Enterprise Web 2.0 Fundamentals Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)It's perhaps slightly surprising to see this put out by Cisco Press. They usually deal with topics closely if not explicitly tied to Cisco hardware, or to Cisco sponsored credentialling.
The book has more general scope, for the most part. It talks in broad, largely nontechnical prose, about the Web 2.0. Explaining what this means in terms of blogs, social networking, wikis and other user-generated activities. But it also has meaning in terms of the mobile user, who might access the web from a cellphone, PDA or wireless netbook.
As to how the Web 2.0 is accomplished in a technical manner, the book describes various programming languages that are popular in building such websites. Think Ajax and Ruby on Rails, for instance.
The conceptual boundary of the Web is the so-called Semantic Web, a term proposed by Tim Berners-Lee. We get some airing here about the Semantic Web. You get to appreciate that this is still early times for it. The book also brings up cloud computing. Alas, the latter term is so vague, but to the extent that it has useful meaning, the book tries to educate you on this.
The last 2 chapters are where Cisco is actively promoted. Describing how Cisco uses things like blogs in their sales group. I'm not sure quite what to make of these chapters. Is it mainly to build mindshare about how Cisco uses these ideas? For instance, it mentions how Cisco won several awards for their projects. Good for them.
The appendices are extensive and quite good, if you want to use the book as a guide to far more detailed resources on the Web. In a way, the appendices somewhat impart the book the flavour of a review article in a scholarly journal, by their copious references to original texts.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Enterprise Web 2.0 Fundamentals

An introduction to next-generation web technologiesThis is a comprehensive, candid introduction to Web 2.0 for every executive, strategist, technical professional, and marketer who needs to understand its implications. The authors illuminate the technologies that make Web 2.0 concepts accessible and systematically identify the business and technical best practices needed to make the most of it. You'll gain a clear understanding of what's really new about Web 2.0 and what isn't. Most important, you'll learn how Web 2.0 can help you enhance collaboration, decision-making, productivity, innovation, and your key enterprise initiatives.The authors cut through the hype that surrounds Web 2.0 and help you identify the specific innovations most likely to deliver value in your organization. Along the way, they help you assess, plan for, and profit from user-generated content, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), social networking, semantic web, content aggregation, cloud computing, the Mobile Web, and much more. This is the only book on Web 2.0 that:Covers Web 2.0 from the perspective of every participant and stakeholder, from consumers to product managers to technical professionalsProvides a view of both the underlying technologies and the potential applications to bring you up to speed and spark creative ideas about how to apply Web 2.0Introduces Web 2.0 business applications that work, as demonstrated by actual Cisco® case studiesOffers detailed, expert insights into the technical infrastructure and development practices raised by Web 2.0Previews tomorrow's emerging innovations–including "Web 3.0," the Semantic WebProvides up-to-date references, links, and pointers for exploring Web 2.0 first-handKrishna Sankar, Distinguished Engineer in the Software Group at Cisco, currently focuses on highly scalable Web architectures and frameworks, social and knowledge graphs, collaborative social networks, and intelligent inferences.Susan A. Bouchard is a senior manager with US-Canada Sales Planning and Operations at Cisco. She focuses on Web 2.0 technology as part of the US-Canada collaboration initiative.Understand Web 2.0's foundational concepts and component technologiesDiscover today's best business and technical practices for profiting from Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Applications (RIA)Leverage cloud computing, social networking, and user-generated contentUnderstand the infrastructure scalability and development practices that must be address-ed for Web 2.0 to workGain insight into how Web 2.0 technologies are deployed inside Cisco and their business value to employees, partners, and customersThis book is part of the Cisco Press® Fundamentals Series. Books in this series introduce networking professionals to new networking technologies, covering network topologies, example deployment concepts, protocols, and management techniques.Category: General NetworkingCovers: Web 2.0$40.00 USA / $48.00 CAN

Click here for more information about Enterprise Web 2.0 Fundamentals

Read More...

Spring Python 1.1 Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Spring Python 1.1 is a book for professional programmers who either wish
to venture into a world beyond traditional OOP and tackle problems
differently thanks to Spring Python's IoC & AOP features or simply have
practical issues - such as spreading the application across multiple
nodes - to solve. The book does not merely rephrase the comprehensive
reference documentation available at the project's website and I was
actually very curious on how the author would be laying out the material.
Greg took a very good approach of explaining the basic of IoC first and
building upon it in subsequent chapters although they can all be read
separately. All of the major Spring Python's building blocks are covered
and I can only applaud that despite its Java roots almost no XML is used
- that's a good news for all Python programmers fearing that "Spring"
means a lot of unnecessary XML, the prevailing majority of examples is
in pure Python. Java programmers wishing to leverage their existing
Spring skills won't be disappointed though as there are some chapters
devoted to how one can easily migrate a Spring Java IoC container over
to Spring Python one, there's also a discussion of how to use Spring
Python & Jython which, along with CPython, is also a target Python
implementation Spring Python can run on. But let that not confuse you,
the book is mostly written for Python programmers.
I liked it that the book was focusing on getting things done without
turning aside into discussing vaguely related concepts or nuances, for
instance the chapter on SQL doesn't do any 'quick recaps' of what SQL
and relational databases are as is unfortunately quite common in many
other books. On the other hand, not everyone is familiar with IoC and
AOP and I know that anyone unfamiliar with those concepts - regardless
of their primary programming language of choice - can easily take the
book and get acquainted with them. A superb idea was that most of the
chapters teach you how to write unit tests for the given Spring Python
component you'd want to use in your code, IoC, AOP, security, database
access and so on, that's an often neglected area and I was very happy to
see the author having placed an importance on it. Another good idea was
to create a case-study chapter which combines all the knowledge and
discusses it thoroughly.
All in all, it's a good book written by a practitioner for
practitioners, full of diagrams and examples that by necessity are
simple yet don't feel contrived and it's certainly not something you
need to plough through, it does a very good job of introducing the
reader to Spring Python and showing how to use its pluggable components
to write interesting and useful applications solving real-world
problems. If I were to pick a nit I'd only say that it would be nice if
the second edition contained at least a couple of examples of using
Spring Python's IoC YamlConfig, but that's only a matter of syntax so
the issue is really minor.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Spring Python 1.1

The book is an introduction to Spring Python. It starts with simple practical applications, moving on to more advanced applications with two advanced case studies at the end of the book. It is packed with screenshots, examples, and ready-to-use code making it very suitable for a beginner while also showing tactics and concepts suitable for the most experienced developers. Each chapter starts with a simple problem to solve, and then dives into how Spring Python provides the solution with step-by-step code samples. Along the way, screenshots and diagrams are used to show critical parts of the solution. The case studies start off with a handful of use cases, and then proceed step-by-step to incrementally develop features. Some use cases are left to the reader to implement as an exercise. Key problems discovered along the way are exposed and then solved, giving the reader the chance to solve them, or to read the author's solutions. This book is for Python developers who want to take their applications to the next level, by adding/using parts that scale their application up, without adding unnecessary complexity. It is also helpful for Java developers who want to mix in some Python to speed up their coding effort.

Click here for more information about Spring Python 1.1

Read More...

Think Stats Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)If your grasp of Programming exceeds your understanding of Basic Statistics, this book IS for you. As a University Statistics professor, I am constantly looking for reading materials that I can use to integrate Practical Statistics with programming. I am generally faced with the problem of having to mine Programming texts for Stats lessons, all too often I am faced with books that attempt to teach a programming language with examples from Freshman Statistics as an afterthought. (Too much of one, not enough of the other)
This book comes at the problem from the other side. Given that you already have a healthy grasp on programming and are trying to learn Statistics, each topic is presented with helpful, real-world data examples, and a step-by-step explanation of how to code the solutions. That makes this book excellent supplementary material for a Statistics class, or at the very least, a wonderful refresher for those returning to Statistics, with programming in mind.
Caution:
This book is NOT for you if you do NOT have a basic understanding of Programming. This book will NOT teach you to program using statistics. It is meant to teach you statistics using programming.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Think Stats


If you know how to program, you have the skills to turn data into knowledge using the tools of probability and statistics. This concise introduction shows you how to perform statistical analysis computationally, rather than mathematically, with programs written in Python.

You'll work with a case study throughout the book to help you learn the entire data analysis process—from collecting data and generating statistics to identifying patterns and testing hypotheses. Along the way, you'll become familiar with distributions, the rules of probability, visualization, and many other tools and concepts.

Develop your understanding of probability and statistics by writing and testing code
Run experiments to test statistical behavior, such as generating samples from several distributions
Use simulations to understand concepts that are hard to grasp mathematically
Learn topics not usually covered in an introductory course, such as Bayesian estimation
Import data from almost any source using Python, rather than be limited to data that has been cleaned and formatted for statistics tools
Use statistical inference to answer questions about real-world data

Click here for more information about Think Stats

Read More...