I have to admit that I'm a little disdainful of books that claim to offer "MBAs" in one form or another; it's rather like a short history of Britain claiming to offer you a BA, or a popular science book offering a BSc. The most detailed and densely packed business books on my bookshelves are texts for just single modules within an MBA or professional qualification, and I seem to recollect having bought two or three such texts for each module. The claim that any book is "an MBA" is, therefore, at best pretentious and at worst ridiculous. Nor was I reassured by the first sentence in the book: "This book is the first of its kind in the third and final wave of social media literature." The final wave? Really? With social media advancing so rapidly, with new platforms appearing regularly, it seems odd to be talking about "final waves" of literature.

Having got that off my chest, I did like the Social Media MBA. Its claim to MBA status is that it is presented as a series of case studies by Mr Holloman's 15 co-authors, and the chapters are easy to read and easily digestible. The language is pleasingly non-academic! I most enjoyed the case studies, or which there are eight, each written by a senior social media practitioner in a separate companies: ARM, Aviva, Dell, Evans Cycles, GSK, Kodak, Philips and Sage. Interesting, and an indication of the sort of level at which this book is considering social media strategy - that of the FTSE 100 or multi-national corporation. All very "MBA", you might say... With my own focus being on SMEs, this did all seem very high level, but sensible enough.

This book would have been more useful to me if it had included some medium sized company examples (and a medium sized company is one with up to 250 employees and something like £26 million turnover); only Evans Cycles came anywhere near that. I would have found some professional service firm examples useful - but perhaps there are still insufficient examples of psfs, especially the bigger ones, using social media properly.

If there are any Social Media modules in MBA courses - and I suspect that there must be, even though many will take the view that social media is just another tactic within the long established fields of marketing and communications - this book, or an updated version thereof, does deserve to be on the reading list. If you're trying to work out how to use social media in a large organisation environment, it's certainly worth reading too.

I bought this to replace a similar case, one that openned along the top rather than the side edge of the phone. The side opening has the advantage that you can plug the recharger in without opening it (which means it doesn't flood a dark bedroom with light and upset the wife when coming to bed late!), but the disadvantage is that you have to open the "wallet" to adjust the volume. On balance, I find the other opening marginally more convenient - it would be good if a slot had been cut to allow you to adjust the volume (there is an opening for the camera) but that would inevitably make it more expensive.

Otherwise, this is a good protector for a phone, and I recommend this make. The Legend is of course no longer in production, but I'll get something similar when I buy the replacement. If I have a quibble, it would be that this case is not, of course, real leather, but it looks good and the last one did more than a year's daily service before it wore through to the cloth backing, so I was happy enough.

With a house full of beige carpets, I've tried many carpet cleaning approaches over the years, ranging from the powder types, to liquid spot cleaners, and have been a frequent hirer of "rug masters" and the like. The machines certainly work well, but there's no doubt that they wear the carpet out quite quickly too, while powders are at beat an interim solution.

I assembled this "Easy clean" kit somewhat sceptically. A collapsible pole attaches to a brush head and a large aerosol canister of "Vanish Powerfoam". A trigger mechanism at the top of the pole allows you to spray the foam into the brush and then to scrub it into the carpet without having to bend down. (Judging by the diagrams on the foam canister, you can buy and use it without the pole and brush kit too, but you probably have to get down on hands and knees.)

Anyway, a small amount of foam and a modest amount of scrubbing and the area of carpet just inside the sitting room door, a "high traffic" area which looked rather grubby this morning and had a couple of spot marks now looks a very great deal cleaner. In fact, I think it's done as good a job as the "rug master" did last time I had it in, and without the wear. It's also be a great deal easier to use on the stair carpets than a carpet cleaning machine. All in all, I'm pretty impressed!

If I had a quibble, it might be that the pole is not very strong, so I did have to remind myself not to press too hard. On the other hand, it's light, easy to assemble and disassemble - so you can put it all back in the box for storage - and it doesn't appear to need to be pressed into the carpet too hard to work. All in all, this is a pretty damn effective way of cleaning carpets, and given the modest cost of replacement foam canisters I suspect that it may actually be cheaper than hiring a carpet cleaning machine.

This is the second in Dr Weiss's series of three CDs on the subject of negotiation. In fact, the three introductory tracks - 10 minutes long in total - are exactly the same as in the first CD, The Negotiator in You: At Work (BBC Audio). While this is written as an introduction to the series as a whole, it has an example set in an organisational negotiation environment - a local authority and a contracting company. Frankly, that must seem a little confusing to someone who has bought the CD alone, and it just seemed a bit cheap - how long would it have taken to re-write the example at least to use an "at home" setting? There is then an introduction to this CD itself, where Weiss points out that it is in the family setting that we all learn the basic skills of negotiation - for better or worse.

This CD then has six sections relevant to negotiating in the domestic environment: understanding and managing emotions; generational issues; gender issues; intangibles; family holidays; and kids.

I found this CD rather more interesting than the first one, in part, I suspect, because I haven't really given the idea of negotiating in the family context much thought. (It shows, my wife would probably say!) The first four sections of the CD, however, were pretty much as relevant to negotiations at work or anywhere else as they are in the family; the work that Dr Weiss quoted about differences between male and female negotiating styles, for example, sounded very much as if it had been researched in the business environment rather than a familial one. While I haven't listed to the third in the series, I now suspect that this set is better seen as one work than three separate ones, and while I had been inclined not to bother after finishing the first CD, I'm glad now that I did go on.

As with the first CD it's possible to download a workbook to accompany the CD. This workbook, however, seemed less well connected to the subject matter of the audio that that of the first CD - as if it had been written for a different course. In as much as that provides some additional material, I suppose, that's fine, but it did slightly contribute to the feeling that this audiobook may have been something that Dr Weiss knocked together over a weekend to boost his list of publications or even to pay for the next family holiday.

These CDs can offer - over about an hour and a half in total - only a very simple introduction to the art of negotiation. I think that if you are going to get them it would probably be worth getting all three.

This is a short and simple audio book, about 30 minutes long, consisting of an introduction, and then five sections in which he deals with five "negotiating issues": internal and external negotiations; the limitations of "facts" in negotiations and the emotional aspects; salary negotiations; negotiating with "the boss"; and virtual negotiations (i.e. by email etc.)

Dr Weiss, an academic involved in negotiation studies at Harvard University, defines negotiation is "an interaction between two or more people who seek to meet their interests as best as possible by either reaching agreement or ending the process knowing they can do better elsewhere." Dr Weiss makes the point that it is a mistake to think that negotiation should be about reaching a compromise, suggesting instead that the aim is to find creative and unique solutions.

This CD is the first in a series of three, the second being on negotiations within the family, and the third on negotiations "in life", which I think is basically a catch-all for everything not related to work or home. It would appear to be aimed at relatively junior members of organisations, with a focus on salary negotiations when first accepting a job and negotiating with "the boss". There is relatively little in the main section that addresses techniques for negotiating with external parties.

There is an online workbook to download which follows the same structure of the audiobook, while introducing some additional material over six pages. The work is narrated by the author himself, who has a pleasant American voice and speaks clearly and at about the right tempo.

I admit that I was a little disappointed by this audiobook. I didn't come across much that I hadn't heard or read previously, although I did like the BATNA - your "best alternative to a negotiated agreement", a concept borrowed from other Harvard academics in this field who wrote a book, "Getting to Yes", over 30 years ago. There are many negotiating techniques that I have learned over the years which were not included here; given its short length, that was of course inevitable. That having been said there's always some value in listening again to the simple, basic truths, and as Dr Weiss says, the trick is to practice the techniques so they become second nature.

If you are looking for a basic introduction to the subject, or indeed if you are about to start work for the first time, and you prefer to listen rather than to read, then this CD may be as good a place to start as any. If you have already been working for some time or are looking for enhance existing skills in negotiations, then you may find this work to be of limited value.

This must just be an interim report at this stage, as although I have bought the concrete mix to fix this into the ground, ongoing sub-zero temperatures have prevented me from fixing it as yet.

As our current clothes dryer is fixed permanently into the ground, I do like the way this one is designed, which allows it to be lifted out of the plastic socket so it can be brought in during poor weather or if you don't want it spoiling the appearance of the lawn.

The one less obviously good aspect of this device, however, is its use of a nylon cord instead of more conventional, wider diameter clothes line. I will be surprised if it doesn't leave a sharper crease where clothes have been hung over the line, and normal clothes pegs will grip the line much less firmly, if at all, depending on the thickness of the clothes.

Much of the engineering of this product is dedicated to keeping the lines covered when the device is folded up. I can't say that keeping the lines clean has been a major problem in the past, but everything helps. I particularly like the hops designed to facilitate hanging clothes on clothes hangers, which may be the best way to dry some clothes - shorts, jackets - while not creasing them.

I'm looking forward to better weather and the chance to try this out - and will update this report them on the basis of my - and perhaps more relevantly, my wife's - experience.

A very informative reader, albeit one written exclusively by those sharing Rand's philosophy

I bought this book somewhat in error: having had to buy The Fountainhead in printed form because there was no Kindle edition, I was delighted to see, or so I thought, that Atlas Shrugged was now available in that format. It was only afterwards that I read what I'd bought in a little more detail, and, after reading the foreword, decided to put it to one side until I'd read the book itself. Luckily for me, by the time I'd finished The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged itself was available as an ebook.

This collection consists of thirty six essays, divided into eight sections: overview, philosophy, literary aspects, aesthetics, political economy, human relationships, characterization and history. The contributors are drawn mostly from academic backgrounds. Many are also involved in think tanks and blogging from a libertarian economic perspective, although some bring expertise from the areas of literature, culture and music too. The editor, Edward Younkins, is a professor of Accountancy and Business Administration at the Wheeling Jesuit University, which I did find a little surprising considering Rand's strong atheism, which hopefully just goes to show that catholic universities and their academics don't suffer any limitations in freedom of thought as a result of their institutions religious heritages.

The essays certainly gave me a much greater insight into the novel and the thinking that lay behind it. There were only two essays that I found so abstract as to be incomprehensible to me, a mere historian by training and not a philosopher or social scientist. Criticisms of Rand are muted - at worst she is found to have been insufficiently thorough in her thinking, her philosophy insufficient rigorous, or not to have travelled as far down a particular road as a follower might like her to have gone.

Some thinkers on the libertarian right do take their thoughts to extremes, and some of the contributors to this book are in that category. Walter Block, on a chapter entitled "The Non Fictional Robert Stadlers: Traitors to Liberty", for example, includes Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in his list of traitors. The latter is criticised in particular for his promotion of a state funded educational voucher system as a step towards the de-nationalisation of education, one of the grounds being that such vouchers would probably not be permitted to be used for educational establishments that did not believe in abolishing the government, or which exercised their rights to free speech to promote "Communism, Nazism, polygamous nor incest marriages between consenting adults". Good grief! Mr Block's book credits include "Defending the Undefendable". Interestingly, he is an academic at another Jesuit university.

It is perhaps not in the nature of books of this type to include a counterarguments, but I do think that this work would have been a little more rounded had it included a section, maybe even just one chapter, from one of Ms Rand's critics.

If I have a technical criticism of this Kindle edition it is that as a heavily foot-noted academic text, it made absolutely no use of hyperlinks to make it easy to read those footnotes. That makes it pretty difficult to read them at all in a Kindle - at least in a printed book you can stick a bookmark in the relevant place and flick to them. As a minor observation on the editing, I noted that in this book, set in a serif font "I" (as in "India", pronounced "Eye")had been converted into an "l" (ell, Lima) more often than not.

Those minor criticisms aside, if you want better to understand Rand's fictional works this is a great place to start.

Atlas Shrugged may be the most demanding work of literature I have read since university. It is certainly the only novel since then for which I have also bought a reader, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged: A Philosophical and Literary Companionfiftieth anniversary collection of essays, and it is only now, having finished that, that I am turning to writing a review. At about 1,200 pages (always a bit hard to tell from a Kindle edition) it is also, give or take the occasional "space opera", the longest work I've read for a long time. So: was it worth it?

Arguably this is a work of fiction that is more germane today that it ever was. In a month where the government of one European state, Cyprus, exercised a "levy" thought to be over 40% on investors with over 100,000 on deposit, it's worth considering Rand's depiction of the causes and effects of state-backed "looting and mooching". While I find it surprising, 55 years on, that she could have seen the seeds of such statist decadence in the US of the 1940s and 1950s, the New Deal notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the European Union would have represented, to Rand, an (un)worthy successor to the Soviet Union as the archetype of a well meaning but ultimately corrupting and self-defeating super-state. Every day the news abounds with stories of government spending tax payers' money because they feel that "something must be done", or perhaps just that they feel that they ought to be seen to be doing something. Rand was clear: the best thing government can do is stick to maintaining freedom through the rule of law, and then by getting (the hell) out of individuals' way.

I doubt that anyone reads Atlas Shrugged today without knowing that they are reading a philosophical novel from a right wing, more or less libertarian perspective. There are those who claim that it is a great novel in its own right. While few would argue that works of fiction achieve greatness without giving us insights into some profound aspects of the human condition, few if any literary contenders focus so exclusively on the socio-economic and political facets. The narrative is interesting, it's exciting (although it could probably have been more exciting had it been shorter) and the imagery is arresting. Dagny Taggart is without doubt a compelling female role-model. My enjoyment may have been prejudiced a little by the knowledge that every character had been created to represent a particular viewpoint, and I may have spent too long trying to work out what they were, but I can't help thinking that the storyline suffers from all the characters being archetypes.

Characters tend to be either heroic or contemptuously villainous, and there's a distinct white hat/black hat feel to them, made all the more obvious by Rand's unsubtle use of physical attractiveness as a key to character. Perhaps this was the Hollywood screenwriter in her. The heroes are physically attractive while the baddies are ugly. Dagny's brother, James Taggart, the worst sort of pork barrel businessman, is first described as having "a small, petulant mouth, and thin hair clinging to a bald forehead". Dangy's three lovers, by contrast, Copper magnate Francisco D'Anconia, steel foundry owner Hank Reardon, and the inventor and philosopher John Galt, suffer only from being just too heroic, too near to godlike to make entirely believable characters. It's hard to develop empathy with an archetype, and I found only Dagny herself to be truly engaging.

Atlas Shrugged was the last work of fiction that Ayn Rand wrote. I suspect that after this book, and The Fountainhead that preceded it (by 14 years) she no longer needed to worry about money, and she devoted herself to developing her philosophy of "Objectivism" in non-fiction works. I can't say that I found it entirely easy to glean what objectivism was about from the novel alone (Younkins' reader has gone some way to plugging the gap since). Suffice to say that hers is a harsh and elitist philosophy, in which 99% of humanity could at best aspire to be the loyal "common man" represented by Dagny's right hand man, Eddie Willers.

John Galt's credo, and presumably therefore Rand's own, is "I swear by my life and for my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." While one may admire the entrepreneurialism, drive and personal responsibility of Rand's entrepreneurs, I do find her blanket condemnation of altruism misplaced. She appears to discourage personal altruism, not just state-backed, taxpayer-funded altruism. Does she condemn the Rockefellers, the Carnegies and now the Buffetts and the Gates for giving much of their fortunes to aid others? Is it not part of our role and our worth as human beings to look after other members of our "tribe"? Certainly, contemporary genetic theory from the likes of Steve Jones seems to suggest so. Credo: we should all be prepared to live a little of our lives for the sake of others.

As far as specifically ebook related comment on this Kindle edition, it's pretty good from what was probably a scan of a printed version, with a singular but oft repeated error that a small amount of proof reading would have fixed: every time the letter "a" follows a capital W, and some other letters too, it too was rendered as a capital. The frequently visited Wayne-Falkland hotel was rendered every time as the "WAy ne-Falkland". Amusing in a way, but distracting.

This is a book I feel sure that I will re-read again in the future, and I may yet read some of Rand's non-fiction. Great work that it is, however, this is not a book that I feel I can award 5 stars, but it's certainly worth reading - even if you don't fully understand, or feel you entirely like, all aspects of Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy.

This is as good a lawn scarifier as I have used - and I bought one at the end of last year from a brightly coloured competitor. I did find it a little tricky at first to adjust the height - you have to adjust the wheels separately - but I found that the highest of the three operating heights gave my late winter lawn a good raking, removing much of the moss to which it is prone without leaving it a patch of bare earth - all too easy to do it you lower the height too much. With a 30cm rake width it's a little narrower than my previous one, but the extra 4cm probably doesn't make much difference.

I was intrigued, when I ordered it, how the aerator function would work. Aeration is supposed to be about letting air get to the roots of the grass, and those roots are typically 4" to 5" deep. The best aerators drive hollow tubular tines into the earth, lifting out a plug of earth - perhaps 1cm in diameter - depositing them on the surface where you can either rake them up or simply allow them to dissolve back into the surface. I've had professionals in to do this in my garden, and I've also tried it with a manual aerator device (four tines on a bar that you press into the ground with you foot) but that's bl**dy hard work and a recipe for blisters. The most basic form of aeration is to use a garden fork - drive it 5" into the earth and "shuggle" it a little as you pull it out. Again - blisters are likely to abound, and it'll take ages.

The way that this machine "aerates", however, is to use a steel rotor that cuts a groove anything from 3mm to 9mm deep into the surface of the earth. This is clearly not going to reach the depths of the roots of the grass, and in some respects I'd say that it just amounts to scarification with greater loss of topsoil. When I did it to my lawn, before trying out the scarifier rake, it lifted a great deal of moss and thatch. (On refection I should probably have done the scarification first.) Whether this is true aeration is a moot point, and whether it'll make a difference remains to be seen. Interestingly, the manufacturers recommend scarifying just twice a year - April and October - while they suggest aeration "throughout the growing period". I think I'll try it once a month and see what effect it has, and I'll post an update later in the year.

This product seems to be robustly made piece of German engineered, except for the "grass box" or "basket", made of fabric around a frame, which is a little flimsy, rather small, and not nearly as easy to empty as, e.g. a plastic box on the top of the rival machine. I found that I had to empty it every twenty yards or so, although that's probably unusual because my lawn has so much moss in it. The other features that I think could easily be improved by the manufacturers are:

* Make the electric cable out of a light, bright coloured cable - black is difficult to see, and there's something reassuring about it being really obvious. The colour orange may be taken, but a bright blue as used on the quick release nuts would be just about as good (although perhaps not if you're colour blind?).

* Make the cable longer - my other lawn rake, and my mower, have a cable long enough to get back to the wall socket.

* Make the cable detachable at the machine end. The manufacturer quite rightly recommends unplugging the cable from the machine before cleaning it, and I prefer to do so before reaching anywhere near the rotor to remove grass when emptying the grass box, but this involves a walk back to the extension cable socket.

* Make it easier to disassemble the machine. There are "quick release" nuts on the handlebars, but not at the point where the bars are connected to the machine's body, where screws are used. That means that it would be time consuming to disassemble the lower bars, and you'd need to find a screwdriver, and because the screws are self-tapping they wouldn't re-assemble very tightly after more than a couple of times. If you have plenty of space to store this equipment assembled that probably won't be a problem, but as my garden shed is already full it would have been good to be able to put the thing back in its box, quickly and easily, between use. As it is, with the lower bars still in place, the top sticks out of the body by about 9" so you cannot close the lid.

* The button on the "safety catch" is awkward to reach when turning the machine on; of course, this might be argued to be a safety feature, but I just found it a pain.

So, it's a good scarifier, and as I see it, while not a true lawn aerator it has some aeration capability. Although not as ergonomically well designed as some pieces of equipment it appears well made, and none of these niggles stop it doing its job well. I'll live with these in return for the aeration facility, even if it's limited, and so it'll be this machine that I keep. It also appears to be pretty good value for money. I haven't heard of the Einhell brand before, but it looks like it's one to look out for.

The recent purchase of a new TV for the sitting room meant that I had a spare one, which I thought I'd put in my daughter's bedroom in time for her return from university for Easter. Problem: no terrestrial aerial, and only one Sky box (and little desire to rent a second one!). Having tried to use indoor aerials a number of times in the past with limited or no success, I wasn't holding my breath, but thought that it was worth a £20 punt or so. (I also, I admit, bought this one from a local supplier and would have taken it back had it not worked.)

It's not a particularly elegant device -the hoop antenna is fine, but the two telescopic metal antenna look old fashioned and ungainly - they are 3' long when fully extended, not that that seems to be necessary. Build quality seems adequate - nothing fancy, but not shoddy either - and there is a satisfying mass to the thing (which is just as well if it is to hold up the two metal antennae when fully extended.

Initial attempts to get the TV to auto-tune were entirely unsuccessful, so I thought that I'd be taking the device back and getting a professional in to mount an external aerial. Then I managed to find a site that actually listed the frequencies used at Crystal Palace, programmed the channels in manually, and in no time at all I had good reception for all of the terrestrial channels. The picture and sound are good - I can't say that I can tell the difference from the satellite quality. (The list of frequencies, by the way, came from a privately run web site run by a company in Sheffield - I couldn't find any "official" site, including the Freeview ones, that had this technical information. Hats off to ATV Aerial Sales!)

The aerial does have to be in the right place and the right orientation, however. It works on the window sill of an upstairs bedroom, well positioned for the Crystal Palace transmitter (although probably not quite line of sight). It doesn't work on the desk beside the TV. I haven't tried it, but I don't expect it to work on the south side of the house where it would be well screened from the transmitter.

One gripe is that the instruction manual is pretty limited. There is a website address on the card, however, which has a short video to explain how to get a signal. Neither explain the correct orientation of the hoop aerial - it appears to be perpendicular to the plane of the hoop (so you can think of it as looking through the loop to the transmitter - but you should bear in mind that in some environments your best signal, with these very high frequency radio waves, may be a reflected one. My experience suggests, however, that you need to programme manually, and to do so it really helps to know which frequencies you are looking for.