Torres Talking: Books

Beyond Bullet Points

Fri, 09 Sep 2005 23:49:25 GMT

I have been reading Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire off and on for a little over a month now. Time is tight, so actually reading it "in the gaps" or as-needed seems to be the best way to do it. I have to say, I absolutely love the approach Cliff Atkinson describes in this book. I love it so much, I debated not blogging about it... who wants to give away all their secrets?

In short: this book is a must-read for every Microsoft employee. I can't tell you how many 200MB PowerPoint presentations land in my Inbox on a daily basis with slides containing detailed charts, graphs, and full paragraphs in size 6 font. Yes Moz, I am talking about you (but not you alone - we all do it!)

If you are at all interested in improving your presentations, check out this book. Cliff (a fellow Microsoft Press writer) also has a great blog here: www.beyondbullets.com

Pre-order the book!

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:29:05 GMT

Just posted this to the Book Space. I don't like cross-posting but this one is important (to me at least)

Pre-order the book!

Just learned today that our book on MSN Spaces is available for pre-order on Amazon!

First thought: scary because we aren't finished with it.

Second thought: awesome! Everyone else is probably used to it by now, but this is a first for me.

You can pre-order it here. There aren't any details on contents or ship-date (the one they list is not final) but rest assured, it will be a great book ;)

There are two other blogging books recently available for pre-order as well, both focused on corporate blogging. Jeremy's book, Blog Marketing, is already listed and I'm sure will be fantastic. And Shel/Scoble's book, Naked Conversations, is up there as well. (I especially liked Chapter 2 ;) Congrats, guys!

Chapter 8 is almost there

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 04:14:34 GMT

Chapter 8 of the MSN Spaces book is coming to a close.

I can't discuss the title of the chapter because that might be giving a little too much away, but there is a pretty detailed section on RSS feeds. Specifically how to syndicate content in MSN Spaces (RSS 2.0) and subscribe to people's feeds using some of today's most popular readers (Bloglines, RSS Bandit, etc.)

Despite the fact that the media thinks Microsoft doesn't like RSS and wants it to go away, the reality is most of us love it, myself included... Don't believe the hype. So I hope having RSS explained in this book will help it along in some small way... seeing how this book is targeting quite a different audience than books on RSS.

This chapter will also cover some of the MSN Messenger integration (contact cards & gleams) as well as a bunch of new stuff that I can't really talk about.

I will post a little bit of the chapter to the book space soon to get some feedback.

MSN Spaces music lists

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:58:55 GMT

Just posted a small clipping on music lists to the MSN Spaces book space. Click through to read.

MSN Spaces Book
Below you will find a small section of Chapter 8 (Lists) from Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces. The chapter is currently a total of 25 pages in Microsoft Word and the section below is about 2 pages of that. We covered lots of fun stuff in this chapter including list "hacks", linking to other music stores, and custom lists like language translation, guestbooks, and announcements.

Chapter on Lists

Mon, 23 May 2005 00:03:28 GMT

Over on our MSN Spaces book space, I posted a "request for comments" on the chapter about Lists in Spaces. If you have been using lists in creative ways or have ideas about how best to explain the feature, please stop by the book space and let us know!

Here is a snippet:

Writing about Lists - Dreaming up a custom list (getting creative!)

"Contact me" information
Timelines/key dates
Goals & Objectives
Linking directly to photos on Spaces
Favorite web sites, movies, TV shows, etc.
Wishlist (or linking to an external one)
Quotes & wise words
Cross-linking to posts on your other MSN Space
Copyright statements & Disclaimers
Audio/video
Items you are selling or interested in buying

Upcoming Book on MSN Spaces

Mon, 09 May 2005 21:49:28 GMT

"Late lunch" blogging.

As some longer time visitors may remember, a few months back I was toying with the idea of writing a book on MSN services. The timing just felt right; we had shipped MSN Spaces and the beta of MSN Messenger, the MSN Toolbar with Desktop Search was just released, and services like MSN Video and MSN Music were (and are) kicking some butt.

I received some positive feedback from people about the idea and over Christmas vacation I put together a proposal for a book on MSN; Stay in Touch! Using MSN Messenger, MSN Hotmail, and MSN Spaces to Strengthen Your Ties. As coincidence would have it, I was putting the finishing touches on the proposal to send over to my contact in Microsoft Press when I got an email from Juliana Aldous about a similar book proposal she had received from Katherine Murray! Of course, I flipped out and immediately sent Juliana my unpolished proposal in the hopes we could make something happen.

Long story short, in no time flat we were all speaking on a conference call about writing a book together about MSN Spaces! We finalized the paperwork, setup a space for the project, and we are now off and running!

I am crazy excited about this. I get to be a member of an incredibly experienced and professional team writing about a product I work with every single day. And as is the case with just about everything I am involved with nowadays, we would like to enlist your help. Please start sending us suggestions, comments, complaints, favorite spaces, least favorite spaces, etc. We have comments enabled at the book space below and would love to hear what you are thinking about the project; good or bad. We intend to make this book fun, informative, and alive! We aren't ready to announce a release date just yet, but you will be the first to know once it starts appearing on the shelves.

Here is the space we will be using to track progress on the book. We just started posting content... but you can always subscribe to the RSS feed for immediate updates!

MSN Spaces Book