Computers Books

While this book covers all the significant technology in the area, it is a much better read for all those things you wondered about in Sci Fi Could they really do that? Also the policy issues are critical to our privacy rights and conversly national security.

Anyone who uses a mobile phone, relies upon oversees Internet connectivity, or worries about personal security should get acquainted with this book. Mr. Vacca has once again produced a very accessible yet easily readable tome on the dangers and promise of satellite encryption. Pick it up and you'll learn about or government policies regarding satellite communications management and security. By the time you put it down, you'll understand everything from pagers to the electronic battlefield. It's a must-read!

Great book - detailed and technical, but still a good read

As always, John Vacca provides an incredible level of detail in a readable manner. The Internet implications are particularly applicable to almost any reader. In our case, where the line-of-sight constraints of radio transmission in our wireless WANs are forcing us to look at satellite options, this book is an invaluable resource. And the tales told herein about encryption break-ins and techniques make fascinating reading in their own right.

Technical from orbit to chip, and immensely readable as well!

I think that the tittle of this book is a bit misleading. If one reads through all the enthusiastic reviews of the book one can actually get a clear picture of what it is about. It is a general overview of politics of encryption with some technical information included in between. I cannot understand the reason for more than one hundred pages of information about different types of military equipment. Yes, this book is interesting but it is not about cryptography and encryption. These subjects are only a small part of the book. I returned Satellite Encryption after very thorough consideration.

This is a short book, so I only anticipated a rudimentary overview and basic instructions on creating podcasts for a novice. I was pleased to find a good range of information, mostly for people who have had some experience with digital audio and content syndication.

The book is essentially a catalogue of all things related to podcasting. It compares everything from podcatcher software, microphones and headphones, audio editing programs, distribution methods, and all things in between. It also provides a basic guide on creating audio and video podcasts using the iLife products on the Mac or Audacity and Movie Maker on a PC. I felt the best feature of this book was that almost every page included an image of each interface or piece of hardware being discussed. Again, it gives the reader a great side-by-side comparison of the most popular and up-and-coming technologies related to podcasting.

Unfortunately, because the book is so focused on current technology, it will become obsolete very quickly. In fact, the book is barely a year old and is already dated. The author realizes this and attempts to be as forward thinking as possible. This is the second edition of the book, and no doubt subsequent editions will follow.

This book provides everything a person needs to know if he or she is seriously considering creating an episodic podcast right now. It even features some interesting interviews with veteran podcasters. If you do buy this book though, don't expect that it will have a long shelf-life.

You have to admire anyone who tries to write a beginners' guide to a technology this new and that is growing this explosively. Farkas really does an excellent job. His second edition got me up and running on my own podcast within 48 hours of my buying the book.

Most valuable: the author's evaluations and recommendations of products and software. Yes, this material will quickly become dated, but Farkas gives us a good starting point to research gear in online forums and discussion groups.

Least valuable: same as above, as you have to accept that this technology is growing so quickly that any book will quickly become dated. But don't shoot the messenger. Farkas does a great job, and he cannot be blamed because he has written a solid guidebook and cannot control changes within the world of podcasting. Do your own research as needed. Many podcasters are thrilled to discuss their own history with this emerging form. At least Farkas can help you sound like you have some idea of what you are talking about when you ask for help!

Also helpful: descriptions of RSS and script for your own RSS feed, descriptions of hardware available and discussions of each, along with interviews with successful podcasters who maje their own recommendations.

It does help to know a little HTML going into the RSS section, though.

This book is only good if you have absolutely zero experience or knowledge of podcasting. If you have already recorded a few shows, this book isn't for you.

Secrets of Podcasting--Audio Blogging for the Masses
By Bart G. Farkas
Published by Peachpit Press
ISBN 0321369297

Reviewed by Jim Lauria-HuNTUG member

Real world guidance on creating podcasts

A well written and well illustrated guide for beginners looking to create or locate podcasts on Windows or Mac machines.

Farkas includes plenty of screenshots and illustrations to simplify the informative text on how to download podcasts on MP3 players, create scripts and set the flow of your podcast, picking software for editing and recording, and legally playing music on your podcast.

He also offers advice on choosing the right equipment and distributing your podcast and RSS/XML feeds.

An interesting book for beginners which gets a 5 star rating.

Although I haven't (yet?) created one, I am becoming more interested in the podcasting phenomenon. A very good "get your feet wet" book to get someone started in that area is Secrets of Podcasting - Audio Blogging for the Masses by Bart G. Farkas.

Contents: Podcasting Basics; Jumping In; Creating a Podcast; Podcasting Distribution; Appendix; Glossary; Index

Yes, there's only four chapters... but they're *long* chapters... :)

I don't know that I would have titled this book "Secrets of". That almost implies that the book covers the nitty-gritty of podcasting and goes into great detail on specialized topics. That's not the case. Instead you get a broad coverage of the subject matter, from what it is to how to create your own. I've reviewed a number of other podcast books that go into great detail on mics, setting up your own studio, etc. Not here... This is really targeted at someone who either wants to know more about this strange new thing called podcasting, or someone who wants to create a podcast and wonders how to go about it. The information is highly practical, and you get all the "must know" information in order to make sure you are successful your first time out. If you then want to continue on and carry it to the next level, you can look for the books that get into the esoterica of sound theory and such...

I liked how Farkas listed a large number of software packages and hardware recommendations to get started. There's no emphasis on "buying the best of everything", but rather making solid purchases (or downloading solid open source software) that will serve you well going forward and make sure you don't sound like a rank amateur out of the gate. With coverage of Mac, Linux, and Windows platforms, you're pretty sure to find something that will fit your configuration. Also, if you're just into listening, chapter 2 (Jumping In) will give you everything you need to know on how to find, download, and manage the podcasts you find. All this is done with some off-beat humor and a number of interview sidebars with actual podcasters. Getting the perspective of where things are going from more than just the author adds quite a lot to the mix.

So long as you're not looking for expert level tips when you buy the book, you should enjoy the material and get real value from it. I certainly enjoyed reading it, and learned a bit in the process...

Upon completion of this book, I began to muse: what percentage of security professionals have given any thought to security metrics? For those that have actually considered the topic, with what level of frequency do they entertain thoughts of security metrics? Yearly? Monthly? Daily? Gee, I think to myself, I'd like to see a time series analysis exhibit of that...

Based on the fact that I sit here torturing myself with these thoughts, I contend that Security Metrics has already influenced my approach toward security management. Indeed, Jaquith has done an excellent job of exposing an area that is critical to effective security management, but to which many security practitioners (myself included) have previously paid lip service. Security Metrics offers valuable insight to organizations seeking to provide a greater level of intelligence and meaning around their security program(s).

In addition to how well the ideas of the book resonated with my own professional and academic background, the choice to give a 5 star rating was based on its organization, readability, entertaining quips, and the fact that many of the alternative publications in the realm of security metrics are triple or more the cost of this one. Though I've not yet read or reviewed other similar works, the bar has been set high.

What a book. Seriously, I laughed, I cried. I shouted in frustration, only to be placated on the next page. I got a better understanding of what Andy has been banging on about with Security Metrics. And it helps me do my job better.

As the other reviewers state, the information in this book is very valuable and would be an asset to any information security professional, particularly those of us involved in reporting metrics.

My only complaint is the author's writing style. He uses too much nerd-speak. By that I mean his sentences use a lot of giant, impressive-sounding words and jargon when he could say the same thing using simpler, day-to-day english. Because of that, the book was a difficult read for me. I had to re-read many parts to make sure I understood what the author was saying.

I'm at work now and don't have the book with me. I'll update this review later with some examples.

The book is an excellent resource for the security professional who is interested in implementing a strong industrial security program with measures that can assess its effectiveness. I highly recommend it.

I'm not sure what I can write to sway you to buy or read the book if 5 star reviews from Ben Rothke and Richard Bejtlich don't sway you but I'll throw my likes and dislikes in here anyway. I'm not a "metrics guy" in fact, I'm still not , but I do think the book puts the concept of using them into perspective for the person that may not use any metrics in their security work.

I've been summing up the book to people at work by using the example (and I'll badly paraphrase) from the book of "if your spam gateway blocks 100,000 spam messages a day is that a good metric?" Initially you may say yes, that is a good metric. In fact most people at work said the same thing. But, as the author explains it is a poor metric. Better metrics are useful percentages like the percentage of missed spam or the percentage of false positives. Saying that 100,000 spam message are being stopped only tells us that you have a ton of spam on your network.

Some of the things I liked about the book were the author's discussions on how to make charts more readable and efficient at portraying information. I had to read the Tufte books in college and have to admit that I got more out of chapter 6 (visualization) than I feel I learned that whole semester of class. Chapter 2 discussing what makes good metrics was extremely useful, as well were chapters 3 & 4 because they gave good examples of metrics you can use to measure an organizations various defenses like perimeter security or application security. The discussion of using COBIT, ITIL and Security Frameworks in Chapter 4 was also good.

I only had two minor gripes. First was that toward the end of the book the author talks about colors of slides and charts which obviously doesn't do us any good since the book is in black and white and second, that he does use some big words throughout the book and I did find myself having to go back and reread things. Could he have put it into simpler terms, probably, but that doesn't make the book bad, just means I need to work on my vocab :-)

Overall it was a good entrance to the world of security metrics for me and took and away some of the perceived boredom of them. It definitely gave me some tools to look more critically at the numbers and stats that some of the vendors throw our way as well as how to deliver data and information in a more useful matter.

I am a technical project manager that oversees about 25 developers, business analysts and architects. When I bought this book I had very low expectations because most of the SOA books on the market promise more than they can deliver. The wealth of information and the historical computing overview that this book discusses are valuable to any IT and even business employees. I'm still reading it, but so far, I have only one word that can describe my admiration for this work:

"Wow!"

If you are looking for a great read, a book that explains in simple words the principles of SOA modeling, service modeling, middleware modeling, or modeling SOA systems, you will find this book enriching, educational, and fairly easy to read.

This is one of the most fascinating and inspiring SOA books that I ever read. The author Bell both takes his readers through an entirely new service development process and also accentuates the strategies that drive design and architecture for projects. In point of fact, this is the only book that literally explains what service reusability, interoperability, and discoverability mean to a developer, an architect, or a manager. This book is, and will always be considered as the book that started a new era in software development. Why? Because most of the chapters are innovative and present a new vision and viewpoint for building components and services - chunks of code that transform into executables.

The modeling sections are easy to understand and implement. Managers or business people can study this language as well. This simple drawing method for expressing service structures and their relationship simplify and explain SOA deliverables.

I am a Java developer that recommends this book to the development community, to architects, to managers, to operations people, and to infrastructure professionals.

Very impressive text!

I believe that once in a millennium an article or a book can change your life. Why would anyone take the time to write a book that tells a different story, puts you in a unique and special environment that you have never visited before? Why would anyone peril his career, put his/her name at risk and unveil a technology that does not exist?

This author that has appeared from nowhere published an exciting, technical but also philosophical communication narrative about how should we correspond and collaboratively build software. But if you expect to read about a particular programming language or technology, this is not your kind of a book!

From the very first page you find a creative mind that drags you deeper and deeper into a virtual world, a software landscape, which is depicted as a 3D illustration that you can touch, manipulate, or mold to promote the business.

I have been questioning myself why this vision is linked to SOA and services. Why can't we just apply this method to design our overall computing word? Indeed, the author suggests that all systems, business processes, libraries, databases, etc, are services. But the major contribution of this book is the simple interpretation of our complex production and deployment environments.

To make it simple to understand, imagine that everything that we, IT people, have been constructing in the past 50 years, are software structures that fundamentally seem to comply with the author's geometrical 3D rules for software modeling: Atomic, Composite, and Cluster service formations. If this is clear, your computing world can be easily modeled, altered, aggregated, decomposed, subtracted, unified, and even transformed.

Brilliant Piece of Art!

Lisa McGuire,
USA

This is a comprehensive modeling book that delves into modeling aspects of services. The discussed topics address fundamental software development and architecture issues that are not unique to the SOA paradigm. The illustrated methodology tackles imperative software design practices as well.

Bell's modeling book also introduces a modeling framework that offers a communication language. This is a vocabulary that should be employed to offer remedies to organizational problems. The provided notation is easy to understand and enables people to exchange architectural and design ideas through a collection of symbols. These pictograms can be employed to foster software reuse, increase communication between silo organizations, reduce operational costs, and even carve proactive strategies to avoid business instability.

I read through the material twice because I wanted to make sure I didn't misconstrue what was being presented. Service Oriented Modeling has, in only 366 pages, presented a concise set of building blocks, rules, and constructs specifically for the domain of Service Oriented Architecture that is both elegant, in that everything in an enterprise environment can be flattened out and referred to as a service, and unexpected, in that a Meta-Model for SOA is presented demonstrating how to identify services at the abstract and concrete level, how to perform systematic composition of services, and then goes on to present you with things you don't expect see and which are rarely or lightly covered by others in this space, a formal language for describing the Service-Oriented-Life-Cycle at both the Design Time and Run-Time.

If you have ever tried to define an SOA architecture and Life cycle using only UML and gotten the feeling that something was missing or overlooked you will truly appreciate what is presented in this book. I have already started using the terminology and rules on a current assignment and I am astonished at how quickly the fog clears when I am in meetings with representatives of both IT and the Business lines.

I really liked this book and the way it was written. It captures you in the beginning by giving you a look in the journal of the stalker, and from there it does not dissapoint.

Mina and Camille were bestfriends until Camille bacame popular and started hanging with the "cool crowd". She pretty much dithched Mina throughout thier Senior year, which was why Mina was so suprised to get a call from her. Camille asked mina if she wanted to go to the mall, and while hating herself for it, she said yes.

The trip started out rocky and didn't get better from there. As they were eating frozen yogurt Camille asked Mina if she would go with her to meet this guy named Andrew, that she had been talking online to. Mina told her she shouldn't meet him and they fought. Mina caved in and said she'd go, but Camille didn't want her to come anymore. She said she'd take the bus home and stormed off. Mina went home and then recieved a phone call from Camille's mother.

She asked if she had seen Camille and that's when it all started. Camille wasn't back by the next morning so the police were brought in. She was labled missing and they were looking for her.

In an attemt to help Mina went to Camille's locker looking for some kind of clue. There she met up with Camille's Boyfriend, Mick. From there they start trying to find Camille and in the end........

This is a really good book and so are the rest in the [...] series that i have read. The way ti was written captures you, and i LOVE the characters. A really good read, i would suggest tit to anyone.

I love this book. Mr. Cray knows how to right. This story is about a girl named Mina. Her ex-best friend, named Camille, is missing so her and Camille's boyfriend start looking for clues. Before long they find out that she was kidnapped. Unfortunatly she dies so Mick(Camille's boyfriend) and Mina start to look for her killer. They uncover a BIG mystery.

After a quarrel between the two ex-best-friends Mina and Camille, also called Camy, Camille is missing. Her parents, the police and the other people think she has just run away as it is typical for teenagers. But Mina doesn't think so. With Camy's ex-boyfriend, Mick, the scornful girl makes investigations. They come across a dangerous stalker who terrorizes the famous actress Deva Winter ... The case becomes more complicated but then a dead body is found - Camille's. Nevertheless, Mick and Mina don't give up and keep on hunting the murderer. They've just one chance: Mina must play the stoolpigeon in order to trap the Stalker. A dangerous task ... This book shows that life for popular teenagers isn't so easy as you might think. You can be lonely as well. Jordan Cray's novel is very sad, you sympathize with the characters, especially with Mina and K.D. and understand them. Impressing is Mina's change of character. The sarcastic girl becomes a strong, sensible, thoughtful and lovable person. It's not only a simple Internet crime novel, it has depth and truth. Once started the story demands to be finished. One of the best books I've ever read!!! I also recommend "The ShadowMan" and "Dead Man's Hand" .

This book is really good! It's addicting beginning to the end!
Story line: Mina and Camille were best friends starting from their early childhood. They looked the same and everyone thought they were sisters, they were inseparable, But one summer Camille goes with her mom to stay by the beach the whole summer. When Camille comes back she's a totally different person. She has new clothes, lost some weight, and even had a summer boyfriend. When they go back to school the following year Camille becomes totally popular and leaves her somewhat geeky friend, Mina, behind.
When Mina and Camille get in a huge fight at the mall about Camille's new cyberfriend, and how Camille is going to meet him/her, Mina tries to talk her out of it. Camille then storms away saying she's going to take the bus home. But when Camille is missing the next day Mina gets worried. So Mina and Camille's boyfriend go hunting for clues leading to her dissapearence.
This book has a great twist in the end and I would highly recommend reading this book.

After a quarrel between the two ex-best-friends Mina and Camille, also called Camy, Camille is missing. Her parents, the police and the other people think she has just run away as it is typical for teenagers. But Mina doesn't think so. With Camy's ex-boyfriend, Mick, the scornful girl makes investigations. They come across a dangerous stalker who terrorizes the famous actress Deva Winter ... The case becomes more complicated but then a dead body is found - Camille's. Nevertheless, Mick and Mina don't give up and keep on hunting the murderer. They've just one chance: Mina must play the stoolpigeon in order to trap the Stalker. A dangerous task ... This book shows that life for popular teenagers isn't so easy as you might think. You can be lonely as well. Jordan Cray's novel is very sad, you sympathize with the characters, especially with Mina and K.D. and understand them. Impressing is Mina's change of character. The sarcastic girl becomes a strong, sensible, thoughtful and lovable person. It's not only a simple Internet crime novel, it has depth and truth. Once started the story demands to be finished. One of the best books I've ever read!!! I also recommend "The ShadowMan" and "Dead Man's Hand" .

Storm of Iron is a wonderful, heart pounding fast paced action pack book.The point of view of the Chaos Marines are shown in this book, and unlike mindless butchers, they have goals, and some sort of ideals. The Iron Warriors are described in detail and it stays true to the fluff that they are first and foremost siege troops. On the imperial side tales of brave heroics echo threw the book as the imperials fight from one desperatatley hopless situaton to another. The charachters come out wonderfully and the writing is fluid. overall an excellent book to anyone's collection

This was the first Warhammer book that I have read. Since then I have read about 75 and collected about 50, to include the Ultramarines Omnibus that this is loosely tied into. I have all of the Horus Heresy to date (Sep 07) and all of the Commissar Cain to date. I have to say that this is my favorite! I have re-read it about 4 times since I got into it 18 months ago. I highly recommend this book! You can read the other reviews about the plot and details if you like, I am not going to go into it here. I really felt that this was well written and I love the character detail that he went into on both sides. It has you rooting for both sides, I felt connected to Honsou and the Imperial Guard at the same time. The whole book keeps you in suspense because he goes into so much detail on each side, that you don't know until the end which side will win. This is a book that belongs in everyone's library!

Yep, ignore the other reviewers who give these 40k books 4 or 5 stars, THIS IS the best 40k book and no mistake. I've been into 40k for years, most of these books are badly written and of poor quality - not doing the fiction justice - but this one is different.
The only two books worth a look are:
1. Storm of Iron...........and
2. Greyknights!
The rest are really poor in comparision, that includes the Horus trilogy by the way! so if your new to this genre these 2 are the best place to start.

Good story, describes warhammer at its best.
Though, a bit too much details, blood and gore at some times. Could have done with less...

First, Storm of Iron is very well written. It is consistent has great storyline and very few flaws, if just one that I recall.

Like other reviewers said lots of violence and conflict, I add great character development and interactions with a plausible ending. Graham, you did a terrific job! Keep it up!

Dear animation lover. This book will restore your faith in the power of passion. With a never failing belief in the craftmanship of delivering a great story Pixar showed the possibilities of a good marriage between art and technique. Off course, some luck of being in the right place at the right time counts as well.

The book starts with the original background of the pixar machine as a calculating machine to the point where Disney takes over.

I also have almost every Pixar art-of book there is, but the movies described in the book (including all the shorts) are mostly viewed from a Pixar company point of view. This way you get a great overall view.

As it is my dream to come close to the Pixar company, this is probably the closest you can get the heart of Pixar when you are living far away...

Great book,
have to read a lot but very very interesting.
Great image quality and edition.
I'm loving it!


Martina,
Buenos Aires
Argentina

If you're at all a Pixar fan, or even an animation fan, this book deserves a place on your shelf!

very insightful look at the fascinating studio that pioneered the animation industry into the 21st century.

The content of the book is as high quality and colorfull as the company it describes. Also the author did a good job at documenting the history of the company.

However, in the making of this book someone made a couple of mistakes. There are tens of images which have unacceptable 'pixelation' (i.e. blockiness due to overstretching of digital images). Especially the full page spread on p. 220 jumps out with pixels blown up to almost milimeter size!

This is quite dissappointing to me, especially as it is the artwork of a company which spearheads the way in digital imaging! I can imagine this is a slap in the face of some of the artitst and it would definitely not pass through their quality system if the book was produced by Pixar.

Overall the majority of the images in the book are very well reproduced, so I take the couple of handfull of bad apples for granted.

This is the first of the O'Reilly books I have been disappointed in. I bought the book for one reason-- to find out how to restore a / and /usr file system off a remote tape drive. Unfortunately the book does not answer this question, all of its examples assume the server has a local tape drive attached. The authors spend their time touting freebie utilities at the expense of a thourough discussion of the backup and restore capabilities that come with the operating system.

This book is important for System Administrators and DBAs. The book is well-written and have discussed all the major UNIX flavors back and recovery. The author went further by discussing the Backup and Recovery of major databases on these UNIX operating systems.
I give 5 stars.

As a former Unix system administrator, this book proved invaluable to me. Backups are a dreaded responsibility for most as they are not glamorous, but when a backup is needed, the administrator can become a hero or out of a job very quickly depending on thier backups. The author provides some deep insight into the art of backups, drawing upon real world examples that provide insight into the recommendations. The authors quips on real world backup stories is worth the price alone as there is great knowledge to be gained from someone else's mistakes and failures. Truly a gem that should be on EVERY system administrators bookshelf.

Even though I was still very new to Linux/UNIX, this book was able to help me create a fully automated backup routine as well as how to restore from those backups. I found the book very easy to read and not at all dry.

This is *THE* Computer System backup book. It contains all the basics of why you want to backup computer systems, plus many of the real world experience details. It is written from a Unix perspective, but is still applicable to Windows and other non-Unix environments.

I've been using this book as a general guide for several years now. It was a book I watched work it's way through the O'Reilly system from first announcement to general release. I bought it when it first came out. I have not been disappointed in it.

Many people think of computer system backups as a dry old musty topic of interest to nobody in particular. But 9/11 showed how important good disaster recovery planning and procedures could be to a business.

Some of the specifics are now a little out of date, but not by leaps and bounds. It is still very good for its core reason for being - Backups. It is very much less out of date than other computer books on the market today.

I have been dealing with large-scale computer system backups and disaster recovery for large employers for years... and I still consult this book regularly to make sure have not missed anything important. It covers all the topics you need.

This is the best OS book i have evern seen, really deserve 5+ starts. It gives many design issues/ideas of real exist OSes which helped me greatly. If you are really interested in OS or do some creative design job, this book is a must see. It seems next edition of this book will be unleashed next February. But what i concern is next editon may be delayed, because there are really too much new things these years, Linux 2.6 ... And I hope next edition will have some introduction to Windows Kernel. I am a UNIX fan, but you see, Windows conquer the PC's desktop, it surely has some shining points. GREAT JOB, URESH VAHALIA. :)

If you need to learn different flavours of UNIX, this is an excellent book. This book is worth reading cover to cover.

I found this book to be extremely helpful in studying for my OS PhD prelims. It really lays out the issues and presents solutions taken by SVR4, BSD, Mach, and Solaris in a clear fashion. Excellent detail. The Mach stuff is great, but it looks like it was almost cut and paste from the research papers. This book isnt for novices. I recommend using the BSD4.4 book as well. Both books dont look at Windows at all (for obvious reasons), so a look at the Dinosaur book (Operating System Concepts) is helpful as well for the case studies. You should have a
clear understanding of OS after finishing this book.

A certain small and select set of books can be found in any serious programmer's library. "UNIX Internals" is one of those books.

I originally encountered "UNIX Internals" in my undergraduate operating systems class. At the time, I liked it, but I didn't really appreciate its full beauty until I re-read it with a few years of operating systems experience under my belt. I work as an operating systems programmer for a living, and whenever my knowledge needs brushing up, I go back to this book.

Uresh Vahalia does an excellent job of comparing and analyzing the approaches taken by different operating systems, rather than merely describing them. His deep understanding of the topic is what really sets this book apart. In addition, it is well written, conveniently organized, and thoroughly indexed. If you really want to understand operating systems, this is the perfect book for you.

As others have noted, this book is not for the beginner. You should probably have a minimum of three years of computer science experience before picking this book up.

A must have book for the serious about Unix Internals. The author tried hard to cover the common features among the different Unix flavors. This book is very suitable for someone who likes to read textbooks. It needs lots of concentration. However, it's an excellent book to read, and a good reference. The author follows more or less an academic approach.

It has been a couple of years since I read this book, but I'm sure most of it is still relevant. It's definitely one of the first books you should get if you're interested in web analytics. It's one of those books you can go back to and use as a reference when you need valuable input.

I bought this copy and Web Analytics Demystified. This book repeats a lot of information in "demystified" plus it gives you coding tools to build your own metrics. More bang for the buck here.

Companies are looking for more and more business intelligence from their Web sites, both to improve their marketing efforts and determine ROI. This is a good thing. This is an exemplary "how-to" guide for Web Analytics. Extremely useful.

I think that the book is for differente people: programmers and marketers. But I found it quite interesting althought you have to select what hacks are appropriate for your job.

Web Site Measurement Hacks is the best book in the Web Analytics field. The book explains introductory topics as well as the most advanced ones in a chronological natural way. Subjects like what is web analytics, how to choose a vendor, how the technology works, and how to implement a web analytics program in your company are covered extensively.

Besides being well written and almost encompassing, it presents also the point of view of several of the Web Analytics' experts and vendors. Many of the Hacks are co-authored by big names, such as:

* Bob Page (Yahoo!)
* Bryan Eisenberg (Future Now)
* Jim Sterne (Target Marketing!)
* Jim Novo (Drilling Down Project)
* Jim MacIntyre (Visual Sciences)
* Jason Burby (ZAAZ)
* Brett Hurt (Coremetrics)
* Xavier Casanova (Fireclick)
* Jeff Seacrist (WebTrends)
* Akin Arikan (Sane Solutions)
* Jay McCarthy (WebSideStory)
* John Marshall (Clicktracks)
* ... and many more!

The index is very helpful and you find subjects very easily. The book is well organized and I refer back to it every time I have doubts. It works for me as a Web Analytics' Encyclopedia.