Few today realize that electric cabs dominated Manhattan's streets in the 1890s; that Boise, Idaho, had a geothermal heating system in 1910; or that the first megawatt turbine in the world was built in 1941 by the son of publishing magnate G. P. Putnam--a feat that would not be duplicated for another forty years. Likewise, while many remember the oil embargo of the 1970s, few are aware that it led to a corresponding explosion in green-technology research that was only derailed when energy prices later dropped.

In other words: We've been here before. Although we may have failed, America has had the chance to put our world on a more sustainable path. Americans have, in fact, been inventing green for more than a century.

Half compendium of lost opportunities, half hopeful look toward the future, Powering the Dream tells the stories of the brilliant, often irascible inventors who foresaw our current problems, tried to invent cheap and energy renewable solutions, and drew the blueprint for a green future.

Over the past 25 years, Pixar s team of artists, writers, and directors have shaped the world of contemporary animation with their feature films and shorts. From classics such as Toy Story and A Bug s Life to recent masterpieces such as Up, Toy Story 3, and Cars 2, this comprehensive collection offers a behind-the-scenes tour of every Pixar film to date. Featuring a foreword by Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, the complete color scripts for every film published in full for the first time as well as stunning visual development art, The Art of Pixar is a treasure trove of rare artwork and an essential addition to the library of animation fans and Pixar enthusiasts.

The Form of the Book, by Jan Tschichold, is the authority on book design and the best book I have ever read on typography (and I’ve read many, mind you). As a web designer this book taught me how to set readable, easy-to-digest blocks of type. As the lead designer on Unit Interactive’s recently launched Curations series, I found new relevance in these pages. The principles of setting type to be read and laying out a harmonious page transcend medium and materials. A solid understanding of the fundamentals detailed in this book will make any designer better. Instantly.

Edward Burtynsky has built a career in fine art photography meeting this challenge. He began photographing conventionally beautiful landscapes in large format. As he relates in the video Manufactured Landscapes, he had an epiphany while attempting to photograph in the Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania. He realized that every bit of landscape within sight had been completely reshaped by coal mining. Nothing was "natural." The landscape as reshaped by man instead became his subject.

Oil is Burtynsky's latest book. The extraction, distribution, consumption, and declining availability of petroleum are all explored through his large-format photographs.

In 2006, the artist and computer scientist Jaron Lanier published an incisive, groundbreaking and highly controversial essay about “digital Maoism” — about the downside of online collectivism, and the enshrinement by Web 2.0 enthusiasts of the “wisdom of the crowd.” In that manifesto Mr. Lanier argued that design (or ratification) by committee often does not result in the best product, and that the new collectivist ethos — embodied by everything from Wikipedia to “American Idol” to Google searches — diminishes the importance and uniqueness of the individual voice, and that the “hive mind” can easily lead to mob rule.

One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty, but achievable, goal. To build it, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a brand new database infrastructure, a wiki interface, multi-language support, and people who are willing to contribute their time, effort, and book data. To date, we have gathered about 30 million records (20 million are available through the site now), and more are on the way. We have built the database infrastructure and the wiki interface, and you can search millions of book records, narrow results by facet, and search across the full text of 1 million scanned books. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and is funded in part by a grant from the California State Library. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can't do it alone! This is an Open project - the software is open, the data is open, the documentation is open, and the site is open.

Our music, our culture, our science and our economic welfare all depend on a delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain. In his award-winning new book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind (Yale University Press) James Boyle introduces readers to the idea of the public domain and describes how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws.

Rated Five Stars at Amazon.com since the day it was published, “Taking Your Talent to the Web” is now a free downloadable book from zeldman.com

Designed from the ground up with digital photographers in mind, Photoshop Lightroom offers powerful editing features in a streamlined interface that lets photographers import, sort, and organize images. This completely updated and expanded bestseller, The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2 Book, was also written with photographers in mind. Author Martin Evening describes features in Photoshop Lightroom 2 in detail from a photographer’s perspective.

Google released a browser security handbook for Web developers that details the key security features of the main Web browsers. Released under a Creative Commons 3.0 license, the document provides a comprehensive comparison of security features of the commonly used browsers; IE (version 6 and 7), Firefox (version 2 and 3), Safari, Opera, Chrome and the lesser known Android embedded browser.

It is precisely this level of scientific research that makes True Enough interesting. Manjoo doesn’t simply say that we live in a fractured society where people can choose their own reality. He provides extensive psychological research that proves why our brains function that way.

Objective truth is no longer significant in discussions of political and social matters. _True Enough_ is about how this has happened, and what it looks like. We hear the phrase "marketplace of ideas" quite a bit; Farhad digs into work by psychologists and sociologists to uncover why it is that it is a marketplace in which bad ideas drive out good. I think it's a fascinating book that's full of interesting ideas, and I think these are ideas that we need to be talking about.

De pdf-versie vand e Nederlandse vertaling van het lifehacking boek van Gina Trapani "Upgrade your life".

It's always interesting to read a smart person's intelligent yet devastating take-down of an argument, partly because it's so difficult to do. The intellectual scene is littered with personal attacks, sweeping generalizations, or humorless nitpicking that leave even agreeable readers feeling sympathetic for the person on the other end. If you want an example of a professional, thoughtful, detailed, and nonetheless devastating critique of a thesis, read Jon Chait's review of Naomi Klein's bestselling book The Shock Doctrine in the New Republic.

Ubuntu’s rise to power has been rapid, historic and well-deserved. It’s the best Linux distribution ever, but most people only use a fraction of its power. Award-winning Linux author Keir Thomas gets down and dirty with Ubuntu to provide over 300 conc

Head's argument is much like that of David Noble in Forces of Production: we had a choice about how to use new technology. We could use it to turn employees into ever-more-skilled craftspeople, allowing them to be more effective and creative in their jobs

The site about the photobook by Joe McNally.

The message of Mark Hurst’s new book, Bit Literacy: In an age of infinite bits, time and attention are the scarce resources. The solution is to constantly manage your bits with the goal of reaching an “empty” state.

In OurSpace, Christine Harold examines the deployment and limitations of “culture jamming” by activists. These techniques defy repressive corporate culture through parodies, hoaxes, and pranks.