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TUAW Bookshelf: Learning Unix for OS X Mountain Lion
Dave Taylor's "Learning Unix for OS X Mountain Lion" offers an in-depth tutorial for OS X power users who have not yet mastered Unix. Written for technically competent readers, it focuses on introducing common command-line tasks. The book starts with Terminal, and then moves on to the basic forms of Unix commands. In just about 200 pages, it surveys common file tasks, application launching and even X11. There are a lot of useful nuggets of information to be found. The tone overall is a bit dry, and I was rather hoping for more motivation on topics. That said, the author has done a good job in surveying Unix. My favorite bits were the in-text notes that offered practical advice such as differentiating between absolute and relative paths, what noclobber is, and so forth. In those, the content got a lot more real-world, and the tone was a bit warmer. It's a good book if you are, for example, a developer who's considering exploring the command line, or someone who's regularly responsible for system administration, but it's really not intended for a general Mac audience. If you've ever wondered about permissions strings or wanted to access file systems directly, and need to basically understand what's really going on behind that lovely OS X GUI, Learning Unix for OS X Mountain Lion offers a basic introduction that will get you started. It retails for US$20 print, $12 e-book or $22 for both.
Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite coming to the UK on October 25th, starting at £109
Amazon has found a relatively clear day in the calendar on which to launch its excellent Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in the British Isles. The ad-supported basic model will knock you back £109, while an extra £60 will get you the 3G version. Amazon's Lending Library service will roll-out at the same time, offering Prime members free loans from a collection of 200,000 books as part of the £49 per year subscription (which also has other perks). If you're shopping around, don't forget that Barnes & Noble's equally glowing alternative is also available in the UK these days, wearing a pretty much identical price tag.
DevJuice: Regular Expressions Cookbook enters 2nd edition
Regular expressions are a staple of development. A grammar for matching forms to text, regular expressions are used in Apple development for use with predicates, in validating text entry and more. O'Reilly just released a new edition of Jan Goyvaerts' & Steven Levithan's "Regular Expressions Cookbook" (US$50 list price, $30 street price.) Revised and expanded, the book offers a wealth of common regex use-cases, from numbers to URLs, email addresses to post codes. It's primarily a reference book, so don't expect to sit down with this book on a warm and cozy night. It's the book that you put on your shelf and pull out whenever you need to look up a few specific patterns. I grabbed the first edition of this book at an O'Reilly Foo camp retreat a few years back. The second edition offers the same well-indexed quick help as the first one. If you already own the first edition, the second may not exactly be a must-buy except for completionists. The table of contents and book material are largely the same. If you haven't picked one up yet, however, then this is the regex reference you've been looking for. Here are a few other regex online resources you may find handy: The Regular Expression Library site has indexed thousands of regular expressions from contributors around the world. Go to Regex Pal to test your regex expressions via an interactive JavaScript tool. Use the txt2re generator to build code that extracts elements from source strings that you provide. It supports output in C as well as several other language destinations.
TUAW TV Live: Brett Terpstra reveals Mountain Lion tips
Welcome back to TUAW TV Live! While you may miss the smiling faces of my substitute hosts Kelly Guimont and Doc Rock, you'll get to see my relaxed post-vacation visage as well as that of today's guest -- the one and only Brett Terpstra. I've got the usual avalanche of accessories to demo, and Brett and I will be talking about his new book with David Sparks -- "60 Mountain Lion Tips." Below, you'll find a Ustream live stream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments. You'll be watching the show in glorious HD! If you're driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you're stuck in traffic, please don't -- keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It's a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat. In addition, the live stream and chat will be available through our Facebook page. Just point your browser here to watch the show and chat with other viewers while you're on Facebook. We'll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you're seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you'll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices. Video streaming by Ustream
Minecraft dev inks deal with Egmont Publishing for books, magazines
Minecraft developer Mojang has a deal with UK's Egmont Publishing to create children's books and magazines in territories excluding the US, TechCrunch reports. A spokesperson can't confirm which products exactly will be borne of the deal, but they will include "a range" of items and will launch next year.Egmont inked a deal with Rovio last month to publish a line of Angry Birds books in the UK. Angry Birds may just be the most merchandised modern game, and Minecraft might be looking to grab some of that market: By March 2012, it earned $1 million (of $80 million total) in revenue from merchandising since October 2010.We have some suggestions for Egmont's Minecraft-inspired children's literature: Stevie Trotter and the Minecart of Secrets; Goodnight Moon, Hello Endermen; Everybody Mines. And for the adult book spin-off, 50 Shades of Coal.
Google Play Books app arrives in Japan, adds translation, place info, highlighting and more
Not content at stopping with its recent European tour, Google Play Books has made the trip to Japan and brought back a handful of new features. In addition to support for reading Japanese books in a vertical, right-to left layout, Mountain view now lets users tap on names of geographical spots within text and see them pinned to a Google Map alongside the option to find more information using Larry Page's favorite search engine or Wikipedia. A freshly added translation feature takes user-highlighted words and phrases and spits them out in the reader's language of choice. Particularly studious literature lovers can now mark up their digital books with notes and highlights that sync to the web and across their personal fleet of devices. A new sepia tone theme also joined the existing day and night views on their journey abroad. Hit the source links below for more details and the download.
Amazon Kindle Mac app update adds gesture features and visually richer Kindle book support
Amazon has refreshed its Kindle app to include support for swiping and other gesture navigation features for Macs running Lion OS X or higher. It will now display Kindle's new Format 8 books, allowing for more complicated formatting, HTML5 support, pop-up text, embedded fonts and other visual accoutrements to spice up your Mac-based reading. The update also adds Japanese language support alongside the typical pile of bug fixes and tweaks. You can download the new reader from the Mac App Store now, right at the source link below.
Amazon launches India Kindle Store, swap rupees for good reads
Indian consumers haven't been cut off from Amazon's world of e-book goodies, but their experience is about to get a lot more native with the launch of a local Kindle Store. The prices of over a million books are now available in rupees, and if you're in need of hardware, the latest bare-bones Kindle can now be found in-store at Croma for Rs. 6,999. That E Ink Pearl screen comes at a premium, however, as there are more than a few budget-friendly tablets available in the country which support the Kindle app. The best news is probably reserved for fledgling writers, who now have access to Kindle Direct Publishing to showcase their work and hopefully net some purchases.
Master Chief surveys the Art of Halo 4 book cover
Above, your eyes can gaze upon the cover of the upcoming Awakening: The Art of Halo 4 art book, featuring all sorts of concept art and designs from Microsoft's upcoming Halo 4. It's got everything you want in a Halo book cover, including Master Chief, some crazy epic Forerunner structure, and a trusty assault rifle. Actually, that's not quite true; we could use at least a little Covenant. Is that a Covvie ship flying through the background? Unclear. You'll have to wait to get a better look when the book arrives on store shelves in November, along with the new game itself.
Assassin's Creed: Forsaken novel out Dec. 3, will tell story of Connor
Ubisoft has announced a new novel set in the Assassin's Creed universe, coming about a month after Assassin's Creed 3 hits stores on October 30. Assassin's Creed: Forsaken will be written by Oliver Bowden, and will focus on "the story behind who Connor really is and how he has become a deadly killer."Sales of the Assassin's Creed novels, at around 380,000 copies, haven't come very close to the games' 38 million sales, but there's clearly an audience for the historical fiction. Assassin's Creed: Forsaken will be out for $9.99 on December 4.
Austrian city builds public library with nothing but QR codes, NFC and stickers
Strangely, the Austrian city of Klagenfurt doesn't have a public library, even though it hosts the Festival of German-Language Literature. However, an initiative dubbed Project Ingeborg is turning the municipality into a book repository of sorts with 70 QR code and NFC chip-equipped stickers. Plastered throughout town, they direct users to web pages where they can download public domain works, largely from Project Gutenberg. Oftentimes, e-books will be located in relevant locations -- so you'll be sure to find Arthur Schnitzler's The Killer near the police station, for example. Come August, the team behind the effort will partner with local talent to distribute books, music and other digital content too. In an effort to build a stronger bond to the location, the organizers have prevented search engines from indexing the links, so you'll have to visit Klagenfurt to access the curated goods. If you'd like to turn your city into a library, the group hopes to release instructions for replicating their system soon. [Thanks, Michael]
Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War excerpt
Simon and Schuster has posted an excerpt from Christie Golden's upcoming World of Warcraft novel: Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War. Like The Shattering did for Cataclysm, Tides of War is expected to be the story that sets the foundation for the Mists of Pandaria lore. As we've reported before, Blizzard announced the book will be released at the end of August, which coincides with Simon and Schuster's release date of "on or around August 28th." You can preorder Tides of War now. We've reprinted the entire excerpt and description after the break.
The Art of Blizzard is captured in new book
While some might argue the artistic merits of games themselves, few can deny the artistry of the concept art and sketches behind their development. And those who love the artistic style of Blizzard games will now be able to enjoy the inspiration behind their favorite games in a new hardcover book. The Art of Blizzard offers an exclusive look at many of the ideas and images that influenced and defined the various game universes, including World of Warcraft and Diablo III. It covers the timeline of the company from its origins as a three-person console-game development studio to its present day success. It is composed of almost 800 pieces of concept art, paintings, and sketches as well as commentary from VP of Art and Cinematic Development Nick Carpenter, Senior Art Director Sam Didier, and Senior VP of Story and Franchise Development Chris Metzen. The 352 page book will retail at $75.00 US; pre-sales will be available at San Diego ComicCon from July 12th through the 15th. The book can also be pre-ordered on Amazon.com for a discount. [Source: Blizzard press release]
Samsung warns Italians that Kobo is leaving the Readers Hub, teases 'new and improved' e-book service
We hope you took advantage of those Italian lessons. If you didn't, the gist is that Samsung has warned at least one HDBlog.it visitor (and Galaxy phone owner) that its Readers Hub will soon drop Kobo e-book support. While there isn't a mentioned cutoff point, Samsung is steering the faithful to the regular Kobo app on Google Play if they want to keep reading. The company's only explanation may be a good one: it's promising a "new and improved" e-book service that should be ready in the near future. We'd very much like to know what that is, but until Samsung is more forthcoming with actual details, we'll have to be content with the company's alert-as-teaser approach to marketing.
Amazon and Avalon in a tree, publishing romance books di-gi-tal-ly
Amazon Publishing and long-running book-maker Avalon now has more in common than rhyme schemes. The pair have struck up a deal to publish over 3,00 titles from the publisher's back-catalogue, broaching its romance, mystery and western genres. It'll be the first time that these books will be digitized and, well, Oprah's always looking for stuff to read.
Sony's Wonderbook is PS Move-augmented reading, launches with J.K. Rowling's 'Book of Spells'
If you were wondering what Sony planned next for the PS Move, the answer is apparently... books. Just displayed at its pre-E3 press conference, Wonderbooks will let users turn physical books into the best pop-up adventure of all time. As seen in the presentation, it could project images onto the book, letting users peer own dark tunnels, cast spells or even dodge a flying dragon that escaped from the pages. On the downside, the task looked a bit complicated for the target audience, requiring them to manipulate the book, look at their TV to see the effects and wave a wand with their other hand. There was a bit of a demo fail during the presentation, we'll see if things work more smoothly when we get some hands-on time tomorrow. The first PlayStation 3 Wonderbook title available is by none other than Harry Potter writer JK Rowling, who brings the Book of Spells for muggles to try their hands at Hogwart's best-known incantations. One other book was also mentioned, Diggs Nightcrawler. Check out our liveblog for all of the details. Update: Check after the break for two new trailers from the PlayStation.Blog, one for Wonderbook in general and another specifically for Book of Spells.
Oprah launching 'Book Club 2.0,' your mom now knows what 'webisode' means
Everyone! Check under your chairs! It's a...new book club from Oprah! Yep, the former queen of daytime TV is revamping her famed literary organization for the 21st century. Winfrey says she was so taken by Cheryl Strayed's Wild, that she absolutely had to get back on the book peddling bandwagon. The talk show icon will be launching digital editions of the book for the Kindle, Nook and iPad on Monday, featuring exclusive content like a reader's guide. Webisodes featuring Winfrey will go up each week and readers can submit questions via Twitter and Facebook. The whole thing leads up to a live streaming interview with the author on July 22nd. More info -- and a video of a woman who desperately needs someone to give her that talk show back -- after the break.
Google image search results crammed into picture dictionary
Though not quite a replacement for Mountain View's ill-fated dictionary, this 1,240 page tome contains the first Google image search result for each word in a run-of-the-mill dictionary. With a PHP script, London-based artists Felix Heyes and Ben West scraped the image from each search and compiled an alphabetically ordered PDF brimming with 21,000 images -- safesearch-disabled warts and all. "It's really an unfiltered, uncritical record of the state of human culture in 2012," West told Creative Applications Network. Alas, the volume isn't destined for mass distribution -- presumably to avoid copyright issues -- but the pair is considering sending a small batch of soft cover copies to print.
Pitch Perfect is the perfect marketing primer for the indie developer
If you're a developer with an app and a dream, you would do well to pick up Pitch Perfect by TUAW's Erica Sadun and Steve Sande. Their book lifts the veil on how app reviewers, bloggers specifically, operate. Most of the advice I give to people looking to pitch an app is in this book. Added to the valuable knowledge within are some great illustrations by Nitrozac and Snaggy (of Joy of Tech). Pitch Perfect starts with why you should care about reviews, and dives quickly into some essential advice on crafting your app. It's hard to be objective when you've slaved over code and graphics for months, but if you take Erica and Steve's advice to heart, it will snap you awake and hopefully give you a discerning eye before you send us your hard work. The book has several chapters on crafting your pitch, from what to include and what to avoid, all the way to how to reach out to harried, underpaid bloggers. Managing expectations, dealing with bloggers in general -- these are things I wish I could tell everyone before they send us a single PR email. Then there are a bunch of case studies, which they pick apart for good and bad examples. Finally, there are tips and techniques for making a product video, press release and more. A few quick tips on social media, and the all-important care and handling of bloggers rounds out the book. These last few chapters are marketing classes distilled into action items. How do you know which PR outlets to use, for example? How do you shoot a video of your app? I think the social media tips are the most sane I've read in a while, honestly. While this book is a great first step, it won't tell you how to measure ROI on your social media campaigns, or provide a list of secret emails that guarantee you great reviews across the galaxy. Pitch Perfect is tuned especially for indie devs who lack a marketing team, who likely can't afford one, and who have a ton of other responsibilities besides promoting their app (like, bug reports, making enhancements, eating food, playing outside, etc.). Once you've launched your app, however, this book is your best chance for a fair look from any number of review sites. Obviously I wouldn't keep Erica and Steve around if they couldn't write and knew nothing. I think any developer who is looking to understand how to pitch blogs for reviews would do well to read this book not just because it's a sneak peek into blogs or reviews, but because Erica and Steve know their stuff and (most importantly) know how to explain what to do in a wonderful way. You won't feel lost, either. Pitch Perfect is one of those delightful books that guides you through a process and points out all the right moves. Well-written, with great examples pulled from the stuff we do every day? It's a bargain at US$8.99 and available on Kindle and the iBookstore.
Book: Halo film failed because Microsoft doesn't 'get' Hollywood
Microsoft didn't mess up when it hired a fleet of actors in Spartan armor to deliver the Halo script to potential movie studios, and the deal didn't stall when each production house had a fixed amount of time to read and bid on the screenplay. In the end Microsoft wanted too much, and it didn't know how to ask for it - it only knew how to demand. The industry differences between Microsoft and the film's two production studios, Fox and Universal, eventually led to the project's implosion, Jamie Russell explains in his book, Generation Xbox: How Video Games Invaded Hollywood.Microsoft's terms included $10 million against 15 percent of the box office gross, a budget of at least $75 million and fast-tracked production, as well as creative approval over the director, regular flights from Seattle to L.A. to review post-production footage and 60 first-class plane tickets for Microsoft personnel and guests to attend the premiere, all at the expense of whichever studio picked up the script. Not even Harry Potter was getting this level of concessions, Larry Shapiro of Hollywood talent agency CAA says.
