Computers and Internet Books

This book is amazing. I have some experience with Flash video and video production techniques, but I felt like I had a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This book covers everything I need to know, and the included code is priceless. If you want a robust Flash player, with auto-detect, auto-update, etc., but don't care to learn the ins and outs of Actionscript, just use what's provided. You'll have Player up and running in minutes.

I ended up sharing the book with our Video Production team, too. They used a lot of the instruction about good compression, proper aspect ratios, and creating alpha channels for FLVs.

Rob Reinhardt is the master of Video deployed in Flash. I was so happy to see he finally has written a book that captures his knowledge, experience, and excellent teaching skills. Rob is clear, concise and you can be guaranteed that he has tested, used and deployed all the techniques he demonstrates.
Bravo!!!!!

There's nobody more prolific and comprehensive in the world of Flash video delivery than Reinhardt. Considering the enormity of topics and goals addressed in this book, he's really outdone himself this time. Essential for anyone interested in serious deployment of Flash video.

this book is a decent hands-on approach to creating video players using AS3 & AS2. Two of the missing things that I think are necessary are creating custom volume controls and handling full-screen mode.

My company bought other Flash Video books, but this book had the ActionScript 3.0 code I was looking for. The DVD included with the book rocks--I've always wanted to test HD footage in Flash, but didn't want to spend too much time looking for huge files on the Internet. The DVD has lots of HD content to use as sample content.

A few months ago I realised my two businesses need websites. I got from the professionals and promptly decided to do it myself. I reasoned that I could buy MS Frontpage, plus all the books I needed and do everything for less than 10% of what the quotes came to. I was right. And wrong.
I never realised how scared I was of Frontpage, so I compensated by buying way too many books. The good thing is that I am now in a very good position to tell you which books are worth your while and which are rubbish.

I was right in that one can publish your own website for a lot less than I expected. I was wrong in that of all the books I'd bought, I only needed one. You guessed it.

"Build your own web site" makes publishing a web site ridiculously easy. I am serious. The other books all have these clinical, corporation-type covers, so I looked at them first, and started building my site. For some reason, I was put off this book somehow. As if I thought, if the others have these professional looking covers, they must be the better books. How wrong I was.

This book is divided into three parts. The first part deals with how to prepare - how to decide what goes onto your site, how to plan, how to put everything together et cetera. How to design your site. I followed it to the letter and it worked.

Part 2 is subdivided into subsections, each dedicated to a different type of web development programme (such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage etc). I only read the Frontpage bit and that is how far I got. Because by that time I knew everything I needed to build great websites!

The money I spent on the other books is wasted money. This book helped me tremendously, and in record time. I might put a link to my site in my "About You" area, so you can see for yourself. But the point is that I was able to create a functional website, with some nice features, within the span of a day or two, on Frontpage, with absolutely no prior experience. NO other book available could do this. David Karlins is a genius.

This is without a doubt the best (beginner's) book on web designing of all the ones I've seen. In fact, nothing else comes close. The funny thing is that this book was the cheapest of the bunch!

This book is straight to the point and does not require to be read in any particular sequence aside from the 1st chapter. After that you can bounce around to the sections you need which impact you most. Good reading and a good resource.

I am an absolute beginner in the world of website design. After researching numerous books and videos on the subject I came across David Karlins absolutely brilliant book. It is written in such a manner that even a ten year old would understand. Someone who truly understands the subject and posses real knowledge is capable of presenting the same in a simple way. I highly recommend this book to all people who have gaps and holes in understanding of the process of creating web site.

In a rating like from 1 to 4 years of college for completion, this book covers the first two years.

Very helpful basic book for a web site builder/beginner to understand about web sites. Too often books/teachers seem to think that the problem is not understanding the how the design program works when the problem is more basic, more conceptual. I look forward now to reading his book on Dreamweaver MX.

I love this book. It should be required reading for all undergraduate and graduate business students. I'll be looking for Windham's next book.

I must congratulate Ms. Windham on her excellent book "Dead Ahead". I think I must have read it more than three times by now. I am a consultant and my company is involved in web design and development. On many of my assignments, I relied on this book as a guide and many of her ideas have worked very well with my clients.

Our company provides e-commerce and web presence solutions. We use "Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business" by Laurie Windham extensively to help us provide effective solutions for our clients.

Dead Ahead covers the 'new rules' of web-based commerce, from using existing businesses and strategies to succeed to establishing recognition and associations via the internet. Important chapters on investing in the right technology and conducting e-business make for important insights on the rules and atmosphere of the web.

This was used as a text book in my e-business MBA class and would recommend it to others outside of class. It covered a lot of issues relevant to the topic. I enjoy reading books like this that are up-to-date in a dynamic industry.

If you're looking for a guide on writing e-mails in a business setting, look no further. This book covers every aspect of writing e-mails and even some tips on how to organize your e-mail as well. The chapters take you through different topics regarding e-mail and at the end of each chapter are some activities that you can do to help build your awareness of your e-mail writing skills and how examining the messages you receive from others can help improve your awareness of writing skills. This book is perfectly designed for training courses, since each chapter could be completed in one training session. I recommend this if you are looking to write e-mails as professionally as you can.

Like it or not, we live in a world of electronic communication. E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide is a practical and helpful guide for those who aren't totally familiar or comfortable with the medium as well as for those who use it routinely, but perhaps not always effectively or appropriately. Most important, it urges people to take their e-mail communication as seriously as their other written communication - and tells them how.

This book is exactly what every e-mail should be (and so few are): clear, sensible and pointed. Compare the advice here to the emails you receive daily and you will agree that it is filled with uncommon good sense. You'll find yourself trying to figure out how to secretly get copies to your colleagues! Jim Knutsen, President, Boatz Knutsen Communications

Like it or not, all of us are up to our eyeballs in emails everyday. We feel pressed for time yet need to write coherent emails that effectively communicate important information. This guide is an excellent resource on how to write readable emails that come to the point quickly without leaving any of the important stuff out. After going through the material, I recognized a lot of mistakes that our company frequently commits in our frequent volleys of emails with clients. I wish I would have had this book sooner! Thanks for cutting through the jungle for us, Write it Well!
Thanks,
Mike O'Quin
PowerPointPartners.Com

As the author of an English reference guide/workbook, I think this book is exceptionally helpful to everyone needing to send out professional e-mails. E-mail has just about replaced informal memos and even reports. Therefore, we all need to learn how to convey the right tone, present a professional image, get our messages across clearly, learn the etiquette of e-mail, and avoid the pitfalls and hazards that e-mail technology poses. The author provides excellent, relevant examples and lays the material out in a logical, easy-to-understand fashion. I highly recommend it to individuals, HR departments, and training professionals.
Jane Straus
Author of The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation
and
Enough Is Enough! Stop Enduring and Start Living Your Extraordinary Life

I've worked in the telecom industry for years, and this dictionary accurately defines more telecom terms than any other. However, it is not very well-written. The style is really colloquial and inconsistent. One definition may read like it's straight out of IEEE-100, while others sound like a hallway conversation between engineers. Even within a definition, the same term may be capitalized in one instance but not in others. So, I'd put it in the library for sure, but get The Authoritative Dictionary of IEEE Standards Terms (IEEE 100), Seventh Edition and McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms, too!!

This book is perfect for computer enthusiasts, business owners who utilize computers and telecommunications, scientists, a wide
constituency of educators, computer programmers, web designers and just about anyone who may need to understand computerese in simple English. Important definitions are listed; such as, ADCU, back lobe, card cage, isochronous distortion, etc. There are strategies to minimize calling charges by utilizing prepaid cards for national and international calls. Important computer user groups may be accessed at:
o atmforum.com
o ectaportal.com
o ecma.ch
o gigabiethernet.org
o 10gea.org
o 3GPP.org
o aitp.org
o ansi.org
o apcointl.org

The book is a solid investment for any computer professional, teacher, computer user group or business person.

I use this book all the time. This is the perfect reference book for every engineer working in the Telecomm field

Less than nine months ago I started working for a software company that makes OSS/BSS solutions for Telecommunication operators.
As an economist I had a lot of problems understanding the sector and the acronyms that telecommunication people love to use. Having this dictionary at hand did definitively help me a lot. I do recommend it to every person wanting to get a general understanding of the sector. Only a pity that Harry did not include more graphics to help with the explanations.

As a telecommunications student, I was leery of all the abbreviations and unfamiliar terms. This book was very helpful in explaining new words and phrases, especially since the telecommunications industry is full of strange acronyms. Very worthwhile!

If you want to understand programming the Flash Communication Server and it's capabilities this is a good place to start.

Although I'm using Flash Media Server 2, this book is still highly relevant as not much has changed. The core objects and language is the same so I would not hesitate to recommend it for anyone looking to use FMS.

This book is all about the design of applications using Macromedia's Flash Communication Server MX. FCS MX enables the building of media-rich web applications by taking care of the basic tasks required in the networking of the applications. Thus, you can focus on the application itself rather than worrying about low-level communication details.

Since this book is concerned with situations where multiple Flash applications will be executing on the same server simultaneously, there is going to be considerable effort involved in coordinating events, which is addressed by this book. You should already have FCS installed and running on your server and you should also have Flash MX available on the client. The following is description of the book by chapter:

Chapter 1, Introducing the Flash Communication Server - Acts as an introduction to FCS and an overview of the whole book.

Chapter 2, Communication Components - How the FlashCom communication components encapsulate commonly needed features such as chat, video recording and playback, bandwidth control,and user configuration. These components implement many basic building blocks for your application.

Chapter 3, Managing Connections - This chapter covers connections in more depth past the SimpleConnect component, including how to write custom code to handle various changes in the connection status as well as different errors.

Chapter 4, Applications, Instances, and Server-Side ActionScript - This chapter describes how to write Server-Side ActionScript and work with the objects that control application instances and the Flash movies that connect to them.

Chapter 5, Managing Streams - Offers a somewhat oversimplified but complete example that shows the basic steps in publishing one live stream and subscribing to a second.

Chapter 6, Camera and Microphone - This chapter explains how to use both the Microphone and Camera classes to record live streams. These classes are at the heart of most communication applications involving multimedia.

Chapter 7, Media Preparation and Delivery - This chapter covers many details for compressing and streaming audio and video.

Chapter 8, Shared Objects - This chapter starts an entirely new subject - shared objects, which provide a mechanism for the transmission of data between client and server.

Chapter 9, Remote Methods - This chapter also shows how to broadcast method calls to every movie and application instance connected to a shared object or stream, or send them to and from individual movies using RMI.

Chapter 10, Server Management API - Discusses the Server Management API and its applications, including monitoring a FlashCom Server, gathering statistics on application instances, and managing the log streams.

Chapter 11, Flash Remoting - Demonstrates how Flash Remoting can be used to add data connectivity to FlashCom applications. Flash Remoting can access web services, server-side scripts, CGI applications, XML files, or the local filesystem with the help of an application server such as ColdFusion.

Chapter 12, ColdFusion MX and FlashCom - Teaches some specifics involved in using Flash Remoting with ColdFusion MX and FlashCom. There are some practical working examples shown that demonstrate how you can leverage the benefits of Flash Remoting in conjunction with FlashCom.

Chapter 13, Building Communication Components - This is the first step in building complete applications, and is demonstrated through an extensive example.

Chapter 14, Understanding the Macromedia Component Framework - How to modify an existing component and how to create a new one. Also discusses server-side framework code and its core features and data structures.

Chapter 15, Application Design Patterns and Best Practices - Describes some of the best practices available to application developers. This chapter provides some useful design options, patterns, and best practices that will help you build better applications.

Chapter 16, Building Scalable Applications - Deals with building multi-instance and multiserver applications that don't bog down as the number of client connections increases.

Chapter 17, Network Performance, Latency, Concurrency - Traditional network design issues affect FCS also.

Chapter 18, Securing Applications - Specifically this chapter examines the three A's of security - Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting.

Excellent book, stuffed of examples very well explained, easy to read and to understand, essential for who desires initiate or even though to profound itself studies on FlashCom.
Obligator reference in projects involving FlashCom, either for fast consultations and advanced tasks.
Excellent approach of subjects as Design patterns and security, yonder a perfect demonstration about audio, video and much more.

If you're a developer looking into real-time server communication using Adobe Flash, this book is a must-have. It guides you thru various levels of application development in an easy to understand format, and provides well documented pieces of code to assist you in the learning process of putting together your project:

Topics covered include:

- learning about components and how to use them
- establishing and managing client connections
- publishing live and recorded streams
- local communication with clients
- remote communication with outside applications

The book also shows how to build and integrate your own custom components, and how to scale your application using the components that you've created. Other highlights include information on how to use shared objects and server management API, as well as ways to improve both design and performance.

I couldn't disagree with that last review ( 2 stars) more. I've been on the Net for three years and still find the Web guide a useful reference. Kennedy has put a great deal of work into collating a pretty damn useful cross section of the Web. I can't commend him high enough. I've bought several copies as gifts for friends - who've all lavished it with praise.

Even someone with a passing knowledge of the Internet, like myself, knows a good deal of what is in this book. The first half starts off useful enough, but like most books on technology diverges into sections that are seemingly "no briainers" and sections that are so specific as to be less than useful. The second half is mostly just addresses of sites and reads like a TV Guide.

Two stars, one for each of the pieces it was in when I finished reading it. Money ill spent.

I have been exposed to the Internet since 1991 when only universities or companies like Microsoft had access to it. So, I was used to surfing the Internet using FTP, Telnet, etc. When the World Wide Web came into existence in the mid-nineties, it grew faster than anything any of us could ever imagine (as we all know by now). I ran across one of the first editions of the Rough Guides about the Internet in 1997. Till then, inspite of being very familiar with the technology behind the Internet, I felt very uncomfortable about my knowledge of what the Web was all about. This Rough Guide was the reference I started using to change my ignorance about the Web. I bought every edition since then and have benefited tremendously.

So, why is this book so great? What does it offer? Well, considering that it is almost impossible for anyone to learn everything about the Internet, most people don't even bother to learn the basics. Not surprising, since you have to spend hundreds of hours reading too many books to even get a glimmer of understanding about this untamed beast called the Internet. This book addresses all the main topics in approximately 500 pages, and provides you the critical information that you need to know about the Internet in Plain English! If you like trivia, there is also quite a bit of it in this book on the history of the Internet. This book acts as a pocket reference, complete reference, listing of popular sites, dictionary and more - all for under [$$]

Being raised on British books, I thoroughly enjoy the systematic treatment of any subject that British authors tackle. This book is no exception - it is very thorough, complete and the facts are extremely accurate. Unfortunately, British books don't do that well in America (probably due to marketing disadvantages). But if you get a chance, check this book out and I am sure that you will be a fan of British books forever.

I have always bought several copies of each edition of this book that came out and gave them out as gifts to close friends and family that were new to the Internet. Every one of them has thoroughly enjoyed the new found knowledge gained through this book. I hope you have fun discovering more about the Internet by reading this book on a train ride or plane trip somewhere. Good luck!

This book is small, yet filled with more information than 5 of the Dummy books and i feel smart using it not like the dummie books. You will find ways to deal with problems on the Internet as well as a dictionary of site to run too. Great gift for the Computer user.

Excellent book! Love it! Highly recommend to all! One of the best internet guide books I ever got! Thanks rough guide :)

The book is not only well written and organized but the examples of the written HTML and the pictures of the resulting web pages give the reader a very good background in writing and reading HTML. Using an older version of this book, I was able to create and publish my own web site a few years ago before I had ever seen any HTML. I bought another one because I lost the old one.

Do not be misled by the "24 Hours" thing; if you get the book today, don't expect to be able to see a webpage you designed tomorrow. However, if you apply yourself and spend a day or so on each lesson, you will learn more HTML from this book than from any other source available.

Sams Teach Yourself books are well worth the few bucks you may want to spend to get your own copy and you will want to use the following web address: http://www.24hourhtmlcafe.com/ where you can copy the pictures shown in the lessons to include in your own picture library.

I would rate this book as 5 stars if the pictures were in color.

I didn't know any significant HTML prior to using this book. This book is a great starting point and will give anyone enough background to put up a pretty good page. I feel like I have gotten a good grasp of HTML from this book and now feel like I should branch out into Javascript to develop my pages further.

Oliver & Morrison offered good advice on what to do and what not to do when designing a webpage, and they also explained why they make those suggestions, which certainly assists in making later judgement calls on topics they don't directly address.

I would also recommend O'Reilly's HTML/XHTML book, which has come in handy in clarifying a few points. However, this book is sufficient for anyone looking to put up realatively simple pages and is easier as an introduction (and more motivating) than O'Reilly's book. That is, buy this book first and buy O'Reilly's book if you have a desire to learn more about HTML.

Having been out of web Development for a couple years, I needed confidence that my basic understanding was up to speed. This book HTML and XHTML in 24 hours, brought me up to date rather quickly. It provided the foundation that I needed both to build some basic web application prototypes, and to be able to begin reading more specialized books on Web Development. Specifically books on CSS.

I have been using a canned program to manage my company's web site, but I wasn't always able to do fine tune the pages the way I wished. So I decided to teach myself HTML. Working through this book, I was able to learn step by step how to design pages and manipulate the images and text. The book is very clear and concise and the exercises the author gives at the end of every chapter are extremely useful.

Best computer related book that I have ever read. I was somewhat familiar with HTML concepts, but never created my own web page. The lessons are organized well and are so easy to follow! They even go over applets, Active X, and JavaScript. Awesome, awesome book.

Upgrade Your Life is a great book. I've followed the blog for several years, but it's nice to have an analog version when you want to practice the best techniques available.

Recommended for information or technology workers who need to get more productive to survive and/or avoid insanity.

I suspect most people will find some useful tips in this book. As always, they are only useful if you actually do them. But many are fairly simple to implement which helps! And the book is written so you can go immediately to those areas of most interest to you, if you like.

This is a collection of hints, tips and hacks for the technologically inclined. Areas covered are email, organizing your data, tricks to overcome your procrastination, clearing your mind, focusing your attention, streamlining common tasks, mastering the web, honing your computer survival skills and managing multiple computers.

Not at all ironically, the people for whom this book will be most useful - real geeks - will already know some, not all, of these things. I am most definitely a geek, but I did learn many new things and happy for that.

In some ways, the book will a half-loaf for many. There's a lot of Macintosh stuff that will not be helpful to Windows users and vice-versa. There's Windows Vista material that will not be useful to those (most of us, perhaps?) who are sticking with Windows XP. But this is not a major problem: the book has so much good stuff in it, that there is plenty for everyone.

Trapani's writing style is wonderfully clear, direct and concise.

Overall, other than calling it useful, versatile, eclectic and well-done, this book is difficult to classify. It merges real life (remembering to pick up the milk) with the technical (setting up a VPN) and lots, lots more. It is definitely a fun book to browse, packed with lots of great information.

A very worthwhile addition to your library.

Jerry

I'm not the most disorganized person on the planet, but I'm not the most organized either. I found the book to be a good reference and helpful in getting things organized. The chapter on e-mails - first chapter - actually worked. I feel my inbox is managed well. 200 new messages a day (that's not as much as some folks!) and I'm breezing through them without backlog. On the down side, I found a few tips a little too "organized" for my taste. I'm more about simple effective solutions and this book provides quite a few. It's well worth the investment.

I remember reading the first edition of Gina Trapani's Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better and thinking how wonderful it was. Of course, when the second edition came out, I had to get that one too. And as with the first one, I have all sorts of post-it notes scattered throughout the book for reference and "go back and try this" notes. Well worth the time and money you spend here.

Contents:
Control Your Email; Organize Your Data; Trick Yourself into Getting Done; Clear Your Mind; Firewall Your Attention; Streamline Common Tasks; Automate Repetitive Tasks; Get Your Data To Go; Master The Web; Hone Your Computer Survival Skills; Manage Multiple Computers; Index

Over the span of the chapters above, Trapani presents 116 different "hacks" that you can incorporate into your daily computer life to, well... work smarter, faster, and better. As with most books that are a compilation of different tips, some will resonate strongly with your current needs, while others are skimming material that may not be relevant. For instance, the hacks in the first chapter, Organize Your Data, hit home. I'm working towards consolidating multiple email addresses with Gmail, and I'm cutting down the number of folders I have, relying on search to find what I need. Master The Web also had some cool tricks, like having multiple home pages in Firefox and using Google Notebook for web clippings. I wasn't quite into the Managing Multiple Computers as much, as my current setup doesn't call for that. Still, it's good information to have around should you need it at a later time.

I actually found a couple different things occurring as I read through the material. There were hacks where some software was presented that did a certain task, and I'd realize I've been looking for something just like that. Similar to scratching an itch that you couldn't quite reach. Then there were the hacks that opened your eyes to whole areas you didn't even know you needed. Let's call that finding AND scratching the itch you didn't know you had five minutes prior. After going through some of the Automate Repetitive Tasks hacks, I have started to look at a lot of things I do with a view towards eliminating the manual repetitive effort that I just accepted as necessary before.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who spends most of their waking hours in front of a computer, and/or earn their living in front of one. Taking away even a small handful of nuggets can radically change the way you do things.

I found this book while browsing the programming section of Borders (the programming section of my local Borders is amazing!), and I've found it to be a real gem.

The book covers so much more than just Apache security. It covers installation and configuration, and explains a little of how Apache works along the way. There are also chapters or sections on:

- Understanding and securing PHP
- An explanation of SSL
- DOS attacks
- Traffic shaping in Apache
- Logging is covered extensively
- There's a chapter on web security in general, where all the common attacks are explained
- Using Apache as a proxy or a reverse proxy

I especially enjoyed the Web Security Assessment chapter where the author explained how to systematically analyze and probe web applications/servers, with many real world examples.

There is a large section discussing mod_security, which is an amazing Apache module. Mod_security is an intrusion detection and prevention engine for web applications (a web application firewall). The book is written by the author of mod_security (Ivan Ristic), so he really knows what he's talking about in this area. Also covered is mod_dosevasive, which, obviously helps prevent against denial of service attacks.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to any Apache administrator, user, or web programmer. Its one of my favorite books on my bookshelf.

Thanks a lot, we are very happy to have this book in our library!

This book is worth every single dollar. The examples are very clear and also provide invaluable information about security.

A must have for everybody using Apacge.

I recently received copies of Apache Security (AS) by Ivan Ristic and Preventing Web Attacks with Apache (PWAWA) by Ryan Barnett. I read AS first, then PWAWA. Both are excellent books, but I expect potential readers want to know which is best for them. The following is a radical simplification, and I could honestly recommend readers buy either (or both) books. If you are more concerned with a methodical, comprehensive approach to securing Apache, choose AS. If you want more information on offensive aspects of Web security, choose PWAWA.

Before I go further, I must mention that Ivan Ristic cites me and my books twice, on pages 2 and 229. While humbling, I tried not to let this fact influence my review.

AS is an extremely well-thought-out book. My favorite aspect of AS is the decision to start with a blank httpd.conf file, rather than accepting the file packaged with Apache and making edits as needed. By building up httpd.conf from scratch, the author shows exactly what components are needed in a very clear manner. This was not the approach used by PWAWA. I would like to see other technical books adopt this teaching method.

AS includes better coverage of several topics which I believe are core to securing Apache. I liked AS' discussion of chroot environments and jails, although the author should distinguish between chroot on Linux or BSD and jail on BSD alone. AS features a whole chapter on proper PHP deployment (Ch 3), and a whole chapter on SSL/TLS (Ch 4). AS devotes another chapter to explaining how to host multiple Web sites on one host (Ch 6), which is critical to many Apache environments. AS' chapter on Web infrastructure (CH 9) also covers topics not found in PWAWA.

AS is also less explicitly Linux-centric than PWAWA. As a primary FreeBSD user, I found AS' approach more applicable to my environment. PWAWA seemed to assume everyone was running Red Hat Linux. It's fine to use a single OS for all examples, but I had to personally identify tools and techniques that would probably only work on Red Hat.

I had very little trouble with any of the text in AS. My main concerns involve Ch 1, where the author spends time on certain security concepts. I would consider the following with regards to threat modeling on p. 5: (asset) what might be compromised; (motivation) why compromise; (vulnerabilities) where compromised; (attack) how compromised; (threat) who compromised you; (risk) threat X vulnerability X asset value. On pp 9-10 the author should also have used the risk equation just mentioned.

Overall, I really liked AS. The book really is about Apache security, so if you are more interested in attacking Apache you might prefer PWAWA. If you want to learn about Web application hacking in general, your best bets are probably Hacking Exposed: Web Applications, 2nd Ed, and Professional Pen Testing for Web Applications. I will read and review those two books shortly.

Excellent book. The chapters on PHP and logging are especially useful.