Applications Books

Dear Professor:

Befor a few months, I read this book in MIT durring I do visit professor research,It is an excellent book. Now I came back China,I want to buy it, but I don't know how to buy it, and how to pay it. Would you please tell me for it, I will very appreciate your help.

Dr. Xueguang Qiao

It is an excellent book in the optical fiber communication and sensing!

A review of this book can really only be given in comparison to the only other book on the subject at this time, "Fiber Bragg Gratings," by Kashyap.

The book has a wonderful balance between the theory and applications of Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs), something that is lacking in Kashyap's book. The first 4 chapters (not including the introduction) give a nicely detailed theory for FBGs, including several sections in the "Properties of Fiber Bragg Gratings" (chapter 3) that are not covered in Kashyap's treatment. The book then contains two relatively large chapters on the applications of FBGs, the first on "Applications of Bragg Gratings in Communications" (chapter 6), and "Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors" (chapter 7). FBG sensors are completely omitted by Kashyap, so this book is far more useful to those working in the area (as the reviewer is). Although this book does not includes as much in the way of "Apodization", "Band-pass Filters", and "Chirped Fiber Bragg Gratings", as Kashyap does. Kashyap also has an extensive chapter on "Fiber Grating Lasers and Amplifiers", which is a small section in this book.

Overall I would say 4.5, but I had to choose 4 or 5, so I went with 5, as this book has been a great help to me. Conversely I gave Kashyap a 3.

So, if you can only buy one FBG book, I think this is it. But check the tables of content for both books and compare them, as Kashyap may be of more use to some.

My final though is that this book does have the feel of an edited collection of some 700+ references, were as Kashyap does appear to have written a book which feels more like a text book. But as a reference book I personally prefer the first.

Regards,

It is an excellent book in the optical fiber communication and sensing!

I knew nothing about fiber Bragg gratings before I picked up this book. Othonos and Kalli cover just about everything you would want to know about fiber Bragg gratings, from the physics of the fiber itself and how the gratings are created, to applications (including some of the more exotic ones). The material is presented in an understandable manner, with sufficient text descriptions - not just equations that you have to figure out yourself. If you're just beginning to learn about fiber Bragg gratings, I recommend this book highly.

Seifert walks you through and gives you the core concepts you need to understand the evolution of Ethernet to the Gigabit and Multi-Gigabit speeds. Very well layed out.

An excellent and must have book on ethernet. Glad to see someone involved in the standards process decipher the ethernet, fast eternet and gigabit standards. Very easy to understand and focuses on the practical aspects.

This book not only covers Gigabit Ethernet, but ethernet in all its varieties. Rich Seifert covers everything very clearly systematically.

There is a fair amount of repetition across chapters, possibly so that each chapter can be read independently and out of sequence.

This book is fantastic if you need to get a grasp of Gigabit Ethernet fairly quickly. The explanations are clear and concise and it's fairly easy to read. I skipped the first couple of chapters because I wasn't concerned with some of the historical perspective, and the book was still very readable.

It has the best explanation of 8b/10b encoding and autoconfiguration I've found as well as doing a good job describing the differences between Gigabit Ethernet and the 10Mbps and 100Mbps versions.

There's even a little humor to spice the book up. It is bad engineering humor, but humor nonetheless.

Well written and full of information. Excellent comparison in the last chapter of ATM to Gb E-net. If you need a book on Ethernet, get this one. So many books just have a lot of text with very dry information in the form of opinions (nothing you can sink your teeth into) but this book has very good information presented very cogently.

If you want just one book on networking and specifically upon Ethernet, get this book! If you are installing or supporting a network, get this book! It has tables on "Ethernet Media Designations" (e.g. 10Base-FL) so you buy the right stuff, and other tables such as "Switching vs Repeating", "Full-Duplex Media Support", and "Link Propagation Delays" which are very clear and helpful.

I wish I had had this book three years ago when I was converting our old network over from coax to UTP/10BaseT.

I've enjoyed everything that I've bought by Rick Sammon and this is no exception. He's thorough and helpful

Rick hac combined basic photography with digital enhancement..Believe me when I say you need to edit almost all your photos to make them really pop. This book is easy to understand and gives you the basics to improve your digital photos while learning photoshop elements or cs2.

I enjoyed this book. It reads easily and quickly and many of the photos are stunning. It introduces and de-mystifies some of the more difficult PhotoShop functions but was not detailed enough for me in some examples, to use these functions without further instruction. I found it inspiring enough to order a more in-depth book with precise step-by-step instructions, Rob Shepperd's Outdoor Photographer Landscape and Nature Photography with Photoshop CS2, to teach myself some of the techniques in-depth. Recommended for anyone wanting an overview of CS2's possibilities and an opening to begin exploring it.

Before I give you my review of Rick Sammon's new book, Idea To Image in Photoshop CS2, let me tell you a bit about me. I am an enthusiastic advanced amateur photographer--with roughly 40 years of experience that includes published magazine and Associated Press photos and numerous awards. I gave up my wet darkroom a few years ago for digital photography, image editing in Photoshop and ink jet printing. But, enough about me; let's get on to the important stuff and why you're reading this review: my thoughts on Idea To Image in Photoshop C2. So, what kind of book is this, and who is it for?

What Kind of Book is This?
Strictly speaking, this is not a how-to-do-it book. Yes, it has many examples of how Rick created his photos and associated effects. And, looking in the Table of Contents, you'll find a goodly list of projects that offer numerous techniques, such as, A Note Paper Effect, A Quick Pencil Sketch and Speed-Aging A Photograph. But the crux of the book is an attempt (mostly successful) to teach the reader how to take a concept for a photograph and, through a combination of careful planning, good photographic techniques and post shoot Photoshop image enhancements, create professional-level images.
There are three sections to the book: Chapter 1 on how to get ideas for innovative images; Chapters 2 through 4 about actual shooting and enhancement techniques, and Chapter 5 on how Rick (and you) can envision and carry through projects, as the title of the book says, from idea to image.

Who is Idea To Image in Photoshop C2 for?
This book is definitely not for absolute beginners in either photography or Photoshop. Rick assumes some basic knowledge in both areas. And, since this is a project-oriented book, he assumes the reader wants to learn, not only how, but also why, Rick recommends each technique. Rick also goes to great lengths to explain where each concept he describes fits into the scheme of the creation of the final image.

Conclusion
The obvious question now is, will this book at least return your investment? If you're looking to up your photography/Photoshop skills beyond the basics, to what Rick refers to as photographic artistry, the answer is yes. Rick's premise is that any photographer only gets out of a photographic project what he or she puts into it, and besides reasonable skill and imagination, that also means sufficient time. If you're willing to put in that time, this book will prove an excellent guide.

Idea to Image in Photoshop CS2 - Rick Sammon's Guide to Enhancing Your Digital Photos is a different sort of Photoshop book. Most Photoshop books focus on showing you what can be done to enhance your image. Idea to Image approaches from a different perspective. Rick Sammon encourages you as the reader to focus on your final vision prior to capturing the image. Throughout the chapters he sprinkles in an assortment of suggestions and examples designed to aid with composition, and timing. Learning when to take the picture, and encouraging you to experiment and think beyond a single shot.

The book is 202 pages long, and very reader friendly. In reviewing other Photoshop books I often conclude that you can jump in anywhere that interests you and start playing. With Idea to Image I think it best to start at the beginning and read it in order at least through the first two chapters. There is a lot of good advice in the opening pages and to skip past it would be a mistake.
Once you get into the book, like most Photoshop books, the lessons are brief and well encapsulated allowing you to quickly access what you need to know to try a new technique. The book encourages you to explore and experiment, always-good advice in my mind. I always encourage my friends to push beyond the obvious application of a technique and think of unique ways to apply a new style.

Idea to Image is a great book if you are in need of a little creative boost. While some of the subject matter would be beneficial to beginner photographers, there are surely better places for a novice to look for help. The more I know about Photoshop the more I realize how much more there is to learn. Idea to Image is a great reminder to focus on the final image, not just the viewfinder, and it is a welcome shot in the arm when your creativity is waning.

To me a review is most meaningful when you know a little something about the person writing the review. I have been an avid amateur photographer since the late 1970's and have been selling my work since 2004. Photography isn't my day job, but it does provide a welcome supplement. I have been shooting with a Canon Professional Digital SLR since 2003 and perform the vast majority of my post processing work in Photoshop. I began with Photoshop 7 and currently work with CS2. I am a member of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) and make extensive use of the abundant educational materials available on the member website. I have read well over two-dozen Photoshop training guides with one overriding goal in mind; producing the best images possible.

The book was brand new and the shipping was fast.
Thank you for an easy transaction.

This text is perfect for the reader who can read graphs and diagrams. A picture is worth a thousand words and so are graphs and diagrams. This text is chock full of graphs with all the information that you may need for an undergraduate or graduate course. I love this book. Its an excellent reference.

Was used for "intermolecular forces" class... Advanced, and I think, it could be useful for people who work with AFM.

The above "reviewer" needs to learn the English language! What the hell is that guy trying to tell us? I'm glad the book is useful to the outdoors.

I have not read too far into the book, but it seems to be fairly well written.

If you want to learn about the title subject, this is a great intro book. And it's probably the most enjoyable theory book you are likely to own, if you purchase it.

A java nut is defined as someone who worships the community developed JSRs. This book brings the ultra-boring standard to life with quite a bit of humor thrown in. For a veteran servlet/JSP developer, this is indeed a perfect starting point for portlets. However, you do need to know about servlets to understand phrases such as "...like a servlet, a portlet lives peacefully in a war file..." on page 2. It gets better as you read and I simply could not put this book down (a rarity among all programming books). It comrehensively answers the question "I know all there is to know about jsp, now how do I code portlets?".

I do have some suggestions for improvememts though (although I suspect the author will hate this). Basically, I think there is much more to portal development than the JSR-168 (soon to be obsolete or augmented by a new JSR). The standard is silent on practical aspects of portal development like themes, layouts and the all important content management systems (CMS) needed for large sites (in fact, anything to do with a database persistence or system state and, well, data is missing in the JSR-168). Portal vendors, even the "reference implementation" Pluto, therefore need much more than the JSR-168 to deliver the required developer functionality...this virtually guarantees that any "pure" JSR-168 portlet you write will need to be tweaked somewhat depending on which portal framework you will deploy into. Conversely, if you are using a commercial vendor CMS to create a portal, you need to know zilch about JSR-168. You will need to figure out the database level housekeeping details by yourself (or pay the vendor to teach you...no free lunch even with the open source guys). So, beyond the simplest toy portlets, albeit a solid exposition of the JSR, you will need more than this book to get really going (mostly understanding your framework and container etc...especially to master themes, layouts and CMS).

Finally, thanks to Amazon, I was able to order this book directly from the author (pulpjava). In addition sending me the latest edition of this book for no charge, he even sent me a free book on java exams...THANKS!

A friend of mine attended his class. He said this author is great, he explains things clearly and seems really understand students' need. He knows where students may get confused and he spends more time explain on them. He said he felt the teacher know what questions students may ask. Before student asks, the auther explains.

So I guess a good teacher can write good books because he knows how to explain. I think I am right. I have read another porlet book and very disappointed. After I read this one, I really understand how to work on portlet development.

Like in college, professors good at doing research may not be good at teaching, because they never figure out why students do not understand this kind of simple things (These professors are too smart). Teaching is a skill. This author is really good at teaching, so he is good at writing a book to teach reader.

This book gives you exactly what you need if you're new to the Portlet API. It goes over all of the classes of the JSR168 API, with lots of explaination of how portlets work, and simple, but relevant examples, that make it very easy to understand how, why, and what is going on inside of a portlet.

The book starts off with the basics of PortletRequest and PortletResponse programming, and moves quickly at a good pace into deeper and deeper subjects, such as PortletPreferences, PortletSession and Validators.

The book covers everything in the Portlet API, is easy to read, and makes many of the advanced topics very easy to understand. The author makes learning portlet development simple easy, which is perfect, because so many other books make it so convoluted and hard.

If you're doing portlet development, you've got to have this book on your bookshelf, if not right next to your keyboard.

The author has done a beautiful job in writing a clear and concise text on portlet programming for the JSR-168 spec. I've taken plenty of training on portal/portlet development and applied it minimally. Reading through this text summarized and CLARIFIED all of what went on in class, and made it much easier to comprehend. The quizzes at the end of the chapters are great checkpoints to boot. I've been very happy with the series of books Mr McKenzie has put out. They are engaging and invaluable to me as a java/web programmer.

I knew nothing about portals and portlets until I picked up this book. It really is an easy and enjoyable read and easy to follow and understand. I recommend this book to any one who would like to battle the IT world of Java and portlets. Another great thing is, if you really don't understand something you can go to the web sites and watch the free tutorials the author has online, and no offence, but if you don't understand it after reading the book and watching the tutorials then maybe portal is not best for you. :)

Making I/T Work outlines an effective methodology for planning and executing technology initiatives. One of the nice things about the book is how it alternates between narrative and lesson, one reinforcing the other. And this is done in a style that is knowledgeable and confident without being preachy or pedantic.

However, Severance and Passino have written a book that goes beyond IT implementation in its message to executives. Based on solid research and practical experience, Severance and Passino have provided a framework for bringing an organization together focusing on a common goal and executing according to a plan. Some would label this 'change management'. I would call it a platform for competitive advantage on a sustained basis. As the authors point out, knowing what to do really isn't all that difficult. Where the majority of companies have trouble is in execution. Great book!

Gene Tanski
CEO - Foresight Technologies

Having spent 32 years in Information Technology, I find this book right on the mark. It is a must read for ALL CEOs and their I/T executive that may be contemplating a major change in their orgainzation or heading into to a project of any type or size. The authors use more than a half century of experience to describe how any major project, with or without an I/T component, will fail if proper management techniques and practices are not understood and followed. You may even think this book is about you and if you don't read it carefully and heed the advise, it may well be in the future!

As one of the early North American pioneers of the SAP technology in late 80's, I have assisted numerous clients in implementing complex projects in an effort to drive significant business value and the realization of business strategy. Making I/T Work does an excellent job of capturing the lessons learned over the past decade and shares a practical framework for how to get it done right. The book combines the value of change management, alignment, and dynamic planning in an easy-to-read story. It is a must read for any executive embarking on a similar journey.

Having worked with Passino since the early days of systems integration and the creation of the chief information officer role, I'm impressed to see this book. Most people think you unleash the power of technology through some grand combination of new hardware and a complex technology architecture.

Truth is, it's about people. How you work with them. How they work with the system. How you treat them.

Passino is a strategist who would agree with Michael Porter that information can help give you strategic advantage, but advantage only comes through people.

This book is a must read for any serious student or executive who has a lasting belief that technology can benefit enterprises of all kinds. It's a mandatory read for anyone responsible for a multimillion dollar systems investment.

Dennis and Jacque have distilled years of experience into a couple of very simple, but very useful frameworks that give every executive the context for making I/T more effective. In addition, they effectively share their experience and the results of their interviews to identify the usual problems and then how to deal with them. A simple, quick read that is extremely useful.

A great book that gives a quick overview from contact printing and projection aligners (1970's and early 1980's technology), but it spends most of its time and effort on the more recent (2000's) technology and processes. There was information packed into each page, providing both an overview and detail into the more recent development of lithography. It helps to have some previous exposure to lithography as well as the topics of physics, optics, and chemistry since the book will build on all of these subjects to provide the basis of the newer technology.

this book consists almost everything u need to be a lithographer and is also concise and up-to-date!

also the price is not too high.

good book!

The book provides a great overview of the Electron Beam Lithography, which was the material of interest for me. Material is conveyed in great detail while the meaning of the material is not necessarily constricted to the experts. As an undergraduate student, I found the material readable. I was also able to understand most of the information well and as a result I believe I have a good base of knowledge about lithography. I would definitely recommend this book to other students.

The book give a very good overview of what microlithography is and it gives the recent advances in the field. I highly recommend it as something very good to have if your into the field of lithography and especially if you are a non engineer.

I teach a graduate class in Microlithography and this is the best text I have seen to date. It contains all the modern techniques presented in an easy to read format. I highly recommend this text for all process engineers in the field or engineers wishing to learn more about this integrated circuit processing technique.

This book was very helpful to solve my interoperability problems w/o building crazy wrapper code. I had two huge issues, I was struggling to build an XML web services bridge channel between my j2ee application and microsoft C# application. I had several issues with encodings and XML content issues. I had integration problems with couple of j2ee applications with VB app. This book helped me to solve them.
This book is perfect balance for understanding all microsoft <-> j2ee integration specific concepts and code guidance. Simon guest done terrific job explaining the concepts with good level of details to support both from j2ee and .net perspectives. The author has so much grip and clarity on the subject, makes it so simple for understanding and illustrations and very clear to read. A must have for java and .net developers.

It's an essential resource for any architect or developer who is involved in integrating the two platforms, J2EE and .Net, with enough breadth and depth in both being a technical reference as well as offering practical examples and solutions. The samples are working applications that can quickly jumpstart design and development, providing enough understanding and is presented in a clear concise manner.

It has helped us resolve some rather complex interoperable challenges that we've had with some of our customer applications, and saved us an immense amount of time and resource in research.

If you are looking for a quick start to resolving a complex problem, this would be a great place to begin.

Kudos!

Today's Enterprises are heterogenous environments that make writing reliable efficient applications a nightmare at the best of times. This book gives the modern developer the tools and strategies necessary to successfully build and deploy heterogenous applications in today's Enterprises.

It is nice to see that readers are offered many different strategies for interop including both webservices and binary.

In addition, the companion CD actually contains TONS of usefull stuff including all the code, and usefull 3rd party applications.

Truly a must have.

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt is what J2 enthusiasts cling to when discussing .NET technologies. Simon cuts through these biases with concise, helpful guidance of how to interoperate. IBM and Microsoft both have committed to interoperability and Mr. Guest's book shows how that has real-world applicability. This book shows how an IT organization does not have to commit to J2 or .NET, but BOTH can interoperate and solve the problem. This book is no-nonsense and gives both audiences of developers equal perspective and guidance. Both platforms have their own value. This book attempts to bring synergy and achieves success in doing so. Bravo!

This book is a godsend for anyone who wants to learn how to successfully integrate .NET and J2EE software systems. Simon's writing style is clear and engaging, the book is well structured, and there are copious examples which provide concrete examples of each aspect of .NET/J2EE integration. One of the book's distinguishing features is that it covers a wide range of scenarios, such as XML data interchange, web services interoperability, messaging with MSMQ and the integrating with the presentation tier. The book ships with several useful third party Java products on a CD that allow the reader to immediately try out the code samples. Highly recommended!

This particular series of instructional books (meaning the "QuickSteps" series) has always been one of my favorites -- they're concisely written in short paragraphs with decent descriptive pictures to help anyone learn just about any type of software application.

While I found this book to be fairly complete, I'd still only recommend it as a desk-side reference manual to use along with Microsoft tutorials themselves. While it is a cleverly written book that is not as cumbersome to use as other reference books on the market, it does not address all of the finer points of Excel.

All in all, it's a great reference book, and let's face it, sometimes it's just easier to review a chapter a few times to digest material rather than stare at a computer screen until you become cross-eyed.

All in all, I'd probably give this book a 4.5, but since that's not an option, I'll have to stick with 4 stars.

I'm a soon-to-be-graduating Psychology student at the University of Washington and I am writing this review from the perspective of some one using excel in Social Sciences.

I found this book extremely suited to my needs...each step was very clear and precise and it was easy to find the chapter or section that was most applicable to what I was working on.

It covered all of the functions of Excel that I have used in my classes thus far. Although my intro. classes had a very brief introduction to the functions I needed, as I progressed into higher level classes and used more and more Excel I found that I needed additional specific instructions for my work. This book was very helpful in that way, and saved me the bother of forever emailing questions to my professor, as I had done before I received the book.

I actually used Excel the most to analyze the significance of data from an experiment that I had designed and to graph the results. This required quite a few steps and it was helpful to have a guide to look at as I went as opposed to trying to guess what came after the basic skills I had previously learned.

I also lent this book to a friend who works in American Ethnic Studies and used Excel to organize and make tables of data for her thesis. The American Ethnic Studies major has no background in science, so was in the position of having absolutely zero knowledge of Excel. However, with this book alone, she was able to complete the Excel portion of there thesis without any additional help.

From a student's point of view, this is a great resource if your field involves any use of Excel.

I don't use Excel all the time. But when I do I don't have time to troubleshoot problems.

This hands-on, user friendly book has helped me conquer Excel. The text is readable and well organized. The visuals are clean and fully support the instructions.

I found that you can start from the beginning and teach yourself EXCEL with simple step by step instructions or you can flip straight to your topic of interest and further build your skills. This is a great tool for all levels of expertise.

I manage a medium-sized network and support a large number of fairly savvy users. That is, most users know how to do their specific tasks very well and are willing to learn new things. But they are not willing to sit down with a book full of dense text. This is where the "Quick Steps" books come in handy. I keep a number of these books on hand and when a user requests assistance, I give them one of the books with the appropriate page bookmarked. Steps are outlined in full color with lots of pictures and pointers and tips. Additional information is set off in side boxes so users can learn more if they choose. What I have found is that once a user completes a task successfully, they get fairly excited about the experience and browse the book to learn more. The books really stimulate users to experiment with things they would not normally bother to learn. And that is where this book excels. It is a "browser." Users don't feel like they need to start at the beginning and read through to the end. I get lots of grumbles when I ask for the book back so I can pass it on to others.

This book is also great for new users. I tell them to spend a few hours working through the steps, which are easy to follow and can be done at a fairly fast pace. Most users think the full color layout is fun to work through. The down-side is that like any book, space is limited, especially with the fully-illustrated format, so you're obviously not going to find everything in these books, but I do feel they contain a good balance of material and are appropriate for corporate libraries.

Marty (the concept author for the Quick Steps series) and I are fellow writers and that is how I learned about these books. I must say that they have helped my users enormously and relieved my support task. Hey, it's the 21st century. Anyone working in an office should know how to work with operating systems and common applications. Most people can do that if they have easily accessible references and refresher material like these books. Thanks to Marty for developing the "Quick Steps" concept and to McGraw-Hill for publishing this series.

I am an infrequent Excel user, so I needed a good reference book that is well indexed. That's exactly what I got with Excel 2003 QuickSteps. It's easy to find what I need when I want it. It's very well illustrated and contains a lot of great tips. The author does an excellent job of explaining the material.

This is an excellent book if you want to strictly pass the PowerPoint 2000 MOUS exam. If you have basic knowledge of PowerPoint and want something similar to a practice test, this is the book for you. I would recommend using this book as a supplement with more in-depth books to pass the exam. The end of chapter practice questions on the CD-ROM are very similar to the real test. I ended up scoring a 984 on my exam practicing with this book.

This is a great book for stictly passing the MOUS exam if you already have basic knowledge of PowerPoint. This book is written more like a practice test and should be used with a more in-depth book to study for the exam if your starting from scratch. But if all you want to do is pass the exam, this book is for you. The end of chapter review questions and CD-ROM exercises are very similar to the real exam. I ended up getting a 984 on my exam practicing with this book alone. But once again, I would only suggest this book to people who are already familiar with PowerPoint.

If you are an average or above average Microsoft user and want to pass this exam -- this is the book for you! This book gives a good overview of PowerPoint skills and has good review tests at the end of each chapter. I only use PowerPoint occasionally but had no problem scoring a 952 out of 1000 on the exam. I also learned a great deal about the program that will help me on future presentations.

This book does not cover basic Microsoft skills. So if you don't know how to cut and paste or copy and save files (minimum skills), want to learn more about PowerPoint AND pass the test, I would suggest a more detailed book.

Crammed for 1.5 hrs before the test and passed.

General Knowlege of Windows + This Book = Certification

I used this guide after briefly referring to a third-party manual and scored 952/1000 on the exam--three days before, I'd never even used PowerPoint. Some people think study guides should be as comprehensive as a manual but the truth about the MOUS exams is that, most of the time, the more advanced knowledge you have, the more likely it is that you'll get tripped up interpreting the tasks. Klippert provides an excellent, easy to read and refer to guide that tells you exactly what you need to know. The accompanying CD is brilliant with practice documents for everything, including finished solutions so that you can check your work. What this guide has that most others lack is focus--which is all you need to pass the exam.