Computing Internet Books

This is a great handbook for starting up a blog (corporate or private for that matter). There is a lot of great info backed into this little book. I would highly recommend getting it for your team if you are starting a blog that requires a lot of support and buy-in. Nice work Byron & Steve.

BTW: If you ever get a chance to hear them speak on the topic, take it.

I have already been blogging, but this book helped me focus my efforts in a way that may help my business. Lots of great insightful info, and common sense explanations in this book. I found it very helpful and easy to read.

I need a blog for the homebuilt aircraft community, particularly those working with composite (fiberglass) technology. I work alone and will require additional help with developing a good active blog. This book has helped me to ask the right questions of the professional IT type who must help me get the blog going.

DL Byron and Steve Broback have really done an excellent job in writing this very thorough primer on blogging for business. The book, actually, is more than a mere primer: its breadth is surprising. They've managed to cover virtually every aspect of business blogging in a mere 180 pages. Quite an accomplishment and one the authors can certainly take pride in.

The approach is linear, beginning with an explanation of what a blog is, determining the focus of your business blog, the varieties of blog, design, tools for blogging, writing the blog, getting noticed, monitoring and managing and ending chapter on syndication and other fine points they refer to as "beyond blogging".

What is impressive is how much solid information the authors manage to convey without overwhelming the reader. The writing style is comfortable and spare. They avoid technical language and do a good job of explaining each point.

Overall this is one of the best books on blogging I've seen. It is practical, not theoretical and the authors left dogma and cant at the door. They are clear that blogs are not miraculous but can certainly help a company advance toward its goals.

Well done and a worthwhile read that will serve as a quick reference after you've read it.

Jerry

Blogging isn't just for the chatty consumer: not with the appearance of PUBLISH & PROSPER: BLOGGING FOR YOUR BUSINESS. Here it turns into a viable approach for furthering business, coming from business owners who offer real-world techniques and ideas to blog to improve business. Learn how to start such a blog and build momentum and interest to promote a brand, products, or customer relations. The authors have extensive background in the blogging world and in business alike and have put their premises to the test, so this offers realistic ideas already applied to solid business pursuits.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Wheaton has an interesting perspective on things due to his experiences as an actor, writer, voice actor, parent, spouse, and unabashed Geek. He uses his entertaining story-telling skills to share his observations and lessons learned.

As a regular reader of WWdN:In Exile, Wheaton's writer's "voice" has a conversational tone that I really enjoy. I am submitting this review primarily to reply to what several other reviewers have said about his conversations with his brain/himself. Others have said they find these annoying, but they're a part of Wheaton's delivery that I really enjoy. If you aren't sure if you'll enjoy his writing style, pop over to his blog and read a bit.

Wil is a great writer, learning to write about what he knows. This book provides a fascinating insight in the behind-the-scenes of Wil's life and of Star Trek TNG.

Like Mr. Wheaton's other book, I was very pleased with this one as well. I could relate to the "geekness", being a recovering geek myself.
Wonderful book.

"Just a Geek" by Wil Wheaton is an incredible book. Wil has proven himself not only a gifted actor, but a gifted writer. The book is raw and revealing. You feel every emotion right along with him. Tears well up when he does not land that role. You feel his love for his wife and stepsons. You experience the joy he finds in doing Star Trek conventions, meeting fans, and writing his blog. You will roll with laughter at the fireworks story. You see Wil, not as an untouchable Hollywood actor, but a real man, complete with all the trials, tribulations, and joys that all of us experience. My only complaint is with the foul language. This is not a book for kids, unless it is filtered by a parent, but it is a must-read, especially for the Gen Xer and Trekkie.

I bought this book because I started reading Wil Wheaton's blog and some of the articles he's been writing for various internet sites and found them to be very funny. So, I thought I was going to get a funny, behind-the-scenes look at Star Trek:TNG. I didn't get that. What I got was excerps from his blog over the past 5 years or so. And it really wasn't all that funny. I actually cried (yes, cried) a lot more than I laughed. But you know what? I wasn't disappointed. It turns out to be a peek inside WW's head and his journey from seeing himself as a washed up actor to being happy being a writer, family man, and "Just a Geek." It's really a much more human story that the average person can relate to (I know I did!) instead of being a gossip-fest.

Wheaton writes in an easy, conversational style sprinkled with interesting, occasionally brilliant descriptive turns of phrase. Is he the next F. Scott Fitzgerald? Probably not. But it is an easy, enjoyable read about a guy coming to grips with his life taking a big left turn that he didn't intend to take. Even if you don't know Wil Wheaton from Adam and have never seen a Star Trek episode in your life, you will enjoy this book, because it's not about being a Trekker. It's about being a human.

Excellent Book. Who said an old dog can't learn new tricks. Found several little tid-bits that have trimmed a number of my scripts or changed the way I've implemented services! A great desktop companion for advanced and intermediate admins.

This is a very good book. These remarks are for Linux users on the way up. If you are already an über-üser, well, you will probably like this book anyway.

If you don't have the first volume, you might want to start with it. It has some simple but very useful things that apply to just about anyone with their own Linux box and a command line.

This volume is much more advanced, and most of the tricks and techniques deal with much more specialized problem domains, ie. things you might not have run into yet. One advantage of this book over the first is that it is very up to date in its recommendations of existing software to use.

'Linux Server Hacks Volume Two' by William von Hagen is an outstanding companion guide for ALL Linux users and administrators. Packed with over 450 pages and 100 new hacks not in Volume 1, these aren't just known by everybody things that you can do with Linux, these are hot tips and tricks that most any Linux freak can excel from learning about.

Chapters Covered:

01. Linux Authentication
02. Remote GUI Connectivity
03. System Services
04. Cool Sysadmin Tools and Tips
05. Storage Management and Backups
06. Standardizing, Sharing, and Synchronizing Resources
07. Security
08. Troubleshooting and Performance
09. Logfiles and Monitoring
10. System Rescue, Recovery, and Repair

Pick this book up now, you will NOT be disappointed in this delcious Linux FEAST!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I can't say enough about the work done in Linux Server Hacks vII by the two Bs. Bill and Brian have hit the ball out of the ballpark with this one.

Just the section on LVM (Logical Volume Management) have saved my bacon!

Every single "hack" (read tip) is extremely practical, applicable and relevant to managing and administering Linux systems whether "servers" or not!

The absolute best part of this book is that you get really useful, insightful views into the experiences of seasoned veterans of Unix systems. If you sit in a NOC or if you're the 24x7 guy/gal on a server farm, this book is an occupational requirement! Everyone else will appreciate it if they're running Linux. In my modest network of perhaps 30 Linux systems, I can tell you that I saved hours of effort with just two of the hacks included in this volume. Considering the time savings, buying this book saved my company more than 300% on the cover price.

Are you a system administrator? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Bill Von Hagen and Brian K Jones, have done an outstanding job of writing volume two of a book that focuses on cool hacks they developed or used in their server and system administration careers.

Von Hagen and Jones, begin by exploring the authentication options that are available to you in heterogeneous networked computing environments and simplify administering user accounts and passwords. Then, the authors explore ways of connecting to remote systems. Next, the authors explain how to set up central servers that do things like synchronize the time on all the systems in your environment, deliver IP addresses to newly connected hosts, and integrate these services with existing ones. The authors then present a variety of cool sysadmin tips and techniques that they've accumulated over the years, including how to keep processes running without writing a daemon or staying logged in, how to use PXE to netboot Linux, how to share information with fellow sysadmins in a centralized fashion, how to get the most out of classic but incredibly useful terminal-oriented applications, and so on. They continue to explore some cool ways of making it easier for you to manage storage, deploy new systems, do backups of today's huge disks, and even reduce the need for some of the restore requests that occasionally clog every sysadmin's inbox. Then, the authors provide some tips and tricks for managing distributed storage and making sure the administrative environments on your servers are synchronized. They then discuss a wide range of security tools and techniques that can help you sleep at night and protect your systems at the same time. Next, they provide techniques for optimizing system performance, whether by figuring out who's hogging the entire CPU and shooting down that user's network sessions or by using cool knobs in the /proc filesystem to tweak system performance or using journaling filesystems to minimize system restart time. Then, they include hacks that enable you to centralize log information in a variety of ways, be warned when problems arise, and get the most out of system status information, whether it's log information, internal disk controller status data, or remote hardware status information that you can collect via SNMP. Finally, the authors show you how to boot crippled systems so that you can diagnose problems, repair munged filesystems, and even recover deleted files of data that was stored on disks that have gone belly up.

This most excellent book has presented hacks that are techniques that the authors have used at various times. More importantly, they view these techniques as time- and hassle-savers that are usually downright fun and cool.

At the moment the only real game worth playing is Google. No, I'm not a spokesperson for them but it is clear that if you're going to play you ought to play with the guys that own the ball. There is power in "Building Your Business with Google for Dummies". The best thing is that when you meet the Google criteria and succeed with them you can use the exact same business building blocks with any other resource. Brad Hill understands this and does a great job relaying his knowledge via the "Dummies" format. I'm beginning my second read-through. Thanks Brad.

Larry J. Frieders, RPh
[...]
340 Marshall, Unit 100 ~ Aurora, IL 60506
Tel 630-859-0333

This book took my business, AUDIN Web Design, to new heights. Now anyone can just type in AUDIN Web Design in Google (or Yahoo and MSN, for that matter) and find me. This book allowed me to master Google, the juggernaut of search engines. If you cannot tame that tiger, you will not survive in the market place. My company, AUDIN Web Design, has helped many small business get ranked on Google. This is my bible. I carry it around wherever I go. I advise everyone to read this book before consulting a professional about your online search needs. You could get ripped off if you are not wise about your choice of Company. This book has given me such confidence with the Google juggernaut, that my company now offers a 100% money back guarantee policy. A lot of companies can't offer that because they don't know what they are doing. Read this book and get informed. It could save you lots of money, yes money, the stuff you work so hard for. The stuff makes the world go round.

Since Google is currently master of the universe you need to understand what Google is looking for when it ranks web pages. This book not only does that but goes into detail of other Google services like froogle, adsense and adwords. I highly recommend this book to anybody trying to build a presence on the web.

"Building Your Business with Google For Dummies" by Brad Hill is one of many options for learning Google's tools. This one is focused on using it to promote business websites.

You might not need this book. To find out, go to Google's website, and create an account. Look at the FAQs, testimonials and the help areas. Much of what's in Hill's book is logical, but is organized in as sensibly as any I have seen. I need this book for that reason. It saved me time from having to learn this information in a too slow trial-and-error way.

You'll learn a few important things about Google, and how to help them help you attract traffic, sell products, or create interest in your website.

AdWords
I have an online e-commerce site, and need to know Google. As a smaller business, I can't compete with the major companies in being listed in categories I feel are important. That's where Google AdWords comes in. It allows me, for a fee per click, to compete.

Hill's explanation of strategies and process is solid. There are ways to lose money, and he helps show how to test keywords, use ad groups, edit ads, and how to bid intelligently. He also looks at the premium service that allows big businesses to use oogle with less worry about click-through rates.

AdSense
AdSense, the tool that places Google ads on websites based on the page's content. While I only make a few cents when a vistor clicks through an ad, it helps me provide a service to my customers who do not feel my site met their needs.

Hill explains how AdSense makes money, and warns against cheating.

Increasing Your Page Rank
No one knows Google's formula for ranking pages. The most important factor is having useful information, being linked on other like-minded sites, not abusing the process.

Hill tells you what page rank means, and how to avoid mistakes many webmasters make. This includes tips on design, domain choice, keyword use.

Using Froogle and Google Catalogs
These are two features I have never used. Hill gives a good overview of this Google tool, which provides exposure to those websites selling products in a catalog-style, or through AOL and Yahoo shops.

I fully recommend "Building Your Business with Google For Dummies" by Brad Hill.

Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com

This book was very helpful in teaching novices how Google works with online businesses in order to make the businesses more profitable and also make Google move valuable. The techniques were easy to apply.

Ed
http://www.imonitsoftware.com

An excellent resource on risk analysis techniques and methodolgies. The breadth and depth of coverage fits a wide range of audience. I work in information security and found the concepts and details very very helpful and ones I could relate to in my work. The organization of the chapters and overall book is very logical and facilitates overall readability. I wuld highly recommend this book to anyone working in any aspect of risk assessment/management.

2 thumbs up!

After having read the book, I was left with a mixed feeling. The content of the book is OK. Not special, just OK. If this book changed your way of thinking about risk, then this is probably one of your first books you read on the subject. I give the book content 4 stars, since it's decent, easy to follow and fairly complete. Besides that, the author included three good articles at the end of the book, one of which (by Caroline Hamilton) is particularly well-written.

Now for the style. I can only agree with one of the other reviewers regarding the comment he made about proofreading the book. I wonder if the book was proofread at all. There are so many errors and annoyances in this book, it starts working on my nerves fairly quickly. To name but a few:


The writer contradicts himself on several occasions. Sometimes this gets hilarious:
- Page 30: [The cost/benefit analysis] is the most important step of any risk analysis process.
- Page 35: As discussed in the previous example, the scope statement is the most important element of the risk analysis process.
- Page 39: The most important element of any risk analysis process is the recommendations of controls and safeguards... etc etc.


I understand that mister O'Leary is his mentor, but don't tell me five $%^$@ times that he is the Director of the Education Resource Center (pages ix, 12, 13, 65, 66).


The spelling errors are a real pain in the butt:

- page 217: "Aurebach" instead of "Auerbach" (my favorite; it's his own publisher).
- page 16: "can shared" instead of "can be shared"
- page 36: ".appropriate" instead of "appropriate"
- page 43: "their role" instead of "his role"
- page 45: "control" instead of "risk" (last word on the page)
- page 46: "these" instead of "there"
- page 47: "guideline" instead of "guidelines"
- page 55: "their" instead of "its" (it refers back to "job")
- page 64: wrong comma usage
- page 71: "in" instead of "it"
- .....
- page 162: "Originizational" instead of "Organizational"
- page 217: "Ozierz's" instead of "Ozier's"


The writer uses the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V too many times. Definitions should be reworded, not blindly copied. See pages 7 and 57, pages 47 and 72 etc.

Sometimes bulleted items in the same list have a trailing dot, sometimes they haven't.

I can go on and on.

To wrap it up, the writing gets 1 star. Equals 5 stars. Which will be rounded to 2 stars, simply because of his sloppy writing. If the writing were better, I might give it 3 or 4 stars.

As a corporate leader and IT leader, I need proven methodlogy and opinion from experienced leadership. "This crucial process should not be a long, drawn-out affair." What?! This is an essential capability of corporate leadership. "To be effective, it must be done quickly and efficiently." Okay... Let's look at what the risk management process is and, today, consider that it transcends business and requires managers and executives who - just perhaps - grew up in the information age. They cannot rely on the work of those who did not, and/or are trying to market a product. Lead the way leaders of the future. Protect your business by understanding and managing it yourselves instead of following people who want to sell you books and make money off of your business core competence. It takes real leadership from informed management who did more than read a book. Understand issues, solve problems, hire people/leaders who know how to handle risk from all vectors and retain the talent that preserves the future of your business. Listen to them. Challenge them. Build a system that manages your risk. Maybe this book offers something, but be your best counsel.

This is a great book about risk. Very valuable. Written in a clear and easy to understand style.

A bargain at 5 times the price. You can't get this info and data anywhere else.

After reading a large number of security books and papers, you come to an uncanny realization: if an author does not misspell HIPAA in his entire work, he's gotta be good! But then again, if a guy was a CSO when I was just finishing my elementary school, I am sure he knows something about security...

Here is what I have to say about this title: it is good, but pretty dry. And I happen to hate dry books. However, I am willing to make an exception for this one, since it is a management book about security risk. It won't teach you how to hack, scan, exploit or protect and firewall, but rather how to define, document, manage, organize and facilitate.

I would recommend the book for those involved with formal risk assessment for organizations. Admittedly, I do not fit this profile myself, but I enjoyed it since the author presents a somewhat novel approach to security risk assessment (called FRAAP) and I was curious about it. I also liked the section on mapping controls, such as HIPAA to ISO17799, etc.

Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., GCIA, GCIH, GCFA is a Security Strategist with a major security company. He is an author of the book "Security Warrior" and a contributor to "Know Your Enemy II" and the upcoming "Hacker's Challenge III". In his spare time, he maintains his security portal info-secure.org and his blog at O'Reilly. His next book will be about security log analysis.

Dear sir:

I don't give long reviews but to let you know I was satisfied with this purchase.

I am a book guy when it come to learning/solving problems on the computer. I have some great books that help me out every time I have a question. This book is sooo not one of them. I always go to this book first when I have a question about Word 2007, and it always disappoints. What the heck book were all these reviewers using? Awful.

If you have Word 2007 or plan to get it, this book is a must have. Word 2007 is DIFFERENT and then some, but all the answers are here. The large heavy tome is indexed and divided so that the answer to almost any question can be found. It may even tell you more than you care to know. Not a beach read, but a very helpful desk reference.

This text is excellent if you already know something about using Word 2007. Has many details especially about technical actions needed when you are composing book files.

If you know little to nothing about Word 2007, this is not the book for you. It too often assumes you know the answer to the question you are trying to answer. Common terms that you might use if you are familiar with 2003 are not used here, so the index is useless. Save your money.

I had the chance to read this book, and found it well written, comprehensive and extremely useful reference. It is amazing how all the "predictions" from the moment the book was written (1999) are now (2007) a reality. I'd really like to see the 4th Edition, not to see a change in its contents or layout, but to see upgraded information on the products.

The picture shown back then has now been cleared up, and some of the actors back then are now gone and others have appeared.

If you are not familiar with the Client/Server and Web programming jargon and/or are having trouble figuring out how all of the pieces fit together, this book is for you.

You'll need to get past some of the 'cuteness' that the authors use to make their points. However, they cover the topic soup to nuts in a way that you will understand going forward.

I picked up the first edition of the book by accident when I was trying to figure out fat client server computing and subsequently bought the other two versions to get more overview and to use as a desk reference (i.e. I had to explain the concept of ACID properties of transactions and needed a brush up)

Lastly, if your manager is non-technical, do yourself a favor and get him/her a copy of this book.

I found this book very interesting 1.5 years ago when I read it. Partially because there was a very good match between what was written in there, and what I could hear around me in the work place.

Time has passed, and I hear less and less talk about CORBA (except in negative terms), and more and more talk about Websphere (based on some technologies explained in the book also - I have to say)...

The third edition remains mostly interesting, but it is now more of a book providing background information, rather than a book providing cutting edge info and likely to help people make choices for the future.

I am impatiently waiting for the fourth edition.

Bernard

Pros:

- Easy to understand
This book explains technical concepts in simple english and gives analog to things we are familiar with. Most books out there "talks greek" and present technical concepts in a way that is more complicated than they actually are.

- Breadth
I have been in the IT line for more than ten years and I can say that the breadth covered is simply astounding eg. user interface,
web server, application server, databases, remote procedure call, message passing.

- Depth
The important parts of a topic is covered in sufficient depth to allow us to have a overview of the subject without being deeply buried and lost in the details. If further details on any topic is required, one can always look up the other books. We just need a good overview here.

- Humor
I loved the humorous cartoons that aptly describe the concepts and keeps us from falling asleep.

- Organization
The topics are well organized with similar concepts grouped under a common heading with subheadings and so on. Most books out there group multiple large concepts under one heading (with no subheadings) making it harder to read and bookmark.

Cons:
This book is outdated. We need to know where does microsoft .net framework fits in. Is COM/COM+ dead ? Who is winning - .net or CORBA ? What about new standards such as SOAP ? What does microsoft new language C# brings to the world of client/server ?

I found this book to be both a waste of money and my valuable time. I was looking for an intermediate to advance level treatment of client server systems. I was utterly disappointed. This book attempts to start from the very basic fundamentals and delve into the more advanced concepts. It miserably fails at its task. For the intermediate to advanced level readers, it fails to deliver what they were expecting. For example, 80%+ of each chapter is devoted to covering the basic terminology and the remainder tries to touch base on the various technologies. I found the coverage to lack detail and completeness. If you happen to be a begginer at the subject matter, you may be even more disappointed. Skimming through the fundemantals, I was surprised to find the basics were explained in terms of the advanceds. For instance, middleware was explained in terms of its utility in transaction integrity and load balancing. Anyone who understands transaction integrity and load balancing doesn't need an explanation of middleware. He/she would most likely be interested in specific methodologies. And, anyone who doesn't know what middleware is, most likely will not know what transaction integrity and load balancing mean. This book is full of such, let's say, logical inconsistency. ...

Cyber_Reader compiled and edited by Neil Spiller is an impressive and erudite anthology of texts and essays on the theme of cyberspace. Most of the essays are from the 1990s, though a few appropriate excerpts from earlier cyberspace history are included. An amazing and eclectic selection of learned opinions and analysis make Cyber_Reader an engaging, informative, seminal, at times challenging, and always highly recommended study of how virtual reality shapes our living world to this very day.