The designs, first published in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s booklet, “Farmhouse Plans,” show how tiny, low-cost houses can be planned to grow into larger, more comfortable homes over time. The idea helped homeowners spread the cost of construction over many years as houses were expanded in two, three or more stages.

The Growing Houses all started as attractive cottages, each with a kitchen and one or two multi-purpose rooms. Carefully planned additional stages of construction added bedrooms and more formal living spaces with very little demolition and little or no disruption of family life. Each stage created a new home that looked as good or better than the one before it.

“Prosperity Plans” includes a complete reprint of the original 1935 booklet with forty home designs, floor plans, a new forward by Berg, photos of the homes and the times, and links to Internet sources of free downloadable copies of the houses’ original construction drawings. Although the plans are not suitable for today’s building codes, they are a great source for design ideas and attractive construction details.

Softcover copies are available at Amazon.com and other booksellers. An inexpensive, downloadable e-book edition, as well as links to the free construction drawings, are available at www.ProsperityPlans.net .

About the Author, Donald Berg:

Donald Berg is a member of the American Institute of Architects and the Society of Architectural Historians. He has published fifteen books on American building and landscape design. His designs, articles and interviews have appeared in Home Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Country Life, Traditional Building, The Old-House Journal and many other publications. He was a guest on, and consultant for, HGTV’s special, The American Farmhouse.

Brain Drain was patient driven. Five years ago, Dr. Glassman, founded the New York Center for Longevity and Wellness – its goal to take a comprehensive approach to medicine and to balance mind/body concepts with conventional medicine. Two years later, he began distributing a weekly, motivational e-mail message to patients and friends; its popularity quickly grew. As a result, he was prompted to turn his practical advice into a book.

The book offers a groundbreaking revelation that provides readers with the necessary tools to stop personal brain drain, thus exposing them to the power of their mind. Through Dr. Glassman’s simple steps, the reader discovers how to find the things in life that are right for them. It explores many areas that include: how to get out of an unhappy relationship; how to improve overall physical health; how to increase energy; how to break free of bad habits; and much more.

Broken down into 19 chapters and three parts: The Automatic Brain; The Power of Our Mind; and Seven Days to Belief, Brain Drain connects the dots between mind, body, spirit and wellness.

Brain Drain recently won honorable mention at the prestigious New England Book Festival in the non-fiction category. Its 240 pages are available in hard cover for $29.95 on Amazon.com (search “glassman Brain Drain”) and at: www.CharlesGlassmanMD.Com.

About the Author:

Dr. Charles Glassman’s internal medicine practice in Pomona, NY emphasizes wellness and prevention. He is patient focused rather than problem focused; and driven to provide health care rather than sick care.

A Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a the Life Extension Foundation, his approach to medicine is integrative – using traditionally-approved methods while recognizing the power of unconventional therapies. He is consistently voted a “Top Doctor” in Hudson Valley Magazine and New York Metro.

Dr. Glassman has appeared on ABC News, Bloomberg Radio, National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal Radio. He has had numerous health care articles appear in The New York Times and other publications, and is quickly becoming a leading medical community expert on mind/body/spirit concerning the physician-patient relationship.

He lives in Rockland County, NY with his wife Melanie and their four children (and dog, Ginger).

To sign up for a free weekly message newsletter, and for a free sample chapter, visit: www.CharlesGlassmanMD.com. Visit blog at www.CharlesGlassmanMDblog.com.

Sofon Guided Selling is a standard software solution for accelerating, simplifying and improving the sales and quotation process. Business & Decision will market this solution with focus on the Infor and Microsoft Dynamics AX market.

Ian Thurbon, VP Sales Strategy & Marketing from Business & Decision comments: “Sofon Guided Selling offers significant value in addition to our current ERP and CRM portfolio, especially in the area of customer specific sales. Sofon has proven its value in the North American market and has many references in combination with existing Infor and Microsoft ERP implementations”. As Sofon provides a complete and standard solution for sales calculation, pricing, configuration and quotation generation, Sofon completes the business process coverage for our customers from first contact until maintenance and service.”

Otto van der Tang, Managing Director at Sofon comments: “Our partnership with Business & Decision will help us to strengthen our position in the North American market. Their network and expertise offers us a significant opportunity to expand our customer base in our largest geographical target market. We view the partnership with Business & Decision as an important proof point that our software meets a significant market need.”

About Business & Decision:

Business & Decision is an international Consulting and Systems Integration (CSI) company. B&D is a leader in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Business Intelligence (BI) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and a major player in e-Business and Enterprise Information Management (EIM). Business & Decision contributes to the success of customer projects by driving maximum business performance.

The company has a reputation for functional and technological expertise and has forged partnerships with all of the key technology vendors. Located in 19 countries, Business & Decision currently employs more than 2,700 people worldwide. Additional information is available at www.businessdecision.us .

About Sofon:

Sofon supplies sales support software under the name Sofon Guided Selling. Using Sofon, quotations, contracts, orders and other sales documents can be generated quickly, simply and accurately. Sofon Guided Selling supports needs analysis, calculation, configuration, pricing, visualization and document generation in any language needed. This reduces sales costs, shortens sales cycles, increases scoring rates, simplifies sales processes and improves cooperation between clients, dealers, sales, engineering and production.

Sofon can be seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Dynamics, Infor, SAP, Salesforce and other market leading ERP and CRM solutions. Sofon users are middle-sized to large internationally-oriented companies who supply client-specific products or services, such as Philips Healthcare, Ricoh, Elekta Oncology Systems, and Aebi Schmidt. Sofon is located in the USA, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium and supports customers in over 50 countries. Additional information is available at www.sofon.com.

The Steganography SearchPak was created from hash values extracted from the latest version of the Steganography Application Fingerprint Database (SAFDB) created and maintained in Backbone’s Steganography Analysis and Research Center (SARC). SAFDB is the world’s largest commercially available hash set exclusive to steganography applications. Digital forensic examiners around the world are using hash values from SAFDB to detect the presence of steganography applications on seized media.

First responders and digital forensics lab examiners can use the Steganography SearchPak with Triage-ID(TM) and Triage-Lab(TM) to quickly detect any files associated with 768 steganography applications. The tools are designed to be used by both technical and non technical users and are widely deployed for both field and lab investigations.

Triage-ID(TM) is a field tool for first responders to perform automated on-site analysis of suspect computers, with a bootable CD-ROM and USB drive. Triage-Lab(TM) is a Windows based tool that performs automated analysis of drive images, network drives, stand alone suspect computers, DVD’s, CD’s, and other digital media.

Detecting the presence of steganography applications is a strong indication the application may have been used to conceal digital evidence. When files associated with steganography applications are detected, users have the option of contacting Backbone for further assistance with finding and extracting the hidden evidence using advanced steganalysis tools developed in the SARC.

Contact ADF Solutions at info@adfsolutions.com or the SARC at sarc@backbonesecurity.com for information about obtaining the Steganography SearchPak.

About ADF Solutions:

ADF Solutions, Inc. is the global leader of forensic triage tools for rapid evidence recovery and intelligence extraction from computers and peripheral devices. The tools have a proven track record at reducing forensic backlogs, securing fast convictions, and identifying suspects who are a threat to national security.

About Backbone Security:

In addition to hosting the SARC, Backbone is a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Approved Scanning Vendor that provides automated PCI DSS compliance assessment services with their industry leading One-Stop Scanning Solution. Backbone also provides real-time intrusion monitoring, certification and accreditation, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery planning services.

About the SARC:

The SARC is a Center of Excellence in advanced steganography research and development established within Backbone Security to create and maintain a national repository of steganography applications, fingerprints, and signatures. The SARC has created the world’s largest commercially available hash set exclusive to steganography applications and is the leading provider of world-class forensic tools and techniques for detecting the presence or use of steganography applications and extracting information hidden with those applications.

Online: www.backbonesecurity.com or www.sarc-wv.com .

Added to the DMD DataTrac Commissions customer roster are The Legacy Group, a Washington-based lender also operating in Arizona and California; Essex Mortgage, a California-based lender with offices in Utah and soon expanding in the Pacific Northwest; and CMG Mortgage, a California-based lender that offers both broker and mortgage banker services.

“Commission calculations are frequently a source of frustration both for lender management and for loan officers,” said DMD president Rob Katz. “DataTrac Commissions provides total commission transparency, allowing loan originators access to their commission pipeline 24 hours a day, every day of the week through its Web-based system.”

“DataTrac Commissions allows lenders to demonstrate their commitment to calculating originators’ commissions accurately and quickly,” he added, “which contributes to a competitive edge in attracting stellar loan originator talent.”

DataTrac Commissions also allows lenders to set up fee floors in compliance with RESPA, enabling them to catch pricing mistakes before it is too late to make corrections. DataTrac Commissions enables lenders to test “what if” scenarios for compensation plans, allowing them to understand exactly how commissions would be paid if plan changes are adopted – an analysis typically viewed as so complicated that it is rarely done.

City Bank Mortgage, the mortgage banking business unit of $1.8 billion City Bank Texas, implemented DataTrac Commissions in 2009 after discovering multiple instances of misallocated fees and commission over-payments. In 2009 City Bank Mortgage had an almost 50 percent increase over its total 2008 volume of $285 million. As originator productivity and loan volume reached record levels in 2009, maintaining accuracy around commissions and RESPA-related fees became a losing battle.

“During our implementation process we tested the system by running our plans against historic numbers and found all sorts of places where we overpaid commissions,” said City Bank Mortgage secondary marketing manager Tom Couture. “Within the first few days we identified commission payout errors totaling $10,000.”

About Del Mar DataTrac:

Founded in 1991, Del Mar DataTrac (DMD) is the leading provider of affordable loan automation solutions for mortgage lenders, banks, and credit unions. DMD offers a scalable workflow platform that enables lending best practices by leveraging DataTrac as the back-office hub along with a sophisticated point-of-sale system, a Web-based originator portal and commission engine, and a management dashboard – all in a paperless environment.

The DataTrac Suite is designed by mortgage lenders for mortgage lenders who strive to deliver extraordinary customer service, increase production and profitability, reduce risk, and streamline overall efficiency. For more information, visit www.dmdinc.com .

Plus, the editors have invited local divorce professionals to answer common questions on topics of relevance to divorcing and separated individuals, including legal, financial, emotional, children, and more.

“With current economic conditions, it has never been tougher on families going through a divorce,” states Divorce Magazine’s Publisher and CEO Dan Couvrette. “By presenting the secret to a successful divorce, we want divorcing individuals to get the quality information and support they need sooner, not later.”

The Winter/Spring 2010 issue of Divorce Magazine is available now. Additionally, Divorce Magazine’s online resource center – located at www.DivorceMagazine.com – contains a wide range of divorce-related articles, news items, forums, and directories of divorce professionals who can help separated or divorced individuals. Access is free and no registration is required.

About Divorce Magazine:

Launched in 1996, Divorce Magazine is North America’s only magazine devoted entirely to divorce. It is published twice a year with six regional editions (California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, New York/New Jersey and Ontario), and is full of helpful articles as well as guides to local divorce professionals. The magazine’s Website, www.DivorceMagazine.com, has been the leading divorce-related Website since 1996, offering a diverse archive with thousands of pages of self-help articles as well as public forums, polls, and information on local divorce professionals.

The far-fetched story begins in August 2009, when a renowned entertainment reporter is thrown out of a plane over Los Angeles. At the time of his unfortunate death, he was completing a manuscript detailing the strange personal life of the most secretive megastar of our time–Rook. Luckily, this work in progress was rescued, although the details remain obscure. Now, assembled here is the sought after exposé of the infamous rock star, searching for his lost innocence. The quixotic adventure journeys from LA, to Amsterdam, to India, and back. Along the way, Rook struggles with celebrity excess, reignites with his old flame, gets mixed up with the mafia, and must rescue the daughter he never knew he had. From the heights of hedonism to the depths of despair, this topical parody explores the beast of fame.

Author Kevin Glavin assumes the archaic guise of “editor,” connecting the dots of this rather bizarre, reverse coming-of-age novel, Rock Star’s Rainbow.

Glavin, who supposedly found the surviving draft of the book on a plane, was struck by the enigmatic nature of the work while reading it at the roulette table. He decided then and there, after losing on 00, that it was notable and should be made public, and not remain in Vegas. Says the editor: “After consulting with counsel, I have determined that it is worth the gamble to publish this manuscript for the public’s enjoyment, edification, and potential horrification.”

The novel is in part a pastiche, alluding to elements of Don Quixote, Either/Or, Ulysses, Satyricon, Crime and Punishment, and other classic works.

Review copies and interviews with the author may be arranged upon request.

Available for $24.95 (hardcover) and $14.95 (paperback) through www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com .

For a PDF preview and more information on eBook storefronts and international distribution: www.rockstarsrainbow.com
www.kevinglavinpublishing.com .

CHAPTERS also features a line-up of special guest authors, curated by Maud Newton:
- Friday, February 26: Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of Wench.
- Friday, March 26: Nami Mun, author of Miles From Nowhere.
- Friday, April 23: Lizzie Skurnick, author of Shelf Discovery.
- Friday, May 21: Ru Freeman, author of A Disobedient Girl.
- Friday, June 18: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of The Thing Around Your Neck.

CHAPTERS is co-sponsored by: The Center for Fiction, Eileen Fisher, American Eagle Outfitters, glassybaby and M + E/Michael Fusco Design. This program is supported, in part, by public funds from: The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York State Council on the Arts, and The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

About The Guest Authors:
Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s (www.dolenperkinsvaldez.com) fiction and essays have appeared in StoryQuarterly, Robert Olen Butler Prize Stories 2009, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She splits her time between Washington, D.C. and Seattle. Wench (Amistad, 2010) is her first novel.

Nami Mun (www.namimun.com) is the author of the debut novel, Miles from Nowhere (Riverhead), which was shortlisted for the Orange Award. Named Best New Novelist of 2009 by Chicago magazine, she is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Award.

Lizzie Skurnick’s (www.lizzieskurnick.com) new book is Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading (Avon, 2009). She is columnist for Jezebel.com’s Fine Lines and has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, The Washington Post and more.

Ru Freeman’s (www.rufreeman.com) debut novel, A Disobedient Girl (Atria Books, 2009), will also be published in Dutch, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese and Hebrew. She calls both Sri Lanka and America home and writes about the people and countries underneath her skin.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (www.halfofayellowsun.com) is the author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun, and The Thing Around Your Neck. She has received numerous awards, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

About Girls Write Now:
Girls Write Now (GWN), the first and only East Coast nonprofit to combine mentoring and writing instruction within the context of all-girl programming, has, since 1998, helped nearly 3,000 underserved or at-risk girls from NYC’s public high schools develop into the next generation of writers and readers. In recent years, GWN has been profiled in The New York Times and featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. In November, the organization received a 2009 Coming Up Taller Award from First Lady Michelle Obama and the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, distinguishing Girls Write Now as one of the top 15 after-school arts and humanities programs in the nation.

More information: www.girlswritenow.org .

First impressions. My credit card is out of my wallet, and I typed in my email for Apple to “let me know” when I can order one on their website. More specs below, but you can find all of that at www.apple.com – so you don’t need me to spell out every goodie in detail when Apple can do a better job themselves (um, pun intended). Yes, it’s basically a big iPod/iPhone, but with much more power (a custom 1GHz processor, from one of the tech firms Apple acquired over the past couple of years to develop just such tech without having to go to AMD or Intel, or even IBM who provided most of Apple’s 20th century silicon).

From the presentations and videos I’ve seen, the ebook store to buy books, and the new iBook application (not to be confused with the notebooks called iBooks) look really beautiful, and I’m excited to try the iPad for this purpose, as I sent back my original firt generation Amazon Kindle due to the form factor, but primarily the refresh lag on the display when switching pages — my brain is pseudo-idetic, and for every page turn, my brain would take a little snapshot of the reversed out page before the new one could appear. Simply couldn’t deal with it. I know the latest generation is much better, but I have been waiting for Apple to try its hand at this.

Back in 2004 I did a roundtable interview/article on “the future of e-books” where I posited that what the e-book (or ebook) industry really needed was a great reading application to take off and succeed. Amazon has done that with Kindle, because they followed Apple’s model with the iPod of making sure you had “food” for your device at a reasonable price, and with relative ease in acquisition (unless you’re totally clueless and still can’t cook popcorn in your microwave). What make this the right time for Apple is a no-brainer: they have the design and usability skills, they have a whole generation of users “in pocket” who are familiar with the iPod/iTouch/iPhone, and many of those are second generation folk who first fell in love with the Mac/Apple culture with the iMac as kids.

Us older folks who had SE30s, Quadras and PowerPCs (but, ahem, who use Windows PCs daily now), were early adopters of the iPod as it originally only worked on Mac. Many of us who came from that space of trust jumped on the iPhone when the entire business and tech, and telecom, communities expected it to fail (or “epic fail” if you will pardon what is the most loathsome phrase in social media right now). But, no, the iPhone took off and has become the most recognized, and perhaps the only “loved” multimedia portable, outside of the Blackberry (crackberry) cadre, who are mostly business-oriented folks and not the average joe, or the right brained sort (pardon me if I’m mis-labeling you). But, I’m getting off topic. Point is … it’s happening again right now, with the media saying Apple can’t succeed with the iPad, there’s too many others bringing tablets to market, and what about the Kindle, blah blah, blah, woof. So what. Apple has the chops to make the hardware, do the software, and they have the user base, the ecommerce system in place, and they can deliver what others like Microsoft and Sony have failed to follow through with.

Basic pricing:
16GB 32GB 64GB
Wi-Fi $499 $599 $699
Wi-Fi + 3G $629 $729 $829

Basic specs:
Size and weight
Height:
9.56 inches (242.8 mm)
Width:
7.47 inches (189.7 mm)
Depth:
0.5 inch (13.4 mm)
Weight:
1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;
1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

Display
* 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology
* 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi).

ADD ONS:

iPad Keyboard Dock: The Keyboard Dock combines a dock for charging your iPad with a full-size keyboard. The dock has a rear 30-pin connector, which lets you connect to an electrical outlet using the USB Power Adapter, sync to your computer, and use accessories like the Camera Connection Kit. An audio jack lets you connect to a stereo or powered speakers.

Brilliant. Look for a review in 2-4 months when I have one!

“The ‘Scary Story’ makes for a fun, understandable way of telling an important story about the harm that can be done by central banks,” said Walter E. Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University.

The book has also received approval from other prominent economists from Massachusetts to Louisiana and Alabama’s Ludwig von Mises Institute. “I was inspired to write this book for my 11 and 13-year-old kids to help them understand why so many people have lost their jobs,” says author Martin McCannell who is the founder and president of a three-employee medical device company in Boston.

“The approval I received after showing my story to a few economists, to make sure I got it right, made me decide to go ahead with this book project. It’s a simple concept that everyone can understand once they read a little story like this,” McCannell predicts.

South Dakota artist Sharon Grey won a worldwide competition to illustrate the book with her watercolor paintings. This is her fourth children’s book.

“The Scary Story of the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Box of Free Money” (ISBN – 10: 0-615-33743-0; ISBN – 13: 9780615337432) 32-page paperback will be released on February 14 on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com at $4.99 each and can be pre-ordered now. Ebook editions for Kindle, Mobipocket, Sony readers and other formats are currently available at $0.99 each at www.smashwords.com .