieving commercial success in any creative endeavor, from writing a popular novel to starting up a successful company to creating an effective marketing campaign.    As the world’s most creative people have discovered, we are enticed by the novel and the familiar. By understanding the mechanics of what Gannett calls “the creative curve” – the point of optimal tension between the novel and the familiar – everyone can better engineer mainstream success.    In a thoroughly entertaining book that describes the stories and insights of everyone from the Broadway team behind Dear Evan Hansen, to the founder of Reddit, from the Chief Content Officer of Netflix to Michelin star chefs, Gannett reveals the four laws of creative success and identifies the common patterns behind their achievement.

Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It


Scott Kupor - 2019
    That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing business to the next level, you need to understand how VCs think. In Secrets of Sand Hill Road, Kupor explains exactly how VCs decide where and how much to invest, and how entrepreneurs can get the best possible deal and make the most of their relationships with VCs. Kupor explains, for instance:- Why most VCs typically invest in only one startup in a given business category.- Why the skill you need most when raising venture capital is the ability to tell a compelling story.- How to handle a "down round," when startups have to raise funds at a lower valuation than in the previous round.- What to do when VCs get too entangled in the day-to-day operations of the business.- Why you need to build relationships with potential acquirers long before you decide to sell.Filled with Kupor's firsthand experiences, insider advice, and practical takeaways, Secrets of Sand Hill Road is the guide every entrepreneur needs to turn their startup into the next unicorn.