When inexperienced entrepreneurs ask my advice about their idea for a tech startup, they often worry "What if Google decides to compete with us? They will crush us!" I respond that far more startups die of suicide than homicide. If you can avoid hurting yourself, then you are already better off than most of your competitors. Startups are a chance to build something entirely original with brilliant and ambitious people. But startups are also dangerous. Limited money means there is little room for mistakes. One bad decision can mean bankruptcy. The potential payoff attracts capital, which in turn attracts scam artists. The unscrupulous often lack the skills needed to succeed, but sometimes they are smart enough to trick investors. Even entrepreneurs who start with a strong moral compass can find that the threat of failure unmoors their ethics from their ambition. Emotions matter. We might hope that those in leadership positions possess strength and resilience, but vanity and fragile egos have sabotaged many of the businesses that I’ve worked with. Defeat is always a possibility, and not everyone finds healthy ways to deal with the stress. In this book I offer both advice and also warnings. I've seen certain self-destructive patterns play out again and again, so I wanted to document one of the most extreme cases that I've witnessed. In 2015 I worked for a startup that began with an ingenious idea: to use the software techniques known as Natural Language Processing to allow people to interact with databases by writing ordinary English sentences. This was a multi-billion dollar idea that could have transformed the way people gathered and used information. However, the venture had inexperienced leadership. They burned through their $1.3 million seed money. As their resources dwindled, their confidence transformed into doubt, which was aggravated by edicts from the Board Of Directors ordering sudden changes that effectively threw away weeks' worth of work. Every startup forces its participants into extreme positions, often regarding budget and deadlines. Often these situations are absurd to the point of parody. Therefore, there is considerable humor in this story. The collision of inexperience and desperation gives rise to moments that are simply silly. I tell this story in a day-to-day format, both to capture the early optimism, and then the later sense of panic. Here then, is a cautionary tale, a warning about tendencies that everyone joining a startup should be on guard against."

    As the size and complexity of commercial software have grown, the gap between academic computer science and industry has widened. It's an open secret that there is little engineering in software engineering, which continues to rely not on codified scientific knowledge but on intuition and experience.Barr, who worked as a programmer for more than twenty years, describes how the industry has evolved, from the era of mainframes and Fortran to today's embrace of the cloud. He explains bugs and why software has so many of them, and why today's interconnected computers offer fertile ground for viruses and worms. The difference between good and bad software can be a single line of code, and Barr includes code to illustrate the consequences of seemingly inconsequential choices by programmers. Looking to the future, Barr writes that the best prospect for improving software engineering is the move to the cloud. When software is a service and not a product, companies will have more incentive to make it good rather than "good enough to ship."

    Eight minibooks provide you with expanded coverage of the most important topics to the WordPress community, such as WordPress basics, theme designs, plug-in development, social media integration, SEO, customization, and running multiple sites. Veteran author Lisa Sabin-Wilson leads an authoritative team of authors who offer their unique knowledge and skillset while sharing invaluable advice for maximizing your site's potential and visitor experience.Presents straightforward and easy-to-understand coverage of the basics of WordPress, the most popular blog software in use today Delves into the topics that matter most to the WordPress community, such as theme design, plug-in development, and social media integration Addresses ways to handle a variety of WordPress security issues Examines the WordPress network The word on the street is that WordPress All-in-One For Dummies presents everything you need to know about WordPress in one convenient book!

    This book describes his descent. Read about how he moved quickly from level to level, seeking power. While he thought he was moving up, he was really being dragged down.

    Who knew Laine Crosby, former marketing executive at The Weather Channel, had the gift of being an Investigative Medium? Not even Laine, that is, until she moved from Atlanta to the property of an eighteenth century Maryland plantation and woke up talking to a former slave buried in her backyard! Investigative Medium - the Awakening, examines the gift that was thrust upon Laine who was at first surprised, and then upset, and over time and through experience, embracing of this new way of life. Laine’s husband, Chris, twins Annie and Caleb, and even her Jack Russell terrier “Steve” have peripheral ghostly involvement, so it is a family affair, although at first an unsettling one.Along Laine’s journey, she meets an unlikely friend, the spirit of Jannette, once nanny to the children on the plantation where she lives. Laine becomes Jannette's voice, bringing her back from the antebellum South to tell the incredible story of her life as a slave, and a tender romance is revealed. Interwoven with Laine’s personal story, are the first hand accounts of former slaves Jannette and Bill, and others.Laine finds similarities in her own life and Jannette's, and with Jannette's friendship, Laine begins her journey down a path of self discovery. Once Laine accepts her gift, it is her mother who, from beyond the grave, helps Laine find a way to surrender, and at long last give up on the life she dreamed of having, in order to have the life she was meant to live. Investigative Medium - the Awakening is first in the Investigative Medium series, a preface to future books about Laine's adventures with law enforcement, historians and archaeologists. It is a fast read and an uplifting and hopeful book for anyone who has lost a loved one. But, put on your seat belts; It's a thriller along the way!Now available as an ebook on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords. Paperback available July 2013 (ISBN 978-1-940261-00-3)on LaineCrosby.com among other stores.

    Author John Myles White shows you how this powerful class of algorithms can help you boost website traffic, convert visitors to customers, and increase many other measures of success.This is the first developer-focused book on bandit algorithms, which were previously described only in research papers. You’ll quickly learn the benefits of several simple algorithms—including the epsilon-Greedy, Softmax, and Upper Confidence Bound (UCB) algorithms—by working through code examples written in Python, which you can easily adapt for deployment on your own website.Learn the basics of A/B testing—and recognize when it’s better to use bandit algorithmsDevelop a unit testing framework for debugging bandit algorithmsGet additional code examples written in Julia, Ruby, and JavaScript with supplemental online materials

    

    Pattie’s Personal Narrative is a prime source for the history of the Southwest during the 1820s. He, and a group of fur trappers, set out on a journey from St. Louis to California and back. After Jed Smith’s trip this journey, which began in 1824, is the second known expedition to California. This remarkable book records an eyewitness account of what the West was like before the great swathes of migration occurred. Pattie’s book fully explores the dangers of life as a trapper in the wilderness of the far west, including during one episode after Pattie and a group of French trappers were attacked and only three of them survived. Personal Narrative provides fascinating insight into the earliest clashes that were beginning to occur between citizens of the travelers from the east, Native Americans and Mexicans as United States began its great westward expansion. Yet, Pattie also demonstrates how there was great cooperation between groups, for example when he aided Mexicans, Native Americans, missionaries and settlers with smallpox vaccinations. It is essential reading for anyone interested in finding out more about the Old West and life of this fascinating American frontiersman. James O. Pattie first published his account The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky in 1831 and he passed away in 1851.

    Over the next 3 centuries, it would grow to become one of the mightiest empires in the world, the Vijayanagara Empire. An empire dazzling in it's achievements, in it's riches, in it's arts. From it's founding, to it's fall after the Battle of Tallikota to the heights it achieved under Sri Krishna Deva Raya, City of Victory aims to recreate the splendor and glory of one of the most magnificent empires ev

    Arthur Thompson proved them all wrong. For forty years Thompson ruled Glasgow's mean streets, always devising new terror.

    Internet and World Wide Web How to Program, 4e introduces students with little or no programming experience to the exciting world of Web-Based applications. The book has been substantially revised to reflect today's Web 2.0 rich Internet application-development methodologies. A comprehensive book that teaches the fundamentals needed to program on the Internet, this text provides in-depth coverage of introductory programmming principles, various markup languages (XHTML, Dynamic HTML and XML), several scripting languages (JavaScript, PHP, Ruby/Ruby on Rails and Perl); AJAX, web services, Web Servers (IIS and Apache) and relational databases (MySQL/Apache Derby/Java DB) -- all the skills and tools needed to create dynamic Web-based applications. The text contains comprehensive introductions to ASP.NET 2.0 and JavaServer Faces (JSF). Hundreds of live-code examples of real applications throughout the book available for download allow readers to run the applications and see and hear the outputs.The book provides instruction on building Ajax-enabled rich Internet applications that enhance the presentation of online content and give web applications the look and feel of desktop applications. The chapter on Web 2.0 and Internet business exposes readers to a wide range of other topics associated with Web 2.0 applications and businesses After mastering the material in this book, students will be well prepared to build real-world, industrial strength, Web-based applications.

    Having the same class in college, curiosity got the better of me when she told me her dad was an ex-MMA fighter.I searched him online and found that he was a ripped, huge fighter in his youth. But he looks even better today, forty-two years old and just as muscular as he used to be. Even better, his hair has turned silver and he looks even more rugged and manly. The truth is I let myself fantasize about him sometimes.But it has to stay a fantasy. A man like Liam Larson – rich, successful, handsome – would never be interested in a naïve virgin like me.But then Kayla asks me to come home with her for Valentine’s weekend everything changes.At first, I think she’s just trying to rope me into singing at her Dad’s club. She’s always saying I need to be more confident with my music and get over my stage fright. I know that’s not going to happen any time soon.Then I meet Liam and something crazy happens. It turns out he wants me just as badly as I want him. I don’t know if we’ve been shot by Cupid’s arrow or if we’re both just crazily attracted to each other. All I know is we shouldn’t be doing this. If Kayley ever found out, it would be World War three.Yet we can’t stop. I try to fight it. I try to focus on my songwriting. He tries to focus on his work, his businesses. But this tall, muscular alpha is a man I just can’t quit, even if I’m constantly surprised that he wants me to.He says he loves my curves. He says he loves my body. He says he loves my singing voice.But that’s not all.He says I belong to him, and that on Valentine’s night he’s going to claim me in the most possessive way a man can.What if Kayley finds out? What if he discovers that I’m a virgin? What if this all blows up in our faces?I never knew Valentine’s Day could be so complicated.*Valentine’s with My Best Friend’s Dad is an insta-everything standalone instalove romance with a HEA, no cheating, and no cliffhanger.

    While the work entails elements of software development, marketing, and advertising, it's neither purely technical nor traditional "agency" work. Because the industry is relatively new, the gap in understanding between the clients buying the work and the teams building it is often wide, and the methods of delivery vary.Enter the Geek Girls Guide. Nancy Lyons and Meghan Wilker don't just tell you how to deliver digital work, they demonstrate how to think about it. Interactive Project Management helps clients, agencies, and industry professionals better understand the critical role of the interactive project manager, and presents a collaborative, people-focused approach to delivering high-quality digital work. This concise volume helps build understanding across all stakeholders in interactive work, and most importantly, it won't put you to sleep.

    Important projects tend to be time constrained, pose huge technical challenges, and suffer from a lack of adequate resources. It's no wonder that project managers are increasingly focusing their attention on risk identification.Identifying and Managing Project Risk is a practical guide to minimizing the possibility of failure in critical projects. The book takes readers step by step through every phase of a project, showing them how to consider the possible risks involved at every point in the process. Relevant figures and diagrams support the text and illustrate key scenarios. At the end of each chapter is an analysis of how the principles just discussed applied to a supreme example of what many once considered a truly impossible project: the building of the Panama Canal.Packed with real-world information, this book is essential reading for any project manager seeking to complete projects smoothly and successfully."

    In this e-book you will learn what exactly is needed to run a successful Design Thinking Workshop which is fun and at the same time generates great results. In this e-book Pauline Tonhauser, founder of designthinkingcoach.de, shares her best practices.