rich media

The poor man's TV and radio spot.

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There are lots of different kinds of ads on the web: simple text ads and links, graphic images like buttons and banners, ads that have motion like progressive JPEGs and animated GIFs...and then there's the next level: rich media.

An ad that has audio, video, Flash or interactivity is considered "rich" media. Usually, you require some sort of plug-in to view it or hear it. Advertisers used to pay a premium for rich media ads, but now, you've got to have rich media as part of your portfolio before any serious money is on the table at all.

What's currently being written about rich media around the web...

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Best Sellers at Amazon.com...

Rich Dad's Guide to Investing: What the Rich Invest in, That the Poor and the...
By: Robert T. Kiyosaki
List Price: $19.95
Amazon Price: $7.50

Amazon.com
The rich are different from the rest of us, if for no other reason than U.S. tax and securities laws allow them to invest in ways that keep us from catching up to them. That's why 90 percent of all corporate shares of stock are owned by 10 percent of the people. Kiyosaki believes it's possible for anyone to move up into that 10 percent, but it takes a different view of investing than most people have: it takes a plan to be a successful investor. And a plan is more than simply buying and selling, or collecting "assets" that bring in no cash and are thus more akin to liabilities. The way most people invest, "they might as well be pushing a wheelbarrow in a circle," he writes. A plan is "mechanical, automatic, and boring," a formula for success that has worked historically for most of those who've used it. Kiyosaki's "rich dad" (actually, the father of his best friend) tells him the simplest analogy is the game Monopoly: buy four green houses, trade them for one red hotel, and repeat until you become rich.

The overall message of Rich Dad's Guide to Investing is that this is an abundant world, full of opportunity for the sophisticated investor. However, it sometimes takes a while to find this point. Much of the book is told in dialogues between young Kiyosaki and his rich dad, and these conversations can ramble. There are rewards for the careful reader--for example, in the middle of a section on the basic rules of investing, Kiyosaki's rich dad compares investor education to toilet training: difficult at first but eventually automatic. But getting to these inspired metaphors means wading through a lot of repetitive dialogue. It's a bit ironic that someone who advocates investor discipline should show so little as a writer. But by the end of the book, even the rambling starts to make sense. By the hundredth time you read that the rich don't work for money, and that you don't need money to make money, both concepts start to make sense. It still looks difficult to apply these ideas, but Rich Dad's Guide to Investing certainly makes the case that they'll work for anyone bold and smart enough to practice them. --Lou Schuler

Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, scaling, and optimizing the next gener...
By: Cal Henderson
List Price: $39.99
Amazon Price: $19.99

Product Description
Learn the tricks of the trade so you can build and architect applications that scale quickly--without all the high-priced headaches and service-level agreements associated with enterprise app servers and proprietary programming and database products. Culled from the experience of the Flickr.com lead developer, "Building Scalable Web Sites" offers techniques for creating fast sites that your visitors will find a pleasure to use. Creating popular sites requires much more than fast hardware with lots of memory and hard drive space. It requires thinking about how to grow over time, how to make the same resources accessible to audiences with different expectations, and how to have a team of developers work on a site without creating new problems for visitors and for each other. Presenting information to visitors from all over the world * Integrating email with your web applications * Planning hardware purchases and hosting options to have as much as you need without breaking your wallet * Partitioning and distributing databases to support large datasets and simultaneous transactions * Monitoring your applications to find and clear bottlenecks * Providing services APIs and using services from other providers to increase your site's reach and capabilities Whether you're starting a small web site with hopes of growing big or you already have a large system that needs maintenance, you'll find "Building Scalable Web Sites" to be a library of ideas for making things work.

Full Scoop (Janet Evanovich's Full Series)
By: Janet Evanovich
List Price: $7.99
Amazon Price: $1.45

Product Description
Dear Reader:

Mercury's in retrograde, and folks in Beaumont, South Carolina are dealing with gossip, scandal, misunderstandings, and more secrets than ever. Local pediatrician Maggie Farnsworth has even bigger worries. Her wild-girl past has caught up with her in the form of her ex-boyfriend, a jailbird who just flew the coop--and is bent on tracking down Maggie and her daughter. Fortunately, FBI agent Zack Madden is on hand for protection. Unfortunately, his presence is turning up the heat on an attraction Maggie simply has no time for...or does she? But Maggie and Zack aren't the only ones getting busy: Fleas, the hound dog, is up to his old tricks--this time with Butterbean, a very allluring...goat? Jamie Swift and millionaire Max Holt have babies on the brain. And resident psychic-slash-astrologer Destiny is fighting a crush of her own. Since the town's ice cream parlor is a magnet for gossip, no one can keep a secret and the sticky situations are getting even stickier... It's the wildest time yet in the town we love to write about, with the characters we can't get enough of. So sit back, relax, and enjoy a FULL SCOOP of fun, adventure, and romance.
Janet and Charlotte

Think and Grow Rich
By: Napoleon Hill
List Price: $7.99
Amazon Price: $2.00

Product Description
Economical pull drawer transfer files feature sturdy construction with double-thick side walls to permit up to five-high stacking and back locks to prevent tipping. Front stacking locks included. Contains at least 25 percent post-consumer material. Plastic strap handle.

Programming WPF
By: Chris Sells
List Price: $49.99
Amazon Price: $28.33

Product Description
If you want to build applications that take full advantage of Windows Vista's new user interface capabilities, you need to learn Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF). This new edition, fully updated for the official release of .NET 3.0, is designed to get you up to speed on this technology quickly. By page 2, you'll be writing a simple WPF application. By the end of Chapter 1, you'll have taken a complete tour of WPF and its major elements.

WPF is the new presentation framework for Windows Vista that also works with Windows XP. It's a cornucopia of new technologies, which includes a new graphics engine that supports 3-D graphics, animation, and more; an XML-based markup language, called XAML, for declaring the structure of your Windows UI; and a radical new model for controls.

This second edition includes new chapters on printing, XPS, 3-D, navigation, text and documents, along with a new appendix that covers Microsoft's new WPF/E platform for delivering richer UI through standard web browsers -- much like Adobe Flash. Content from the first edition has been significantly expanded and modified. Programming WPF includes: Scores of C# and XAML examples that show you what it takes to get a WPF application up and running, from a simple "Hello, Avalon" program to a tic-tac-toe game Insightful discussions of the powerful new programming styles that WPF brings to Windows development, especially its new model for controls A color insert to better illustrate WPF support for 3-D, color, and other graphics effects A tutorial on XAML, the new HTML-like markup language for declaring Windows UI An explanation and comparison of the features that support interoperability withWindows Forms and other Windows legacy applications

WPF represents the best of the control-based Windows world and the content-based web world. Programming WPF helps you bring it all together.

31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles
By: Tracy Repchuk
List Price: $17.95
Amazon Price: $17.95

Product Description
31 Days to Millionaire Marketing Miracles is a breakthrough blueprint of the proven steps of the most brilliant internet programs out there that will cut to the heart of your stops and get your Internet dreams realized. In addition it profiles some of the hottest Internet Marketers in the industry and includes exclusive audio interviews by Tracy with Yanik Silver, Jason Oman, Adam Ginsberg, and more. Your step-by-step guide to Direct Internet Profits that will give you what you need, when you need it, in the order that you need it!

Learning Flex 3: Getting up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications (Adobe D...
By: Alaric Cole
List Price: $39.99
Amazon Price: $20.54

Product Description
How soon can you learn Adobe Flex 3? With this book's unique hands-on approach, you will be able to tinker with examples right away, and create your own Rich Internet Applications with Flex within the first few chapters. As you progress, you learn how to build a layout, add interactivity, work with data, and deploy your applications to either the Web or the desktop.

Learning Flex 3 offers step-by-step instructions that are clear and concise, along with tips and tricks that author Alaric Cole has gathered after years of using Flex and teaching it to fellow developers at Yahoo! You'll understand how Flex works, how to use the MXML markup language and work with ActionScript, how to deploy RIAs to the desktop using Adobe AIR, and much more.

Whether you're a beginner, or an experienced web developer coming to Flex from another platform, Learning Flex 3 is the ideal way to learn how to: Set up your environment with FlexBuilder and Eclipse Create a new Flex project Use the different design views in Flex Write code with MXML Lay out your Flex application Embed images and graphics Build a user interface Add interactivity with ActionScript Handle user input Move, display, and collect data Add custom components with MXML Add sound effects, filters, and transitions Style your applications with CSS, skins, and themes Deploy applications to the Web, or to the desktop using Adobe AIR Also included are brief explanations of objects, classes, components, properties, methods, types, and other Flex attributes. You will find that Learning Flex 3 is not only the most complete tutorial for Flex, it's also the quickest way to get going with the latest version of this powerful framework.

Head Rush Ajax (Head First)
By: Brett McLaughlin
List Price: $39.99
Amazon Price: $11.38

Product Description

Sick of creating web sites that reload every time a user moves the mouse? Tired of servers that wait around to respond to users' requests for movie tickets? It sounds like you need a little (or maybe a lot of) Ajax in your life. Asynchronous programming lets you turn your own web sites into smooth, slick, responsive applications that make your users feel like they're back on the information superhighway, not stuck on a dial-up backroad.

But who wants to take on next-generation web programming with the last generation's instruction book? You need a learning experience that's as compelling and cutting-edge as the sites you want to design. That's where we come in. With Head Rush Ajax, in no time you'll be writing JavaScript code that fires off asynchronous requests to web servers...and having fun doing it. By the time you've taken your dynamic HTML, XML, JSON, and DOM skills up a few notches, you'll have solved tons of puzzles, figured out how well snowboards sell in Vail, and even watched a boxing match. Sound interesting? Then what are you waiting for? Pick up Head Rush Ajax and learn Ajax and asynchronous programming the right way--the way that sticks.

If you've ever read a Head First book, you know what to expect: a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Head Rush ramps up the intensity with an even faster look and feel. Have your first working app before you finish Chapter 1, meet up with the nefarious PROJECT: CHAOS stealth team, and even settle the question of the Top 5 Blues CDs of all time. Leave boring, clunky web sites behind with 8-tracks and hot pants--and get going with next-generation web programming.

"If you thought Ajax was rocket science, this book is for you. Head Rush Ajax puts dynamic, compelling experiences within reach for every web developer." -- Jesse James Garrett, Adaptive Path

"A 'technology-meets-reality' book for web pioneers on the cutting edge." -- Valentin Crettaz, CTO, Condris Technologies

Oracle Automatic Storage Management: Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Gu...
By: Nitin Vengurlekar
List Price: $49.99
Amazon Price: $26.78

Product Description

Build and manage a scalable storage infrastructure with Oracle Automatic Storage Management

Streamline data management and provisioning using Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) and the detailed information contained in this exclusive Oracle Press resource. Written by a team of database experts, Oracle Automatic Storage Management: Under-the-Hood & Practical Deployment Guide explains how to build and maintain a dynamic, highly available Oracle database storage environment. Inside, you'll learn how to configure storage for Oracle ASM, build disk groups, use data striping and mirroring, and optimize performance. You'll also learn how to ensure consistency across server and storage platforms, maximize data redundancy, and administer Oracle ASM from the command line.

Manage Oracle ASM Instances and configure Oracle RDBMS instances to leverage Oracle ASMDefine, discover, and manage disk storage under Oracle ASM Create external, normal-redundancy, and high-redundancy disk groupsAdd and remove Oracle ASM storage without affecting RDMS instance availabilityLearn how Oracle ASM provides even I/O distribution Work with Oracle ASM directories, files, templates, and aliasesImprove storage performance and integrity using the ASMLIB APISimplify system administration with the Oracle ASM command line interfaceUnderstand key internal Oracle ASM structures and algorithms

Writing & Reporting News: A Coaching Method (Wadsworth Series in Mass Communi...
By: Carole Rich
List Price: $100.95
Amazon Price: $65.00

Product Description
WRITING AND REPORTING NEWS prepares students for the changing world of journalism by emphasizing traditional basic skills while also stressing new trends in the convergence of print, broadcast and online media. With new information about blogs, multimedia writing, and other skills students will need for careers in the media, the Fifth Edition retains its emphasis on writing fundamentals and ethics in journalism, as well as the coaching method, which features tips and techniques from writing coaches and award-winning journalists. The text's strong "storytelling" approach with stories about journalists and its built-in instructional material make it accessible and easy for students to learn effective writing and reporting techniques for every news medium.

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