Results for "New Books"
Mastering 2D development in Unity3D | Book for Intermediate Game Developers
Game development has picked up the last few years. RPG games such as Activision's Call of Duty have surely constituted to the craze. Positively or negatively. If a top game maker can't make best games, can I (you, the game developer ask).

For game developers, the Unity 3D is a great tool. The game-making engine is free, and there's a very helpful community online. Resources are aplenty as well. But there are two types of learners, those who can learn from the free resources online and those who need a book to learn.

Mastering Unity 2D Game Development by Simon Jackson is for the learners of the second type.  The book is a resource to create a 2D side-scrolling RPG.

The Book :

Mastering Unity 2D Game Development teaches the skills with an overview of the project that you'll be undertaking.

After that it teaches you how to build a character, and includes instructions on how to use Unity's sprite system.

After that you are taught the animation part.

...then you create your on-player characters, inventory system, combat systems. Then finally you taught how to pack and deploy your game. The book teaches you how to market your game as well.

As happens with most of these books, you need to be crazy about coding; else you will not be able to continue with the over 400 pages. This also means the addictiveness to quickly consult online resources for better understanding and correction of errors.

A keen learner will surely get plenty of tips and tricks.

Opinion: The book Mastering Unity 2D Game Development is NOT for beginners or who just starting with Unity 3D. The book requires a good familiarity with the engine and the C# programming language (the syntax, OOP etc.).

The book was written when Unity3D version 4.3 was in implementation and hence refers to some UI elements that have since been changed.
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Anil Singh Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Advanced Features of the iOS SDK, New Book
A new book to help you understand the Advanced Features of the iOS SDK came out last month.

 New Book  iOS Components and Frameworks: Understanding the Advanced Features of the iOS SDK (Developer's Library) by: Kyle Richter

Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional

Published: 2013-11-14

ASIN: 0321856716
EAN: 9780321856715 sales rank: 76616

Price: $29.54

About the Book from the Book Author:

Take Your Next Leap Forward as an iOS App Developer! Covers iOS 7 and Xcode 5

iOS Components and Frameworks will help you leverage iOS’s powerful components and frameworks to build apps with outstanding performance, reliability, interactivity, media support, and customization.
Pioneering iOS developers Kyle Richter and Joe Keeley illuminate the sophisticated intermediate-to-advancedlevel techniques you’re now ready for. You’ll find example-rich coverage of topics ranging from social support to security, Core Data, TextKit, iCloud support, UIKit Dynamics, MapKit, and Passbook. There’s also a complete section on advanced performance and security, including the effective use of Grand Central Dispatch and Keychain.
Each chapter contains a complete sample project that walks you through integrating its technology into a typical iOS app. You’ll discover how multiple iOS features can be combined into exceptionally powerful apps and walk through a complete case study project: a fully functional game with complete Game Center integration.

Coverage includes:
  • New physics-based animation effects provided by UIKit Dynamics
  • Making the most of Core Location, MapKit, and Geofencing
  • Leveraging Game Center features such as Leader Boards and Achievements
  • Giving users access to their address and media libraries from within your app
  • Using lightweight JSON to move data among servers, apps, and websites
  • Syncing apps via iCloud using UIDocument and key-value store syncing
  • Securing user data with Keychain
  • Informing users of important app-related events via Notifications
  • Storing and retrieving persistent data locally with Core Data
  • Using advanced Objective-C features to write more manageable, concise apps
  • Improving responsiveness through concurrency with Grand Central Dispatch
  • Advanced text handling and display with TextKit
  • Smoothly handling complex and continuous gestures
  • Effective debugging techniques with Xcode 5 and Instruments
  • Building passes for Passbook and PassKit
If you’re a serious iOS developer who wants to build cutting-edge apps, iOS Components and Frameworks delivers the practical skills, reusable code, and expert insights you’re looking for.
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Anil Singh Monday, December 2, 2013
The New Star Wars Cookbook about Ice Sabers...is out
A new book released on April 2, can make the summers a little sweeter and interesting for you (and kids, if they are around). A new Star Wars Cookbook, Ice Sabers: 30 Chilled Treats Using the Force of Your Freezer! (Star Wars Cookbook) is all about whipping out a fabulous recipe from Ice Sabers. Though , you can create chilled sweets of all shapes, all inspired by George Lucas's Star Wars. With recipes like Millennium Fal-Cone Pie and Bananakin Splits, the book has it all.

About the New Star Wars Cookbook...

                                            Ice Sabers: 30 Chilled Treats Using the Force of Your Freezer! (Star Wars Cookbook) 

Create 30 sweet, chilled treats in this Star Wars-themed cooking kit, from Mos Icely to Qui-Gon Gingerbread Ice Cream Sandwiches to Frozen Hoth Chocolate. Or freeze up lightsaber-inspired ice pops using the 4 lightsaber ice pop molds included in the kit. With so many easy-to-make recipes for delightful treats, this galactic cookbook will appeal to any Jedi appetite. ---------

Anil Singh Wednesday, April 17, 2013
New Book of Designer who collaborated directly with Steve Jobs, released
New Book presents design for change - design as a strategic and holistic way of finding and creating sustainable solutions that are also successful in an economic sense.

A new book, titled "Design Forward: Creative Strategy at the Core of Sustainable", is Hartmut Esslinger's (one of the most influential designers and thinkers internationally, as well as the founder of frog design) attempt to explain how ‘strategic design’ in business and society can and must bring about positive change through innovative creativity.

The book's key attribute is how it has strategically extended definition of design as a convergent and humanistic amalgamation of technology, the environment and the economy.

Esslinger has not boarded this philosophy now, his design has always been a key strategic discipline, which he has practiced successfully in companies such as Wega, Louis Vuitton, Sony, SAP and especially Apple.

At Apple he collaborated directly with Steve Jobs. Therefore the book also attempts to establish a wide range of creative innovators as top executives, who are equally influential and occupy leading positions in economics, education and politics.

particularly fascinating in the photographs are the ones showing Tablet like prototypes from Apple. What is interesting is that the prototypes, though mimic the form and layout of Apple's ipad, appear artistically bland. For instance the prototype shows, pointed corners and oblique edges. This makes one infer that, Steve Jobs indeed contributed a lot to product designs, aesthetically.

The Book,  Design Forward, tires to look every future projection as based on some design in history.

What else the Book Offers:

1) The Book hows relevant and richly illustrated case studies taken from Esslinger’s career with frog design.

2) Also shows selected works by his students at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he teaches as a professor of Industrial Design.

3) The content of DESIGN FORWARD supplements Esslinger’s previous publication A FINE LINE.

4) With contributions by the students from the Master Class ID2 at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and by other academic partners.

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Anil Singh Sunday, December 30, 2012
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Once Offered $12 million for Netflix
Former Apple evangelist and now a celebrated keynote speaker, Guy Kawasaki still laments, how he once, declined Yahoo!'s CEO offer. Those were hey days for Yahoo. The fortunes of both Yahoo! and Guy never rose since then.

Netflix founder CEO, Reed Hastings, may also have lamented his decision of flatly rejecting Amazon's acquisition Offer in late 1990s.

Yes, Amazon once wanted to buy Netflix. In 1999, when Netflix was still a struggling start-up, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos offered CEO Reed Hastings $12 million.The offer Reed flatly rejected.

This and things like these, have been revealed in an upcoming book, titled "Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs " a history of the DVD-and-streaming pioneer, that's due to go on sale Thursday. The Book is authored by Gina Keating, the former Reuters reporter.

The book further says that, the Netflix CEO even tried to negotiate to keep Amazon out of the DVD mail-order rental business.

According to "Netflixed," founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph met with the Amazon CEO in 1999, after he indicated he might want to partner with Netflix in some way. "Hastings also wanted to discuss selling Netflix to Amazon if the price was right. The only problem was that Hastings was "less than impressed with Amazon's $12 million offer." Although the author, doesn't reveal how much Reed wanted; it was later reported that the amount demanded was $50 million.

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Anil Singh Saturday, October 6, 2012
The Information: A fascinating Book on the History of Human Communication
A book on the History if Human Communication arrived in march this year. The book is simply fascinating, eye opening, engaging (70 percent of of its length) for anyone who wants to have a glimpse (thorough) of how humans reached the age of internet from the years of 1800s.

The Book:

The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood , by James Gleick begins with the “talking drums” of Africa and traverses the creation of writing, the ingenious inventions of the steam age, information theory’s origins and development, and ends with the current state of the internet communication.

The book includes the profiles of relatively lesser known inventors such as Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace( who in the 1800s envisioned computers made of gears and powered by steam), and Claude Shannon (a World War II code breaker, without whose achievements computers could not have progressed).

Not limiting itself to the PC related information growth, the book also traces and elaborates the infiltration of information theory into other fields, such as genetics. Among the examples given in this context is the case of DNA, which previously considered mostly a topic of chemistry, came under the realms of technology, when Watson, Crick and Wilkins realized in early 1960s, DNA’s purpose was to convey instructions about how to construct organisms. No wonder the idea was revolutionary even for the scientists at the time.


What makes the book special is that, the author sees the information much more than n just the contents of over-stacked brick and mortar libraries and Web servers. The book asserts that the Information is the driving force which takes the entire Universe forward.



Pros:

As said the book is an eye opening, fascinating, baffling and engaging book on the History of Information and Communication.

Cons: 

1) Some readers can find it over simplifying, a certain areas.

2) The discussions of logic proofs, unsolvable mathematics proofs, and particularly scientific topics could be unnerving to some readers. But this unnerving feeling exists only for about 20 percent of book pages.

Conclusion:

Regardless of any limitations, The Information is an engaging book, for anyone who is interested in the history of Human Communications and Humans. ---------

Anil Singh Saturday, August 11, 2012
For Inventors who seriously want To Make Money, Here’s a New Book
Not every inventor (especially the new ones) wants to make Millions with his Invention.

Still, an invention which makes money is never an uninvited guest.

Whether an invention makes small, significant or truck loads of money; it is always better than the one which makes none.

And making money from one’s inventions requires much more than a sharp mind, steep curiosity and out-of-the-box creativity. It also requires knowledge of the worldly ways to safeguard one’s invention, by way of patents, packaging the prototype well, so that it appeals to the person/company who buys its rights for commercial replication, and many small but important things.

Simply stated, if you are an inventor, who loves to create things, and wants to make money out of it as well; then a new book — Your Complete Guide to Making Millions with Your Simple Idea or Invention: Insider Secrets You Need to Know – is for you.


THE BOOK IS ATTRACTNG GREAT REVIEWS:

The book is getting great reviews from experts and educators, who have devoted decades of their lives teaching & representing innovation, legal framework around innovations, innovators & entrepreneurs and patents.

Gene Quinn, President & Founder of IPWatchdog Inc., Patent Attorney has this to say about the book,

“For over ten years I have been writing articles and commentaries in hopes of educating independent inventors and small businesses on patent and intellectual property issues. For those who are new to the innovation business it can be an extremely daunting task to come up to speed on the topic, particularly given the diverse, sometimes counter-intuitive, issues and obstacles that need to be successfully navigated. I have long wanted to write a book for inventors myself, but now there is no need for that endeavor. As this new book is much like what I would have written, if I write a book on the topic. Time and time again as I read this book I found myself nodding my head in complete agreement. For new inventors who seriously want to succeed this book should be required reading.”


FOR WHOM IS THE BOOK?

· An inventor/entrepreneur who clearly sees the US economy continue to trend towards an innovation and technology based economy intellectual property rights, and patent rights in particular. To such clarity that, he has convinced himself that the manufacturing jobs are gone and Prosperity is tied to innovation.

· An inventor who believes that a pre-requisite to successfully innovating and making money from innovation is to understand the processes in play outside innovation.

· A person who wants to have at his side, everything advised about ‘innovation as business’ in the past few decades and today, in a concise easy to understand format.

· For an inventor who has understood that he is far more likely to succeed if he treats inventing as a business. And for whom inventing stuff is more than just an American dream – for whom inventing goes well beyond the “cool” factor, innovative contributions; one who wants to like to succeed financially, sees nothing wrong in making money from his invention.

· An inventor, who understands that innovation needs money as well.

WHAT THE BOOK OFFERS:



The book has been written with one overarching theme: How to approach inventing in a business way.
Inside this overarching theme, the book covers broad to minute questions & issues faced by a new inventor, which include the trials and tribulations of inventors, the need to have a direction in their innovation effort, the importance of time management, scheduling and meeting promised deadlines. This the book does in an uncommon level of understanding with respect to both the questions inventors have and the knowledge they absolutely need to know to succeed.

That apart the book also talks about patents. Reflecting on the patent section of the book, Gene Quinn, Patent Attorney, says that many might find it surprising that some of the best things said in the book are those things that provide a reality check on the importance of patents. Others found the authors take on patents , simply spot on.

In author’s own words,

“ patents are not the end of all be all, but rather they are a means to an end. Obtaining a patent is not the ‘holy grail’; rather, ‘the holy grail of inventing is getting your invention into the hands of consumers and making a profit."


Majority of inventors today want to do just that. If you are one among theese, then Read Your Complete Guide to Making Millions with Your Simple Idea or Invention: Insider Secrets You Need to Know, not only once, but keep consulting it whenever the need be.

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Anil Singh Sunday, May 20, 2012