This timely and vibrant book provides frameworks for thinking critically about the roles of digital media in personal relationships. Rather than providing exuberant accounts or cautionary tales, it offers a data-grounded primer on how to make sense of these important changes in relational life.The book identifies the core relational issues these media disturb and shows how the ways we talk about them echo historical discussions about earlier communication technologies. Chapters explore how we use mediated language and nonverbal behavior to develop and maintain communities, social networks, new relationships, and to maintain relationships in our everyday lives. It combines research findings with lively examples to address questions such as whether mediated interaction can be warm and personal, whether people are honest about themselves online, whether relationships that start online can work, and whether using these media damages the other relationships in our lives. Throughout, the book argues for approaching these questions with firm understandings of the qualities of media as well as the social and personal contexts in which they are developed and used.Personal Connections in the Digital Age will be required reading for all students and scholars of media, communication studies, and sociology, as well as all those who want a firmer understanding of digital media and everyday life.

     When one man's death exposes a complex web of lies, three couples discover the true meaning of love, loss and redemption. Hailey What do you do when you find out your whole life was a lie? That your husband really wasn't your husband but someone else's. That the vows you made to each other were simply empty promises. You pick up and move to the country to start fresh. When life hands you limes, you make sure you have tequila because your life is about to get stirred up. Jensen Married to my high school sweetheart, the best thing she gave me was my baby girl. But we weren't enough for her. I wasn't enough for her. The last thing I expected on my birthday was a Dear John letter, but that's what I got when she upped and left. Now, it's just me and my girl against the world till the new girl moves in next door. Is there such a thing as a perfect love story? UNEXPECTED LOVE STORY Crystal I was the strong one, they said, until two words brought me to my knees. It was a secret I didn't share with anyone. A secret that made me promise I'd never fall in love. I no longer wanted that white picket fence of every woman's dreams. Until the unthinkable happened. Gabe I thought I had it all with the best medical practice in the state and the woman of my dreams. I wore a smile on my face every single day. I couldn't wait to watch her walk down the aisle and start our forever, except she never did. My runaway bride made me realize love isn't worth it. What happens when your dreams unexpectedly come true? This is the story of unexpected love. BROKEN LOVE STORY Samantha I had the perfect life; a husband who loved me, and two kids who were my world. Until someone else answered his phone and my perfect life shattered. When he died, I was left with answers he couldn't give me and a box full of lies. He left me broken. Blake I fell in love when I was fifteen, knowing she was the one. For five years, she was my everything—my every breath, every heartbeat, every thought. She made me promise to move on, promise to find love again, but I broke those promises because I can't move on. Two broken souls brought together by tragedy and heartbreak. Can a broken love story be fixed?

    Ironically, I must recommend that you read her every word so that you can find out why your customers won't read very many words on your website -- and what to do about it.-- Jakob Nielsen, Principal, Nielsen Norman Group"There are at least twelve billion web pages out there. Twelve billion voices talking, but saying mostly nothing. If just 1% of those pages followed Ginny's practical, clear advice, the world would be a better place. Fortunately, you can follow her advice for 100% of your own site's pages, so pick up a copy of Letting Go of the Words and start communicating effectively today."--Lou Rosenfeld, co-author, Information Architecture for the World Wide WebOn the web, whether on the job or at home, we usually want to grab information and use it quickly. We go to the web to get answers to questions or to complete tasks - to gather information, reading only what we need. We are all too busy to read much on the web.This book helps you write successfully for web users. It offers strategy, process, and tactics for creating or revising content for the web. It helps you plan, organize, write, design, and test web content that will make web users come back again and again to your site.Learn how to create usable and useful content for the web from the master - Ginny Redish. Ginny has taught and mentored hundreds of writers, information designers, and content owners in the principles and secrets of creating web information that is easy to scan, easy to read, and easy to use.This practical, informative book will help anyone creating web content do it better.Features* Clearly-explained guidelines with full color illustrations and examples from actual web sites throughout the book. * Written in easy-to-read style with many befores and afters.* Specific guidelines for web-based press releases, legal notices, and other documents.* Tips on making web content accessible for people with special needs.Janice (Ginny) Redish has been helping clients and colleagues communicate clearly for more than 20 years. For the past ten years, her focus has been helping people create usable and useful web sites. She is co-author of two classic books on usability: A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (with Joseph Dumas), and User and Task Analysis for Interface Design (with JoAnn Hackos), and is the recipient of many awards.

    The Winning of America Series: The Frontiersman

    Concrete Countertops is an essential book for architects, homeowners and contractors who want to learn how to design, form, mix, pour, color, trowel, inlay and finish decorative concrete countertops. Homeowners will be inspired by the 350 color photographs that bring this exciting medium to life.

     Ever since she could remember it had been the three of them. Rachel, Stephen and Thomas. They had been the best of friends, the closest of allies. It was Stephen and Thomas who had helped her get through when her mother passed away. But they were no longer children and it was time Rachel admitted which of her friends she loved more. After a two-year courtship with Thomas, Rachel turned down his marriage proposal. Now two years later, Rachel wonders if she has done the right thing. She couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her father and moving on with her own life, especially not after everything he has done for her over the years. But that doesn’t matter now, because Thomas is courting Katie Smock. When her father sets her up with Stephen, Rachel looks at her other friend through the eyes of a young lady for the first time. Had she fallen in love with the wrong friend two years ago? And why did Thomas seem jealous of her renewed friendship with Stephen? Find out now in this heartwarming tale about love and family-ties that will remind you of the important things in life and that sometimes it’s good to let go.

    

    

    Its primary mechanic is the advanced artificial intelligence that lets the neighbor remember the players actions to foresee his future moves. Avoiding detection — essential to complete the game — thus becomes more complicated the more the player takes a similar path while trying to sneak past the neighbor. Frequently taken routs are quickly armed with traps (that prevent escape), obstacles (such as boards in windows), and alarms (like cameras placed here and there)

    It also includes a sample syllabus and answer key.

    Her intelligence, ambition and appetite for confrontation have made her a target in a music industry still dominated by men. As Kurt Cobain's wife she was derided as an opportunistic groupie; as his widow she is pitied, and scorned, as the madwoman in rock's attic. Yet Hole's second album, Live Through This, awoke a feminist consciousness in a generation of young listeners.Live Through This arrived in 1994, at a tumultuous point in the history of American music. Three years earlier Nirvana's Nevermind had broken open the punk underground, and the first issue of a zine called Riot Grrrl had been published. Hole were of this context and yet outside of it: too famous for the strict punk ethics of riotgrrrl, too explicitly feminist to be the world's biggest rock band.Live Through This is an album about girlhood and motherhood; desire and disgust; self-destruction and survival. There have been few rock albums before or since so intimately concerned with female experience. It is an album that changed lives – so why is Courtney Love's achievement as a songwriter and musician still not taken seriously, two decades on?

    You’ll discover how to draw all types of dragons using nothing but a pencil. Drawing Dragons shows how to bring to life fierce warriors and bearded ancients as well as baby hatchlings and protective mothers. It also features a special section on adding claws, scales, horns, jewels and other unique details to your dragons.Learn to draw:• Ferocious, attacking dragons•Graceful sea dragons•Fire-breathing flying dragons•Wise, thoughtful dragons

    

    So much so, in fact, that the 12-month design cycles cited in the last edition have shrunk to 6 or even 3 months today. Which is why, more than ever, you need a smart, practical guide that demonstrates how to plan, budget, organize, and manage your Web redesign - or even you initial design - projects from conceptualization to launch. This volume delivers! In these pages Web designer extraordinaire Kelly Goto and coauthor Emily Cotler have distilled their real-world experience into a sound approach to Web redesign workflow that is as much about business priorities as it is about good design. By focusing on where these priorities intersect, Kelly and Emily get straight to the heart of the matter. Each chapter includes a case study that illustrates a key step in the process, and you'll find a plethora of forms, checklists, and worksheets that help you put knowledge into action.This is an AIGA Design Press book published under Peachpit's New Riders imprint in partnership with AIGA.