Projects and Systems Books

Whether new to the world of Project Management or have some experience, this book guides you through the details of electronic Project Management easily. If you are just beginning PM work, Part I, Project Management Basics is appropriate, as it explains the fundamentals of Projects quickly, providing a good quality foundation. The tools, functions, and views are then discussed for the electronic management of a Project, relating them to the fundamentals just learned. Where appropriate, the reader is told about similarities between this solution and other MS solutions, likely increasing the reader's comfort level with the software. All but a few pages relate examples using non-technical language to crystal clear screen shots, which are on the same page, nicely merging the world of Project Management with Microsoft Project software.

After the basics are learned, the reader learns how to resolve the common project challenges of schedule and resource limitations. Chapters 8 & 9 are excellent in providing numerous possible resolutions to these problems. The chapter on customizing the software to suit your needs is short, but complete. The section on importing and exporting project information is the best I have seen to date as it covers many file formats. Coordinating files and using them in a Workgroup and posting files to the Web are also well covered. I highly recommend this book!

This is a pretty good book on MS Project. Of course, there aren't many out there. It covers how to build projects, how to schedule resources, and what task slack is. It also covers how to use Project to report on your progress and it has a section that covers using Project in a workgroup environment.

If you are a seasoned user of MS Project, you may not get much from this book, but if you are like me, and have used project for two years, and needed a reference manual, then books does a good job in that arena.

So far, this is the only book out in the market today that does a really good job of illustrating step-by-step how to use this software package.

It also comes with a CD-ROM disk that contains templates and Microsoft Project utilities.

This is most comprehensive and detailed orientated reference book on Project 98 that I have seen to date. It gives, not only technical support, but real world application to your project management needs. I am a trainer/consultant and I recommend this book as a must to my students in Project Management!!!

For planetary astronomy fans, the book is great: chock full of pictures and engineering detail. (The slipcover is also lovely -- I wish I had it as a poster!) The writing is workmanlike and shows that the author's first language is not English, but it does the job. For the casual reader, though, the technical detail may be too much.
One gripe: the paper is a glossy bond that smudges and holds fingerprints something awful. This would have been fine for the photo pages, but *all* the pages are like that.
All in all, a good book and a much-needed addition to any space-lover's bookshelf.

Galileo is probably one of the most significant NASA missions since the Voyager pair. Here, Fischer covers both the background and the latest findings (as of presstime, anyway) of the mission.

The background is copious but appropriate, covering prior missions such as Pioneers 10 and 11 and the aforementioned Voyagers, as well as a brief history of Jupiter astronomy, going clear back to Galileo himself and his discovery of the moons of Jupiter.

The history of the mission is covered in detail, from conception through to execution with all its trials and tribulations. Bumps in the road such as the mission rescoping following the Challenger disaster and the failure of the primary antenna are covered thoroughly with no punches pulled.

Findings are covered, fortunately, in topical order rather than in chronological, with sections devoted to each of the major moons as well as Jupiter itself.

The book is translated from the German, though despite this it's consistently clear and easy to follow. There are at least two occasions when a wrong word is clearly used, however, once where "degrees" is used instead of "astronomical units," and another I simply didn't understand. But this is just one of my necessary quibbles, and overall the book is impressively readable. I strongly recommend it for those interested in the subject

A must-read for any Jupiterphile. Fischer presents an in-depth look at the science behind the Galileo mission to Jupiter. From the history behind the probe, going all the way back to the 1970's, to the budget cutting, to the eventual launch and failure of the high-gain antenna. It's all covered in this volume, with exquisite detail and enough science content to take you well beyond the press releases. Highly recommended!

An interesting look at the space program from a non-american source, that gives the reader a text free of the usual "national" chauvinism (and a little bit a German-centric comments!).

But, most of all, it's an excellent source of information about the Galileo probe, from its 1970 original concepts to its long-delayed launch (which makes you wonder if NASA really cares about science). You will also find an excellent (and, of course, premature) synthesis of what we thought we knew about Jupiter and its moons, and what we think we now know...

Even though this english edition has been revised since the original 1998 German release, especially about Europa, you can expect most of its scientific content to be outdated in a few years from now... but, no, you shouldn't wait for another book, because the Viking probes, 25 years after their mission, are still giving up some secrets about Mars. So you can expect a few decades of data mining before having exhausted the information locked up in the Galileo database.

Enjoy your trip!

The book is an excellent overview of the Voyager missions sent to explore the largest planets of our solar system: Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. The book gives a complete account of the spacecrafts' respective journeys and their discoveries but most important the author also brings up-to-date information that has been gathered since the Voyagers executed their fly-bys of those distant moons (information gathered via ground-based telescopes, Hubble and other spacecraft like Galileo). Although the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting planet Saturn will certainly add more information about the planet and its moons than the book contains, this work will remain as a true reference for a long time.
The books is solid account of what we know of our solar system.

The Voyager 1 & 2 missions launched in 1977 revolutionised our knowledge of the outer solar system. This book summarises the missions, how they were planned and executed, what when wrong and what worked better than expected.

Most of all it explains what we learnt about the planets that we never knew before. Except for Galileo's recent sojourn at Jupiter, and Cassini's introduction to Saturn, the Voyagers have provided practically all our knowledge of the giant planets of the outer Solar System and their moons. What the Voyagers provided just cannot be measured from Earth based telescopes, even telescopes like the HST in Earth orbit. There is just no substitute for getting in close with an array of instruments.

The book starts with a bit of history about mankind's discovery of the nature of the solar system with a specially good section on the discovery of the new planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The historical encounters of John Adams (who was one of two who predicted the position of the as yet undiscovered Neptune) with George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, who couldn't be bothered looking, were particularly of interest.

The exploration program was initially planned as a 'Grand Tour' with two launches to Jupiter, Saturn then Pluto followed by two launches to Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune. However funding these missions was competing with the development of the Space Shuttle, and the inevitable happened, budget cuts. Even with the reduction in funds, the opportunity could still not be missed, as the optimal alignment of the planets for taking advantage of such a progressive gravitational slingshot would not reoccur until the twenty second century, the 'chance of three lifetimes' for sure. A reduced budget mission was eventually given approval.

Of surprise to this reader was that the final Voyager missions (the name was not chosen until shortly before launch) were initially planned as Jupiter plus Saturn missions only, due of course to funding restrictions. The final configuration of the space craft was very different from those of the earlier 'Grand Tour' plans which had included the drop off of a probe into the atmosphere of Jupiter, finally executed by Galileo decades later. The final Voyagers were closely related to the successful Mariner series.

While some interesting background detail is provided on the spacecraft themselves, their power, computer and instrumentation systems, and the intensity of the mission planning debates at the time of each encounter, the planets of course are the stars of the book. Evans & Harland spend over 50 pages discussing the discoveries at Jupiter, 40 pages on Saturn and its rings, and almost 30 pages each on Uranus and Neptune and their unusual collection of moons.

With Jupiter, both the Voyager's discoveries and the more recent additions to our knowledge from Galileo are covered. Cassini of course is in the process of re-writing the history of our knowledge of Saturn and its environs. But don't let that disturb you. Cassini will take at least four years to make its discoveries, and this book is such a thoroughly good read, you should read it now. Highly recommended.

In the last decade Springer-Praxis has published a significant number of new titles on the history of space exploration. Some are better than others, of course, and unfortunately this is not one of the more notable entries in the series. Written for the non-specialist, "NASA's Voyager Missions" offers a general introduction to what turned out to be a stunning "grand tour" of the outer gas giants of the solar system in the latter 1970s and 1980s. The basics of the story are present including the mission's origins in the 1960s, its launch in 1977, encounters with the outer planets, and the scientific windfall that resulted from the mission. This work also discusses the individuals who devoted their entire working lives to them, from the planetary work of the 1970s and 1980s to the recent Voyager Interstellar Mission.

These missions, launched from Kennedy Space Center in 1977 were intended only to image Jupiter and Saturn as they flew by, essentially a windshield tour. As the mission progressed, with the successful achievement of all its early objectives, additional flybys of the two outermost giant planets, Uranus and Neptune, proved possible--and irresistible--to mission scientists. Eventually, between them, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 explored all the giant outer planets, 48 of their moons, and the unique systems of rings and magnetic fields those planets possess. The two Voyagers took well over 100,000 images of the outer planets, rings, and satellites, as well as millions of magnetic, chemical spectra, and radiation measurements. Without question, they returned information to Earth that revolutionized the science of planetary astronomy.

This work is suited for introductory history and science classes, but it is too unsophisticated for the serious student. It leaves unanswered a myriad of questions, and fails to explore issues of interest to historians. Unfortunately, the full history of this mission still awaits its historian. There are some other good works on the subject but those also fail to tell the story fully. Among those other books are Henry C. Dethloff and Ronald A. Schorn, "Voyager's Grand Tour: To the Outer Planets and Beyond" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2003); Robert S. Kraemer, "Beyond the Moon: Golden Age of Planetary Exploration 1971-1978" (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001); and David W. Swift, "Voyager Tales: Personal Views of the Grand Tour" (American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1997). These other works should be read along with "NASA's Voyager Missions" to gain a more rounded portrait of the Voyagers missions and their accomplishments.

This book, as was to be expected from a volume in the excellent Springer-Praxis series in astronomy and space sciences, is absolute quality. Although I haven't read its American `competitor' Voyager's Grand Tour by Henry C. Dethloff, I cannot believe that it could be done better than this. Especially if you're interested in the scientific aspects (planetary science, that is) of the Voyager missions, you won't be disappointed. It's all very well covered, extensively, with lots of interesting details and totally up-to-date (Galileo results are included in the discussions and there's a preview of the Cassini and JIMO (to Jupiter's moons) missions). The author may not be a planetary scientist himself, he is definitely an excellent science writer, offering an approach that's technical and detailed (and `problem-conscious') enough to satisfy even professional astronomers while he's writing in such a way so as to convey the sheer excitement of solar system exploration in every sentence. Very readable also, nowhere dry or dull.
The book is more heavily focused on the scientific results of the voyager missions than it is on the technical, engineering parts of it, but that is really not a problem. Most of the on-board instrumentation of the Voyager probes is explained well enough. The book has a lot of stunning black-and-white photographs and many illustrations and diagrams, and it even features a middle section with 13 colour plates. There's a bibliography and also a huge list of useful internet resources. All in all a great book. Very, very much recommended! Don't let yourself be scared off by its considerable price. It's worth every penny.

Within the book you can find a deep and clear overview useful for all professionals that develop solutions that should integrate a series of elements that reach an specific goal. A most in every engineer library.

This excellent text will be useful to every system engineer (SE) regardless of the domain. It covers ALL relevant SE material and does so in a very clear, methodical fashion. The breadth and depth of the author's presentation of SE principles and practices is outstanding. Anyone thinking of writing the "great American SE textbook" can put down their pens. Mr Wasson has done it.

Wasson's book provides a very complete review of systems engineering processes, procedures and terminology. I found the section on trade studies of particular value for developing aerospace applications. Sections on requirements analysis and specifications were also very helpful.

[...]Content-wise the book is excellent.

.
.
.
The author wrote this beook because he was concerned that many of the SE textbooks on the market were too philosophical, and decided to channel his energies into creating a text
that reflected his realities as an SE practitioner and program
manager.

The book includes
1) conceptual foundations in SE,
2) HOW TOs,
and
3) practitioner-based knowledge.

Since SE applies to any type of system from Space Shuttles to PDAs, organizations, services etc., Wasson built on the basic SE foundations from aerospace and defense in formulating a fresh new approach that canbe applied to any business domain - construction, communications, financial, medical, educational, transportation, etc.

The 57 chapters are "lesson oriented", developed for upper-undergraduate to graduate level students, focus on specific SE topics, and include two types of exercises: development of general systems, products, and services and organizational centric.

Instructors can take the topics to any level of detail they desire, depending on their audience.

This book is a very good introduction to the power of modeling with UML. After an initial presentation of the basic principles of modeling and UML, the book presents the diagrams used to model both business and software views of systems. The final part is devoted to the models that can be used for system integration.

All the diagrams are presented through the same case study. This book does not claim to be a detailed presentation of UML. It achieves with its case study to reach a good balance between providing enough knowledge to be used in real life situations, without being lost in features that are rarely used. The nicest aspect of this book is that it is not only a technical manual on UML diagrams, but it provides also valuable information and tips on how to create and verify them, by providing questions that will help you to conduct your analysis.

This is a book that I will recommend as a reference for developers performing system analysis and design activities. It is also a good practical book for students that follow an UML course.

This book explains Business Analysis as well as IT System Analysis & Design using UML as a tool, rather than explaining the use of UML diagrams for one of the two separate design efforts. This gives you complete three dimensional picture of business process and IT system.
The authors have carefully separated the "Airport Check-in" business process from tightly integerated business processes like boarding, luggage handling, etc. This gives you the idea to define your limits and isolate a business case from complex real life situations.
The book does not cover complete UML grammer. The authors intended to introduce the diagrams used in most business situations. I think it is sufficient for ninety percent of the cases.

UML can be a rather daunting subject if you try and look at the entire thing at once. But if you can distill down the items that are used most often, it becomes much more manageable. That's the goal of Packt Publishing's book UML 2.0 In Action - A Project Based Tutorial by Patrick Grassle, Henriette Baumann, and Philippe Baumann.

Contents: Introduction; Basic Principles and Background; Modeling Business Systems; Modeling IT Systems; Modeling for System Integration; Index

UML 2.0 In Action takes the position that UML is like an iceberg... The stuff you use most often is the smaller portion that shows above the surface. So rather than try and write a 1000 page comprehensive tome on the subject, they take the essential portions most often used by real-life developers and weave them into a case study example. The "UML Airport" is used to show UML techniques such as Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Package Diagrams, and Statechart Diagrams. The writing style is more conversational than what I'm normally used to seeing in a book on UML. Also, there isn't as much emphasis on explaining every last nuance on how a diagram can be drawn to handle every last exception you'll come across.

I can see where this book would be a good introduction text to UML. I would probably follow it up with a more comprehensive title of some type, one that documents all the nuances. While this one will get you off to a good start, you could find yourself in a situation where UML as practiced at your organization may have a few more twists than this one covers. Still, UML 2.0 In Action will have you understanding much more (and much more quickly) than you might otherwise figure out...

First of all, why learning UML? Mainly because the Unified Modeling Language is maybe the best-known standardized graphical notation you can use to create an abstract model of a system. With complex systems, you can not rely on ad-hoc graphical representations.

Then, how to choose a good and practical book for learning UML 2.0? This is a tough task, as major publishers have lots of books on UML, some of them extremely complex and pricey.

Given that I was only able to understand very basic concepts of UML diagrams, I always wanted to truly learn UML, but had no time, nor the obligation to do it. That's a pity, as I often find myself in lack of a standardized way to express the relationships that govern a particular process.

A book has therefore to be chosen by its practical aspect, not the comprehensiveness. It's better to be able to learn "just enough UML" to get a different perspective and to get your job done, than to be discouraged by a thick bible you don't even dare to open!

My candidates included:
-- "UML 2 and the Unified Process : Practical Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (2nd Edition)" from Addison-Wesley, which has good references both as a practical book and as a reference book. I however find it unappropriate that it insisted on using commercial UML tools from Rational Rose, MagicDraw and Interactive Objects. I don't want them, I just want the UML course!
-- Many Amazon.com visitors decided to buy the "UML Bible" instead. No kidding, why should I opt for a "clear and accessible... err... 940-page book?!"
-- A much more tempting choice is Kendall Scott's "Fast Track UML 2.0". The author has great references, the book itself is supposed to only capture the essential information from the complexity of UML 2.0 (and it's cheap too!), but Amazon.com's visitors insist on the proofreading errors in the book, even if they seem to have been addressed by the author, at least in part. I stayed in doubt though... even if I have previously bought from Apress and their books are good.

I can't remember now exactly how, but the next thing that came in my browser was "UML 2.0 in Action: A project-based tutorial", from Packt Publishing -- I've written about them two weeks ago on my blog.

This book is a translation of the German original 3rd edition of "UML 2.0 projektorientiert", from Galileo Computing.

To clarify a situation with Galileo's book's page on Amazon.de: the criticism over some errors are referring to the first edition -- things are now corrected. Packt's translation follows the latest available German edition.

We could take a look on what Amazon.com's readers have to say about the book from Packt. The only review to date comes from a Top 500 reviewer, who notes:
-- "UML can be a rather daunting subject if you try and look at the entire thing at once. But if you can distill down the items that are used most often, it becomes much more manageable. That's the goal of Packt Publishing's book UML 2.0 In Action - A Project Based Tutorial."
-- "UML 2.0 In Action will have you understand much more (and much more quickly) than you might otherwise figure out..."

What I've got with my purchase? A book, what else. This is not the cheapest book ever seen for its 229 pages (the German edition has 288 pages because of a slightly different layout). The only drawback compared to the German book is that the English one is paperback instead of hardcover and lacks the color A2-sized poster with diagrams and models. But this is easy to explain due to the printing process (see below).

The free shipping took seven days sharp from Birmingham (UK) to Brasov (Romania), and the Royal Mail stamp was labeled GBP3.39 (about US$6).

The cover is attractive and optimistic (orange, lime green and black make a perfect combination). The printing is somewhat less-than-perfect, and an educated eye would say the pages are printed on a laser printer... which they actually are! The printing house is Lightning Source, the world leader in Printing On Demand -- and that makes it all clear. To be able to print and ship from 3 different locations, traditional printing may be costly. Contrary to the first guess, printing on demand a book like this one (248 physical pages plus the covers) should only cost something like $6 in quantities of 500. About 50% of the price you paid is to be split between operational costs of the publisher, marketing, royalties, and the profit.

What I liked with this book in the first place? I mostly loved that it doesn't claim that "UML is a diagramming language meant to describe and document object-oriented software systems."

As I personally believe that UML is not only for IT projects, but also for any business process, this book gives me full satisfaction by saying: ?UML can be used to model a variety of systems: software systems, business systems, or any other system.?

To prove it, the book purposely limits its scope to the most useful and used parts of the UML, without claiming the completeness. The examples are deliberately took from the real life and are not treating the development of a software application, as you might be expecting! They do however address the modeling of IT systems (Chapter 4) and system integration (Chapter 5).

If you're taking for simple a business system consisting in an airport, with passengers, passenger services, all the possible situations, interactions, and involved information, well... think again! The describing of the functioning and organization of the "UML Airport" is the pretext of the whole book and it's quite an inspired choice: you can not claim you couldn't understand something because of "insufficient programming experience" -- no programming experience is required!

Three models are actually described and analyzed in the book:
-- the model of the business system (passengers, employees, business processes);
-- the model of the IT system dealing with the passenger services business system;
-- the model of the system integration of all these into the environment, including the connections with the external world.

As the book is fortunately good enough to be understood by business analysts, not only by software analysts, the class is defined at page 133 (Chapter 4, the IT systems) as ?a relevant concept from the domain, a set of persons, objects, or ideas that are depicted in the IT system?.

At the business system level, the Class Diagrams introduced at page 87 only rely on definitions from pp. 82-83:
-- the class "Worker", a stereotype ?used to describe the roles of those people who execute business processes or who are involved in execution of business processes?;
-- the class "Business Object", indirectly defined as being ?handled (utilized, controlled, manipulated, produced, etc.) by workers?.

I will not tell you the whole story, as I already have in my mind's eyes plenty of airplanes and check-in employees :-), I will only note that the book uses a very American/International English language and spelling, rather than a British one (it even writes "etc." without the ending point, as in the Merriam-Webster: "etc").

A typical software-oriented scholastic UML course would probably introduce at least 9 of the 13 types of UML diagrams , focusing on the "mandatory" 6 ones (marked with (?)), in this order:
-- Use Case Diagrams (?)
-- Class Diagrams (?)
-- Sequence Diagrams (?)
-- Communication Diagrams (?) (formerly Collaboration Diagrams)
-- State Diagrams (?)
-- Activity Diagrams (?)
-- Component Diagrams
-- Deployment Diagrams
-- Object Diagrams

Since the book describes an easier to understand busines process, it introduces concepts in this sequence:
-- Use Case Diagrams (?)
-- Activity Diagrams (?)
-- Sequence Diagrams (?)
-- Package Diagrams
-- Class Diagrams (?)
-- Use Case Sequence Diagrams -- a special type of (mixed) Sequence Diagrams advocated by the book!
-- Statechart Diagrams (a.k.a. State Machine Diagrams)
-- Communication Diagrams (?)

Quite logical, if you read the book -- even a little too advanced, as many simple processes can be described avoiding package diagrams. And definitely originalin my eyes as I didn't knew about the "Use Case Sequence Diagrams!"

System Integration (Chapter 5) requires some more terminology. It's time to find out that the 'events' you were using, together with the associated 'reference data', are nothing else but 'messages'. Or even 'documents' if they're XML-fied. (The book will not get too technical, don't worry.)

Overall, a pleasant and instructive experience, still awaiting for my time to explore, analyze and understand all the diagrams and the concepts. As many people consider UML to be too bloated, too fine-grained in many aspects, this book shows how you can only use what you really need of UML 2.0.

A 4.7 stars book, if that level of granularity was possible.

The book describes the events leading up to the mision, as well as the preparations and the mision itself, in great detail. The scientific results of the expedition are also presented in a clear way. What in my opinion would have made this a "great" book, rather than a just a "good" book would have been better writing and handling of the story. Some parts which should have carried a lot of suspense and emotion (such as, for example, the launch of the Voyager probes, and the fears of a rocket failure that would have made all the efforts wasted) are handled in such a mundane way that it's almost boring. I continually felt that sections that would have been gripping were just "one more paragraph".

There are also several editing mistakes, repeated words, mistaken sentences, and even repeated concepts and anecdotes. All in all, I got what I wanted (the story of Voyager and it's discoveries), but I'd have liked better writing.

"Voyager's Grand Tour: To the Outer Planets and Beyond," is an excellent book that tells the fascinating story of an overwhelmingly significant pair of probes that went to the outer planets of the Solar System, one of which is still providing scientific data as it reaches our heliopause.

The Voyager project was one of the most important in the history of NASA and the first to visit the outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. It originated during the early 1960s when astronomers realized that once every 176 years both the Earth and all the giant planets of the Solar System gather on one side of the Sun. This geometric line-up made possible close up observation of all the planets in the outer solar system (with the exception of Pluto) in a single flight, the "Grand Tour." The flyby of each planet would bend the spacecraft's flight path and increase its velocity enough to deliver it to the next destination. This would occur through a complicated process known as "gravity assist," something like a slingshot effect, whereby the flight time to Neptune could be reduced from 30 to 12 years. NASA launched these missions from Cape Canaveral, Florida: Voyager 2 lifting off on August 20, 1977, with Voyager 1 entered space on a faster, shorter trajectory on September 5, 1977. These spacecraft would take a spectacular windshield tour of the outer Solar System gas giant planets.

The scientific results of the Voyager mission were astounding, essentially rewriting the textbooks on the Solar System. Over a period of more than a decade the probes explored all the giant outer planets, 48 of their moons, and the unique systems of rings and magnetic fields that those planets possess. The two spacecraft returned to Earth information that revolutionized the science of planetary astronomy, helping to resolve some key questions while raising intriguing new ones about the origin and evolution of the planets in this Solar System. The two Voyagers took well over 100,000 images of the outer planets, rings, and satellites, as well as millions of magnetic, chemical spectra, and radiation measurements. They discovered rings around Jupiter, volcanoes on Io, ice on Europa, shepherding satellites in Saturn's rings, new moons around Uranus and Neptune, and geysers on Triton. The last imaging sequence was Voyager 1's portrait of most of the Solar System, showing Earth and six other planets as sparks in a dark sky lit by a single bright star, the Sun.

Perhaps a personal anecdote is in order here. When Voyager reached Jupiter in 1979 I was a starving graduate student working on a Ph.D. in the history of the American West. Like everyone, I saw the images that came back to Earth and was truly impressed. When I filed my income tax form the next year I included a little note, which I'm sure made the clerk at the IRS chuckle, that stated that I wanted all of my tax money paid that year to go to NASA because of what it had accomplished with Voyager. Perhaps it was silly gesture but it points up the impressive nature of the scientific return.

This book makes clear that Voyager was an early step in humanity's exploratory journey extending not only to the outer planets but also beyond the Solar System. It is a scintillating portrait of a critical program and a must read for all interested in the history of space exploration.

Highly recommended!

This is a superb history of the voyager project. Well written with plenty of illustrations. It's a must for anyone interested in the accomplishments of remote exploration of the outer planets. One note however. A previous reviewer faulted the authors for not being knowledgeable about planetary astronomy. Ronald Schorn, the co-author, was once head of planetary astronomy for NASA. He's treated this subject exhaustively in his previous book, "Planetary Astronomy: From Ancient Times to the Third Millenium." Obviously the author didn't wish to rehash what he had already published.

This book is a scientific history of the Voyager 1 and 2 missions, with in-depth coverage of the technological development of the spacecraft, the scientists and engineers involved, and budgetary and political concerns. This history stretches back for decades, culminating in the launch of the two vessels in 1977 and their exploration of the outer planets, and their current wanderings at the edges of interstellar space. Note that actual planetary science covering our new knowledge of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and their many moons is found in other books, even though that knowledge was provided by the Voyager vessels. Here the authors betray their weaknesses in planetary astronomy with very rushed coverage of those matters, which only appear in the final third of the book anyway. Meanwhile some of the technical and budgetary coverage gets quite tedious, although such scientific history is meant to be the focus of the book. But as a whole this volume does give a very in-depth history of mankind's most far-reaching scientific achievement, as we have realized the dream of extending human knowledge through and beyond our solar system. [~doomsdayer520~]

The introduction to the Java programming environment is well worth the price of admission. This is for folks who want to build a real proefessional grade weather station and not just a toy demon.

This book is an excellent primer to help you understand 1 wire devices and weather devices. I found that it helped motivate me in other directions such as bee hive monitoring in conjunction with the weather. The programs are good but it would be nice if they were available in alternate programming langauges such as C, C++, Visual Basic and a few others. I am not well versed in Java at this time so the alternate programming language would help greatly especially since I am in the process of doing remote wireless using the Rabbit microprocessor with ZigBee for the weather devices and the alternate languages would help the process. If you have a need to know about 1 wire and weather devices this book is highly recommended...

I am not fond of Java. The book would have been of more use to me had the code examples been in VB or C#. The other problem I found with the software is that it was hard to locate. I had to dig around on the web to find a good link to the software files. I also had problems getting all the bits and pieces installed to get even one of the examples to run.

That all aside there is a lot of good information available in the book if you are building your own weather station.



I found the formulas that the auther used invaluable.

A great book - very informative. Tim Bitson takes you step-by-step in both the software and hardware projects so that even the beginner can complete them.

This book about Agile Documentation turned out to be very useful, and is a kind of book I have been looking for. A lot of the same issues and conclusions regarding Software documentation we have discussed in our own Company are discussed in this book, and the advices from the author is very good. Written in a style that makes it easy and fast to read.
Everyone working with documentation in the software business should read this book!

As a tech communicator with long experience in various engineering environments, I am enthused about the concepts espoused here. We need to write "documentation" the way we like to read "documentation"; it needs to have the content needed particularly by us, in the style we need, and concise and to the point when our need begs for that. We need to look toward long term relevance and up-to-dateness - of all technical information, especially technical reference information, and it is more likely to be so if it is concise and focused to start with. We are all scanners, doing stuff or acquiring information in a hurry, doing tasks in a hurry. Another book told about how a new guy on a project was given a thick document about the project. Two days later, he had a headache; couldn't get the picture. If he were given an agile-ly written doc, he would have gotten the picture. Ginny Redish (Letting Go of the Words) is another great one along the same thinking.

ONE distractor: He wrote the book with a bit of his own fluff. Maybe to give the book a slight bit of thickness. Could have been more to the point. An engineer I used to work with used to say "paid by the pound".

Ruping did a good job of covering the topic of software documentation, albeit somewhat generically, i.e. not that specific to software development. He quotes a lot of others in his book and identifies that the goal (of agile documenting) is 'light-weight but sufficient'. If you're working on developing a system for documenting software development (or really any other technical project) this would make a good reference, but start at the back of the book. He uses patterns in his book as his technique to cover the topic. They are recognized problems and solutions, and he lists all of them in the back of the book in thumbnail form. The middle of the book provides the elaboration. The first part of the book is his professional history (sorry Ruping, but not that interesting), and his how-to-use-the-book section.
The problem I had with the book is that I didn't see anything new and innovating. I didn't have an `ah-ha' moment where I finally understood the real principles behind 'agile' documentation. I didn't find this book 'agile' at all. I also did not agree with all of his solutions, most seemed cliché. But again, if you're looking for a reference on the topic of technical documentation - this is not bad.

This book gave me the information I was seeking. It really was a good read. If you are looking to learn more about Information Technology, this book has it.

Easy read, good overview with realistic comments about the job of a PM.

Using this book as a study guide, it is possible to pass the PMP exam. Using only Project Management in Practice and the PMBOK to study from, I easily passed the PMP exam the first time without joining one of the intensive prep classes. Nearly all the questions on the exam were covered in this book. All the PMI required areas of study are covered; Organization, Planning, Budgeting, Scheduling, Resourcing, Monitoring and Controlling, Evaluating and Terminating. The concepts of Earned Value and Critical Path Method are easily explained and examples given. Formulas and case studies are provided with each chapter. As a practicing Project Management Professional (PMP), I still refer to Project Management in Practice.

The author has chosen a good range of projects for this work. They closely match the projects we're involved with in our local Parents and Citizens group to help out at our daughter's school. Very convenient.

The presentation allows for either staged progress through the content or more random access to concepts as you need them.

It's short enough to be digestible but contains most of what you need in Pages, short of AppleScript and other more advanced topics.

If you're relatively new to Pages and would like a good way in this book is probably for you. If you are a more advanced Pages user or have a lot of word processing experience in general you would probably benefit more from a more advanced treatment.

This book does what it sets out to do very well.

Wow, what a bargain! Here's what's so GREAT about this book:

1) The chapters are clearly organized and thought out. Each chapter provides you with a quick, fun, creative project in which you painlessly learn about many of Pages' key program fundamentals.

2) The book provides its instructions in a clear, visual, step-by-step manner that makes learning VERY EASY, yet effective!

3) This author loves to use full-color illustrations, which makes following the author's instructions a real snap.

4) More than a simple word processor -- this author teaches you how to create NEAT projects that look great. You will learn how to create professional-looking projects in this book.

5) Doesn't waste your time. I completed this book within a couple of days and was able to immediately start publishing all kinds of neat publications afterwards.

My summary -- BUY THIS BOOK!! You won't regret it. Wow, what a bargain!

Pages was great when originaly itroduced. Now, in version 2.0, it has exceeded its own expectations to provide excellence wel beyond the ordinary. This edition of "Creating Pages with iWork: Visual QuickProject Guide"
by David Morris, will provide you with the best any "how to" guide could offer. If you love Macs, if you appreciate Pages, you will be blown away wih the quaity of not only Pages 2.0, but also the manner in which the information is presented in Moriss' "Creating Pages with iWork: Visual QuickProject Guide."