Software Books

The built-in vfp report writer, is with no question a powerful tool, but when it comes to end-user report customization, MS Excel is still the report writing tool of choice. This is a great book for those starting to get acquainted with office automation specially for those who wanted to make use MS Excel as the report writer via VFP. The accompanying ebook makes it a lot better...

After 28+ years in this business I have finally stumbled upon an author who knows how to write technical books. This one should be a "how to write" example for other alleged authors.

The book, is clear, concise, and well designed. No assumptions are made; yet it is structured in a manner that one can easily skip over items of familiarity. It is an ideal book in that it spans the needs of users at all levels of expertise and is loaded with real "meat and potatoes" practicality and minimal blue sky theory. No matter what your level of expertise (or the lack of it), you can be creating quality applications within the first hour!

My hat is off to these writers and editors!

This may be one of the best 'how-to' development books on the planet.

Generating complex Office output from any development language (be it VFP, VB, etc.) can be a daunting task. The first time you try it on your own, invariably you hit a wall and think to yourself, 'how do I do this, how do I get around that, etc.'

Tamar and Della do an incredible job of covering the details. I recently finished a project where I had to generate some of the most complicated formats in MS Word that I've ever seen. (Anyone who is 'new' to Fox should also check out Tamar's "Hacker's Guide to VFP", another strong title).

99% of the time, if I did a search through the PDF version of the book, I came across a meaningful code sample that helped me out...or at least pointed me in the right direction. This book could have sold for three times the price and I'd still feel the same way about it.

Even 5 stars doesn't do this book the proper justice. It has an almost endless supply of tips and techniques. The examples cover so much of Office Automation that the book is a 'de facto' reference manual as well. I've been in the business since 1988, and average about 8-10 book purchases a year. Along with Allen Holub's compiler books and Ken Henderson's 'Guru Guide to SQL Server', I'd rate this as one of the best technical 'how-to' books I've ever seen.

I wish someone would write a good .NET applications book along the lines of this book. The difference between a valuable reference book like this one, and a good % of the junk that's been published on .NET, can only be measured in conceptual light years.

Prior to this book, I had been dreading my foray into automation. Literally, within minutes of opening the book, I was automating Excel. And within a couple of hours, I had already built my first automation component for an application. These guys make it so easy!

Every book and article I have ever read by Granor and Martin has been superb, and this book is no exception.

A good book for combine two powerfuls application like vfp and office

I used to have the Bible book for Microsoft Project as my reference for making the most out of this software for managing projects, until The Missing Manual came out. This title in now-popular Missing Manual series takes you through the basics and not-so-basics for Project Standard and Project Professional, allowing you to understand the when and the why behind its features and helping you better build and refine your project plans, track progress of your projects and succeed as a project manager.

Any who own Microsoft's Project 2007 needs Bonnie Bafore's MICROSOFT OFFICE PROJECT 2007: THE MISSING MANUAL guide, which should really be in the box alongside the program. It offers easy step-by-step instructions that cover both Project Standard and Project Professional, explaining how and why to use some features - an approach which goes far beyond the usual `how to' guide. From using Project in a variety of business applications and incorporating other programs such as Word and Outlook to practically guaranteeing project success, MICROSOFT PROJECT 2007: THE MISSING MANUAL should be on the shelves not only of any serious computer reference library, but any business library and any individual who owns Project 2007 and wants to get the most out of it.

Microsoft Project is an unmatched tool for managing all aspects of a project, and the power of its integration with other MS tools is awesome. But its potential is very complex and not for the faint of heart. Before you start blithely loading your milestones and allocating your resources, you really need to understand the concepts of defining your project and conceptualizing the plan. The software won't teach you that and it's the easiest thing in the world to wind up with a Gantt chart that looks like the head of Medusa in no time flat.

That's where this manual makes its mark. Yes, it's a good primer on the software; yes, it's a good reference manual as long as you can guess the term for what you want to do. "Unhide columns," for example: that's what I wanted to do this week, and two minutes with the index and a page reference got the job done for me. (Hint: it doesn't behave exactly like Excel.)

Since I tend to shun manuals, I had not picked up this book until now. I took a moment to flip, and was impressed, and wound up starting at the beginning and going all the way through, reading here and there, checking the book's organization and the points it made about project management. What a great resource! It's an introductory project management course that will get the user started on the right foot.

Despite its name, Microsoft Project 2007: The Missing Manual is much more than a manual. I recommend it for anyone who wants to brush up on the key points of project management, and especially for anyone using the software for the first time (or the first time in a while, which is my situation). It can't guarantee that your project will be a success, but it will greatly increase your understanding of what's going right and wrong. This book is going to make you look good!

Linda Bulger, 2008

I've always hated "How to" manuals written by people who know the application, but not the work. This book shows how to use MS Project from the perspective of a Project Manager.

It's alway been ironic when I've used other resources that the person who wrote the book explains all the buttons, but not when/why they are really used. "The Missing Manual" is the perfect marriage of function and purpose.

This manual is extremely helpful for both the novice and the veteran user. The introductory section on project management is one of the best I have seen, and worth the price of the book by itself. Entertaining yet concise style. Book is well organized and information is easily found.
Highly recommended.

Its a must have book

This book builds on a basic understanding of SQL Server, showing real-world scenarios and advice on what to look for to make database application perform optimally.

I've read at least a half dozen books on MSC Sql/Server at this point, and this was by far the most useful. It's both a good guide to general DB development practices and a tutorial on SQL/Server. This book and the MSC manuals is enough to get someone started on SQL/Server. I took the time to write this review in the hopes of saving someone else all the effort I expended buying and reading the useless books.

This is, by far, on of the most usefull books on Microsoft SQL Server I have seen. It covers important information about optimizing queries, indexes and the database itself. A must read for SQL developers and administrators.

Really covers SQL tunning well. Gets a little too much into general DBA stuff in the end. I would recommend the Ken England book over this one, simply because it is more concise.

This book is a compilation of various functions and commands available to the VisualBasic 5 environment. It provides examples and supplimental information to help users with different levels of expertise.

Recommended if you want to really program in VB 5.0.

I found this book to be helpful with my everyday programming. This book contains example code for every command in it. This bok also gives you the correct arguments for each command. I find this book to be one of my best developement tools in my arsenal. I recommend this book strongly to anyone looking to do serious VB programming.

This reference book is a mirror image of the online help, but a lot more convenient. It contains pretty much all you need to know...and unlike the majority of tutorial books out there, the example code actually works.

How can you not love the VB5 Language Reference.

I teach VB for a living, and I tell my students to re-read this Reference guide every 3 months---there's always something new that you'll see in it.

Others will tell you that this information is provided with Books Online (and it is), but I prefer the printed version.

Though you can get the exact same information online, I find that sometimes it's just better to have the hard copy in front of me. The book does a good job of not only showing the syntax, but what arguments to use and situations where the item applies. It's proven to be very, very useful and people would do well to pick this up if they prefer to use hard copy as I do.

Derivatives are not simple things. It almost seems that complexity was a design goal when they were being set up. In order to determine their real value either today or in the future you almost have to model them on a computer.

This book covers dozens of different types of derivatives, including the common ones and some of the new even more esoteric ones. It talks about the structure of the derivative, and then presents models of them. The models are presented in the most common modelling 'languages' in use today. There is a lot of code involved, but there is not a CD included with the book. Instead, an access code providing a one time download for the code. Note, a one time download. Be sure and save the code quickly and on several media. This procedure allows the models to be updated as needed without regard to the time it takes for the book to move from being written to being published, but if you have a disk crash....

The biggest things this book provides are: first, you get to see what an expert in the field has done, and second, you get the code to run his models on your system, and of course you can modify them if you find some other aspect suits your needs better.

This is a new book, first printed in December 2006, so it is current with the derivatives being marketing at that time.

I highlight two points:

1. The inclusion of Matlab and Excel code in almost all topics of the book.
2. All the content is new and more advanced, there is no recovered topics of his previous book.

Great book. But the code downloading process is a bit weird. Don't know why they just attach a CD.

This book offers prebuilt, modifiable code that you can use for energy, power, weather and many other derivatives applications. The download process is fast and easy. For those who use Matlab, C++, or Excel, there is no competition. A great book with unique content and code.

This book was my ultimate go-to resource on several financial engineering projects (on the buy side). It covers many different derivatives and provides example MatLab and C++ code that is easy to modify and extend.

The instructions for setup and downloading the code could be more clear, perhaps on a CD.

Having never taken a course in computer-based dynamic modeling, this text proved to be an excellent introduction to the topic - and then some. The opening chapter clearly explains the reasons modeling is so important in our complex world, and subsequent chapters in the opening section walk the student through the basic processes of using STELLA and MADONNA to explore dynamic biological systems. (The text is supplied with a run-time version of STELLA.) Later sections build students' modeling skills by adding layers of complexity as a wide variety of biological questions are examined.

The presentation style permits exploration of so many topics by first presenting the basic elements of a model and then guiding the eager student to adjust the model to answer additional questions. Thus, the text truly has something to offer anyone interested in biological systems. Furthermore, it is not necessary to study the chapters in order. Yet the text is carefully woven with analogies so that the skills and knowledge gained from one chapter's model can easily be directed to building and solving those in other chapters.

I also found the text easy to follow during lectures. As the models were presented in class, the equations and the figures in the text - both models and graphs - allowed me to focus my attention on the discussion rather than on getting the "pictures" down in my notes. The text contains plenty of white space around equations and figures so that the student can simply take notes directly onto the pages. One of the most useful features in each chapter is the box showing the equations "in the basement" of STELLA that drive the model. The text is definitely a learning tool, not simply a book to be read but not used.

"Modeling Dynamic Biological Systems" is a text that will be kept close to my computer and pulled from the shelf often. The systems thinking and independent learning encouraged by this book will be very useful as I complete my education and move into my new career.

I have used this book to learn dynamic modeling both as part of a class and in research work. This is an excellent book for beginners and professional modelers alike. The book uses STELLA, an iconographic modeling software, as the platform for learning. However, the knowledge gained through the book and the software is based on more general modeling philosophies that can be applied using other modeling software or programming languages as well. The approach used here is to learn by hands-on training through examples. One does not need to study a lot of theories to start developing models; rather the theories and principles evolve through the modeling exercises. It is not required, though advisable, to purchase the software to go through the examples as the book comes with a run-time version of STELLA.

Another aspect of the book that I found to be interesting is that after going through the initial few chapters, the rest of the book can be studied in any order. It includes a host of examples from various areas of biological sciences and it is possible to focus on one's area of interest - be it population dynamics, genetics, environmental pollution or epidemics. It gives a fair introduction to spatially dynamic modeling as well. I must also mention that one does not need to be a biologist to use this book. I have had friends with economics and engineering backgrounds who used this book to learn dynamic modeling.

One of the most important strengths of this book is that it is easy enough to be accessible to people from a wide range of disciplines and at the same time advanced enough to expose the user to moderate to highly complex modeling challenges. I strongly recommend this book to academics who are teaching dynamic modeling and anyone else who is involved in research that include dynamic processes and interactions. This book teaches dynamic modeling as a versatile tool - so much so that I even used it (for fun) to model my personal finances!

I suggest that the reader take a systematic approach to study this book while sitting in front of the computer and doing the examples as you go along. This will maximize the learning from this book. This is certainly one of the most practical books on modeling that I have come across.

The increasing interconnectedness and complexity of ecological and biological systems is undoubtedly increasing the potential environmental consequences of our decisions. Thus the growing importance of improving our understanding of the characteristics and internal relationships that govern the system's behavior. Hannon and Ruth clearly illustrate how we can think about problems from a `dynamic systems' perspective, and how we can use technical programs to apply this new way of thinking as a tool to model biological systems. They present the means to build a greater understanding of the phenomena we see, the context of the problems that confront us, and the potential and expected effects of any interventions we may make.

Like the book's theoretical foundations, the modeling software used is both user-friendly for easy up-take by beginners, and sufficiently powerful for those at a more advanced level needing a robust software package. The reader is actively guided through the model development, simulation and interpretation process. This learning by participation and experience increases the readers understanding of the wide variety of contexts in which modeling techniques can be applied, and how to apply them.

Those interested in biological issues will find this valuable from the practical biological examples that are used, and the novel approach in which these issues are addressed. These range from spatial and population dynamics, to models of organisms, genetic movements and physical systems.

Further, the clarity of writing, and the familiarity of the examples and problems addressed, makes this an enjoyable educational experience for all people interested in developing a new perspective of the environment in which they live and work.

Perhaps most importantly, the analogical strength of the techniques used and models developed is such that researchers in all fields of academia, from economics to sociology, will benefit from it. It challenges us to re-examine how we define the problems we seek to solve, and to discipline our existing conceptualization of systems. It presents us with tools that challenge, yet compliment and strengthen traditional scientific approaches.

Modeling Dynamic Biological Systems is a wonderful book for students and researchers interested in learning about dynamic modeling. I used this book in the first class I took dealing with dynamic modeling and found it very easy to understand and follow. The basic design of the book is to introduce the basic concepts of dynamic modeling and how to get started designing models in STELLA. Descriptions for designing models and the example models are based on STELLA modeling software, an intuitive iconographic program that allows even non-technical readers to begin modeling quickly. After the introduction to dynamic modeling the book is divided up into parts based on different areas of biology: Physical and Biochemical Models, Genetics Models, Models of Organisms, Single Population Models, Multiple Population Models, and Catastrophe and Self-Organization. In each of these parts there are a number of models dealing with different issues. The models are clearly explained and both the iconographic diagram and the equations are given so users can create the example models from the book or check their own work.

This book is a great resource for both novice and experienced modelers. Biologists from all areas will find this useful if they are interested in learning about dynamic modeling. Even if one's area of interest is not exactly one of the areas focused on in the book, the skills and basic method of dynamic modeling will be learned and the reader can then apply these to their area of interest. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in dynamic modeling, even non-biologists. With its great examples and clear explanations this makes a great resource for learning about dynamic modeling.

This book is a concise, effective introduction to dynamic systems modeling
and how it can be used to provide insight to biological problems. The use
of dynamic modeling is demonstrated through example models, a new model
each chapter. The authors walk the reader/student through each model and
then make suggestions as to how it can be further exploited for greater
understanding of the problem. The greatest aspect of this book lies in
its demystification of computer modeling in general and shows that any
person, no matter their quantitative skills, can effectively model a
system by adhering to certain fundamentals. The models that are provided
range from ecosystems to individual cells, espousing a 'systems' approach
to every level of biology. Overall, this book is easy to understand; providing a mental tool by which one can bring greater clarity to complex, dynamic problems.

The book 'more math into Latex' is a good tool which helps somebody without experience in Latex to start using it as soon as possible and reach an adequate level for simple enough articles very fast. I would not be able to judge this book for difficult Latex applications.

The book is very helpful for graduate students who are first learning LaTeX for publishing their dissertations or for submitting articles for publication. It is especially helpful for users of LaTeX that are using pre-made style guides. This book is not for the advanced LaTeX user who is trying to create their own style guides or document class files, all though the book does have a little on the topic. The book also includes a chapter on using LaTeX for making power-point type presentations, which is helpful in math and statistics where presentations have to include equations. Power-point does not handle equations well. The statistics department at my university recommends the book to all our graduate students for writing their dissertation. I have also contacted the author of the book for additional assistance and found him to be very willing to help with LaTeX problems outside the realm of the book. He helped our department create a document class file for publishing dissertations, a more complicated procedure in LaTeX than the typical LaTeX user will have to encounter. This book is a good introduction into the world of LaTeX.

What new can I write about a book that is in its fourth edition, and has served the LaTeX community for almost two decades?

There is a new chapter on presentations and an appendix on installing LaTeX on a PC and on a Mac, so you get help from the get go. Also, for the first time, this book merges TeX, LaTeX, and the AMS packages into one, smoothing the learning curve for beginner and advanced user alike.

If you are new to this book, I should start by pointing out that you get two for the price of one. A sixty page Short Course gets you ready to type your first article in an afternoon or two. The plentiful sample files help you get started fast.

The rest of the book presents a detailed survey of LaTeX: how to type text and math, document structure, presentations, customization, and long documents.

Gratzer teaches by example: each new concept is introduced with examples and sample documents, so you learn by doing.

Multiline math formulas is the most difficult topic of LaTeX. This is the only LaTeX book that dedicates 40 pages to this topic, trying to make it accessible with a Visual Guide and a verbal guide of how these multiline structures can be classified and understood.

Gratzer teaches by distilling the most important information you need. For instance, Beamer, the presentation class he presents, has hundreds of commands and its documentation runs to hundreds of pages. The Beamer chapter selects twenty commands, so you should be on your way writing your first presentation in hours not weeks.

This book has served me well when I started, and it is my constant companion, placed next to my computer when I type LaTeX.

I am a LaTeX programmer and instructor. This weekend, I finally had time to read Part I of this book, Short Course, and paged through the other parts.

What a pleasure! Grätzer has an amazing talent to say exactly what is important, without putting in extras that will distract a reader.

You'd think that by this time I'd know enough LaTeX to, at least, get through the Short Course without learning anything new; but instead I ran into trick after trick that I didn't know. I use Beamer but I didn't know FoilTeX, the presentation package used in the Short Course. It's a great idea to let tell users very early on how to make a presentation from their papers, and then leave Beamer for full treatment later.

I very much like Appendix A, holding the reader's hand as LaTeX is installed. Then the three "productivity tools" are introduced, explaining how to use these tools on both platforms, and leaving the rest of the user interface for later, leisurely exploration, making it really quick for users to start using LaTeX.

Very early in the introduction, Grätzer talks about "the three layers" (TeX, LaTeX, and the AMS packages) and, from the beginning, use all three seamlessly. This is a radical new idea. It will substantially reduce the learning curve -- my students will appreciate it. The wonderful foreword by Rainer Schöpf (one of the two lead programmers of AMS-LaTeX) makes the role of the AMS packages clear in the historical development of modern LaTeX.

I really like the way you got to "Lines too wide" so early in the Short Course, explaining to the user the cause of the problem and solutions. Why do most books postpone this?

I better not go on and on. Just wanted to write these few lines about my enjoyment as I read this wonderful material.

I was a graduate student in math and faced the daunting task of typing my thesis. It was bad enough that I was inexperienced in writing math, but I was also a novice in LaTeX.

I tried two well-known books. In one, there is a Part I, Basics. This is for me, I thought. Unfortunately, it is 200 pages long and does not cover such elementary topics as the "cases" structure. For that, I had to go to page 288. The other book had "cases" hidden on page 238, under the title "Matrix like environments". Not very helpful.

What a relief it was when I came across this book. It helped me set up LaTeX on my Dell notebook (why do other books assume that you already have a LaTeX installation?). Then I downloaded the sample files as instructed and read the really easy 60 page Part I (Short Course). I worked through the text and examples in less than a day. Then I started writing my thesis.

In my spare time, I gave the rest of the book a cursory reading. Occasionally, I need to go beyond what is covered in the Short Course. For instance, as an analyst, I need complicated integrals not covered in Part I. (They are easy to find: in Part II, in the chapter on typing math.) And when the time came to give a presentation on my thesis, I went beyond the Short Course's section on presentations to Chapter 14, and I used Beamer!

Everybody was impressed.

Now I am Jim Whitby Ph.D. Thank you George for the help.

If you are a beginner, this is the your book.

There are many good reasons to want to enhance your skill in using Microsoft Excel. One might be for getting certified my Microsoft as an expert in Excel in order to enhance your employment opportunities. Another might be for a person who hasn't used Excel to learn about the package from the ground up. Yet another might want to add some specific topics such as pivot tables or to begin learning about the statistics features in Excel. For any of these reason (and others0, this is a great book to get well grounded in Microsoft Excel 2000.

This book is organized by "projects". Each project covers a broader collection of specific skills such as modifying a worksheet, improving the appearance of a worksheet, working with functions, creating pivot tables and pivot table reports, and many more. There are 18 of these projects and each has eight lessons. Each lesson is short and focused to one task. For example, in the Working with Functions project, the eight lessons are: Analyzing Data with AVERAGE, MAX and MIN, Calculating a Loan Payment with PMT, Creating a Loan Payment Table, Evaluating Investment Plans with the FV Function, Using IF to Display Messages, Using IF to Calculate, Using MOW to Display the Current Date, and Using VLOOKUP to Convert Data.

Although this is a book, it is very visually based and uses images of the screens discussed in each lesson with many labels pointing to the specific portion of the screen it identifies. Each project begins with a short introductory statement under the heading "Why Would I Do This?" and ends with a brief summary. Each project also has a few true or false questions and some multiple choice questions to help the reader check their understanding of concepts and terms. If you are unclear about the correct answer, a reference to the appropriate lesson in the project is provided so you can go look it up.

Each project also has a Skill Drill a Challenge, and a Discovery Zone. Some of these use files that are on the accompanying CD. Since this book is also focused on helping its readers prepare for certification testing, the CD also contains PinPoint Assessments that help the reader understand where he or she stands in mastering the skills necessary for successfully passing the certification exam.

The introduction to the book provides good orienting material including a chart of which projects and lessons focus on specific skills. The end of the book also has information on how to use the PinPoint software, how to register for certification testing, a glossary, and an index.

This is a very helpful book.

Excel 2000 was my last exam on my way to master certification. Before I purchased this book I was very lacking in my excel knowledge. This book helped me gain a better understanding of excel functions. I passed my excel 200 exam and missed perfect by only 40 points.

If you want to know the essentials of Excel, not just to pass the MOUS Exam, but also for your daily use, this book should be on your library. The clear illustrations help you to quickly navigate through the lessons. Furthermore, CD-ROM is especially useful if you want to take the Exam.

I am a computer instructor at a local college. This book is a wonderful book to prepare for the MOUS and the CD is a must also!!!

I highly recommend this as a study guide for the Expert Exam.

Not a beginner's book: The technologies presented are relevant to (gasp) some real life problems. The treatment of Distributed Constraint Satisfaction problems was well written and usable. The initial treatment of all subjects was broad, delving into details after laying a sound foundation. Assumes a bit of mathematical sophistication on the part of the reader, but on the whole, well written, well organized and well worth it.

I have been using this book probably for an year now, and this has become indispensable to my work. The collection of authors in this book reads as an 'who's who' in multiagent systems and distributed AI research. Although, its' difficult to maintain continuity in edited books, the editor has done an commendable job. The authors provide a readable introduction to their area of expertise, and supplement them with an excellent bibliography...enough to get u started fast.

Thogh edited the book looks like a single authored text. The definitions are clearly presented with illustrations. The presentation is highly comprehensive. The book is thus highly readable with minimum effort. I liked the chapters on distributed problem solving and planning (Chapter 3),Learning in multiagent systems (chapter 6), Formal methods in DAI: Logic based representation and reasoning (chapter 8)and Groupware and computer supported cooperative work (chapter 10) very much.Readers of diverse interest in distributed artificial intelligence will find the other chapters equally interesting and useful.The book should be on the desk of anyone interested to learn the concepts of multiagent systems and technology.

While perhaps this should not be your first book in AI, it should definitely be your first book on agents. It took me years to accumulate the knowledge present in this book, and it's a great survey of the field for the beginning investigator. However, while this is a great way to get started in agents, understand how agents can be used in intelligent applications (from distributed AI type problem solving, to resource optimization problems), and "get the agent paradigm," coverage of agent software engineering techniques is light. This is not a fault of this book - you will simply need other resources to understand the difficulties and current research in engineering multi agent systems (or indeed any concurrent distributed system). So if you are trying to figure out what to do with agents, or how agent systems work, this is the book for you. If you already know that and want help with formal specification of an agent, verifying your agents meet the specifications, etc. this is not the book for you. Understand that to build systems you will need both!

This is one out of very few books that exist on multiagent systems and distributed artificial intelligence which won't take for granted the reader. It has really taken me from elementary concepts up to industrial applications, passing over the actual "nitty gritty" of programming an agent. Many papers on artificial intelligence are just too mathematical for many readers, and those which have any application would describe what the program does, but only sometimes you get into knowing *how* the program does the trick. I personally would say the book is a "must-have-it", not only for those seeking to understand in concrete distributed artificial intelligence or multiagent systems, but also for any mathematician, physicists, computer scientists and engineer whose background touches somehow the concepts of artificial intelligence as a whole. Come to think of it, even any cunning philosopher of science could take real advantage of this book. Now then, concerning those industries which would like to have this book on their shelves, they would have to take in mind that this book is a departure point. A good one, but nevertheless only the start for deepening towards a concrete application the industry would have in mind.

With the progression of human culture in the digital age developing as it is, it's intriguing to look back at even the recent past and see where we've been and where we were thought to be going. The collection of writings in this volume are invaluable and often shockingly ahead of their time. Anyone who expects to be successful in the future - in this ever-evolving digital world - would benefit by reading this book, and sooner rather than later.

I had to get this book for a class, but am very happy I was introduced to these theories. I'd recommend it for anyone interested in the topic of where online media is going.

From Futurist Cinema, to artificial intelligence, to cyberspace, this collection highlights the origins of multimedia, its influences, its directions, and its future possibilities. It includes an insightful and comprehensive introduction by Packer and Jordan themselves, and the authors they have chosen to include in this work reflect the vast landscape of multimedia in its many iterations: Vannevar Bush, William Gibson, Norbert Wiener, John Cage, and Janet Murray, just to mention a few. This book is a must-have for anyone interested in peeking below the surface of multimedia evolution.

Reading this collection of articles gave me a better understanding of the people and ideas that helped shape computer-based communication. The contributors are for the most part well chosen; a few that I might well have done without, I must admit -- but far more excellent choices than "questionable" ones. The organization of the book is interesting as well. I was reminded of the magazine "Mondo 2000" that I subscribed to in the early '90's (multimedia/geek chic).

This book is a must read for anyone interested in modern art and culture, and where its going. The companion web site on www.artmuseum.net is a brilliant compliment to the book, with 50 video clips, rare photos and other treats. Finally, a publishing project that "gets it" how to use the web + printed book in a way where the sum is greater than the parts. Its amazing to see how long artists and scientists have been working (alone, and in some cases together) towards this goal. Prehaps the following decade will witness a true "waking up" by the mass culture to this new syntax, new reading-practice, of multi-media hyper-texted information. This book may mark a point in time where we started acknowledging the depth and extent of our post-Guttenburg world. Bravo to Randall Packer and Ken Jordon for pulling this project off.