System Management Books

This book will open your mind on how to launch a bew business or innovative product or server. However the authors could write this book in a more simple way and not with a hard to read english text.

Before reading the book, “The Ultimate Competitive Advantage” it seemed to me that most management books were written for “big” business problems. Most authors quote one case after the other to make their own case. A collection of postmortem reports of different companies to tell you how they failed.

This is the first book that has taught me however small a business may be, its success depends on competitive edge it creates with its own resources. There are numerous ways that even limited resources can create an added benefit for the customers and increase my business. The example of “free cold water” on an off beat road is one such method in the book to remember as a simple but brilliant solution to attract customers and add value for the customers. The authors give a set of tools to help one think in a different manner. I recommend this book especially to young person trying to get their business started and also those seeking to break out of dead end situations. A great work!

Mitchell and Coles have done businesses a tremendous service in writing this excellent book. They have done so by providing a practical toolbox of ideas with which to stimulate entrepreneurs, business leaders and managers to enhance and improve their business prospects in today's very competitive marketplaces.

I must admit to having struggled with this book for a long time. Not because of difficulty in reading and understanding. To be sure this is a very lucid and comprehensible book and is accessible to all levels from a twelve year old bringing out his lemonade stall for the third year in a row and adding iced tea to his product range to the CEO of a major corporation.

My struggle was with trying to make overarching sense of what lessons the authors were trying to encourage readers to learn. It became clear to me after several periods of reflection upon completion of the text. The crucial significance of this book in a practical way lies in understanding how deep into national economic systems the process of globalisation has seeped. We see the reults in our everyday lives, how quickly new or improved products come into the marketplace. We see how quickly established businesses change or die, we see cheaper and better products come from remote parts of the world leaving us a greater part of our disposable income to spend on the things we would prefer to spend on them.

It is clear that in life and not just in business the process of change has quickened and that as individuals we must be more adaptable and more attune to the world around us to the opportunities that exist. It is as if we need to become our own business in ourselves.

Mitchell and Coles focus on but one part of this continuous change and that is on the business model. Their strong focus on this area has great strength but we must also learn the broader lesson from their well researched work. To survive in today's world we must not only accept change but we must embrace it as people, as workers, as entrepreneurs. It is as Schumpeter pointed out inherent in the nature of capitalism. But, to be sure it is inherent in the nature of all life, as Hayek observed. We must change or die.

I would heartily recommend this book to everyone, for there is much to be gained from within it's pages. Mitchell and Coles have produced an excellent book which far and away exceeds it's remit as a business book.

The Ultimate Competitive Advantage is a gold mine with a rich vein of unusual ideas from Mitchell and Coles' nimble minds. Its stated purpose is to help readers develop and implement a superior management process for continuous business model improvement. The book goes ahead to do just that.

The authors' approach make deliberate what used to be an accidental, hapazard, uncertain and hard to repeat process.

This book, like Mitchell and Coles' others, is best used as a workbook. After each chapter, several questions are posed to stimulate your thinking, and 95% of the value of the book will be unlocked for you when you take the time to think through them rigorously. Serious entrepreneurs looking for fresh ideas for getting out of the rut and improving their businesses will.

This is a practical book, but it is not a "how-to-book" instead, it deals with the what, when and why; with such tangibles as pricing, cost of doing business and benefits to stakeholders. The authors- Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles researched and found out that unsuccessful companies doggedly apply outdated business models while the successful ones improve their models every 2 to 4 years. The book provides a straightforwad and a systematic method which any company can use to review and improve its business model basing on its key components: pricing, cost of doing business and benefits to its shareholders.

Code complete is the right title for this book. Sadly most people find it extremely hart to read it. Its great as a reference but reading it word for word is as interesting as watching grass grow. Don't get me wrong. This is a great book. Everyone should at least hold it for once. But do not try to read it as a book. The first 300 pages will be boring. When the actual code chapters begin it gets better but still tends to be tedious.

A great book for beginners but a little boring read for advanced users.

When I bought this book, I couldn't believe all the 5 star ratings in the reviews. But, now that I've finished it, I have to agree with them. Simply put, this is probably the best computer-related book I've read. In the book's 850 pages, I found a grand total of five minor problems: one was grammatical, two were typographical and two were minor disagreements with how some things were presented. All trivial. Content-wise, if the universities would teach this material and if programmers would follow the methodologies contained in the book, the world of software would be far, far better off. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND this book and rate it an Excellent 5 stars out of 5.

This was a great book both for me and my team. I've been in the software industry for many years. I started building a team of developers and needed an easy way to bring novice and experienced programmers together on a similar set of standards. This book provided us with the perfect framework from which to start our team. We've developed several major projects using the principles in this book and have experienced a great deal of success.

One warning, the book gets a bit tedious after the first half. If you're looking to improve your C programming skills, it gets really detailed into pointers and other fun, or not, stuff. Also, the examples are in VB.NET...but you still get the point.

If you're an experienced software developer or a newbee in the world of commercial computer programming this book will give a good kick in the right direction. Steve McConnel will keep you hooked by mixing the right guiding concepts with real-life knowledge and examples.

for all programmers. Shall I say Application Developers? Software Engineers? Whatever the title is, programming jobs are alive and well! This book provides a solid foundation. It is too bad very few American students are interested in this profession.

The average students are all studying business marketing. The good students are studying finance.

At Harvard University, they do not teach Accounting. The best ones, study Economics. There are only 21 students studying Computer Science at Harvard. Yet, parents are paying $220,000 to Harvard and other Ivy League. Truly amazing!

Is there anyway we can change this trend?

I bought this book as an additional material to study for the CISA exam. However it didn't help me with the exam at all. Furthermore, in an attempt to cover many things, it did not cover anything in detail. This book is just an endless recollection of bullet points. On top of that, it misses very sensitive topics like disaster recovery planning.

Not having much experience in the IT audit field, this book was a great resource and was easy to understand.

This book has some material relevant to the CISA examination based on the 2003 content areas, although it is not organized or focused as a CISA examination guide. If you are looking for CISA review material for the test, I would strongly suggest to stick with ISACA's combination of review manual and questions CD. I also searched everywhere for study aids for this grueling test and ended up using ISACA's expensive material, but it proved to be the best choice as I passed the Dec 2006 test.

However, as owner of a copy of this book, I assure you that this is an excellent reference of IT management, planning, implementation, risk assessment and control procedures for anyone in the IT business. Most of the material is still relevant as of 2007.

Audit is not the most exciting topic in the world, but this no fluff book really sets the standard. The care the authors took is obvious from the start, the table of contents is one of the most detailed I have ever seen, it allows the book to be used as a reference.

My favorite chapter was Quality Management, best job of making quality approachable I have seen to date. My least favorite was Project Management, it seemed to lack the application and lean to theory a bit.

I am not an auditor, but as an auditee, this book really helped me understand how they think. Recommended!

This is a huge book but spends no more then 1 page on any topic. In my opinion the authors only have financial audit experience and little understanding of IT controls. This book shows the failure of the 'integrated auditor' as the authors are tyring to be IT auditors with little IT experience. They touch on some very good points in a few instances and, in general, the book is decent. The authors do not know much outside of the CISA, IIA and financial based certifications as they seem to think that the ISSA (Information Systems Security Assoc.) is sponsored by ISC2/CISSP's (it is not). Overall, I have not been impressed with this book.

Thick Oracle book which is intended for developers who might need to understand the Oracle internals and administration parts besides writing SQL. It's useful for them working in other database also as the general database concept is simlar. Developers can now have more DBA knowledges after reading before on-going performing some DBA task.

Gr8 stuff for all the Oracle ppl.

A true masterpiece, and a great way to learn Oracle concepts. No more to say.

I have been an Oracle DBA for about six years and this book is still the one I turn to when looking for deeper insight into tough Oracle problems. The author recently published a new book on 9i and 10g and that one is also quite excellent. When it comes to analysis and clear writing style, no one can beat Tom Kyte for excellence. Highly recommended.

I bought this book on cheap clearance after the original publisher went out of business -- the best $12 I ever invested. Remembering even 10% of this book makes you better than 90% of Oracle developers, modelers and architects. Mr. Kyte's real world experience and reliance on solid examples instead of folklore makes this light-years ahead of any other Oracle book; it's the only Oracle book I re-read regularly. If you can afford only one Oracle book, this is it. And you may not need any other.

Firstly a warning, this is the second edition and covers Windows 2003. There is a third edition that covers the newer OS. I bought this book by mistake and it's too big (postage would be too expensive) to return. So buy with care.

This is a big book in terms of pages but the content is less than stellar. Don't expect to find too much on designing AD in real world situations such as integration with networking topologies and devices. Nor expect to find details on integrating AD with other Microsoft technology such as SharePoint. No this cookbook is really an administrator companion, and I think it does a pretty decent job in that but not more.

Very handy cookbook reference for my office bookshelf. I've used it a number of times, and it's more than paid for itself in expediting regularly-scheduled inquiries of our AD structure here at GEICO HQ.

Excellent reference if you work with AD on a regular basis either as an admin or a developer. Each "how to" offers methods for manually performing a specific task as well as (where possible) how to automate the task using code. Should be on every Windows admin/developer's desk.

Overall, this is a great book for reference.

There are a number of areas where I think the book falls short - all of the scripts are very hard coded scripts that don't tell you how to do some functions that would make their scripts actually useful (like "pull the list of users with attributes from a tab-delimited file and create them" or something similar, this would make mass creation of users actually useful, instead of "create user1, user2, user3, etc..."). I think that the writers expect you to be a VB expert (or at least close to it) if you're going to actually make the vb scripts useful.

Most of the scripts are "How to use a script to do the same functions that you can already do in AD with ADUC or another MMC", but I think that the most important thing for me about the book is what it inspires me to think of doing. Things that MS doesn't necessarily expect you to do. I'm still not seeing a way to add sidHistory to an object (MS does it with another applet - there is a way...), but there are so many things in the book that just have me thinking about how you can implement changes to an environment that MS says you can't do. What they really mean is "You can't do that with the GUI tools that we provide you".

I am so glad that this book was recommended to me by a guy I took a class on scripting from. I use this book everyday (almost). I even took it on vacation with me for light reading.

I was skeptical at first, but I followed the advice in this book, and BOY HAS IT MADE A DIFFERENCE!

I picked up this book when it first came out, as I was already a fan of The Practice of System and Network Administration.

It's been three years, and I'm no longer frazzled. Users no longer call me angrily wondering why I forgot to do such-and-such. I (hardly ever) forget to renew service agreements and run regular maintenance.

I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you feel like there aren't enough hours in the day, if you work late, if you feel like your users are beating down your door.

Another thing about the system described in the book is its reliance on a paper-based organizer. I had tried and failed several times to use electronic methods. I'm a sysadmin! I should be able to use computers for everything! Being given a sort of permission to use paper for what it is good for helped me out a lot.

As a DBA, I found this book extremely useful. It's easy to read and has practical advice that works. I was a bit demotivated at work and this book helped me spring back into action.

Some of his quotes I try to remember daily; one of my favorites is "perfection is a real time waster" because it's so true!

Making to-do lists and setting goals is an integral part of time management and this book shows you how to do it properly. A+!

Finally someone noticed all the small differences in System Administrators lifes that require a different approach to time management.

Plus, a sense of humour and accurate advices.

Time Management for System Administrators is a book not only aimed at system administrators but also other task and interrupt driven employees early in their career. It presents a core concept of use to anyone struggling with a "never ending TODO list of doom" both for business and personal tasks. Some of the information is of a very basic nature such as "do short tasks and important tasks first". Part of this, however, could be Thomas Limoncelli's writing style which is detailed almost to a fault. It is, however, a very easy book to read and I found myself going through quite a few pages in one sitting.

On the negative side the analogies the author uses to try and explain time management in computer terms get a bit thick at times in the first few chapters but soon they run out and are no longer in the way of the points being made. Two other somewhat awkward chapters are the Stress Management and Automation chapters. Is it worth the time to write (or read) a chapter to basically tell us to occasionally take a vacation and to get a massage? It seems like filler to pad out the book. Similarly, the important take-away point of the automation chapter is to, well, automate things! However the chapter contains an overly specific set of shell programming tricks the author has learned over the years. These are of course presented as examples of how to automate, but the amount of time spent on details and anecdotes makes this chapter also feels like pad. The time spent in these chapters could have been better spent on the core points of the book.

What is the most valuable information in this book? The core technique is what the author calls The Cycle System. This is a way to manage your TODO list so at the end of each day every item assigned to that day has been addressed, if not necessarily completed. It's a very useful technique for learning to plan, to ensure you follow through with completing tasks and to improve your sense of accomplishment that you are managing your workload. Interestingly the author has always used a paper-based TODO list and calendar, so each technique of The Cycle System is explained both for paper and digital (PDA) methods. The Cycle System can help by providing a framework for managing tasks other than continuing to add them to an ever growing list, however it still requires a lot of discipline to properly schedule tasks in the future to avoid them all piling up on the task list for the current day. After several weeks of using the system it is certainly a workable method as long as you are honest with yourself on the amount of real work you can accomplish in a single day and you dedicate a good bit of time on a regular basis to future planning and scheduling of tasks that aren't high priority or due immediately. Unfortunately, the author doesn't go into a lot of detail on techniques to handle the issue of building up a backlog of low priority tasks other than to suggest daily, weekly and monthly planning times to reprioritize and reschedule tasks. The issues of email management, interruptions, unexpected tasks, request tracking software and even life goals are addressed. This portion of the book is where the true value lies and it provides a good amount of information.

If you currently have no structured task management system this is a great resource to start with. You'll certainly come away with a wealth of information on getting a system in place to start to manage things. If you forget to complete tasks or tell someone you'll do something only to forget it when the next person you run into starts you on a new problem, then this book will be very useful to you in how to manage interruptions and always follow through. If you are fresh out of school and you're in an IT job where tasks are starting to pile up, this book will be of even more benefit to you with its stories and broad IT specific topics. As such I would recommend this book to anyone in a task and interruption oriented job as a basic primer on how you should be expected to manage yourself. If you are in a computer job, so much the better, but regardless of your line of work you can still learn a great deal.

Ranked at four stars due to the issues discussed above, but still very highly recommended!

Tom Limoncelli is a well-known system administrator, author and orator. He speaks at conferences around the globe on issues ranging from firewall security to time management. He has also published papers at conferences such as the Usenix LISA on a wide variety of topics including innovative firewall techniques, coordinating massive network changes, models for improving customer support, and the security issues related to firing your system administrator.

I like the book "Time Management for System Administrators" because it is written BY system administrator FOR system administrators.

The book covers not only the general time management principles, but also valuable advices for system administrators: how to make use of automation, how to cope with multiple customers, bosses and tasks, and so on.

In addition to this book, I can recommend the other great titles that I liked much: "Never Check E-Mail In the Morning" by Julie Morgenstern, "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and "Time Drive" by Gleb Arkhangelsky.

Of the 3 dozen books I've read related to organizing, this is one of my favorites. It is presented in an easy-to-read format that makes it possible to spend a few minutes and read a chapter at a time. There were many great quotes and ideas that are easy to implement. The book also included fun anecdotes. Very well done!

I recently bought both this and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity in order to stimulate my thinking about how to take charge of my incredibly busy job as a software development manager in an e-commerce company. I manage about 8 people directly and am also the prime facilitator for another project team of about 15 people, half of which are contractors. Like most people, I also have my own work projects and initiatives, as well as huge laundry list of personal items to keep up with.

At first I was a little turned off by the 55 super-short chapters, each of which is 1-2 pages in length and has a "What? So What? Now what?" layout. The writing quality seemed only average, and I was left thinking "Is that it?" after each chapter. However, after I finished the book rather quickly and then got bogged down in Getting Things Done, I realized that this is a pretty good layout for the target audience - people who feel too busy to read a book on productivity.

Many of the observations seem obvious, but that is one of the key messages of the book: we're all making this stuff away too complicated. How many of us take ten minutes each morning to set a focus and key priority list for the day? Or do we omit that simple step, or fall into the trap of checking email "just for a few minutes" first and then get seduced into following little shiny objects all day while missing the big picture?

The "Five Decisions" chapters - Discard, Delegate, Take Immediate Action, Put in a Reference File, and File for Follow-up - are important but I think are covered better in the other book. About half of the other chapters really resonated with me, which made it worthwhile overall. However, the author lost me when he spent 10 chapters describing a paper filing system with folders for each day of the month plus various other files. I agree that people shouldn't expect software and tools to solve all their problems, but I think a PDA or list software like Remember the Milk is much better than a paper system for anyone who works in multiple locations or is "on the go". I felt like he was being a bit techno-phobic, sort of like the guys who insist that LP records are better than CDs or MP3s.

Really the best way to improve your organization habits is to browse several books and articles on the topic, note the themes that recur (like planning time, grouping tasks by project or goal, etc.) and then choose a couple of things to focus on. I'd recommend this book as one of those resources but not the best-written or only one.

Chris Crouch's "Getting Organized: Improving Focus, Organization and Productivity" is a fine read which accomplishes what all good teachers do best: Imparting with vivid good humor and simplicity the wisdoms of processes taken beyond the classroom. The target audience here, primarily workers in any workplace, calls for a most delicate balancing act: Being thoughtful and succinctly explaining the theory, practice, and results of a disciplined approach to Organization. Mr. Crouch accomplishes this masterfully with anecdotes, explanations, and his "master teacher" persona.

You won't get rich from simply reading a "How to Get Rich" book and you won't get organized and productive from just reading any book - you have to take action and implement the ideas.

I have used the principles and ideas outlined in "Getting Organized" for several years and found them to be extremely valuable.

Becoming more organized and productive is not a matter of what type of filing system or PDA you use, it involves making a habit of organized and productive behavior.

This book provides concrete tools for forming those habits. Simply outstanding!

This is a very good book to help you get organized. I originally had a three star and changed it to a four star. So many of this book's best elements are also found in David Allen's Getting Things Done. I read Allen's book last year and it knocked my socks off. When I read this, I wasn't as impressed as I would have if I read Crouch's before Allen's (they're both obviously drawing some of the best tidbits from some of the same material that preceded them). They have many, many of the same very helpful tips. The advantage of Crouch's is that is has short digestible chapters. However, an overall approach does not clearly emerge, just a bunch of big and small organizing ideas. An advantage of Allen's is that you get a clear, overarching approach into which all those good tips suggested in these books fit. Allen's chapters are longer, and though very readable, can get a little bogged down compared to Crouch. If I had only one book to buy, I'd get Allen's. However, I'm glad I read Crouch's because it has given me a refresher.

Getting organized is a major issue for many of us (I work two jobs, both of which require me to maintain an office). While one book may do it for some, I strongly believe that major habit changes will more likely come if you really plunge into an area like this. That means reading Crouch's book, Allen's book, and even Julie Morganstern's Organizing from the Inside Out. While Allen and Crouch focus on the office and home office (mail, home files, etc.), Morgenstern also covers garage, basement, closets, etc. I'm serious, to change the way you look at things, you need to read several books and make yourself an "expert." Otherwise, it will be a book you read that you're not likely to act on.

I read them in the order of 1) Allen, 2) Morgenstern and 3) Crouch. If any readers will choose to read all three of these, I'd recommend Crouch first, then Allen, then Morgenstern. Crouch will lure you in with his short little chapters (once you get past his too many introductory-type chapters before you get into the good stuff). Then, reinforce what you learn by reading a lot of overlapping stuff in Allen's book, but Allen will give you an outline or framework that ties it all together. Then, move on from the office to your closets and garage with Morgenstern. Of the three, Allen was the best for me, but I needed the others to sustain my momentum. Good luck!

I recommend this book to all the people who are constantly firefighting everyday to make their mass production businesses better, faster, stronger and quicker. How many more words that end in "er" do you need to rally the troops in growing your businesses? Tom Wentz shares his real world management experience through his book and demonstrates with great logic how to change your mass production status quo and "CREATE" the structural changes you need to CREATE a mass customization powerhouse.
If you have an open mind and are ready to end the corporate frustration you experience today, I recommend that you read Tom's book and learn how to lead the necessary transformational change you need to become successful in today's business environment. Your employees and customer's will love you for it!!!

Written by the Thomas K. Wentz (President of Corporate Performance Systems Inc.), Transformational Change: How To Transform Mass Production Thinking To Meet The Challenge Of Mass Customization is a solid and deftly presented guide for adapting to the new and evolving demands and realities of a globalized marketplace where merely churning out vast quantities of a product is simply not enough to be profitable. Now, more and more, customers want goods and services uniquely tailored to their tastes, and they are willing to pay for it - so much so as to change the shape of international businesses worldwide. Learning how to incorporate customization for maximum consumer satisfaction and profit is a rocky road, but individual chapters of Transformational Change address a range of relevant problems including corporate restructuring, gathering appropriate intelligence, competitive advantages and disadvantages, and a great deal more. Transformational Change is a truly excellent resource and a highly motivational reading for business managers at all corporate levels of responsibility.

Tom Wentz is the quinessential change agent! His book, "Transformational Change" describes clearly the process of change from mass production to mass customization. While the book is an easy read, you'll want to revisit it many times because of the great depth it possesses.

Mr. Wentz shows that insanity truly is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. He likens it to those "hackers" out on the driving range who continually use the improper swing and expect a drive 275 yards straight down the middle.

In light of the events since September 11, 2001, Mr. Wentz expertly shows the need "not to defer the the experience of living today" and to become truly fulfilled at work, at home or in your communities.

This is must reading for anyone who wants to transform their existence.

Transformational change addresses the problem of how to deal with change when moving from a mass production oriented business to a customer centered customized production business. One of the truly unique perspectives of this book is that it discusses and details the process of such a change. Many similar books effectively argue the need for change but then provide no direction on how to make the change. Thomas Wentz' book provides detailed discussion and processes for creating that complete transformation of your business

In the past most businesses were based on a mass production focus. Success and management were evaluated on a numbers basis. How much has sales increased? How many items were produced during this period last year? This numbers orientation tends to cause people to work hard to meet the numbers as their primary focus. In this scenario employees typically don't go beyond what is expected of them. There is no motivation to create a unique world-class organization. Add to that the fact that times have changed and customers now require a solution or product that is customized to their specific needs. If you can't provide a customized solution or product then they will simply go to a competitor that can. Is this just another business direction change? Thomas Wentz argues that it is more than just a directional change, it requires a complete transformation of the business from one form to another completely different form.

A nice extra to the book are the numerous "Key points" scattered throughout the text. By summarizing the prior information in just one or two sentences and making it stand out from the text it is easy to quickly read over the key points of the book and refresh your memory on an ongoing basis. An excellent book on business and change that also has some applicability to personal change, it is a recommended read.

I have read Tom's book twice. The second time very carefully because I wanted to be sure that I was not being seduced by the obvious. I was not. This is an addition to the literature on leading change. Many of the terms are familiar but Tom has brought them together in a way that creates a new picture of the forces that change -- and don't change -- business.

I have become somewhat sceptical of all of the warnings of the dramatic shifts in paradigms that business must face to survive but Tom has succeeded in explaining the shift from mass production thinking to something new in a way that can be understood. I get a clear picture of what it means when there is a new context requiring new thinking. Not every business will face the same changes in context but every business needs to understand if and when its context changes.

I am distributing this book to the sixty CEOs in my CEO peer groups for them to read and discuss. I am also going to schedule an opportunity for them to participate in a simulation to experience first hand the limits that mass production thinking imposes on our search for solutions.

A good book that has a lot of Domino Information.
I find myself referencing it from time to time.
A nice tool to have at your disposal.

Although this book is a bit dated covering Domino R5, I would still say it has been a very valuable aide in learing Domino/Lotus administration on R6.5.3. I wish there had been some flow charts on the routing process at the end of chapter 8, and some packet header diagrams of the Notes RPC protocol.

I would recommend this book to anyone new to the Domino/Lotus notes world.

Great Reference. Go here first then look elswhere! I just HOPE Mr. Kirkland and NewRiders come to some agreement and get an updated version for R6/6.5 soon to be 7 out.

Invaluable!!!!! If I had to do in the trenches domino administration and could only bring one book with me this would be it.

When I was a Jr. Notes Administrator this book gave me the level of knowledge and understanding of Domino and Lotus Notes that I needed to move into a more senior position in a very short amount of time. My now-dogeared copy is still by my side every day at work as I continue to learn from this all-inclusive, easy-to-read manual. From setting up your first server to understanding Domino system architecture, "Domino System Administration" covers it all. This book is truly a "must have". I am desperately hoping that Mr. Kirkland writes an updated version for Domino/Notes 6!

If you buy any book for administering Lotus Notes/Domino, buy this one.

This inspiring book is a must for all recruiters who understand the leverage power of online sourcing and networking.

As its subtitle suggests, The Virtual Handshake is all about interfacing with business and social contacts through the worldwide web. In my field (recruiting), the lines between business and social contacts blur since everyone I encounter might need either a new job or project, might know someone who does, or might be in a position to hire. Networking is not just about pressing flesh and passing business cards at a luncheon these days. There is a rapidly growing area of opportunity to meet people and make deals on the internet. However, please note that The Virtual Handshake does not merely expound the virtues of the internet or report results of deals closed and marriages made, the authors also make the technologies easy to understand and provide practical advice on how to use what's out there. Published in 2005, the book provides current information on various virtual options and their uses. The authors cover topic such as social software and services online; virtual clubs and associations; tips on managing the deluge of email; basics on blogging; effective use of email blasts without being perceived as a spammer; netiquette; privacy protection; and, of course, real-life examples of the use of the virtual medium. Easy to read and very useful, The Virtual Handshake is a primer for those of us who haven't been hip to the virtual world that's out there. It made me wonder if I've been living under a rock! The good news is it's not too late to learn, and this book will definitely help. I was so inspired by this book that I boldly went out there into the virtual world and set up my own blogsite!

This book delivers everything it promises. It is interesting from beginning to end and is obviously written by someone who is inspiring, articulate and experienced. It gives really good advice abot how to handle and manage one's growing familiarity with Internet capabilities and offers several good references for aspiring networkers. It even explains how to write a good resume.

The world is changing and so is business. The Internet, and various "Web 2.0" technologies, for lack of a better (or even good) name, are rapidly becoming an integral part of business and life.

The Virtual Handshake doesn't attempt to get you entirely up to date -- that's impossible, but up to speed -- that's far more valuable.

If you don't have any trusted colleagues you've never met in person or maybe not even talked to over the phone, you need this book. Even if you've spent a quarter of a century online like I have, you need this book. I learned a lot, and still refer to this book often. (If your secretary reads your email to you and you dictate answers, I suggest you retire or read this book ASAP.- You need help catching up).

After reading The Virtual Handshake, and I strongly suggest you do, you'll understand the basics, importance, and success guidelines of social software. You'll be up to speed in perhaps the most critical area of business change in our lifetime. The CURRENT wave of the Internet, and probably more important than the original commercialization and popularization of the Internet.

Hey, what's more interesting, the Big Bang Theory or How Life Came About?? This is the "How Life Came About" part and you'll learn about things like virtual communities and social networking, but far more importantly,- you'll know what to do. Actual steps you should take --- and plenty of case studies to help you understand their importance. Guidelines to harness the power of these new whateveryoucallthem.

Hint: be yourself, act responsibly, and remember you are the same person both online and offline and don't forget it!

There is a lot of valuable information in this book. Plan to read it, enjoy it, and then study it. And plan on concrete benefits.

It's a rehash of common sense. Do not waste your time reading this book.