Software and Tools Books

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, Web Design Tools And Techniques by Peter Kentie (author of the monthly "DTP Maserclass" column in Macworld Nederland) is a comprehensive, "user friendly" guide to all aspects of effective web designs. The relevant subjects covered in accessible detail include creating a storyboard or diagram structure; designing effective navigation systems; implementing effective user testing within the limiting constraints of a budget; applying cutting edge methods without alienating visitors; minimizing user wait times (this alone is worth the entire cost of this outstanding reference); and utilizing site statistics as web design planning data. If you want your website to provide superior content, structure design, visual appeal, enhanced with invisible technology and visitor ease-of-use, then read and study Peter Kentie's Web Design Tools And Techniques!

If you you know anything about webdesign, don't even think of buying this book. It can bore you to death, with its sometimes dated terminologies, and fascinations at technologies that are now dead. I don't recommend this book if you're interested in the process of web design or if you have the slightest experience. If you allready know some webdesign skills and are interested more in the process, "Web Redesign, workflow that works"(kelly Goto & Emily Cotler) is the book for you. If You don't know web design and would like to start somewhere, Lynda weinman's "Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Hands-On Training " is a great place to start.

In Web Graphics Tools And Techniques, expert webpage designer Peter Kentie provides a profusely illustrated, full- color guide to the development and utilization of HTML tags to make a web site functional and aesthetically pleasing. Additionally, Kentie offers a wealth of clearly demonstrated, practical, "user friendly" information on advanced all the current techniques that an HTML programmer must master, including formatting tables, converting copy to HTML files, understanding how to use GIF and JPEG image file formats, integrating typography into design, creating backgrounds, designing effective web page navigational devices, and more. Web Graphics Tools And Techniques is a highly recommended instruction and reference guide for intermediate and advanced HTML programmers and website designers.

Unlike other web design books that mainly seem to focus on how to spell HTML-tags, this book really discusses what web design is about. How can I use HTML-functions and graphics to spice up my site and get attention from the site's visitors ? What are the choices I have, and what do I have to consider when making these choices ? How to deal with different browser types ? All these topics and many more are extensively covered. The book is not only a good start-up for newbies, but also a guide for advanced web designers. Subjects are well organized and easy to find. I've seen many web design books so far, but none got even close to this one. And of course the glossy (but functional) appearance of the book adds to the fun of using it.

I have spent lots of times to look for a book that is written for graphic designer who wants to design the web pages, I find out that some web design books are too complicate for the beginners and of course, some are to easy for the web masters. Only Peter Kentie's book I believe that is designed for both beginner and advanced web designers.

'X Power Tools' is a book for Linux admins and developers who want to learn how to use Linux better than ever before. With 250+ pages of material spread over 15 chapters and close to 200 recipes, this is perfect for anyone looking to do more with the X Windows system.

Great book, great resource, easy recommendation

***** RECOMMENDED

The X Window System is the foundation of graphical desktops on both Linux and Unix systems and supports advanced features of modern graphics cards, so X Power Tools' articles on the topic are a top pick for any advanced computer library specializing in Unix. It offers an introduction to how the system works, considers useful utility programs and applications, covers software that work with X, and reviews the basics of building networks and systems with X. Any advanced Unix or Linux computer reference library will find it useful and specific.

According to the author of the book in review:" This book is written for experienced
computer users...".

Nothing can be further from the truth. In reality this is a very elementary
text on X window system that probably would not be worth of buying if not for the excellent Chapter 3 which does a great job in systematically explaining
structure of xorg.conf file. It is also the only book written in the past ten years entirely dedicated to X window system.

At the beginning of the chapter 6 the author brags about the
fact that he will discuss often ignored utility programs which ships with X window
system. That is quite an overstatement as after the reading of chapters 6, 7, and 8
one would not be able even to configure mice for a left-handed person.

The book in review is just a part of the general trend which can be summarized in the following observation:" As the use of computer technology has seen unprecedented
expansion in the past 20-30 years the computer literacy of an average computer user
has shrunk to zero". I can just add that above observation seems nowadays apply
to so called "power users" too.

At the end, I shell mentioned that the book is written by a GNU/Linux user but the
author made a genuine attempt to write in a fashion which would make the text useful
to Unix users. In an era of great ignorance by a large part of GNU/Linux
community about Unix the author's approach should be commended.

Ever since making Linux my primary OS of choice, I have found it impossible to find a cogent explanation of the different pieces of software that result in the graphical desktop. There are X, session managers, window managers, compositing managers, and desktop environments. Happily, this book explains these pieces of software, their purpose and the way they interact, and does it in a way that is accesible to the intermediate *nix user while still providing a satisfying amount of technical detail. It also provides tools for managing the software and tweaking it to make it do what you want.

I have been using X11 with OpenBSD for at least 5 years now. I have
become knowledgeable about using KDE, less so about using X by itself.

This book filled in quite a few gaps in my knowledge of X, but it did not
provide me with the information I need to solve a problem making a new
monitor run at its rated maximum resolution.

I had been running with a 21" crt at 2048x1546, but the 9-year-old crt
was wearing out. So I bought a 19" ACER lcd display with maximum
resolution of 1440x900. The new display would not work at all with the
default xorg.conf generated by "X -configure". The problem turned out to
be the driver, which was specified as "ati". When I changed the driver
spec to "vesa", X came up at 1280x1024 and worked well. But I have so
far not been able to get the monitor to run in 1440x900.

The book does a pretty good job of explaining the xorg.conf file.
Modelines are mentioned briefly in the text, but not in the index. There
are no formulas given for computing modeline data to be included in the
xorg.conf file. No mention is made of the various values (eg ati, vesa)
that can be specified for X drivers. There is no list of validated modes
in the Xorg.0.log file. So after reading the book I still have not
figured out how to make my monitor run in 1440x900.

The book describes how to support keyboards for multiple countries, but
it was not clear to me after reading it how to display the corresponding
characters for (eg French,German,Russian) characters in addition to
English.

That said, I give the book a 4-star rating. There seems to be no other
current, up-to-date book on X. I'm glad I have a copy to study and write
notes in.

This is just a reference, written in a style a bit too terse. Not good as a tutorial.
For a wider picture and introduction, see Managing Projects With Make (I believe the newer editions only cover GNUMake, which is different than what BSD developers use).

This book, which was made available on the Web for free, is here published in book form for those who prefer it that way. It is a great introduction to GNU Make for beginners who need to learn it, and a good reference for those more experienced.

After a brief overview of make in chapter 1, the authors move on to introduce makefiles in chapter 2 and 3. A general makefile consists of rules, with a target, dependencies, and commands. The authors do a great job of explaining makefiles and give a sample makefile explaining how an executable depends on object files, those depending themselves on C source files and header files. The use of 'make clean' is discussed also, along with the use of variables to simplify makefiles.

A more detailed discussion of rule writing is given in chapter 4, with the rule syntax outlined, and how to use wildcard characters in file names. The 'vpath' directive is discussed also. The authors show how to construct rules with multiple targets, and how to use dependencies that are not necessarily identical using static pattern rules. The chapter ends with a discussion of how to generate dependencies automatically.

The use of command echoing is explained in the next chapter on writing commands in rules, with the recursive use of 'make' as itself a command in a makefile. This is followed in chapter 6 by more details on the use of variables in makefiles. Readers knowing the shell very well will find this easy reading, but beginners will have to pay attention to the subtle uses of variable references and the difference between recursively expanded and simply expanded variables. The authors include an advanced section on variable reference for the more experienced reader. A detailed discussion on using conditional statements in makefiles is given.

The use of functions to do text processing is the subject of chapter 8 with the general syntax for function calls given. This is followed in chapter 9 by a discussion on how to actually execute a makefile.

The use of implicit rules to perform compilation in the usual way is discussed in chapter 10. This is my preference on how to use make and it is given a nice treatment here, with discussions on how to use implicit rules and introduces pattern rules.

Make can also update archive files, and this is discussed in chapter 11. The last chapters of the book give a list of features of GNU make as compared with other versions of make, and a list of incompatibilities of make with other versions. The conventions that must be respected in writing GNU make programs are discussed also.

In the ideal world a make script resides in the /usr/local/ directory branch. It invokes one or two include files found in the project directory for the purposes of customization. GNU Make is capable of this, and other feats. But, without reading the documentation, it's nearly impossible to extract the full power of this essential tool.

This book provides enough of an introduction to make that the newbie can immediately start crafting useful makefiles. For the consumate meddler, there is plenty of info on all kinds of features which allow make to be used to manage nearly every aspect of software and documentation creation.

Originally I downloaded the PDF and had it printed out at Kinkos. Having it in a book worked better. Do yourself a favor and get the book.

This is an excellent book for software developers who want to write Makefile seriously. I have read other make books, including "Managing Projects with make" and "Mastering Make". None of them present core of Makefile to readers. From newsgroup comp.unix.shell one can know that there are still a lot of people who are struggling for writting their own real Makefile. Richard and Roland are national outstanding experts in this area!

I'll add to the positive remarks of other reviewers that this book will help you understand why features that work with one version of make do not work with another. The section "Features of GNU 'make'" contains information on which features came from which 'make' implementation; this gives the reader some historical context and information that not all 'make' programs are created equal. This information is especially valuable when working with a number of different 'make' utilities from different vendors (happily, GNU make runs on almost any platform most users are likely to encounter, and installing GNU make on a machine may be much easier than wrestling with the differences between 'make' implementations).

I refer to this book (or the info version from within emacs) regularly. I have found it extremely helpful while trying to figure out how another Makefile works, while trying to figure out how to accomplish a particular task with 'make', and just for general knowledge about the tool. I found the sections on suffix rules and pattern rules to be particularly informative.

One final note: by purchasing this book you are helping to support free software, as the book is published by GNU Press, the publishing department of the Free Software Foundation.

My hopes were high because of the good reviews this book had received... I was disappointed. The idea of many simple programs, each with some clear functionality, that can be combined to produce powerful commands is illustrated clearly enough in the book. But the readability of the code leaves something to be desired. There are lots of if-the-else, while, and repeat constructs, and it's not possible to understand the code without the verbose explanations from the text. Often checking program behaviour for special cases, such as an empty file on input, are not part of the normal text, but left as excercises to the reader.

I would have liked concise comments that state invariants, pre-conditions, and post-conditions to illustrate the correctness of the program. These comments should be part of the program code, not some separate prose that is disconnected from the code. All too often have I had to support code without these comments, and without the accompanying prose to describe the code. This book seems to encourage writing such code.

And also the book is somewhat dated: some of the programs have functionality that made sense in the early days of FORTRAN programming, and are of little use to currentday C/C++ programmers.

Elsewhere on Amazon I reviewed Kernighan's "Elements of Programming Style." To quote one paragraph from that review -

Brian Kernighan has co-authored three books almost essential to learning our craft, this volume, "Software Tools" and "The Unix Programming Environment". "Elements of Programming Style" spells out the fundamental rules, "Software Tools" shows you how to apply them to a number of simple projects and extends the rules to software design and finally "The Unix Programming Environment" shows you how to use them in an operating system designed to reward you for your effort.

It could be said that "Elements" teaches programming and "Software Tools" teaches software design. Rules such as "do just one thing, do it well" seem to seep in through the pores as you read and work through this book.

It presents a number of projects starting with a word count program and progressing through some filters to some fairly complex tasks culminating in a RatFor pre-processor for Fortran. All the examples are written in RatFor, a version of Fortran that adds some more structured elements to that early language.

Don't be put off by the use of RatFor, the language is easily understood and the style of programming so clear that the algorithms are easily understood. I've personally translated a fair number of them to both BASIC and C and the RatFor pre-processor design became the basis for an AppleSoft BASIC pre-processor written by a close friend.

I've relied on this book so much for the last ten years, after writing "Hello World" I drag it out and translate a couple of the tools into every new language I've learnt. I then spend a day or two thinking about and implementing a design optimised for the new language. After that I find I have a good handle on a language and how to design for it.

This volume is not for those who want a book that gives them pre-written tools, a fair number of the tools are standard issue on any Unix derivative and the code is only tersely commented, relying on the exaplanatory text. However I recommend this book to all software designers and programmers because as you work through these examples you will learn a great deal about honing your craft.

Software Tools. I can't say enough about how important this book was - and still is - to me. The Software Tools in Pascal version does not have the same effect - it doesn't really work. But Software Tools gets across the idea that you do not have to accept the constraints of your environment to produce excellent programs. Instead, develop the program the way is should be and make a surprisingly small effort to then map it to your environment. Don't let the environmental problems constrain your thinking or actual programming. Then with a little effort you can get your environment to match what you need. The book develops a series of software tools, unix style commands, but implements them in a language called RATFOR (Rational Fortran). This is done because Fortran IV was universal at the time, but also horrible as a structured programming language. The delima: Use a better but less widely available language, or use a horrible but very popular and standard language. The author's choice - and the philosophy of the book - don't be boxed in by this choice. They added to Fortran the structures found in C and then wrote a preprocessor to translate this RATFOR to Fortran. The end result was the best of both worlds: well structured programs that will run on just about anything. The whole book is about this kind of choice. It is great philosophy for software development and great philosophy for life. END

I read this book about 20 years back. And I keep quoting it and recommending it, and re-reading it. This is because it changed my whole perspective about writing software. Let me share the two big lessons I learnt.

The first was ego-less programming. Sharing the code and encouraging feedback. We applied this in our group with amazing results. It is a valuable lesson because it is so tough to implement - because of our ego.

The big one was about not writing applications but tools. And creating applications from tools. This lesson kept haunting me whenever I wrote any program. It helped me write generic programs that could be re-used.

The Ratfor examples are a bit dated now. But they elegant and pure.

A must read for all aspire for excellence in coding software.

The tools you will find in this book are ancient. They're written in a cockeyed hybrid of C and Fortran, and they're almost hilariously user-hostile by modern definitions. If this intimidates you, look at it this way -- you're looking under the hood of modern applications. Much modern word processing, page layout, and language implementation can be built by putting a nice, shiny coating on what you find in this book.

Kernighan and Plauger set out in this book to document what they used in their labs at the time it was written, and show how to build them. Ratfor was chosen because C was not as widespread then as it is now, and for those who didn't have it, a translator to standard Fortran '77 was one of the major parts of the book. A simplified version of the nroff text formatter and a version of ed are also included for text file processing (then as now one of the major uses for computers), the result being both a toolkit and a practical education in the ins and outs of applications development.

The environment given is not Unix-based inherently, but this book is a natural companion to Kernighan and Rob Pike's The Unix Programming Environment and John Lions' Commentary on Unix 6th Edition. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to do software development.

This is a great book, as are all books written by QUE, I use it every day while mastering the finer points of web design and embedding 'objects' with Microsoft Frontpage 2000.

One of the best features of this book is the chapters teaching how to work with databases using Frontpage 2000.

"One of the most important features of web developement is Databasing!"

This book covers it all. Setting up forms to update databases, creating ASP, active server pages, and more.

Frontpage has a bad rep, in the web developement industry, well not any more, many Designers now hype Frontpage2000, in this book you will find out all there is to know about Frontpage2000 and why it is a tool of choice for serious web masters.

I own several books by 'Que' publishing. I read several pages everyday. The CD has some great demos. I must have for all web masters/designers. Five Stars and by far the best written book on using Frontpage2000........A winner!

I needed something to get me up and running with FP2000 and to initiate my wife into developing web content and pages. I have always been very satisfied with QuE books because they are so well organized, comprehensive, and have such a good index (something that all too many other books fail to do well at all). This Que offering was not an exception and my wife is developing the website for a school to which she consults with this as her only refernece tool. I have recommended Que books to lots of folks and never had a complaint.

This book is excellent. I red this book during a Web Designer Friend's visit to India, as this book is not available in India. Book has many things to offer. I cound not complete entire book but whatever I wanted to learn, I read thos topics first. I must say this book is excellent. Do not belive anybody who says Front Page is not good designing too. It is One of the Best tool for web designing. So called PROGRAMMER and DEVELOPERS do not want to make you design web site so easily with Front Page!!!!!!!!!!! hasitdave@yahoo.com

This book is excellent. I red this book during a Web Designer Friend's visit to India, as this book is not available in India. Book has many things to offer. I cound not complete entire book but whatever I wanted to learn, I read thos topics first. I must say this book is excellent. hasitdave@yahoo.com

The Using Front Page 2000 comes with some free software, which they make a big deal about, and it is only shareware or trial programs, nothing you cannot easily find online.
The book is huge and heavy, and did not address several of the advanced areas I was looking for, and I thought there was a lot of writing and not a lot of meat. Too much verbose talk and not enough examples.
Also after reviewing the book, I have sent it back, and I have decided to move away from Front Page, and move to Dreamweaver. I have tried their trial program, and the program can do so much more, and is not dependant on MS extentions.
Overall I was not happy with the book, I have seen a much better presentation of information, easier to read, formatting, etc.
There was some good information in the book, but I think I just am more disillusioned with Front Page overall as it has become limiting to what I want to do with design.

Just got back from the book store and spent a bit reading this book. It's actually quite good. McBath makes the assumption that you are a DBA. Not someone who reads Gartner reports and goes to meetings.

I've become accustomed to a wide variety of lame backup and recovery books. A good example is Anil Desai's... long on planning, but short on how to actually do the work. In his book, backups don't actually start till chapter 6! Easily 2/3 of the book is fluff.

For example, Desai talks about log shipping-- 5 pages. McBath has a whole chapter on it in a how-to format. BOL doesn't cover it in depth, and where it does, it's wrong (ie. sp_change_primary_role example is wrong on fail over). SQL Server Resource Kit has a whole chapter on it, but not one example of how to implement. Long on theory, short on getting it done-- typical of MS Press books.

The book covers just about all the methods for backing up and recovery using standard tools. It also covers using DBCC to recovery data. Then it expands out into rebuilding your stuff from scratch and reloading it (ex. I lost my master database and here's what I got to do).

McBath's book tells you what breaks along the way and how to fix it. Anyone who's had to rebuild master and got in that infinite loop problem knows the hard way. McBath tells you about the problem *BEFORE* you hit it and how to work around it. The Desai book doesn't even tell you how to properly bring the SQL Server into single user.

This is also the only book out there... including Delaney's... that actually flow charts the sequence of events on how a backup and recovery actually work internally. LSN's, GAM Pages, etc... That way you get the theory as well as the practical I-got-to-get-my-job-done stuff.

The section on DBCCs is the first place I've seen where it's pretty much explained well. Delaney's book is also great here, but McBath put's it in context for recovery of data. The straight dope is here. It's dialed in right.

Another interesting point was he shows you the output of the scripts. That way you can see what it's supposed to do *BEFORE* you do it on your box. By doing this, he's also showing you that the scripts have been tested and run, too.

What I liked most was that it used the GUI and T-SQL scripts. This is great cause most people use a GUI which you can't script in SQL Agent, etc...

What's also cool is the Mohan/Narang paper as the appendix. Mohan outlined the ARIES Write Ahead Log (WAL) protocol recovery mechanism that SQL Server is premised upon. I wish there was more intro to it here. It's just tacked on the back. But this is just gold.

Stuff missing that would be cool: Covering third party tools like Legato. In a major data center, they are mandatory.

Finally a book for SQL Server that rivals Oracle Press's long standing tome on Backup and Recovery by Velpuri.

McBath's book is non-stop backup and recovery issues from beginning to end.

If you do any SQL Server administration where your boss cares about the data contained therein, TRUST ME, READ THIS BOOK THOROUGHLY BEFORE you are in a position of responsibilty. Had I never read this book before I inherited my DBA responsibilities, I doubt I'd be employed right now. This book could not be easier to read, have better examples or provide better insights. Even though I went through a MOC training course and the teacher was great, one week isn't long enough for everything to sink in. Thank goodness there are guys like Mr. McBride to fill in the remaining gap.

I could not say enough good things about this book...mainly becuase I still have a good job because of it.

If your database is important to your boss, this book is a MUST!!!!!!!!!!!

Frank McBath has successfully filled a gap in the reference book section with this complete guide to SQL Server 2000 Backup and Recovery. With its in-depth content and real world examples, McBath's book provides a comprehensive look at everything you will need to know about SQL Server backup and recovery. He highlights common problems and provides practical workarounds. One of the great things about this book is that it is not so general that you would be hard-pressed to find useful examples. McBath gives you the commentary, the code and the specific content that you can use at work. This is definitely the kind of book that every SQL Server DBA should have!

Author calls it concise monograph that covers a wide variety of backup and recovery issues with plenty of examples. Well, concerning backup section there are more examples in Books on Line. No backup options are explained (i.e. You would use this option to do this particular thing). Absolutely NO scenarios are given. Only a few basic backup statements without any explanation what to run before and after backup. There is an interesting script "Monitoring the Completion of a Backup" - almost 3 pages of code but there is no download option so it is up to the reader to type it in. What a waste of time. Author often makes a point how bad backup and restore practices are in places he did the consulting for. I think they are no better or worse than the books we have to learn from.

McBath's book highlights common problems and provides practical workarounds for Backup/restore
The Book shows some very cool tricks that make it possible to recover data that's lost due to media
failures. It also covers data recovery tricks by using indexes. It continues about explaining what
to do when you need to rebuild your machine from scratch. Common problems are discussed and workarounds
given. The book is full of examples and tips and tricks from REAL consulting, not rehashing a manual
or Books on line. These tips give the book even more value.

What I liked most was that it describes using the GUI and T-SQL scripts. A GUI is nice but to really
hit the nail one should automate this and script it.
This is THE Backup/Restore book each SQL-Server DBA must have in his bag. READ it BEFORE disasater
happens. One can never be preperaed enough for situations like this.

Last but not least there's an appendix with the Mohan/Narang paper This paper outlines
the ARIES Write Ahead Log protocol recovery mechanism that SQL Server uses.

Do you love to tinker and optimize? If you do, then this book is for you! Author Ted Wallingford, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that contains only a small subset of VoIP knowledge; but, enough to serve as an introduction to the world of VoIP and teach you how to use it to save money, be more productive, or just impress your friends.

Wallingford, begins by introducing you to some Internet based VoIP phone service providers who can help you replace your traditional phone line with a cost-saving, feature-rich VoIP line. Then, the author shows you how to customize and maximize productivity-enhancing telephony applications. He also introduces you to Skype and Skyping. Next, the author shows you how to install, configure, and hack Asterisk, an open source PBX. Then, he continues by showing you how to add hardware hacks to your VoIP setup--and how to customize them. The author also explains how you can monitor VoIP and troubleshoot it using traditional admin tools. Finally, the author shows you how to use hard-core voice.

In this most excellent practical guide, the author provides dozens of hands-on projects for building a VoIP network. More importantly, he shows you how to tweak and customize hardware and software to get the job done.

I've been in telephony and networking for nearly 30 years. Started in R&D at a PBX manufacturer in 1979, then did a stretch with the, at that time, worlds largest Ethernet company. Then I worked on a Fiber Optic Voice and Data MAN (IEEE 802.6) and have been manufacturing telecom products for the past 14 years. I think that gives me the qualifications to critique this book even without having to mention the Ethernet board I designed for IBM was featured on the cover of PC Week Magazine in 1987.

This is a very good book. If you are a VoIP systems integrator or do anything with Asterisk, this book is a must have. There are major problems with the current state of the VoIP industry. The two biggest problems are security and the unavailability of a decent broadband connection with QoS and an SLA below $400 per MegaBit. Yes $400, but we're talking guaranteed availability and less than 0.5% packet loss,and 50mS or less latency with real penalties for not meeting the SLA.

Before reading this book I would not have considered putting an IP-PBX on an ADSL link. The author's idea of putting a Sangoma ADLS modem in the Linux box with PPPoE client software and controlling the modem queue is nothing short of genius. Then to top it off with the AstShape QoS scripts and the QoS monitoring tools, this book is an absolute bargain. With these tools I'll not only know if the ADSL connection is capable of supporting VoIP service, but I'll know exactly why. Much better than cutting over to the VoIP system and later discovering the problems. The whole book is just full of great ideas. There is something in this book for everybody from the Skype user to a single VoIP phone owner, Asterisk, or enterprise PBX administrators. Just check out the Table of Contents. Amazon does not have the Table of Contents available but it is on the O'Reilly website oreilly D0T C0M.

While the book is an asset for seasoned VoIP integrators, it is also a very good resource for someone completely unfamiliar with VoIP with a desire to learn. You can start out with free software for a Windows PC, progress to purchasing a single VoIP phone, then to a Linux PC. If you are leary of Linux, either get over it or you should probably stay out of VoIP altogether.

Voice over IP, as with most emerging technologies, in the process of shaking up the world, in this case Public Switched Telephone Network and Plain Old Telephony Service. The author starts of the book off at the most basic entry point for most consumers into the world of VoIP, which is background about the main commerical carriers such as Vonage. The introductary chapters continue to build on the most elementary approach, giving the reader advice on modifying the soft phone[s] that the respective carriers will allow or provide to the consumers, such as alternating ring tones. It isn't long before Ted is explaining how to compeletly re-wire the house over to a pure VoIP infastructure using the existing wiring in your home as well as an, or the ATA provided by the carrier. While this is undoubtly over the casual readers head and possibly comfort level it is good see that this option is explored and explained for those that might not be aware of this solution.

Of course, other VoIP solutions are explored. Skype, is mentioned and basic features are explored, although the detail provided on Skype is not as detailed as those of other solutions, which maybe due to the coverage for Skype under the Skype Hacks book. However, the coverage for building your own VoIP via Asterisk is quite detailed and in-depth. Options that explored for this approach, are call forwarding, hold music, voice mail applications and distinctive ring as well as basic advice on setting up and compiling the application. The process appears to be able to easy to implement, but alas was not tried due to this reviewers use of Skype for his VoIP needs.

Also in the closing chapters of the book, issues of improving QoS are addressed as is the legacy signalling protocol that H.323 is since the adoption of SIP. Since QoS is vital to ensuring that VoIP traffic receives the bandwidth that it needs Ted gives us some basic commands to find out if there is jitter [dropped datagrams] and some ways to fix this issue. However, it should be noted that this chapter, as with most of the later half of the book is more in line for larger scale operations that use Linux/Unix and building their own office VoIP solutions.

To summarize, VoIP hacks does offer something for everyone, although the hacks provided in the latter chapters are geared to the enterprise level deployment of VoIP. That's not to say that the information is not relevant or even eye opening, just the average home user will find little to apply this to.

I enjoyed reading this book. It's got great information on the different VoIP services and how they work. And it has a bunch of fun recipes that you can use to play with the services. I really enjoyed the one about altering your voice. As well as the information on how to record iChat and Skype. That is really handy.

VoIP isn't just a fad or the hot thing in the computer/Internet world, it's what is beginning to, and eventually WILL replace the old style AT&T phone system that has predominated in the world for the past 100 or so years. With the availability of high speed Internet and the technology to go along with it, VoIP (voice over IP) has re-engineered how we talk to each other, making voice communication faster, quicker, and CHEAPER than ever before. AT&T and the big phone companies have long raped consumers of their hard-earned dollars with tons of fees and overpriced "features". Its was only a matter of time before a better alternative came about, and now it's here and the # of new VoIP users that come online every day is staggering. As a user of VoIP I can tell you that I personally love it, and I would never go back to the old land line connection.

If you enjoy learning about VoIP and you want to learn how to do more with it, this book is for you. Going beyond the regular setup "tricks", VoIP lists out plenty of fun and interesting things to do with your VoIP connection. Whether it's downloading little applications to track your usage or learning how to control the lights in your home with your IP phone, this book will please all the geeks out there in the world who need to go past simply using their connection, needing to get into the guts of how it all works.

If you want to learn more about VoIP and some of the fun things you can do with it, this is a fun book to add to your collection.

**** RECOMMENDED

This book is part of the "For Mere Mortals" series, which sounds like it was created by the publisher to compete with the popular Dummies and Idiots books. However, McGrath's efforts are not a trivial read. What she describes is a considerable effort by Microsoft to migrate the myriad VBA developers towards .NET and Visual Studio 2005 Tools.

The emphasis is not on implementing abstractions like object oriented programming. Rather, it uses the reader's background in coding VBA and in MS Word and Excel. Nor are you expected to be proficient in database design or the intricacies of SQL Server. Much of the text is about front end material. Like using the conveniences of the VSTO user interface, with its many widgets and menus, to easily code.

Many new features are available, compared to what you previously had under VBA. The most striking example is now the nifty ability to have a data island. Imagine an Excel spreadsheet on one machine. That loads from a database on another. If the first machine is your laptop, and you take it somewhere isolated from the network, what happens to your data? Well, there is now a means of copying that data, while you're still connected, into a data cache on the laptop. Without having to go to the extent of running a full database on the laptop.

I found the book thorough and easy to read and follow. It reviewed .net extremely well, and made me aware of .net capabilities I had overlooked since the old ones worked.
I met a problem early on in my use of the book, communicated with the author, and got the help I needed to overcome the problem.
An excellent book on the subject.

I should mention although I haven't really done much with the book that it lacks a sample code file download. This means you have to key in everything yourself to test and debug.

Traditionally, developing on the Office platform meant that you would use VBA but Microsoft released Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) a few years ago to let .NET developers use their skills to develop managed Office applications. Moving from VBA to .NET is not easy because you need to learn so much new stuff especially if you never touched .NET in any way. "VSTO for Mere Mortals" is a book targeted at VBA developers who never used .NET before.

In the first chapters, the authors explain what is VSTO and what features are available for developers. Chapter 2 and 3 introduce the Visual Studio development environment and managed code. Seasoned .NET developers will skip these chapters but they are essential for people who never used Visual Studio before. The next chapters cover everything VSTO from Word, Excel and Outlook development to Smart Tags and database development. A full chapter is devoted to new features of VSTO 2005 SE and Office 2007.

If you're a VBA developer that wants to jump into .NET development using VSTO, look no further, this is the book for you. Experienced .NET will also find this book interesting but will skip a couple of .NET introduction chapters.

This book (VSTO for Mere Mortals) is very well written and easy to understand. I did not come from a programming background. I started by learning VBA so making the move from VBA to the .NET /VSTO world was a bit intimidating for me, however; after reading and following the examples in this book, making that leap is not as hard as I thought it would be. I love the detailed code samples in the book and the step-by-step way that they are presented. I really learned a lot from reading this book. Thank you to all that contributed to putting this book together.

This is the book you need if you want to get under the hood of Word. Solves lots of problems, useful code examples, and the right attitude to Word (love it, hate it, we have to use it and may as well tame it).

I hope there's a second volume someday.

Buy this along with Word Annoyances and you'll be all set to do deep stuff with Word, right up to the VBA/serious macros borderline.

It seems like the Hacks series just keeps getting better and better. This time I had a chance to review the book Word Hacks by Andrew Savikas (O'Reilly). As usual, there are a number of items here that I'll be able to use right away...

Chapter list: Word Under the Hood; The Word Workspace; Formatting, Printing, and Table Hacks; Editing Power Tools; Templates and Outlines; Housekeeping; Macro Hacks; Forms and Fields; Advanced Word Hacks; Word 2003 XML Hacks; Index

For those unfamiliar with the Hacks format... It consists of 100 tips, tricks, or unique ways of doing things with the subject at hand (like Word, Excel, etc.). The hacks are normally not things that you would find intuitively obvious, or even things that you thought were just flat-out impossible to do. In Word Hacks, the author (along with a number of contributors) takes you on a trip into the inner world of Word and uncovers a multitude of tricks you've probably never seen...

Wonder how to get IE to launch Word documents in Word? That's hack # 8. Need dummy text to fill out content in a document but you don't want to just type random characters? Check out #14. How about using Word as a Windows backup utility? Yes, you can do that, and hack #81 shows you how.

The thing I like most about this book is the profusion of VBA code to be found. For non-programmers, this might be a hindrance in that a lot of the hacks involve using the VBA code they supply. I can think of a number of potential readers who would be totally lost there. But for developers who use COM to manipulate Word from other software packages, this is a treasure trove of ideas. An excellent "R&D" resource... "Rob & Duplicate"! :-)

If you're an average user of Word or a power user who doesn't want to play with code, you'll get some value here. If you're a techno-geek who wants to program everything, this is your book. Highly recommended...

There is a huge global base of Microsoft Word users; some subset of which should find this book useful. Savikas goes beyond common texts that either get you quickly started on MS Word, or comprehensively tell you of every option. You are presumed to be already facile. So much so that you've run into recurrent annoyances, which perhsps the book can help alleviate.

The hacks deal mostly with problems for which macro programming is needed. It's not about situations where the answer is some obscure manual sequence of steps you must do within MS Word. Nor are the large reference books on MS Word likely to be of help. They do explain macro programming, and give examples. But that consists only of a fraction of their coverage. Whereas, you have here a book focused on macros.

You don't necessarily have to already be programming macros to get something out of this book; though it would help. If a given hack addresses your situation, you can just copy vebatim the hack's solution code into a macro.

I learn through practical examples. I hate those many many programming books out there that just give you the dry bones of how the functions, parameters, arrays, variables, data types, objects, and so on work together. Even if I might actually understand what they're saying, they still leave me scratching my head and saying: "Ok, I got it. Now why would anyone ever want to do that?"

This book is NOT like that at all. This is an adventure in programmatic praxiology. It is very well written and very well presented. I learned a ton of ways to actually use VBA with Word.

A better subtitle for this is "Tips for Taming It with Macros." The book begins with showing how to tweak the interface to meet your needs, one of the few hacks not requiring macros. For a long time, I never modified the interface beyond choosing the tool bars I wanted to view. I frequently used the word count feature and added that to the interface. Since then, I've learned to modify it based on my needs so I can quickly access the most often used features. Tip #1 is all about that.

Haven't ventured into macros, or at least not much? Get a crash course on how to create and run macros so you can use those included in the book and venture on your own. Savikas explains the basics at the 30-foot level while guiding the reader through the steps of creating and running a simple macro. Many of the hacks use macros.

When clicking on a link to a .doc file from within a Web site, the file opens within the browser and editing it is difficult because many of Word's tool bars are not there for your use. Hack #8 puts an end to this nuisance. In "Building a Better MRU" (most recently used), take the MRU file feature up a notch and pump it up with a form.

According to the book, most of the hacks work with Word 2000, 2002 (also known as Word XP), and 2003. It mentions some of the hacks work with the old Word 97, but the book focuses on 2000, 2002, and 2003. The last chapter, "Word 2003 XML Hacks," begins on page 319 and is the only one specific to the newest version of Word.

The book follows the Hack series model making it easy to use as a reference. All the tips offered are listed in the table of contents. If you like what you find there and want something heavily focused on macros, the book will satisfy your needs. Those looking for a manual with help for getting around Word and discovering some of its power are better off with a different book.

Anyone who is comfy with Word and likes to fiddle with something a little more advanced will get just that. Try a couple of hacks at a time to build up your Word knowledge. Soon you'll be creating your own macros. Those who are macro pros might not glean much from the book. The book's publisher's Web site includes five sample hacks . Try them out to get a feel for what the book offers. The same page has a link for downloading code examples from the book.

This practical guide to visual data mining strategies for networks, hierarchies, temporal data, and landscapes is the best I have seen. The realistic examples from financial fraud detection, telecommunications network analysis, retail sales, bio-informatics, etc. reveal the remarkable power of these novel techniques. The authors guide readers through the process of data preparation, analysis, and discovery with numerous figures from many of the rapidly emerging commercial systems. If you have important data that you must understand, you'll benefit from this book.

Data mining is an important segment of computer science that is growing in popularity. It is also diverging into many different branches. As a developer of shareware that targets quantitative data mining solutions, I purchased this book to improve my understanding of the full data mining market. This book helped me understand where our software fits into the bigger picture and more importantly the detail in the book has provided us with some worthwhile new ways to improve our software. Additionally, it is the only book available that covers the spectrum of visual data mining methods and systems.

For the ordinary person, a book such as this is a good place to start data mining. To achieve anything useful with data mining, you first need to get an idea of what you are trying to achieve and how you are going to achieve it. Without this background knowledge you are more than likely going to waste a lot of valuable time and quite a lot of money on the expensive tools that service the market.

Data Mining Solutions will help you get on the right path as it has a good blend of academic detail, software overviews and most importantly it gives practical details as to why you might want to use data mining in the first place. There are also some quite interesting insights into issues like fraud, which add some drama to the computer-related discussions.

The usual approach taken in computing is to first purchase the product and then learn the science. For data mining, this purchase should be preceded by some practical background reading from a resource such as this. I highly recommend this book as a place to start your voyages of data mining discovery.

Westphal and Blaxton do a good job of introducing data mining concepts, but focus too heavily on data visualization techniques. A large chunk of the book is devoted to tool walk throughs, information that will be outdated soon. The case studies cover several industries, but fail to show the authors' methodology in action. The greatest shortcoming is the EXTREMELY brief discussion on neural networks, genetic algorithms and other non-visual analytic methods. If you are a beginner in data visualization, buy this book. Anyone looking for in depth (or even an intro) discussion on AI and statistics, look elsewhere.

I think this is one of the best books on data mining. The book covers whole range of issues related to data mining and it makes the book in a way unique since you will find it extremely difficult to find another source that is as comprehensive as Data Mining Solutions. Although data mining is a quite complicated process, the book is easy to read. Authors maintain nice flow of ideas through out the book. Now the strong and weak things about the book will follow.

Things I particularly liked in the book:

· Excellent introduction to the topic. I have tried other sources on data mining and this book is by far the most comprehensive and easy to understand.

· An extremely good blend of theory and practice. Authors seem to be very experienced in dealing with various data mining issues. Solutions and examples from telecommunications, fraud detection and other areas show how the theoretical background can be applied to real life problems.

· Authors cover not only the processes of data preparation and analysis but also explain the ways of presenting the results which I think is crucial thing to one's success.

· Authors try not to over-emphasize the power of various data mining techniques. You will find explanations of pros & cons for each of the techniques and suggestions on when to use them with the most success.

· The book includes a good coverage of data mining tools (software) that will help you once you decide to apply data mining techniques to real world problems.

Things that you might miss:

· Sometimes figures lack description so it takes some time to understand what authors have meant.

· Sometimes you might want deeper description of topics covered.

Overall, I think this is a really good book on data mining, especially for newcomers. The book gives a broad understanding of various data mining areas and it definitely can serve as a good starting point for gaining more benefit out of the existing databases in your business. I give five stars out of five.