Paul McFedries

This is a book that should be recommended reading for everyone getting an Amazon Fire Stick for Christmas this year. From information on setting up a new Fire Stick or Amazon Cube TV to advanced instruction on voice activating commands, there is something to be learned in the Amazon Fire TV For Dummies book for the newbie and the experienced user.

I’ve had an Amazon Stick for several years and thought myself competent using it. The remote that came with the unit served for inputting show more programming search terms and for entering App usernames and passwords. Fortunately, I haven’t had a lot of login needs. In the first half of this book, the author introduced the Fire TV cell phone app and, in doing so, taught me how to handle search terms and my login input needs using the app’s keyboard. The app made search and logon information input quick and less painless. Whereas, doing the same tasks using the fire stick’s remote was time-consuming and torturous.

Having Echo devices throughout the house, I dare not say “Alexa” unless I intend to activate one of them. Therefore, voice commands using the Fire Stick’s remote do not interest me as you have to precede the command with “Alexa”. I, therefore, paid less attention to the chapters about Fire TV voice commands. Neglecting these chapters is not a bad thing since, in the book’s introductory, the author recommends, even encourages, you to skip around through the book to subjects that interest you or that you are most in need of at the time. I started doing just that after reading straight through the book’s first half as I found myself daydreaming as I got into chapters that were less relevant to me. Amazon Fire TV For Dummies isn’t a novel, it is designed to be a reference book. So, don’t feel compelled to read it fully and consecutively, review the index, and read the chapters that interest you at the time. You can then put it down and refer to it again when there is another feature you want to learn about. Thinking of ‘Amazon Fire TV For Dummies’ as a reference book makes it more likely that you’ll order it for your library. show less

I didn't know if I would learn a lot more about FB, since I have been on FB for a while now. However, this book is very comprehensive for different groups or topics that could be explored. It is especially valuable to a FB newbie who is starting out with a slow feed with few friends. Joining several groups of interest is a way to meet new people and enjoy reading while trying to locate friends and family. This book lists quality resources. This is not a gamer's resource, and that was why I show more liked it even more. show less

This book is wonderful for the new Twitter user, or someone considering Twitter, but as a seasoned Twitter veteran - so to speak - I found much of the information redundant and I had to force myself to not skip past many of the earlier chapters.

I did find a few things interesting: like a few of the sites mentioned in the last chapter, and the handy table of text commands (most of which I have to admit I wasn't even aware of) - and the tidbit that the same commands worked in the third party show more clients (I only knew d username message to send a direct message worked as such).

This book will be the most useful to someone who has either a) never pointed their browser to the Twitter site or b) has an account but only ever uses the site to update or check their timeline. Anyone else will be bored from most of the information given. show less

I love the visualness of it, and the explanations are fairly clear. But there's a *lot* that's not included.