Category Archives: Books

Book Reviews Books Web/Tech

Book Review: Using Drupal (O’Reilly Press)

May 10, 2012 – 7:58 pm

Using Drupal by Angela Byron, Addison Berry, and Bruno De Bondt is a comprehensive introduction to Drupal that can help get your first Drupal project off the ground.

Learning Drupal is a personal project of mine of mine this year, so reading this book was definitely part of my education. I compliment the authors on the friendly and warm writing style in the book. The book provides a solid introduction into the world of Drupal including starting with a history of content management on the web, and then delving into how Drupal works.

Some notable parts of this book (for me at least) are:

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Book Reviews Books Web/Tech

Book Review: Take Control of BBEdit

May 1, 2012 – 10:11 pm

I rank BBEdit as one of those applications that few mortals ever get to make really hum. It has many features under the hood that go underutilized or completely forgotten. Take Control of BBEdit  by Glenn Fleishman dives into this complex application.

Fleishman’s approach in the book is to take the reader through install, setup, and working with the various BBEdit features, working with documents, writing more efficiently with BBEdit’s tools, editing text, wrangling text (automating reusable text elements), search and replace, and then through working with web pages and sites. He does a great job of putting together how BBEdit users had to put together working with text, managing web sites, and managing projects to maximize BBEdit.

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Book Reviews Books

Book Review: Drupal Development Tricks for Designers by Dani Nordin

April 12, 2012 – 7:23 pm

Learning Drupal is one of my main technology learning goals for 2012, so I was interested in reading Drupal Development Tricks for Designers by Dani Nordin. While I am not a designer, I was interested in ready a Drupal book directed at the non-coding masses since I am learning Drupal. The first thing to get out is that this book isn’t about design but rather walks designers how they can create a development environment for their Drupal projects. I am a believer in self sufficiency on tech projects so I am down with the aim of this book and think Nordin really hits the mark with this book.

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Book Reviews Books Collaboration Tools SharePoint

Book Review: SharePoint 2010 at Work by Mark Miller

April 7, 2012 – 12:59 pm

SharePoint at Work Book CoverMy luck with picking SharePoint 2010 books is continuing because I just read SharePoint 2010 at Work by Mark Miller who assembles a veritable “Best Of” EndUserSharePoint.com writing. This book is a keeper! The book chockfull of practical SharePoint knowledge in multiple facets of designing, developing, and deploying SharePoint 2010 inside the corporate enterprise. The book is actually a compilation of articles written by SharePoint 2010 practitioners who work in the industry.

The  SharePoint Maturity Model that leads off the book  should be required reading for anybody deploying Microsoft SharePoint 2010 today. As I’ve often said, it’s not that SharePoint is bad, it’s the implementation. The SharePoint Maturity Model (by Sadalit Van Buren) homes in on one of the biggest issues I’ve encountered with SharePoint through multiple contracts as a technical writer and that is that too many times when it comes to SharePoint that organizations don’t really know what they have and focus on projects that may not bring a suitable Return on Investment. Organizations need to have a cohesive way to analyze and understand the SharePoint platform as a whole that makes this article required reading in my opinion.

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Book Reviews Books Reading SharePoint

Book Review: SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real World Projects (Microsoft Press)

March 22, 2012 – 7:37 pm

I am a sucker for practical technology books especially about Microsoft SharePoint so Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real World Projects hits my sweet spot with its well paced projects that take readers through all the stages to create and implement a SharePoint project using out of the box features. It puts me in my mind of the excellent SharePoint 2010 for Project Management book by Dux Raymond Sy.

The projects based approach to this book is a real selling point especially since you don’t even need to be a fully trained SharePoint developer/administrator in order to follow them and the create the projects. The book’s projects run the gamut from a project management solution, a basic FAQ solution, to a resource scheduling solution. Project complexity grows as the book progresses but each project sticks to the format of Identifying the Business Problems; Gathering Information; Designing the Solution; Building the Solution; and Managing the Solution.

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Book Reviews Books iPad Macintosh Reading

Book Review: Publishing with iBooks Author by Nellie McKesson and Adam Witwer

March 10, 2012 – 2:27 pm

I read Publishing with iBooks Author because I am scoping out the iBooks format for some potential personal projects. As a technical writer, I know that eBooks are part of my professional future as well. The book serves as a great introduction to iBooks Author even for those without extensive electronic publishing experience.

The book starts with a tour of the application that provides feature and interface details on this very well designed authoring application. Chapter 2 delves into Book Building Basics that while second nature to many publishing professionals including print jockeys takes on some added wrinkles especially when it comes to widgets and interactivity. I was happy with the book’s approach in Chapter 3. While iBooks Author includes a powerful text editor (along the lines of the excellent Apple Pages or so it reminds me of), if you are like me you are going to import content from a document to publish – so I found the directions on importing a text file to be especially useful (and my favorite part of the book).

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Book Reviews Books iPad iPhone Macintosh Productivity Reading

Book Review: Take Control of Screen Sharing in Lion by Glenn Fleishman (TidBITS Publishing)

March 7, 2012 – 7:07 pm

Take Control of Screen Sharing in Lion by Glenn Fleishman from TidBITS Publishing, Inc is a comprehensive book about the technology and art of Screen Sharing in OSX Lion. It’s the book to read if you want to learn the ropes of screen sharing in OSX Lion.

Fleishman leads readers through the basics of screen sharing through screen sharing with iChat (good coverage just too bad iChat is going away); sharing via BonJour; sharing via direct network connection; sharing via Back to My Mac; and sharing via Skype. The steps are all very detailed in each section. However, I would have liked the book to be a bit more generous with screen captures for the more novice Mac users reading this book.

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Book Reviews Books Collaboration Tools Microsoft Office Microsoft Office 2010 Word 2010

Book Review: Security and Privacy for Microsoft Office 2010 Users by Mitch Tulloch

March 5, 2012 – 8:02 pm

Security and Privacy for Microsoft Office 2010 Users by Mitch Tulloch is a book I’ve been trying to find for years. Throughout my time as a technical writer, I’ve bumped into some minor to major security and privacy issues related to the development and distribution of Microsoft Office documents including some that caused a measure of embarrassment to people. By extension of my work as a technical writer, I’ve had to give both formal and one-on-one training about some of the topics in this book and can tell you it is easy to say it’s just Microsoft Office until something you don’t want to leak out gets out in one of your documents. read more »

 
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Book Reviews Books Mobile Devices Reading

Book Review: Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual by Peter Meyers (O’Reilly Media/Pogue Press)

March 1, 2012 – 9:31 pm


I bought a Kindle Fire on its launch day. While I’ve come to enjoy the device, I read Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual by Peter Myers to see if there if there was anything I missed in my tinkering with the Fire. Well, I am pleased to report that the book provides a friendly yet in-depth coverage of the Kindle Fire’s features. Even if you are a longtime Kindle Fire user, you will find something in this book.

Kindle Fire: The Missing Manual takes the reader from unpacking and setting up Amazon’s hot new eReader to using it as a traditional eReader, perusing the Newsstand even consuming video and music on the device. If you are open to use it as a tablet, section III of the book takes readers through using the Fire for email, managing your contacts, and web browsing. Section IV of the book is devoted to tricking out the Kindle Fire with apps from the Amazon App Store for the full realm of tablet tasks.

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Book Reviews Books Reading Web/Tech Weblogs

Book Review: Professional WordPress by Hal Stern, David Damstra, and Brad Wilson

February 21, 2012 – 8:34 pm

Like many people, I’ve had an ongoing love/hate relationship with WordPress through the course of running my personal blog and some freelance assignments so I am always open to learning more about the platform. I recently read Professional WordPress by Hal Stern, David Damstra, and Brad Wilson from Wiley Publishing, which unlike many other WordPress books focuses on the platform’s backend and tackles the ins and outs of WordPress in the enterprise. Even having some experience installing WordPress myself, I really didn’t know much about its backend and this book really filled in some gaps in my learning.

While there is not much of anything new to learn in the first two chapters, the book really hits its stride when it takes the reader through the WordPress Core and Loop. Both of these topics might be a bit black box to some WordPress users especially if they’ve never had the opportunity to install and tune the product in the wild.

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