Computer Books / Human Readers

The sprightly Barnes Blog's writing advice robot vanquishes the shambling beast of boring technical books. It occurred to me this morning, as I lay unable to get back to sleep after my son woke for a feed, that Ed Emberley's drawing books are the perfect How To Cookbook. It just...

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This is what my Google Analytics graph looks like for the last few days: (It's National Doodle Day here in the UK, so I'm hand illustrating my blog posts today.) An article that I'd written several weeks ago got onto the front page of Hacker News,...

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 Lots of people think they can't draw. Fact is, you probably can draw -- you simply don't draw. Most adults are scared of drawing -- if you overcome your fear and try to learn, you'll be amazed how quickly you can get the hang of it. I'm not talking about intricate stuff here....

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Packt is based in Birmingham. I wonder if I can find an excuse to go see these guys... they look fun: Microsoft-owned Rare is opening a second facility next month, launching Fazeley Studios in Digbeth, Birmingham to act initially as...

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If you want to get a lot of attention in return for your blogging time, I've found there are 3 types of post worth bothering with. They're quick to write, and they get a disproportionate response compared to other (more laborious) approaches. If you want to blog but...

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I've concluded that it's as simple a child's play to develop a Twitter strategy, and build a base of loyal and engaged followers: Choose your $TYPE_OF_PERSON. Pick a niche that is big enough to be interesting, but not already so over served that you can't compete. In other words, pick...

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If you have an idea for a tech book (or any how to book) then you probably want to know if the idea's any good or not, before putting weeks or months of work into planning and writing it. Is your idea really bulletproof? Or will it shatter...

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For me, Twitter and Posterous provide a great double punch. Posting every blog post to Twitter means you can guarantee some readers for everything you post. And having the freedom to post longer text to Twitter is just great. Blogging felt like a waste of time until I discovered the Twitter...

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Mashable provides this step-by-step tutorial for creating a customized "mini site" for your business, right inside Facebook.  You’ve probably seen custom Fan Pages like those of Best Buy and Victoria’s Secret. When you land there, you start on what is essentially a mini website within Facebook, instead of the Page’s wall or...

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Zeebo is a low spec, low cost games and internet console for emerging markets such as India, China, and Brazil -- one TV households who want a cheap, multipurpose computing device. It comes with both a gamepad and a keyboard. Games...

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... and Daily Writing Tips has set out the basics of the short story for you: How to Write a Great Short Story Like any story, your short story needs to have a beginning, middle and end: The beginning is where we’re introduced to the characters, especially the main character and his/her...

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Many, if not most of my authors really struggle with the first chapter of a book. Partly it's because its the first book chapter many of them have ever written, and partly because it is a particularly tricky chapter to do. It's hard to know what to say. ...

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According to Gamasutra, the top 10 grossing iPhone games this week includes only one $0.99 cheapie. $0.99 seems so cheap for anything, I wonder why games devs are so keen to charge it. Is it really true that a 99c game will sell more than twice as much as the same...

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Unity3D has announced the release of a new Terrain Toolkit, designed to make it easier to create realistic outdoor terrain in Unity. Here's what they say: The toolkit enables the creation of large scale, realistic and playable game worlds within a...

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As somebody who's trying to use Twitter to drive traffic to my own blog, I couldn't resist reading this article from ProBlogger -- even though I usually avoid all those social media experts. Summary: #1: Change the Default Logo #2: Show Up #3: Complete the Bio Profile #4:...

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If you look at the posts being retweeted right now, you'll find that most people retweet messages from people with far more followers than themselves. This seems like the obvious thing to do -- accounts with lots of followers are bound to be good quality and worth retweeting, right? Perhaps...

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Philippe at Glacier Games has redesigned the main character in his iPhone Game: Why? Well…when I built the rig for my character and started to animate him, I came across a design problem. I had made the legs for my character too long and it would have forced me to create...

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According to Calvacade Games, there are some simple rules that'll help your iPhone casual game be a success. I'm sure they'll apply to any casual game, not just the iPhone. It has to be a conversation starter It has to be familiar It has to be "elevator pitch" friendly Getting the right balance between...

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