Microsoft Books

Finally, a book on coding e-commerce applications that makes sense. I bought this book because I expect the combination of TV with the Internet to be the next really big thing and I did not want to miss it. The pleasant surprise was that this book helps in all sorts of Internet commerce development, not just interactive television. After slogging through other bit buckets it sure is nice to find a book that clearly explains not just e-commerce on TV but good web interface design in general. After reading this book I'm even able to make forms read and write to a database backend. If you are an intermediate or better HTML developer do your career a favor and buy this book.

A clearly written guide to internet programming in C++. The examples are solid, and yet simple enough that you don't get bogged down trying to figure out the code rather than understand the concept being taught. It's a shame other programming books aren't as well written.

This is a good guide. It does tell you how to pass through each stage. Also, it tells you how to unlock the best cars and track. So, it is very good guide. But one thing I should tell you, you have to get this when you play or you will be clueless. It does tell you all. Enjoy it, guys!

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Who are the electronic elite?
1. Bill Gates, Mitchell Kertzman, Safi Qureshey, Eckhard Pfeiffer, Sall Narodick, Mitch Kapor, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Lew Platt.

How did the electronic elite differ from past executives?
1. They have a different mindset from the executives of the past.
2. They bring unique leadership quality to the business world.
3. They are creative and build organizations that are productive and yet humane in their treatment of their employees.
4. Bureaucracy is almost nonexistent.
5. There is an egalitarian energy that inspires employees to try to change the world.
6. They have learned to create organizations that are both creative and flexible.

What has changed?
1. Computers have changed the world; computers affect almost every facet of life; our economy depends of computers to measure, transmit, and verify financial transactions; and the global communication network brings information locally.
2. Corporations are struggling and in many cases failing to meet the challenges of computer technology. One of the hardest hit sectors is the computer industry itself. Computer vendors had customers, money, experience, and technology but failed to maintain market position and profitability. The once respected giants of the industry are suffering from upstart competition.
3. Has the electronic elite have learn what works and what works and what does not work in the business environment of the future?

What was it about these upstarts that allow them to perform so well in face of such powerful and entrenched competition?
1. The electronic elite believes and feels that they are a part of a different culture.
2. They believe they have made a radical departure from the management styles and corporate behaviors of the past.
3. Mitchell Kertzman said, "IBM simply got too bureaucratic to be nimble when technology changed...If your culture is bureaucratic, you will not succeed in technology-period."
4. The electronic elite believe that their organizations are successful because they have successful cultures.

What kind of culture leads to success?
1. Decentralized companies have become more effective competitors than the centralized companies that preceded them.
2. Employees started using computer word process and email to correspond; the new technology connect the company through interconnected networks; the new technology was accepted and implemented within one decade; the technology explosion transformed completely the ways people worked and lived.
3. In a global sense, culture, not technology, always has determined which nations have prospered. Certain cultures are better suited to take advantage of advanced technologies than others.
4. Hammer and Champy, authors of "Reengineering the Corporation" admit that 70 percent of all reengineering campaigns fail.

What is Corporate Culture?
1. Authors Deal and Kennedy define Corporate Culture, as, "a strong system of informal rules that spells out how people are to behave most of the time."
2. Corporate culture focuses on values; the corporate motto express the symbolic expression of the companies core value; a large part of any corporation culture consists of the cultural mindsets that people use to evaluate the appropriateness of business behavior; a cultural mindset is a habitual image, metaphor, or paradigm that acts as an emotional and intellectual touchstone for determining what's "the right thing to do".
3. Business=Ecosystem (diversity thrives), corporation=community (goals that contribute to group success), management=service (management leadership), employee=peer (excellence is encourage from each employee - eliminates management time waste), motivation=vision (employees believe in the vision, enjoy what they are doing, and share in the profits), and change=growth (change is adapting to new market conditions).

How do you redefine your culture?
1. Eckhard Pfeiffer said, "Change needs to be constantly on the agenda...We adapt as we move along...The speed of change is not evolutionary, it is revolutionary. It can't be predicted.
2. Calibrate your current culture. The first step is to understand the culture your currently working in, the process of self-examination. The transformation in terms of the economic revolution has been dominated by information technology software and telecommunications.
3. Cultivate cultural role models. Determine the cultural attributes in "best in class" organizations that contribute to successful behavior and try to emulate this behavior in your organization. Choosing a cultural role model requires market research. How do the employees in the model company feel about work? Do they enjoy what they do? Are they having fun? What kind of individuals are attracted to the organization? What kind of individuals stay around for a long time? What kinds of individuals move on? Do employees feel comfortable listening and talking with customers? How do the model employee's feel about profitability? Do they believe they can make an impact? What can you learn from the model company?
4. Imagine the possibilities of a company that is more powerful and more flexible. Eckhard Pfeiffer said, "It's a matter of maintaining the momentum, and making it happy with excitement and good performance-meeting schedules and taking ownership." How would your people behave if they really believed this? "People would be paid based on results rather than on their position in the organization." Eckhard created an HP culture of trust, high achievement, integrity, teamwork, flexibility, and innovation.
5. Extend the vision by creating a vision statement of the ideal organization. Jim Manzi said, "It is insane to think that a cultural change can come directly from a top-down structure, or that there's a monopoly on good ideas at the top of the company". No matter how compelling the company vision, companies develop inertia. It takes time to look for new solutions, for new ideas, and new directions; it requires a great deal of communication; it takes time to overcome frustration and doubts. Success companies have organizations and processes that are flexible and can adapt.

Methods for removing roadblocks: 1. directly confront denial 2. Sacrifice the sacred cow 3. transform the vocabulary 4. reinforce the new culture.

The book covers all the skills necessary from the core exam to the expert exam. It shows everything so that someone with limited Access knowledge can start from page 1 and working with the book, and downloaded sample files pass the Access 2002 exams. There are additional tidbits of information provided in the book, that are unrelated to passing the exam, which are helpful for day to day use of Access. There are better books available for reference purposes, but this book will definitely provide the skills necessary to pass the exams. The book is 248 pages.

This should be the only book anyone would need to pass the MOUS Excel 2002 Expert exam. For the most part, great coverage of each menu function, toolbar function, and program settings. There are a few subjects which could use a little more coverage to make this book a more complete study guide, such as spreadsheet functions and some of the finer details of workbook properties, so be prepared to cover these subjects on your own because they were covered on the exam (fortunately I figured them out rather quickly during the exam). Overall, this was a great resource suitable for both novice and experienced Excel users.

For those of you who are interested in taking the MOUS PowerPoint 2002 exam but want to study for it on your own, this is the only book you will need - period. I knew next to nothing about PowerPoint before I began studying this book. I studied for about three weeks and scored 931 points out of a possible 1000 on the exam. This book provided excellent and thorough coverage of everything you will need to know to pass this exam, without all of the extra stuff. Just go out to www.course.com to download the project files (free of charge) and you will have everything you need. Buy this book!

This book is written for system architects and design professionals, covers architecture and design concepts. I would strongly recommend this book for advance users as the book cover says it dives deep into the advance settings and performance tuning recommendations for Metaframe implementation.

Thayalan Rajaratnam - NY

I think this is the most fantastic and authoritative book on Access and SQL Server that I have ever read. It is filled with excellent examples that draw on the authors personal experience. A must read!!!