Computers Books

I have already been blogging, but this book helped me focus my efforts in a way that may help my business. Lots of great insightful info, and common sense explanations in this book. I found it very helpful and easy to read.

I need a blog for the homebuilt aircraft community, particularly those working with composite (fiberglass) technology. I work alone and will require additional help with developing a good active blog. This book has helped me to ask the right questions of the professional IT type who must help me get the blog going.

Blogging isn't just for the chatty consumer: not with the appearance of PUBLISH & PROSPER: BLOGGING FOR YOUR BUSINESS. Here it turns into a viable approach for furthering business, coming from business owners who offer real-world techniques and ideas to blog to improve business. Learn how to start such a blog and build momentum and interest to promote a brand, products, or customer relations. The authors have extensive background in the blogging world and in business alike and have put their premises to the test, so this offers realistic ideas already applied to solid business pursuits.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

DL Byron and Steve Broback have really done an excellent job in writing this very thorough primer on blogging for business. The book, actually, is more than a mere primer: its breadth is surprising. They've managed to cover virtually every aspect of business blogging in a mere 180 pages. Quite an accomplishment and one the authors can certainly take pride in.

The approach is linear, beginning with an explanation of what a blog is, determining the focus of your business blog, the varieties of blog, design, tools for blogging, writing the blog, getting noticed, monitoring and managing and ending chapter on syndication and other fine points they refer to as "beyond blogging".

What is impressive is how much solid information the authors manage to convey without overwhelming the reader. The writing style is comfortable and spare. They avoid technical language and do a good job of explaining each point.

Overall this is one of the best books on blogging I've seen. It is practical, not theoretical and the authors left dogma and cant at the door. They are clear that blogs are not miraculous but can certainly help a company advance toward its goals.

Well done and a worthwhile read that will serve as a quick reference after you've read it.

Jerry

As a longtime blogger and an entrepreneur I approached this title from New Riders with interest. I was happy to find out a wide range of information that I immediately put to good use in my own blogs. Interestingly enough, though the focus of the book is on blogging for businesses, the elements it presents are not limited to the business world. As a matter of fact, there at times throughout the book that you forget about the title of the book and get sunk into it due to the usefulness of the knowledge the authors share from their experience.

The framework Byron and Broback offer makes perfect sense, taking the reader through a natural progression to make sure the resulting blog is a success. From determining the focus of the blog, how much to write and how to design and implement it; to getting down to the task of posting, getting traffic and monitoring it, the book is thorough in spite of the fact of being less than 200 pages in length.

So, if you are considering to start a blog for your business, do yourself a favor and read this book before. I suspect you will thank me for it!

I've loved reading this book and learned a lot from it. It's even still relevent with Photoshop 6. My only negative comment is that the book is so heavy physicaly that you cant enjoy reading it but by putting it on a table.

What makes this book great is the personal perspective of the authors. Rather than simply explaining features, the authors tell you which features THEY use and when. I suppose this is what they mean by "real world."

If you use Photoshop, but you don't use high-level techniques, you owe it to yourself to get this book. This is not one of those books on how to do crazy effects, rather it's a tool for serious users to get the most from Photoshop's tools. This book takes you through each of the different features of Photoshop -- sharpening, color correction, making selections -- and teaches you things you thought you already knew.

P.S. Years after writing this review, and attending Photoshop workshops, I can attest that the information in this book holds up. The advice on topics such as color correction, making selections, sharpening, etc are still on-the-money and totally applicable to Photoshop 7, so if you can get this book at a big discount it may well be worthwhile.

while this book does have a lot of useful info, there are a few things i don't like about it. for starters, there is NO cd. most books come with a cd full of imges and other goodies. that may seem like a minor detail, but it would be nice to be able to have the same images from the book in order to practice on. the other thing i dislike about this book and this is my biggest complaint is the very bad rosette pattern of the halftone dots. it is so bad, that in some cases it's hard to see the "before and after" effect in the images. i also don't like the fact that all of the curves in the book are backwards!!!!! i have been drawing curves before DTP ever exsisted, and find it very hard to do things backwards and i have yet to see anyone use curves in that manner in the working world. the authors also seem to place too much emphasis on histograms...in my 7 years of working in photoshop, i've never seen anyone call up a histogram and use it for any sort of work yet the authors make it seem like it's an everyday thing for people to judge images with a histogram...these are minor rants, but i'd recommend the photoshop bible to people before this book.....real world photoshop is definitely a book to own, but not as a first photoshop book....

This is for people who use Photoshop in a professional setting. It will help you get better scans and get better output from your scans.

I adore this book! It is one of those books that I just pick up and flip to a random page, and absorb the wisdom. It is full of tiny little things you can do to make your work look more professional. This guy is amazing.

One-Minute Designer Revised edition Roger C. Parker MIS:Press, 1997

Like it or not, if you use a computer you are a typographer, and that's anyone who arranges words within a given space: letter, report, bulletin, brochure, ad, billboard, book, sign etc. You don't have to be a graphic designer to create good typography because Roger Parker makes it easy to communicate clearly. The book is methodically organized. Each page is devoted to one subject, i.e. column width, placement, type sizes, word and letter spacing, font choice-all 204 of them. Parker writes easily, clearly, succinctly, and is always on the side of the reader, and the absence of verbiage and posturing is refreshing. Each page has direct, easy-to-understand two color illustrations that unambiguously define the text. Unlike program manuals that have incomplete or misnamed subjects, I'm impressed with Parker's contents page and glossary, which makes it easy for the reader to find information quickly. The soft cover book is a comfortable, easy to hold 7" x 9" portrait format. For quick review, the italic captions are printed in red. Text is set in one of my favorite fonts Minion, designed by Robert Slimbach one of the world's great type designers. The generous 11-point size makes is easy to read. This is a book that makes it easy to produce good looking, well organized layouts that communicate, a rarity in manuals. Parker's book should be within arm's length at a workstation, and [for the money], it's money in the bank.

Doyald Young, teacher and author: Logotypes & Letterforms and Fonts & Logos

This book is amazing. It lists 200 examples of good and bad design in a text/title/image/graphic perspective for business documents (which is just like a website). This book is a bible for begining or intermediate graphic designers who want to make the perfectly organized data (newsletters, website, newspaper, etc). Instead of long chapters of boring theory and idealism, it points out common design mistakes and shows a better way to do it and throws in a couple sentences of theory to it. In my opinion this is a must in anyone's library of books.

I bought this masterpiece after I read 'The Non-Designers Design Book' by Robin Williams. The content is much the same, but explored much more thoroughly, with clear examples and well-thought layouts.

If you want to get only one book on Desktop Publishing, THIS IS THE ONE! Don't waste your time with other books.

A paper design is self-explanatory and self-maintaining. This is why Roger Parker was able to write this superb book on design for paper. Web publishing involves collaborative maintenance of a collection of material. So one can never achieve such clarity. Anyway, this is a great book if you want to design some paper stuff and it is also good to think about why you'll never have it this easy in the Web world.

I have used the 1st edition for years as my primary Test & QA reference. Being a fan of Dr. Demming, this book supports his teaching. Mr. Lewis's book provides many pracical examples and templates for the QA practitioner, be they a seasoned pro or someone just thrown into Testing for the first time.

This book represents the most complete and comprehensive approach to total quality of any I've read on either software testing or software quality assurance.

Highlights include:

- A structured quality cycle based on Plan-Do-Check-Act. This cycle is the foundation of continuous improvement, which is the theme of the book.

- Complete description of testing techniques - in this respect the book is an encyclopedia for software test professionals and a definitive reference.

- Comprehensive resource for forms and checklists (I wish these were also provided in soft copy on a CD ROM or author's web site, but they are not).

- Full view of metrics across every aspect of the development life cycle. In the same manner that the testing techniques are encyclopedic, the metrics are also an encyclopedia for SQA professionals.

I've used this book as a reference, and it had a heavy influence on a reference chart a colleague and I developed for depicting life cycle key metrics. It does not confine itself to testing alone, and in fact, has something for production services and service delivery professionals, as well as project managers involved with large scale development and implementation projects. You would have to buy at least a dozen books or download thousands of documents off the Internet to get the information contained between the covers of this book.

After reading Software Test and Continual Process Improvement, I am impressed by the breadth and depth of William Lewis' test and quality process coverage. I recommend his book to anyone who is involved in the software development life cycle, including Project Managers, System Analysts, and IT Directors.

Mr. Lewis' book is particularly relevant those of us who must reduce development costs while meeting our customers' maturing expectations. Times have changed; financial restrictions prevent using development resources to correct software defects. Initiating the prevention processes outlined in Software Test and Continual Process Improvement will boost project efficiency and product value.

My suggestions for improvement: If Mr. Lewis left out the vendor references (in Sections IV and VI), then his book would be less vulnerable to obsolescence. More emphasis on how requirement and test management tools map to each other would strengthen the same sections.

It's naive to assume that a book on software test and quality can describe all the components and nuances of thorough testing. Software Test and Continual Process Improvement comes closer than any other book I've read to describing effective end-to-end software quality interventions. It's the software test compendium to hold on to.

You'd have to download over a gigabyte of internet resources, then cross-reference them to come anywhere close to having a resource as valuable as this book. Lewis has taken proven techniques spanning both software testing and SQA, wrapped them into a quality process based on the PDCA model and places all of the information you need to master testing and SQA between the covers of this outstanding book.

All you need to add is the ability to think. If you can do that you'll be able to transform the incredible amount of information in this book into action. If you do that I guarantee you that you'll be able to develop a world class quality organization.

Of course, you can mine the publicly available resources and sort through them. Before you do, think carefully about how much your time is worth and just how much you can absorb. If you're intelligent enough to understand this book, you'll quickly see that you'll save thousands of manhours. If not, you still need this book because approach will make you think in terms of cost/benefit.

The forms and checklists in this book alone are worth many times the price.

After reading Software Test and Continual Process Improvement, I am impressed by the breadth and depth of William Lewis' test and quality process coverage. I recommend his book to anyone who is involved in the software development life cycle, including Project Managers, System Analysts, and IT Directors.

Mr. Lewis' book is particularly relevant those of us who must reduce development costs while meeting our customers' maturing expectations. Times have changed; financial restrictions prevent using development resources to correct software defects. Initiating the prevention processes outlined in Software Test and Continual Process Improvement will boost project efficiency and product value.

My suggestions for improvement: If Mr. Lewis left out the vendor references (in Sections IV and VI), then his book would be less vulnerable to obsolescence. More emphasis on how requirement and test management tools map to each other would strengthen the same sections.

It's naive to assume that a book on software test and quality can describe all the components and nuances of thorough testing. Software Test and Continual Process Improvement comes closer than any other book I've read to describing effective end-to-end software quality interventions. It's the software test compendium to hold on to.

In my business as a book editor and consultant, I am always looking for good resources for clients. I have been able to find some good books on book marketing--and others on writing a good sales letter or press release. But until I read Karen's Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal, I knew of no book that gave in-depth help on design and writing. I am very impressed with the quantity and quality of Karen's information. I especially like the easy to use format. Her book is a great example of the quality of work Karen produces in her business as a graphics professional.

Barbara Munson
Munson Communications Editorial and Ghostwriting Services
www.munsoncommunications.com

I wished I had purchased this book before publishing my first book, but there will definitely be a revision after reviewing this material.

Being exposed to many business people, authors and graphic designers over the last year, I find that Karen Saunders is the "real deal" when it comes to giving relevant information that you can use.

Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal has helped and is helping me to develop my brand. Let us face it-everyone desires to turn his or her product into a sale at every glance.

Everyone wants their idea or product to speak without speaking and that is precisely what you will get when you put the principles of this book to work.

There are many out there promising to help you when it comes to developing a plan and putting it to action, but Karen Saunders delivers in Turning Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal.

My name is Walter Taylor, Jr., Minister and Author of Touchdown Love and I approve this review.

I purchased Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal by Karen Saunders last year and have found it to be an invaluable resource for designing marketing materials including counter displays, book description sheets, our own website, etc. My book is now our distributors best selling book on recreational boating, and I believe the marketing materials derived from Karen's book contributed significantly to this success.

My copy has all kinds of Post-It notes marking pages of particular interest, and lots of Hi-Liter marks, so you can tell I use it a lot. It's not just about graphics-it covers such things as writing good marketing copy, typography, digital imagery, and printing, and that's not all. Even if you hire out your graphics and marketing materials work, this will help you understand and evaluate the contractor's work. I can absolutely recommend this book to anyone who needs to develop marketing programs and materials.

Tom McEwen, author of Boater's Pocket Reference

As partners of clients who help make their businesses more successful, virtual assistants often have to oversee the creation of marketing material. While one option is to hire a graphics firm to do it all while the business owner remains hands-off, most small business owners can't afford this luxury.

Enter Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal: How to easily transform your marketing pieces into dazzling, persuasive sales tools! by Karen Saunders. Filled with beautiful images, information-packed articles, and helpful tools, Turn Eye Appeal Into Buy Appeal is a must-have for any business owner who even thinks of creating (or getting someone else to create for her) logos, business cards, newsletters, brochures, and websites.

Turn Eye Appeal Into Buy Appeal overcomes all manner of design and print roadblocks with answers to such questions as

"What colors should I use to add 'zing' to my design?"
"Where should I start in designing my logo?"
"What will make people read my marketing piece?"
"What paper should I use for my printed marketing piece?"
"What should I say about my company?"

One of a business owner's goals is to increase his revenue. One of the best ways to increase revenue is to attract consumers through powerful flyers, business cards, brochures, and logos. Turn Eye Appeal Into Buy Appeal will help business owners be able to produce appealing marketing material that really sells.

Dawn Goldberg, CMVA, COO of AssistU. Since 1997, AssistU has been training, certifying, and referring the best virtual assistants in the world.

Karen's years of experience is brilliantly conveyed in her book "Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal." Saunders, the designer of many award winning books, gives credibility to the easy to read and implement information. It's a great resource book for anyone wishing to create any type of written material - whatever form it may take.

Barbara J. Butler - Aurora, CO
Destination Wedding Minister - Author - Speaker

The book is well written and I feel that I will be successful in setting up my first honey pot once I get my network segmented for security purposes.

Excellent, really good, sorry for my bad English, but is EXCELENT BOOK.

Regards

Carlos

I have relatively little to add to the praise that has already been given of this book, but I found it extremely enjoyable. In particular, the chapters on collecting and analyzing malware were quite good, in my mind. I think the book delves a bit too deeply into man page territory with the level of detail provided on the minutia of utilities, but that doesn't detract from the book, as it is very clearly segmented away from loftier topics.

Overall, I found this book to be quite excellent, and very informative and accessible to those new to the arena of Honeypots.

Books that put institutional knowledge, or knowledge that people in the industry know but its not written down anywhere, are few and far between. This book succeeds in taking that institutional knowledge and putting it into a readable, functional, and well-organized format.

Before I get into the chapter play by play stuff, let me just say that Chapter 8, Client Honeypots, is worth the price of the book. Client-side attacks are were everything is moving to and the days of a remote OS 0day or quickly fading away. One of the hardest things to automate and teach is client-side attacks because it used to involve user interaction (someone actually clicking on the email, link, .exe), but with the client honeypots they discuss in the book you can automate clicking on emails, clicking on links, spidering websites, and running the executables you download from the sites. You can also monitor your honeypot for changes after running the executable, good stuff!

Most of the other reviewers said you can skip the introductory material, and you could, but its better than the usual "beginning of the book/background" material. The book starts with honeypot/honeynet introduction. Chapter 2 covers high interaction honeypots to include a good chunk of information on VMware and your other "virtual" options including User Mode Linux and Argos. Chapter 3 covers Low interaction honeypots like LaBrea, GHH, and PHP.HoP for your web based low interaction honeypots. Chapters 4 & 5 are a healthy dose of honeyd. Chapter 6 is collecting malware with Nepenthes and Honeytrap. Chapter 7 covers Hybrid systems. Chapter 8 is, as discussed, Client Honeypots. Chapter 9 is on detecting low and high interaction honeypots. Chapter 10 contains Case Studies, Chapter 11 is Tracking Botnets, and Chapter 12 closes out the book with analyzing malware with CWSandbox.

My only gripes about the book were that they failed to talk about persistent versus non-persistent modes in VMware and there as no discussion of identifying VMware and Sebek in Windows. Configuring your virtual machine how you like it, then setting it to non-persistent is a great way to let users or attackers do whatever they want to the OS. The changes survive an OS reboot but if you reboot the virtual machine it goes back to the original state, very handy. The other gripe was a shortage of material on detection of Sebek on Windows hosts, its covered in-depth for Linux though. Detecting VMware and some other honeypot type tools like Sebek in Windows is fairly easy. Simply querying for their respective registry keys usually does the job :-)

Overall, a good book. Its useful, up-to-date, and relevant to security today.

It's fairly difficult to find good books on digital defense. Breaking and entering seems to be more exciting than protecting victims. Thankfully, Niels Provos and Thorsten Holz show that defense can be interesting and innovative too. Their book Virtual Honeypots is your ticket for deploying defensive resources that will provide greater digital situational awareness.

A security technician with some degree of proficiency should be able to read Virtual Honeypots and then implement at least one of the solutions presented. This sounds like a fairly common event, but too often technical books do not provide the detail required to transform theory into practice. Virtual Honeypots offers installation and operational guidance for a variety of deception and analysis systems, primarily for server-oriented technologies. I especially gained a better understanding of Honeyd and Nepenthes, the two applications about which I cared the most.

While I liked the first 2/3 of the book, I have to say I really enjoyed the last four chapters. These covered Detecting Honeypots, Case Studies, Tracking Botnets, and Analyzing Malware with CWSandbox. Of these the final chapter was superb. Ch 12 has probably the clearest explanation of hooking I've read anywhere. I am not a rootkit writer or Windows kernel programmer, but the text was so well written I had zero problems following along.

I gave Virtual Honeypots five stars because it is so unique and well-written, but I do have a few minor issues to mention. First, I was somewhat disappointed by the honeyclients section (ch 8). I was not as confident that I could implement a honeyclient solution after reading the great material on server-oriented honeypots. Perhaps the second edition or a separate book will give greater attention to this area. Second, I found a few small technical items. On p 4, it isn't accurate to say "TCP...[gives] each packet a sequence number." Bytes of application data are numbered, not packets. On p 13 we are told to use a snaplen of 1500 bytes, but this will cut off the last 14 bytes of many Ethernet frames. Try it with ping -s 1472 while sniffing with Tcpdump. As you can see, these minor issues are easily fixed in a future printing and do not justify dropping a star.

If you are at all interested in potentially deceiving intruders, buy and read Virtual Honeypots. You'll learn about more than VMware (QEMU, UML, etc.) as well as numerous open source tools you can download and try for free. I look forward to reading more from these authors -- perhaps a book of true case studies?

This book has short chapters and a lot of examples. It is a good "second" book for an Introductory SQL course.

This is a GREAT book for foundation skills in SQL.

I used this book to teach myself SQL when I was "elected" to implement an Oracle database system at a former job and have since gone on to become an Oracle developer and DBA. The concepts and techniques learned in this book have served me well along the way. I have taught Oracle development in a technical school, and insisted that they use this book in the classroom. The diagrammatic approach to learning about tables, columns, joins and SQL functions seems to "click" with everyone who encounters it.

I'm writing this review after buying my ?10th? copy of this book - don't loan it out if you need to keep your copy.

I used this book when I needed to pick up SQL fast. I worked in an organization where I had to build Teradata Data Bases and used SQL to select and move the data. The illustrations really help visualize every aspect of assembling an SQL program and how it interfaces with the data base. I still use it today when I need to be reminded of a particular syntax. Don't loan this book out if you ever want to see it again. I did and now I'm buying another book!

I am currently enrolled in a Database Management (Oracle/SQL) class at Boston College. Right off the bat, I knew I was in trouble when we were told the professor would be unavailable for help and most of students in class were computer science majors. (I was taking the class to broaden my computer skills above and beyond front-end web design.)

The textbook in class was the heinously monstrous 1200+ page Oracle 9i The Complete Reference by Kevin Loney. After struggling through many chapters and finding our professor's teaching style very unhelpful, I decided it was time for another resource.

I checked on Amazon ... and found Sam's Teach Yourself SQL in 10 minutes to be semi-helpful. Then at the Harvard Coop, I stumbled upon it - - A VISUAL INTRODUCTION TO SQL. The problem, I realized, was that I am a visual learner and need to see all the schema tables and step-by step actions to describe what happens as I develop queries. This books is key for any layman, like myself. It walks you through very basic (and more complex) problems in an easy-to-read visual approach. While using SQL on the PC, viewing the tables is difficult and this book helps you map out the problems to figure them out. I was especially impressed after emailing the author about a table question and getting a personalized response.

If you are in a bind to learn SQL on your own, this book is great and won't kill you lugging it around either.

P.S. A great addition I found to this book was a Mac client software (that can access Oracle Databases) called SQL Grinder. Like the book, this program is also very visual and the GUI (MAC) clearly reigns over any PC. Sorry Windows users! Thanks for your help, David Chappell! ;-)

This book doesn't assume that you are familiar with databases or the SQL programming language. It teaches you the programming language step-by-step using a graphic approach. A great way to learn SQL.

I agree completely with the other reviewers. This book is has an amazing wealth of information about VRML and will have you making some amazing worlds by the time you are finished. Many important subjects are covered, from beginning to advanced topics. I do agree that there isn't NEARLY enough information about scripting with VRML, just a brief talk of how to do it. Some more examples with this would have been a huge help, but otherwise, I'd recommend this book to anyone who uses VRML, no matter your expertise.

This book is perfect for beginners and those that already now the basics and want to advance further. It has many examples and is written in a intelligent manor. If you are advanced in VRML you may still benefit from this book however when it comes to scripting and adding Java to your 3d worlds you will need to invest in other books.

Even nearly nine years after it was first written, this book continues to be valuable for more reasons than when it was published. If you are still involved in VRML and have some need to learn this language, this book is a complete guide that starts from the beginning with the simplest concepts and shape definitions and then builds to advanced concepts such as textures, lighting, and fog. Throughout the book there are figures of the resulting images and plenty of sample VRML files for all examples. I do agree with the other reviewers that chapter 30, the one on scripting, is really the only chapter that is no longer worthwhile since so many changes have been made to the scripting part of VRML. Other than that, this is truly one of the best written and most instructive tech books I have ever bought. If you are going to study VRML, there is no longer any other book in existence but this one that is worth owning.
The second reason to own this book has only popped up over the last two or three years. Since Xj3D began to come on the scene several years ago as the XML-based open-source replacement for VRML, this book has become invaluable for evaluating that tool's ability to build virtual worlds. In fact, the Web3D consortium's "test files" for Xj3D, which continues to be a work in progress, are VRML files from this book that have been translated into Xj3D. Since the base tags are the same in Xj3D as they are in VRML, if you are able to understand VRML you should be able to understand what's going on in an Xj3D file with just a little investigation into the basic differences. This will allow you to intelligently evaluate Xj3D and determine if you can find any weaknesses or discrepancies in that tool's implementation.

Doesn't take you through the subject in the conventional manner. After the first couple of intro chapters, you can then easily delve into any other chapter for what you need. Very useful as a reference once you understand the basics. A bit weak on using scripts to control and interact with VRML worlds. Other than this minor gripe, a great book.

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I am a third grader in Houston. I'm not a computer geek but I'm realinterested in technology and know a lot about computers for a kid myage. I love to read as much as I like to play sports. I think theInternet is one of the greatest inventions of all time. It's sort of the Michael Jordan of inventions.

Willie & the WWW is an incredible book. I usually read chapter books. This picture book is extremely cool and kids in all the grades here read it. Mr. Geissen was invited to our school and spoke about his book. I'll always remember meeting him. Some famous authors come to our school. But a lot of their presentations are boring. And these authors are usually sort of stuck up. The digital presentation Mr. Geissen did was awesome. Our librarian told me he is younger than most of the authors who write kid's books. I think this is probably why he is more with it when it comes to knowing a lot about the Net, and he knows how to talk to kids. He's just a nice guy. He told us all that the attention he's gotten because he came up with idea for Willie & the WWW, the ideas for illustrations, and wrote it doesn't make him special or better than anyone else.

Mr. Geissen talked to my dad and me about computer technology and writing and answered all the questions I had. Mr. Geissen isn't a computer geek either. He has written about computer technology for a long time and knows a lot about it. He said he included the basketball parts in the book because he loves this sport and has played basketball and tennis almost all his life. He's the only author who has come out to our school who can dunk a basketball.

I think he should write a sequel to Willie. He told me he didn't plan to write a sequel. That he just wrote Willie & the WWW for his son. He has gotten a lot of emails from parents and teachers asking for sequels. He said he would probably come out with two more Willie books after he publishes a chapter book called "The Blue Leaf Sled". This is going to be an awesome book. He read part of it at our school. My Mom and Dad encouraged me to write this review to tell other kids about the Willie book. They think other kids and parents will like this book as much as I do. And my Mom and Dad also want a sequel.

This book is a big hit at my daughter's elementary school school, where the teachers, library staff, parents and the community have worked together to incorporate the Internet into the curriculum as a resource for teachers and children.

The author contrasts the themes of reality and virtual reality against a backdrop of the digital frontier of the Internet, and uses the techniques of traditional fables along the way. My only criticism is I think the publisher would have produced better art by using an artist who specializes in digital imaging techniques to produce illustrations that were less static. This is a story that could use more complex images, which better convey movement and better accompany the vivid imagery the writer uses.

I highly recommend the book, though. Particularly after seeing the teachers' and kids' reaction to it. The Web is a new frontier. And the space metaphors and the character of Evelyn, the astronaut who advances the plot (and seems to be based on Amelia Earhart), fit perfectly with the book's theme of moderation and the need for a healthy balance between things in the digital world and the "real" world. I think this is an important issue for parents raising kids today. Overall, this is an imaginative and memorable book for elementary kids of all ages.

As a parent of two and a founder of a Silicon Valley-based startup Internet business, this unique book caught my eye. It's the only picture book for elementary children I've seen that features a Web theme.

The story captured the imagination of my children. And I was surpised to find myself reading a picture book on the Internet that was entertaining for young kids, yet did not condescend to them (or me). This book cleverly provides a window into current and future information age themes -- the very issues we in Silicon Valley confront each day and that are profoundly changing our society.

I highly recommend this book, particularly to people interested in prompting their children to think about the pros and cons of technology, the choices technology requires us to make, and how we can best use it in our lives.

I'm a children's literature professor and our students use this book to introduce students at elementary schools in Los Angeles to Internet concepts. The children love it. The conversations it stimulates are wonderful! The author cleverly uses many metaphors to address issues the Net is raising in society. Often children pick up on more of the metaphors than the adults who read it. I recommend this book to parents and educators who are looking for a good way to start interesting discussions among children about the Web.

As a librarian at a large library in NYC whose been fortunate enough to have the resources to acquire a wide and comprehensive collection of wonderful children's picture books, I and my colleagues whom I most respect tend to be reserved in our praise of new picture books. Today, many of the best visual artists are producing striking and inventive books. They now grace the coffee tables of fashionable homes and corporate offices. All this, in my opinion, is wonderful. For all their artistry and polish, though, even the large publisher's top-list picture books often fall short when it comes to combining artistry with an intelligent and meaningful narrative on important current events.

Willie & the World Wide Web is gaining a cult status among children's librarians, especially among librarians who embrace the responsible use of the Internet, for a good reason. The author uses lucid prose to explore the key issues that are the subject of much debate as the Internet becomes such a powerful force in society. Don't turn to this book for the sort of stunning fine-art illustrations that are on the level of picture books illustrated by the well-known visual artists who work in the picture book field. The images here are fine, though, and complement the text as they should. I read a feature article in which the publisher said future editions will include more sophisticated illustrations. The total effect of the first edition of this book is what makes it special.

First, I and a group of elementary children found ourselves enjoying the whimsy and subtle humor of this book. On a closer reading, I saw the author had carefully woven a thread through this story that explored issues ranging from the complexities of reality verses virtual reality, the seemingly infinite possibilities the Internet provides for innovation, the addictive power of interactive technologies, the convergence of new media and traditional media, the Net's great potential as an educational resource, privacy in the information age, the pros and cons of electronic commerce and new forms of global communication, the fact that the Internet can and is being used for good as well as bad, and that our society is being challenged to confront a number of new and difficult choices as this technology becomes more powerful and pervasive by the day.

In my view, Mr. Geissen wrote this book to say we are in store for a great adventure. He poses many of the large questions. And he poses them well and in an engaging way that intrigues his young audience. How will we respond? How will our kids respond? I couldn't agree more that these issues need to be discussed among elementary children. The author challenges children to consider these issues and ask questions. And with a little good guidance, the children who read this book do. Their insightful questions and answers about Internet issues are ones adults should pause to consider.

The book's use of the motifs such as outer space images and Amelia Earhart's airplane are creative and wise. The story ends right where it should, with a relevant inversion of the "was-it-all-a-dream?" technique of traditional fables. That all this is done within the context of 32 pages of fiction, which doesn't waste words, and that appeals to computer-savvy kids and stimulates their imagination is what makes this book stand out from the crowd. Every library should have a copy of this remarkable picture book for children.

I purchased this book a few days ago, and as soon as I read the first chapter, I realized that I needed to read the entire book as quickly as possible. This is a wonderful book, and parts of it truely invoked a state of "nerdvana" in me!

PRO's:

First, I will say that the information in this book is tightly packed. There is no unnecessary verbage, and the writing is direct, to the point and understandable. There is a high ratio of technical content to noise, and this greatly contributed to my enjoyment of the book. Even in the technical areas that I was already familiar with, I found the summary of the information to be precise, accurate and helpful. I can see keeping the book around as a reference guide for years to come. The general structure of the book, for example the sections in grey boxes with the [!] annotation, works well, and the end-of-chapter summary and review (particularly the Q&A) are good.

There were several sections, ones that I was personally weak in to start with, that I found particularly helpful, such as the sections on analyzing packed or compressed executables and malware. I had just never gotten around to reading the whitepapers on these, and I'm glad I didn't as those chapters of the book summarized in a few pages what would have taken many more to pick up by reading other original sources. I personally thought that the chapter-to-chapter flow of the narrative was fine for anyone who does incident response on a regular basis.

Through the years, Harlan Carvey has developed and made available his tools in an open (perl) format with no need for compensation. The tools on the DVD alone are worth the money of the book, and are a great addition to any IR toolkit. The references to third party tools, many of which I hadn't heard of, were also particularly helpful.

CON's:

If you are not very technical, or not very familiar with the Windows operating system, you may be overwhelmed by the level of technical detail. If you are an experienced administrator, however, you should be able to adapt what you know about other operating systems (e.g. file structures, process execution, etc.) fairly easily. There were a few typographical errors in the book that didn't detract from its readability or technical accuracy.

All in all, and excellent book, and a must-have for ANY windows incident responder.

Harlan Carvey's book, Windows Forensic Analyisis, is an invaluable resource in any computer forensic examination of a Windows based computer. In real-life experience, I had a case where I had to determine file use by a former employee. The company never took the computer out of service and continued to use the machine after the employee left the company. By using the information in Windows Forensic Analysis on system restore points and MRU registry entries, I was able to determine not only what files were used but on what days. This book is one of the first I look to when I have questions on examining Windows systems. If you only have one reference book for Windows examinations, this should be the one. A must-have for any computer forensic examiners library!!

Once again Harlan Carvey has provided a resource worth every penny. The chapters detailing registry and memory analysis alone were extremely valuable to me. The accompanying DVD provides countless Perl scripts to assist in the collection and sorting of data.

This book is essential for understanding how to analyze memory dumps, albeit many forensic investigators will usually turnoff a computer instead of getting a memory capture to do a more traditional analysis.

The included scripts are very helpful. This book unlike many other books in this genera is designed for the technical professional. Forensic analysis is often like a who done it mystery, and having some more tools in your toolkit will assist you in thinking outside the box. The registry analysis was thorough and essential for a recent project. The memory dump analysis scripts were helpful in a recent Defcon Capture the Flag Competition. A sample chapter is avaliable online.

Harlan poured his clear love of incident response and of the forensic profession into this book. Windows Forensic Analysis dives into many exceptional topics that are routinely overlooked in similar material. The entire book covers many novel analysis techniques and topics, the registry analysis chapter and the file analysis chapter discusses many detailed artifacts and areas of examination during forensics that up until this was published was only discussed deep inside forensic circles or discovered through hard earned on-the-ground experience. The book's only drawback is that it covers too many topics and the chapters do not flow together as well as I would have hoped. A single chapter is excellent, but in many cases it doesn't lead you to the next one. I also found that the entire book could have been written on just registry forensics. However, in order to create broad appeal, the registry section was probably shortened. You can tell Harlan has a lot more to tell. Finally, the CDROM companion could have had more polish to the file layout as finding some of the tools is slightly confusing upon initial glance. Even with these minor drawbacks, the information in each chapter is phenomenal. I recommend this book to anyone looking to advance their understanding of the Windows analysis environment.