Computing Internet Books

I'm not writing this to discredit the book. I think it is very well done. I just think it should be made clear that this is a beginners level book. There is a lot of emphasis placed on translating cat os into native. There are also numerous examples of how to configure various topologies. I think it is very well done. However, anybody who can read and use the univercd, will have a wealth of knowledge, far beyond what can be contained in this book, within a few mouse clicks.

If you are familiar with only one of these operating systems and require knowledge of the other. This is a good buy. I always had trouble trying to interpret the logic used the catos. But, concerning gaining a deeper understanding of switching, I didn't get anything from this one.

This book covers 2900 Series up to 6000 Series Catalyst Switches including Catlayst 3500XL and 2900MXL Series. This book is not for CCNA wannabe's, cause it doesn't include Catalyst 1900 Series. Besides, you should know Cisco Switching before attempting to read this book. This book is more help on your day to day Cisco Catalyst administration job.

This book beats Cisco LAN Switching (CCIE Professional Development). It covers those topics that Cisco LAN Switching lacks - from Switch Functionality, SE Configuration, creating VLANs & Trunking, STP, Multilayer Switching, to QOS. More examples than LAN Switching.

This book, together with the Cisco Routers for IP Routing Little Black Book (by: Innokenty Rudenko) and Remote Access for Cisco Networks (by: William Burton and Bill Burton), your daily administration of Cisco devices will be easy as you have never imagined. Of course you need at least a CCNA Advanced Level or a CCNP level to use these three books.

I'm a CCNP/CCDA supporting Internet Data Centre / Internet Service Provider Core Routers/Distribution Switches/Access Switches and I found that this book is valuable to my daily administration tasks. I highly recommend this book for Cisco Catalyst administrators.

CiscoPress's "Cisco Field Manual: Catalyst Switch Configuration" by Hucaby and McQuerry is a very strong attempt at documenting the configuration implementations of Cisco switches. Any Cisco Switching book is going to need to make a decision as soon as the first page - and that is how best to document the two separate and totally different versions of Cisco Catalyst operating systems - COS and OS. This book takes a different tact - and one that I think works very well. Instead of splitting up the two OS domains and describing each in their own respective sections - the authors have decided to show how to implement both types of commands at the same time. This little difference is profound in the way it helps demonstrate the use of each command and eliminates redundancy found in other all-in-one switching books.

It is important to note that this is not a Switching-101 book. You definitely need a decent understanding of the various subjects - Spanning-Tree Protocol (STP), Virtual-Trunking Protocol (VTP), etc... The book does a good job at discussing the different implementations of Vlans and Trunking (Chapter 6).

One reassuring item to note is that I did not find any typos in the book. I have used this book while studying for my CCIE R&S lab (I think a lot of CCIE candidates forget that the `S' in R&S stands for Switching). I have also used this book for real-world implantations. I feel the utilitarian value of this book is much higher than Hucaby and McQuerry's similar book on Router configuration.

I give this book 4 pings out of 5:
!!!.!

The author has put together a very clear and concise book which is essential for engineers. Whether using it as a reference or to read it cover to cover it is well worth the purchase. A+

I am a network engineer and use the Catalyst 2900, 2950, 3500 and the 4000's on a daily basis. We do a lot of VLAN configurations, trunking using 801.q, static port access, along with other various switch configs. This book has been indispensable for my daily routines. There has not once been an instant where I couldn't find the answer to what I was trying to accomplish when configuring a Cisco Catalyst Switch. This also gives you the commands for COS and IOS and also tells you which switch supports what and which switch doesn't (example: the Catalyst 2950 supports 801.q by default, where others support ISL by default). I highly recommend this book for all your switching administrative needs.

This is one of the excellent books on designing on-demand ecoystem.

This book is a MUST HAVE for every manager or student who still believes that much has to be known about what is coming to us in the XXI Century. Anyone who has heard or met Dick Nolan, a Professor at the HBS, is very aware of his down to earth, creative, and witty mind. He will be part of Management History and this is not an understatement since, in my view, he already is. He brought, in 1974, IT to the minds of the Directors at Boradrooms by his "Stage by Stage Theory," nowadays commonly accepted by everyone. He foresaw the need for Strategy to meet IT and the Humanities. His previous 1996 book "Creative Destruction" led the way for others to recently follow the field, ideas, and even the book title. He went on to build Nolan Norton & Co., a Management Consulting Firm that everyone has been trying to copy without success. In this new book, once again, Dick et. al. compiled the best thoughts he alreday had before "the internet bubble." He waited to get this book published because he dosen't like to be seen as a forecaster. However, whatever he says, will be done in the future by every sustainable business. His thoughts and wisdom have created a school of thought from which even the Balanced Scorecard came to be a reality in 1988!

As a Kellogg MBA student, this text was suggested reading for an IT Strategy course. My understanding of IT for strategic advantage was greatly enhanced through the readings in this book. I believe it is a must read for anybody who wants to know what some of the World's most successful companies are doing to enhance their current product with technologies currently available to everyone.

While attending Delivering Information Services at The Harvard Business School, and during the Session on "Case: Barnes & Noble vs. Amazon.com," I discovered this book. The book is now used in the course "Competing in The Information Age." This course is geared toward MBA students who want to work in the Technology industry.

What attracted my immediate attention was the course description which said that "class participation accounts for 50 percent of your grade." This book embodies The Harvard Business School "Case Method" which encourages interaction among the class participants. This is the context from which my reading interest expanded.

The content of the book is organized around "the big picture" and does not get bogged down into minutia. The content grows from other books by the editors: Globalization, Technology and Competition; Future Competition in Telecommunications; Reengineering the Organization: Transforming to Compete in the Information Economy; and Creative Destruction: A Six-Stage Process for Transforming the Organization.

The underlying theme of this book is the internet and how it is changing business.

This book has been an incubator for other books coming into the market with a similar title. For example, Scott McNealy, Chairman of Sun Microsystems, has co-authored "The Power of Now: How Winning Companies Sense and Respond to Change Using Real-Time Technology."

Another spawned title is "Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense-And-Respond Organizations", by Haeckel and Slywotzky.

The authors are able to influence discussion significantly on an on-going basis. Professor Bradley is Chairman of the Executive Program in Competition and Strategy Area at Harvard. This area includes high powered thinkers and lever-pullers, such Professor David Yoffie who is on The Board of Directors of Intel Corporation and whose case studies have sold over one million copies. Professor Noland is the current Faculty Chairman of Delivering Information Services which has been a big success story for decades.

Because the editors are so influencially "wired into" many large corporations and academic communities, I think this book will continue to show continuing influence, as evidenced by boopks spawned from the subject and title.

Anyone will interest in internet technology should enjoy this book as I did.

This book is awesome. Very easy to read & follow and quite informative. I was able to make a really cute flash within 2 chapters and 2 hours. I can't wait to see what I can do when I'm done.

Flash is a complex program with innumerable functions. Phillip Kerman breaks the program down into bite-size chunks and leads you through each one step by step. His explanations are concise and easy to understand and always followed immediately by practical exercises so that right from the outset you get your hands dirty creating things using the program. The absolute beginner will have a solid overview of the basic functions of Flash by the end of the book and be able to begin experimenting with a project. The book's well-organized structure and detailed index would also make it ideal as a reference tool for those who already have some knowledge of the program.

It takes FOREVER to get to the point and many times there is repitition over the instruction. Sometimes in the same paragraph! A good book that gives information yes, but it could easily have been cut to a third the size.

I bought this book last month due to some good feedbacks. But when I read, it seems the book is too much unnecessary words just to make it look thick but the actual content is thin. I would recommend to learn from the help section of the flash program itself. It's much more clear and right to the point not like this book. From there then google up and you will find a lot of more better tutorials than this book and best of all, it's free!

Hi all, first of all, I just want to thank all the people who had written the comments on this book. It had helped me a lot in making a decision in buying this book. Thanks.

As for the book, I just got it. I am in Hour 2 and so far, it has helped me soooo much. I am new to Flash and I think this will be a great book for all the people who are new like me. I gave it a 4 stars rather than 5 since I haven't finished the book yet and can't comment on the whole book. But base on the first 2 hrs, I think once I am done with the book, my rating would be a 5 star.

This book is readable, nice to look at, and does a good job of pulling a lot of information into one place. Finding information about the different GIS packages in the web is a challenge. If you don't know GIS already, like me, you're lost. This book helped me find my bearings, and in no time I was able to take shapefiles, do processing on them, and display the results in a web page dynamically.
The problem with this book is that it's fairly shallow. It will give you a couple of basic examples of how to use some pieces of software, but for anything more complicated, you have to look elsewhere. There is frustratingly little information on mapscript, but, overall, I'd say the book fulfills its role.

Author doesn't assume you know anything. Examples are UNIX, but he explains very well. He doesn't talk down to Windows users (apparently Mapserver installs easily on Windows). Very exciting. Explains map projections well. Good reading on the airplane. If you're an open source geek and/or a GIS person and a UNIX enthusiast, you'll be very happy.

This is an interesting, well written intro book for open source web mapping enthusiasts. I found some helpful tips and also appreciated the traps to avoid sections. The material gave me a greater knowledge and appreciation of MapServer in particular allowing me to move onto more in depth books quickly.

With revolutionary technology, Google Earth now lets computer users zoom through space to specific sites all over the world. Mapping is also making great strides in the law enforcement world, where geographic information systems (GIS) have been replacing pin maps. Systems such as New York City's COMPSTAT have been highly successful in mapping and depicting virtually any combination of crime/arrest locations, crime hot spots, and other information in real time.

While not specifically written for law enforcement, Web Mapping Illustrated is a valuable guide for those who are interested in using maps and other GIS tools. The Internet hosts many open-source mapping tools, making the creation and publishing of online maps much easier and more effective.

Web Mapping Illustrated is written for those wishing to avoid expensive commercial software mapping systems and instead use open-source and other free tools. The book details the use of free mapping software and tools such as MapServer, GDAL, OpenEV, and PostGIS. It also explains how to find, collect, understand, use, and share various mapping data sources.

All 14 chapters are well written and organized, progressing from the basics to the publication of sophisticated interactive Web maps. Fittingly, the book makes effective use of numerous full-color maps and software screenshots

To be short and to the point... the title basically covers the primary issue I had with the book... I felt most of the book could be summed up in about 20 pages but yet it was still a full book of how to go get a free piece of software, connect a GPS, and chart where you were going...

Note: I was most likely disappointed because I was truly looking for a much more technical discussion on how GPS databases work and how to decode GIS information. In the past when I have prucased books form the publisher they were much more in depth on technical aspects of the systems, data, and so forth. In this case it was a discussion of how to sue free software and a GPS... no truly what I had in mind.

Oh, well... other I'm sure will enjoy it... just didn't fill the bill for me...

Broadband Network Architectures: Designing and Deploying Triple-Play Services provides a detailed introduction to next-generation triple-play services, components and business connectivity, covering everything from protocols and strategies for blending BNGs into networks to choosing access protocols and handling IP addressing. Any college-level computer library strong in network design needs BROADBAND NETWORK ARCHITECTURES, which addresses the latest field-tested industry best practices and trends.

I was looking for a resource to get up to speed on capabilities, options and configurations as my company is facing decisions in this area. This book does an excellent job providing background and bringing you right up to where broadband networks stand today. As my company and customers are spreadout, we are interested in video and telephony over the net and the book has complete coverage of "triple play" scenarios with multiple vendors. This is a very useful resource.

Practical and easy to follow implementation stategies for triple play services on a broadband architecture. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone involved with network architecture design.

I ordered five new E-bay books. I received five books however only three were what I ordered. I am so turned off on Amazon.

eBay Quick Steps
A book review by Frank Dobrowolski
May 12, 2005

by Carole Matthews & John Cronan
Published by McGraw-Hill/Osborne
ISBN 0-07-225506-4 2004 240 pages
List price: $16.99 On Amazon: $11.55 +S/H

This is a short book, with wide margins and many vivid color illustrations and tables. As a result it is a quick read - per its title. It has a simple, direct approach which works well for eBay beginners and novices. It also contains some information that likely would help advanced users.

I like the illustrated, annotated Walk through of an eBay Transaction
1. Prospective seller registers to sell an item on eBay
2. Takes photos of object to sell and writes a description of it
3. Enters the description, photos, payment terms, shipping information, and other supporting material into eBay's auction selling form
4. Track the item as buyers start bidding on it
5. The buyer registers to participate in the auction
6. Buyer finds the item and bids on it
7. Buyer wins the auction and connects with seller to verify the details and the buyer pays the seller
8. Seller sends the package per the shipping terms specified
9. Buyer receives the item
10. Buyer and Seller provide feedback about each other in this transaction.

The Find Your Way around eBay chapter begins with a page-filling illustration that is typical of this book. The eBay home page is shown and eight areas are picked with a comment on each. The chapter continues with more large figures and sidebar "Tips" and "notes".

One page is filled with a table that lists the type of auction, gives a description and notes requirements. For example:
* Auction - Buy It Now [Fixed Price]
* Description - Offers the item for a given price and there is no auction
* Requirement - Seller must have a feedback rating of at least 30 and be a registered user for at least 14 days of be ID Verified.

The guidance on ID Verified contains 11 steps and one figure, one Note and one Tip.

The following chapters are similarly presented in easy to follow text with numerous colorful illustration, tables and sidebars. Chapter 9 presents information I have not seen this in other books on eBay and it is done well here. The Chapter
has sections entitled
* Detect and Report Account theft
* Use Buyer Fraud-Protection Measures
* File a Fraud Alert
* Set up a Bidder Alert
* Block Bidders or Buyers
* Report Unwelcome Buyers
* Use Additional Resources
a. Security Center
b. Law Enforcement & Other Resources

This may be the best book on eBay I have seen for beginners and novices in using eBay. Advanced users probably would find some information that they could use.

If you want to have sophisticated webpages without using Net Framework 2 or 3, then this book is a must. I highly recommend it.

I bought this book as a complete reference to the javascript/jscript language. Instead I got a much to broad beginner's guide. The index is lousy, which makes it even worse as a reference, and server side javascript is mostly ignored.
If you want a javascript beginner's guides, sure you can go for this one, but it is definitely not for advanced programmers, it hasn't helped me solve one single problem.

This book does not cover the details of most of the Javascript objects. The examples are good enough for beginners who are just getting to know javascript.

Mastering Javascript is an excellent book for a newcomer to JavaScript, but I find that its value for updating my previous knowledge of JavaScript was much less than I expected. The book is a hefty 1100+ pages, and they avoid providing beginner's information on HTML, thankfully. Yet the language in the book is somewhat dry, even considering normal standards of writing in similar style books.

The book is good for those who already have a background in programming, and are interested in venturing into JavaScript. There are extended JavaScript examples in the book, and sample code is provided on a companion CD.

A very appreciated section on XML is included, and this was the section I focused on the most. Yet it doesn't develop it as much as I would have expected it to, considering how much it had already done with previous topics.

All in all, I would have enjoyed it more if this had been my first introduction to JavaScript. As is, it is still a good ride, though not as satisfying the second time around.

I'm about half way through the book and I find that is very informative, easy to follow. The one think I don't like is that it is focused on older browser development for Navigator 3. But I would definetly recomend this book to others.

I give this book 5 stars for the methodology (GUIDS) used alone. I think I can use that in my work. The chapter on interface layer is also good, but might confuse a beginner vb.net programmer. Overall the book is great, however, the chapter on business layer is not what i have expected. It delved on interfaces and state management of object for most of the chapter, but seems to be getting nowhere with the sample. I will have to read the chapter again to understand it fully, as I got lost in the process. I was actually expecting object collaboration on this chapter, but that was left out, so what's really the purpose of business layer chapter then? I will not recommend this book to novice programmers. For a much better discussion on object-oriented approach with clear explanation on 3-tier from the ground up, I highly recommend Dan Clark's Beginning Object-Oriented Programming using VB2005 book.

I have been using Ms. Kurata's book at work in making the transition from VB 6.0 to Visual Basic 2005. I find her explanations easy to understand and her examples immediately relevant to the work I am doing. I have a library of reference books on the subject, but lately I have found myself regularly referring to this book to quickly jog my memory on topics such as creating property statements and custom event handlers. This book packs a lot of knowledge into a well-written concise package.

Ms. Kurata's book is similar to Tim Patrick's book, which is another of my recent favorites that I also recommend.
Start-to-Finish Visual Basic 2005: Learn Visual Basic 2005 as You Design and Develop a Complete Application (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series)

After searching long and hard for a book about business objects and databinding, I stumbled across this one. It gives you a good starting point and makes you think in a Object Orientated way. Lots of reuseable code and the presentation was good. I like a book that you can read and do a project at the same time.

However, I thought the book ended abruptly and left things a little undone. Furthermore, I would of liked it to go into more detail on sorting and filter business objects since this is a major issue.

In all, this was a great buy and I'll be referencing it for a while.

**** 4 Stars for Deborah Kurata ****

This book accomplishes a few useful things:

First of all, this book teaches you Object-Oriented development concepts, such as what Object-Oriented programming is, the basic elements of Object-Oriented architecture, and the benefits of using an Object-Oriented approach.

It also teaches you how to design software using the GUIDS Methodology: Goal-centered design (includes use cases, scenarios, business object identification, and domain model), User Interface design, Implementation-Centered design, Data design, and Strategies for construction.

Additionally, this book teaches you how to implement N-Tier architecture in an application, and explains its benefits. The N-Tier approach in this book is comprised of a Presentation Layer, Business Layer and a Data Access Layer.

A downside to this book is that it leaves you short of having a fully functional application, supporting record sorting and filtering, which, in my opinion, is a fundamental element of data presentation.


Additional Comments:

Being an ADO.NET proponent, and competent in extending ADO.NET, I found the OOP approach demonstrated in this book to be (frankly) a lot of work. A lot of the code that goes into this approach can be significantly reduced using ADO.NET. Furthermore, ADO.NET requires much less time to become proficient in, and faster to develop.

Here's a simple example that creates a Customer Class:

Public Class Customer


Public Sub New(ByVal customerName As String)

Me.Name = customerName

End Sub


Private m_Name As String
Public Property Name() As String

Get

Return m_Name

End Get

Set(ByVal value As String)

m_Name = value

End Set

End Property


End Class


A customer can be created like this:

Dim c As New Customer("Chili's Grill & Bar")


Now, how do you get a list of Customers? You have to use List(Of Type):

'Create a list
Dim customerList As New List(Of Customer)

'Add Customers
customerList.Add(New Customer("Chili's Grill & Bar"))
customerList.Add(New Customer("Dickey's BBQ Pit"))
customerList.Add(New Customer("La Hacienda Ranch"))


My Next question is, How do you handle sorting in a List(Of Type)? You may be tempted to, Well, Sort() of course!

customerList.Sort()

However, if you did not implement the IComparable interface in the Customer class, then you cannot use the Sort method... Any other ideas?


Now, what about filtering? How do you filter a List(Of Type)?

...


Put it this way, if you want to be able to bind the list to a control, like a DataGridView, and then have the list sorted when a DataGridViewColumn header is clicked, then you need to do some programming to implement the IBindingList interface. And then what if you want to do advanced sorting and filtering? You need to implement the IBindingListView... That's quite a bit of programming!


But life is MUCH easier with ADO.NET!

'ADO.NET (Create a Customer table and add a Name column)
Dim table As New DataTable("Customer")
table.Columns.Add("Name")

'Add 3 customers to the table
table.Rows.Add("La Hacienda Ranch")
table.Rows.Add("Chili's Grill & Bar")
table.Rows.Add("Dickey's BBQ Pit")

'What about Sorting?
Dim view As DataView = table.DefaultView
view.Sort = "Name ASC"

'What about filtering?
view.RowFilter = "Name='La Hacienda Ranch'"


Another example is, How do you handle the IDataErrorInfo interface? You have to do a bit of work with OOP, but with ADO.NET... You don't have to do anything, because it's already implemented in a DataTable... Sweet!

What about all of the other concerns about data validation? Create a Strongly-Typed DataSet, add a Customers DataTable to it, Double-Click on it to create the ColumnChanging event, and then validate away!


Overall, it's a pretty good book. And it's definitely worth reading, even if you don't end up using the OOP concepts presented, because there are quite a few things you can learn that will help you as a developer.

In the end, the path to OOP architechture or ADO.NET architecture is up to, but hopefully I've provided you with a few helpful thoughts.


Gary Lima
aka VBRocks
2008 Microsoft Visual Basic MVP
VisualBasicRocks.com

I have totally enjoyed this book. So much so that in my leisure I have opted to work through it a second time. Being a .Net programmer and just beginning to leverage the power object programming: I found the book exhilrating.
I never knew how she was going to pull together: like replacing hard-coded item for database tables.
My only disappointment was that the book ended a little too soon. I would have like to have to have seen somewhat more of a data-entry application.

Stephan Onisick; VB/SQL Consultant