Category Archives: Book Reviews

Android in Practice – Book Review

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My name is Adrian and I am a tech book addict.  I often find myself purchasing tech books and reading some of each one, and on rare occasions an entire book from cover to cover.  My recent focus, like many others I know,  has been on mobile development.  So with this new focus I purchased a couple of e-books that cover the Android platform.  One of these books happened to be Android in Practice, published by Manning Publications, and written by Charlie Collins, Michael Galpin, and Matthias Kaeppler.  The book was actually a MEAP – Manning Early Access Program.  MEAPs are interesting in that you get a chance to see how authors put together their book and how they try and tie it all together.  It also allows you to get books that cover hot topics sooner than their publish date. Disclaimer – I purchased a copy of this MEAP, this is not a book review written because a publishing house gave me a free copy.  With all of that out of the way let’s get on with the review.

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The Smashing Book – Review

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About a week ago I received a copy of The Smashing Book in the mail. I thumbed through it on the first day and it seemed that there was great information on each page. I decided to sit down and start reading the book from cover to cover. I am glad I did. After over 15 years of creating web sites and applications I thought I was pretty aware of most things web, boy was I wrong. The Smashing Book is a collection of articles written by designer/developers on topics ranging from layout to fonts; colors to site optimization; conversion rates to branding. This book has it all for the UX web professional. Could it be the new ‘Bible’ for UX developers?

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Laws of Simplicity – Review

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After a long hiatus from blogging, and a short vacation, I was finally able to catch up on some reading. So to kick off the new year here is a review on one of the books I just finished, The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda.

The Laws of Simplicity is a concise summary of John Maeda’s thoughts on design. I found this book to be an awakening of subconscious design principles we already posses. It was not a text book explanation of esoteric theories from an academic. All of the authors ‘laws’ were related to real world observations and application. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is involved in product development of any type, and especially for those involved in software.

To quote the author’s mentor “Be a lightbulb not a laser beam.” Read the book and you’ll get an illuminated feeling and a better understanding of your own thoughts on design.