David Thorne has quickly established himself as the world’s leading internet troublemaker. Since his emailed efforts to settle an overdue bill with a drawing of a spider achieved massive worldwide online exposure in 2008, millions of people have followed Thorne’s hilarious exchanges with unwitting victims reported via the mainstream media, online and email inboxes globally. Thorne’s razor-sharp writings, compiled in his first book “The Internet is a Playground” say something about everyday life we can all relate to.

"There is usually a fine line between genius and insanity, but in this case it has become very blurred. Some of the funniest and most clever writing I have read in years." (Terrance Fielding, WIRED magazine) "I laughed so hard and uncontrollably I could hardly breathe. Reading this on public transport is not a good idea." (Penthouse magazine) "Brilliantly funny." (Jezebel.com) From the notorious Internet troublemaker who brought the world the explosively popular "Next Time I'll Spend the Money on Drugs Instead", in which he attempted to pay his chiropractor with a picture he drew of a spider; "Please Design a Logo for Me. With Pie Charts. For Free," which has been described as one of the most passed-on viral e-mails of all time; and, most recently, the staggeringly popular "Missing Missy", which has appeared everywhere from The Guardian to Jezebel to Andrew Sullivan's The Daily Dish, comes this profoundly funny collection of irreverent Internet mischief and comedy. Featuring all of Thorne's viral success, including "Missing Missy", The Internet Is a Playground culls together every article and e- mail from Thorne's wildly popular website 27bslash6.com, as well as enough new material, available only in these pages, to keep you laughing-and, indeed, crying-until Thorne's next stroke-of-genius prank. Or hilarious hoax. Or well-publicized almost-stint in jail (really).

Based on four years of experience teaching computers to 8-12 year olds, media scholar Ellen Seiter offers parents and educators practical advice on what children need to know about the Internet and when they need to know it. The Internet Playground argues that, contrary to the promises of technology boosters, teaching with computers is very difficult. Seiter points out that the Internet today resembles a mall more than it does a library. While children love to play online games, join fan communities, and use online chat and instant messaging, the Internet is also an appallingly aggressive marketer to children and, as this book passionately argues, an educational boondoggle.

Today, "community" seems to be everywhere. At home, at work, and online, the vague but comforting idea of the community pervades every area of life. But have we lost the ability truly to understand what it means? The Neighborhood in the Internet investigates social and civic effects of community networks on local community, and how community network designs are appropriated and extended by community members. Carroll uses his conceptual model of "community" to re-examine the Blacksburg Electronic Village – the first Web-based community network – applying it to attempts to sustain and enrich contemporary communities through information technology. The book provides an analysis of the role of community in contemporary paradigms for work and other activity mediated by the Internet. It brings to the fore a series of design experiments investigating new approaches to community networking and addresses the future trajectory and importance of community networks. This book will be of interest to students of sociology, community psychology, human-computer interaction, information science, and computer-supported collaborative work.

The Security+ certification is CompTIA's response to membership requests to develop a foundation-level certification for security workers. The IT industry is in agreement that there is a need to better train, staff, and empower those tasked with designing and implementing information security, and Security+ is an effort to meet this demand. The exam is under consideration by Microsoft as the baseline security certification for Microsoft's new security certification initiative. The Security+ Training Guide is a comprehensive resource for those preparing to take this exam, covering everything in a format that maps to the exam objectives. The book has been subjected to a rigorous technical review, ensuring content is superior in both coverage and technical accuracy. The accompanying CD features PrepLogic(tm) Practice Tests, Preview Edition. This product includes one complete PrepLogic Practice Test with approximately the same number of questions found on the actual vendor exam. Each question contains full, detailed explanations of the correct and incorrect answers. The engine offers two study modes, Practice Test and Flash Review, full exam customization, and a detailed score report.

In the first ever book devoted to a critical investigation of the personal style blogosphere, Minh-Ha T. Pham examines the phenomenal rise of elite Asian bloggers who have made a career of posting photographs of themselves wearing clothes on the Internet. Pham understands their online activities as “taste work” practices that generate myriad forms of capital for superbloggers and the brands they feature. A multifaceted and detailed analysis, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet addresses questions concerning the status and meaning of “Asian taste” in the early twenty-first century, the kinds of cultural and economic work Asian tastes do, and the fashion public and industry’s appetite for certain kinds of racialized eliteness. Situating blogging within the historical context of gendered and racialized fashion work while being attentive to the broader cultural, technological, and economic shifts in global consumer capitalism, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet has profound implications for understanding the changing and enduring dynamics of race, gender, and class in shaping some of the most popular work practices and spaces of the digital fashion media economy.

A guide to the Internet covers such topics as broadband connections, searching the Web, online shopping, games and gambling sites, trip planning, email, instant messaging, blogs, and downloading songs and videos.

The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more than 3 billion internet users across the globe, some 40 per cent of the world’s population. The internet’s meteoric rise is a phenomenon of enormous significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary societies. However, much popular and academic writing about the internet continues to take a celebratory view, assuming that the internet’s potential will be realised in essentially positive and transformative ways. This was especially true in the euphoric moment of the mid-1990s, when many commentators wrote about the internet with awe and wonderment. While this moment may be over, its underlying technocentrism – the belief that technology determines outcomes – lingers on and, with it, a failure to understand the internet in its social, economic and political contexts. Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. This expanded and updated second edition is a polemical, sociologically and historically informed guide to the key claims that have been made about the online world. It aims to challenge both popular myths and existing academic orthodoxies that surround the internet.

Fraud poses a significant threat to the Internet. 1.5% of all online advertisements attempt to spread malware. This lowers the willingness to view or handle advertisements, which will severely affect the structure of the web and its viability. It may also destabilize online commerce. In addition, the Internet is increasingly becoming a weapon for political targets by malicious organizations and governments. This book will examine these and related topics, such as smart phone based web security. This book describes the basic threats to the Internet (loss of trust, loss of advertising revenue, loss of security) and how they are related. It also discusses the primary countermeasures and how to implement them.

Spracklen explores the impact of the internet on leisure and leisure studies, examining the ways in which digital leisure spaces and activities have become part of everyday leisure. Covering a range of issues from social media and file-sharing to romance on the Internet, this book presents new theoretical directions for digital leisure.