LAUG 2.0 News

Fire the Phone Company by Dave Field

The title sounds pretty enticing…how to fire the phone company. The book is about Voice Over IP, or VoIP, which is a technology that allows voice chat over the Internet. Even though the book is copyright 2006, it really felt dated. That’s probably because this is such a fast moving field. No mention was made of some of the more innovative products out today such as the usb flash based phone from Vonage nor any info about Skype being bought by ebay. Unfortunately, the book also completely ignored Apple’s very high quality entry into VoIP—iChat AV.

The book’s subtitle is “A Handy Guide to Voice Over IP.” Not to nitpick, but I wouldn’t call it a guide, rather a overview. The book gave the reader a brief yet complex overview of the history of VoIP communications. The book took a simple straightforward subject and overwhelmed the reader with hundreds of acronyms (I actually started counting). Most of the acronyms, while interesting, are completely impractical as a guide. These acronyms have little usage for the average person wanting to dump the phone company. In addition, I think the book unnecessarily scared readers away from using VoIP. Too much time was spent on technical details such as home wiring or firewalls. In reality, this stuff generally works out of the box with little configuration from the user.

Based on the cover and title, I expected more of a guide on what options for VoIP were out there and which company would be right for me. Field did provide a chapter on how to compare VoIP companies, but left all the research to the reader. While I respect that if he included recommendations, they might change by presstime, but too often in the book instead of offering practical advice, he simply suggested that readers use Google to do their own research.

Personally, ever time I’ve used VoIP solutions, they work! I didn’t have to configure firewalls, check the wiring in my house, it worked like a charm. Same for any customer I’ve worked with. I almost wondered…does he work for the phone company…and is he being paid to scare readers. I don’t think he researched his subject very well, and he based all his recommendations on personal experience. Again, this stuff isn’t rocket science. I can confidentially say it’s harder to secure a wireless router than to chat with someone over the internet

Field did do a decent job of giving readers who want to switch to VoIP descriptions of realistic problems and how to handle them, most notably how to establish 911 access and how to switch your land line number to your VoIP number.

Buy this book if you need a historical overview of VoIP for your computer classes, but as a guide for someone wanting to switch to making phone calls over the Internet—avoid this book because it will needlessly scare you.

Pros: Great if you own stock in AT&T/SBC, as people will be afraid to fire the phone company
Cons: Endless fear mongering and complexity inaccurately portrays the ease in which you can fire the phone company

2 out of 5 DogCows

Link for more information on Amazon.com

Leo Laporte’s Guide to Mac OS X Tiger

by Leo Laporte, Todd Stauffer

Celebrity endorsements can be both good and bad. When it’s a grill, an endorsement by George Foreman tends to work out. When OJ Simpson endorses you’re car rental service it’s bad. Given the general high quality of Leo Laporte’s podcast and TV shows, I had high hopes for this book. I was woefully disappointed. Same thing happened when I bought sneakers endorsed by a basketball star and my game didn’t improve at all. The book was really writeen by Todd Stauffer based on the screen shots of his Mac. Apparently Leo didn’t have too much involvement, just like that famous basketball player probably had little to say about the shoes with his name on it.

First, the book was very difficult to read from a design perspective. Looking at a page it was nearly impossible to find what you want. Anyone ever heard of the tab function or indentation. These tips are from Design 101..use your margins and indentations to emphasise certain points and organize them on the page. In addition, the table of contents and flow of the book was very confusing. A good intro book takes it for the User’s Experience perspective: start with the beginning when you turn on the mac and setup up a user account, and then setup email, and so on. Leo’s book starts with the essoteric aspects of the Finder. If you are a new user, that’s not very helpful until you understand more about your Mac and if you are an intermediate user, you already know this stuff. Finally, the book didn’t include enough screen pictures, and the screen pictures that were included were not very helpful. I wish I could tell you what pattern was used to determine what was pictures worthy and what wasn’t. Including pictures in a book help break up long text areas and the pictures get associated somehow with the topic being discussed. In this book, the pictures were not used to help balance the text nor did the layout effective use the pictures to illustrate the text being dicussed.

From a technical perspective, the book did a mediocare job of explaining Mac topics. Typical of many technical books, the book explained topics in a way that novice users wouldn’t understand and intermediate users would be insulted by. Granted, it’s a thin line to walk: explain it straightforward enough that a novice will understand it but insightful enough that an intermediate user would appreciate and learn from it. At least Todd and Leo aren’t alone in their failures. A great example is multihoming. Multihoming is an advanced way of using mutliple network connections. A novice would unlikely care about it and a intermediate user wasn’t given an explanation of how to set up multihoming–only that it exists.

Worst of all, this book is just plain wrong in some area. In the troubleshooting chapter, Todd recommends running Norton Utilities when you have problems. What? Norton Utilities is not compatible with Tiger. That’s been known since Tiger came out. He also indicates that hardware problems with kernel panics are usually related to drivers and never considers that hardware may be bad or incompatible. Those are some serious errors. Granted it’s only a few errors, but errors bad enough that a computer could be rendered unusable after taking some of his advise.

Generally, this is a below average introduction to Mac OS X Tiger.

Pros: Not terribly expensive, a quick read
Cons: Hard to read and understand. Technical errors and inconsistent topic depth

2 out of 5 dogcows

Click here for more information on Amazon.com

Let me start by saying, “I’m a designer not a programmer”. This in-depth book is over 900 pages and slightly intimidating in it’s scope as well as it’s heft, But Dreamweaver 8 - The Missing Manual is not a book to read cover-to-cover. This book imparts a good deal of knowledge in the basics of web development and web technology, making it a useful reference for experienced Dreamweaver developers and complete beginners such as I.

Dreamweaver 8 is the latest version of the popular web design and development application used to create some of the world’s best websites. To give you a little background, I just finished the layouts for a project of creating my first website. I’ve owned Dreamweaver since version 2 (1998) and although they changed naming conventions (MX, 2004, etc.) I still never got the hang of creating even a simple website. Now, with the help of this book, I hope to finally get up to speed in the web game.

As far as web development software goes, it is the gold standard and has recently been bought by Adobe from Macromedia. Most graphic applications today do not come with a printed manual and usually get one in PDF format on the CD, but who would print out a 900 page book? This book fills that gap.

The author, David Sawyer McFarland, begins with the basics of how to navigate the software as well as the basics of web design and progresses to advanced features like database integration, CSS, XML, and XSLT. For the novice user like myself, it gradually steps them up to the ability to make full-featured high quality websites. For experienced users, the book is compartmentally designed to provide quick access to the information you are looking for. Because the book covers not only Dreamweaver functions, but web design basics and other background skills, it can easily be used as one-stop-shopping for anyone wanting to be proficient in web design.

The tips and notes provide useful information that isn’t readily available elsewhere and tutorials help readers develop and learn the skills as they read along. The author is particularly helpful in pointing out not only the lesser-known shortcuts and tips, but valuable extensions available to make the developer’s life easier. The writing is short and to-the-point and the book is well-written and easy to access, making it an indispensable desk reference for novice and experienced Dreamweaver developers alike. Now, if it would only finish my project for me.

4 out of 5 dogcows

Dreamweaver 8 - The Missing Manual Click to learn more at Amazon’s Web Site and earn the LAUG some money.

by Chuck Toporek

This is not a beginners book. If you are looking for a book that explains how to double click or what an icon is, look elsewhere. The primary audience for this book is someone who is familiar with the Mac and wants to learn all the tips, tricks, and idiosyncricies of Tiger. This is the type of book someone working in a computer lab or at a help desk would turn to when you need a quick answer to a question. Every IT department should have a copy of this book available.

One of the greatest aspects of the book is Toporek’s tables of keyboard shortcuts in every section. I generally like keeping my hands on the keyboard and every time I move to the mouse, time is wasted. If there is a way to do something, anything on the keyboard in Tiger, Toporek tells you. I found myself writing little post-it notes of shortcuts I never knew and now can’t live without.

The book is extremely comprehensive, not just covering the Finder, but also applications and utilities, Unix, networking, and troubleshooting.

If I had to pick one book to be stranded on a dessert island with (of course that island would need wireless internet and electricity) it would be this book. I can’t think of a real world question this book couldn’t answer. Many of the sections were in a “How do I ” style like “Change password for User Account?” or “Share a USB Printer over an Ethernet Network.” Being a real world Tiger user, I can’t think of a single question this book doesn’t answer. I also found it handy when there were things I heard about in Tiger, but couldn’t remember where they were or how to use them. For example, I know there’s a program that will take pictures of the screen, but can’t remember where it is. I can’t search help if I don’t know what I’m looking for. A quick flip through the Applications and Utilities section in the book helped me find what I was looking for.

This is not a tutorial book. Toporek states the “how to” do something without actually walking you through it and doesn’t explain why he’s telling you to do something. I like to think of this as a recipe book for using Tiger. Follow the recipe exactly and you’ll be fine, but don’t expect to be told why you must preheat the oven or make sure to temper the eggs when making custard.

I highly recommend this book for a intermediate Mac user who would rather look something up in a book then search for the answers in Google or call their tech savvy friends. I went out and bought one personally for myself I liked it so much!

Pros: Efficient and straightforward guide on how to use Tiger efficiently and effectively.
Cons: Not for the intro user, if you are looking for a bunch of pretty pictures and hand-holding–go elsewhere.

5 out of 5 dogcows
5 out of 5 dog cows

Follow this link to purchase the book on Amazon:
Mac OS X Tiger Pocket Guide (Pocket References)

“Mac OS X Internals” by Amit Singh

Publisher: Addison-Wesley
ISBN: 0321278542
Price: $64.99
Author web site: http://osxbook.com/

“MacOS X Internals” is the first book introduced since the advent of OS X that focuses on the low-level details of the MacOS in a way that will give technical people, ranging from geeky end-users to hardware-level programmers, a thorough and fascinating tour of the MacOS. This book is not for “average” end users; it is not an introduction to how to use a Mac. Nor is this book for people looking to get started programming on the Mac; there are plenty of books designed for new Mac developers. What “MacOS X Internals” tries to be is something unique: a guide to the MacOS from the bottom up, and it hits this mark very well.

“MacOS X Internals” can be roughly divided into three parts: a technical history of the MacOS, a review of the MacOS firmware and booting process, and a technical tour of various parts of the OS itself (such as interprocess communication and the file system, to pick two at random). The first section will appeal to any technically-included user of the MacOS, the latter two are aimed more at programmers, although there is plenty there to increase the knowledge of anyone with a strong technical bend, whether they have coded before or not. The MacOS history is a detailed trip down memory lane from the very first post-Next developer builds of MacOS X right up to Tiger and beyond. The features introduced in each OS are described in detail with emphasis on technical and “under the hood” changes. The author is clearly an enthusiast as well, as he frequently sprinkles entertaining bits of trivia in with the meat of the main narrative.

Moving on from the historical sections to the present, author Amit Singh gives a blow-by-blow description of the process of the Mac booting. If you have ever wondered exactly what the Mac is doing as the power flows and the grey apple logo appears, this is for you. Everything from the sequence of initial power-on tests, to the bootloaders and Open Firmware onto the higher level unix boot process are covered in detail. Of special note is the extensive coverage of Open Firmware, which is much more then a merely the “BIOS” of a PowerPC Mac. Singh describes many activities that a system programmer can do in Open Firmware, including making a draggable windowing environment and even programming the famous “Towers of Hanoi.” Unfortunately, this book was mostly finished before the Intel Macs arrived on the scene, and while there is a section on the EFI (extensible firmware interface) that is the “BIOS” of all Intel Macs, it is not nearly as deep as the Open Firmware section (updated information on EFI and other topics can be found on the author’s web site at http://osxbook.com/).

Roughly following the guide to the MacOS booting, Singh delves into the meat of OS X’s Unix underpinnings, describing how the MacOS really runs “under the hood.” This section covers all the expected topics, including the kernel, interprocess communication, and memory is very thorough fashion, with tons of code snippets all clearly explained. This will be especially useful for readers who are familiar with how other Unixes work behind the scenes, as Singh frequently and helpfully points of the areas where MacOS differs from other flavors of Unix. There is a great section on the various file systems that OS X supports, which is notable because other then a simple list, I have never seen this information in a book with such detail. The section of the primary OS X filesystem, HFS Plus, is very useful for both developers and power users alike.

“Mac OS X Internals” clocks in at 1641 pages in the end, and is over two inches thick. I was thoroughly impressed by this book. The author’s technical knowledge, as well as his enthusiasm and skill at presenting these topics is excellent. It’s hard to find anything negative to say about this book other then the the above-mentioned need to have more information on EFI (which isn’t the author’s fault, it was a matter of timing). I do wish the book came with an electronic version, as this would have made searching and copying the code snippets much easier. There is a coupon included for a time-limited trial of online access to the text, but I would prefer that a PDF be included on a CD with the book, even if this required an increase in the price (you can buy an electronic version on Amazon, but this is separate from the print version). These minor complaints aside, I cannot recommend “MacOS X Internals” enough. It is the finest technical book on MacOS X yet published, and puts Apple’s own technical documentation to shame in comparison. If you are a highly technical end user of developer, this book belongs on your shelf.

Summary: a technical tour-de-force and as thorough an overview of the MacOS as has ever made it into print with appeal to everyone from very technical end-users to system programmers

Plusses: Amazing wealth of technical detail, thorough coverage of all aspects of MacOS underpinnings, great sections on OS X history, boot process and file system, tons of programming examples
Minuses: A bit too much Open Firmware minutiae and not enough EFI minutiae, no searchable copy included

4 dog-cows

(this review has been updated from the original version…additional information on the author’s web site and availbility of the PDF version have been added based on reader comments on this blog)

Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

I really had high hopes for this book. So many of my clients are switchers. They go from a PC to a Mac and don’t have a grasp of any of the basics. “Where’s my Outlook? Internet Explorer? Oh no!!”

Unfortunately this book is for intermediate PC users who are switching to the Mac, not novices. The book assumes knowledge of how to configure a PC and then builds on that knowledge for you to be able to do it on a Mac. The book tells you how to move your files from your PC to your new Mac, PC programs and their Mac equivalents, and how to configure your Mac. Not much time is really spent on how to “use” your Mac. To be fair, that’s what the title says “Switching to the Mac”, not “How to use a Mac, Switcher edition.”

The best chapter by far is the “Transferring email and contacts” I took copious amounts of notes because the chapter was so detailed. Anyone who wants to move their emails from their PC should buy this book. It covers using Outlook, Eudora, Netscape and more to their Mac equivalents, including OS X’s Mail.

In my experiences, people switch to a Mac because they found PCs too difficult to understand. Explaining things in PC terms kinda defeats the purpose of switching. For novices, look at one of the Intro to Tiger books.

If someone isn’t an intermediate PC user trying to swtich, but a novice…by this book for the person setting up your Mac so they can get all your information off your PC and make the transition to Mac as seemless as possible.

Pros: Expert advice on how to take your files, settings, and programs from a PC to a Mac
Con: If you wanted to learn all that stuff, you’d probably still be using the PC

Three out of five dog cows

As a member of the User Group and in my professional capacity, I get to see a lot of different books. After reviewing this book, I gave it to everyone that got an iPod for the holidays… the book is that great.It’s probably one of the best technical books I’ve read.

First, the books is extremely well organized into eight basic chapters depending on what you have questions on. You can easily find a particular concept in either the Table of Contents or Index. The reader can jump to the item they have a question about or simply read the book from cover to cover. Breen covers both the Mac and Windows aspects of using an iPod and iTunes.

The writing was clear and straight-forward, and while Been did not talk over your head with technical jargon, he didn’t treat you like a “Dummy” either. Great useful tips are interlaced throughout the chapters with some things that are major time savers. He covers everything, not only music, but how to synchronize photos, contacts and appointments with your Mac or PC. Many books gloss over this highly useful aspect of using your iPod

The best chapter by far is the troubleshooting section at the end. When you have a problem with your iPod, Apple’s own documentation is very difficult to find and understand. He takes you step by step through what to do when your iPod stops working and all the possible fixes. That will save you a trip to the Apple store or waiting on hold with tech support.

I tried very hard to find something to counteract my overwhelming positive review, but I can’t. The book explains all aspects of using an iPod—no stone is unturned. The book is easy to read, easy to find the items you need. It’s even easy to carry around. It’s about an inch thick, 5 inches wide and 7 inches long making it easy to fit into a backpack, purse or briefcase. Heck, it’s only $10, and would be a bargain at twice the price.

Not only is this book great for a beginner, but even an experienced iPodder might have a question or two this book will cover for them. If you give someone an iPod, give them this book along with it!

Pros: Excellent reference on how to use an iPod and iTunes
Cons: He could put iPod support people out of business!

5 out of 5 dog cows

Ever see one of those coffee table books on clearance at the bookstore? The book is stunning, but once you see the pictures, you’re like “so what? Where’s the beef”? That’s this book. All show no substance. There are lots of pictures but the problem is a picture isn’t worth a thousand words, otherwise why would you need a manual? A manual needs words to explain concepts!

This book appears to be designed for novice iPod users trying to expand their knowledge, and it fails miserably.

I found the book disorganized; it reminded me of a bad PowerPoint presentation. A beginner’s book should have narratives walking people through the steps and use pictures to explain those steps in a logical order. Each concept only had one picture to describe the process, even if it was a multistep function. For example, on the section “Getting music in your iPod” the picture to explain the concept was a iPod docked.

This book tries to be all things to all people. Kelby starts by telling you how how to connect your iPod and leaves you with a chapter on Podcasting. I doubt if a new user will move through the concepts this quickly. Every topic was given one page, some concepts need multipages and some only need a half. An entire page was devoted to the fact the iPod doesn’t have an off button.

Overall, this book did a poor job of explaining technical concepts to novice iPod users and was too simplistic for advanced users. The pictures didn’t explain the concepts and the prose didn’t explain things well either. Kelby also has a strange sense of humor that got in the way of his explanations and gave too many of his personal opinions rather than sticking to the facts. I didn’t need to learn about his musical tastes or his other projects… I just wanted to learn how to use of my iPod.

Pros: Visually appealing, will look nice in your collection and impress your neighbors.
Cons: Looks aren’t everything, style without substance.

1 out of 5 dog cows

Do you ever notice when reading some product manual, there are these little grey boxes in the margin that mentions a tip or trick. You read it and think, “Hey, that’s great.” This is a book all about those kind of tips.

I liked the fact that the book was a series of these short tips. I get interrupted easily, and the tips only take about a minute to read. I could easily start and stop the book without losing my place. I recommend reading it near the computer, because you really need to apply the tip if it’s useful to you, not just read about it.

Kelby walks you through all aspects of Tiger and a majority of iLife. However, this is not a book for novices or people that haven’t used Tiger for awhile. The reader should have a basic understanding of Tiger to understand how his tips will save you time. I wouldn’t quite call the tips “Killer”, but simply very useful. Maybe the author tried to call it very useful, and then marketing hyped it up to call it killer.“Killer tips”sounds better.

Personally, I knew a third of the tips because I use Tiger so much. Another third of the tips had no relevance to me, such tips related to sending and receiving faxes. However, the final third of tips were great and more than worth the price of the book. Often, it was just a simple item that might save a few minutes each day. For example, I never tried dragging the dashboard icon out of the dock. Never really thought about it, but my dock is pretty full, and since I can just press F12 to activate dashboard, it was wasted space on my Dock. Other tips I enjoyed were all the ideas about customizing the Finder or Spotlight searches. Sure I knew them, but didn’t really think about how moving things around would save me a few minutes each day.

Some of the tips were really cool, combining many of tiger’s hidden functions into practical “gee whiz” projects. An example of one of the more interesting tips was how, in a few short mouse clicks and an iSight camera, you can turn your Mac into a home surveillance webcam.

One of Tiger’s most powerful and underutilized features is Automator. While Automator is complex, I would have liked to have seen tips on some easy ways to write workflows.

Pros: Great, time saving and cool tips useful to anyone that works with Tiger. Highly recommend it for someone who uses Tiger on a regular basis, even people who think they are experts.
Cons: I wouldn’t quite call them “killer” tips, falls short on Automator.

5 out of 5 dog cows

Ryan Shaw, PC World Review by Bonnie Hall Targeted at both new and experienced eBay users alike, this book is the ultimate guide book on everything and anything to do with eBay. Being a novice eBay user, I was interested to see if this book would help me understand the fundamentals of online bidding and how not to get duped by some of the artificial sales that everyone hears about.The fact that there is a diverse range of things available for purchase is why eBay still remains popular to this day.

I have to admit I own no less than eight different “Bible” books so being impartial may not be relistic in describing my opinions here.

The book starts off by explaining some of the basics associated with eBay; from registering as a user, to understanding the different types of auctions available. On the buying side of things, researching, tracking auctions and bidding strategies are also discussed. For those eBay users who wish to sell instead of buy items, making a particular item attractive to the bidding masses is no easy feat. The book covers everything from creating a seller account, weeding out the non-paying bidders and placing snapshots of the product, to accepting online payments.Thinking of becoming a full- time seller and creating a business through eBay? This topic is also represented, with various sections on how to save money by taking advantage of strategic buying and selling.

Though new to the world of eBay, it gave me the confidence to buy and sell products with the best of them.

• The authoritative reference-tutorial on eBay-the world’s leading online auction service-packed with power-user tips and tricks.
• Clear explanations and illustrated step-by-step instructions take readers through the entire eBay process-from the “eBaysics”of buying and selling to running an eBay business.
• Written by an expert eBay user and veteran author, the book covers all aspects of eBay.
• Discusses eBay troubleshooting and includes useful appendices that explore hardware and software needs, eBay lingo, and basic HTML markup terms.

This comprehensive guide covers what you need to know. Learn how to bid successfully, choose items to sell that buyers want to buy, conduct safe financial transactions, take advantage of feedback, find the true bargains when buying, and get a fair price for things you sell. You’ll even find an entire section to guide you through setting up and managing a practical, profitable business on eBay.

• Understand how eBay works, what it can and cannot sell, and how to take advantage of all its services.
• Find out what makes a good User ID, why you should set up multiple inboxes, and how to protect your privacy.

The following bullets are taken from the back cover:

• Navigate the site and explore different auction types.
• Find out what makes a good User ID, why you should set up multiple inboxes, and how to protect your privacy.
• Avoid fraud and learn how to deal with questionable sellers and complicated transactions.
• Choose the right items to sell, create sales listings that attract bids, and capture images that generate buyer interest.
• Learn to pack and ship items for safe,timely delivery.
• Discover how to accept credit card and other electronic payments.
• Develop a business strategy, set up a schedule, track expenses and income, and report taxes.
• Identify good sources for building your inventory.
• Create attractive,easy-to-read auction listings using eBay’s features and HTML.

Pros: Comprehensive yet easy to understand. Well organized.
Cons: General focus; if you need more depth this is not the book for you.

5 out of 5 dog cows