Matt Bennett's review of "The Book Of WIFI".

Organise Your Photos By Michael Slater. Reviewed by Matthew Bennett.

HTML, XHTML, and CSS Bible 3rd Edition
Bryan Pfaffenberger, Steven M. Schafer, Chuck White, and Bill Karow.
2004 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana. Published simultaneously in Canada.

This book is great for anyone wanting to a start-to-finish guide in understanding, building and maintaining a website. It covers a wide range of techniques and elements you would want to use on a website.

The introduction explains what the book intends to cover, the audience it is targeted for, and a useful little note on how the book is organized, and to look out for symbols that stand for tips, notes, or other little features that helps the reader along the way. I found this very informative, because I knew what each part of the book was going to be about.

Each chapter begins with a very short and concise history of the topic, and how the chapter will help with using the topic in question. For an example, in Chapter 14 (Multimedia), it states that multimedia on the Web has grown up, and you can now watch a broad range of clips. It also states how it is now targeting at people with fast connection, since a sufficient number of people now have broadband. It concludes that this chapter will examine some of the most frequently used multimedia platforms today.

I found that every topes is explained very clearly, and any computer jargon or difficult instruction is defined a little icon saying ‘Cross Reference’ or ‘Tip’ and so on. So a person with a basic amount of computer knowledge could easily follow each topic as it progresses onto harder and more complex features. The language is also very easy to read, and doesn’t use difficult words that you can’t understand. In one chapter, it read that you can ‘write messages to their browser windows telling them they have a crummy browser (in a nice way, of course)’. Isn’t that so easy to comprehend?

Tables of elements, pieces of script and images used for examples (figures) are all used to great effect. The scripts show where an element should fit if you wanted a specific sort of outcome. The screenshots and images show what it should look like, so you know if you are on the right track.

I think this is a fantastic book for anyone wishing to create a professional, fresh, well-maintained website. Beginners will benefit from the decent amount of history and answers to very frequently asked questions such as ‘What is the World Wide Web?’ or ‘How does the Web work?’ while experienced users can use the well-organized Table of Contents to find the exact subject they wish to pursue. Highly recommended for any experience level, as long as you know how to work a computer.

Review by Jenny Sahng
6.6.2007

Car PC Hacks: Tips and Tools for Geeking Your Ride. 

Book Review on "Plain and Simple Windows Vista"

 Chris Ward's Book review on "The Essential Turring"

Hacking the Cable Modem by DerEngel is a very useful book for all who have cable internet. It shows you how to break the law in many ways, and then says that the book isn't intended for illegal activities. What it teaches you is very very hard to do, so if your looking to squeeze a few extra easy mbps out of your modem, this isn't the book. Its for getting into the guts and soldering/desoldering and doing all that technical stuff. The information in this thing is astounding. The author is obviously the master of hacking, and the guides aren't incredibly easy to read. Its definetly not newbie friendly. All of the hacks in the book can't be done without risking the life of your modem.

There is also a handy section at the beginning which tells about the history of cable internet, and how it compares to ADSL and other services. I found this part the most useful out of all the parts in the book, and it really helped me to understand why my cable internet is better than everyone else's DSL. Also in this section is a history of cable modem hacking, brief details about most of the cable modems supplied by ISP's today and brief overviews of all the different types of hacking cable modems.

 All in all, this wasn't the book I expected it to be. I thought it would let me install some software/press a few buttons and remove my data cap. Instead, I would have to break into the actual modem and solder some stuff. Then I'd have to make a special cable to connect to it, and only then would I be the smallest bit close to hacking it. All this is a bit beyond me.

ISBN: 1-59327-101-8