Software Books

'Learning Flex 3: Getting up to Speed with Rich Internet Applications' is a great guide for anyone looking to learn or improve their Flex 3 skills. A collaborative book between O'Reilly and Adobe, this text is a perfect buy for anyone that wants to get their feet wet with this new and exciting technology or just needs a refresher in the basics of how to build Web 2.0 applications.

The Flex platform is perfect for building self-contained apps which are netcentric, modern and efficient. If you are looking to build a new web app you owe it to yourself to take a look at this technology and this is the perfect first step to take!

**** RECOMMENDED

Learning Flex 3 is an excellent resource for beginners who know nothing about Flex. Please read a detailed review of the book I posted online at RIA Revolution -- [...]

Well worth the price - for anyone learning Flex 3 and needing a good well rounded book that answers a lot of essential questions. A great find, easy to read, to the point, clearly written and the examples work exactly as you'd expect. A very satisfying read indeed.

The first thing that stood out is that it's in color! I love color, especially for technical material it adds a whole extra dimension to the medium and another vehicle by which to communicate. Obviously in code listings it makes the code easier to visually digest and mentally break down what you're seeing, and with screen caps color is so much more appealing.

The dimension of the book is wider that normal, which gives the book an extra wide gutter that the publisher is able to leverage. And leverage they do by making use of it for an assortment of side bars, notes, tips, and blurbs.

So aside from the aesthetics, content of course is the key. The book is aimed at beginners who don't necessarily have any sort of programming background - so the audience that this book would appeal to includes anyone interested in learning more about Flex and if it's the right fit for them; as a quick read (only 304 pages) you can blast through this book in a short amount of time.

Who might those people be? Developers wanting to test the waters with Flex because they had heard good things about it, Flash or Web media designers thinking about getting into the development side of things with Flex, and management level folks looking to explore new opportunities and want to get a barometer reading on what it would take to get into Flex, etc...

The writing style is fairly casual, and you feel like the author is talking to you (as opposed to the feeling of a manual). I think the author does a pretty good job at keeping things high level with enough meat to make the reader feel they're actually being productive as they work through the examples.

So I'd recommend this book to someone who wants to get their feet wet with Flex - someone who may not be fully committed to Flex at this point in time and doesn't want to invest a ton of time yet.

* Difficulty Level: Beginner
* Range of topics: Moderate
* Depth of topics: Light
* Development experience needed: None
* Reading Speed: Fast
* Writing Style: Casual

I was beginner to Flex and went through different books and adobe document (excellent & highly recommended for reference). Now after going through the book I feel it is perfect for someone who want to learn Flex (coming from Java or anyother OO language)

It is very well organize plus color text makes it very easy to read (color text is my favorite).

In my opinion must read for beginner who come from Java background (myself)

This book covers most everything the wanna be Mac tech needs to know to be able to get into their system intelligently, without making expensive mistakes. It's not preachy or over technical from my standpoint, and it makes a great reference for when you need to tackle a problem yourself, rather than spending a lot of money for someone like me to come out and fix your computer.

I like the bredth and depth of the information given so much, that I am going to use it as the class text in my free Mac Troubleshooting class at Santa Ana College

This book is very good. It is one of the few books that is comprehesive of the entire Mac line (from the original mono-MAC to the iMAC). So many Mac books now only focus on the current models forgetting the earlier ones.

It is arranged by topic (memory, hd, input devices, etc.) and very easy to use. It is also suprisingly accurate. Twice I have found the information in the book's spec tables to be accurate where Apple's own ServiceSource specs were incorrect. (If only I had access to where they get their info!) :-)

Want to work on Macs? Get this book!

This book has really help me. It contains information about troubleshoting, installation, upgrade and more. Good graphics, easy to understand tables and easy to follow instructions.

Tremendous Trememndous. This book helped me upgrade my old SE-30 for use as a networked print server in my apartment. It got me set for networking 7 computers together on a LAN, including the fun ways that Macs talk with Windoze boxes and a Read Hat machine. I love this book!

Shortcuts, ways to speed up the machine, preemptive troubleshooting tips and more interesting info than you could ever retain.

If your Mac's out of warranty, you have nothing to lose by trying to fix it yourself. Stauffer's the man when it comes to clear explanations of needed repairs. I replaced the hard drive and CD-ROM drive following his book's advice. The book paid for itself.

This gives some great insight, not only on how to do project management well but on how to manage people in general. I wish more of the managers I have worked with over the years had had this available.

If you are not a manager, but work in IT this is still worth your time. It gives a great look into just what project managers are dealing with, and how you can best help them succeed.

The concepts and advice are all things that I would want every team member to know well, with any team I was on. And it is all born out of hard work and excellent experience. This isn't a bunch of purely idealistic advice - it is grounded in reality.

I've read first edition of this book and Scott's other book - Myths of Innovation. Was very happy about both of them.

So when time came to recommend good book for my manager I had no doubt. After that he was screaming everywhere how this book is :)

[...]

In these last days of vacations, I've managed to finish reading this really cool book on project management. Even though I'm not a project manager, this was one of those books I've heard lots of good things about and I can tell you now (after finishing reading it) that I wasn't disappointed with it.

Besides being fun and easy reading, you'll find lots of great tips on this book. For instance, I'll be using some of the ideas presented on the Skills and Management parts on my work from now on. If you ask me, I'd say that the last chapter (Powers and Politics) is more than enough for justifying the book's price!

Overall, I'm giving it 9/10 and I'm putting it on my special reference shelf, where I've already got Peopleware (ok, I've just noticed that I haven't publish a review on this book on my blog. I'll do it on the next days), The mythical man-month, etc. So, if you haven't read this book and you're on the development business, do yourself a favor and pick a copy and then read it from cover to cover! You should to be a better professional after reading it!

Scott does a great job again in the new edition of this book of providing well-organized, practically useful guidance on how to work on and run a project. Even if you're not actually in charge of a project, I'd recommend this as a book to help you understand what should be getting done on it. The three biggest areas he focuses on are how to ensure a project has proper focus and clear priorities, how to run meetings and do feature-level design, and how to handle a project as it moves from start to finish.

The key to proper focus and clear priorities is the tie between the mission, goals, features, and tasks in a project. Scott provides a great framework for tying them together, ensuring they're created, and ensuring the team understands them.

The advice on running meetings and doing feature-level design is the only area that might not work as well for those outside of Microsoft. While I highly identify with it, and think that he's clearly stated the best practices for our environment, your mileage may vary.

Finally, he does a great job of talking about the difference between the start, middle, and end-game. Many people try to use a single process throughout and either overburden the start of the project or allow the end-game to spin wildly out of control. Scott's very clear about how to apply the right level of touch and raise the process bar at safe but necessary increments as a project goes on.

For this new addition, he addressed all of the negatives of the original - honestly, it's so good that if you have the first I recommend buying the second! I particularly enjoy the exercises, especially the reflective ones, as they help to cement all of the lessons I should've learned when I read the first version...

Making things happen fills one of the gaping holes in MBA education. I learned quite a bit through trial and error over several years post MBA but this book would have been a welcome addition to any of my courses. If you have any reservations about managing projects, working in and leading teams, or generally being effective, get this book, read it cover to cover, and put all the great tips and insights to work ASAP.

There have been a couple of other books on message passing, but most of them have been anchored to a particular operating system or language. This book is the first to offer a general treatment of messaging, as a way to merge disparate middleware installations.

At the end of the day, messaging technology is just another way to allow distributed code to interact. Blunden takes the time to compare and contrast messaging against other distributing computing techniques. The result is that the reader can understands the relative advantages and limitations of messaging, so that they can use the right tool for the right job.

At every turn, Blunden grounds his explanations using concrete examples, so that the reader has a solid frame of reference (I can appreciate the author's humorous 10-page implementation of a DCOM server, basically to demonstrate how awkward a distributed technology can be... it's no wonder DCOM faded away).

The author of this book has obviously seen combat in the trenches. The fact that he would discuss deployment requirements like auto-update and secure network communication is proof enough.

I particularly enjoyed the bits of storytelling that Blunden hides in between technical discussions. In one part, he talks about working at a company in the throes of Y2K conniptions: "Like a 15-year-old kid studying for an algebra test, the company that hired me had waited until the last minute to do its homework. In September of 1999, the CIO put down his copy of Fortune Magazine long enough to realize that something needed to be done. Angry customers might file lawsuits, which would ruin the CIO's plans for a weekend cottage in Bermuda."

This book does an impressive job of looking at a "niche" of computer science and analyzing it in the backdrop of contemporary production requirements. The book provides an extensive presentation of background theory, a 10,000+ line working system, lucid documentation, and a discussion of alternative improvements and approaches.

To demonstrate the cross-platform/cross-language feasibility of his distribution, the author offers three different client pieces (C, Java, and Perl). This is a round-trip explanation of messaging passing that does a conscientious job of covering all the bases.

This is a very instructive learning-by-implementing book, in the tradition of Tanenbaum's MINIX. Blunden walks one through an in-depth analysis and implementation of a real message passing server.

I'm a little put off, though, by the fact that I find 10 5-Star ratings for this book, all posted on the same date by the same reviewer. C'mon.

I bought this book with the expectation that the Bluebox message server would be a token implementation.

Whoa! Was I wrong; this book shows the full monty! It includes a message server engine, a log server, a database interface, a license server, and auto update engine, recovery facilities, and a heartbeat monitor. Fortunately, the 100 or so classes that make up the distribution are well documented and a user manual is included in the book. The last few sections of the book also have some interesting anecdotes that are worth reading.

One of the few WM development books, and certainly the only one that merits five stars. This book is thorough, timely, and informative about the technologies relevant to making great WM apps in native and managed code.

I purchased this book, among others, to learn more about the compact framework. This has ended up being the one that is always on my desk and constantly referred to. There is information in here that is not on any google search, and the code used by the author to demonstrate complicated operations (such as creating opacity in CF forms), is easier and clearer than I have seen anywhere else. A very good book, and well worth purchasing.

Definitely a good book: I found it very complete and easy to read. Useful and interesting, straightaway.

Got 2 copies for my moble development team. The book is simply invaluable. Either you read cover to cover, or select any chapter of special interest the result is in depth information and guidance. Very often our two copies are not enough for everyone in the team.

It is like my bitacora or bible when i am offline. I guess it has a little of everything you need to know in very compact book (i thought a 600 book will be wider but the size is great)

The MicroStation CAD Manager book is loaded with practical examples and exercises that really allow you learn by doing. This book is an excellent by for anyone who is trying to navigate their way through MicroStation's workspace!

This Rowse Company publication, the companion piece to the Rowse 4-day training class, is an excellent resource for any MicroStation CAD manager. It's a comprehensive approach to building all the necessary components that constitute the MicroStation "workspace", the backbone of any good MicroStation environment. This manual provides instruction on creation of such key elements as cell libraries, color tables, font libraries and seed files. It then demonstrates how to pull all these important ingedients together into a server-based, corporate space that is the vehicle for implementing and maintaing CAD standards. This book has been invaluable to me as a guide to truly efficient CAD administration.

The most complete guide to managing MicroStation I've seen yet. I would highly recommend this book for any CAD manager.

Footnote : This book is the courseware for the "MicroStation CAD Manager" class offered by Rowse Company.

I have taken this course at their site and have recieved the book, which is an astounding composite of insite and skill in regards to management of Microstation (A CAD Software program)
the company "Rowse Company" is bar none being the most company/family oreinted company that, continues to drive towards the future of design and production, I continue to deal with the software/reference material and they are the "Most professional people" I have ever met............ the bottom line is they are there for
the professional to design and empletment their product or expertise ... morning, noon, and night ... and actually care
my hats off to them..............
GODSPEED

This book is a Bible for Microstation Cad Managers. It covers everything from installation to cad standards and details each aspect of developing a custom workspace for your office. I am constantly refering back to it. I took the course that this book was created for and it was worth the money to just walk out with the book. At the current price, it is a steal!
If you are a Microstation Cad Manager or just want to customize Microstation to it's fullest, you need this book.

This book lives up to all its good reviews. Guarantee yourself a better grade by buying and reading it. It is exactly what it says, a "Study Guide". Although you can pass the exam with just this book, I recommend learning the material in a lengthier manner. Either take the instructor-led courses or buy the Microsoft training kits (I bought the kits), and then read this book just before you take the exam, using it as a "Study Guide". With the help of this book, I passed by a wide margin on my first attempt. There were a couple items covered in the book that were not covered in the MS training kit, but which did appear on the exam. (I won't be specific because of the NDA).

I share all the opinions above. Though the book is rather thin, the content is a real treasure. It covers all one needs not only to pass the NetEss exam but also to get a real knowledge of the subject. I used it together with the Exam Cram and scored 900+ points. It's written very professionally. And it's amazingly cheap! I would strongly recommend the book to everybody learning networking and working towards MSCE.

This book was very easy to read and gives most of the important details needed for the exam. Since it does not include example questions, I used transcender exam questions as a supplement. When I first took the transcender tests after reading the book I knew enough to BARELY pass if the transcender had been the real exam. After doing transcender over and over until I scored 100% then taking the real exam, I passed with a 900/1000 (766 required to pass).

A friend recommended that I purchase a Kinnaman MCSE study guide for my first exam. I have since passed two tests, currently studying for my third. These books are all you need to pass.

This is a concise book which will get you passed on the 70-058 exam and teach you something along the way. You could pass the exam with just this, but I would recommend pairing it with the Microsoft Press study guide as Kinnaman's networking essentials book has no test questions.

Easily the best book ever written on managing complex software projects. Even more relevant today than when it was written, it has been my project management companion for years.

I read many object oriented and agile books published recently. In a Mymocks book store near Townhall, this book is wrapped. It raised my curiosity since it is such an old book. I ordered a used book from Amazon.com and it is still cheaper than the discount book seller in Australia.

Half way through, I realized that Agile process is not a new thing, it exists before it was called Agile, just like AJAX exists before it was called AJAX. Do you know how Martin Fowler called Java POJO? Martin learnt from a joke in this book.

It is book on Agile practice even it never mentioned Agile in the book.

Half-way through this book I decided I wanted to burn every copy of the book. If other people read this book, then they'll all know how to manage object-oriented software projects too!

I swear that Booch was spying on several of the so called "projects" that I was a developer on. It is simply amazing to me how many times the so-called "Harvard School of Business" techniques are used to manage an OO project! I have learned through the school of hard knocks what Booch has written about in this book (wish I had discovered it sooner, a couple of pointy haired bosses could have used it!). Anyway, Booch breaks OO management into seven chapters: First Principles, Products and Process, The Macro Process, The Micro Process, The Development Team, Management and Planning, and Special Topics. I especially found interesting his descriptions on how NOT to run an OO project (oh, and he gives plenty of examples on HOW to run one too!). Booch covers OOA, artifacts, OOD, methodolgies (a biggy with me even on a one person project), evolution (gosh! who would have thought you could have cyclical development???). Identification of classes, objects, symantecs, relationships, etc. He then tackles the team environment: roles and responsibilities (especially the manager's responsibilities!), resource allocation, and tools (this book is not a plug for Rational Rose BTW). Finally: managing risk, planning and scheduling, staffing, costing (a tough one), Quality Assurance (this is not testing!), and he talks some about projects in crisis and what to do. The last chapter is kind of a catch-all containing: User-centric, Data-centric, and Computation-centric systems discussions, along with Distributed, Legacy, Information Management, and Real Time Systems. The appendicies contain: a summary of recommended practices (for those wanting to create a methodology), and rules of thumb. There is a great index, bibliography and glossary to tie up the package nicely. Booch has a terrific writing style presenting what would normally be a dry subject! Definitely for the computer Project Manager's shelf!

I had no hesitation to give 5 stars here. The book is really very good. Honestly, what do you expect with such a book ? To learn valable advices, to understand them, and to have fun while reading. Such a book exists : this one ! How many time I asked to myself "Yes ! What a good idea ... and so simple" or "Of course ! That's it". I really read it like a novel. You can bring it with you for your hollidays (like me), without the feeling to get boring with professional stuff !

Hi,

This book is great for DBA and Developper alike. I would recommend it to anyone working with Oracle, even if you're not working to solve performance issues. With all those tips at hand never your application will suffer from poor programming.

Guillaume

I highly recommend this book as a handy reference to keep at your desk. It is full of handy tips and a great assessment for reviewing your own environnment.

I love reading this book. I typically read a few pages before bed. It's filled with lots of practical examples and suggestions. Very thorough explanations. Some of the examples could do with a little more explaining but overall it's still very useful.

This book manages all concepts, basical and advanced, and the reader can review and fortify concepts. The OCM Author with explains in an easy mode Oracle Products. Excellent book.

A "must have" Oracle book for anyone who works with Oracle on a day-to-day basis. The database efficiencies I have been able to obtain for my clients by simply using Rich's book as a point of reference are well worth the cost in purchasing it.

Adam Suber, Event Chairperson, Southeastern Michigan Oracle Professionals (SEMOP) Group.

I found this photography book to be informative and beautifully illustrated. One of my favorite pictures is of a new born. It shows only part of the head, a shoulder and curled little hands. We see no clothes or blanket,just soft baby skin. Photo Workshop is a good description. The chapters are complete enough to instill confidence to try the different techniques. The assignments at the end of each chapter are motivating. I would recommend this book to those who are trying to capture the spirit and innocence of children. These techniques also work in capturing a pets personality. I have given this book to each of the parents of my grandchildren,and am looking forward to receiving some great pictures.

The book was exactly what I was looking for. Help with the how to on the technical side,but was helpful on setting up shots. Looking around my house and seeing how the book would "shoot it" then applying it with my DSLR. Composition and Lighting was extremly helpful to me. This book was well worth my investment.

I've read this book from cover to cover. I love it. As a beginning photographer, this book was very helpful. Not a lot of technical info. Just enough guidance to get me going on my own.

In addition to Ginny's inspirational photography I found this wonderful book to be informative beyond taking portraits of children. I am new to photography and found lots of ideas and tips for taking better photos of any subject. An additional bonus is the assignments at the end of each chapter to put the techniques into practice. This is a book that I will refer to often. I highly recommend this and look forward to more books by this photographer.

Having three daughters, documenting their childhood with photographs is a real priority for me. But I really lacked knowledge on how to take good photographs - I always relied on the auto settings on my camera and the pictures seemed so ordinary. In the attempt to learn more about photography, I purchased this book along with a couple of others. This book, by far, was the most helpful for me. I had been having a hard time wrapping my mind around the concepts of aperture and ISO, but this book really helped me understand! Each picture listed the shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, which helped me see what those things were doing to affect how the picture looked. Also, the pictures were so inspiring and gave me tons of ideas on composition. The assignments at the end of each chapter were helpful in developing my skills. The book was very pleasent to read and it's definitely a book for parents aspiring to become better photographers! My only wish was that the pictures also listed what type of lens was used (so that I could buy it and have the lenses that the professionals used!).