Authors: Hal R. Varian. Joseph Farrell. Carl Shapiro.
Paperback, 112 pages
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: 2005-01-31


Reviews :

    The Economics of Information Technology is a concise and accessible review of important economic factors affecting information technology industries. These industries are characterized by high fixed costs and low marginal costs of production, large switching costs for users, and strong network effects. Hal Varian outlines the basic economics of these industries while Joseph Farrell and Carl Shapiro describe the impact of these factors on competition policy. The volume is an ideal introduction for undergraduate and graduate students in economics, business strategy, law and related areas....

Authors: Kathryn Keranen. Robert Kolvoord.
Paperback, 186 pages
Publisher: ESRI Press
Publication Date: 2008-06-01


Reviews :

    The fourth volume in the Our World GIS Education series features open-ended activities that stress the use of GIS in problem solving and decision making. This book encourages readers to investigate and answer questions, create their own analyses, and make decisions based on real-world concerns. Designed for high school and college students, the lessons build on the rich array of GIS tools available, enabling the students to perform sophisticated analyses. This book contains a student resources DVD with exercises and data and a software DVD with a 180-day trial of ArcView 9.2....

Authors: Alan Cooper.
Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: Sams
Publication Date: 1999-03-23
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    The Inmates are Running the Asylum argues that, despite appearances, business executives are simply not the ones in control of the high-tech industry. They have inadvertently put programmers and engineers in charge, leading to products and processes that waste huge amounts of money, squander customer loyalty, and erode competitive advantage. They have let the inmates run the asylum. Alan Cooper offers a provocative, insightful and entertaining explanation of how talented people continuously design bad software-based products. More importantly, he uses his own work with companies big and small to show how to harness those talents to create products that will both thrill their users and grow the bottom line....

    In this book about the darker side of technology's impact on our lives, Alan Cooper begins by explaining that unlike other devices throughout history, computers have a "meta function:" an unwanted, unforeseen option that users may accidentally invoke with what they thought was a normal keystroke. Cooper details many of these meta functions to explain his central thesis: programmers need to seriously reevaluate the many user-hostile concepts deeply embedded within the software development process.

Rather than provide users with a straightforward set of options, programmers often pile on the bells and whistles and ignore or deprioritize lingering bugs. For the average user, increased functionality is a great burden, adding to the recurrent chorus that plays, "computers are hard, mysterious, unwieldy things." (An average user, Cooper asserts, who doesn't think that way or who has memorized all the esoteric commands and now lords it over others, has simply been desensitized by too many years of badly designed software.)

Cooper's writing style is often overblown, with a pantheon of cutesy terminology (i.e., "dancing bearware") and insider back-patting. (When presenting software to Bill Gates, he reports that Gates replied: "How did you do that?" to which he writes, "I love stumping Bill!") More seriously, he is also unable to see beyond software development's importance--a sin he accuses programmers of throughout the book.

Even with that in mind, the central questions Cooper asks are too important to ignore: Are we making users happier? Are we improving the process by which they get work done? Are we making their work hours more effective? Cooper looks to programmers, business managers, and what he calls "interaction designers" to question current assumptions and mindsets. Plainly, he asserts that the goal of computer usage should be "not to make anyone feel stupid." Our distance from that goal reinforces the need to rethink entrenched priorities in software planning. --Jennifer Buckendorff ...

Authors: Andy Mulholland. Nick Earle.
Paperback, 408 pages
Publisher: Evolved Technologist
Publication Date: 2008-04-18


Reviews :

    Mesh Collaboration: Creating new business value in the network of everything. Mesh Collaboration, a new book by Andy Mulholland and Nick Earle, helps companies understand how to thrive and grow in a fast moving, ultracompetitive, globalized world by telling the story of Jane Moneymaker, the CEO of the fictitious Vorpal, Inc. Mesh Collaboration continues the story started in Mashup Corporations. In that book, Moneymaker and her team grappled with mashups and service-oriented architecture and the nature of Vorpal's relationships with innovators, customers, suppliers, and with the IT department. Mashups allowed a new form of business model, focused on selling customized products to niche markets and using the power of viral marketing. In Mesh Collaboration we pick up the story as Moneymaker and her team face the challenges of scaling the new business model in the multi-cultural globalized world. General sales and administrative costs are soaring and it is unclear why. Using the technique of explanatory fiction, Mesh Collaboration shows how Moneymaker merges the new world of Long Tail niche business models with the mass-market enterprise business model. Part 2 addresses the way that Web 2.0 collaborative techniques can be expanded beyond the role they initially played in creating niche markets. Part 3 shows how smart services can transform traditional industrial businesses by focusing on Power Plus, Vorpal¿s larger sister company. Power Plus expands beyond commodity products that compete only on price to a new model focusing on delivering business value by providing the whole solution through collaborative innovation. The last part of the book provides analysis of key questions that arise in each scenario....

Authors: Monika Mathé.
Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Publication Date: 2006-01-10


Reviews :

    In this unique book, osCommerce expert "Monika in Germany" lets you in on her secrets on how to hack your way to that perfect osCommerce site. This cookbook provides you with ready-made solutions for customizing your osCommerce installation and seasoning it with exciting new features. With a total of 69 recipes, this book helps you improve all important areas of your default installation.

Written by an acknowledged osCommerce expert, the book not only gives you ready made solutions that you can easily incorporate into your system, but it also explains to you how these solutions work and shows you in detail how to implement them. This also helps you learn about the underlying API and later create your own variations to suit your very own taste.

The focus of this book is not to teach osCommerce, but to give solutions to specific problems. For learning osCommerce, we suggest that you either read Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Professional Edition or Building Online Stores with osCommerce: Beginner Edition. This cookbook, however, can be a great companion for any of these books.

osCommerce has been around since March 2000. At present there are over 10,000 live, registered osCommerce sites, and about 100,000 registered community members. Apart from providing ready-made solutions to problems, as well as a huge repository of information, the osCommerce community is a living entity with which we can all interact. With the rising success and popularity of this remarkable piece of software, things can only get better.

The book has 11 chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of osCommerce.
Chapter 1 equips you with a few very easy and very important changes to the basic design which will make developing and later modifying a whole new template a breeze.
Chapter 2 will help you modify your navigation to ensure a smoother shopping experience for your customers.
Chapter 3 covers infoboxes and turns you into an expert in tweaking them to your needs.
Chapter 4 deals with one of the most important visual parts of your shop, the product display in the listings and the detail page.
Chapter 5 outlines different methods to make searching on your site a fun experience. You want your customers to use your search and to find the products you want to sell to them.
Chapter 6 highlights customizations of the checkout process, namely the flow from the shopping cart to the shipping and payment pages up to the order email.
Chapter 7 talks about new shipping modules. You will learn how to adapt existing modules to create completely new rate systems for your shop.
Chapter 8 focuses on existing payment modules and how they can be tweaked.
Chapter 9 provides tips on efficiently using banners as a marketing tool.
Chapter 10 is a goodie bag of extra special treats to indulge your sweet tooth.
Chapter 11 tackles changes in the admin area. You alone will be the keeper of these secret recipes hidden to the public eye.

This book is aimed at people with existing online stores, built using osCommerce. The book follows a systematic approach whereby users can modify and extend features on their already existing osCommerce site. Each chapter deals with a different aspect , and provides ready-made recipes for modifying code to your requirements. The author starts by explaining basic changes one can make to the design of your store, and then covers features like navigation, images, shipping and payment modules, and even explains how to make changes on the administrator's side and keeping your own recipes private....

Authors: Thomas S. Gray. Claire Mencke.
Paperback, 411 pages
Publisher: Wiley
Publication Date: 2000-01-10
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    When you need on-the-spot answers to your online investment questions, look no further than Teach Yourself Investing Online. Presented with the clarity and functionality that make all Teach Yourself guides so popular, this book arms you with the tools necessary to make online investing a rewarding and satisfying experience.

Whether you've never used the Internet to make a financial decision or you're on your way to being an active day trader, Teach Yourself Investing Online helps you find the information you need to make wise decisions. Discover online investing by exploring financial Web sites, creating an investment plan, and choosing a broker. The book preps you on how to investigate your options before slapping down your money as well as how to track performance of potential or actual investments. When you're ready, more advanced topics cover a vide variety of online features including bonds, options, futures, mutual funds, IPOs, day trading, and messages boards....

    At one time or another, everyone is a newcomer to the world of personal investing. Teach Yourself Investing Online, by financial journalists Thomas S. Gray and Claire Mencke, is an easy-to-follow primer for those now ready to boot up their speculative bags of tricks in cyberspace. Covering both basic Web skills and hints for employing them at popular financial sites, it presents the fundamentals of organizing, researching, planning, and trading in a way that even absolute beginners can readily grasp and immediately initiate. The approach here is to present highly visual two-page spreads devoted to "Finding the Investment Style That Fits," "Opening an Online Account," "Calling Up Company Reports," "Tracking Upgrades and Downgrades," and dozens of similar topics. Each includes elementary instruction with pointers to one or more Web sites that perform the function or explain it in greater depth, a series of screen shots from those sites illustrating this narrative, and a sidebar with related information. Anyone at least moderately familiar with investment practices and principles may discover little new here, but those looking to get started will find plenty of helpful direction and advice. --Howard Rothman...

Authors: Michael W. Allen.
Paperback, 220 pages
Publisher: Pfeiffer
Publication Date: 2006-05-19
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    Praise for Michael Allen's e-Learning Library

This is the first volume of six in Michael Allen's e-Learning Library a comprehensive collection of proven techniques for creating e-learning applications that achieve targeted behavioral outcomes through meaningful, memorable, and motivational learning experiences. This book walks readers through the revolutionary processes of rapid prototyping and iterative design as a means of sorting the conflicting and hidden agendas of organizations, winning essential support, and generating creative learning solutions.

"Too many learners have been frustrated and too many careers have been derailed from poorly designed, ineffective e-learning. Michael Allen is finally sharing his 'secret sauce' with the world. The Savvy Start technique alone will go a long way to ensuring that every e-learning project turns out to be a successful one."
--Kevin Kruse, founder, e-LearningGuru.com

"Michael Allen has written a terrific book for courseware developers and business leaders who are interested in launching e-learning programs that will have a true impact on people performance and the business. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to take e-learning to the next level."
--Nick van Dam, global chief learning officer, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; founder, e-LearningforKids.org

"Michael Allen knows instructional design from the ground floor up. For four decades he's lead the field. Now he shares his hard-earned knowledge with the rest of us."
--Will Thalheimer, president and principal researcher, Work-Learning Research

"In this short volume, beginning with rapid analysis, rapid prototyping, and rapid evaluation, we find not only the details of the successive approximation process for developing superior e-learning, but also corporate and academic case studies to provide context for the design and development approaches recommended."
--Michael E. Echols, vice-president, Strategic Initiatives, Bellevue University; author, ROI on Human Capital Investment...

Authors: Stephen Haag. Paige Baltzan. Amy Phillips.
Hardcover, 610 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Publication Date: 2006-11-17
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    BDT takes a business-first approach, starting each chapter by explaining the value of a business initiative and then detailing the technology that enables the initiative. This revolutionary approach instantly demonstrates the �why� to business students without boring them with the �how�.. . The adaptive chapter/plug-in organization allows the instructor to adjust content according to their business or technical preferences.....

Authors: Brenda Huettner. M. Katherine Brown. Char James-Tanny.
Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-02-25


Reviews :

    Virtual collaborative team environments face unique challenges because their communication is not face-to-face. Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools provides practical advice for managers of distributed teams who must design the internal systems and meet deadlines with a diverse team, and for team members who want to develop and maintain professional relationships. To address these needs, this book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses team dynamics, project management and development, and forms of communication. Part II covers the types of tools currently available for collaboration such as wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and more, and describes the different feature sets of each. Part III explains the various features of the book's companion wiki....

Authors: Central Computer & Telecommunications Agency.
Paperback, 200 pages
Publisher: Stationery Office
Publication Date: 2000
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

    This work draws together the advice provided in the five core books by CCTA on service support. It covers: change management; configuration management; help desk management; problem management; software release and rollout; and an explanation of the links between the disciplines....