Tech books

A year or so ago, I wrote about my dead tree web 2.0 reading list, which was all about what books were being published about the interactive web. I’ve bought most of those on the list, plus a bunch of others that folk suggested.

There are other books one can buy about this stuff though, which don’t just talk about the issues and culture of the web, but which actually tell you how to do things.

I don’t tend to buy too many of these, as a lot of the help one needs one can get from the web itself, but I got a couple through the post from Amazon the other day.

Using Drupal is a really good entry level guide to what is a fiendishly complicated, but amazingly powerful CMS. It’s genuinely readable and am really pleased I got it.

Ning for Dummies is a guide to using and setting up your own networks on Ning. As someone who Ninging is entirely based on playing with stuff, it’s great to have a resource to pick up and find out what some of those options I dare not touch do. Again, recommended reading.

One book I have had for a while, which I have to mention here, though, is WordPress for Dummies:

Which isn’t for Dummies at all, in fact it’s for very sensible people. It takes you right the way from setting up a WordPress.com blog to writing your own themes and plugins – awesome stuff.

What techie books do you swear by?

Hyperlocal alliance

Will, Dom and Kalv are starting something that has the potential to become really rather cool.

So where are we going with this? Well we want to know if hyperlocal people in the UK are up for some sort of ‘UK Hyperlocal Alliance’ (working title) dedicated to a positive future for hyperlocal content in the UK. This isn’t an attempt to form a trade body or a union or a lobby group, just a simple web resource where we can sign up to a simple statement of intent, get in touch with each other and tell our stories.

Leave a comment on the post if you want to keep involved…

Bookmarks for May 4th through May 16th

Stuff I have bookmarked for May 4th through May 16th:

  • Baby steps in Social Media News Releases – "The Social Media News Release (SMNR) updates the old press notice and video news release for a social media age. Factual bullet points instead of marketingese. Embedded video and images for media outlets and bloggers to use. Social bookmarking buttons to help users to spread the word. Related documents and context to help the lazy or time-poor to put the report in context."
  • Information for life – "a blog from Opportunity Links discussing the challenges of information delivery to the public. We hope to use this blog to explore how we can fulfil our mission statement: “We believe that people should have access to quality information to empower and support them in the choices they make.” "
  • Wolfram|Alpha – "Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone."
  • Digital Engagement | Director of Digital Engagement – A new blog at the Cabinet Office for the Director of Digital Engagement
  • Can’t Connect… Won’t Connect » the billblog – "Imagine how nice it would be if most wireless networks were suddenly five or even ten times faster and generally reliable."
  • socialstrategy:start [Practical Participation] – "There are many small hurdles to effective use of social media and technology in public services. In democratic engagement and participation; communications and outreach; education; or just about any other area of work – the same soluble barriers hold up action. "
  • Acorn, the image editor for humans. – I'm using Pixelmator at the moment to do my web graphic editing. @billt recommends Acorn though, might give it a go.
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