Communications Books

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)

This book is for new and existing mobile application developers who already have some experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, either desktop or compact version. If you are new to .NET, first read "Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step By Step" by John Sharp or "Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step By Step" by Michael Halvorson. Those books can teach you the programming basics, and you will then be prepared to use this book to learn mobile application development. This book can help you develop mobile applications using .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and will introduce you to some of the new features that are in .NET Compact Framework version 3.5, which will be released with the next release of Visual Studio, currently code-named "Orcas."

Along the way, the book highlights features that are new to .NET Compact Framework 2.0 so that the developer who has experience building applications using the version 1.0 product can identify new features that are helpful. However, the main purpose of this book is to give you the essential information you need to design and build applications that work on a constrained device such as a Pocket PC or Smartphone, or on embedded hardware. It instructs you as to how to build and debug applications, how to design GUIs that work on small devices, and how to deploy applications. It also delves into problems that are unique to mobile device applications, such as how to design and build applications that work well with unreliable, slow network connections, which is the usual state of affairs with phone-enabled mobile devices. This book is a handbook for the mobile developer that explains how to tackle the common problems that mobile application developers encounter. The book is divided into three parts:

Part 1, Mobile Application Development Essentials, contains six chapters that everyone should read because they take you through topics that all mobile application developers must understand.

Chapter 1, ".NET Compact Framework--a Platform on the Move," is an introduction to the .NET Compact Framework and explains the tools you need to build applications for smart devices.

Chapter 2, "Building a Microsoft Windows Forms GUI," explains how to build effective Windows Forms applications on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones.

Chapter 3, "Using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Other Data Stores," looks at data persistence on devices in SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition databases and how you can build a graphical user interface that binds to data.

Chapter 4, "Catching Errors, Testing, and Debugging," shows you how to test and debug your applications on real devices and emulators, and how to trap and handle errors at run time.

Chapter 5, "Understanding and Optimizing .NET Compact Framework Performance," is about creating applications that perform well, something that requires a little more care to achieve on a smart device with limited RAM and storage than it does in a desktop application.

Chapter 6, "Completing the Application: Packaging and Deployment," looks at packaging and deployment and how Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy to build installation packages so that you can install your application on your target devices.

Part 2, Solutions for Challenges in Mobile Application Development, contains 10 chapters that examine areas that present particular challenges to applications running on a smart device.

Chapter 10, "Security Programming for Mobile Applications," is about security programming, an essential topic for any software developer, but of particular interest to mobile application developers who are responsible for keeping valuable data secure on a mobile device that can be lost or stolen, and must send data over public communications networks such as the Internet.

Chapter 11, "Threading," looks at how to do multithreaded programming in the .NET Compact Framework.

Chapter 12, "Graphics Programming" shows how to present UI that looks more polished and professional than one that is built using only the standard Microsoft Windows Forms controls from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox.

Chapter 13, "Direct3D Mobile", discusses how 3-D graphics can be implemented on a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered device using Direct3D. It starts simply with 2D graphics and then gradually moves into 3D graphics.

Chapter 14, "Interoperating with the Platform," explains how to call native APIs that are available in the underlying Windows CE operating system to perform tasks that are not possible using the .NET Compact Framework APIs alone.

Chapter 15, "Building Custom Controls", looks at developing custom Windows Forms controls that you can use in .NET Compact Framework applications.

Chapter 16, "Internationalization", explains how to create applications that are easily localizable to different cultures and languages.

Chapter 17, "Developing with Windows Mobile", looks at the Windows Mobile 5.0 managed APIs, a set of APIs that are unique to mobile devices and that expose system information and allow programmatic access to data stores such as Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile contacts, calendars, and tasks lists.

Part 3, New Developments, consists of a single chapter that provides an early look at the next version of Visual Studio and the next version of the .NET Compact Framework, version 3.5. The latest version adds new features for querying data collections, messaging, testing, and many other innovations and enhancements.

No Talking by Andrew Clements is a great book set in fifth grade where the students have challenged each other to a contest...boys versus girls. The rules of the contest are simple but can be very hard to follow. Students may talk at school only when an adult asks them a question, but then they can only answer using three words at a time. Students can not speak at home, on the playground, or in the lunchroom. The students keep track of their words and use the honor system to report them. When the principal demands that the contest must end, the students join together to silently face a new opponent in the competition. Clements does an excellent job of showing the voice of these students through their dialogues with one another. Their personalities shine through the pages.

Teachers will love the ideas and discussions that stem from this book. The book sparks conversations about peaceful ways to settle arguments like Mahatma Gandhi did in India. The teachers in the book complete many activities that allow students to follow the contest rules and still learn. One my favorites includes creating a story as a whole class where all students add to the story using only three words at a time. Students will love completing lessons that follow these from the book. It may even inspire a contest.

"No Talking" is a realistic and entertaining book that describes a competition between the boys and girls at Laketon Elementary. Each team tries to go untill the end of the week without talking. Commotion occurs as a result of the silence. The teachers and the principle are getting annoyed by the constant silence to they decide to take action on the nonsense. Does the teachers stop the competition or do the children pull them into the fun? Read to find out!

Working in a public school, I am around children every day. Here are two facts that I feel I can state from experience:

1. Kids like to talk

2. There is nothing that gets the youngsters going like boys vs. girls competition

In No Talking, Andrew Clements manages to merge both of these eternal truisms.

At Laketon Elementary, the 5th grade class has a reputation for embracing the spoken word - so much so that they earned the nickname "The Unshushables" from teachers. On top of all this noisiness, the boys can't stand the girls and the girls aren't all that keen on the boys.

One day Dave Packer attempts something that surely has never been done by anyone in his fifth grade class - to make it through the school day without saying a word. He fails, but his experiment leads to a challenge between the boys and the girls: Two days of school. Whichever group talks the least wins.

This book has all kinds of classroom implications, and the rivalry between boys and girls will immediately draw kids in. No Talking is an entertaining story and a quality fiction selection

No Talking is a good book about girls versus boys war with no talking. The war started when a boy did his report on India and he heard about this man who tried not talking to clear his head. This book has a good moral and teaches kids a good lesson. I would say third - 5th grade should read this.

This book, "No Talking", was pretty good, though when you read the breif explanation of the plot on the back of the book, it sounds better than it really is. It is also a short book, and I finished it in about 30 minutes despite its catagory: "chapter book". I thought it had a fairly nice plot, and it did teach a lot, but it also wasn't as funny or as great as it sounded. As I said, it was short with an alright plot.

I loved the humor it did have, though, and I thought the ending was interesting and heart-warming. You also had to love some parts with the only three-word answers the kids gave the teachers' answers. However, I thought the beginning was written in a confusing way. Also, there were so many characters, I woke up the morning after I finished the book and couldn't even remember half the names.

FOR PARENTS: (Scale from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest/worse)
bad language - 0 there was no bad language
sexual content - 1
1. one example of sexual content was that a girl kissed a guy on the cheek
violence - 0 there was no violence
adult content - 2
1. one example of adult content was that the main character, Dave is yelled at by the principal and he yells back, which shows rebellion.
2. another example of adult content was that the book is based on what Dave read in a book on India about the well-known Muslim, Gandhi, and Dave seems to think Gandhi is very wise in not talking, which may come off offensive or confusing.

Overall this was an okay book.

This book should be the first resource to which you turn if you need to write a persuasive document.

Although this book is directed towards business writers, the information in it is just right for understanding the psychology and techniques of persuasion. I used the book extensively for developing grant proposals (for higher education) and saw my success ratio double. As a result, I won more backing and my colleagues are still asking how I did it.

The author makes good points that produce good results, from his pointers on style and jargon to his mini-primers on formatting. Sant is absolutely at the head of the class.

Rereading the reviews of this book, I was surprised by the one negative review of this book by Tony DaGiau. No surprise! Turns out that he runs some solo consulting company that competes head on with the Sant Corporation, Tom Sant's company! If Tony writes a book on dirty tricks, it'll be worth reading. Other than that, stick with Sant's book (and, if the book is any indication, Sant's company).

Tom Sant has put together one of the single best books on proposal writing. Whether you are responding to a bid request or just designing a basic proposal the book is filled with tips for getting the winning contract. Everything is covered here. There are examples of bad proposals and details of what is wrong with them, examples of how to make your proposal stand out from the others and even a primer on the basics of persuasion. It is well organized and flows well from the beginning to the end of the process not only defining what should be done but why you are doing it. This knowledge gives you the ability to adapt to unusual situations instead of just using a boilerplate method for all your contracts. It even comes with a small but thorough checklist in the appendix to make sure that you have left no stone unturned in creating the proposal.

There is however, one point that I would like to have seen added to the book. At the last of the book he emphasizes the importance of editing your proposal. When you are done then read it again as a whole to see that it contains continuity, check it for spelling errors, check it for grammar errors, etc. Read it from front to back two or three times to make sure that you catch everything so that you don't lose credibility with your audience. While I agree totally, on long proposals I also start from the back section and read the sections from back to front. Why? As you are rereading for editing your attention to detail tends to decrease and you become more careless after a certain point. Starting from the back sections gives you a chance to read those sections while still fresh. Does it work? Well let's take a look at his book itself. No errors jump out at me until page 178 where the word "about" is spelled "abut". Well if that is the only problem then he has still done well. Then I got to page 186 where he has an example of a badly worded item. After showing the better wording the book states "That's a little better, isn't it? A little easier to understand the first time through?" Obviously he meant to say that it is "easier to understand THAN the first time through". And then a third error on page 188 where he is discussing the importance of using "complement" and "compliment" correctly. But during the discourse he actually spells "complement" as "conplement". A perfect discourse that suddenly has three errors within ten pages.

This is still a fantastic book on the details of how to write a proposal, things to do, things to avoid, how to persuade, how to focus the proposal or contract, etc. It belongs on the shelf of anyone who writes proposals and contracts or any form of communication, which involves convincing other people to see your position. I even successfully used the information in the book to detail the current status and proposed direction of a mishandled project and was able to win the client back and keep the contract.

Tom Sant's structure and approach to proposal writing and responding to RFP's has already helped me win more business. BY following his methodology, my proposals are far more persuasive and client-centered. It is a quick read, and gives you more than enough examples and some humor. If you write proposals, this is the book you need. Sant also has award winning software that follows the structure of the book and helps automate the proposal and RFP response process.

This book is a must for everyone who has to write a proposal. It gave me some great ideas and different ways of writing, so my proposals were much better. The book is easy to read and I started to implement Sant's ideas immediately. I also hear that his company has very useful software to help automate proposal writing as well.

If you want to start programming network and distributed systems in Pocket PC platform this is the book for you.

Juan Carlos Olivares Rojas
http://mail.cenidet.edu.mx/~jcolivares04c/

The content is amazing covering a lot of issues on Pocket PC programming. Very detailed and easy to understand. A lot of code samples making life so much easier! A must for every Pocket PC developer.

Any developer can benefit from this useful book. Combining the best aspects of a users' guide and a reference manual, the book has any information a Pocket PC programmer would need, in a format that's easy to use and readable. The index, FAQs and code samples make it easy to find just the information you're looking for, with descriptions providing more context and background. And I particularly enjoyed the funny and appropriate quotes from movies or TV programs at the beginning of each section.

There is somewhat of a dearth of books on Pocket PC development in general, and so that there is a book of this quality devoted to Pcoket PC Networking is pretty amazing. And "Networking" really means more than just what most folks might consider Networking, like Desktop Synchronization, Infared and a chapter on Pocket PC Phone issues.

Before I picked up a copy of Steve's book, I had no idea that there was so much to network programming on the PocketPC. Now, I wouldn't want to do that programming without this book. Thanks, Steve!

Lotus Domino support for EJB programming mode

Bob Balaban is a Louts Notes and Domino guru. After working for Lotus for many years, Bob certainly new the nuts and bolts of Lotus Notes better than just about anyone.

This book was way ahead of it's time. I heard Bob speaking about Domino and Java at The View's advanced technical seminar in 1999. At that time many Lotus Notes developers were just coming to grips with LotusScript (although it was introduced in Lotus Notes 4) and all of the new web features associated with Domino; HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc.

While this book is now dated, it is still one of the best on programming Lotus Notes and Domino with Java, and the only one that focuses solely on that topic. Many other books have glossed over this topic altogether. Although a couple of others have provided good treatment. If you are new to Notes and Java then it could still be well worth your while to pick up a copy.

Programming Domino 4.6 With Jav

Programming Domino 4.6 With Jav

This is by far the best and most useful book I have purchased in a long time! Bob has great insights on the future of Web interfaces to data and how you, as a programmer, can effectively work in the new paradigm. He does an excellent (and concise) job of helping you sort out the architectural options for the web: cgi/perl/asp/activex/etc. The book then has a detailed explanation of everything you need to know to program Domino in Java. I found Bob's speculation on the CORBA/IIOP and Domino v5.0 technologies especially useful in planning our IT infrastructure. Please buy this book if you are curious about Domino and Java! If you are new to Java you should also find a beginners guide. This is not a 'learn Java and Domino' text for beginners. Intermidiate and Advanced users, however, definitely need this book before they write another Agent in Domino or another CGI script in Perl. This book will wake you up to the future of the Web, Domino, and Java programming!

With numerous stories and citations, the author discusses, often from a Christian standpoint, his belief that revelations continue to occur to common people around the world. He calls these revelations "Divine Fire--the transfer of thought, spirit, and power from an Infinite Intelligence to a finite, human intelligence." Quotations and interviews of great variety support his position in a very readable format.

Wow! The book began with such an interesting story, I read it is one sitting. After much research and study, Brad Steiger truly has become aware the spiritual gifts are alive and well in the world today. Many people across the world have staunchly stated that they have had revelations from the Lord or another "higher power". This book ranges from biblical quotes to UFO sightings but keeps consistency through out.

Ever receive a message from an angel, spirit guide or God? I haven't either, but the people interviewed in this book say they have. The author has collected not only hundreds of stories from a wide variety of people who claim to have had a Revelation, but he also evaluates them along with members of the scientific community. Really interesting information. Highly recommended!

This is an excellent book documenting people's encounters with God, spirits, angels, etc. The author has interviewed men and women of all ages, races, religious beliefs, etc. and shows that people from all walks of life have had personal encounters with the divine. Very well written and thought provoking.

and recently reread it as I do every couple of years. There is a reason this book was first published 35 years ago and still is read around the world. Translated into multiple languages, this is the definitive tome on the subject.

When I got a copy of this book and realized what was on my hands I hurried up to ask for a copy to our University Library. Unfortunately, it seemed that the book has been discontinued from Addison Wesley's catalog. 'It must be a joke...' I thought. Well, I'm not pretty sure about that, but if it's true 0 stars for AW editors!

I really think that this should have be a bestseller, if only the 've made a better promotional campaign. I found the book thanks to a cross reference in 'Wi-Foo', a masterpiece of Wi-Fi security. I had never heard of Puzmanova's book before.

It's a superb guide about networking interconnections, at the same level of Radia Perlman's Interconnections book. But with some useful enhancements, including keywords and concepts highlights, and a very organized content presentation. It's extremely easy to find what you're looking for in a moment.

I agree with the other reviews about the contents so I won't add anything here. No matter if you only manage to find a used copy, it worths your money and effort. Get it!!

Excellent. Well written, well structured and comprehensive. Breadth of coverage necessarily means less depth on any given subject, but good references allow in-depth follow up. All in all, easy to read and very insightful.

I am a Beng Electronic engineer Final Year student doing my final year project on routing efficiencies, investigating packet arrival times using different routing protocols. I have so far found this book extremely beneficial, which explains a lot of the terminology and techniques in the routing world in great detail. For me its not a book to read from back to back, but one that I found very handy to have near by when working along with my project.

I bought this book on Brian Dennis' recommendation, and I've been very happy with my purchase. The book goes into a tremendous amount of detail on various bridging techniques and routing protocols, but it's quite easy to read and very enjoyable. Excellent work.

Chris Bryant
CCIE #12933

Puzmanova says the main aim in her book is to show what's behind "the evolution in network interconnection, and give some clue as to where industry developments and standardization efforts are headed: to gain performance by avoiding unnecessary processing in the internetworking device itself, whether router or switch."

Part I is on the principles of network interconnection. This is an overview of the layering principles in building and operating networks. Puzmanova's enthusiasm comes out here as she talks about how she became fascinated in the relaying (routing) principles observed in each layer. She peeled the OSI onion from the outside in, looking at the network from the top layers down. The relaying principles at each layer cover pretty much all the widespread LAN (802.3, Token Ring, FDDI) and WAN (X.25, ISDN, Frame Relay, ATM and SONET) technologies. Then she covers network management and remote monitoring, as well as the principles of network interconnection. At this section she addresses a key question: What is the difference between a router and a switch? After all, switches route, and routers switch. The difference is in the architecture. A switch architecture provides additional forwarding capacity as ports are added. A router typically has a single forwarding engine and additional ports still share the capacity of this single engine. Interestingly, this is somewhat analogous to the difference between shared and switched media, seen in the evolution from hubs to switches. With hubs (as with routers), users share the capacity; with switched media, the capacity is dedicated to all the users.

Part II is very brief and talks about bridging, essentially a precursor to switching. It talks about transparent bridging which is used for Ethernet and source route bridging for Token Ring. The difficulty in creating hybrids for these two is discussed, and indeed there usually has to be some kind of routing function. The important thing with transparent bridging (which has pretty much won the day by the way - forget about Token Ring at this stage) is the prevention of loops through the spanning tree protocol.

Part III deals with switching principles and architectures, including circuit switching, packet switching, and cell switching. Switches have pretty much the same functionality as bridges, breaking up collision domains and sharing a broadcast domain, but with greater port capacity and most of the functionality in the hardware. Virtual LANs (or VLANs) are a way to break up broadcast domains at Layer 2. WAN switches also do cell switching for ATM. The developments in switch fabrics and congestion management define where some convergence in routing and switching is taking place-in multilayer switches (Layer 2 and 3). This has also led to some high speed routers and switches.

Part IV, Routing, is what seems to fascinate Puzmanova the most. All routing has become Routing IP - other routed protocols like IPX and AppleTalk are fading away and more or less don't matter any more. This is good, because routing protocols are complicated enough. Older distance vector protocols (like RIP and IGRP) which use direction and hops and provide the whole routing table in updates, have given way (thankfully) to link state protocols (like OSPF and ISIS); the latter are tougher to administer but bring rapid convergence and all routers know of a topology change, whether it's due to a broken link or an added device, in very short order. Knowledge of routing protocols and their behaviors in different scenarios is the key to the highway for network administrators. Especially important is how different protocols play with each other, in terms of how they coexist, how the filter traffic or redistribute routes into one another, or how they tunnel (wrap packets from) one protocol into another. Routing protocols have extra intelligence but these smarts are processed and take up cycles, and anything that can be done to limit the overhead, by choosing a lighter weight protocol, by redistributing routes, or by using a dial-up link as a backup, is potentially helpful to the performance or the scalability of the network. Part IV also talks about the architecture of routers, in terms of their internal switching fabrics and switching processes. Then it discusses how the highest performance can be achieved with advanced mechanisms that distribute the effort among different devices - the foremost example is label switching or label swapping as used in MPLS, which is essentially a protocol that operates at both Layers 2 and 3, and which helps a network combine the speed of switching with the scalability of routing. This provides another example of the convergence that the book's title implies.

Part V deals with hot topics of the day: speeding things up with QoS and high performance, and optical networking. It also goes into a lot more detail on MPLS, which was alluded to in Part IV. The advantages and disadvantages of routing versus layer 3 switching, and the question of when to use a router and when to use a switch are detailed here. It explains how MPLS clearly distinguishes between path determination (which should mainly be performed at the edge) and packet forwarding. Packet forwarding is very fast because once the packet is labeled at the network edge, it quickly traverses the network, only requiring the label switching routers to perform the label processing without actually performing any lookups in the routing tables. Packet forwarding will be getting faster in the future with optical networking and the development of optical switches that can operate within MPLS networks, perhaps at the dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM) level with multiprotocol lambda (wavelength) switching.

The appendices include an acronym glossary, standardization notes, troubleshooting guidelines, port transmission speeds, and some general useful numbers including port numbers, hex to binary conversion and multicast addresses.

This is an excellent book to read to help anyone to live a life of significance. It challenges the reader to go beyond where they are in life to run the race with committed abandon. Highly recommended

I purchased this for my husband and he is constantly referring back to it. He recommends it to all of his friends.

Excellent resource if you are in the corporate world. Sound, common sense advice with bibical references without being too "preachy". Would use for a motivational tool for any level of management, customer service or retail establishment.

The advice in this book extends beyond the professional world and echoes in everyday life. This makes sense; we don't live double-lives, and there exists no magic, secret formula for success in business, medicine, or raising kids. It comes down to basic human virtues.

Commitment. Character. Competence. These attributes fuel the engines of success in life.

It boggles the mind how many books or programs offer axiomatic platitudes such as "it's not what you know but who you know" or "success is what makes you happy, so be true to yourself."

None such wasteful advice finds its way into this book. Rather, Dr. Irwin points out the objective, observable standards that exist in life, and our need to continually evaluate ourselves and measure our choices against those standards.

As the book says; it's simple, but it isn't easy. I highly recommend this book.

Tim Irwin's book, "Run with the Bulls," is by far the most insightful business book I have read this year. It causes you to take a look beneath the surface and determine how you can lead a life of significance and find meaning in your work. There are very few business books that take you to this level of personal reflection. "Run with the Bulls" is one of them.

Many business books provide just enough information to whet executives' appetites for more advice accompanied by high consulting fees. Author Kees van der Heijden has written an exception. His comprehensive volume puts scenario building in historical context, explains its relationship to forecasting and tells you how to introduce scenario planning to your organization. Once you understand your corporate identity and your fundamental "Business Idea," he says, you can establish and enact informative scenarios that will prepare your company for several different versions of what lies ahead. In that way, scenario planning generates better decision making. We strongly recommend this book to top managers, strategists and planners, especially those who sense they're making decisions on the fly without having a structure for thinking deeply about future implications.

Frankly I'm surprised at all the glowing reports without someone mentioning that this isn't the easiest book to read. Not that the language is difficult. Rather the sentences are long and often unclear, and there are too many reference to past and future chapters.

I'd suggest reading a few paragraphs before purchasing the book. You might find that this book is not for you -- it didn't do anything for me. I gave up half way through the book, maybe there was more value in the second half.

I have found this book a delightful and enlightening read. I've been a fan of Scenario Planning since reading Peter Swartz's "Art of the Long View." This if the first book on the subject that i've read that actually provides the level of detail i wanted to see such that i could begin to practice scenario planning and incorporate the tools and language into my work environment. Great stuff.

I agree with the other reviewers, it is not a business novel. Fifteen pages per hour is a good score. However it is worth every minute. I recognise the strategy meetings that indeed most often strand in tactics at the very best. The idea of the Business Idea and the huge importance Kees lays on the need for an original, differentiating business element was for me the most important lesson. I am working for a 50 year old company, active in a domain that is under severe pressure of a rapidly changing business model,
after years and years of 'innovation' around the same theme. This work was an eye opener.

Disclaimer: This review is one of the assignments in a graduate course on forecasting.

First, I should say that this is an amazing book, but not necessarily an easy read. However, it repays the effort needed. A previous reviewer commented on the difficulty of the writing. I find the same thing, but it can be marked down to the Dutch/German writing style, which is both compact and tends toward longish sentences. Essentially this means that some sentences have to be read twice before the idea is absorbed. Let me be clear, this activity is well worth it!

This book is more than just about scenarios, offering a convincing and comprehensive understanding of how scenarios can and should be used as a form of strategic management.

Along the way, the reader is treated to clear and helpful explanations of such things as "the business idea of an organization" (ch. 3), "articulation of the business idea" in scenarios (ch. 8), "option planning" (ch. 11), and "the management of change" (ch. 12), among others.

Overall, scenarios as practiced and understood by Van Der Heijden (who spent 35 years at Shell and 6 years as an academic before writing this book), are useful tools. They are foremost organizational tools which are best used by entire organizations, not the solitary planner at their workbench.

If you want to understand how the future can be more accurately perceived (though not predicted), and how organizational learning can actually happen, then this is a worthy addition to the library of any management strategist or student of the future.

Smart Videoconferencing is a must read for anyone who is going before a camera. The authors give simple tips which can maximize your presence on camera. It is a quick, simple read. Well worth the money.

This is a concise, direct, very practical handbook for organizing a videoconference and communicating effectively on camera. The tips on organization, preparation and choosing the right medium for your meeting are especially helpful and new. Many tips, especially about grooming, makeup and clothing, are so simple they border on simplistic, but for those who have no experience in media or performing (such as corporate executives), these clues could make the difference between success and failure. Authors Janelle Barlow, Peta Peter and Lewis Barlow back up their pointers with real-life anecdotes which reinforce their ideas quite convincingly and provide the book its only real entertainment value; otherwise it's relentlessly practical. We from getAbstract found this book useful for anyone who is organizing or participating in a videoconference. When you're on the air, you want to be in the know.

I enjoyed reading the book. Even easy to read for me who is no‚Ž-native speaker of English or intermidiate learner of the language. I did not have to look up dictionary so often.
Anyway,I think that this book will be good especially for those novice end users who have just started using the video technology and who want to use it in more effective and productive ways.
I think that this is a kind of a book that end users desire.@Basically they are not intersted in how technology works behind but more and more they are interested in benefits and effects that they anticipate to get from using the technology. Not intersted in features and capabilities etc.. Some may, though.
However, I would like to point out one thing.
There is a paragraph in page 10 regarding Japanese video market graph. What is written is not correctly translated into English.
The numbers in the year 1998 and 2000 are based on a prediction by unidentified source according to the web page.But numbers in the year 1988,1993 and 1995 are actual numbers.
The graph was a part of a presentation made for doctors in Saitama to understand the status quo of videocommunications in relation to medical activities. But it does not show the source.
The numbers includes all kinds of video equipment from room or board type to set-top to PC based to surveilance. It does not mean one product category.
But it is true that the first video service was launch in 1984 by NTT, but it was actually not as popular as expected. Just a handful of big companies in Japan used the service to slash costs associated with travels, and the service cost per month as running cost was unjustifiably quite high to smaller businesses, so it did not go hit. And after that, audio service introduced also by NTT that offers relatively inexpensive service which could be accepted by smaller businesses.

This is a wonderful book, but I think it's titled wrong. It should be Media Savvy Videoconferencing. I bought the book thinking it would be about videoconferencing exclusively, but actually it's filled with information about how to look good whenever you are in front of the media. This book should be read by all PR people and anyone who has to do television appearances. There really are tricks to the trade. Why do media savvy people generally look good on television? Because they are using the techniques described in this book.

Last month, after our company installed a new videoconferencing system, my boss asked me to assume responsibility for our first trial meeting with a midwestern customer organization. I was very excited about the promise that this new technology could afford our business. But, I must confess, that the actual videoconference event was a big disappointment. Even though the equipment worked as promised, the meeting felt like Ted Mack's "Original Amateur Hour." That's when I began browsing around for a book that might address the weaknesses I perceived in our interaction. And, I discovered that only one book - of the dozens available on videoconferencing - actually dealt with the human communication issues involved.

After my first experience, I can attest that these are, indeed, the most important.

Our next videoconference event is scheduled in a few days - and I think our company is now much better prepared, thanks to the helpful, practical tips in this book, Smart Videoconferencing This book emphasizes the significant differences that exist between a face to face meeting and a videoconference. There is a paradox involved, because the videoconference demands both greater care and professionalism, while, at the same time, there is the necessity for a sense of relaxation and authenticity. I can tell you that our first event lacked both of these qualities - and our company lost some business as a result. Now, I think I we can avoid the mistakes we made last time.

I highly recommend this book for anyone engaged in videoconferencing when the stakes are high.