While much of what Goodson teaches is useful, there are some glaring flaws in his arguments. This first problem I had is that he uses the Occupy Wall Street movement as a successful case study of a grass roots movement affecting change. The difficulty with this, at least at the moment, is that while the OWS movement exhibited a lot of sound and fury, but has seemingly not accomplished much. I wonder if this was just a view I had, but I asked a number of friends, most liberal like I am, and they all had to admit that while the OWS was a great idea, it seems to have accomplished very little. Well, unless you could trashing parks as an accomplishment.

Secondly, to defend his argument that these types of movements can be motivated towards brand marketing, he holds up Apple as an example. Just as I was an OWS sympathizer I am also an Apple fan boy. But, Apple is a special case and is not an easily replicable example. Just ask Microsoft. While people will line up for hours waiting for an Apple store to open, I can’t remember anyone ever lining up for the release of a Microsoft product. Maybe the Xbox or Halo video game? Perhaps the only other store that has people lining up for its opening is Trader Joe’s or Chick-Fil-A. But neither one of those has a stock cap of over $600 and the international brand recognition of Apple. And in Chick-Fil-A’s case it is because they are bribing the first 100 people with free meals for a year. Take those meals away, and no one would line up.

This is not to say this is a bad book. This review is coming off extremely negative, and for that I am sorry. I really enjoyed the book and the object lessons Goodson writes. The examples and methodologies it contains are valuable and they are easy lessons to read and grasp. They are harder lessons to carry out however. And more importantly, they are methodologies and viewpoints that are very hard to instill in an organization unless they were there from the start – and were there as the raison d’etre from the beginning. Steve Jobs did not retrofit his goals to the company. He set out from the beginning to change the world.

So, read the book. Take it to heart. Pass it on to others in your organizations. But don’t expect to be the next Apple unless you already have implemented everything in the book before you even read it.

Note: The publisher gave me a copy of this book for the purpose of. There were no strings attached, and that gratis review copy in no way swayed my opinions towards this work.

Most websites provide on-screen controls for you to listen to our podcasts. But, the best thing about podcasts is that they can be downloaded to your own computer or audio player device. This lets you listen to them anytime – such as in the car or while on a walk or maybe doing those household chores.

You can subscribe to podcasts, just like a magazine. In the same way a magazine arrives in your mailbox when a new edition comes out, a podcast uses software on your computer called a podcatcher to automatically download new shows whenever they become available. To subscribe and download podcasts requires that bit of podcatcher software and perhaps your audio player device. Below are some instructions to help you with that.

Step by step guide to receiving a podcast

There are three steps to set up your PC or Mac to receive a podcast:

1. Download software to retrieve and play your podcasts

You will need a software tool, called an aggregator, which will let you subscribe to a podcast and will download and play the mp3 files. So, once you have subscribed to a podcast this software will do the hard work of managing your subscription by checking for and downloading any new episodes that have been released. One common aggregator is iTunes but there are many others. Note that iTunes works on both Windows and Mac. There are even aggregators that work directly on your iPhone, Android or Windows Phone or iPod.

Since we cannot show you how to use all the different aggregators available, we will use iTunes as our example. If you need to download a copy of iTunes, you can get it from the Apple iTunes site.

2. Subscribe to a podcast

To ensure that you receive the latest episode in the podcast series you must subscribe. Once you have subscribed your aggregator will regularly check for any new episodes. Subscription is achieved by letting the aggregator know the location of a file that contains information about the podcast. For example it will tell the aggregator when each episode was released, it will give a description of the episode and also let the aggregator know where the mp3 file is so it can download it.

When you visit a web site that offers podcasts you will usually see either a button labelled ‘Podcast Subscribe’ or ‘RSS’ and some text that will look something like our big subscribe button in the upper left hand corner up there. That label or image is a link that contains the location of the file that has all the information that allows the aggregator to download the mp3 files and manage your subscription.

To subscribe to a podcast from the podcast’s website:

1. Click on the image or link.
2. This should take you to a page offering you the option of subscribing with your system’s default podcast or RSS reader.
3. For this website, and most others, you would just click on the big red “Subscribe” button and that’s it!

To subscribe to a podcast directly with iTunes:

1. Select the text that gives the location of the podcast information file and copy it.
2. Open iTunes and click on ‘Advanced’ and click ‘Subscribe to podcast’.
3. A window opens. Now, paste the location of the information file here and press OK.
4. You have now subscribed to that podcast. You will notice that iTunes is now downloading the information file and will soon download the first mp3 file. Once it has finished a black triangle will appear at the side of the podcast details. Click this for more information about the podcast.

3. Listen in iTunes

To view the podcast details and to listen to the mp3 files select ‘Podcasts’ from the menu on the left hand side. Select a file and press the play button. That episode of your podcast will play. If the file you want to listen to has a ‘GET’ button next to it then press this to download the mp3 file. This will happen if the podcast you have subscribed to has already released several episodes.

Additional Resources

1. Wikipedia article on podcasts

The WordPress 3 Cookbook, published by Packt Publishing in December of 2012, is not the kind of book you read cover to cover. As the title implies, it contains a series of recipes or tasks that you will go to in order to get something specific accomplished. Those tasks may be as simple as changing some text in the header or footer, or as complex as customizing the internal WordPress look to display posts of only a certain type or combining that with some custom CSS to display your posts in a two column layout.

You will want to at least read through the table of contents and introduction to familiarize yourself with what WP recipes are include, but you probably don’t want to try to read the book straight through. If you do that, as I did for this review, you will find yourself increasingly annoyed at the repetition of basic instructions like using the text editor to open the CSS file.  While they should be expected in a cookbook of recipes, since you never know where someone will dive in, they get mind numbing if read in a linear fashion. Even then they might have been done better. Every food preparation recipe I read does not include instructions on how to boil water or preheat an oven. You go over that once and make reference back to it. Unfortunately in this Shreve’s book the instructions are repeated over and over again with each task.

That does not detract from the overall value of the book though. The recipes are arranged in increasing degree of complexity, and even though I have been working with WordPress for years, I picked up some good hints as the book went along. It is one of those references that you might not necessarily need at the moment, but you will want it on your shelf. When the time comes that you want a specific recipe or tutorial that is in the book, you will need it at hand. Quickly.  And that is where I plan to keep this one – close at hand for reference.

Also not that, as is the case with all Packt Publishing books, the WordPress 3 Cookbook is available in both paper and electronic formats, so it is quite convenient to have with you in whatever form you prefer.

Note: The publisher gave me a copy of this book for the purpose of. There were no strings attached, and that gratis review copy in no way swayed my opinions towards this work.

To read more on this, please check out Google’s site, as well as these excellent articles and sites.