Showing posts with label work. Show all posts
Showing posts with label work. Show all posts

Total Access Review

Total Access
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Total Access ReviewWhile I'm not one for too many business books, I took the recommendation of a respected friend and read the book.
I wear two hats in a web development and multimedia production company; owner and sales. The content of Total Access satisfied both brains. We provide our clients with communication tools that are focused at internal and external audiences. I found myself head nodding and matching many of our company and client experiences to concepts discussed in the book. The book helped me recognize (and hopefully capitalize on) patterns that we see occurring with our clients.
Regis may not see the future (cause it's already happening), but he may be the first reporting on it. I'd recommend Total Access if you are able to "apply" valuable insight and knowledge to your business life. Stick with Tom Peters if you just like to read.Total Access OverviewMarketing as we know it is disappearing, declares industry legend Regis McKenna.As marketers focus on advertising and promotion, the chief information officer is automating their core functions. As they obsess over brand, the chief strategy officer is dispersing their responsibilities throughout the organization. And as they squabble over whether marketing is an art or a science, McKenna argues that they're completely overlooking what marketing has become: a technology. What does this displacement mean for the future of marketing and its role in today's increasingly networked organizations? Who will manage the all-important customer relationship-and how? In this bold new book, McKenna marshals over forty years of experience as a marketing innovator, investor, and industry visionary to explore an emerging-and essentially different-marketing paradigm. In this unconventional model, says McKenna, computers and the network do most of the work, from data gathering to customer care and response. The marketing function disappears into a network of relationships and responsibilities between man and machine throughout the value chain.Total consumer access to-and interaction with-the marketplace replaces the archaic broadcast model. For marketers, the end goal changes from creating brand awareness to satisfying customers. And brand itself becomes a"persistent presence" which sustains the customer dialogue however and whenever the customer chooses. McKenna argues that marketers must shed their marginal role as image creators and take on the brave new role of managing this new infrastructure. They must learn to operate with one foot in marketing and one foot in information systems-integrating the people and technological tools necessary to deliver value and novelty to every customer anytime, all the time. Competitive advantage will come from engaging the entire business in this total access network-making marketing a mission-critical, enterprise-wide responsibility. A rousing manifesto by a renowned pioneer of high-tech marketing, Total Access will remake marketing and redefine success in our networked world. AUTHORBIO: Regis McKenna is Chairman of The McKenna Group in Palo Alto, California.He has worked with more than 300 start-ups, including Apple and Intel, and is the bestselling author of Real Time (HBS Press, 1997).

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Handbook of Assessment and Treatment Planning for Psychological Disorders, 2/e Review

Handbook of Assessment and Treatment Planning for Psychological Disorders, 2/e
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Handbook of Assessment and Treatment Planning for Psychological Disorders, 2/e ReviewI found this book much better for assessment of clients rather than treatment planning. This book is very detailed on what assessment measures you should use for the various disorders but is light on treatment planning. For treatment planning, I have found Barlow's Clinical Handbook of Psychological Disorders: A Step by Step Treatment Manual much much better.Handbook of Assessment and Treatment Planning for Psychological Disorders, 2/e Overview
Widely regarded as a premier clinical reference, this book provides state-of-the-science tools for conducting effective assessments and using the results to plan and monitor evidence-based interventions. Leading authorities present proven approaches to screening and assessment for specific psychological problems. They offer practical guidance and case examples to help clinicians select the best measures for different populations and assessment purposes. Recommended instruments and procedures are described, including applications for managed care and primary care settings. Many of the chapters feature detailed tables that compare and contrast relevant measures.New to This Edition*Thoroughly updated with new instruments and research findings.*Chapter on the role of assessment in evidence-based treatment.*Additional disorder-specific chapter: impulse control disorders.*Chapter explaining how to evaluate the reliability and validity of a measure.

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Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition Review

Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition
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Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition ReviewDefinetely targeted towards the sophomore/Junior level students. This book goes into generic concepts used by most operating systems - i.e., what happens when a program is loaded into memory? How do processes make system calls to the kernel, how is deadlock among several programs competing for the same resources resolved, what is the characteristics of real-time operating systems etc.
I have adopted this book for teaching the operating systems course. I find that students, in general, appreciate this book as it is very readable. I believe a good text book should have the following qualities: It should be light enough to read it in bed, the fonts should be large enough to not give a headache after an hour of reading, should be written in clear lucid style with plenty of figures and should have decent binding. I believe this book qualifies in all those aspects.
However, I do have one unpleasant comment. I hate it when authors keep coming out with new editions with just small delta changes - forcing students to buy high priced editions because some professors could care less about the cost of books to students (after all, we profs get them for free). The 7th edition is not a whole lot different than the 6th edition (about 2 or 3 new chapters included in the 7th edition). Considering that you can buy a used 6th edition for half the price of a new 7th edition, I recommended my students to go with the 6th edition instead and chose to just teach them some of the additional materials from the 7th edition.
What I would have liked to see in this book - greater detail (perhaps with some psuedocode) on the workings of the kernel and how programs can take advantage of it (I guess I am thinking along the lines of Steven's UNIX programming book).Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition OverviewAnother defining moment in the evolution of operating systemsSmall footprint operating systems, such as those driving the handheld devices that the baby dinosaurs are using on the cover, are just one of the cutting-edge applications you'll find in Silberschatz, Galvin, and Gagne's Operating System Concepts, Seventh Edition.By staying current, remaining relevant, and adapting to emerging course needs, this market-leading text has continued to define the operating systems course. This Seventh Edition not only presents the latest and most relevant systems, it also digs deeper to uncover those fundamental concepts that have remained constant throughout the evolution of today's operation systems. With this strong conceptual foundation in place, students can more easily understand the details related to specific systems.New Adaptations* Increased coverage of user perspective in Chapter 1.* Increased coverage of OS design throughout.* A new chapter on real-time and embedded systems (Chapter 19).* A new chapter on multimedia (Chapter 20).* Additional coverage of security and protection.* Additional coverage of distributed programming.* New exercises at the end of each chapter.* New programming exercises and projects at the end of each chapter.* New student-focused pedagogy and a new two-color design to enhance the learning process.

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Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design Review

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design
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Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design ReviewThis book is superb. I have read every SOA book available (up until Apr/06) because it's part of my job as a technology research analyst and all-around techno-geek. From those that I have read and studied, this is the only one I feel compelled to write a review about. AND - because I did have to go through it in such detail I'm going to raid my research notes and share with you a detailed review of not just the book, but each of its chapters.
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Nothing special here, this is just a chapter that introduces the rest of the book. Call it a glorified table of contents if you will. At first I felt like skipping it altogether, but then I did what I'm supposed to do for my job and that is read each and every part. In the end, I'm glad I took the time for two reasons: By reading a summary of each of the chapters I got a good feel for what this book was going to cover and what it wasn't going to cover. Secondly, I liked the author's intro stuff about ideal and not so ideal (real) SOA. Kind of insightful and stinging at the same time. Still, though, this is still just a description of other chapters. It's also a chapter you can get for free at the book's web site.
Chapter 2 - Case Studies
Here the author provides background information for the two companies he uses as case studies. If you're into case studies, then you'll definitely want to read through this. But - I found the subsequent samples pretty easy to follow and I think you could get away with skipping this chapter if you really wanted to.
Chapter 3 - Introducing SOA
Here's where I started getting into the meat of the book. If you think you don't understand what soa is or what the industry's made of it or turned it into then you need to read this chapter. It breaks it all down and builds it all up again in a very systematic manner. Make sure you leave this chapter with an understanding of how primitive and contemporary variations of soa are different because the author uses these terms later.
Chapter4 - The Evolution of SOA
Finally someone who makes a distinction between specification and standard and gets it right. This chapter talks about the soa industry and how vendors are responsible for soa but are also causing problems at the same time. How standards organizations are working for soa but also competing at the same time. Pretty interesting stuff and even though this was the least technical chapter, not once was I bored. It ends by comparing Ssoa with older architectures. I especially like how the author differentiates between soa and "traditional" distributed architecture that uses web services. (hint: rpc has a lot to do with it)
Chapter 5 - Web services and primitive soa
I read the author's first soa book last year and this chapter seemed to repeat a few sections from that. But if I remember correctly it goes into more detail and provides case study examples that the first book didn't have. If you're a web services veteran you can probably skip this one.
Chapter 6 -Web Services and Contemporary SOA (Part I: Activity Management and Composition)
Here he goes up a gear and dives right into that scary thing we've been calling ws-* Everything from transactions to context mgmt to orchestration and so on is covered. I really felt the author did a brilliant job building this chapter up by starting with simple meps and building up to activity management and bpel and so on. He really showed how each adds a layer over the other and how all add layers to soa.
Chapter 7 - Web Services and Contemporary SOA (Part II: Advanced Messaging, Metadata, and Security)
Yup, the rollercoast ride continues here as he gets into addressing, reliable messaging, security and other ws-* specs. All of these are specs I had already heard about and I think this type of coverage is appropriate forwhere soa is going. I forgot to mention that in this chapter and 6 he introduces 'in plain english' sections that are hilarious. They are humorous analogies that compare these complex technologies to analogies he writes about a car wash. Good, fresh writing in the usual dull and dry techno world.
Chapter 8 - Principles of Service-Orientation
Essentially a whole bunch of theory about designing services and then eight specific 'principles' (dos and don'ts) about how to design services the right way for soa. I had to go back and reread this chapter after I finished the book. I sort of glanced thru it at first but then found out that later chapters really use these principles. When I went through it again I actually thought this was pretty important stuff. This really is the next oo. You can get this chapter for free at the book web site too.
Chapter 9 - Service Layers
STudy this if you're a application architect or enterprise architect. It shows what you canh do with services built with service-orientation. The diagrams showing different types of layers combined together are pretty cool.
Chapter 10 - SOA Delivery Strategies
If you're a PM you'll love this chapter. It gets into the different phases in a soa project and how you can reorganize them using 'delivery strategies' depending on your budgets and priorities. I'd pay extra close attention to the pros and cons parts where, after documenting these strategies in abstract, the author points out their true colors.
Chapter 11 + 12 - Service-Oriented Analysis I + II
Don't know where to start when it comes to figuring out your services? Well, the author lays it all out here. He provides a process for systemtically breaking down your business logic and divying it up into services. Chapter 12 is like an instruction manual about service model. Being froma web services background this was all new to me.
Chapter 13 - 16 - Service-Oriented Design I, II, III, IV
Roll up your sleeves man, because here is where you get into the real muck of building web services for an soa. There are a bunch of processes that hash out the nitty gritty of wsdl, xsd, and bpel and show you how to build services for the types of layers set up in ch.9. Tons of code and case study samples and tips for design. This is probably the most valuable part of the book for developers and architects.
Chapter 17- Fundamental WS-* Extensions
I forgot tomention that in chapters 6 and 7 no code samples are given. He only covered ws-* specs conceptually. All of the corresponding code is placed in this chapter. A bit inconvenient if you're a developer who wants to see the code while learning about the spec, but not tragic. The neat thing is he ties the code samples into the case studies. This was my first experience with ws-* in real world tyhpe scenarios.
Chapte r18 - SOA Platforms
The author documents j2ee and .net frameworks here first in total abstract and then about how they support the different parts of soa. This was very interesting because it related a lot of the concepts stuff to actual technology and the let you compare different technologies in how they support soa.
I recommend this book to colleagures and clients and I'm recommending it here. If you have questions about SOA then this book probably has the answers you're looking for. I say that because by the time I finished reading it I ran out of questions myself.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design OverviewThis is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches fundamental and advanced SOAdesign principles, supplemented with detailed case studies and technologiesused to implement SOAs in the real world.***We'll have cover endorsements from Tom Glover, who leads IBM's WebServices Standards initiatives; Dave Keogh, Program Manager for Visual StudioEnterprise Tools at Microsoft, and Sameer Tyagi, Senior Staff Engineer, SunMicrosystems. All major software manufacturers and vendors are promotingsupport for SOA. As a result, every major development platform now officiallysupports the creation of service-oriented solutions.Parts I, II, and III cover basic and advanced SOA concepts and theory thatprepare you for Parts IV and V, which provide a series of step-by-step "howto" instructions for building an SOA. Part V further contains coverage of WS-*technologies and SOA platform support provided by J2EE and .NET.

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The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. Review

The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content.
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The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. ReviewThe title and cover draws people in. 4 Hour Work Week, it's too good to be true. Then we read the first couple of pages, maybe the first couple of chapters. The first chapters are the typical motivational, "you can do it" montage. I'm not going to lie, I felt motivated to give this book a try after reading the first part of the book without even knowing what this book is all about. But as I began to get out of the fluff, and actually found myself reading the core subject of the book, I was utterly disappointed. D is for Definition
In this section Ferriss tells us to do an important task: define what you want. And I agree that most of us live through life not knowing what we want; just following the crowd like a herd of sheep. This section was the motivational, make you feel good section. This wasn't the how, it was the why, and it downright made me pumped.
E is for Elimination
Okay, so he basically says to eliminate all the junk in your life. For example: watch less TV, don't check your e-mail 50 times a day, don't look at your phone 100 times a day, don't surf the web 3 hours a day, etc. It's all good advice, nothing too fancy, or new, just plain old, "don't waste your time" advice. So far so good.
A is for automation
This is where I ran in to problems with Tim's method of creating a "4 hour workweek". First he tells us to outsource a big chunk of our lives using a VA (virtual assistant) from India or Shanghai or wherever. Basically a virtual assistant is a person who assist you in everyday task (checking emails, making reservations, doing research for your job that you got hired to do,set up appointments, etc) so basically an online-personal assistant you hire for dirt cheap. So if you are okay with some guy in India knowing your personal information (SSN, bank account number, phobias, any illnesses you might have, problems in life, and many more as Ferriss states) go ahead and outsource the things you can already do yourself to a guy in India you never met. But Ferris says that misuses of sensitive information are rare; well there could be bias behind that statement, but I'm not willing to find out if it's true or not. The irony of oustourcing your life is that you become dependent on your VA. You no longer have the urge to take control of your own life when it comes to paying bills, making reservations, or doing research for your job because your VA does it for you. So that's the paradox: out source your life, but become more dependent on a foreigner. And Ferriss quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson throughout his book as a motivational spice. But it's apparent that he never read "Self Reliance", the cornerstone of Emerson's philosophy. (Tim if you're going to use Emerson's words, how about not making a book that totally contradicts the philosophy of Emerson? Thanks).
A is for automation Pt. 2
Ferriss then goes on to tell us how we can make up to 40,000 dollars a month of automated income (little work). Basically you create a product and sell it. Plain and simple. He tells you to find a market, find the demographics of your product, make a product and sell it. Yup, your average entrepreneurship. It's nothing new, and Ferris is not an expert entrepreneur. He did have a company BrainQuicken which sells "Neural Accelerator" supplements. The site is 99% advertising and 1% scientific: It sells because it's precisely that. And the product that Ferriss started is not something revolutionary, I'll take my 200mg of caffeine before a workout any day than pay 50.00 dollars plus shipping for BrainQuicken. So if you want to make your own product, market it, sell it and make millions of dollars go ahead. Tim tells you exactly how, but what Tim doesn't tell you is that it takes a lot of work in the beginning, a lot more than 4 hours a week.
L is for Liberation
More like L is for not showing up to work, and being cynical. Now I'm against the 9-5 hours of work. I think that human beings are more efficient enough to get things done in a short period of time, and I believe that society is slowly catching on. But here's Tim's idea of "liberation". Escaping the office: not doing your job or worse, not showing up. Killing your job: quit your job. Mini retirement: take a month vacation every 2 months of work (or pattern that works best for you). Filling the Void: filling in the emptiness and the boredom you feel with fun stuff like becoming a horse archer, learning tango, and winning a fight championship by cheating.
So okay, let's say everything goes well: you are making 40,000 dollars a month, you are working no more than 4 hours a week... now what. Even Ferriss says that you will feel a void... well that sucks doesn't it? Why don't you go and talk to your VA about your problems?
Now obviously I'm against Tim's advertising methods, it's misleading. The book only sells because of the hope it gives 9-5 workers that it's possible. Oh, it's possible but unlikely. Tim is no Bil Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, or Clint Eastwood he is nowhere close to them. You see great testimonials from people from Yahoo!, Wired, Silicon Valley, and hell, from Jack Canfield about Tim's book, but not from people like Gates, Jobs, Buffett, Eastwood, or any other highly successful people, why? Because those four know that true success comes from years of hard work, and building lasting relationships with people. Those four know that decreasing your work hours, outsourcing your life, and making a tons of money is not the road to true happiness. Those four people, even if they read this book, will probably throw it in the fire. But for the cynical, "how do I work little and make tons of money" people out there (which is most of the population) this book will initially look like the next Bible. The fact that this book sold well says a lot about our society.
This is a misleading book, there are tons of other great books you can read for true success: Talent is Overrated (no BS way how people become great at what they do), 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (classic), and How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People... to name a few. Very few will read this review before buying, and more copies of this book will sell due to the cynical and lazy nature of people. Don't be one of those people, don't buy this book.The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated: Expanded and Updated, With Over 100 New Pages of Cutting-Edge Content. OverviewMore than 100 pages of new, cutting-edge content. Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times. Whether your dream is escaping the rat race, experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint. This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches: •How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent "mini-retirements"The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Workweek includes:•More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income, overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point•Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a private chef for less than $8 a meal•How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times•The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without being either

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