HTML5: Up and Running

Author: Mark Pilgrim
Format: Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (August 25, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0596806027
ISBN-13: 978-0596806026

I became impatient with the history lesson in Chapter 1 and wanted to test drive HTML 5. What's different? What's new? Guess I'll have to work to find out. As the blurb I found at Amazon said of HTML5, It’s not one big thing. It's not a matter of learning a new markup language from scratch, which is both a good and bad thing. In fact, again to quote the author's blurb, “Upgrading” to HTML5 can be as simple as changing your doctype...In HTML5, there is only one doctype: !DOCTYPE html. That's encouraging, but just how easy is it to learn HTML5 and how easily can you learn it from Pilgrim's book? I went in search of the answers.

The first place I went was the book's Preface to see where I could find a link to the source code. I was pointed to the author's site Dive Into HTML5, which is the original book on which the book I'm reviewing is based, but it didn't have a clear cut link to anything called "source code". Maybe this is where It’s not one big thing comes back to bite me.

Chapter 2: Detecting HTML5 Features introduced me to Modernizr (yes, I spelled it right), which is a nifty JavaScript library that detects the HTML5 and CSS3 features your browser will support. It also creates a self-titled global JavaScript object containing the properties for each such feature. However, if your browser doesn't support certain HTML5 features, Modernizr won't fix it. But what about learning HTML5? We kind of got away from that.

Oh wait! Chapter 3: What Does It All Mean? helps. I found the link to a set of code examples which got me started. Then, as I progressed through the book and through the author's site, which runs in parallel and often in duplicate, I realized how the book was organized. This is no small feat, but maybe it was my expectations that made the task difficult. I was expecting a front-to-back guide to getting started with HTML5 and what I discovered was a collection of loose pieces in a box.

Learning HTML5 from Pilgrim's book is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. When you first open the box, all you can see are a collection of jumbled pieces that, taken at a glance, don't make a lot of sense. If you had never encountered a jigsaw puzzle before, you might look, become confused as to what these pieces mean lying in such disarray, close the lid, and walk away looking for something more comprehensible.

One missing pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, is a knowledge for HTML4. Imagine the raw code of an HTML4 web page. Now imagine that you are presented with a list of tags and other markup elements you're not familiar with. What are you supposed to do with them? How do they work? What do they replace (if anything)? Using Chapter 3 on his web site for an example, I tried to navigate around until I could find something I could sink my teeth into.

Got a lesson on DOCTYPE, history lessons on the root and head elements, lots of other stuff to scan past, a section called A Long Digression Into How Browser Handle Unknown Elements, more stuff...more stuff...then it began to register. I started to hit spots on the pages that said stuff like, this is how we used to do things (add example of old code) and this is how you do it in HTML5 (add example of new code). The information is there, it's just not organized and called out the way I wanted it.

I went back to the book, compared it to the same pages on the author's site and "got" the organization. It may be a matter of how I think vs. how the author thinks, but from that point on, it was easier to tease what I wanted to know out of the book's pages.

I think HTML5 is fabulous but I'm not sure that HTML5: Up and Running is the best book to use as an introduction. It most definitely is not the best book to use for an introduction if you aren't familiar with HTML in general. I'd recommend navigating the author's website before buying the book. If you "get" the website, you'll "get" the book. They're pretty much the same thing.

Chromium on Ubuntu 10.04 Slower than Firefox?

Maybe I'm being unfair. After all, I have been having networking problems with my Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) virtual machine running in VMware Workstation 7. Seems to be tied to a DNS problem. The VM doesn't pick up the DNS server addresses from the DHCP server on my network (though it gets an IP just fine). I thought the solution was to point to Google's free DNS servers. Worked for awhile, but then stopped. I tried using the DNS servers on my wee home server and DSL modem device and that worked for awhile too, and then stopped.

I finally tried my ISP's DNS servers and that seemed to take hold, though I don't know why. It shouldn't make a difference but I've been surfing from my Lucid Lynx VM for two days now without a hitch. That leads me to my second problem.

I'm a big fan of Firefox so naturally, use it on all my Linux and Windows machines. I've tried Google's Chrome web browser on a Windows VM and like it, so I decided to install Chromium on the Lucid VM. Seemed to go great guns at first but then hit major snags.

Actually, I was having problems in both Firefox and Chromium which all seemed to be tied to my general networking problems for the VM. For the past two days, I've been surfing the web just fine with Firefox, though. Time to try Chromium.

For a minute or two, it seemed great. I thought I could give Chromium a real workout and see if it really was faster than Firefox, just as the speed tests between Firefox and Chrome suggest when run on Windows. I've got some bad news.

Firefox continued to let me surf the web at lightning speed, but after a few minutes, Chromium slowed down to a wounded crawl. I tried Googling the problem but only came up with a slow video playback problem in Chromium on Ubuntu reported at ubuntuforums.org.

Admittedly, before I had the chance to investigate further, I had to leave for work, so I won't be able to make more tests until I get home tonight. I suspect the issue may still be tied to Ubuntu Lynx running as a VM and the associated networking problems, but I can't be sure. Until I get home and have a chance to look at this more completely, has anyone else had an experience with poor Chromium web browser performance in Ubuntu 10.04?

The USING Series: More than Just a Book

If you are into technical reading or writing, you've probably at least heard of informIT.com. Among other publications, they're responsible for the Unleashed series, and their imprints include Cisco Press, IBM Press, Prentice Hall Professional, and QUE Publishing. While you may use books such as those published by Cisco Press without being overly concerned regarding the presence of a parent organization, you may also be unaware that changes are coming. 

I previously posted here in my blog that my eBook Using GIMP was going to be released within a few months. What I probably didn't spell out, is that it's part of a newly launched book series called Using under the imprint of the aforementioned QUE Publishing. But why should you care? 

To quote the site's blurb notice:

USING is more than just a book: It's the fastest, easiest way to gain the technology skills you're looking for! Don't just read about it: See it, hear it, with step-by-step video tutorials and valuable audio sidebars delivered through the free Web Edition that comes with every USING book. For the price of the book you get online access anywhere with a web connection—no books to carry, content updated as the technology changes, and the benefit of video and audio learning.

My book will be released as an eBook but not in print format, which is described as:

The Web Edition of every USING book is powered by Safari Books Online, allowing you access to the video tutorials and valuable audio sidebars. Plus, you can search the contents of the book, highlight text and attach a note to that text, print your notes and highlights in a custom summary, and cut and paste directly from Safari Books Online.

Some of the upcoming titles include Using LinkedIn, Using Google AdWords and AdSense, and Using Blogger. The whole point of the Using series is that the reader (and I use the term somewhat loosely) accesses the information using multiple media types, including text, video, audio, and web. Topics include a wide range of subjects, from Microsoft Windows 7 and MAC OS X Snow Leopard to Using Google Maps and Google Earth and the already mentioned Using GIMP.

Since this is a brand new series type, QUE wants to promote it as strongly as possible (which I suppose is part of why I'm blogging it). To that end, you've got a terrific opportunity to get a hold of and read these books for free by becoming a reviewer. I may take advantage of this opportunity myself since I have a track record as a technical book reviewer. 

Many of these books are or will become available at Safari, so if that's your reading method of choice, you won't be left out. Stroll over to QUE's Using Series web page and see if you can find something that interests you.

Why Hasn't Google Wave Gone Viral?

I received an invitation to get Google Wave and, with serious intent, decided to give it a whirl. After all, I had initial misgivings about Facebook and twitter, but now you can't blow me off of either one with a stick of dynamite. I figured (reluctantly...how many ways to communicate do I really need?) that Wave would be the next big app in my life to consume what little time I don't have. I even wrote a review on Wave a few weeks ago, so I was on my way, right? Wrong. What happened?

I logged into Wave for the first time in three days this morning and found a "wave" from someone making the same statement I just did. She said:

I know! That's what's "un-useful" about it - I always forget to check mine to so I just revert back to Twitter and email - you know - those "oh so out of date" tools! ;-)

I don't get it. I remember when Gmail was "by invitation only", and now every one has Gmail and I use it as my default webmail. I've pimped my Google home page with a customized theme and all manner of gadgets I use to keep track of my social networking. Google has me hooked as far as that part goes, so what's the problem with me extending my "addiction" to Wave?

The question that seems to come up from the people I do use Wave with is "what am I supposed to use this thing for?" I managed to add about a dozen people to my Wave address book, but conversations have stalled. I've started following a few public Waves to see if I could join in on a conversation, but they're hard to follow. Nothing seems linear. When a new contribution has been made to a Wave, it isn't at the top or bottom of the stream as you'd expect (as in a "conversation" in Gmail, for instance), nor does the Wave automatically focus on the new addition.

I think part of the problem is in trying to find information to make practical use of Wave. For instance, in attempting to do the research for this blog, I did some Google searches (what else?), but searching for "why hasn't Google Wave gone viral" doesn't yield a great deal of useful data. I managed to locate the article Why We Are Cautious About Google's Wave, but frankly, it didn't do much to answer my question. It was written soon after Wave was first introduced, so the information has "aged" somewhat (at least in Internet time).

Next, I tried searching Wave itself. I figured if anyone would be talking about the use of Wave, or lack thereof, it would be Wave users. Am I wrong? Facing the Wave UI, I realized I'd forgotten how to search for public Waves. A little Googling later, I found The First Google Wave Search You Must Know and with a mere with:public, pulled up an endless list of public Waves. Gee, how unique. Now how do I find the one I want? I don't want to read a book and I don't want to scan a 14 page web guide. Like most people in our Microwave oven, Google search engine, instant gratification world, I want to ask a quick question and get a quick answer.

I don't remember having this sort of problem getting on board with twitter, and realistically speaking, I haven't been using twitter all that long. Sure, Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein wrote The Twitter Book, but I didn't use it to "learn twitter" (it actually wasn't a really great book, and I ended up donating it to my local public library after reviewing it). When I needed to know something about twitter, I either asked another twitter person or Googled it. I usually found the little tidbit I needed (who has time to read a whole "dissertation" like this blog?) and away I went.

I have an interest in Microsoft's SharePoint platform (don't ask...it's a long story), and am following a few public Waves on the topic. This is a frequently asked question: "Is Wave a SharePoint killer?" and the general consensus is "no" (despite Om Malik's prediction in his previously mentioned blog). Sure, Wave is extendable with just oodles of APIs, but in what direction does one "extend" Wave to make it usable and (dare I say it) intuitive? Why does it seem so hard to use Wave?

It occurred to me that either Google never intended Wave to be particularly useful to the average end user crowd, or they initially targeted the wrong audience. Speaking of SharePoint, I find myself wondering if Wave is intended (or should be intended) for the business, rather than the general public space? Everything else is going into the cloud, why not enterprise collaboration? This seems to be the thought of David Cook at The Shiny Wave blogspot. Perhaps my failure to launch, relative to Wave, is due to my being the wrong person to use it, or at least my using Wave in the wrong context.

Of course, I've tried Delicious, Friendfeed, Plaxo, Plurk, and other online social apps and promptly walked away, not feeling "the hook" sink deeply into my flesh, so maybe Wave is just another passing fancy that didn't take hold in my life. Then again, I didn't bother to review any of those apps and or dedicate two (so far) blog articles to them, so Wave must have made some sort of impression on me.

It can't be lack of information. Doing a general search on Google Wave produces a ton of results, including guides at Mashable and Lifehacker, so quality tech affectionados feel Google Wave is worth spending time and resources on. On the other hand, getting a specific piece of information seems excessively difficult, such as how to find a specific public Wave discussing why Wave hasn't "gone viral", so is that it? What's the problem? Is it Wave or (gulp) is it me?

Afterword: I just added a public wave: "Why Hasn't Google Wave Gone Viral" and made it accessible to everyone (Thanks for the tip, Google). Let the games begin.

Review: Goggle Wave so far

I got this in my Gmail inbox the other day:

"Thank you for signing up to give us early feedback on Google Wave. We're happy to give you access to Google Wave and are enlisting your help to improve the product".

Since I'm all about making improvements, I clicked the link to accept my invitation to Google Wave. Once I signed in with my handy dandy Google account (OK, so I'm going a little overboard here), Google Wave opened in my Firefox browser.

I clicked on the first welcome message (there were two) and got this:

Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

Happy waving!

Gee. Who would I wave with? I took a look at my contacts and saw that four of them were already on Google Wave. Still, I should read the other welcome message before continuing (linear or anal, I don't know which).

The second message lead me to a YouTube video of "Doctor Wave". Volume was up full blast, so it almost blew my head off. Took me on a nice tour on the GUI, just to orient me (all of us who are using Wave so far). The video is a sparse 2 minutes, 12 seconds, just enough to point out all of the major areas of the UI but not enough to bury the audience in details. Below the playback, is a small group of links that lead to further content.

Now I felt free to check out my Contacts to see if anyone was around I could "wave" with. I clicked on a name and the YouTube video in the wave panel vanished and was replaced by a text editor. I created the message, clicked "Done" and waited. Nothing happened, but then, I didn't know what to expect. Also, all of the nifty links that were below the YouTube video on the wave panel vanished, and I had no idea how I can get them back.

Thought I'd try out the navigation panel and clicked from Inbox to All. More messages became available, including two unread ones; more introductory material. I clicked on the "Welcome to Wave" message again, and the YouTube video and the aforementioned links came back to the wave panel.

I must say, I'm probably the perfect person to try this out and review it. I'm experiencing Wave from a total "end user" perspective, having not read up on it previously, so the whole thing is new. Also, I'm still working on my morning coffee, so I can't promise my brain is as agile as it should be if it were fully caffeinated.

I sent out a cry on twitter for more Wave people and then continued to explore. One of the messages in the "All" folder (already read) listed Extension Settings, which I could uninstall or remove. Basically, these are Google Gadgets, like the ones I used to pimp out my Google home page. I looked around, but the "under construction" message from Google let me know that more Gadgets for Wave weren't available yet, so the pimping would have to be postponed. The noticed "Unfollowed" appeared by the message title. Apparently, you can follow and unfollow specific waves. I found an unfollowed wave that said Profile and decided to "edit" my Google Wave identity.

I was surprised that it wasn't imported from Google proper. My Google av was as I could see it in the Contacts box and by all of my waves, but it wasn't available in my actual profile. Nevertheless, I clicked Edit Profile and see what was what. I inserted the URL to my blog and updated my av photo and that was about it. There was a field for "status" but I have no idea what it's used for. Is it like updating one's "status" in twitter or Facebook?

Just for giggles, I followed the "unfollowed" waves in my All box, then continued to explore Navigation. The rest of the folders were not surprising. By Me is like a "sent" folder, Requests was empty and must contain waves relative to receiving invitation requests. Spam and Trash are self explanatory and Settings held the waves related to the customization of my Google Wave.

No responses to my message that I possess Google Wave invitations yet (has it become that passe' already?). Doctor Wave was right. Without someone to Wave with, this isn't much of a power surge. Of course, if a new message arrives, will I know? My Google page automatically refreshes, and so does Gmail, but I don't know about Wave. I did notice that the number of messages changed in my Inbox from time to time. I don't mean that new messages arrived, but that the messages disappeared and reappeared. Sometimes they all vanished and the all returned. Then, about half of them vanished. Of course, this is a beta, so you can expect the occasional glitch.

While waiting for anyone to respond or to care, I continued to nose around. Under Navigation, you can expand Searches and Folders. Folders just lets you make more you-know-whats and Searches is like searching Gmail, only with a few more options. You can also search your Contacts, though with only four registered in Wave, that's hardly a chore.

Within the Wave window itself, you can click Reply, Playback, Unfollow, Archive, Spam, and Read (which is only active for an unread Wave. It's nice to finally have the option to Unfollow an Gmail/Wave, since an unending conversation in Gmail can sometimes get annoying. Playback?

When you click Playback on a Wave that's not a video or audio file, you get the controls but they affect nothing. I found myself wondering if the Playback button shouldn't also be inactive on all Waves that don't actually play. A minor point, but Google is asking for suggestions.

While waiting, I decided to see if my Google Wave profile was able to work and play well with CredMe. I found out that not only it did, but there were a set of instructions (apparently written by a developer and not me) telling me how to insert the CredMe URL code. I've been playing with CredMe for awhile, so I didn't really need to RTFM. I quickly verified my Google Wave profile with CredMe and was back to the Wave.

Oh, I did get a reply from a friend of mine in the UK. His new job won't let him get online as freely as he could in the past, so I had to wait for the workday to end in that part of the world. Message arrived automatically. When I revisited Wave on a break from my own job, it was just there. Somebody please tell me how this is an "email killer". It's nice, it's smooth, it's slick...it looks like the next generation web-based email interface...but it's email. What makes it "Wave"?

To be fair, I've only been on Wave for a few hours and have only exchanged messages with one person. Probably not a fair test of Wave's abilities. While I'm going to post this article now, I'll be back with updates on Wave as (or if) they develop.

Oh. One more thing. You can reach me on Google Wave at james.pyles AT googlewave.com.

Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers

Author: Steve Souders Format: Paperback, 254 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc. (June 18, 2009) ISBN-10: 0596522304 ISBN-13: 978-0596522308 Apparently the move from Yahoo! to Google has been good to Souders (as you might expect). Now working for Google on web performance, he's written a sequel to his January 2008 book, High Performance Web Sites (Souders was working for Yahoo! at the time) which I previously reviewed. According to the Product Description, "Souders' previous book, the bestselling High Performance Web Sites, shocked the web development world by revealing that 80% of the time it takes for a web page to load is on the client side". Sounds pretty dramatic, especially for a technical book. I don't know if I was "shocked" when I read Souders' prior book, but I was impressed. How does his follow up effort measure up? Whenever I write a book, I usually mention that it takes a team to write a book, even if only one person's name is on the cover. As it turns out, besides Souders, there are eight other direct contributors to Even Faster Web Sites including Ben Galbraith, co-director of developer tools at Mozilla and Dylan Schiemann, co-founder of the Dojo Toolkit. The "dark side" of multiple contributors is sometimes a lack of focus or continuity in a book. The upside is including the wisdom and experience of numerous subject-matter experts. As with the previous Souders book, there's no explicit "who is the book for" section in the front matter, but the subtitle "Performance Best Practices for Web Developers" makes it obvious who should be reading this book. The idea, as with the prior book, is to develop web sites using practices that allow your sites to load and perform with the minimal amount of load on the client-side. With competing interests such as style, theme, content, and general "eye candy", this isn't as easy as it sounds. High Performance Web Sites (sorry, it's hard to review this book without referring to its predecessor) was a straight-forward 14 step (one chapter per step) sequence in how to improve web site performance. Even Faster Web Sites goes beyond what you might think of as "straight-forward", which isn't a bad thing, but it might make some of the techniques less accessible to the less experienced developer. With that in mind, if you're just starting out developing web sites, read High Performance Web Sites before moving on to this book. Reading the two books "in order" isn't absolutely necessary, but it might make more sense if you're new to the game. Experienced players may do as you wish. The reader will need to know more than just vanilla HTML/CSS/JavaScript to get the most out of this text. While topics such as Optimizing Images (Chapter 10) may not seem complex "programmatically", Coupling Asynchronous Scripts (Chapter 5) and Writing Efficient JavaScript (Chapter 7) will be more challenging if you're not already familiar with the subject matter. I suppose you could say that this book has been "written by professionals for professionals", but I think that tagline is used by a different publisher. I also have to say that, despite multiple contributors, the overall "feel" of the book wasn't disjointed and, while you can read the entire book cover-to-cover, experienced developers can also zero in just on specific topics of interest. The Appendix contains a list of various performance assessment tools which, in and of themselves, requires a bit of experience or experimentation to get a feel for. Other "value added" pieces include Souders' Web Site dedicated to the book and the O'Reilly site for the book. The former is a series of blog articles on the information presented in the text, including comments, while the latter is the standard "this is one of our books" pages, where you can read/submit errata, register the book, and so on. You'll probably get more mileage out of Souders' blog, since it contains more behind-the-scenes insights into the material. Don't read this book if you're just getting a handle on designing and developing your first few web sites, however once you have experience and have a solid grounding in "coding for the web", I think you'll benefit from Even Faster Web Sites. If you are a professional web developer, you definitely will benefit.

The Google Way: How One Company is Revolutionizing Management As We Know It

Author: Bernard Girard Format: Hardcover, 256 pages Publisher: No Starch Press (April 10, 2009) ISBN-10: 1593271840 ISBN-13: 978-1593271848 This is a very interesting read, but you may not know why you're reading it at first, or even exactly what you're reading. The title suggests that you'll learn the "Google way" of doing things and this is largely true. It also suggests that the "Google way" is a unique set of operations, philosophies, and processes that have resulted in Google's incredible success and that perhaps, by learning "the way", you may be able to replicate that success in your own efforts. Is that true? Probably not. Whenever I hear a term such as "the Google way" or "the HP way" or "the giant-Fortune-500-megahuge-corporation way", I think of the mechanics a large company uses to operate on a day-to-day basis. My understanding of these "ways" is that they result in an evolutionary slowness in getting even the most simple and mundane tasks done (I once waited months to be hired for a temporary job at a very large corporation because all such temp hiring decisions had to flow through the CEO, which is madness, but it was their "way"). The general theme of this book, is to describe for the reader the origins of Google and how the development of the "Google way" resulted in it's tremendous success, including possible future directions for the search engine giant. To accomplish this, Girard pulls not just from all of the publicly available information on Google and its founders, but interviews with former Google staffers, general history, philosophy, and classic corporate strategies. For instance, lessons learned by Ford's revolutionary creation of the assembly line, creativity and Edison, and the invention of the steam engine, are all brought into play to illuminate the various concepts and methods of developing something that had never existed before. Not that there weren't search engines before Google, but there was never a business model like "The Google Way" before Page and Brin created it, then brought in Eric Schmidt (formerly of Novell) to help continue nurturing it. Girard's book won't tell you how to create another "Google". It can't. One of the points I walked away from the book with, is that a unique set of situational and environmental circumstances had to occur for Google to be created in the way it was created, at the moment in history it was created. Those circumstances have passed and, while I'm sure it's quite possible to make another company at least as successful as Google in the future, it will not be created, developed, and operated, in exactly the same way as Google. It isn't enough that Page and Brin "bucked the system" to create Google, it was their specific approach in doing so (after all, not all rebels succeed just because they're rebels). Defying corporate "tribal knowledge" in and of itself wasn't sufficient to account for Google's success. Being a rebel in this instance, doesn't mean being chaotic or necessarily defiant. Page and Brin were extremely thoughtful in their approach, they just were thoughtful in a different direction than the traditional compass heading. You won't get an insider's view of Google from this book, at least not in microscopic detail. If this were a book officially sanctioned by Google, it would probably speak with a different voice, and one that more closely quoted the "party line" (all companies have a party line which is used by the company to publicly describe themselves, while not disclosing much of the actual inner workings). Girard's book sacrifices the "insider's look" of Google, at least to some degree, in order to be able to speak about Google with more latitude. I didn't get the feeling I was learning "secret knowledge" while reading, and as I mentioned, everything in the book is backed up by all of Girard's sources, listed in detailed notes. The part of the book I wanted to get to was Google and the future. This would be squarely Girard's opinion about what's next for this company; something he couldn't get directly from source information (though he could derive from it). Girard wrote the book as the current economic meltdown was beginning (it seems to have been finished slightly before Obama was elected) and he weaves this information into his projection of how Google might respond. It's probably still too soon to see if these projections are at all accurate, but time will tell. I found the book to be well-rounded in its coverage of the various aspects of "life at Google" and specially appreciated the scope of history and philosophy that Girard brought in to his work. It gave the lens used to view Google a better and sometimes unexpected perspective. Although the book isn't exclusively about how search works (though the topic is covered for obvious reason), I found I was glad that I'd read (and reviewed) Bill Tancer's (Hitwise Intelligence) book, Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters, because it expanded that particular dimension of Google for me while reading "The Google Way". If you find the "entity" of Google a fascinating topic and want to look "under the covers", I think you'll enjoy what Girard has created.

Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters

Update: The article What the Web knows about you is a frightening companion to Tancer's book. Author: Bill Tancer Format: Hardcover, 240 pages Publisher: Hyperion (September 2, 2008) ISBN-10: 1401323049 ISBN-13: 978-1401323042 Bill Tancer's book first hit me as a strange cross between a voyeur's look at the Internet and Orwell's 1984. I got the distinct impression as he was detailing just what he could learn from tracking our web searches, that "Big Brother" had arrived. That's something of an exaggeration, since all of the personal information is stripped out of Tancer's data (hopefully), but I found it amazing what he said he could learn about people, just by looking at patterns in searches. Tancer's innate curiosity about people is definitely communicated throughout his writing. It's not that he's interested in specific individuals per se, but in how people as groups search and what it means. His blog at Hitwise (where he works) can be reached at the URL www.ilovedata.com and I think he means it. I think it's almost like Tancer is "in" love with data, what it can tell him, how it can be manipulated, and so on. The chapters weren't as tightly associated as I'd expected. Going through the book was like reading a series of loosely associated vignettes, each with its own special theme, and all tied together using the topic, "data". Tancer is quite casual; actually conversational in his writing, so the book is an easy read. That's a good thing since, if you don't love data, the book could have been impossibly dry and static. If you are looking for a detailed, penetrating business analysis of how Internet searches and marketing are associated, try enrolling in an MBA program. You won't get it from this book. Not that the information isn't particularly helpful, but it is presented for a very wide readership. That means it doesn't contain the amount of information or level of detail that specialists in their fields would find terrifically compelling. It is rather compelling for everyone else, though. While the first half of the book exists to establish the foundation for how data patterns can be analyzed, the second half describes how certain phenomena on the web works and can even be predicted. Ever wonder how sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace literally took off overnight? Tancer provides information to at least try to explain these viral phenomenons. You can see how Tancer makes the connections in data points as they crisscross across the Web 2.0 landscape, even when he's describing how a little known band called "Arctic Monkeys" became a smash hit within a year of their birth; to the astonishment of the band members themselves. As I rocketed through the book and approached the final pages, I wondered if, as Tancer puts it, we are what we click? Can human behavior be derived from Internet behavior? In the world of Web 2.0 (and rising) and having just elected our first Internet President, it certainly seems like it should be so. After all, according to Tancer, whenever we're online, we leave a trail of the sites we visit like so many breadcrumbs. It's this trail that Tancer follows to come up with what he presents in his book. On a personal level, I rather hope we aren't just what we click. I would rather believe that people are more than just what they look for on the web. On the one hand, if you're reading this, you are interested in reading a book, which is outside the web's sphere (at least in theory). On the other hand, you're reading this book review on the web and will probably buy the book at Amazon. Maybe you'll email the link to this review to a friend, post it on Facebook, or tweet it on twitter (or all that and more). I suppose that means I'm wrong and Tancer's right. To find out more, buy his book and go through it. 240 pages go by fast, so you'll be at the point of making your own conclusion in no time.

Review: Google Apps Deciphered

Author: Scott Granneman Format: Paperback, 592 pages Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR 1st Edition (December 14, 2008) ISBN-10: 0137004702 ISBN-13: 978-0137004706 Update 3, January 21st: I've been doing a little research on Web 3.0 as it relates to Google Apps but particularly to my upcoming review of Bill Tancer's Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters. Update 2, January 20th: Interesting comparison between Google Docs and MS Office at InformIT. Update: I wonder how this story I found at Slashdot will impact Google's SAAS plan? First of all, to really appreciate this book, you'll have to become comfortable with surrendering data you'd normally have contained in apps on your hard drive onto "the cloud". You'll also have to become comfortable with surrendering that data to Google. Then again, maybe you've already gone a long way down that path without even realizing it. Let's see. What are Google apps? Do you have a Gmail account? If so, you at least have an idea about Google apps, even if you haven't used a single one. Actually, Gmail is a good place to start. You may consider Gmail no more significant than any other web-based mail system (Hotmail, Yahoo, and so on), but there's a lot more to it, at least once it becomes part of an application service. One of the goals of Gmail as part of Google apps, is to move your personal and business activity off the desktop and into the cloud...which in this case, lives in Google's data center. All of Chapter 3 of this book is dedicated to showing the reader how to migrate their emails from a variety of other platforms to Gmail. Outlook and Exchange are covered here of course, but you can also migrate from other desktop apps, such as Thunderbird and from other webmail systems, such as Hotmail. Once you've migrated from these other platforms to Gmail, the adventure isn't over. Granneman considered Gmail so important, that he dedicated Part II of the book, a total of four chapters, to the intricacies of managing communications with Gmail. While it's not quite the central theme for this book, since it's the most common Google apps used, I thought I'd start out here by way of launching this review. Of course, "cloud computing" isn't just Google's bright idea. As illustrated in this New York Times article published in September 2007, Microsoft has long been a proponent of this strategy. Google and Microsoft continue to struggle for the hearts and minds of the computing faithful throughout the world. Microsoft is the name we think of whenever we think of our computer, but Google is what enters our minds whenever we need to search. Office 2007 is Microsoft's latest foray into the office suite and it continues to be desktop based. For Google, cloud computing is here and now. The chief advantage of cloud-based applications is that they are completely hardware platform free. It doesn't matter what computer you are using to access your email or to create documents; your work exists "out there". With high speed Internet connections, both LAN and wireless being the norm, there's virtually no noticeable delay between input and output. Your work is at your fingertips in just the same way its always been. But how successful is Google in this endeavor? According to the Introduction in this book, over 3000 businesses a day sign up with Google Apps, with Google claiming over half a million companies total as Google Apps users. Ok, caveat time. These business are paying customers who use the Premier Edition of Google Apps, which is somewhat different than what you and I would have as individual freebee users. Is this author just shilling for Google, writing a book that makes Google Apps look good? When (or if) you buy this text, are you just going to be reading advertising? The beginning of the book certainly seems that way. Sure, it's not entirely blatant, but to sell the book, the reader has to be sold on the idea that Goggle Apps is something they should at least seriously consider. Otherwise, why shell out the dough in the first place? No one buys a book on Microsoft Office 2007 if they aren't planning on using the application. Of course, both Scott Granneman and Prentice Hall need to have some sort of faith in Google Apps, at least in terms of its "sellability" to create the book in the first place (though I'm willing to bet that Prentice Hall relies heavily on Microsoft Office products to generate its wares). At least as far as the first Chapter presents, there's an obvious comparison between MS Office and Goggle apps in an attempt to convince the reader that there are other alternatives besides the house that Gates built. But what about cloud computing? It's also known as Software-as-a-Service or SAAS. Chapter 2 of the book is the "real" salesperson of the text in explaining what SAAS is and how it is implemented through Google. I was a tad bit misleading earlier in the review when I implied that being a Gmail user made you a Google Apps user. While Gmail is a significant component of Google Apps, you still have to sign up separately for Google's SAAS service. The standard edition is free but you can try out the premier edition free for 30 days. The comparison list shows the stark difference between the two. I have to admit, going both through what Google Apps has to offer, and how Google's foray into cloud computing has been documented by Granneman has left me impressed. This isn't a matter of just cobbling together a bunch of different services that people already use (Gmail, Blogger, Picasa) and stamping "Google Apps" on the box. This is a completely integrated package of applications suitable for the business user, made available from the web. Just about everything you'll need to run a company's communications is available, from creating websites, to instant messaging, to managing videos. I did rather miss having something like Visio to create detailed diagrams, though. Am I convinced enough to throw caution to the winds and abandon the desktop for the cloud? No. Of course, I'm a pretty conservative person and I don't make changes quickly and easily. I use OpenOffice.org for most of my office suite needs, at least at home. On the other hand, I use Gmail extensively, as well as Blogger and occasionally Picasa Web Albums; all extensions of the Google universe. Google is already quietly entering our lives, one free, online app at a time. If you'd like to see if you should take it to the next level and consider formally running Google Apps, either as an individual or corporately, Grannerman's book would be a good place to start.

Building Your Own Learning Path

I pulled a link from twitter for an O'Reilly article called Choose your own adventure... er... learning path. Basically the idea is that, there's at least as much information available on the web for any given topic as you'll find in any classroom or perhaps, any university program. The question is, assuming that university credits or a degree aren't part of your goal, can you tailor your personal educational program using just web resources? The fact that the Brett McLaughlin article mentions the O'Reilly School of Technology means that part of the purpose of the story is to promote O'Reilly's online, for profit, educational center. That said, the write up also discusses what people look for in free online resources, relative to their learning goals. The trick is organization and discipline. If I sign up for a course, whether online or classroom based, and pay my money, I'll be sure to show up and work hard. I don't want my hard earned greenbacks to go down the drain, especially in this economy. If it's true that you get what you pay for, part of the payoff is the boost in self-discipline that being frugal (tightwad?) results in. Both this article and the John W Lewis blog it links to, mentions sequencing of learning as being particularly important. The Internet may be the world's largest library, but Google isn't the world's best librarian. While you can probably find everything you need, you'll have to design the curriculum yourself. Your success or failure in this endeavour depends on your organizational skills as well as your self-drive to achieve a goal. The O'Reilly blog entry has been there for a couple of days now as I write this, so the comments section there has grown lengthy. I suppose I'm just reinventing the wheel at this point by writing about the topic here, but self-education is one of my interests and, when Tim O'Reilly pointed to the blog from twitter, my commentary took on a life of its own.