Web Books

I read a section from the book each night and feel warmed and inspired by it. Also, more and more I'm coming across this image of a web in life and understanding and appreciating the interconnectedness of things as described in the book.

Richard Louv has a great philosophy toward life. This book illustrates his desire for all of us to include more nature in our existence. The book is a gentle reminder of our wilder selves.

"The Web of Life: Weaving the Values that Sustain Us," is an incredibly powerful work connecting the present with the past, eloquently capturing the basic values which bring strength to individuals, families, schools, and communities. Through a story-telling approach which immediately connects author with reader, Richard Louv plants the seeds of possibility in the reader's mind, offering simple and do-able approaches to integrating more of the sustaining values into our busy lives.

I used Louv's book in my thesis on Amish culture, as I immediately found threads of commonality between Louv's observations and my personal experiences among the Old Order Amish. In this work, Louv unknowingly, perhaps, touched upon sustaining human values that transcend culture and generational boundaries. In the Web of Life, Louv emphasizes what we can do individually and collectively to begin creating a world of compassion, sensitivity, fulfillment, and joy.

This is a must read for anyone wishing to set aside the temporary lures of self-gratification and integrate more practical and sustainable values into their lives.

I picked up this copy the same time as I picked up his "Last Child in the Woods" ~~ and I took it along on a camping trip recently. It is a neat little compilation of essays regarding making time for family, having meaningful conversations and keeping friends, keeping the communication channels open with your kids and spouses, brothers/sisters/parents, and other topics.

It is definitely a keeper in any family's library ~~ but if you have read the book, "Last Child in the Woods" ~~ you will find the same themes and same stories touched upon in this book as well. That is why I gave it a four stars because it is tedious reading to read the same thing over and over again. Yes, this book is the original since it was published in 1996 but when you have two books by the same author telling you pretty much the same thing, it makes you wonder if he needs more fresh stories to share or if he is running out of ideas. It'll be interesting to see what his next book will touch upon.

Just because re-reading the same thing is tedious for me, it doesn't have to be for other readers. If you like essays and essays about family, nature, communication and so forth, you will like this little book. It is lyrical and thoughtful. It is inspiring. It will make you look at life a little bit differently and perhaps, instead of having imaginary conversations with your spouse in your head, you will talk to him/her and rediscover the reasons why you fell in love with him/her in the first place. This book is just not about stories, it is about people reconnecting to humanity again in spite of the highly technogical age we live in today. It is about people reconnecting to nature and family and friends ~~ the little things that make our lives go round.

It is definitely a gem of a book.

9-11-07

This is a wonderful collection of essays/short stories which drive home the importance of family, family connections and the importance of our past. Each essay is worth mulling over thoughtfully. You will find youself being able to relate to most of the author's words. We need works such as this at a time when so many of our families and communities seem to be bent on distruction, and more importantly, we need to read these works and ponder them. All in all quite thought provoking and quite inspirational. Would recommend this to anyone. Would recommend you purchase it and give it a reread now and then.

Attention Michael Pachis and others who purchased this book in 2006: I am the book's author and when I saw your comments, I contacted my publisher. If you purchased a copy recently and received it in 3-hole punch format, send me an email and I'll put you in touch with the publisher. They have a small number of perfect bound copies they can send you instead. Use the email address on the right side on my personal web site (kensall.com) home page. I hope this helps.
(I gave this 5 stars simply to not impact the book's current rating.)

This is an excellent book to understand, develop and code XML. However, in the parsing discussions (chp 7-10) an understanding of OOP and Java programming are almost required. Other than that, it is an excellent text.

I want to warn customers that the publisher has gone to a "print on demand" publishing model and this book is not delivered as a paperback, but as eleven hundred three hole punched loose leaf pages! This leaves you with the task of finding a binder after paying 40$ for the book! Since it is book size (8 x 10) it awkawardly fits into a standard 8.5 x 11 binder, not very convenient for reading or transporting, and you need the binder to be 3.5" thick to fit the book in the binder.

I gave it five stars for content, but this new method of publishing gets zero stars.

This book is not an "how to" guide, nor does it claim to be one. I mean by this that if you are, say a Java programmer looking for a book that concretely shows you how to integrate xml with Java then you would be better off with one of the so many Java/XML books on the market.

However, if in your work or your studies you feel that you need to gain a more thorough understanding of the W3C specifications related to XML, then this is the book to buy.

All the W3C specs are available for free on the web. The trouble is, W3C documents are designed to provide a precise definition of a standards, they are not designed to be especially intelligible by mere mortals (however technologically enclined). Some are quite readable, others far less.

Firstly, I really like that this book present all the relevant specifications and working drafts in perspective. Secondly, I found that it does a remarkably good job at translating these specifications (without simplifying them) in understandable terms.

In my work, I am interested in gaining as thorough as possible a view of XMl technologies and this book helps me greatly. I also like the fact that it present a well-organized bibliography at the end of each chapter (sadly many computer books from Wrox, O'reilly, Que an like don't have a bibiography as if to say "everything inside this book comes straight from the author's mind. DO not look any further).

I have reviewed for myself around twenty XML books. I found this book to be one of my top favorite. I recommend it especially for:
- CS students or programmer with a theoretical bent.
- anybody who wants to get a thorough overview of W3C standards.

Where to start? With the concise history of where XML came from and why each design decision was made and how the evolution of specifications took place over the years, or the thorough explanation of all the XML specifications, or the programming and parsing aspects of XML and metadata, or the cool XML timeline poster towards the end of the book? This book has much to offer any person interested in finding out what XML is and why and how it has changed our world.

Kenneth B. Sall, the author of this book, organized this book in a fashion where each section could be studied on its own, and if there are references to the previous sections, they are appropriately mentioned. This way, one does not need to sit down and cover this 1000+ page book cover to cover to realize that the topic of conversation is. The stage is set at the beginning by the author commenting on the fact that XML can describe everything under the sun, even the kitchen sink:

"XML: ... maybe it's everything but the kitchen sink? Say, have you heard the one about the XML Kitchen Sink Language? ..."

I have been working with XML for sometime now, and I am still amazed at how it has grown and expanded in to our everyday lives in the past few years. One can spend months coming up to speed with the specifications and the XML "realm", and that's not enough. This book does not even cover, in a great detail at least, the Web services realm. That alone is a couple of thousand page book. The background topics are essential to any reader: basic XML syntax, DTD, Canonical XML, Namespaces and XML Schema. Once you have these topics covered and well understood, you can jump around to any other part of the book, displaying XML data for example or XML programming API's.

One can spend a couple of hours trying to figure out how these specifications fit in, but the author hs already done the job with a very useful picture inside the cover page. What's your forte? Cascading Style Sheets to convert XML data into a PDF document for example, or an XHTML document to display on a web site? XHTML is also covered in length, if you do not know that is and what it offers over the plain old HTML.
My favorite topics were probably the authors explanation of the XML parsing and the available API's and resources. SAX, DOM, JAXP and JDOM are covered in great detail.
* SAX - the API that started it all. Minimal and light-weight. Fast and event driven.
* DOM - Memory intensive, complex, but very powerful. It's a tree based model, and the tree represents the whole document.
* JDOM - java specific. Can be used with either DOM or SAX.
* JAXP - java specific again, but easier to use than JDOM.
There are also a number of C++ XML parsers that the author touches on such as the Apache Xerces, C++ SAX and many others, but the main topics revolve around the four most popular parsers mentioned. These sections are mostly tutorials and how-to's. Each parser is used in an example and example is analyzed piece by piece. DOM is covered in more detail due to the number of levels (DOM level 1-3) that it has. Since DOM is more powerful and more complicated, the topic is a bit more advanced and would require more attention from a novice. If you read thru the SAX chapter and understand it well, DOM would not be that much of hurtle, but make sure that you read understand SAX first. Java centric API's including XML-RPC, JAXB, JDOM, JAXM are covered by the author to depict how XML can be used and how it would benefit the application - and developers in-turn. The icing on the cake is when K. B. Sall outlines the differences between SAX, DOM, JDOM and JSAX. He talks about each of the technologies in detail, tell you what the advantage and disadvantage of each one is, and then it compares them against each other. By the time you are done reading these sections, you would become an expert in XML parsing and programming.

XLink and XPointer. How can one leave without these two core technologies and tools? They are truly remarkable; easy to use, light weight and easy to learn. Well, they are well covered - as you would expect from this book. One thing about these topics is that they could be very abstract and need examples, and we got lots of those. The example depict the efficacy of how one can use XLink to create complex connections between sets of resources, even though you do not have a write access to those resources. This is very handy and resourceful technique is you need to build an e-commerce site. With XPointer, one can locate individual XML elements, set of elements or even a range of XML data between two points. The ability to specify "range" of elements is where the true power of XPointer is revealed.

The references, the related resources for each topic, simple to complicated examples and a CD filled with goodies, source code used throughout the book and the W3C specifications at your fingertips outline the some of the other benefits of Kenneth B. Sall's "XML Family of Specifications" book.

I can only take one little challenge at a time. So far Sandy Berger's book has helped me with e-mail and finding and organizing things. Those two chapters are my favorite chapters. The reward for working hard to understand attachments with Sandy's help is being able to receive pictures of all four grandkids that are scattered around the country. This book opened that door for me. I look forward to tackling other chapters and learning other skills.

I did not have any computer experience. I was not fortunate to be exposed to computers during my schooling. I felt like I could learn to use the computer and found this book to be the perfect tool to help me.

I read the paragraph by Horrace Deets, AARP's top guy, and agree that Sandy Berger can help you get the most out of your computer experience. I feel like I am making up for no computer experience and will have plenty of computer fun in the future.

I found out you don't have to be described as a "Grown-up" to enjoy this book. My parents are enjoying it but they are o.k. with the description "grown-up"; I don't think it fits me. Still I found the information in Sandy Berger's Your Official Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet right on the mark for what I needed to know about computers. And I am only 27. So I guess it doesn't matter where useful information comes from as long as it is helpful.

I love this book. I am 66 and just bought my first computer three months ago. This book, along with America Online Simplified, is my bible. It is so easy to understand and so complete. I will continue learning from it.

Reviewer: Paul Gerstenbluth (ariefound@aol.com)

Review: Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet, IDG Books Worldwide

Give me a Ticket to Ride on. The Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet is your destination ticket to a rewarding online experience. America Online makes it easy to arrive online, but what do you do once you get there?

Open Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet and find the road signs to:

* Travel and navigate AOL and the Web using links, browsers, and search engines

* Stay in touch with family and friends with AOL email and learn about Instant Messaging and Buddy Lists; and

* Explore popular topics online including travel, money, health, hobbies, retirement, research, and genealogy.

Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet's Contents at a Glance:

Pro Reaction

Book font is 14 points for easy reading. Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet pages are loaded with tips, definitions, cross-references and notes. Also, there are dictionary type thumb indexes through-out the 15 chapters for finding information quickly.

CD-ROM contains America Online version 3.0 and 4.0 for the Macintosh. Also, it contains for PC users' 5.0 for Windows.

Con Reaction

Missing from CD-ROM is Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator for Macintosh users. Utility shareware such as Always Online should have been included on the CD. Also, missing is summary of index of Websites mentioned in the book.

End Notes

The Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet is an easy-to-use traveler's guide, written specifically for adults 50 and older. It shows you step-by-step how to use the Internet to enhance your daily life.

The book also shows you how to find invaluable resources and services such as e-mail, travel planning, hobbies, health and money management, and retirement tips.

Grown-up's Guide to AOL and the Internet simplifies and defines the lingo, walks you through the basics, and points you to online destinations and activities.

=== Paul Gerstenbluth is President of the ARIE Foundation. The ARIE Foundation's mission is to provide VA hospitalized patients with hobby materials and computers that helps in their stay and recovery.

The book has good facts on latest threats on cyberspace.
I admire the author's plot setting in how he tried to combine a real
life scenarios from a informative story line.

As a point of improvement, it would be great if he invested more on a more exciting story, so that an avid reader wont get sleepy in the middle of the book.

I read the book Zero Day Threat (ZDT) by Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz. I really liked the book! Zero Day Threat is about the underground cyber-economy. It makes some surprising points grounded in real truths. I liked that the book paints a complete picture, i.e., how malware,
identity theft, and "drop off" gangs collaborate to facilitate
a well oiled cyber-economy. Since my research area is security,
I was very familiar with the different types of malware brought up in Zero Day Threat. However, this book gave me a complete picture of the problem.

I particularly appreciated two features of the book.

Structure: Each chapter is broken into three sections: exploiters,
enablers, and expeditors. Exploiter sections focus on crooks (such
as scam artists and drug addicts) and how they benefit from the
underground economy. The Enablers sections focus on credit card
companies, banks, and credit bureaus, and how their current practices
enable the underground cyber-economy. Expediters
are guys (good and bad) that allow the cybercrooks to exploit
vulnerabilities in an expeditious manner. I thought this structure
was just brilliant! It really brings out the correlation between
various factors and actors that enable the underground cyber-economy.

Narrative Style: I really enjoyed various anecdotes in the book.
There are several stories about people being scammed or getting
lured into the profitable cyber-underground. For example, there is a story of
a "drop off" gang in Edmonton which is narrated throughout the
book. These anecdotes makes the book very interesting and provide
a "human side" to the cyber-underground.

I highly recommend this book.

The authors have done a superior job in showing how criminal elements combined with loose security in banks have created a serious breach in our own personal and individual privacy. I have spoken and consulted nationally concerning this very issue, very often to deaf ears in the financial industries. They simply do not want to hear of the dangers to their systems and the compromising nature of exposing their customers to easy piracy.

I only hope that the public reads this expose and demands that their information is much better safeguarded. I have spoken to Mr. Acohido on many occasions and he is passionate about this subject and the dangers to every consumer.

Thanks

Jay Morrow

Technology managers can face a big challenge trying to get senior
management to understand that effective security is well worth the
investment. Real-world stories make their job easier. This
extraordinarily well-written book contains the richest set of stories
about real cyber attacks ever assembled.

This is what the Boston Globe's Rob Weisman said about "Zero Day Threat":

A harrowing inside look at the brave new world of cybercrime and identity theft spawned by technology. Acohido and Swartz take us into the shadowy dens of the scammers and call their enablers to task.
Robert Weisman, Technology Writer, The Boston Globe

I have been involved in the software industry for several decades working with both software application and internet teams. All too often, there is the knowledge-and-task gap between the technical implementation of a product and the practical, real-world process of launching, marketing, and effectively promoting your product. This is a great book for both the developers and the marketing group, and it helps the entire team stay focused on the practical tasks that can yield great benefit over time. It provides enough background for the non-technical folks to understand how search engines work, how to optimize for results, and how to implement an on-going, focused effort to consistently improve your site's visibility. The author brings both technical insight and marketing savvy to the subject -- this is rare indeed -- and is able to demystify SEO and lay out a program for practical implementation and promotion. Whether you are creating your own website, need to increase your site's visibility, or are part of a larger team or company effort, this book is a must!

I have been involved in the Internet business since the early 1990s and I am constantly asked by business colleagues for tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of websites. I have finally found a book that I can strongly recommend! Scanlan's book is a detailed but very practical "how to" for all business people that will explain exactly what they need to do to build traffic to their business website. In my view, it's a "must have" for all those business managers who have struggled to get understandable information on Search Engine Optimization and website management.

Failing to understand the principles of Search Engine Optimization would probably mean inevitable death to a Web dependant startup. This isn't the Theory Of Relativity, but it is your business's relativity and survival in one well written, easy to read and understand field manual.

As a result of reading "The 12 Habits" I identified several weaknesses in my company's SEO that are keeping us from getting the visibility we need to be optimally competitive.

I'm not technical, I'm a sales and marketing guy. Finally someone with the intelligence for a layman's mindset has put forth the nuts and bolts of what makes people find you on the world wide web. Key words being WORLD WIDE! With so many choices out there it's next to impossible to be FOUND anymore.

Scanlan's book removed the mystery behind the HTML or whatever else is being coded these days for web services. I'm the CEO of a small services company focused on putting on corporate Executive Golf outings. Very niche. Not so niche that there isnt 000's of other service providers around the globe providing similar services.

Thank you for making this readable, understandable, and most of all, easy to quickly change your web search/find strategy in short order. Excellent read and service. All of us here cannot thank you enough for the thought and energy you put forth in this book! I can only hope my competitors don't find your book as well....

With a bewildering array of books claiming to have all the answers for your Web 2.0 needs, it's refreshing to find an author who really "gets it". Techniques like SEO, SEM, PageRank Optimization and AdWords Campaigning are so new that most of the books on the subject are either crammed with jargon or promise the earth, moon and stars. Liam breaks it down for you simply and elegantly, and doesn't insult your intelligence in the process. "It may take you a year," he says, if you're starting from scratch.

It's an easy read, with lots of call-out boxes and illustrations. If you're a typical website, 80 - 90% of your customers reach your site through Search. One way to stay ahead of your competition is to read this book and start implementing the 12 Habits.

I have been using GoLive since the Cyberstudio days, and this book STILL florred me on how much useful information it contained. Everything from the "Well duh! I can't believe I didn't know that" to the "WOW" tips are in here.

Simple. Consolidated. Useful.

This book is a great catalyst for experienced as well as new GoLive users. It's great way to learn all those little hidden, new or forgotten goodies in GoLive, whether you want to know how to be a more efficient GoLive user or want to know what you've been missing and don't have the time to learn. This book is a quick, enjoyable, easy read. I'm already looking forward to a "More Tips & Tricks!" book, but it's hard to imagine they've missed any with this one.

Adobe offers GoLive as a powerful tool to build pages in a website. It is complicated enough that the authors of this book present 200 tips, to perform common and useful tasks.

The contents pages show a titular summary of the tips. Given that GoLive is from Adobe, it's no surprise to see an emphasis on the visual presentation of the pages. Typical is a tip about writing links in PDF documents, or another tip about converting an HTML file, and any associated referenced images, into a single PDF document. Of course, there are also several tips involving Adobe's flagship Photoshop.

Overall, the tips seem straightforward to understand and do. This appears to have been a deliberate choice by the authors. The book is most useful if you already have the basics of GoLive. A good companion to a standard text on GoLive.

I recently met the Author Adam Pratt at Mac Designers Conference this year in Chicago and Adam introduced me to GoLive CS, I was hooked within 20 minutes. Reading this book is like speaking to Adam but instead of 20 minutes, it feels like a 6-8 hour training. The book is simple and effective for the beginner and full of tips and tricks for the intermediate user already using GoLive. It covers the basics from setting up the site to advanced features like creating cool Quicktime slideshows with GoLive's impressive QuickTime editor. The book is filled with great resources such as hidden shortcuts (for Mac & PC), detailed descriptions of each object and there's even a resource listing sites that are full of GoLive Tutorials.

Being a Senior Web Developer and College Instructor, I highly recommend this book and give it 5 stars.

One of the best books on software that i ever bought. I've been working with GoLive for quite a while now and just can't believe how many useful things i didn't know about it yet. So many shortcuts that enhance productivity, so many features that i paid too little attention to.
Because of the way it's written - 200 tips, most of them on 1 or 2 pages - it's easy to pick it up at any time, read a minute, learn something valuable and put it down again. And you're almost sure to learn something new with every tip.

This book is an excellent resource for learning AspectJ. It is perfectly organized to take you from beginner, novice, to expert as you move through each of the chapters, just as you might expect if you were taking a class in AspectJ.

The author's presentation of the material is straightforward and easy to follow, and his examples are not too involved that you lose track of what's going on. Furthermore, the author has an excellent grasp of the language and is really able to show off the power AspectJ has to offer.

What I really appreciate about the book is that he focuses not just on coding, but also on design; I'm a software engineer and am very pleased that the author discusses an aspect as something to be used elegantly, as part of a well-designed system, rather than just another tool that can be abused. He even discusses several new design patterns that AspectJ makes possible.

I truly recommend this book!

I met the author of this book this weekend, and saw him give a presentation on this material. Finally, a book that shows real uses for AOP.
I have been watching AspectJ since I first saw it about a year ago. My first impression was that it was 'cool', but was worried about giving developers more rope with which to hang themselves. Yes, it was cool, but the most practical examples you would see in demos were thing like 'logging'. I was worried that it would just lead more more ways for junior engineers to 'convolute the code', without bringing much benefit for that risk.
The material in this book, ALONG WITH the support the author had from the Eclipse IDE changed my mind. Finally, there were some real examples involving transaction support, JAAS, exception handling, and more. Furthermore, he addressed these topics in the real-world sense of refactoring existing code to prove his points.
If you aren't using an IDE that gives you some support, then I still have my concerns about 'convoluting' your code; but I am more convinced than ever that AOP concepts are worth putting into my mental toolkit. I have no doubt that the way aspects 'inject' behavior into code will reduce our development time, and make our code behave more consistently (no errors because of inconsistencies in the way common things are handled). If you can add one more ball to the things you 'mentally juggle' while developing, add AOP concepts. This book will help.

I have got this book at local Austin Java User Group meeting. First impression: different cover. Most of Manning books are either greenish or almost black-and-white. This one is yellow.

Part 1 provides really good introduction into AOP. This is the first book I have read on AOP; all stuff I have seen before was online or magazine articles. One interesting fact is that this book took a while to consume, compared to the usual two-week cycle I have for technical books. I guess the reason is that the book has more substance than most of the techincal books and Mannigs does not try to pad their books with API references and other stuff that can be easily found online. After the chapter goes through AOP concepts, it explains AspectJ in application to those concepts. Basic syntax as well as some advanced techniques are explained.

Part 2 has examples of basic applications of AspectJ. Of course it starts with the mandatory logging implemented using AOP. Not a very good example in general, since logging is not really a cross-cutting concern, but works for illustration purposes. Other two application areas discussed in this part are implementation policy enforcement and optimization (pooling and caching examples). Policy enorcement part is really interesting, especially if you are into call patterns.

In general, every part follows the same pattern: first the author discusses the conventional approach, then explains challenges of the conventional solution, provides AspectJ-based solution, and gives one or two examples. Very clean language, easy to follow.

Part 3 discusses advanced applications of AspectJ. First it delves into design patterns and idioms of AOP; it's not by any means AspectJ-specific, so would be useful for any AOP implementation. Examples of patterns are providing thread-safe implementations using AspectJ, implementing security (very interesting discussion on JAAS), transaction management, and implementing business rules using AspectJ. The part ends with AspectJ usage in different development phases.

Two appendices: description of AspectJ compiler and Ant integration - only 15 pages for both. Useful as a reference.

Overall impression: an excellent book. Definitely worth reading, even if you are not into AOP yet.

I loved this book, first of all the introduction is the most interesting presentation of AOP that I ever read.

The other chapters are very good too since based on use-cases very easy to reproduce on projects...

A book to have is you want to learn abour AOP (even if not interested by AspectJ per se...)

AspectJ In Action is a great book to use as an introduction to Aspect-oriented Programming. However, AOP is not for developers to whom Java and OO are still new. Without a comfortable understanding of classes, polymorphism, and encapsulation AOP will only further confuse things.

With that said, AspectJ In Action is a wonderful book filled with plenty of examples and explanations about the well-lit areas of AOP as well as many of the dark corners. I enjoyed reading this book because it starts out with the fundamentals and works its way to more and more complex uses of AOP without getting bogged down in language tangents. Also, the direct application of AOP in real Java design areas is very helpful in getting a better feel for when and how AOP can be applied.

I am looking forward to Ramnivas Laddad's next book!

Thank you for an excellent guide for online shopping! If you are looking for great Internet guides for Kids & Family, High School, and College students, please check out the You Are Here Internet series!

Online stores come and go, especially the big ones, but this book lists hundreds of terrific small online stores that carry really unique stuff. I especially liked all of the stores that sell natural cosmetics and natural fiber clothing for me and my kids. I've had this book 2 weeks and already its saved me lots of time.

I was tired of seeing the same old online stores over and over again. This book pointed me to some real winners. It's a big time saver. Very easy to find what I wanted quickly.

I learned a lot about online shopping that I never knew before. But the best thing about this book is all the online stores, listed by categories. I found some neat stores. Loved the party section.

Before picking up this excellent book, I was wary of online shopping -- and I still am, but now I'm intelligently wary. The authors do a marvelous job of helping understand what you can trust and what you can't, how online shopping works in all its various manifestations, and what strategies to use when you do shop online. The book showed me that online shopping is not (as I had thought) just for shopping addicts who need a fix 24 hours a day, but a great space for intelligent and discerning consumers. I'm still not a big spender online (or anywhere), but I've used the book to help me find some things I couldn't find anywhere else and at surprising prices. I think this book is going to go down in the so-far brief history of online commerce as a milestone achievement. It has certainly changed my views about WWW commerce and made me a better consumer. I can't say enough about this expansive, easy-to-use, fun, and informative work. I hope they plan to update this work regularly.

The CareerXRoads series by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler should be a reference book that every recruiter buys. I am a recruiter with almost 22 years of experience and since 1998, I have purchased CareerXRoads. It is that good.

Candidates who want to use the Internet to find their next position will also find these books very helpful.

Gerry and Mark include informative articles for recruiters and job seekers alike at the beginning of the book.

Then they dive into the Internet and review websites that are job, resume, and career management sites. Their reviews are very helpful.

Recruiters, this book helps you determine where to spend your time and/or money to find niche sites to conduct searches. They also will suggest when a site may just be a waste of time.

Candidates, Gerry and Mark help you organize your job search. Their list of niche sites may help you zero in on companies who do what you want to do. Then, you may apply online or try to network your way into an interview.

Bottom line, if you are a recruiter or a candidate, purchase CareerXRoads.

Bill Humbert www.recruiterguy.com

Recruiters, job search sites, corporate career sites, HR testing online -- these are standard elements of the 21st century world of work.
If you are experienced at clicking in and out of employment-related sites, you will appreciate the very professional presentations of 500 sites the authors consider the best. There are also references to 2000 other sites.
If you're overwhelmed by the topic, or fear you'll never catch up, this volume is a place to begin. After perusing the book, you will know more about professional uses of the internet in the areas of job search and employee recruitment.

I am a career management consultant. The first two suggestions I give all new job seekers at any levels is to get a copy of CareerXRoads and get some business cards printed.

I have found that CareerXRoads is the bible for a good job search, using the internet; Obviously it is a great help in finding Internet sites where the right jobs are posted. But better than that, it tells you where to post your resume and how to post it, using the right format, key words, etc.

As a Career Coach, I recommend this book to all of my clients.
And, even more critical, as a Recruiter, this book is where I go to find the hard to find candidates.

CareerXRaods is both on my desk and another copy is in my attache.

I am even thinking of giving my kids each a copy on their birthdays.

Richard Stone
Human Resources Consultant

Every job seeker and recruiter should own this book!
This book is a tremendous resource to a job seeker. It offers advice on everything from networking to resume development. On the recruiter side, it offers advice on how to maximize your recruiting efforts in a variety of ways. The index and rating of internet sites is an invaluable tool to both [I should know - I used this book during a recent job search and now use it on a regular basis as I have found a new position as a Partnership Recruitment Manager!]
I have met one of the authors [Mark Mehler], and he has a true committment to helping individuals and companies use the internet to its full potential in job and candidate searches.
I highly recommend this book!

Codin' was a good introductory if you already have a solid background in computers (OS, File Systems, file types etc...) and at least an intermediate understanding of html (although to the author's credit he offers some bonus material on html if you don't). It really works well if you are an advanced html person with at least some web design experience but want to dive into scripting and creating interactive websites. He does a good job of introducing php as a language and showing some simple techniques to get you up and running quickly, especially with forms. Not a book for advanced php developers and there is really no javascript which I think would be an important component to show how the two languages can be used in conjunction. Also maybe some explanation as to when php is appropriate vs. say a full OOL (object oriented language) like java or where it might make sense to use javascript instead of php to handle front end stuff. Overall it is a good book. I thought the author could have done a better job of explaining in the form chapter how the form fields can be input into a database but he stopped after explaining the input into a flat file which most people I have found wouldn't find all that useful since a db is the way to go in most instances. He goes into the db in the next chapter and sort of leaves you hangin with the previous form explanations. He circles back around and explains in later chapters but it was a little confusing because you had to infer some stuff to make the connection. Overall I recommend the book though and I have a Master's degree in IT and am very familiar with html, css, and SQL, and now a decent foundation in php.

BTW, I found the code examples offered on his site very useful and helped me get past some of the stuff that I had to infer.

I really think this is a great book for beginners in the php/coding area, It's very clear and with a clean and good practice in mind. As for me is not that useful because of my previous php knowledge, but it's a good point of reference for those familiar with php also. Overall... great book, great explanations.

If you liked Stylin' w/ CSS and want to make dynamic sites, this is the book for you. It starts very basic, and builds slowly. I enjoyed it.

I've spent a lot of time looking for a resource I could use to teach myself php. The biggest problem I've ran into is the book/website either being 1) over my head, or 2) unbearable to read.

Luckily this item was neither of the above. Though I haven't made it though the entire book yet I have found this to be -extremely- helpful and well written. I don't come from a coding background at all so I had to find something that really started from the ground up. I found this to be easily understandable to someone who doesn't get coding. Additionally his website has two extra beginning chapters if you really need to go over the basics (which I did for the coding part).

The language is clear and concise and not confusing or dull. So I would highly, highly recommend this title to anyone from a design background looking to expand their talents. So far it's one of the best I've found.I will definitely look at this other books, the next time I'm in the market for another computer book.

I'm a big fan of Wyke-Smith's "Stylin' with CSS" so I snapped up this book immediately. I'm not finished with it, just yet, but I think I can still point out one thing. I'm reading Larry Ullman's "PHP for the World Wide Web" (2nd Ed.) at the same time, and I find that the two work really well together. "Codin'" moves very quickly, and he tends to gloss over things a bit, but combined with Ullman's more in-depth book, I'm learning a lot. They reinforce one another, I suppose.