Human-Computer Interaction Books

Never trust a person that writes about things that he or she does not understand.

The citation below contains several very serious errors.

--------Chapter 16, Page 228 (footnote)-------
Non-polynomial (NP) problems have no known solutions of this nature [polynomial time solutions] and may require dramatically more time to solve as the input length increases, exhibiting, for example, exponential dependency. A subset of NP problems, known as NP complete, are proven to have no polynomial time solutions.
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The errors are:

1. "NP" does not mean "Non-polynomial" but "Non-deterministic Polynomial" (which are VERY different things)
2. Many NP problems do have known polynomial solutions, and it is possible that all of them have (still unknown) polynomial solutions.
3. None of the NP-complete problems have been proved to lack polynomial time solutions... Indeed, any such a proof would solve the famous "P vs NP" problem, a central open problem in computer science that has an associated prize of one million dollars from the Clay Mathematics Institute.

Granted that the book is not about complexity theory, but still, how could you trust any information in the book after this?

A must for any IT security/networking engineer. Great read, great price, informative yet entertaining.

Nutshell review - This is a great read. Very entertaining and informative. Will really open your eyes and make you think about unusual information security issues and attack vectors.

Zalewski brought up a number of interesting and very innovative security situations and possibilities. The statistical derivation of content based upon CPU utilization, is something I had never even considered... but at the same time it looks like it could be more work than someone would be willing to invest. The writing style is also slightly academic. A fair amount of time is spent giving background and information about a topic when those who may see the situation will probably already understand the history. I will have to admit that this was not a page turner, but I am very happy I bought this book. It was just a little difficult to get through at times.

Silence on the Wire is not your typical security book detailing the
latest application exploits or generalized security trends and attack
prevention. Zalewski deals in the minutia. If you were to construct
a Bell Curve of security knowledge and concepts, you would need to
chop out a large portion of this graph and simply include the upper
threshold, in which Zalewski thrives on the seemingly unknown.

Zalewski takes a bottom-up approach. He dives right into the security
of hardware design, Random Number Generation, and how this can all add
up to information leakages otherwise known as security threats. If
you have ever typed on a keyboard, then you may be interested in
knowing what signature you are generating of yourself every time you
log into that remote SSH console. Perhaps you might also be
interested in the fact that simple mathematical operations, such as 2
* 100, could result in timing attacks against your algorithm, whereas
100 * 2 may not. Scary stuff.

Zalewski continues with seemingly innocuous attacks that can occur
before your IP packets ever leave the local network. It is unnerving
to find out just how easy (and cheap) it is to reconstruct data from
those blinking lights on your network equipment, or unsanitary
Ethernet frames. Have you ever given thought to how nice it was to
have virtual network auto-configuration on your switches? Well, so do
your foes.

Once your packets touch other nodes all across the Internet, that's
when the real fun begins. If you are already familiar with the OSI
Model and the TCP/IP suite, then your reading will hit a low point for
the next thirty pages or so. However, when you emerge from this sand
trap of common knowledge, most certainly provided to assist uninformed
readers, you are met with quite worthy knowledge detailing the ability
to accurately identify remote parties, who otherwise may wish to
remain anonymous. Your choice of Operating System and Web Browser may
help somewhat, but Zalewski shows how you can still be sniffed out
even across the sea of the Internet.

Zalewski concludes the book with a brief look at the entire Internet
as an aggregate system, and how subtleties of its inner-workings can
be exploited by those who understand them. It never once crossed my
mind to utilize carefully constructed packets for distributed
computing tasks acting as Boolean operations, but one of the final
topics regarding parasitic storage does appear quite attainable.
Zalewski's final chapter in the book leaves us with the lesson that
sometimes all you need to do to discover the minutia, is to open your
eyes.


* p. 127: Figure 9-6, regarding TCP options, is incorrect.
* p. 182/183: '6,4512' should read '64,512'.
* p. 198: 'user-racking' should read 'user-tracking'.
* p. 216: 'www.rogue-severs.com' should likely read 'www.rogue-servers.com'.
* p. 233: 'recover the information he when it bounces back' should
likely read 'recover the information when it bounces back'.

Conceit and self-righteousness have become the calling cards of anyone who can outdo someone or something with computers. Big deal. All the self adulation that has gone into this tacky piece of work can't hold a candle to the fact that Gary Kasparov can play chess (and think!) Which is more than I can say about the vanity displayed by the author. Anyone who sets out to humiliate or bring down a champion by using questionable means has zero integrity. However, it's to be expected from this kind of individual.
It is singularly unimpressive; vain and self indulgent.

Feng-Hsiung Hsu's story will appeal to anyone who enjoyed Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine or Steven Levy's Hackers. The book captures the thrills and spills of an intellectual steeplechase. Along the way, it reveals the inner workings of the computer science department at Carnegie Mellon University. It's a great read. Feng-Hsiung Hsu, if you're reading this and you ever find yourself in Hortonville, Wisconsin, the first cup of coffee is on me.

"Behind deep blue" is the great feat of the applied technology (computer chip design, programming chess) over the human mind. This is a statement that should invite us to think and rethink, specially if we recall HAL 900 in 2001 (A space Odyssey). On one hand, one may be tempted to argue the chess is just a variegated set of combinations and nothing else; but besides there's an unsolved question in the air; have we ruined the artistic beauty, the power of the mind and the sophisticated analysis behind every move?

This millenary game has enjoyed millions and millions of people around the world, without lacking age, sex, social condition, ideological beliefs or geographic latitude. But beneath these reflections underlies the expected desire to find out what made possible the apparently impossible.

Go for it.

I have prurchased this book to improve my english language.
Yhe same talks about two subjects that I know: computers and chess.
It was a good surprise read this enjoyable work which offers information, stories and knowledge.
The author explains very clear the roots of Deep Blue and reflects the environment of Top chess.

Read it!

Behind Deep Blue was written by the man who lead the research and development team which created the chess computer that beat the World Chess Champion, Gary Kasparov. Hsu tells a lot of fascinating stories about his involvement with IBM, academia and the world of computer-vs-computer chess tournaments. It never got too bogged down in computer or chess jargon.

Some interesting things concerning the identity of Deep Blue (or computers in general) emerge from Hsu's story. Hsu speaks of his computers' identities in ways which facilitate his sportsmanship. So for instance, almost every time one of Hsu's computers loses a game it is retrospectively explained by reminding the reader that the computer had been regrettably forced to play when it still needed a few more weeks of software or hardware tweaking. It never lost because it was an inferior machine - it lost because its superiority could not manifest because its update/debugging had been interrupted by the tournament schedule. As the book makes clear, Hsu's computers were continuously undergoing relentless tweaking, providing Hsu with this excuse every single time one lost. This may be par for the course when diagnosing machines - since any sub-desired performance which can be corrected can, therefore, be "explained" as the unfortunate consequence of the machine's present uncorrected state. For humans it's different. When I lose a foot-race I can't say, "Well the only reason I lost is because this race was scheduled a few years before my training made me fast enough to win it."

Another fascinating element of the book is Hsu's recounting of Deep Blue's now-famous rejection of 36. Qb6 in game two against Kasparov in the 1997 match. Kasparov broadly hinted that the computer's decision not to move that way was a human decision - implying that the IBM team had cheated. Hsu's defense of Deep Blue is convincing. But there is raised an interesting point regarding computer intelligence. If Deep Blue did in fact choose to avoid 36. Qb6 without human intervention then Kasparov's heartfelt identification of the move as cheating has Deep Blue passing a simple version of a Turing Test.

I have a handful of Make: copies, and plan on fleshing out the rest of the back catalog. I'm considering a subscription. Even if you don't have a workshop, these "magazines" (more like little books, actually) are great for stimulating your mind and reminding you that making things isn't just something that other people do.

I stumbled across Make: in a retail store and bought a copy. Nearly fifteen bucks for a "magazine" is pretty spendy for me, but minimal advertising and lots of interesting articles and reviews hooked me. I've since subscribed, but when I found out Amazon had back issues at discounted prices, I had to pick up the issues I had missed. In addition to gaining the confidence to try to repair some things I previously considered "disposable", I learned about a drain-cleaning tool that more than paid for all of the issues I've purchased in the money it saved me on a call to a drain-cleaning service.

From super low-tech incredibly hi-tech, there is something to interest most tinkerers here.

Ok, I was expecting good things from this magazine, but what I got exceeded my expectations. The first thing that I noticed was the production quality of the publication. The pages are thick and satin like and the art is consistent and first rate. Most importantly, the content is exceptional. Typically with these sorts of books, there are many interesting tidbits, but no practical applications. Make: differs in that every time I turn the page there is something wonderful that begs to be created.

I brought my first Make: to work and almost didn't get it back. I showed it to five people and every single one of them subsequently bought various editions from Amazon. I figured it would be a good idea to subscribe to the magazine, but when I went to retrieve the subscription cards there were none left. My buddies stole them all for themselves!

Make: has fired my imagination and has me in projects for years to come. Good job O'Reilly!

Not sure what magazine Brandnew was reading when he complained "70% of contents are sponsored, and ads appear everywhere", but it wasn't this one. Make has VERY few ads. I just quickly thumbed through this issue (Vol. 1), and was only able to find eleven pages that have ads on them, including inside the covers and the backcover. It's possible that I missed one or two others, but there's no way you'd ever say they were "everywhere". The ads that do appear are all relavent to the target audience. Like most magazines, they do have product reviews, but they're contained in about 10 pages, and again are all relevant to the reader.

Later issues do have more ads then the early ones, but even then, they are all clustered at the beginning and end of the magazine. In issue 4 (the latest) there are probably 15 pages of ads, and none appear in the main content area, between page 75 and 184.

Ok, now that I'm done debunking the nasty rumors spread by others, what do I think of the magazine itself? I love it. The projects are interesting, fun and informative. It's also one of the rare publications that isn't scared to publish ideas that could hurt someone. They publish all of the appropriate warnings, but they trust that you're smart enough to take responsibility for your own actions. Most of the projects are completely safe, but if you're buying this for your kids, I'd recommend that you check out each issue with them & decide on which projects they can do by themselves & which are better to do together.

Of course not every project will appeal to every reader, but they'll likely give you ideas that can be applied to other projects that do interest you. It might not appeal to everyone, but if it sounds interesting, you'll most likely love it.

I stay on the lookout for the "Boys" guides, you know, those old books dealing with science and technology (a hundred years old, perhaps, but still quite educational). I've looked into a few more modern magazines, such as Popular Mechanics (good for what it is), Wired (mostly a culture thing, I guess), and 2600 (fine, if my goal was to electronically knock over a Target store or something).
This is what I was after: a 'book' series dealing with hacking together hardware, making stuff work, and making stuff work better.
Now my 'to do' list has grown substantially, with a bunch of things I really hadn't thought of doing!

I work in the MP3 player industry, so the title of my review is only a slight exaggeration. P2P technology created the MP3 revolution. This book takes an honest look back at where P2P came from and where it is going from several different viewpoints. I think it is a must-read for anyone working on the future architecture of computing technology. And it is just plain interesting if you are sitting on the sidelines--and you might just find a role you can play in the game.

It's five years old by now, which is a long time in this industry, but the book remains relevant by virtue of the solid writing and lack of fluff that we expect from O'Reilly, and by the third section's excellent in-depth coverage of fundamental issues: Performance, Trust, Accountability, Reputation, Security. Each of these has a lot of valuable information, references and ideas.

Particularly valuable to me were the discussions of:
- Analyzing and optimizing peer connection graphs
- How Groove uses cryptography to protect and authenticate data
- Using token economies and "nonfungible micropayments" to avoid denial-of-service attacks
- How trust relationships can be tracked

The coverage of specific technologies hasn't aged quite as well. There's too much on things that either never went anywhere (Red Rover?) or are extremely primitive by today's standards (Gnutella), while very important more recent ones like BitTorrent and Kademlia are understandably missing.

Still, as I said, I don't think there's a better book out there. I've bought others and been disappointed by their superficiality, even the "academic" books. Buy this one, and then be prepared to do some intensive web searching/surfing for research papers to catch up on later developments like Distributed Hash Tables, BitTorrent, Kademlia, Chord, Pastry, Coral, JXTA, PNRP, Bonjour...

This book provides a great summary of current P2P projects and the technologies used. It is non-technical book that would be a great intro to P2P, especially for "suits" who only think of Napster when you mention the word P2P. There are loads of gems in this text; I recommend this book to any computer enthusiast.

The chapters start out strong, but I lost interest in a few of latter chapters, which tend to be a little redundant. There seemed to be a little too much emphasis on decentralized systems and anonymous file sharing. A few chapters appear to focus on broad topics but actually focus on the particular author's project. For Example, the security chapter was more or less an overview of grove networks. Another characteristic of this text is the fact that its basically 19 separate papers rolled in to one book so don't expect it to flow.

I've been a big fan of O'Reilly & Associates for years because of their consistent ability to provide highly readable and accurate technical books, often about technologies I find fascinating and useful. To me the editorial bias of most of those books is simply the love of the technology they describe. But O'Reilly has increasingly become a force in the organization and direction of new technologies. And it is that aspect of this book on P2P which has made the biggest impression on me. This book is different from the many other O'Reilly books I've read because it discusses the publisher's own ideas about P2P and involvement with it.

In 2000, O'Reilly surveyed the field of peer-to-peer computing, and published this book. It has an excellent description of the key concepts behind all the major p2p implementations then existing. Napster, of course, was the best known. But Seti@home, Gnutella, Jabber, Freenet, Free Haven and others are also explained. These are compared with each other, so that you can see the different emphases and strengths of each.

Since the book's release, p2p usage has grown, and the attendant controversy about the downloading of copyrighted material, mainly music, has continued unabated. Napster in its original incarnation has gone. But other p2p networks, like Kazaa, have arisen.

Another type of p2p network has also emerged - for social networks. Companies include Friendster, Tribe.net, Ryze and others. Of course, these aren't covered in the book, because they did not exist when it was written. But as a measure of how comprehensive the book is, one of its chapters describes the key work on social networks and encompasses this entire group of companies.

The technical level is moderate throughout the book. While XML, SOAP and cryptography are described, you only need slight familiarity with these topics. The discussion involving them tends to be at a higher level of usage.

Far too basic for the money spent on buying this title.

I was very disappointed in the book. I thought it would be a compendium of Crabby Office Lady articles. Instead, it it no more than instructions on using various components of Microsoft Office. Was not worth the price.

I enjoyed the persona and some of the tips, but most of this is pretty basic stuff

This book is a must-have for anyone using the Microsoft Office Suite--or for anyone who just wants a good laugh. Buy one for yourself, and buy one for your friends. Excellent, helpful tips written in such a hilarious manner, I could not put it down. Absolutely not another dry, boring "how-to" computer book!
LW--Bellevue, WA

An amazing book written in easy-to-read techspeak. Diagrams, anecdotes...it has it all.

A perfect desk companion for making your office life more productive than it has ever been!

Turkle's research findings are mind-boggling, exciting, terrifying, and (whether we like what we see or not) revealing. We see, here, glimpses of the future as a place where the real and virtual collide. Where who we are and how we think will differ markedly from all we've taken for granted in the old familiar pre-Info-Age. Anyone who works with children or adolescents of the Info-Age should read this book! I recommend it, along with the more up-to-date work by Don Tapscott.

This book isn't for the newbie, but if you're already familiar with computers and what's possible on the Internet but haven't yet explored the world of MUDS and the like, this is one of the most informative and fascinating looks at the virtual world that you'll come across. Even more interesting are the questions that Turkle poses regarding self-identity and what the "self" is given the new "non"-environment we call cyberspace. Though offering few answers, the author introduces us to a future world of seemingly infinite possibilities for self-exploration and challenges us to ponder its implications for who we are, how we define ourselves, and how we interact with one another.

If reading postmodernist types of things turns you on, you'll like this book. The author talks a lot about how computers have moved from "modernist calculation" to "postmodernist simulation." Why there is a need to attach the modernist-postmodernist modifiers to calculation and simulation is never explained, and I suspect it is just done to give the book a tres chic intellectual veneer. As with nearly all authors who use the term, the author does not define "postmodernism" or explain what it has to do with anything in her book. Also a lot of vague talk about how "people didn't used to like to do" such and so a thing with computers but now "people like to do" such and so something other thing with computers a lot more. No data of course, that would offend the postmodernists reading the book. An important - VERY important - topic treated in a shabby manner.

Turkle does a magnificant job in illustrating the human persona while online. As our culture becomes more and more internet dependent, and it becomes easier to be a "globalized" person, psychological changes are sure to take effect. "Life On the Screen" is illustrated with some wry humor, as well as vivid examples.

Sometimes doing someonething online makes it seem less "real." For instance, carding something-aka using a fake credit card number-is less 'real' if you do it online, to order something, than it is to waltz into say, BestBuy and using a fake credit card there. Just because you do it in a non-physical area (what is Cyberspace made up of, anyway?) does not mean that it is still not a crime, and that it is still not capable of having reprecussions.

Shirley Turkle captures precisely what someone, as a user and interacter with the internet, thinks, and does while online. She acknowledges the existance of the internet being a place where people are able to forge "cyber-identities"...or get more comfortable being who they are. She also outlines something that is perhaps one of the most secure things about the internet in this day and age-that on the internet, you are anonymous. Therefore, you can do what you wish (good or bad) and you can interact with others via MUDs or the like...or you can decide exactly how people will think of you as.

The internet is a secure medium for an insecure person. It is where many people who feel unaccepted in life go as refuge, to seek friends and partners who are like them, and who understand. This is also recognized in this book.

I highly recommend anyone, either the hacker, or the suit, or the working mother, or the teenager, to pick up this book and just to start reading. It is disturbing, almost, to find that there are so many people who interact with the internet, and so many different things that they do. The globalization that comes along with the net provokes you to start rethinking many things, and questioning many others....The internet, as portrayed in this book, also helps the reader to truly examine themselves as a whole.

Turkle's book is one of the first ethnographies published on virtual communities and how we construct and reconstruct our senses of identity through the internet. It is therefore an important starting point for anyone with a general interest in this area research. Since this book was originally published however there has been a significant amount of work done on virtual communities and self-identity on the WWW that differs somewhat from Turkle's. Therefore although I highly recommend the book I also suggest that you take the time to explore this subject area more broadly before drawing any conclusions.

I've had numerous oportunities to see Mr. Thieme speak, each being utter pleasure. Richard's command of the english language knows virtually no bounds. My professional life draws me to many hacker and security conferences throughout the year and I make it a priority to see Richard's talks when available.

Islands in the Clickstream is a bound compilation of Richard's ongoing articles and essays that he publishes on his web site. Each an exercise in viewing the world from a new angle, and accepting that things are not only not what they seem, but the exact opposite.

Instead of reading countless reviews on the contents of the books, see for your self by visiting Richard's web site and read a few articles and decide if this is something for you. Google should be able to point you in the right direction.

Although this book is a rehash of Richard's digital library on his web site, I still give it 5 stars for the quality of the content and the portability of the information in book format. It's one of my favorite travel companions.

If I were to craft a title for Richard Thieme, it would be "Master of Perception".

I was pleased as I turned the last page. I read an article each day and I had almost 4 months of thought provoking entertainment. Beyond on that, I got a lot of new ideas to think about and many memorable quotes.

I had an opportunity to obtain and read "Islands in the Clickstream" while at BlackHat 2005. I devoured the book in the airport and on the plane ride back to my home.

The thoughts and ideas that are conveyed in this book dissolved me to tears several times, both in the airport and on the plane, because those words mirrored exactly thoughts that have been bumping around in my own head for years and have sadly and strangely made me feel disconnected from my community. I now discover, through "Islands" I am not alone in these thoughts.

Richard's ability to create such strong imagery regarding technology and how it impacts the human tribe is remarkable. I admire him for his bravery in codifying his thoughts and sharing
them. "Islands in the Clickstream" will sit happily on the shelf next to those of two other amazing technical philosophists' - Buckminster Fuller and Doug Hoftstadter - and just like them, be taken down again and again to refresh, renew and rechallenge my thought processes.

This book could very well prove to be life-changing for the reader; it changed mine.

This is a collection of short articles that blend technology and philosophy. The writing is excellent and the insights are profound. There is little technical detail in the work. But that's not the point. This book is all about having a larger view of technology and it's place in our culture and how it is changing us.

If technology is a lifelong passion for you, then you will want to have a look at this. If the computer business is just a day job then you probably won't get anything out of this.

It took me a long time to digest this book, which is jam-packed with quoteable insights, new perspectives on familiar ideas, and inspiring thoughts. Reading this collection of essays, which were written as periodic email columns over a span of seven years, felt like trying to eat a rich, dense dessert in one sitting. This is a book that should be savored slowly--by everyone who has any connection to technology. It's an amazing work.

I can't think of any book that's quite like Islands in the Clickstream--it doesn't fit into any established categories. Syngress Press, the publishers, describe themselves as providing "Career Advancement Through Skill Enhancement," and say it should be shelved in "Computers/General." But what this book actually contains is a collection of secular sermons. They fill the niche of an idealized homily--a short talk that reconnects its listeners to a larger context for their daily lives, inspires them to be better people, and makes them think about deeper issues than the everyday grind--but without any religious context, and addressing technology specifically. Thieme says "...these are sermons...in the sense that sermons form and inform a community that chooses to gather to hear them." It's not too surprising, then, that Thieme tells us he was an Episcopalian priest for sixteen years.

These essays do have a few flaws I associate with a genre like sermons, ie basically ephemeral and not designed to be read en masse--sometimes there's a palpable stretch for the inevitable clever final sentence, and we get some repetition of favorite concepts and quotes like "sanity is contextual." There's also a hint of bombast, not exactly pretentiousness, but a weakness for over-stated metaphors and over-heated symbolism. Thieme's got a liberal hand with buzzwords: nexus, fractal, cyborg, panoptic, granular, convergence, paradigm, morphing, etc. I also think he's barking up the wrong tree in one or two essays where he talks about UFOs and remote sensing, but he's not credulous by any means.

These are minor quibbles. To give an idea of how much this book impressed me: I typically collect a quote or two from a book I read. A great book will yield four to six. I copied down about FIFTY quotes from Islands in the Clickstream--new ideas, brilliant encapsulations of thoughts that have vaguely crossed my mind, inspirational statements. Here's just a small sampling:

"The edge is the new center. The center of a web is wherever we are."

"When things are going well, accountability diminishes. Then when things don't go well, there's chaos." (written in 1997, with a prescient reference to the financial tech bubble)

"'Out of the box' thinking is just a name for climbing out of one box into a little bit bigger box."

"Good tools work regardless of why we say they work. Technical tools and spiritual tools alike."

"That's the problem with oracular truth: the opposite is nearly always just as true. Oracular truth is more like a mobius strip than a yes/no binary system."

If you're someone who's been involved with computers long enough that "hacker" doesn't sound like a dirty word, you'll feel like Thieme is speaking directly to you. If you ever wonder about the effect of technology on how we think and communicate, you'll find a lot of food for thought here. If you're professionally involved with the Internet in any way (as a techie or in business), you ought to read this book. If you're looking for inspiration to be a better person, without being expected to believe in a personal god, check this out.

I would love to hear Thieme speak. He seems like a truly amazing person. (...)

Review cross-posted from Blogcritics and my book blog.

This book is full of handy processes. I have to say, you MUST be dedicated to building personas...and so does your organization. If you're just venturing into the space, you certainly find out what's possible.

If this concept is new to your organization, I would recommend finding a way to slowly introduce this process. I am certainly a believer in personas, but don't think you need the whole process to reap 80% of the benefit of personas.

If your org already believes in personas and you have executive sponsorship, the content could really benefit you to launch an entire persona process.

Finally, someone has produced a 'definitive guide' to personas.

I really liked Cooper's idea of personas when I first came across it. In human factors, we use varying techniques of modelling users but this one seemed to stand above the rest due to its exploitation of our affinity with stories.

Unfortunately, over the years I've noticed personas being used in a haphazard fashion in industry - and for good reason. Practitioners had very little in the way of good references, how-tos or theory behind how to properly implement personas. Well, this book neatly solves all those problems in one shot. Pruitt and Adlin have put together an impressive tome that can be used either as a spot reference, or a definitive guide to implementing personas effectively. I highly recommend it.

Lately I've been disappointed in many of the so called practitioners books that have crossed my desk, they have been very light on detail, aimed at the novice and do not have enough detail for the experienced professional. This book was different.

Written in a way that makes it accessible to the novice, it is a book that begs to be read from cover to cover. Skimming it just makes you realise that there is so much information in it that you will have to allocate serious time to it. It is full of helpful suggestions, ideas and quotes from people using personas in the field. Importantly it also provides anecdotes of what didn't work for people. It provides plenty of concrete suggestions to implementing personas, and guides you through the lifecycle of them rather than just saying here they are, just use them.

All in all this is a very practical book, written by people experienced in the field, with some great chapters by other experts eg Whitney Queesenberry. I thoroughly recommend it.

Colleen

I should admit my bias up front. There are those who like little short books that make one point and make it over and over. There are many popular books in our field that are like that, filled with stories that all basically make the same point and are just a couple of hundred pages long. They are heavy on fun reading and pithy quotes, and light on meat. If my company doesn't buy them for me, I usually like to borrow these, read the first chapter and last chapter and skim the rest.

The Persona Lifecycle is the other kind of book. It is a book that is large because it is packed with information and ideas. It is big, because the topic is big. It is organized in a way that lets you take it down from the shelf and just read the bits that are relevant to the problem you have at the time. Are you trying to figure out how to get started? Are you trying to figure out how to engage your organization in the effort, and in user-centered design through the use of personas? Are you trying to figure out how to make your personas more effective? Are you trying to figure out how to drive more business value out of them? There is something for every situation.

There isn't just one way to get value from personas, and so a checklist or cookbook isn't appropriate. What are appropriate are principles that can be used to figure out an approach for a particular context, and lots of examples.

Furthermore, it is a book that doesn't just live in the world of theory, or pontificating about a point of view in order to justify a consulting business. It is a book that is filled with practical advice and the experiences of those who are using personas in their jobs.

This is a must-have resource for the HCI professional's shelf.

(I've been doing personas since 2000, right after reading Cooper's Inmates are Running the Asylum).

I had great expectations for this book, but was sadly disappointed. There are a few good "models" in this book, like the fact that it uses a single case study carried through the book to continually try and tie things together. However, the book is a very difficult 700pp read. They've thrown in everything including the kitchen sink in this book, which is not a good thing.

They have stories from the field, handy details, bright ideas, the G4K case study - all woven throughout the writing of the book. It breaks to book up too much and makes it less useful.

There's an entire chapter on reality maps. They don't have anything to do with personas, really. They're a great tool, kind of like the Task Analysis grid [...], but I wouldn't put that in a personas book.

They should have created some personas for the book to guide their design and limit the amount of writing they did. The writing style isn't engaging. The interior design of the book is confusing. They have a number of different elements threaded through the book, which dissects the pages up too much, making it more difficult to read.

Personally, they could have just stuck with the chapters from their contributing authors and had a better book.

This was very disheartening for me, as I was really looking forward to this book. However, of the 300+ books on my shelf, this is one that I simply could not recommend.

[...]. The authors really missed the boat here. This is not a how-to book. It is very thorough, too thorough. They seemed to take everything related to personas and try and pack it into one book. The execution simply missed the mark.

Good book for learning the basics of computer such as hardware, software, and input/output devices, etc.

Great book that summarizes ICT related information for High School computer courses.
Useful as a written resource for both students and teachers, and for teachers trying to help students look for resources beyond Wikipedia...
Basic information only, but covers a lot of ground. The best 'beginners' textbook that I have come across and used.

This is an interesting book to start your knowledge on the Technology field. However, in comparison with other sources
(i.e. The Hardware Bible) it does not have the broadness on
certain subjects.Overall this title is excellent when you want to start in the technology of communications.

I used this book when I was teaching junior high computer literacy; that was five years ago and even then it got rave reviews from the students AND parents. While some of the verbiage was a bit complicated for junior high age, I just directed them to skip certain sections. The pictures and explanations continue to be excellent--certainly, the best book I reviewed on the subject.

i received a b.s. in mgt/mis in the 80s and recently took a self-paced community college course that used this as a textbook as part of a 2nd degree program i am pursuing. i wanted to refresh/update my knowledge in the field.

this is a comprehensive overview of computers presented in a clear way with wonderful study aids. i particularly enjoyed the programming, enterprise systems, and networking chapters. it also covers career fields within IT. what really makes this book outstanding is the website that comes with it. at the end of each chapter are tests and tutorials which you can do online. the labs are excellent and i loved the one on chapter 4 which explained the guts of the computer and then had you build one! it had you draw a network diagram and assign ip addresses. these types of tutorials really help "lock in" the subject matter. students today have the best tools to learn. i wish i had this 20 years ago!!

i recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about/brushing up on computer skills. for folks out of school, this is a great way to get the lingo.

to check out the online version go to [...]. each chapter is summarized on this site with a wealth of information to learn and explore.

This is one of those books that only gets a new edition when the author has something genuinely new to say, and this third edition of Sayood's excellent introduction to data compression is no exception. This particular edition is different from the second mainly in that there is a new chapter on audio compression that includes a description of the mp3 algorithm. Also there is additional information on the new video coding standards as well as the new facsimile standards.

As to the target audience for this book, if you are tasked with designing hardware or software implementations of data compression algorithms and you have some background in either electrical engineering or computer science, then this is a good book from which to learn and then to practice what you learn via some very good exercises. Some prior knowledge of information theory and random processes wouldn't hurt either. There is also an abundance of examples that are sprinkled throughout the book to illustrate concepts as they are presented. The author's approach in each chapter is to explain each concept in as an accessible manor as possible, present relevant equations, and then work an example using what has just been presented.

The book presents the mathematical preliminaries in chapter 2, and chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to coding algorithms which include Huffman coding, arithmetic coding, Golumb-Rice codes, and Tunstall codes. Chapters 5 and 6 describe many of the popular lossless compression methods and their applications. These methods include LZW, BWT, and DMC. Chapter 7 describes various lossless image compression algorithms such as JBIG as well as their applications. Chapter 8 discusses the mathematical background of lossy compression standards. Chapters 9 and 10 concentrate on quantization since it is the basis of most lossy compression schemes. Chapter 11 discusses differential encoding techniques such as DPCM and delta modulation. Included is a discussion of the CCITT G.726 standard.

Chapter 12 is the third and final chapter dedicated to mathematical foundations. It is meant to prepare the reader for the chapters on transform, subband, and wavelet based methods that encompass the following three chapters. The JPEG standard is covered in chapter 13, the CCITT G.722 standard in chapter 14, and the EZW, SPIHT, and JPEG2000 standards are covered in chapter 15. Chapter 16 focuses on audio compression and includes descriptions of the various MPEG audio compression schemes including mp3. Chapter 17 switches gears somewhat and covers techniques in which the data to be compressed is analyzed and a model is produced. This model is then used to synthesize the data and is quite useful in speech compression. Chapter 18 deals with video compression and diverges from the book's central theme of dealing with techniques rather than applications. The chapter discusses the H.261 standard as well as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 standards.

The website for the book, found at the publisher's site, contains a large number of C programs dealing with compression. I haven't tried to use any of these yet, so I can't speak to their validity.

This book has all the ingredients for a great textbook. It provides good theoratical background without going into unnecessary details, gives lot of discussion about applications, provides great exercise problems, and above all it has outstanding examples that makes some of the difficult concepts easy to understand.

Data compression needs a lot of background in information theory and other areas specific to speech, image processing etc. It is impossible to give a rigourous theoratical treatment of all of those in one volume. A strong point of this book is that it gives you just enough background on a variety of topics - without making the whole book obscure. In that respect, it is very application and implementation oriented. It is in fact what it says it is: A very good "INTRODUCTION to Data Compression"

The best thing about this book is the coverage and organization of the material. Sayood covers a wide variety of compression topics without getting into the nitty gritty details of them all. Thats why its an "Introductory" book. This book is a valuable resource for those who want to know the basics of various compression techniques and can be used as a starting point for further details. Some topics like arithmetic coding are covered in more detail than others. The book is also organized nicely with mathematical foundations provided as and when necessary.

The book is one of the clearest I have read as a text book. Why cant everybody write like this?? There is very good flow throughout the text.

Only complaint is the software. It looks the software has not kept pace with the book itself. Some additional software has to be added (for Transform coding, for instance), and some references in the text book to the software are incorrect. If the accompanying software is upgraded, as it should be, I will rate this book a clear 5-star.

Amazon claims that this is "the definitive guide". I have to agree with them because this book is the only broad grey pages introduction to data compression that I have been able to find, and it is very well written.

If you are only casually interested in data compression this book is not for you.

If you are interested in adding compression to your application and your data falls into a common category, sound, video, text ect this book is probably not for you. You should look to the open source community or buy an off the shelf product.

But if your data is odd or unique like say telemtry data (I'm sure there are other examples I just can't think of any) and you need to design a compression scheme for your data this book is "the only" book for you.

If you want to begin research into data compression and you are a newbie this book is a must have.