Computing Internet Books

This book is great for tech learners of just about all levels. I consider myself technically inclined, however, there were still many things in this book that I had either never thought about, or just didn't know exactly how to do.

Lifehacker is a great collection of hacks that will make your life easier and more interesting. I recommend this book to anyone who possesses this desire.

I liked the approach that the author takes in offering 88 tips that she has found useful. You can really just pick up the book and open to any page and start reading about a tip. Oh, sure, they are organized into groups and some tips build on the previous tip or two; but you can snack on these whenever you want.

I leave this book on the table in my cube to let visitors thumb through it if they happen to be waiting for me.

If you're a "continuous improvement personality" like me; then you've probably already seen or adopted a bunch of these tips. But, there are so many tips/tricks that you are bound to find some that are new.

Well, it's a pretty cool book ... but, I have to admit I haven't used one trick so far. Not sure why, but a lot of them seem unrealistic to me. I'm sure someone can use them, but most are not for me.

This book is definitely worth the time to pickup and read. As someone who has a million shortcuts in my life, I was hesitant picking this book up. But the first 25-40 hacks are gold. Solid Gold.

Most of the information in this book can be found in various locations. But the author brought everything together in one place.

My only criticsm of the book, was that it was written for the layman, for the most part. Descriptions on how to use flicker etc, were uncalled for. We'll figure it out. And many hacks were completed half way...and never really completed with any flourish. I'd like to see a part II, which takes those same hacks, and takes them to the next level. Ie - Email yourself a backup hack taken to times 10 wiht backup, and information inside the email.

I bought this book, because Amazon recommended it automatically with this great book: The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

and I made a mistake. And this is NOT because the book is bad or poorly written or has no information inside. And this is why giving the stars here is hard thing. How to rate book if YOU can not use a single trick, because you just do not like them or do not need them?
Book is about (TECH!) tips, but I was buying the book, since3 I thought it will be more thinking and time management related.

Gina teaches you how to block entertainment website before 3 o'clock, before you had not done the job - no this or that website, Firefox will not allow you open it and so on so on. Every tip I read I answered - cool yes. Interesting - yes. Will I use it? No.

And so all the way in the book. What I want to say - if it is possible - TRY look inside the book before you buy - some people may find it useful, but if you are regular reader and search for time management books - i am afraid you will expect different book. This is most hard review I ever wrote here. I strongly suggest - get a sneak preview of some tips - you will LIKELY have a reactions like - interesting & cool.... by seems I will not use it.

Fairly easy to follow, covers all the content that is tested. Has many practice tests, flash cards, and the entire book on pdf included. Read this book cover to cover, do the practices, and you will ace the Network + exam.

I just passed my Network + exam yesterday. I self-studied and this book was the cornerstone of my preparation. It's well-written without the cheesy attempts at humor that you get in some of these certification exam books. It includes enough detail, but not too much (too much detail was a problem with the Exam Cram book I used to prepare for my A+).

The practice exams on the "Sybex Test Engine" CD are very helpful in preparing. On the other hand, I made one run through the "Network + Virutal Lab" CD and found it mediocre at best. The interface is clunky, there are formatting problems and bugs, and I never did figure out how to get the answers to the questions I didn't know. You could probably ignore the virtual lab, unless you have little or no real-world IT experience and need it to see what the Windows, Mac, and Linux GUIs look like.

Get this book and the flawed (but still highly recommended) "Network + Practice Questions" from Exam Cram by Charles Brooks. Read them both, make flash cards of all the information you don't already know, memorize your flashcards, and you should be ready to take the exam.

The good: I passed the exam with a 729 score.

The bad: The book is badly put together, and has some glaring omissions for anyone new to the subject. Just some examples, the discussion on CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA makes no mention in the text that one is for wired Ethernet and the other is for wireless. You do see where each technology is used, in a table 3 pages later, but that is not going to make an impression on anyone learning the subject. I didn't catch it until I missed the question on a Totalsem practice test. Chapter 8 on security also seems very badly arranged and a very quick gloss over of security protocols such as PPTP(not mentioned in Ch.8 but only in Ch.7), L2PT, or IPsec, with no mention of how they work or what they really do.

There was also at least one very confusing contradiction. In chapter 5 on network operating systems, the book stated that it is only possible for Windows servers to support Mac clients with special add-on software and only with limited support. Then a few pages later it states that Window NT and 2000 have built in support for Mac clients and that a Mac client won't be able to tell the difference between a Mac and a Windows server.

My other complaint is a faulty index. I can't count the number of times that I tried to look in the index to try to review something I had read only to be frustrated.

Not to be too hard on the book it is a fairly good book and was my primary textbook for the exam. But don't use it as your only source of information unless your willing to do a lot of your own research on the Internet.

I used this book and the "Network+ In Depth" book to study for my certification (I had a lot of time on my hands when I was preparing for it). The Sybex Network+ Study Guide has a good overall structure to it. It is easy to follow and laid out in such a way that you can easily map the sections to the objectives for the certification exam (however, they could have made it even easier to map out).

I read through this book, and then wrote my own study guide that mapped directly to the exam objectives, where I would have a section for each objective (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.) with the necessary notes underneath the section header. I found most of the basic info in the Sybex book, but there were certain parts that I had to look up on-line or in the Network+ In Depth book.

The Sybex Network+ Study Guide book also comes with some practice exams and electronic flash cards. I used those resources quite extensively and they did a good job relating to the material in the book (although there were somethings that didn't really correspond, if I remember correctly).

After preparing for the exam using the Sybex book and CD, I decided to double check that I had covered the right materials. I went online and looked for some practice exams. I was quite shocked by how different the questions were on those practice exams than what was in the Sybex book. It was a good thing that I consulted those other resources, because they certainly helped fill in a lot of the cracks that became increasingly apparent in the Sybex book.

When I finally took the Network+ Exam (2007 edition mind you), there were many questions that I was not familiar with, and the wording was also very different (I passed, by the way). I know that this may have something to do with the newer version (2007 Edition) of the test - but the subject matter is supposed to be the same, only some different wording on the questions.

Ultimately, this book is good at giving you a general idea of what to expect on the exam, but if you want to pass with satisfactory marks, do not rely solely on this text.

I just took the Network+ exam today and barely passed. The book has lots of good information, however it does not tell you everything you need to know for the 2007 exam! This book was written for the 2005 exam. Maybe if I took the 2005 exam I would have done much better, but I studied this front to back thoroughly and barely passed. There were many questions I had no clue on, because the book never spoke about it.

If you get this book, consider it a foundation, and then get something else that focuses on the 2007 exam. The book has very good information, just keep in mind that you will need to continue further than it gives you.

The book is well written by an author who knows how to make effective presentations. This is not a "how to" book for mastering PowerPoint. It is a guide for how to use PowerPoint to enhance presentations. People who suffer through tedious presentations and yearn not to inflict the same on others will benefit from reading this book.

Although I am a certified Power Point Professional I don't use Power Point anymore. Let me explain. Since Apple came out with Keynote it is far better so I left Power Point in the dust and has never been easier. For Power Point I will agree with the other commenters this book is one of the best I have seen even better than the "Dummy" books I used to recommend to my Community College classes. I would love to have seem a CD with some sample complete presentations.
The main thing I disliked about the book is the fact the illustrations are in Black & white. The only color is on the covers. I believe the book would be better if they were color and what is there would have better resolution.
I am a full time Minister and would love to see something from the stand point of when you have a lot of material you need to give the audience. I speak to the same audience 52 weeks a year and roughly do 110 presentations. I do pickup some points out of every book and this one is no exception.
I am waiting for a book, probably by a preacher who does as many presentations as a do to the same audience, dealing with how to deal with a lot of text putting full Scripture passages in the presentations.
This one is ok but I find it written more to the fellow that does business presentations. There is another audience unless I am the only Preacher that uses Power Point or Keynote.
Great job though Rick.

Why Most PowerPoint Presentations Suck
Altman's writing sets a new standard for "computer" books. I use the quotation marks because this book doesn't just cover PowerPoint, but also provides solid teachings on delivering more effective presentations, making it more of a "professional" book than one just on computing subjects. That aside, this is the best-written computer-oriented book I've read. Altman has an entertaining style while also clearly demonstrating his expertise on the subject through genuine tips and techniques that are easy to understand and use. If the title doesn't grab you the content certainly will.

I did not like this book as much as the other five-star reviewers on this page seemed to have liked it. And since someone else has already said something similar, I found my voice too.

This book tries to do too much in a series of unrelated chapters and is not too suitable for simple PowerPoint users. It also assumes too much from the reader and gets into technical PowerPoint jargon without considering if the readers knows what it means.

One of my friends on the PowerPoint newsgroup was not too happy with this book, but I disregarded her opinion and got this one based on the opinions from all the other reviewers here. I wonder why these reviews don't say more.

The author is more interested about his own life, events, and contacts than about PowerPoint. Almost everything is unoriginal and the author says that he learned this trick from this friend, and that friend. No wonder all the info comes up as half the info and although the writing style is good, the content is not deep enough. I'm sorry but that's my opinion.

Este libro ofrece información detalla acerca de la arquitectura de OCS. El contenido de este libro es amplio, ofrece un nivel de detalle que no he visto en otros libros, de lejos el mejor. Para los que lo están evaluando, no lo pienses dos veces.

OCS is a powerful product, enabling many different scenarios, and this resource kit is a must for administering it.

Just having the tools and OCS PowerShell scripts in one place is handy, but what makes the *book* a great buy is the content around the tools and scripts. The book is neatly organized by different scenarios, and show each of the reskit tools *as appropriate for each scenario*. That's a big help, because there are many useful tools and scripts here, but identifying which one(s) to use would take a lot of effort without this focus.

The material itself is structured so that it's easy to find high level information, but has deeper information embedded. It's easy to get right to the practical information while skipping over the deeper technical content if you don't need it, but it's easy to find and dig into that deeper material if you *do* need it.

Because of the organization and solid content, you don't have to read the whole book to get a lot of value. When I needed specific information about the changes from LCS (the previous generation of OCS), or when I needed to figure out the best tools tools to use for the *new* scenarios, I got practical guidance, quickly, on the appropriate techniques and tools.

Best of all, the book is filled with detailed and interesting side bars from experts, both within the Microsoft product team and from outside experts with extensive real world deployment and configuration experience. They were so much fun, I found myself skimming the rest of the book, just to read these sidebars.

This is a good, detailed look at Office Communications Server 2007. It has a lot of nitty gritty details, including information on how to debug the system with a network monitor and low-level protocol information. Where the book really misses the mark, is for administrators who do *not* have a giant, multi-site, zillion server network. Ironically, most sys admin books feel like the author only had access to 1 server to write the book, and admins in larger networks are left with no details on scaling out. This book goes in the opposite direction; huge portions of it are devoted to large networks, and all of the examples are for large networks. As the admin of a much smaller network, I found much of this to be useless, occassionally confusing, and trying to put me on an implementation path much more expensive than it needs to be for my organization.

J.Ja

This book explain in good way the general architecture of Office Communications Server 2007. This Microsoft product have many features and many server roles to install and configure and in the resource kit there are some real scenarios descriptions that facilitate undestanding. In the book's cd there are some important tools for better management of the Server. Don't are developed in deep mode the integration with others Microsoft servers like SharePoint Server 2007 and MOM.

The OCS 2007 Resource Kit is a must have for any OCS administrator. It has all the details about Office Communicator you need to fully support and understand this complicated product. It has all the WMI settings that any admin would need to make changes to there environment. Also detailed diagnostic information about IM, Conferencing, Telephony is fully exposed in their respective chapters. I highly reoommend it.

This is a book of advices on how to make the system running. Not just to write and release it (no pun intended), but to keep it running after the release.

The book is about prior planning for capacity and stability, designing systems capable of handling the load while being resilient and fault-tolerant, build it in a maintainable and adaptable way, so that it lives through the years. A great deal of information in it too.

Overall, it was a pleasant reading, because in most parts it matches precisely what I'm doing on my job and what I've learned to be the right way of doing through hard experience. As always, such practical convergence with published material is very comforting.

Why did I give it 4 stars then ?

Because the book itself needs more work.

It is poorly structured and is stylistically informal. It doesn't have a plot, but it is also not a collection of independent essays or articles. Near the end it feels like the author just gave up the structure and stuffed the book with random thoughts.

Despite the author's promise for each part of the book to have a case study, only 3 out of the 4 unconnected book parts are opened with one, and the studies are of anecdotal nature. A few pages of horror in everybody's eyes to find out that a janitor had accidentally pulled the plug, something like that.

As the few architectural patterns suggested by the author reside near the middle of the book, the first half is full of forward references, like "but wait till you see the MagicPattern !". The patterns when you encounter them are useful but are explained shortly and in informal manner again.

A lot of assorted hints, ranging from TCP handshaking to stripping whitespace off web pages and wrapping a web service around a database. Interesting, but inconsistent.

It is difficult for me to be unbiased about a book like that, because, like I said, it correctly describes many of the practical considerations that I already knew in the first place.

I'd say it is the kind of book for the architects with development past. It will be useless for you unless you have a lot of practical experience as a developer. On the other hand, if you are a beginning developer, it won't help much either because it doesn't offer any analysis or any kind of formal textbook kind of information.

Release It!: Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software (Pragmatic Programmers) (Pragmatic Programmers)

This book offers very sound advice, based upon Author's years of experience. Every serious developer/architect should own it. The only reason why I gave it 4 stars is that the book is devoid of code; it would have been % star plus, book had Author put some code samples there (even pseudo code or more diagrams).

Unlike many books (such as those with animal kingdom on their cover or photos of several programmers) this book is by/for a real software engineer with real life production ailments and antidotes for them. Even if all the use cases discussed here may not be applicable, if people follow at least 50% of those that apply I think there will less business outages, better user experience and a happier IT department.

On top of all the good technical stuff, this book also happens to be well written - enough to be just enjoyed for the anecdotes and such.

A must read for any software engineer of web applications!

There are dozens of technical books on my bookshelf, most of them quite good... but none as relevant and valuable an addition as Release It! If you are a professional involved in the development, deployment, and production support of modern information systems it is in your interest to get a copy of this book and (unlike many a technical manual) *actually read it*

I just completed reading Release It! by Michael T. Nyggard (Pragmatic Bookshelf 2007). It is part of The Pragmatic Programmers series. I have read the book cover to cover twice. At first, I thought that the book was just another book on how to manage projects. So What! The ideas presented in the book were common sense. I have been doing these same things for many years.

Then one day I was working on a project, and was trying to figure out how to handle a problem. I remembered what I read in Release It! about the topic. I grabbed the book off the bookshelf and looked it up; logging. The ideas presented are common sense, but how often have we missed to boat. The ideas presented in the book I implemented much to my own joy. The result was a customized deployment of the Java Logging system which is simple to maintain and does not require external libraries.

It was at that point I realized the brilliance of the book and the pragmatic side of things. I re-read the book. As an architect, project manager, developer, and maintainer of complex software ecosystems, the ideas in the book provide a "pragmatic" common sense approach to handling situations. The book is a learning tool, one person's personal perspective on software design and deployment, and a reference. It is an all-in-one book.

This book provides a great tutorial on how to manage complex projects for the novice, and a gentle practical reminder to the seasoned architect/project manager.

The book is divided into 4 major sections: Stability, Capacity, General Design Issues, and Operations. The first two sections provide the basis for the remainder of the book. The Stability and Capacity sections have divided the topic into an explanation, followed by general design patterns and anti-patterns. It explains in enough detail how to implement good patterns and recognize bad ones.

The section on General Design covers items like Administration and Security. There is nothing earth shattering in these sections, but they do provide a basis for a "check list" of items to make sure you consider in your designs.

The final section on Operations is the one where you will make friends with your administrators and keep your sanity. The portions on designing for monitoring including logging will be your savior at 2:00 AM in the middle of a blizzard. The discussion on designing for the future does not get enough attention in our modern get it out the door now world. This may be the push you need to think about it.

This is a book to have on your bookshelf. Mine is full of tabs and post-it notes.

As most O'Reilly books, this *was* an outstanding, readable, and indispensable guide for Tomcat development and administration. Unfortunately, it's sadly outdated: this book only covers version 4, while versions 5, 5.5, and 6 introduce many, many innovations and changes, and you don't want to waste time reading material that doesn't apply to the current versions. It is unfortunate that this book is still being for sale. This book has well deserved stars, but those starts are now obsolete. We all Tomcat lovers are looking forward for an updated edition.

'Tomcat: The Definitive Guide' is a great resource for all Tomcat programmers and administrators. Jam packed with 450 pages of material over 11 chapters, you will learn everything you need to know. Security, configuration, performance tuning, integration with Apache and building Tomcat from the source, this is a wonderful guide that should be on every Tomcat admin's desk.

**** RECOMMENDED

Jason Brittain and Ian F. Darwin's TOMCAT: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE, 2ND EDITION has been updated for the latest version of Tomcat and offers a complete guide to installing the servlet container, from basics of installation to using web applications, securing Tomcat from online intruders, troubleshooting and customizing the program. Any advanced computer collection strong in Java programming needs this.

This book is hopelessly incomplete. I'm always having to augment it's contents with on-line information. I just attempted to determine the difference between "path" and "docBase" in the "Context" tag in the server.xml file but again it struck out. All page 175 says is that "context" configures the web application directory within a host. End of story. I strongly suggest that you look to another source for Tomcat.

All of these other reviews, including some of the popular spotlights, seem to be about the first edition with quite a few people saying they were disappointed. I never read the first edition, so I can't remark on its content. However, this second edition seems to have all the details you need to get up and running, and Tomcat is not an area of my expertise.

In many cases Tomcat is a good choice for a web server, and it is well suited as a high performance production web server. It is also a free and open source servlet and JSP engine. You can use it by itself or with other web servers such as Apache httpd. The book is a user's guide for Tomcat, not a tutorial on how to write web applications. That misunderstanding might have had some readers disappointed. Thus, you don't need to be a programmer to understand the book - it is targeted more at system administrators. The following is a run down of the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Tomcat - explains how to install Tomcat, get it running, and test it to make sure that it's functioning properly.
Section 1.1. Installing Tomcat
Section 1.2. Starting, Stopping, and Restarting Tomcat
Section 1.3. Automatic Startup
Section 1.4. Testing Your Tomcat Installation
Section 1.5. Where Did Tomcat Come From?

Chapter 2. Configuring Tomcat - shows the various places to look for information about your server, how to find out why things aren't working, and gives you some examples of common mistakes in setting up and configuring Tomcat.
Section 2.1. A Word About Using the Apache Web Server
Section 2.2. Relocating the Web Applications Directory
Section 2.3. Changing the Port Number from 8080
Section 2.4. Java VM Configuration
Section 2.5. Changing the JSP Compiler
Section 2.6. Managing Realms, Roles, and Users
Section 2.7. Controlling Sessions
Section 2.8. Accessing JNDI and JDBC Resources
Section 2.9. Servlet Auto-Reloading
Section 2.10. Customized User Directories
Section 2.11. Tomcat Example Applications
Section 2.12. Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
Section 2.13. The Tomcat Admin Webapp

Chapter 3. Deploying Servlet and JSP Web Applications in Tomcat - shows web applications composed of servlets, JSPs, and other files, and several approaches for deploying them. It ends with a discussion of the Manager web application, which can handle some deployment operations for you.
Section 3.1. Hosts
Section 3.2. Layout of a Web Application
Section 3.3. Deploying an Unpacked Webapp Directory
Section 3.4. Deploying a WAR File
Section 3.5. Hot Deployment
Section 3.6. Working with WAR Files
Section 3.7. The Manager Webapp
Section 3.8. Automation with Apache Ant
Section 3.9. Symbolic Links

Chapter 4. Tomcat Performance Tuning - some ideas on performance tuning the underlying Java runtime and the Tomcat server itself so that you service requests more efficiently.
Section 4.1. Measuring Web Server Performance
Section 4.2. External Tuning
Section 4.3. Internal Tuning
Section 4.4. Capacity Planning
Section 4.5. Additional Resources

Chapter 5. Integration with the Apache Web Server - covers the use of Tomcat with Apache httpd and talks about the several ways of making Tomcat thrive in front of or behind an Apache httpd installation.
Section 5.1. The Pros and Cons of Integration
Section 5.2. Installing Apache httpd
Section 5.3. Apache Integration with Tomcat
Section 5.4. Tomcat Serving HTTP over the APR Connector

Chapter 6. Tomcat Security - details about what security is and how to improve it in your Tomcat installation.
Section 6.1. Securing the System
Section 6.2. Multiple Server Security Models
Section 6.3. Using the SecurityManager
Section 6.4. Granting File Permissions
Section 6.5. Setting Up a Tomcat chroot Jail
Section 6.6. Filtering Bad User Input
Section 6.7. Securing Tomcat with SSL

Chapter 7. Configuration - Using realms this chapter shows how to set up an example JDBC domain to talk to a relational database. Realms are lists of users authorized to implement specific sections of your web site. Many of the other configuration changes you can make are discussed too.
Section 7.1. server.xml
Section 7.2. web.xml
Section 7.3. tomcat-users.xml
Section 7.4. catalina.policy
Section 7.5. catalina.properties
Section 7.6. context.xml

Chapter 8. Debugging and Troubleshooting - Ways to look for information that helps discover why things aren't working and gives examples of mistakes that are commonly made but may not be obvious. Also discusses why Tomcat may not shut down gracefully and what to do about this common problem, as well as ways of preventing abnormal shutdowns from recurring.
Section 8.1. Reading Logfiles
Section 8.2. Hunting for Errors
Section 8.3. URLs and the HTTP Conversation
Section 8.4. Debugging with RequestDumperValve
Section 8.5. When Tomcat Won't Shut Down

Chapter 9. Building Tomcat from Source - How to compile your own Tomcat in case you don't want to run a prebuilt binary release of it. Gives step-by-step instructions on how to install the Apache Ant build tool, download all necessary support libraries, and build your Tomcat.
Section 9.1. Installing Apache Ant
Section 9.2. Obtaining the Source
Section 9.3. Downloading Support Libraries
Section 9.4. Building Tomcat

Chapter 10. Tomcat Clustering - Some options for running multiple Tomcat servlet containers in parallel for both fault tolerance and higher scalability, while discussing the pros and cons of various clustering approaches.
Section 10.1. Clustering Terms
Section 10.2. The Communication Sequence of an HTTP Request
Section 10.3. Distributed Java Servlet Containers
Section 10.4. Tomcat 6 Clustering Implementation
Section 10.5. JDBC Request Distribution and Failover
Section 10.6. Additional Resources

Chapter 11. Final Words - Overview of the Tomcat open source project's community resources, including docs, mailing lists, and other web sites.
Section 11.1. Supplemental Resources
Section 11.2. Community

Appendix A. Installing Java
Section A.1. Choosing a Java JDK
Section A.2. Working Around Older GCJ and Kaffe JVMs
Section A.3. Sun Microsystems Java SE JDK
Section A.4. IBM J9 JDK
Section A.5. BEA JRockit JDK
Section A.6. Apple Java SE JDK
Section A.7. Excelsior JET
Section A.8. Apache Harmony JDK

Appendix B. jbchroot.c
Appendix C. BadInputValve.java
Appendix D. BadInputFilter.java
Appendix E. RPM Package Files

I'm happy that I purchased this book, in spite of some of the negative reviews. It is an excellent easy to understand reference for the touch. Especially those like me who are new to iPod. It provides what Apple sadly does not.

I have to agree with the first reviewer. This book is only useful for someone who absolutely knows nothing about the iPod, iTunes, and portable digital music hardware and software. I was expecting a lot more from Erica Sudan. She has written good books and articles about hacking software and hardware, and I thought the "max" part of this book would get readers beyond the "ipod for dummies" information. Nothing wrong with "dummies" books, but I just expected lots more in this one. She barely devotes a chapter to jailbreaking the iPod touch, which she has written about on other websites. I like Sudan and I thank her for the writing she does, but I would suggest Scott Kelby's book on the iPod/iPod touch or another book titled, iPod: The Missing Manual. Those two books are much better laid and approachable for iPod newbies.

If I wanted another manual for my iPod, I would have downloaded it. This book is primarily an "iPod touch for dummies". The "secret, undocumented features" are either published by Apple or easily discoverable. The last chapter on jailbreaking & hacking is inferior to even the briefest google search.

Save your money and time. I returned mine the day after it arrived.

I needed a book that would take me step by step through every keystroke for every feature. There are a couple of places where this is the case, but too often it said things like "you can do "such and such" and just leave it at that. I need to know HOW do you do "such and such"! The one thing I am really pining for is to be able to play games! A simple Klondike, or Twin Towers or Aces High... I can't believe that my beloved Apple would go to all this trouble and leave out a way for loyal septuagenarians to get games.

First, I do not own an iPod Touch. I have a Classic iPod with video. I was interested in reviewing this book because I wanted to know more about the iPod Touch and if it is really worth the money. Having read through several chapters, I am now planning to buy myself an iPod Touch, although I may wait a little while to see what the next generation is going to be.
Here is what I found out using this book. Apparently, those who bought the iPod Touch early on had to pay $20 for a software upgrade that enables features which provide Mail, Google Maps, Weather, Stocks, and Notes. All newer models come with that upgrade now.
The iPod Touch is almost like having an iPhone but without the phone and the $60 a month fee. It uses Wi-Fi, so you are able to do a lot of things online such as checking stock prices, browsing news, looking at YouTube videos and so on. It has a QWERTY keyboard which allows you to type notes or email. Videos can be watched in widescreen just as on the iPhone by turning the iPod Touch horizontally. Instant Messaging is possible using the iPod Touch, but iChat is not included. That is really what I am waiting for. I figure the time to buy one is when I can do a voice or video chat with my iPod Touch. Then who would need an iPhone? Of course, the difference is an iPhone can be used anywhere and the iPod Touch needs Wi-Fi, which is not everywhere--yet. Also, not everyone uses iChat, but a lot of people I know do.
If you own an iPod Touch, then this book will teach you how to set up your email, use Safari web browser with it, check for traffic conditions, weather forecasts, and buy music from the iTunes Store while using Wi-Fi. It also tells how the iPod Touch operates by the touch screen and using your fingers to perform different tasks.

I'd have rated this a 4.5 if I could have.

This is an excellent book covering a very new subject matter. My only major complaint is that it seems a little rushed - I've found several typos, and even one section where a couple of lines of (important for that section) code are missing. (I figured out what was missing as I'm sure most people will.)

Also, the book is out of date. However, that is not the fault of the author or the publisher! It is that Amazon's service changes so quickly. The author and the publisher have made every attempt to mention the most recent changes to the service as of the time of writing, including pointing to places on the web to find out more information.

The material it covers is spot on. It goes through the different services that Amazon offers - including their storage, elastic computing, payment systems, and database systems. It clearly explains the disadvantages and advantages of each system, and provides -useful- code examples (in ruby) of how one can take advantage of the services Amazon provides. (There are examples in other languages, like Python, that the author makes available on the book's website.) Each section is devoted to a service for the most part, and the book is very readable.

As I said, I'd have rated this book a 4.5 if I could have. Outside of the errors due to rushing, it's quite useful and quite informative. The code is easy to follow, and I've found it very handy for working with the Amazon Web Services.

Excellent resource, but a bit droll. The content is laid out well, there are plenty of (working) examples, and there's pretty much no fluff to the book at all (in contrast to many O'Reilly books which add a fair amount of humor and distraction).
My chief worry when I received the book was that the title on the spine said "Programming Amazon Web Servcies [sic]". Yes, really the spine has a typo! The cover page does *not* have the typo. Obviously I was worried that the content might have similar brazen errors. But so far not so.
I'd recommend this book for anyone who needs an EC2/S3/AWS reference.

'Programming Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2, SQS, FPS, and SimpleDB' is a good resource for anyone that is using the Amazon suite of web products and need to learn more about how to get the most out of these powerful set of web 2.0 tools.

For anyone that doesn't know what these tools are, here's a quick one-liner about each:

S3 - online storage to store and retrieve data

EC2 - online computing to be able to run jobs on a farm of machines

SQS - web messaging infrastructure for computer-computer communication

FPS - flexible payment system for moving money online

SimpleDB - store and retrieve datasets online

I like the content of this book and feel that it plays an important part in this niche market but my major qualm is that the code is written solely in Ruby in this book. While that might appeal to a certain market, to only have this communication in Ruby and/or not use a more traditional language of the day I feel is a major mistake. For this reason alone I knock a star off but still recommend it to anyone looking to learn or use these incredibly cool technologies provided by amazon.

**** RECOMMENDED

This is a good overview of the suite of services that comprise Amazon Web Services (AWS), I'd have given it a 3.5 star rating if I could. It talks about all of them, but it spends the bulk of its time, very reasonably, discussing S3 (the persistent storage system) and EC2 (the compute cloud - basically Amazon's Rackspace in the clouds) - each getting about 100 pages devoted to it.

As others have noted it is out of date - but any book would have the same problem due to the moving target that AWS is. The biggest news is that EC2 is going to be getting persistent storage, which I believe will change the game completely when it is rolled out to the public. Instead of needing some elaborate connection with S3, now instances will behave much more like a typical physical machine with real disk drive. The book, on the other hand, provides almost no real advice on how to deal with the problem of non-persistence of EC2's current storage mechanism. This is a signifcant problem that everyone will have to deal with and glossing over it is a failing of the book.

This is also a Ruby book, which I found fairly annoying. Nowhere in the description does it suggest that it is done in Ruby. And while Ruby certainly is trendy these days, the actual number of Ruby developers is small - it gets undue weight in computer texts. At the end of the day, though, it generally provides the actual request strings and XML requests and responses for non-ruby folk to come to their own conclusions.

This is a worthwhile book to get if you're interested in quickly getting a good and broad idea on how to work with AWS. It will give a good foundation to get more out of the documentation and forums found on Amazon's AWS site itself.

Well.. I have pre-ordered that book back in Feb and was very anxious to get it. I read it cover to cover and could not find any how-tos, migration paths, implementation ideas, etc.. AWS is a new concept so many IT Directors and sysasdmins who have previously deployed "three tier" structure (DB - MiddleLayer - Web server) are desperate to find how to migrate your typical "data center" / "managed service" / "colocation" into Amazon web cloud (EC2 /S3)- besides lots of Ruby examples that book has little to offer: no structure, no migration. Bottom line: if you want to start fresh and "play" with AWS -this one is for you, if you manage 4 or 5 or 20 data centers and concern about how many servers do you really need and how to move your high availability application to Amazon - you need to look elsewhere.

Multichannel marketing is an excellent resource to learn about how you can combine on and off line marketing integrating it and providing metrics to evaluate campaigns. This is great for seasoned professionals or for those starting out in their career. Highly recommended read to expand your knowledge.

This book is written with excellent real-life examples and specific information. And it's written in a tone that's easy to digest, with a voice that's marketer-to-marketer. It's good to take a step back and understand how online and offline campaigns affect each other, especially if you don't actively do both for your job. I'm not finished with the book yet, but I've already subscribed to Akin's Blog (www.multichannelmetrics.com) and sent the link to my team!

As the online and the offline worlds collide from a marketing perspective, practitioners need to be fully prepared to leverage the wealth of opportunities this creates. The Multichannel Maketing book is targeted to this exact cause.
As an online marketer myself, I found this book extremely engaging and useful as we delve into combining our online and offline marketing efforts.
Since the only way to prove that our marketing efforts are paying off is measure, measure, measure, the measurement and metrics section of this book gave me a good grounding on what I need to do in terms of metrics.
Overall, it's a great book, especially if you are looking at multiple channels to achieve your marketing goals.

As a consultant, I interact with marketers everyday. Everytime I begin a new engagement, I spend volumes of time creating a common language and understanding around what "multi-channel marketing" means in today's world...certainly not an efficient investment of my time or my client's dollars.

FINALLY, there is a book that meets MY standards on both the theory and practice of multichannel marketing. Akin's book "Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success" provides unique insight and understanding to help marketers either begin the process of executing more complete multi-channel marketing efforts, or refine existing programs.

What I found especially compelling about Akin's book was the very natural and organic progression within each chapter. Chapters open with a quick summary of a business challenge/opportunity. His descriptions (often complimented by case studies) are direct and to-the-point...easily consumed by the multi-channel newbie. As he digs deeper into each topic he offers perspective that even the most seasoned CMOs will find actionable nuggets of wisdom in (I LOVED the Chapter 6 on Measuring Lift Between On-line and Offline).

In closing - is there value in Akin's first book? No matter what your currently level of expertise is...this book will make you a better marketer.

In this book, Akin Arikan walks us through the whole process of measuring online and offline activities using Web Analytics. He presents both theoretical advices and live examples of how his theories have been (can be) applied.

As a Web Analyst and an online marketer I look forward to adding the methods presented in the book to my repertoire. The jargon alerts alone are worth the read.

The book is very well written and should be required reading for marketers and analysts on the web. The interaction between online and offline is becoming more and more important, and companies must understand how to integrate all their marketing efforts.

I warmly recommend reading this book.