I’m reading Garr Reynold’s book “presentation zen: simple ideas on presentation design and delivery.” Reynolds discusses “really bad powerpoint” and “the scourge of the deck,” but spends most of his time on how to do things right, from preparation, through design, to delivery. The books approaches the art of presntation in terms of the aesthetics, mindfulness, connectedness one practices while meditating. “A new era requires new thinking,” he says. This book should be required reading for anyone who has to present at the conferences I attend.
Gene Smith’s new book, “Tagging: people-powered metadata for the social web,” is a geek’s dream. If you tag web content, you’ll love this book. You can sink your teeth into discussions of metadata, taxonomies, geotagging, tagging interfaces, and data models. If you’re not a tagger (yet) you can appreciate what Smith has to say about the cultural underpinnings of social bookmarking, how and why people share media, and potential business benefits.
Posted by paul baker 
