Web Books

This is a helpful book. I've got a couple of Mr. Sydow's other books. He's good at clarifying complex topics. Maybe it's because he's a computer programmer, or maybe it's because he's written a few "For Dummies" books (I've got "Mac Programming For Dummies" and "Internet For Macs For Dummies: Quick Reference" by him). In any event, he writes clearly and it's a good book.

I've used Windows a lot, and the Mac only a little (my brother's had a Mac for a long time). I've had an iMac for a few months now, but I didn't feel like I was putting it to its best use. This book helped a lot. It has basic information, such as how to get the most out of the Macintosh operating system and your Web browser. It also covers some things which are aren't in other books I have, like how to connect the iMac to another Mac to have a small home network. I connected my iMac to another Mac and a printer, and it worked. I'd recommend this book to anyone with an iMac.

This is a nice compilation of stories by Richard Adams. I ordered both this title and "The Iron Wolf" by Mr. Adams only to find that they're both the same book. I suspect the "Unbroken Web" was the UK title for marketing reasons--the title "Iron Wolf" probably had more appeal in the US.

I count myself lucky to own this book- sad to see that this (and Shardik!!) are hard to find. Beautiful illustrations, and writing that will draw you in. As I recall, this is not really for young children (but then, I don't think watership down was for young children either). If you find it, pick it up.

Arlyn Hubbell's "Understanding Web Development" provides for a solid grounding into the world of web design, HTML and the basic web technologies. For a beginner, this book is a good start to understanding how the World Wide Web works and what it takes to publish documents to it. For those who are more advanced in the field this book will probably not tell you anything new and you can take a pass on it (and stop reading here). If you are looking for the basics though, you've come to the right place.

THE CONTENTS:

Here are the topics that Hubbell addresses:

1. Introduction to Webmaster's UNIX including FTP and managing your directories

2. Pre-planning your web side including analyzing your audience and laying out your web site

3. Basic HTML tags

4. HTML text tags, image tags, lists and background tags

5. Working with Tables

6. Working with Frames

7. Designing HTML Forms

8. Server-Side technologies

9. Restricting web site access through .htaccess

10. Overview of CSS

THE ANALYSIS:

Overall, this book is a great teaching and learning tool to the basics of web design. Hubbell has struck that fine balance between covering in good detail the basics of what you need to know versus information overload. Overall the book is very thorough and takes you through the web design process for beginning to end and it manages to do so without overwhelming you.

Each chapter is broken up into small lessons and at the end there are exercises for you to follow. All of them are well designed and good you and good grounding into the basics.

Hubbell also does a great job of presenting the various HTML tags. She goes over what they are and also thoroughly discusses the various switches that accompany them and their functions. She also includes the source code as well as a screen shot of what the completed web pages look like. While not going into things completely in depth on the source code as some other books do, this book accomplishes its task well, giving you a "basic" understanding of HTML. Students can easily go through and pick apart and learn the code on their own from the basics that Hubbell provides (which ultimately when you learn a programming language you're going to have to do anyway, pick it apart and do trial and error...).

THE VERDICT:

Overall, Hubbell does a fine job of covering the various technologies and issues that deal with web development. This book was used as a text for an e-commerce web design course I took during the Fall of 2002. Whether you are studying this subject independently or whether you are an instructor looking to use this book for your course, Hubbell's "Understanding Web Development" is a fine choice.

Highly Recommended

The material was very relevant and the text was easy to read. I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a Web career.

This book is an excellent book on Web 2.0 technologies and how they can be used to provide value to users in a Web 2.0 world. The book is a light on technical (programming), but rich on concepts and the business side of Web 2.0. What makes this book useful is the fact that it reintroduces common concepts such as blogs in a way that an executive can understand and take advantage of. The first chapter discusses a brief history of the web. The second chapter goes into explaining what web technologies such as CSS and XML are and what a web service can do for a business. There are a few other very useful chapters in this book, but by no means you should stop your Web 2.0 quest with this book. This book's a great way to start your Web 2.0 journey and it even puts forth the notion of semantic web. But, once you figure out what area you want to concentrate on, I recommend getting a more comprehensive book on that specific topic.

I borrowed this book from someone who knows a great deal about web directions, and I found it to be very very good. Although the authors do not reflect the tsunamis being created by Doug Englebart (Open hypertextdocument system or OHS) and Pierre Levy (Information Economy Meta Language or IEML), this is a very elegantly organized and presented book.

It forced me to question my here-to-fore blind expectations with respect to the Semantic Web where in practice the theory of seamless integration has not been realized. I was especially taken with the author's conclusion that we must continue to develop applications for smallish communities of practice where the human brain continues to be the primary searcher, sorter, and valuation or linkage agent.

Jim Bamford's book on the National Security Agency (NSA), Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, concludes that one day NSA may--after spending hundreds of billions more of our hard-earned wages, create the ultimate computer--one weighing very little, running on virtually no energy, and able to do petaflop calculations per second: THE HUMAN BRAIN.

I am among a handful of co-founders of the Earth Intelligence Network, and I will conclude this very favorable review with my opinion: the World Brain is emergent, and it is the end-users, as the co-authorrs of this book conclude, that will continue to be the primary content creators, content sharers, and content valuators.

As soon as China and India figure out they can create infinite wealth by handing out free cells phones and offering their respective 1.5 billion poor free information and education "one cell call at a time," it will be game over for both American and European digital ambitions.

Machine learning has been over-hyped since the 1980's, and while I respect the computational mathematics being pioneered by Google, and various deep web or meta web endeavors, the reality is that search today stinks, yielding less than 2% of relevant information. I don't expect that to be resolved anytime soon. What I *do* expect is for humans empowered by relatively simple tools, to figure out how to do a national referendum from neighbood to nation=state, in 24 hours, and how to mobilize a public cabinet that posts a sensible slate of policies backed up by a balanced budget.

See also:
Mobilizing Generation 2.0: A Practical Guide to Using Web2.0 Technologies to Recruit, Organize and Engage Youth
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
Global Assemblages: Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems
Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace (Helix Books)
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

I'm in a class that uses this book as the text. I am very impressed with the step-by-step instruction. The text doesn't assume anything and yet, it doesn't insult my intelligence.

Very well-written, easy to follow, and confidence inspiring.

Well done, Mr. Mostafavi!

This is an introductory book on programming in Visual Basic 2005. However it does presume that you have programmed before on some kind of system. It doesn't matter which language, but the basic concept of writing commands, logic, and so on should be familiar to the reader. To be sure, he does give a bit of instruction into basic programming principles, but it is pretty basic.

Next he goes into a description of Visual Studio which is used to program in several Microsoft languages. Then on to writing programs. He leads you through the writing of a pretty basic program. While basic in nature this program covers a lot of the principles of programming. By the end of the chapter, you've put a small window on your screen.

Throughout the book he uses a series of extentions to the little program, and by the end of the book you should have a pretty good understanding of the language.

This book bring me from Intermediate level into advanced level.
It shows you all real useful examples by utilizing ASP, VB, Db design, and Stored Procedures calls. It's kind of learning how real-world sophisticated shoppong sites(like amazon.com) are created. I am very happy with the book. If you want to become a professional web developer, or learn how to design a data-driven web site, the book is what you want.

I recommend that the book is for Intermediate level who has some experiences in VB, SQL Server.

Although title says developer's guide but it makes a reader from novice to developer. Before that e-commerce was complicated,difficult even reading other books makes you confuse more about the subject but after reading this whole concept becomes clear. In my opinion Only prerequisite for reading this book is some databases experiance, it will accelarate if reader have experiance in Access, Sql server. The 99 percent Use of stored procedure is one of the greatest thing by Noel. I have built my web site base on concept and examples given in this book. Though there might be some minor errors but I think they make you learn and eventualy they make you master the vb script, stored procedure and concept.
I congrulate Noel and request him to upgrade this book to Asp.net and vb.net as well as other of his book named e-commerce developer's guide to building community tools.

Thanks Noel

Visual InterDev Database Application Development for the We

Visual InterDev Database Application Development for the We

This is an excellent overview of VoiceXML. In addition to a thorough discussion of the VXML language and technologies, the author had the great idea of illustrating the material via a Personal Information Manager project (address book, calendar, and to-do list), which the reader creates while reading along. IMHO, this is by far the most practical of the VoiceXML books that I own. I learned quite a bit, and have even been able to create a number of useful VXML apps on my own since reading it.

This is a great book. It is an example of how a modern
technical book should be written to really teach the
reader both the substance of the subject and the context
in which that subject is meaningful. There is high level
motivation throughout the book which enables the reader
looking for an overview of Voice XML and how it relates
to technologies used with it. There is technical detail
that will enable the software engineer to understand
the technical foundations and how they relate to technologies
used with Voice XML such as XSLT, JSP, HTML, JavaScript, etc.
In addition, there is an architectural framework of browsers,
gateways, web servers, servlets, grammars, telephony, and
the transformational processing model, which is concisely
presented with the essential concepts needed to understand
how all these technologies are woven into a cohesive
structure to enable the building of Voice XML and multimedia
applications. If that is not enough, there is working example

provided which is explained throughout the book, and it is
even presented in a UML framework which will be useful to
engineers who want a good example of effective use of UML.
And there is a CD, and associated web site, with both the
application and all the tools you need to build and test
the example - note: some of the tools like XML Spy, IBM
WebSphere, Allaire JRun, and Apache Cocoon may have time
limits, so don't install the software until you are ready
to spend the time necessary to set up and test the
application. Finally, the book is written at an extremely
intelligent level and the reader may find some of the
philosophies like cognition and artificial intelligence
stimulating. Sounds like a lot for a 200 page book, but
the author has succeeded in delivering all the above and
more in a manner that should serve as a model for
presenting new technologies.

I am a retired executive and have started my own consulting business recently.The new world of Wireless Internet has intrigued me for some time but knowing nothing about it I was reluctant to get too far on my own until just last week I got a copy of the book "WAP Integration" by Srdjan Vujosevic and Robert Laberge.
The book is very imressive in that the subject matters are well organized, the writting style is easy to read and understand and at times fun , yet contains a wealth of information covering topics for those who are amatures (like me)all the way to the more professional and knowledgeble people whose daily life is programming or creating new application protocols.
I am able to recommend the book as a "five star" product based on my limited know how of this exciting and upcoming new technology.
I am now "technically" competent enough to send e-mails through my wireless (but Internet capable) phone, and understand some of the technical concepts which were very hazy at best when I started into the book.
I especially like the info provided in "Related Sites" enabling the reader to further enhance their knowledge in any particular focused area.

Tom Krieser

This book has great working examples of WAP. They talk about each line of code, show exactly what is what and have excellent template examples. Great work!!

The web advertising and marketing is extremely confusing. Almost everything I've ever been told has been a lie. In sharp contrast, Kuegler's book tells hard truths, backed up with very specific examples. He focuses on companies and techniques that have flown below the mainstream radar screen, and delivers information that any marketer or entrepreneur can use.

Chris Yeh is Mr. Kuegler's partner at his consulting firm.

I would question the objectivity of the previous review.

Please also place no credence in my rating of five stars, I have yet to receive my copy.