Intranet Books

It'a a excellent book - very easy to use - with a lot of information

4

This book is a good introduction to MS Windows SharePoint Services (i.e. not SPS). I liked the broad coverage of all WSS features, and not least the introduction to use FrontPage 2003 for enhancing the design and functionality of WSS, plus a short introduction to Web Part development. It is easy to read, even for non-SharePoint guru's. I can recommend it as an introduction to WSS.

While covering a lot of infomration, this book still did not answer basic questions about how to use Sharepoint. It is geared more for the tech/programmer rather than the end-user.

After purchasing 6 others on the subject of Windows Sharepoint Services, I find that this has the best information on the broad subject of WSS. The book is not perfect but its a fairly easy read and the examples are some what real world.

The authors take a unique approach to help one understand the concepts of the internet and its confusing terminology. The introductory summary provides a clear perspective of how the internet and its related attributes have quickly developed into a powerful tool in today's marketplace. It then provides a conceptual look into the future of how this new technology will impact our daily lives. The business case examples (ie. Business Internet Vignettes) are a great reference point for all technical and non-technical backgrounds- even those with an existing understanding of how powerful the internet and e-commerce can be. These examples go beyond the big Fortune 500 success stories and document how mid-size business' apply this new technology. A well documented glossary of internet terms has also been outlined by the authors. This is a great feature for all readers who must grasp an understanding of this new technology and its related jargon.

With thousands of related terms, this is very limited. Every time I've picked up the book to look up a term, it wasn't available. This is a waste!

"For business, the Internet represents the prospect of change, which, in turn, implies learning to live with uncertainty. It represents one of the challenges of modern life -- to reduce and manage risk and uncertainty through knowledge and understanding. To its intended audience -- managers charged with deploying Internet technology in the service of busines customers and other stakeholders -- this skillfully crafted business narrative delivers knowledge and the means of understanding....Throughout, a recurrent theme is that of using the Internet to build and extend customer and product relationships, rather than to promote isolated hits on Web pages.... Although predictions concerning ways in which the Internet will affect us both exaggerate and minimize its likely effects, one thing is certain -- our habits will be changed. Business managers and technical support staff will want to read this concise and enjoyable executive briefing, in which humor, zingers, and incisive analysis are to be found in equal measure. " Excerpt from review published in COMPUTING REVIEWS, June 1998, p. 310.

An excellend, well-researched volume with significant insights and information for those wrestling with the tactical and strategic challenges posed by inter/intranet technology and the exponentially growing e-commerce environment.

I found this book not that useful to me. I am no beginner. This book is for beginners who wants to know about jargons and generally general stuff related to it. I bought this book because of the author Walid Mougayar whom have impressed me. Helpful if you want to know something but not too deep. Useful for managers who wish to conduct conversations on technical stuff as ice-breakers. Even the initial section which describe different companies is too shallow. I get get better stuff elsewhere. Perhaps in-depth of a few companies would have been much more useful. Reading the book remind me of the old days when I spent my time in the libaries browsing through Britannica and researching on various subjects. As stated before what could be gained is just skin deep but could serve as a point for deeper reading. It could serve as s book on a serve for non-technical managers who may wish to do some initial reading before attending a technical meeting. I do not recommend this book for people who wants more in-depth knowledge. I recommend it to people who wants an overview.

It is way to basic, if you've been running an intranet in a largish size company then you don't need this book. If you just got thrown to the wolves though then this may (or may not help). I can't honestly recommend this book.

If this was still 1998, this would be an excellent read but unfortunately, as with most material in this category (Web Usability), it ages too quickly.

You would think that with five authors there would be something useful in this book. Unfortunately, this book is all about the politics of Intranets and not about actually building one. There is one page with an outline of possible Intranet topics, but other than that there is no help on Intranet content.

This book has definately prepared me for the challenges that are ahead of me. Creating an intranet is the easy part of the process. The book discusses the politics that are involved and what obstacles you may need to overcome. Regardless of it not being a "technical" book, it gave me a more clear understanding of exactly how the whole thing works, and political steps I might need to take to prepare myself and my company. I would recommend this book to anyone who may be involved in the process - beginning or advanced.

Already from the start I enjoyed this book. A book which shows that intranets are --indeed-- about people and not technology. Although my background is quite technical (UNIX admin...) I recognize that it is not technology in the first place which needs attention. Good structured, nice to read. The first 4 chapters were (for me) most valuable. The rest of the book is a very handy guide for implementing and learning the processes involved. So a big relief and I recommend this book to everybody who is able to look *beyond* the technology...

Anyone can set up a POP3 server. Setting up an IMAP server is rather more difficult, especially if you want it to scale to handle more than just a few thousand users.

If you are administering "modern" Internet e-mail servers, then this book is a vital component of your bookshelf.

Just like the authors of this book, I was also very surprised why there isnt already a book on this subject. IMAP is spreading especially in webmail, enterprise and scalable systems.

The book covers excellently the two major IMAP opensource servers UW IMAP and Cyrus IMAP servers.

The book also touches subjects, as remote filtering, and remote configuration storage.

Although the book leaves the usage of LDAP as a remote configuration option mentioned but untouched.

The boot also talks about well known IMAP clients on Unix, Linux, MAC and Windowns platform such as (PINE, Eudora, Netscape Messanger etc).

The book also talks about web-based email systems such as IMP, WING etc.

One thing that I disliked about the book and for which reason it will not be get a room in my library and looses one star is that all screenshots of webbased mail systems are taken in MS Internet Explorer.

Uh? I thought it was one of the BLUE books of Oreilly not a RED one.

Perhaps the authors of this UNIX based book believe that a web-based email client consists of two parts: 1. A server side gateway such as IMP, WING 2. Microsoft Internet Explorer

Also, on page 69 the book states "Internet Explorer and OE are available for Windows 95/98/NT, Macintosh, and Unix". I dont think that its correct. I use a Unix system (IRIX), and I cannot seem to find one version for IRIX. Isnt IRIX Unix?

Other than that , its a fine book that should be in your library unless you run a MS free house like mine.

I give this book a grade C. It talks about the benefits of IMAP and about the most popular IMAP servers Cyrus-Imap and WU-IMAP. It shows an intro to both these servers but it does not go into technical details. I had to go to other sources in order to find out how to setup Cyrus IMAP properly and how to troubleshoot it. I wish they had a more recent Revision like the other O'Reilly books that are kept updated. There are a lot of differences between the IMAP servers of the year 2000 and the IMAP servers in 2006. I wish there was an O'Reilly technical book on just Cyrus-IMAP and anotherone for Dovecot-IMAP (my second choice for an IMAP server). Someone needs to write a new IMAP book, please!

The big limitation here is that this book concentrates on a couple of open-source packages, so lots of time is spent detailing their intricacies. I would think that a more general book on IMAP4 protocol would be helpful.
But there are good examples of CGI scripts that monitor and manage mail servers, for instance, that can be adapted by the creative sysadmin to many other purposes. I also wish that there was a CD-ROM disc, or website with the source code. Typing in code from a book is a drag. The good thing is that you can modify it and make it your own as you type it in.

If you are looking to find out about the IMAP protocol - This book is very good, I bought it to help me install the Cyrus imap server. The book covers the installation of cyrus but it does not cover the prerequisites. I found the hardest part of setting up the Cyrus server was dealing with the software prerequisites, i.e. tcl and cyrus sasl. If you are interested in learning about the IMAP protocol, this is the book, if you are interested in setting up Cyrus - save your money.

This is a great book for cold fusion. Mr. Forta explains this language very well with simple examples.

First. This is not your typical instructional book. Do not purchase this if you are just learning CF. For the advanced user who wants to learn CF project development (pertaining to intranets) grab this book.

I love the concept of this book. Currently my bookshelves are lined with books that give me snippets of code explaining the various tags in CFMX. This book assumes (requires) you know CFML and don't need an explanation of the tags or their attributes. You become part of the development team. As you read this book you will see how this team will build a content management system. Starting from an idea and ending with a working CMS (hopefully) you will learn the "big picture" of CFMX.

With most basic instructional books it can be difficult to see how all your .cfm modules will fit into one grand application. This book will help you.The book is filled with mock notes and memos from the team members discussing requirements and ideas for the CMS. Also the code used is written out for you. The code is divided into small coherent pieces and there are plenty of editorial comments to explain the team's methodology.

If you are looking for code you can cut-and-paste from a CD; look elsewhere. This book is to give you real-world experience coding a project. Simple pasting modules into you CFMX server would not teach you anything. Besides, if all the code for the CMS you are building was placed on a CD, it would be easy to just copy the files onto your intranet and have the worlds cheapest CMS available...

...

This is not about code... its about real life production experiences. Uniquely original in the genre of computer books. Most computer books, are technical, full with code. This book takes another approach, by selecting five of the most commonly built web apps and guides you through the process, down to the emails the clients send internally. I am half way through the book and have already learned some interesting techniques that utilize coldfusion mx's newest features. Each project is developed in different ways, so the reader gets a good mix of different styles of production and workflow methodolgies.

Great book... once finished going to get the other reality book about flash and coldfusion.

So I'm going throught the book and decide to start in part IV "product requirements". After reading the whole section (several chapters), I decide to install the code on my own CFDev server so that I can see the app I've been reading about in action. Long story short, I can fill a phone book with the errors I've found and recieved.

Sure, I can spend 2 or 3 days going through the code and rewritting the application. But at that point, the book is no longer valid. So while it has been fun to read emails from Teo to the team about how to develop the application, the final product doesn't work.

I've been using ColdFusion for 5 years. I thought that I should point that out.

I haven't tried the other Apps in the book yet. Maybe they work. Maybe they don't!

You'll be very disappointed if you buy this book. The code is full of errors and doesn't work. Save your money, look around, and buy something else. You'll be wasting your money on this one.

I don't like books that put me to sleep and this one did. I was hoping to read in detail about intranets (hardware, software,and construction) but this book was pretty basic. It would be no help to someone looking to create an Intranet from scratch but more for someone who wants a 400 page dictionary definition of Intranet. It was a bore and a waste of time and I suggest you read all the reviews before buying this book.

saw it, bought it, used it every day until my intranet was complete. this is an excellent book to use as a working guideline every day.

This book is totally "light" and superficial. It's like reading a poor article in a magazine. It hasn't the appropiate level of discussion for each point. I've read it in five days, wondering when I'd find something that really worths. I've finished it, and I'm still waiting !!!.

In each chapter, the authors give you a short description of some basics facts about technologhy, or any other not technical fact; but anyway facts that you should already know if you're an IT professional.

Everywhere in the book, you can find the phrase "for more information, call the specialists". The specialists, of course, are companies like BSG, where they used to work. But you can't find the author. That company has been sold, so the book references to a lot of resources that doesn't exist anymore.

I strongly recommend you not to read it.

If you have to manage the bulding process of a corporate Intranet, I think I can give you some help. There are some serious works about human facts, functional facts, and management facts in an Intranet. "Intranet Organization", by Steven Tellen is a good one. It's online, search for it (I can't put URLs here). I don't know if it is a printed version, but it should. I've also good references for "The Human Side of Intranets", by Jerry W. Koehler.

If you're a developer, instead, I recommend you to start with "Intranets Unleashed". It gaves you a good introduction to each technologhy point.

The conclussion about the book: it is not technical, it is not functional. Really bad. 400 pages about nothing !!!

You've heard the hype. You've heard that it is easy. What you haven't heard is what it really takes to get a corporate intranet going. This book provides detailed how-to-do-it steps that are applicable for an intranet from a five person lan to medium size organization. The technical detail is accurate even for the larger organization, but the authors side-step the political and technical complexity of integrating an intranet into the typical Fortune 200 hundred company. For the rest of the world, you get a step by step overview of the technology, the components, and the required suppliers (such as internet service providers (ISP)),

I recommend this book because it is technically accurate, logically and sequentially laid out, and because it contains all that you need to know to implement an intranet. It even outline a budget. The chapters are laid out so that you can begin where you are or use the book as a reference on a particular issue. One of the reasons for a consulting firm such as BSG Consulting to publish such a book is to demonstrate that they have the expertise to do the job. This book succeeds in this demonstration.

Let's clarify what this book is, and what it is not. This text is concept and theory - nothing more. Though ridiculously out-of-date in 2004, many techies are looking for methods/tutorials to set up a corporate intranet. This is not the book for you. This book should be purchased for non-technical supervisors and MBA's who need more to be informed of the why's then the how's of an intranet.

This is far from the realm of the O'Reilly series. Those books present snippets of code, step-by-step learning, and in general provide good exposure to the hands-on part of creating workable programming, networking, etc. Here, you have the best reasons 1998 has to offer for why your business should employ an intranet.

An invaluable volume for any webmaster's bookshelf. It goes into great detail about all aspects of building and using corporate intranets. I've used this book as a guide in all my intranet projects.

While this book was a good explanation of intranets and what they do, it didn't go into much detail on how to actually implement one. The book is also out of date already! I would recommend this only to someone who wants to learn more about Intranets but doesn't need to put one together.

An invaluable volume for any webmaster's bookshelf. It goes into great detail about all aspects of building and using corporate intranets. I've used this book as a guide in all my intranet projects.

I bought this book because of the title, but unfortunately the content is too shallow. It's very, very basic. There is no technical part. If you want to understand XML and Web Services, I would recommend XML Handbook 4th edition by Charles F. Goldfarb and Paul Prescod.

When searching for a book on XML I came across this book and thought I recognized the name. Yes, this is the same guy who used to write a regular column for Network World for many years and if I am not mistaken for Data Communications prior to that. I used to like his columns so I took a gamble with this book. The book, to my delight, is just like his columns. Provocative, informative, challenging and often peppered with humor, folklore and good suggestions. Though XML isnýt its main focus it does provide some insight into XML and Web services and its treatment of portals is well worth looking at. I just wish he would write about more topics because his style and approach makes it easy to wade through technical material.

The book provides a decent amount of information and presents it in a non-technical manner.
Unfortunately there is just much too much useless chatter interspersed throughout the work and banalities abound everywhere, not to speak of significant irrelevancies. Its length could certainly have been rediuced by a third--to its benefit.
Finally, the editing is awful--there are very large numbers of typos adding no small annoyance and the quality of reproduction of some of the illustrations is such that they are close to illegible. Certainly not worth the price as it stands.
After the read I am more knowledgeable, no doubt. But I surely could have used my time becoming so more effectively.

This book is without a doubt an excellent read. It covers a variety of issues such as XML, content mgmt, CRM, knowledge mgmt, portals, services, etc. in a way that is simple to understand without sacrificing the details. Illustrations of real-life examples and typical solution architectures are excellent. Reality is separated from fantastical "one-size fits all" vaporware that is all too common today. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the critical issues surrounding enterprise level solutions BEFORE spending a few hundred grand on their next big project.

Not a beginner user-friendly book at all. I am not able to utilize it.

I bought the first version of this book back in Feburary for my 2nd Customer Deployment of Sharepoint. There are several things you may already know about Sharepoint Designer, but I found this book best used by intermediaries; as Reference Material.
For Beginners I also recomend to have and take the time to use the book because there will be things that will make more sense when you are presented with Business Case situations.
I put the book down for a month and now have started a 3rd customer deployment for a Bio-Tech company that wants to control workflows. Now I am re-referencing the book for additional triggers.
Down the road I can see using Data-Sources to create reports connected to Oracle DBs, but there is not a need right now or security access.
Hence the reference material.

If you are the Cheif Designer-Dev of a Sharpeoint Implementation this book is a must have for the miger cost.

I was faced with a project that could best be implemented with SharePoint, but I lacked experience, hence this book. It is an introductory book that presumes no foreknowledge of the subject and leads the reader incrementally through the features of SharePoint. The enclosed CD contains an eBook and the files for the chapter lessons. The print and page layout adhere to the proven format that makes the Step-by-Step series fruitful tutorials. The topics include:

*Build your own SharePoint site with easy-to-use templates
*Create lists and libraries to store information
*Add discussion boards, wikis, and blogs
*Set up Document and Meeting Workspaces for easy collaboration
*Share calendars, contacts, and data from Microsoft Office programs
*Customize your pages with Web Parts


This is authored by some of the same experts who have written advanced books about SharePoint, and their knowledge is evident in this lucid introduction. Elementary - as it should be for beginners.

This is a good book for someone new to SPS or for someone creating content. It is not a technical administrator guide. I would have given it 5 stars if they had spent some more time on the architecture overview and provided any coverage on the integration with pre-2007 Office.

NOTE: This book is not for everyone, if you have not invested at least 40 hours looking at network traffic, I would recommend you pass.

This book is zero fluff, it makes you want to spin up your scratch boxes and follow along. In fact I did just that, I have to switch to a new ISP that requires PPoE and I was always curious how that worked, the book gave me just enough of a clue to interpret what was passing in and out of my house.

The world has a new grandmaster of tcpdump and I have seem some pretty good ones over the years. Once I designed a T-shirt for a SANS conference with the hexadecimal output from a tcpdump; only we flipped it so it was running down the shirt and rendered in green, to resemble the matrix.

The packet was a DNS reply. In the additional records we said good things about SANS; after all, gotta market to eat. There was an error intentionally placed into the shirt and we designated a prize for the first attendee to find the error. A student walked by wearing the shirt and the "4500" in the hex field caught one of the instructor's eye. She followed him around murmuring, it is sideways, UDP, DNS, a reply, there are additional records, wait a minute that pointer entry is wrong. We watched in amazement, when she was done and looked up, the entire SANS faculty bowed to her. Because a mal-formatted packet can kill a packet analyzer the world needs people like Judy and Jon.

This is not a beginner book and Jon expects you to catch the 4500 stuff pretty fast. However, if you have followed the discipline of tcpdump instead of some packet analysis tool that spells out everything this book can take you to the next level.

VPNs Illustrated is rich in diagrams, including packet headers and state diagrams, examples of network traffic, and cartoons that explain the architecture of the system, or network. It is amazingly well edited, my only nit is on page 93, line 1 spacing off by one character.

The book has a strong linux bias, if you are a Windows person, you will be able to follow along for about 60% of the book using Windump, but you will not be able to use the tools or source.

This is the perfect reference for the person that knows networking and wants to really invest in taking it to the next level.

Finally, the dedication to Rich Stevens was over the top and heartfelt appreciated. I will never forget the man who taught me how to read a packet.

Given the complexity of VPN I was hoping to find a book that could explain key technologies in a concise and an organized manner. "VPNs Illustrated" does contain a wealth of technical information, but it failed on both counts.

The book offers unnecessary detail when trying to explain key concepts. It is so disjointed that the author is reduced to constantly referring the reader to other chapters to find information that is needed to understand a specific topic area. For example, the critical topic of IPSec is first introduced during a discussion of L2TP.

The book contains factual errors such as a typo describing "OC4" when the author meant to say OC48.

Overall, I was very disappointed with this text. It needs to be proofread and completely reorganized.

VPNs Illustrated is a great book for those wishing to understand network traffic at the packet level. Author Jon C. Snader was inspired by the earlier TCP/IP Illustrated volumes, and tries to reproduce the Tcpdump-style material found in Stevens' classics. The level of detail found in VPNs Illustrated easily outweighs any problems this book might suffer, so I recommend you read it for in-depth knowledge of VPN traffic.

The book is divided into three parts. Of these, I found Part I ("Background") to be of questionable value. The introduction (ch 1) should not have been a chapter, and ch 2 ("TCP/IP Overview") should be replaced by a reference to existing volumes on TCP/IP. The crypto overview (ch 3) could also be replaced by a reference to other books, although as a non-crypto guy I found it a helpful refresher. The last chapter in part 1 finally gets to more subject-specific information, covering PPP, IP-in-IP, PPPoE, GRE, PPTP, L2TP, and MPLS tunnels. I really liked reading the author's criticisms of certain protocols like PPTP and L2TP. He should have included Tcpdump traces of MPLS, since the other protocols featured packet data.

Part II included chapters on VPNs (ch 5), SSL (ch 6), SSH (ch 7), and "lightweight" VPNs (ch 8) like VTun, CIPE, Tinc, and OpenVPN. Some of this material is very deep and probably unnecessary for most readers. The author explains messages exchanged by almost all of these protocols, which is information I've not seen elsewhere. Some may consider these descriptions obscure, while others (probably researchers and developers) will appreciate the analysis.

Part III covers IPSec. Ch 9 ("IPSec") should be part of ch 10 ("IPSec Architecture"). The remaining sections thoroughly address IPSec (11: AH; 12: ESP; 13: IKE; 14: the future of IPSec). I think chapters 10-13 are the best IPSec material I've read. They made more sense than others I've seen, although the complexity of IKE made ch 14 difficult to follow.

Throughout VPNs Illustrated, the author is not shy about sharing criticisms of various protocols. This is extremely valuable. He also repeats sound advice on practices to avoid (like static preshared keys) or measures to consider (defeating replay attacks). Because he illustrates so many protocols, he compares and contrasts them to emphasize key points. He also frequently cites authoritative sources like Schneier and Ferguson.

To achieve a fifth star in a second edition, I would like to see the author incorporate my previous suggestions. I would love to see configuration files for all of his examples in the appendices. He can move existing examples out of the main text to improve readability. Every protocol should have a corresponding network trace analysis, and the traces should be posted on a Web site. I would also like to see a summary of his thoughts on what makes a great VPN protocol, and then his ratings for various implementations.

You won't necessarily be able to implement the VPN software discussed in VPNs Illustrated by simply reading the text. You will gain a great understanding of how they work, or sometimes, don't work!

I bought this book aiming to gain indepth understanding of VPN technology, but I was disappointed. The key chapter 4, for example, try to explain tunnel concept left and right, but it mixed the general encapsulation and tunnel, and the verbose wording didn't make it any clear. Using tcpdump trace to explain some of the field is both a blessing and curse, depending on how you look at it - I think the book is sort of strong in specific details but weak in overall conceptual pictures - however most of those details have been better documented in the RFCs.

Another example - when talking about generic tunnel skeleton using FreeBSD as example (ch 4.8), where some code snippets are presented, I feel some background and detailed illustration of flow/drawing is necessary to clear up the concept and why it correlates prevoius sections, but none given.

It may sound a bit harsh: though the author try to emulate Rich Steven's style and dedicate the book to him, but it is hard for me to say the end product can really live up to Steven's standard.