Human-Computer Interaction Books

Understanding the issues and challenges associated with virtual organisations is a subject area in its ascendancy. Whilst more structured ways of working (such as vertically integrated companies and long term supplier partnerships) will continue, virtual organisations will become an increasingly relevant feature in developed economies.

This book provides an essential contribution to the subject area. It is useful to readers seeking to gain an academic perspective on the issues and to practitioners and industrialists seeking to deploy these new ways of operating in order to deliver competitive advantage. Hence I thoroughly recommend it.

So far, most serious publications about `virtual organizations' I came across are fragmented and theoretical. There seems to be a lot of talking and thinking about the subject but there is little experience and accomplished successes to report on. Under these circumstances, the editor of `Managing Virtual Web Organizations in the 21st Century' did a remarkable job to introduce a converging conception of the virtual organization (VO) and include theoretical knowledge, practical solutions and recent experiences with VO's.

The book contains 17 articles that elaborate on various issues ranging from the general conception of VO's to its legal format and from the business point of view to the underlying ICT-architecture. From the number of contributors and their various positions and geographical locations I might conclude that the undertaking of writing this book required a virtual organization itself. For many contributors this seems to be nothing new. In many articles it is stated that VO's have existed ever since people started to work together on the basis of trust. The new thing that the 21st century brings is the addition of ICT, which adds potentially more structure and scale to the VO. The book focuses largely on the design and management of such organizations. In most cases it takes the production and ebusiness environment as its object. Occasionally there is attention for web organizations in the professional services industries. For those who want to know on what the European Commission spent much of her billions for the `Information Society' (IST-program), the book provides a number of references to relevant IST-projects.

Some effort seems to be taken to make all articles fit into a general framework of the book, which could not prevent many contributors to start with a description of what they regard to be a virtual organization themselves. Happily for the editor, most contributors agree more or less on the underlying concept, which is remarkable, where-as the book lays out a quite specific and practical framework for this kind of organization.

For its riches in issues and practical models the book is a useful source for professionals and decision makers that want to keep up to date with key concepts and developments regarding `web organizations'. However, I don't think it is going to be `The Bible of VO's'. Therefore it is too specific on some issues and not encompassing enough on others. On many issues the book provides insight and useful ideas, but overall it leaves the reader with a lot of critical thinking to do himself. It seems the editor does have a clear view on the basic concept he likes to introduce. On top of that he is gathering and analyzing additional data and models. Little doubt next time he will come out with his bible after all.

Ulrich Franke and his co-authors give a broad overview over the Management of the relatively new organizational form of virtual enterprises. For all business people who are interested in strategic management or involved in networked economy this book is essential. The topic is structured quite well and shows a collection of different views given by international experts in the field of virtual organisations.

Many books and articles have been written about the intriguing puzzle of virtual organizations (VO). But many authors failed to deliver an integrated approach, too. Therefore, I have to congratulate Mr Franke twice. Het not only compiled a book surveying a broad range of aspects, but also revealed challenges from the managerial side. And the various authors, who put their expertise in this book, make this a guide through VOs and most crucially, more credible. There is no doubt, this is a highly recommandable book - particularly for managers and chief executives, who are boldly enough to take on the forthcoming challenges of the 21st century.

There are not many books dealing with virtual organisations and e-business after the internet bubble did burst! Did most writers models collapsed with the stock market? This book certainly shows that modern ICT is still an important issue leading, if applied in a coherent strategy, to a competitive advantage. It proves that the virtual organisation is an organisational form of the 21st century. This book is a must for people who are interested in strategy.

I have found this book to be very interesting as it was written by someone who learned the 8051/52 by doing in both hardware and software. Get this book!

This book is a very nice example of how to write a technical book on a reasonably complex subject without making any assumptions that the reader knows anything. I had never touched an 8051/8052 prior to this and haven't written any assembly since college. To give a point of reference, I have desigend a few reaonably simple applications on PIC processors (1 8bit and 1 16 bit) prior to being assigned a project on an 8051. After reading this book I realized a whole new level of understanding of things I was fumbling around and getting done, but never really quite grasped the down and dirty detail. I'd been designing my applications in c because I was convinced ASM is too dry and too hard.

Craig leads you down the garden path and before you know it, you actually feel like you should be doing certain things in assy rather than in C. Also, I've gotten a little vision of how things work in the background quite a bit better than before.

Good job! I'll recommend it to others transitioning to this device.

I thouroughly enjoyed this read.

Well written and complete technical books are hard to come by; this is one of them.
After reading this book one will have no troubles programming and applying the 8051/8052 MCU. I found no other books were necessary.

This guy REALLY knows his stuff, and the book is so easy to follow. I have NEVER done assembly programming, and didn't know ANY of the syntax. After a couple of chapters, I was programming in it like I had been doing it for years. The way the author lays things out makes it a breeze to learn how to open up the world of 8051/8052. I *loved* the book, and I use it as a reference ALL THE TIME.

Thanks Craig!!!!!!!

Josh

Overview
Mr. Steiner's writing is very clear--opening complex topics that I previously struggled to grasp. His prose is plain and easy to digest. This is a great tutorial and reference all in one.

Introduction
"The 8051/8052 Microcontroller" is broken into several sections including Architecture, Assembly Language, Hardware & Single Board Computer, Development Tools, Hardware Interface and Software Examples, and Reference & Appendixes. Each section covers the topic well with the strongest sections being Architecturee and Assembly Language. These sections provide an excellent method for "wading in" to gradually understand the concepts including special function registers (SFRs), memory--internal and external, timers, serial IO, and interrupts as well as helping raeders to understand and use assembly language in their projects.

What's Good
The book is targeted toward people who have some programming experience and understand basic logical constructs and it hits its target well. As a seasoned Windows programmer, it was simply a matter of reading through the text for me to understand most of the concepts on the first reading. I was riveted because I was understanding so much of it. Craig does a great job of not assuming you have certain foundational knowledge. I found myself at certain points in the text asking the question in my mind "yes, but what about...", only to moments later realize the text is explaining exactly what I was wondering about. Very well done.

For years I have struggled to learn assembly language for the sake of gaining a better understanding of computer architecture. This is the first time that it "clicked" for me. I get it and can now write code using Assembly. Now, I will be using C for my projects for the most part because it asbtracts certain aspects of writing the code that are arduous when done in Assembly, however, understanding Assembly has really helped me to see exactly what is going on.

What's Bad
There is really nothing bad about this book. It is not only a good text for deepening in your understanding of the 8051/8052 architecture, but is an excellent reference to keep on your shelf when you need to recall some specific details.

That being said, I would have liked to see a section dedicated to building and/or simply using a pre-built chip programmer. This is really not a criticism because the book is really comprehensive. For me to understand at a practical level, though, it would be helpful to learn how to take the most basic elements (the MCU, crystal, capacitors, etc.) and place them on a circuit board and see them work with code that I've just downloaded to the MCU.

The section on the SBC is really good, but it feels to me like it abstracts an important part of embedded system development--assembling the parts. I want to see how things work outside of the context of a development board. Maybe Craig will add a chapter dedicated to building a basic system from parts and a programmer in the next edition.

Conclusion
"The 8051/8052 Microcontroller" is an excellent book to use to get started as well as a great reference. I have several other 8051 books including "Programming and Customizing 8051 Microcontroller" by Predko, "C and the 8051" by Schultz, and "Embedded C" by Pont. They all have their good points, however, Steiner's book brings things together in a way and doesn't assume much about the reader's base knowledge and gave me many "aha" moments I hadn't experienced with the others. If you want to learn the 8051/8052 microcontroller, buy this book!

Roth and Amor provide a great book on how to simplify technology. If we do not try to simplify it, it will become unmanageable in the future. The book shows what the problems are and how to solve them. Unfortunately, production was weak and there are some figures are not very well readable. Please change this in the reprint.

This book talks about a radical change in IT. It shows how computers should be programmed. Not in a tool-centric way, but in a user-centric way, meaning that not the functionality is the main focus, but the usefulness of the system towards the user. In many cases, you can see systems that are full of features everyone and nobody needs. If these systems would only provide the functionality that I need at a given time, it would reduce the complexity of that system and would enable me to do my work faster. By connecting all sorts of devices and services, it is possible to create new me-centric service chains that can give better value to me.

The book provides a lot of good ideas how this can look like in the future, but also shows what is necessary from a development point of view to make this happen. Technical, social and business aspects are introduced and enable the solution architect for a new product/service to make it me-centric.

A must for product development!

Although it may seem simple, so far computers did not actually do work for us, the did the work instead of other tools. Word ist just an electronic typewriter, but did it write the text for me? No! The next generation of computers will be different. They will actually do work for us, they will make their own decisions and execute predefined work tasks in an intelligent way. Sounds spooky? Maybe, but if you trust your secretary, you should also trust your computer. Hayes-Roth and Amor show us how this brave, new world may look like. Very interesting read, indeed!

This book talks about a radical change in IT. It shows how computers should be programmed. Not in a tool-centric way, but in a user-centric way, meaning that not the functionality is the main focus, but the usefulness of the system towards the user. In many cases, you can see systems that are full of features everyone and nobody needs. If these systems would only provide the functionality that I need at a given time, it would reduce the complexity of that system and would enable me to do my work faster. By connecting all sorts of devices and services, it is possible to create new me-centric service chains that can give better value to me.

The book provides a lot of good ideas how this can look like in the future, but also shows what is necessary from a development point of view to make this happen. Technical, social and business aspects are introduced and enable the solution architect for a new product/service to make it me-centric.

A must for product development!

Although it may seem simple, so far computers did not actually do work for us, the did the work instead of other tools. Word ist just an electronic typewriter, but did it write the text for me? No! The next generation of computers will be different. They will actually do work for us, they will make their own decisions and execute predefined work tasks in an intelligent way. Sounds spooky? Maybe, but if you trust your secretary, you should also trust your computer. Hayes-Roth and Amor show us how this brave, new world may look like. Very interesting read, indeed!

If you want to learn or review IP Addressing I can think of no better book on the market-highly recommended! While all of this information is available elsewhere in piecemeal fashion, this book puts it all together, including critical design issues, all with very clear, practical examples based on the author's extensive experience. If your work calls for a solid understanding of the intracacies of IP Addressing, implementation, this book is for you.

The book provides confidence and integrity in an enlightening array of subjective entries. The author leads an impressive set of credentials to the reader with first person comfort. The format allows entry-level students of the subject matter enough leeway to follow a suggested path to better design of networks by first considering the 'Addressing' issues.

This is a must read for anyone putting together an IP network

The author positions the book as a IP numbering system for enterprize networks and it is not. Graham spends half of the book explaining what an IP datagram is and what it is used for and the other half of the book is very basic IP numbering theory. Basically if your in charge of the ip numbering of an "Enterprize Network" and anything in this book is new to you then your in over your head.

I highly recommend this book if you work in I.S., support servers or database systems, and want to know about TCP/IP subnetworking.

My situation three years ago:

I was an OpenVMS M/SQL systems manager put in an awkward position of constantly having my projects delayed and aborted because the network engineers I worked with did not understand IP well enough to support my organizations' network. It was a Friday, and I was working on an important project that needed to be done by Monday. The network engineers had completely let me down -- they boggled a router configuration and addressesing scheme and blamed it on the me and the phone company! I went to the local bookstore, picked this book up, and (with this book) I was able to fumble my way through a the design of a small subnetwork and router configuration by Monday. Within a few months, I took over their responsibilities.

Since then, I've become CCNA-certified, a full-fledged network engineer, and have seen incredible career-growth. None of this would have been possible if not for this most excellent introductory book. It was very easy to read, even for a subnetworking-ignorant fool (at the time) like myself.

Pierre Levy writes in French (or at least he did with his first three books) and stuff may be lost in translation. I have met him, he is one of the top minds in the emerging field of Collective Intelligence, and I recommend his other two books. The other reviews are great.

Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace
Cyberculture (Electronic Mediations Series)

This is one of those rare books that will re-wire many minds. Lévy gives us a new way of seeing culture. He achieves this by linking specific cultural activities, and thereby humankind, to a fundamental process that is outside place and time - the process of virtualisation.

That the book produces its profound cognitive effect in so few words is stunning. Part of the credit for this feat must go to the translator, Bononno.

'Becoming Virtual' in my view surpasses that other classic,'Understanding Computers and Cognition' by Winograd and Flores. Lévy depicts cognition and action as both social process, and process occurring within the individual. He introduces concepts sparingly and tellingly, illustrating them with examples reaching from the dawn of the human era to the present day.

A book that can be read at one sitting, but will demand to be picked up again many, many times in the years ahead.

This book is extremely heavy on the esoteric, philosophical lingo. As a virtual environment systems designer, I found it to be essentially useless. My guess is that it would be of value only to academicians and others not directly involved in the technological aspects of VE and other digital domains. Although I suspect there might have been some useful stuff here, the writing is too tangled to unravel. If you speak academese, you might fare better than I did.

The word 'virtual' has had a fair amount of exercise in the last few decades, and it would be a pity if some were put off reading this wonderful book due to the misguided belief it may be populated with computer lingo and people with wetware engaged in simulated 'virtual' sex. Levy's understanding of the virtual extends far beyond information technology; he gives the concept a proper philosophical and even anthropological foundation, and even goes so far as to show that we have in fact always been virtual, and this is what has made us human.

Technology is probably what separates us from all other living creatures, or at least sophisticated technology, such as machines. Yes, other organisms utilise simple tools and what have you, but none of them are going to the moon in any sort of hurry. Levy's work is essentially about artifacts, be they software like language or symbols, or hardware like tools and machines. However, following on from the work of philosophers such as Deleuze and Serres, Levy is profoundly against the two common (mis)conceptions about them: that they 'dominate' us, or that they are simple tools in our hands, doing our bidding. Heidegger and his ilk were very keen on the domination idea, but that's only because they didn't really understand machines; sure, your VCR will seem to dominate you, if you can't work it, as many older people will tell you, but after a good dose of swearing and fumbling the usual result is a machine that just sits there doing nothing. Hardly despotism. Or you may have its measure, and say it's just a tool for capturing video images, for whatever purpose, and yet it changes the way you watch TV, capture memories of your kids, and the entire institutional set-up of the film industry. Quite a clever tool, that.

If you read this book (and you should), Levy will tell you that all artifacts, including less 'material' ones like language, virtualise our lives. That doesn't mean making them less real, the common usage of 'virtual'; it means problematising them, opening them up to possibilities. Making them MORE real. And this isn't naive techno-optimism, because not only are not all these possibilities not nice, but when you virtualise something you take on-board the requirements of the virtualising medium, which have to be met to keep it running, and you become entwined with the other people associated with these artifacts, such as video repair men. Technology can truly make you feel like a god, but it always needs to be fixed, and you have to undertake profound social relationships for it to happen at all (nobody builds an aircraft carrier alone in their backyard). Or take our oldest and most 'simple' artifact: language. Language, says Levy, virtualises 'real-time', by which he means our everyday interactions with other people. That's what it means to 'discuss' something, you take an immediate issue confronting two or more people, and you use language to open it up to different resolution paths which aren't immediately obvious. And again, this isn't artifact as god or slave: the language doesn't dominate you, although it has in-built constraints which you must adhere to if you want to be understood, and you can't just tell people what to do and see it happen, because not only are allowed meanings consensual or social, but also there is no direct causal link between utterance and action.

Levy explores the way we virtualise every aspect of our lives, from real-time interaction through language, to our actions through technology, and our social relations through institutions. And in each case the mechanism is the same: we create some artifact, more or less material, which allows us to shift what's at stake away from the immediate here-and-now and towards a problematic where new possibilities open up. And again Levy avoids simplistic determinism of any persuasion by emphasising that each of these artifacts simultaneously creates new social arrangements, and introduces new imperatives through the need for their upkeep. This is how the philosophy becomes anthropology, and why Levy says to be human IS to be virtual; it is our species that has taken these artifacts into our collectives, that has used the world to mediate our social lives. And the world extracts a price too, because artifacts impose requirements back upon us, if we want them to keep working, that is. The end of domination, either of artifact by human, or human by artifact.

This is Levy's most accessible book, in English, relatively free of the sometimes over-blown prose of Collective Intelligence. Like Bruno Latour, also an admirer of Serres and Deleuze, Levy allows us to see exactly how our technological, modern world is every bit as religious, barbaric, enlightened, enchanted, mystical or whatever as it has always been; you just have to understand artifacts. (It is also a tremendous asset for philosophy students who don't fully understand the scope of the Begsonian/Deleuzean 'virtual'.)

And as another reviewer has hinted, there's even theology in nuts and bolts, if you know where to look.

The idea that is perhaps most central to this book is that if you design the action involved in a user interface, the design of all other objects in the domain will follow. To support this, Laurel reconciles the seemingly disparate and relates user interface design with producing a play in theater. For example, the way she brings in the Freytag triangle works very well.

This said, I wish I wish that we would see a book from Laurel (or from one of her other usability guru companions) that treats with more recent issues-- particularly the Internet. I think she's one of the smartest people out there in the field, and I try to read what she's written, but I'm getting tired of reading about Habitat, Guides, and the Holodek on Star Trek. That's not the fault of the book, given that it came out pre-Internet hype, but it did inflect the reading experience with some weariness.

... because it reminds me a great deal of Bruce Lee's "Tao of Jeet Kune Do." In that book, the reader is warned in the preface to approach the book actively with pencil in hand to jot notes and draw lines between connected ideas. I have done this with Brenda's book. It will take about 6-7 reads and lots of mental connections before everything starts to gel.

It is a new "Way" of thinking, and, indeed, is so far ahead of any way we design software now that many ideas that this book suggests still need extensive research to even understand how to implement. (e.g. Freytag graphs as a way of structuring software/task flow to provide a pleasing HCI, and Brenda's Principles of Intelligent Computer Agency as a means for implementing truly AI agents with personality and emotions).

Along with the wonderful head rush of compelling new theory, she also takes the second half of the book to explain principles of software design that you can implement in your programs _now_, and also takes the time to introduce you to fascinating HCI research offshoots like Programming by Demonstration.

It is wonderful writing, and her ideas and concepts continually refresh and remind me why I am in such an exciting field.

I finished reading "Computers as Theater" by Brenda Laural yesterday. The book has many good ideas in it, and it may well be worth reading just to pick these up.

It is also one of those books which does not do a good job of unifying its material, in my opinion. Rather than being a progression of ideas that builds to some intellectual climax, it meanders through various interesting points not quite aimlessly. The book introduces two useful diagrams: 'flying wedges' which describe how the space of possibilities in a drama go from the 'possible' to converge on the 'necessary', and 'freytag triangles', which measures the rise and fall of a plot. If these are used to describe this book (a slight abuse?), it doesn't fare well. The freytag diagram never peaks, and the wedge doesn't converge to the 'necessary'. This may be because the objectives for the book were not clear. As a reader, I didn't realize she was not (mostly) speaking to the modern commercial software world for quite a while into the book. The book also ended with two chapters about virtual reality (the substance, not the hype), and I was left wondering if perhaps *this* was what the book was really about (if so, I didn't see it coming).

All that said: there are many good ideas in the book, some of which will make you stop and think for a while (e.g. those diagrams). It is valuable because of this. As an individual, I simply wish the book had been better structured, for I'd have gotten more out of it.

Laurel is quite the scholar - she's got experience and learning in the fields of theater and human-computer activities. Laurl applies Aristotle's Poetics to computer software design. I especially liked her comparison of computers to theatrical production - a tremendous amount of action goes on "behind the scenes." As Laurel points out, dramatic expression is a type of virtual reality; anything we develop with computers has a very long heritage. A must-read for the digerati

This excellent book is one of a mere few books that thoroughly and competently addresses object-oriented (OO) style of graphical user interface (GUI) design. Note that OO GUI *style* is entirely independent of whether the GUI is implemented with OO technology. A strength of this book is its comprehensibility by programmers, in addition to GUI designers.

Here are two other essential ones: Design Guide for Multiplatform Graphical User Interfaces (LP R13, Issue 3, by McFarland & Dayton, 1995, Piscataway, NJ: Bellcore), and Object-Oriented Interface Design: IBM Common User Access guidelines (by IBM, Carmel, IN: Que Corp.)

Here's a merely fair quality but essential one: The Windows guidelines for software design. (by Microsoft, 1995, Redmond, WA: Microsoft Press).

This book explains the subtle nuances and fine art of designing truly object-oriented user interfaces in easily comprehensible terms. Dave Collins is an OO industry guru and his book is a significant contribution of pragmatic advice on the subject.

Collins cuts right to the quick on this often misunderstood topic. Project manager thru programmer will profit from having this on their desk. It you remember COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/1, then this sbook is syour key to understanding the "new age" of object orientness. Incredibly concise, crystal clear discussions of all the important issues.

The author of this book has obviously spend a great deal of time in academia -- much to his detriment. The book reads like a college-level psychology textbook, complete with references to the myriad other people upon whom his work is drawn.

For example, the author is not content to just define a term and move on. Instead, he reviews the entire history of the term, what other people have thought about the term, and then summarizes all of the thoughts. Geez, there are even examples at the end of each chapter.

If my review is hard to read, I blame it on the fact that I have been reading this book for the past hour.

But, if you can get past the pedantic writing style, you will find a good deal of useful information. The concept of object-oriented user interfaces is often misinterpreted and/or mis-implemented. There is a detailed history of the object-oriented GUI, and good discussions on the human factors that lead to good GUI designs.

One note is that the book was published in 1995, so brace yourself for lots of examples from the leading GUI of that time: Windows 3.1! Windows NT is only mentioned as 'Cairo'. But as is true of many design models, the age of the book really has no relevance.

This book really makes me ambivalent. It is essentially a collection of colums on the subject of "Human Interface" written for Apple's developer news magazine. Thus the number of topics covered by the book is immense. In 38 (!) chapters (that is 6 pages per chapter in average) Peter Bickford covers almost everything that has to do with interface design, ranging from database interface design, design of icons, the use of music, designing games, information systems, etc. etc. What makes me award this book three stars after all is the fact that it is a joy to read the book. It takes not more than a few hours to whizz through the pages which do contain several words of wizdom useful to everybody no matter their level of experience. The use of small case stories throughout the book is nice and adds positively to the overall experience. If you want to start a dialog with a user interface specialist (for whatever reason) this is certainly a great book to get you started. The design and layout of the book, is fairly dull and boring. There are only very few black and white illustrations which do not add much to the overall impression. Even though that white space is important for increased readability, I think some of this space (20% of the book) should have been used for better and more illustrations.

I really found this book helpful in developing my understanding of User Interface design. Although it was written more for designing UI for software I found the examples and explanations VERY applicable to designing web sites. This book also keeps your interest, the author throws in quite a bit of humor. I HIGHLY recommend it!

Like the topic it covers, this book has a friendly interface. Unlike most technical books, I found Bickford's text downright entertaining. For example, he uses the analogy of a good waiter in a fine restaurant to drive in the idea of transparent interface, and house-hunting to help designers understand how databases ought to work. Bickford is an excellent teacher - he knows how to make his subject appealing and accessible. (It figures -- given appeal and accessibility are his criteria for good interface.)

The book is somewhat Macintosh-centric, given the fact that most of the chapters originally appeared in an Apple Computer newsletter. Nontheless, his ideas and philosophy has helped me build better web sites.

All too often, books on interface design can be overly academic discussions of theoritcal design issues that are interesting only to other user interface designers.

Not so with this book. Mr. Bickford's writing style is accessible and geared toward general users, designers and developers. His coverage of the subject matter is informed and non-technical--you will certainly find it useful whether you are a commercial application developer, multimedia author, or designing applications and sites for the Internet. He argues very eloquently for concepts like elegance, intelligence and thoughtfulness--traits missing in much of today's bloated operating systems and applications (hello Redmond?). He covers both major desktop platforms, PC and Macintosh, citing examples of the virtues and pitfalls of each OS's operations. He also delves into other media, including an intelligent, if conservative, treatment of web design. I am hoping the next edition will be updated with more web coverage.

Mr. Bickford's credentials are impressive. He is a former writer for the Apple Directions developer newsletter writing regularly on usability and interface issues. He is very adept at making complex concepts simple through the use of metaphor, humor, and anecdotes gleaned from his years of real-world experience.

If you are looking for an accessible and entertaining book that will help you consider your interfaces from a more enlightened perspective, you should definitely pick this book up.

This is a wonderful book to understanding how the linux networking code works. Good coverage of networking code for a beginner-developer to grasp.

In "The Audience for This Book" section it says that "..newcomers will be able to get up to speed quickly, too". That is patently untrue. This is probably a good book for someone completely knowledgeable on the workings of the kernel and who has a solid programming background. I may, after considerable further study, find this book useful. For the time being this book is a functional door stop.

I have read a number of books on the TCP/IP protocols and their implementations; both the original Berkeley (BSD) Unix TCP/IP stack and the Linux TCP/IP stack. I must say that this is the best of all of them. This book makes the subject very approachable for the newcomer to network protocol software but the explanations are detailed enough to satisfy an old dog like me. Benvenuti's writing style is clear and very readable. He liberally provides diagrams to illustrate the concepts he is discussing.

My only fault with the book is that the transport layer protocols (UDP and TCP) are not covered. Benvenuti provides a list of important areas of the networking software that are not covered in the book but gives other references for most of these. I hope that he is working on a volume 2 to cover these areas.

I would sum up by saying that if you want to learn about the Linux networking software or network protocol software in general, start with this book. This book will give you the background to understand other, less well written books that cover the remaining networking software topics.

Are you a newcomer who already has some knowledge of networking? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Christian Benvenuti, has done an outstanding job of writing practical guide that represents a good starting point for anyone willing to learn more about the Linux kernal internals.

Benvenuti, begins by introducing you to the basic knowledge you need to understand the rest of the book comfortably. Then, the author will show you how and when network devices are initialized and registered with the kernal. He also puts into context all of the features that can influence the path of a packet inside the kernal, and to give you an idea of the big picture. Next, he looks at the link layer or L2 counterpart of routing: bridging. The author continues by explaining the main drawbacks of version 4 of the IP protocol and shows you how IPv6 tries to address them. He also discusses how the router and the application host know who each other are. Finally, he introduces the routing process, and how it plays a central role in the Linux networking code.

In this most excellent book, the author shows you how Linux carries out the complicated tasks assigned to it by the IP protocols. More importantly, one of the strengths of this book is that it integrates the pieces and shows you the relationships between far flung functions and data structures.

This book is a very quick read. It is written for non-technical business managers. The book spends an awful lot of time covering a few key topics, including the importance of reviewing log files on web servers, introduction to cookies, and how to use cookies to personalize a web site.

A number of examples are provided, some based on a theoretical company that is introduced and developed in the book.

The book is well organized and easy to follow. However, there isn't much depth - I expect more.

In the past, e-businesses were treated as special cases. Profits were not considered an immediate or even short term requirement in the rush to build a brand and the business structure. Stock prices rose as horrendous losses were accumulated quarter after quarter. As is the case with such unsustainable dreams, once a bit of deflation takes place, it becomes a rout that engulfs even the strong players. However, those with solid business plans and sensible execution can survive and even thrive.
Developing and maintaining a business on the web requires several changes in strategy from that of "traditional" business. You must be available ALL the time, you have about eight seconds to make a good first impression and second chances to succeed are rare. Throw in the problems of gathering enormous amounts of data, refining the value from that data, assuring the sources that you will not misuse it in any way and protecting it so that none of it is misappropriated and you have complexities that will cause you to reach for the headache medicine.
Before you take that natural step you should do something that will provide more lasting relief, which is to read this book. Written at a non-technical level, all of these problems are examined in the proper context. The solutions are those that are sustainable, sensible long term approaches where the potential problems are identified.
One theme that is a consistent and necessary point of emphasis is that you must not assume anything and even if an assumption worked in the past, it must always be reexamined. Businesses on the web generally make the bulk of their sales from a small percentage of their visitors, so the key to success is to characterize that group and look for and attract more of their kind. If this can be carried out, it is possible to increase revenue while reducing advertising effort and expense. This seems to be a point lost on so many e-businesses, where the goal seems to have been the generation of traffic without regard to the quality of that traffic. The best point was that if you have to give away things for free to attract traffic the most likely result is that you will give away a lot of free stuff for minimal gain.
This book is filled with sensible, sustainable, non-technical information about how to survive and grow in the increasingly hazardous arena of business on the web. If it had been available and read by more people in the dot com world, the recent value adjustments of several companies would have been considerably tempered.

This book builds from a fundamental understanding of the Information collected from web customers to an explanation of what is possible and clarification of different approaches, and finally to guidance on how to get started. I found myself pleasantly surprised at the breadth of what was covered by the end of the book. This book is not just about what web data is available, but also about web business strategy. The web data is used as a mechanism to explain how a web business should be thought of.

Web Engagement: Connecting To Customers In e-Business is a superb introduction to key concepts essential for successfully conducting business activities on the Internet. Bill Zoellick explains proven strategies for understanding customer needs and developing websites to meet and satisfy those needs. Novice Internet entrepreneurs will learn what Zoellick calls "personalization" and it's importance for buyers and sellers; how to utilize personalization and customization in a business-to-business web engagement; how to use web server log files and browser cookies to track what customers are doing on a particular website; how to divide customers into segments and groups in order to better meet their needs and enhance sales; and to identify, develop, and evaluate business objectives and how successful a commercial website is in meeting commercial goals. Web Engagement is a "must" for anyone new to e-commerce, and has a wealth of practical information for even the more experienced e-business operator.