This book features a curated compilation of Robert Scoble’s best posts from 2011-2012. If you’re at all interested in how today’s technology is shaping the future and making our lives better, you won’t want to miss this great collection of posts discussing innovative startups and cool new tech advancements. Excerpt from the Book How does Silicon Valley and Apple miss Steve Jobs? Well, on Monday night I was having dinner with Gary Morgenthaler, who was one of the investors in Siri, along with a few Siri team members, and I heard stories that they weren’t able to tell me while Steve Jobs was alive. For instance, Jobs called Siri management at least 30 times personally in about a month to convince them to join. Also, Steve Jobs yelled at Apple managers who didn’t “get” why Siri was so important to Apple. But most important to me, and the book I’m writing with Shel Israel: Jobs had already started working with the team on how to make Siri more contextually aware. In fact, Norman Winarsky, who heads up SRI, the lab where Siri was developed, told me that SRI is about to start testing out a new app that will dig deeper into your email and your calendar to “assist” you in a much deeper way than Siri can right now. What do we meet by context? Well, Siri today is pretty stupid about what’s on your calendar. Ask it “where is my next meeting?” and it will show you your next meeting, but it doesn’t know where it is. Close but no cigar. It gets worse from there. Ask it “where is the best place to get lunch tomorrow?” and Siri answers with places near my home. Problem is that tomorrow I’m going to be at the Apple iPhone 5 launch in San Francisco. Siri is quite stupid about context, location, and a bunch of other things. Will it improve? Apple already announced some improvements to Siri, for instance Siri will, with iOS 6, be able to start applications. But it’s hardly expected to be contextually aware in any real way. Ask Siri “what is my favorite gas station?” Siri answers “I don’t know.” The problem is, that isn’t really true. Apple knows what gas stations I’m most likely to stop at. Or it could, if it just knew how to contextually evaluate the data that both Verizon and Apple already have streaming from my phone. If it doesn’t know something like my favorite gas station, it certainly doesn’t know the answer to something simple like “how many times do I eat at Chinese restaurants?” That’s easily verifiable. Ask it such a question and it just brings up a list of Chinese restaurants near you. It doesn’t even try to accurately turn down the question. But back to Jobs. He saw Siri’s potential to add a new, simpler, contextually-aware, user interface to any device. There are lots of rumors that Apple will use something like Siri in other products, like its Apple TV product. In fact, at dinner the other night I learned that at least one of the team members that remains at Apple is now working on a secret new project. I doubt we’ll learn about that tomorrow, but I’ll be looking for signs that Apple understands how to take us into the contextual age. I’ll be looking for signs that Steve Jobs’ passion for Siri is still being listened to.

"Digital Vertigo provides an articulate, measured, contrarian voice against a sea of hype about social media. As an avowed technology optimist, I'm grateful for Keen who makes me stop and think before committing myself fully to the social revolution." —Larry Downes, author of The Killer App In Digital Vertigo, Andrew Keen presents today's social media revolution as the most wrenching cultural transformation since the Industrial Revolution. Fusing a fast-paced historical narrative with front-line stories from today's online networking revolution and critiques of "social" companies like Groupon, Zynga and LinkedIn, Keen argues that the social media transformation is weakening, disorienting and dividing us rather than establishing the dawn of a new egalitarian and communal age. The tragic paradox of life in the social media age, Keen says, is the incompatibility between our internet longings for community and friendship and our equally powerful desire for online individual freedom. By exposing the shallow core of social networks, Andrew Keen shows us that the more electronically connected we become, the lonelier and less powerful we seem to be.

This special issue of The Translator explores the field with a view to learning from the individuals and networks who take on such 'non-professional' translation and interpreting activities. It showcases the work of researchers who look into the phenomenon within a wide variety of settings: from museums to churches, crowdsourcing and media sites to Wikipedia, and scientific journals to the Social Forum. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and models, the contributions to this volume enhance the visibility of non-professionals engaged in translating and interpreting and challenge a range of widely-held assumptions within the discipline and the profession.

President Barack Obama, in his 2011 State of the Union Address, called America "the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers" and "of Google and Facebook." U.S. Chief Information Officer, Steven VanRoekel, said that America has become a "Facebook nation" that demands increased transparency and interactivity from the federal government. Facebook as a nation in 2012 would be the third largest country in the world with over 900 million citizens, after China and India. This book portrays the social media ecosystem as a world of increasing Total Information Awareness, which is essentially a civilian version of the controversial Total Information Awareness program unveiled in 2002 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at the U.S. Department of Defense. Back in the 60's, DARPA initiated and funded the research and development of Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) that went online in 1969. The success of ARPANET gave rise to the global commercial Internet in the 90's and the new generation of Fortune 500 companies today including Amazon.com, Google, eBay, and Yahoo!. As if life comes full circle in the 21st century, private businesses and the ubiquity of social networks such as Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and YouTube are creating the technologies and infrastructures necessary for the DARPA-proposed Total Information Awareness program. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook "the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented." Indeed, military and civilian technologies have interwoven into every fabric of our society, as Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "We exist at the intersection of technology and social issues." This book offers discourse and practical advice on the privacy issue in the age of big data, the rise of Facebook nation, and Total Information Awareness. Opening with President Ronald Reagan's 1984 National Security Decision Directive and ending with George Orwell's novel 1984, the author takes us on a roller-coaster ride through Facebook's botched IPO, Carrier IQ, Kony 2012, SOPA/PIPA blackout, cyber bullying, crime fighting, and a host of other timely issues facing our Facebook nation. Social media strategists, information architects, social scientists, policymakers, and academic scholars in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) will find this book a valuable asset.

Neil Young took on the music industry so that fans could hear his music—all music—the way it was meant to be heard. Today, most of the music we hear is com-pressed to a fraction of its original sound,while analog masterpieces are turning to dustin record company vaults. As these record-ings disappear, music fans aren't just losing acollection of notes. We're losing spaciousness,breadth of the sound field, and the ability tohear and feel a ping of a triangle or a pluckof a guitar string, each with its own reso-nance and harmonics that slowly trail off intosilence. The result is music that is robbed of its original quality—muddy and flat in sound compared to the rich, warm sound artists hear in the studio. It doesn't have to be this way, but the record and technology companies have incorrectly assumed that most listeners are satisfied with these low-quality tracks. Neil Young is challenging the assault on audio quality—and working to free music lovers from the flat and lifeless status quo. To Feel the Music is the true story of his questto bring high-quality audio back to musiclovers—the most important undertaking ofhis career. It's an unprecedented look insidethe successes and setbacks of creating thePono player, the fights and negotiationswith record companies to preserve master-pieces for the future, and Neil's unrelentingdetermination to make musical art availableto everyone. It's a story that shows how muchmore there is to music than meets the ear. Neil's efforts to bring quality audio to his fans garnered media attention when his Kickstarter campaign for his Pono player—a revolutionary music player that would combine the highest quality possible with the portability, simplicity and affordability modern listeners crave—became the third-most successful Kickstarter campaign in the website's history. It had raised more than $6M in pledges in 40 days. Encouraged by the enthusiastic response, Neil still had a long road ahead, and his Pono music player would not have the commercial success he'd imagined. But he remained committed to his mission, and faced with the rise of streaming services that used even lower quality audio, he was determined to rise to the challenge. An eye-opening read for all fans of Neil Young and all fans of great music, as well as readers interesting in going behind the scenes of product creation, To Feel the Music has an inspiring story at its heart: One determined artist with a groundbreaking vision and the absolute refusal to give up, despite setbacks, naysayers, and skeptics.

From the creator of the number one business blog comes a powerful exploration of how, and why, businesses had better be blogging: Naked Conversations. According to experts Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, blogs offer businesses something that has long been lacking in their communication with customers -- meaningful dialogue. Devoid of corporate-speak and empty promises, business blogs can humanize communication, bringing companies and their constituencies together in a way that improves both image and bottom line. The authors use more than 50 case histories to explain why blogging is an efficient and credible method of business communication. You'll find yourself excited about the possibilities blogs present after reading just a few pages. Discover how: Prominent business leaders, including Mark Cuban of the Dallas Mavericks, Bob Lutz from General Motors, and Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems, are beginning to use blogs to connect with their customers in new ways. Blogging has changed the rules of communication and competition. You can launch an effective blogging strategy and the reasons why you should. Featuring a foreword by Tom Peters, this is a resource you and your business can't do without.

Praise for Career Distinction "Hands down, this book is the bible on branding for your career!" -- Susan Britton Whitcomb, author of Job Search Magic "As a professional resume writer and career coach, I have extolled the concept of personal branding for my clients for years. Now, for the first time ever, I have an outstanding resource to recommend--Career Distinction by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson. This book details the concept of personal branding in a magnificent and easy-to-digest presentation that is a must-buy for every serious job seeker." -- Wendy S. Enelow, CCM, MRW, JCTC, CPRW Executive Director of the Career Masters Institute "Arruda and Dixson are widely respected in the global career coaching community as gurus who not only teach but live the personal branding model, and their expertise and passion show through on every page of this practical, indispensable book. I highly recommend it to all who want to distinguish themselves from the competition." -- L. Michelle Tullier, PhD, Vice President of Right Management and author of The Unofficial Guide to Landing a Job

This text offers a pathway to understanding and developing public relations campaigns and other types of strategic communication. The author presents a step-by-step unfolding of the strategic campaign process used in public relations practice. The text serves as a guide to field-tested procedures, offering practical insights that apply to public relations campaigns and case studies coursework.

Sell Your First Book & Develop a Successful and Sustainable Writing Career Before you can land a book deal—before you can even attract the interest of agents and editors—you need to be visible. How do you become visible? You develop a platform, or a way of reaching your readers. Everybody can develop a platform, and this book shows you how to do it while you're still writing. This book offers: A step-by-step approach to creating, growing, and nurturing a platform An economical approach to self-promotion (no need to spend thousands) A clear way to uncover your strengths and weaknesses as an author The strategies that are essential (or not) to online promotion A philosophy of authorship that leaves you confident, empowered, and equally partnered with agents, editors, and publishers (instead of waiting to be discovered) A diverse set of tools and methods for getting known (not just web-based tools or ideas for extroverts) After you read this book, you'll be able to answer the inevitable question: "What's your platform?" You'll learn the hows and whys of becoming visible and how to cultivate visibility from scratch. Best of all, you won't need any previous knowledge or experience to get started. Growing a writing career isn't just about landing one book deal and then scrambling like crazy. There is a more strategic and steady way to lay the groundwork so you can avoid scrambling altogether—and Get Known Before the Book Deal is the only comprehensive book that shows you how.