How I got the book:

Review copy (which I’m keeping) sent to me on behalf of the authors

Background:

Andrew Pek and Jeannine McGlade are internationally acclaimed authors and entrepreneurs in the field of creativity and innovation.

Stimulated! is a business book to help people tap into their creative potential at work by describing habits to help find inspiration and using it to create new work, products, services, etc.  The five habits are:

• Scouting
• Cultivating
• Playing
• Venturing
• Harvesting

There are also chapters on awakening, stimulating, and sustaining creativity.

The strengths:

This book is an easy read at 195 pages.  It’s full of lots of colored illustrations, quotes, and comments about creativity and innovation.  The core concepts of stimulating your creative talents are logical and similar to other books.  The scouting concept, for example, reminds me of the artist date concept from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, where the reader is encouraged to occasionally set aside blocks of time to basically go out in the world and do or see things that help engage the imagination and all five senses.  Overall, the authors do a good job of presenting this overview of ways to stimulate your creative side.

The areas for improvement:

Even though this book is less than 200 pages, it still feels a bit too long, like it was drawn out about 20% longer than it needed to be.  It doesn’t bring up a lot of new ideas but it does get the job done.  However, I tend to like more detailed anecdotes, case studies, or exercises in a book like this.  I can appreciate that the authors may have had limited ability to talk about the work they have done for their clients, but a little more meat would have been good.

Other points of interest:

This is the most colorful book that I’ve ever read that wasn’t a comic book or otherwise illustrated book.  It has color on virtually every page.  Did I mention the use of color yet?

Verdict (7 out of 10): (worth checking out; a useful resource for developing creativity and innovation)

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Ubuntu One's paid service allows you to help fund the future developments of Ubuntu. It's like a help-me-help-you kinda thing. Also, the people in Ubuntu plan to integrate this into the operating system's applications so application-specific information can also be backed up, stored and retrieved from other computers.

The whole thing is still on beta mode and I just recently got the invite to open an account. Installation procedures are pretty much straightforward and easy. Until I hit the roadblock. Step 4 requires you to add your computer. The thing is, clicking on the Ubuntu One application does absolutely nothing. No panel icon. No Ubuntu One website. Nothing. So I file a bug. Here's where the beauty comes in. Anyone can file a bug. And usually you get some sort of response within a few hours. I got my response. Apparently the bug has already been reported before. And some people have found the solution to the problem.

First, open up the terminal and install the following.
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntuone-client ubuntuone-client-tools

After installation has finished, kill the ubuntuone-client-applet (just in case it's running)
$ killall ubuntuone-client-applet

Then run it again by clicking on Applications » Internet » Ubuntu One to start the process. Wait a bit. Takes a while for the website to come up. If it doesn't after a few minutes, go back to the terminal, kill the applet again, then type the following.
$ ubuntuone-client-applet --signup

That should work. After you've added your computer to Ubuntu One, kill the Ubuntu One applet once more then run it normally from Ubuntu's menu. You should be able to see the icon on the panel now. If the panel icon has a red cross on it, then just right click on it and click on Connect. You should be good to go from there!