economics-software

Demos are of critical importance but are far too often left unmanaged, unstructured, or un-coached. Some people are naturally good at them, others aren't. And deals are won or lost based upon what happens during that critical single event. Believe me.

There is wisdom here. Lots of it. It's full of content -- actionable and thought provoking. Cohan covers preparation, style, questions, special situations, time management and, very specifically, what it takes to deliver a great demo.

This is one of the few books I've seen on the subject that ties the demo all the way up to the business needs of the CEO.

If you are in software sales, this book is for you. If you're a rep, buy two copies. One for you and one for the person who does your demos. If you do demos, buy one for yourself and one for the rep with whom you work.

Peter Cohan has distilled years of customer presentations into an incredibly practical, easy to apply methodical approach. He gives examples, formulas, checklists, and nuggets of information that are so incredibly helpful. He saved me from learning the hard way (the way he did) and my presentations go smoother now. The material is relevant for seminars and presentations as well as demos generally. I found his chapters on Preparation and Style particularly helpful for all my work. "Great Demo" is a GREAT BOOK! I highly recommend it.

The Great Demo! is a gem and has an appeal to a much wider audience than meets the eye. It offers helpful techniques for anyone facing an audience. The author is a masterful presenter and he offers insightful and creative ways of handling a presentation. He also provides many instructive and humorous vignettes. This book is a must for anyone who wants to connect with their audience.

AT LAST! A definitive, concise, readable, understandable, helpful book on this subject that has literally changed the way I communicate and network in my business. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to the authors!!

I work in a non-technology based field, yet found this book to be a great tool for inspiring some new marketing ideas.

Like many people looking for a book or information on web conferencing I was frustrated in my search by the surprising lack of available material. Needless to say I was thrilled when my search ended having come across "The Web Conferencing Book..." and was happier still when I found the book to be as an informative and engaging read as it is. Extremely comprehensive, The Web Conferencing Book answered virtually all of my questions on the subject - and even provided me with information I didn't even know I need to be aware of. I can't recommend this book enough for people needing to know more on the subject as it will undoubtedly have an immediate and highly positive impact on your web conferencing abilities and overall knowledge. The authors have provided us with an amazingly valuable resource and I'm now offically on the lookout for future technology books by them.

This is a complete primer on intellectual property and its value to the enterprise. Key issues that are addressed include:

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)- this is probably the most important discussion in the book because it continues to be controversial.

Complete discussions of all aspects of intellectual property law as it pertains to cyberspace. The clarification of the protections afforded to patent holders that are not given to trademark holders is invaluable. In addition, I learned much about the value of patents and how a business model can be developed around patents alone. I particularly liked the discussion of patent ownership (employee inventor vs. company to which the patent was assigned). This alone makes the book worth reading.

Case studies - many of the case studies which are used throughout the book focused on pending court cases when the book was published. Many have now been resolved, the resolution of which open more questions and further cloud issues. I'd like to see an update or second edition that provides closure.

Excellent introduction to technical issues. The author has a knack for reducing the key elements into easy-to-understand chunks of information that teach non-technical readers quite a lot about technology.

If you buy one book on intellectual property law from a cyber-business perspective, this is the one to get.

As book titles go, CyberRegs: A Business Guide to Web Property, Privacy, and Patents sounds uninteresting. Fortunately, what the book lacks in flashy titles, it makes up in interesting content. CyberRegs is an engrossing and sometimes angry look at the perverse nature of patent law.

When many people think of the Internet and e-commerce, they think of a series of open and non-proprietary standards that enable computers to speak networking Esperanto. As the book shows, that does not necessarily jive with reality. Many companies have tried to homestead on pioneering technologies and use them to gain a lock on the market. Author Bill Zoellick cites numerous cases -- many still in litigation -- to illustrate this point.

The book starts with a brief background of the nature of copyright and patent law and doesn't assume any type of legal background or expertise. Zoellick's writing style is easy going but to the point, and he accomplishes his goal of examining the disruption and instability that the Web has introduced into the world of intellectual property.

Zoellick looks at the Web from many different perspectives, from business and legal to technological and political. While some may think they don't need a book about Internet law and regulations, the reality is that, for any organization doing business on the Internet, there exists the strong possibility that they may be infringing on someone else's intellectual property rights.

One of the most controversial issues that the book looks at is one-click patents issued to Amazon.com. The one-click patents preclude any Internet business that has not licensed the technology from Amazon.com from enabling their customer's to complete their purchasing experience with a single mouse click. The question of whether one-click is even patentable is a controversial one. Those who say it is, feel that Amazon.com is protecting a vital business asset. Those who don't support it say that it only serves to stifle productivity. Zoellick gives numerous other examples.

CyberRegs also goes into such issues as digital signature and privacy. Zoellick does not take sides, but provides a fair-minded look at the debate between greater and lesser control of privacy and the Internet. The book also tackles such controversial topics as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Napster and DeCSS.

In part 3, Zoellick provides an excellent overview of digital certificates. He goes into detail on the parameters around the groundbreaking E-SIGN (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce) act. Many have complained that E-SIGN is extremely light on details and specifics, which it is.However, Zoellick says that with E-SIGN, Congress took the approach that we don't really understand how to do business on the Internet so issues surrounding authentication of electronic signatures are not necessarily easy problems to solve.With that, Congress restricted government action to the parts of the problem where they are directly involved and required.Congress recognized that for any effective solution, markets need time to develop and patience is required. Although this approach is hard when dealing with Internet time, it is nonetheless necessary.

You don't have to be a lawyer to appreciate CyberRegs. Anyone who wants to have a business presence on the Net should read this book so as not to get involved in a legal tussle. While John Grisham may own the legal fiction market, CyberRegs is as close to a non-fiction legal thriller as you can get.

Although CyberRegs has a much wider audience, my perspective of this book is that of a competitive intelligence specialist. The four topic areas covered, from a CI specialist's point of view are illuminating.

The first two topics, copyrights and patents, are the foundation of intellectual property and by extension, corporate and shareholder value. The author's discussion of both copyrights and patents expose loopholes that can work for or against you, depending on which side you are on. One theme the author repeatedly addresses is the fact that copyright and patent law is lagging behind the technology. He cites numerous case studies, all of which you will either applaud or condemn depending on which side of the issue you happen to be. As a CI specialist who engages in "white ops" (collection of competitive intelligence using legal methods), I was somewhat dismayed by aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) because it draws legal boundaries that didn't previously exist. The CI community needs to be aware of this particular law because what was heretofore "white ops" may fall under black ops (illegal intelligence gathering) under the provisions of the DMCA.

The more technical topics, electronic signatures and privacy, are presented in the same balanced and thought-provoking way as copyrights and patents. Having recently read Bruce Schneier's SECRETS & LIES I had some insights into the technical aspects, but the nuances that Mr. Zoellick brings to these topics makes for compelling reading. He manages to raise thorny issues and provide answers from both sides of the issue.

Overall this is an invaluable book that should be read by anyone who seeks to understand the current state of intellectual property laws, the challenges imposed by the connected world, or how the laws and challenges combine to change the playing field. As stated above, the DMCA alone will have wide implications in my profession, and is certain to affect business operations and corporate policy in far ranging ways.

This book is very useful for beginners and intermediate programmers. "Debugging" is full of practical advice on debugging in general. It is not tied to any particular programming language.

The book describes 9 main debugging "rules", and many smaller "sub-rules". The rules (such as "Make it fail" or "Quit thinking and look") and sub-rules (such as "Start from a known state" or "Build instrumentation in") are derived from common sense and years of experience. Many people know most of the rules, but perhaps do not systematically follow them. "Debugging" clarifies and makes a systematic review of the debugging practices, with examples taken from real life, simplified to remove the jargon.

The book is quite funny and makes enjoyable reading. I am looking forward to more: perhaps we can see more stories in the next edition, or in a companion volume, or on the debugging rules web site.

An excellent book of reference for novice to medium level user.
Mr. Agans' book presents real life experiences, or as he calls them war stories and humor filled comment/anecdotes.

I find myself chuckling and giggling along while reading this
book, some of what he said brought back my own memories while
working/debugging on my own software bug(s), or other people's
bug(s) that I have somehow 'inherited' because they left the
company, or are too busy on other projects to debug their own

code. I like the metaphors that he uses to explain ideas or
concepts that seems a bit too complicated to understand.

Mr. Agans made this very clear in the beginning of his book;
the book is not a cover-it-all book, it is a general concept
book on how to isolate, find, and debug something that has gone
wrong. The principles presented by Mr. Agans can be applied to
situations covering everyday life. He presented examples of well
pump and light bulb, etc...

More experienced software/hardware engineers or more experienced
problem solvers who read this book might find it covering bases
that they already know, but the humor makes it worth while.

Debugging leads to quality products and competitive success. This book is the result of twenty years experience in troubleshooting hardware and software products. Agans documented his nine rules for debugging, and explains each one in a chapter. You can read this to get ideas for solving problems in a systematic way.

His first rule is "understand the system", another way to say "don't assume" or "read the manual". [His comments on "a politician" tells me he should follow rule #1 (p.18).] Sometimes the constraints of time and money will not let you capture enough information; management will set the rules and schedules.

The "quit thinking and look" rule says that facts should drive theories (like in criminal detection). Making a list of probable causes can be a guide to research. Page 54 tells of a bug in "one small, simple software routine". Is code inspection passe? Page 65 tells of a light not going on. Based on MTBF, its more likely the light bulb than the switch. But don't overlook the possibility of the connection at the receptacle.

"Divide and Conquer" would be better phrased as "narrowing the search" for a faulty component in a planned, logical manner. Changing one thing at a time advises against trial and error, or guessing at the solution. Keeping track of all changes allows narrowing the search, and any possible interaction with an earlier change.

"Check the Plug" suggests using a PRINT statement that works all the time, not just for a certain event. This is not practical advice in my experience! You should test the tool before using it for testing; recalibration is always good. "Get a Fresh View" is another way to restate the problem. When doing this you may suddenly realize what you've overlooked. Often someone has come across the same or similar problem. It can also be good politics to delegate responsibility.

Page 125 describes the classic "dirty gas filter" syndrome. Consider getting the gas lines blown out. A locking gas cap is one way to prevent this; don't overlook sabotage as a cause. "In the old system we knew how to crash it so they'd send us out on break." Chapter 11 recommends testing a fix by removing it to prove the change. This rules out any random differences; except when its obvious (p.128). Some problems do go away by itself. I once worked on a serially-reusable on-line program. After I made it reentrant (so it didn't modify the code) a lot of strange bugs just disappeared.

Chapter 13 gives a number of examples using the rules. The touchpad problem could have been avoided with either code inspection or programming standards. Or a better compiler? Chapter 14 tgells how the rules apply to a Help Desk. The last chapter suggests how to use this book at work or in school. But if your job resembles Dilbert's, bring your resume up to date (the tenth rule?).

It is great for teaching class on the basics of MS ACCESS.

Byron Giles
www.gilestechgroup.com

Each chapter is a Project. Project 1 took you through what you should already know about other Windows applications. I felt that I would not be trying to learn Access if I did not know how to use "Help" in other Windows applications.

Anyway, this was a great BASIC Access book. I did, however, have to send an email to Prentice Hall. After a week, I still have not heard from them. There are sections in the book called, "Discovery Zone Exercises". They let you figure out what to do by using "Help". Sometimes "Help" is no "Help". My advice to you is, if you can not figure out the "Zone" exercises just go on. I found one answer in the "Intermediate" book. Another at a book store.

With all that, the book is well written. They have you do the same thing more than once and sometimes in different ways. It earns 5 star's.

I am now starting on the "essentials Access 2000 intermediate" book. Look for that review.

I bought all three book, beginning, intermediate & advanced to use in a course that I teach in Theories of Database. My students used these books to learn Access on their own. The book is very clear with practical examples. It includes many hints and tips that help avoid many of the pitfalls that beginners will typically encounter. Gives plenty of assignments and examples. My only complaint in that the binding on the spiral addition is pretty flimsy. I highly recommend this book for beginners or for teachers looking for a good access "workbook".

This book as become my day-to-day bible to managing a professional service division within our product-oriented company. If you have your objectives and strategy clear, this book will help you getting organized with the tactics.

This book is "just what the doctor ordered" for anyone trying to develop a Professional Services(PS) organization that is aligned with other functional groups and the overall mission of a product company. It also should be required reading for any leader moving for the first time from a stand-alone PS company to head up a PS organization within a product company.
I found it to provide easy to read, practical guidance on what the components of the PS organization should be, what the mission and profitability drivers should be, key organizational interfaces and how it should be measured.
Also, this book was reviewed, chapter by chapter, by all PS leaders as well as other functional leaders within the company, to develop a "lessons learned" document as part of a services strategic planning process. Invaluable assistance!

I bought the book because I needed to startup a software engineering group within our established PS organization. The book provided very good insight in how a PS organization should run within a Product Company. It provide good food for thought in understanding the difference between a standalone PS organization and one attached to a Product Company. The content opened some eyes within our organization and reset some expectations. The book also validated some of the processes and focus of the existing PS organization. If you are starting up a PS organization from the ground up I recommend this book. If you have a PS organization already in place, within a product company, I also recommend this book to validate your current focus.

Mark Taylor's new edition of his book gives great insight on what to look for when shopping for a computerized shipping system. The chapter about "free" shipping systems is definitely eye-opening. A "must-read" for everyone in logistics management. The information on savings in the shipping department that can be realized through a computerized shipping system is simply amazing. I was very impressed with Mr. Taylor's knowledge. The new case study in this edition shows us in details how companies save large sums yearly by using a computerized shipping system.

While shipping of packages is important to so many businesses, it's getting more complicated every day. The author has done his homework and explains the many advantages of a computerized shipping system in clear terms. This is also a consumer-oriented book: you learn what NOT to do. I like the honesty and passion of the author. He's packed a lot into a concise book; share it with staff at all levels of your business. At 25 bucks, what a bargain.

This book really explains what to look out for if you are in the market for a shipping system and how a carrier supplied shipping system can actually cost you money instead of saving it. Easy to read and easy to understand for everyone.

Weinberg distills the essence from von Bertalanffy's classic and manages to present it in a very accessible fashion. The book has been out of print for quite a while so it is great to see a new edition. The message and information contained in here, although originally published in 1975, is now more relevant than ever.

Weinberg covers many aspects of systems theory beginning with the main stumbling block with the present scientific paradigm: the idea that the universe is mechanistic. His treatment is much more general than Robert Rosen's in "Life Itself" but still conveys why the mechanistic notion is flawed.

He then outlines the general systems theory approach before leading into the idea that a system is simply a way of looking at the world. He then outlines the principle of indifference. This leads straight into two sections outlining various aspects of making observations. Finally he discusses behaviour and then some general systems questions.

Throughout the book he uses many examples from disparate fields in conjunction with questions for further research. It is great to see someone who doesn't preach systems but actually uses the ideas.

Definitely a must-read as we decided how to solve the myriad of issues before us.

In computing, a timeless classic is anything that is worth reading for any reason other than to obtain a historical context after five years. If that still holds true after twenty five years, then it is truly an extraordinary piece of work. That label applies to this book. It is not about computing per se, but about how humans think about things and how "facts" are relative to time, our personal experience and environmental context.
Human thinking is a complex operation and that is the point of this book. The problems and examples presented are not those in computing, but problems in how we think about the world and how that world can be different from person to person. In many ways, Weinberg anticipates the development of the science of chaos, where small changes lead to disproportionate large changes. His example of the "small" change of a single character is a classic. A man was considering the purchase of a piece of real estate, but when told the cost was fourteen million dollars, sent the response by telegram, "No, price too high." However, somehow a character was dropped, so the agent received the message, "No price too high", purchased the property and so a classic error was invented.
Weinberg uses science and mathematics as the genesis point for most of his examples. The laws of thermodynamics, chance and simulations in state spaces are used to demonstrate the points. As someone with a wide background in science, I found his examples of how scientific thought gives us an anchor but yet alters over time excellent learning material. Thought problems are included at the end of each chapter and they cover many different areas. Some involve mathematics, others science and many could be the point of a vigorous philosophical debate. Together they form the best collection of thought experiments and points of contention that I have ever seen gathered together in one location.
This is a book that is a true classic, not in computing but in the broad area of scholarship. It is partly about the philosophy and mechanisms of science; partly about designing things so they work but mostly it is about how humans view the world and create things that match that view. This book will still be worth reading for a long time to come and it is on my list of top ten computing books of the year.

If I had to select a book that has influenced my thinking most, it would be this one. This book alone spurred my interest in Systems Research, and is one that I have gone back to re-read many times.

Gerald Weinberg has taken the essence of General Systems Theory and formatted it for the masses. His insight into the methodology, and his ability to combine humor with explanation makes this a must-read in the field. While many of the examples are programming-based, that does not detract from the usefullness of this work.

The publisher needs to understand the importance of this work, and put it back into print!

This book is a text for a class I am currently taking. While it covers all the basics, even the classics yet it also reflects how the cooking is today. The recipes come from a wide variety of sources and not just the school's own files.

I am lucky enough to have studied under Chef Labensky. This is an outstanding book. This was our text book at Mississippi University for Women. We used it for everything. It gives great history, backgrounds, techniques, and recipes. My husband, Colley, (Which I met at MUW)and I still use it on a regular basis and we have been out of culinary school for 2 years. I highly recommend this book for anyone considering culinary school.

This text is very thorough, and covers everything from history, nutrition and sanitation to classic and innovative recipes using the latest trendy ingredients. This text is geared specifically for the cooking student, however, with most recipes written to serve 12 or more, and ingredients listed by weight rather than volume. It will be tremendously usefull to add to a library of cookery books, and can be used to provide a solid foundation of the basic principals of cooking.

After working in IT for over a decade, one of the most interesting things I have found is how few people know what quality assurance is. Mr. Ginac has provided us with a simple and sound book on quality assurance that can help IT professionals to overcome some of these misconceptions. Its value can be seen on several fronts. First of all, its emphasis on the customer is refreshing, and is central to the focus of quality assurance. Second, its discourse is well rounded, illustrating that quality assurance is more broad in its focus than test planning and execution. In the latter point, it illustrates how metrics fit into the picture of quality assurance, and how QA is concerned with the entire process of developing software, from problem identification to solution delivery.

Mr. Ginac also touches on SEI's CMM, ISO 9000, and other topics of interest to the would-be quality professional. The thing that I hope that this book will do is to whet the reader's apetite for more on the topics discussed. As my title suggests, this book only touches the surface of a vast and inviting ocean of knowledge in this field. As such, I recommend it for the beinning to intermediate quality professional and for anyone in the IT field who wants to know what QA is.

I have been in the SQA business for 10+ years. I wanted to test my field knowledge by taking a certification. To my surprise, I did not pass the "Brainbench SQA Certification" (from brainbench.com) the first time I took it. Therefore, I wanted to find out what information I was missing. The test site recommended several books from Amazon.com. I choose this book because it seem to the information that I was looking for at a low cost. After reading this book, I was able to retest and pass the Brainbench SQA Certification.

What I like about this book is the basic industry information that an SQA Engineer should know. It is full of information in metrics. As a tester, I know that metrics were important but I did not know where to apply it effectively. It is also provided me some basic information in ISO 9000 and SEI CMM appraisals in customer-focused quality assurance.

I know there are many software organizations out there that have have not read this book. I highly recommend this book or similar basic book for those organizations that want to develop a quality product based on customer orientation.

This information-packed book taught me more about software quality from a service delivery point of view than I thought possible. I knew before reading it that it was not a typical SQA book, thanks to the previous reviews and a colleague's recommendation, so my expectations were set accordingly.

What I liked most about the book is the consistent focus on metrics that are meaningful to business users. While I was aware of many of the quality attributes discussed, I learned a few new ones to which I can apply to measuring the quality of applications that are delivered to end users. If you are unfamiliar with the term "quality attribute" it is a term that also means "desirable characteristic", and can be expressed as a technical characteristic (function or feature) or a service-oriented characteristic (quantified reliability, mean time between failures, etc.).

Another thing that make this book valuable to me is part that focused on developing questionnaires and eliciting from end users what they deemed to be quality attributes. This goes a long way towards aligning the IT/IS service delivery function to actual business requirements (instead of what we perceive to be business requirements - too often there is a wide chasm separating the two views). Moreover, extending the author's approach by communicating these quality attributes backwards into the application delivery organization that is responsible for developing applications, the ability of IT/IS to align to business requirements is further strengthened. Bear in mind that the flow down of quality attributes does not have to go to an internal development organization. Applications delivery also encompasses software vendors and consultants doing on- or off-site programming, as well as service bureaus and ASPs (application service providers). In the case of external sources of applications, the quality attributes are invaluable--no, essential--to the RFP, negotiating and contract stages of procuring and supporting the application. The value is that quality attributes are an objective way of expressing requirements that can be measured.

This book is must-reading for anyone who provides application support, including tier-2 support, business analysts and production services management. Although it is less than 210 pages in length, it contains a wealth of information that will lead to ideas and strategies for delivering better service and for more closely aligning IT/IS to the business. The only thing I did not like about the book is the "Software Quality Assurance" part of the title. Had I not been fortunate enough to have a friend who practically insisted that I read this book I would have never considered this gem. It rates five big stars by living up to the "customer-oriented" part of the title and for opening my eyes to some important concepts.