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Books Archive

Best Channel Books of 2007

My slide show of the Top Channel Books of 2007 is online now. I was looking for a mix of business, technology and more inspirational fare, but if you've read one I missed, let everyone know in our forums.

Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:31 AM, December 26, 2007
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Freakonomics Strikes At The VARBusiness 500

Freakonomics, (both the best-selling book, and the popular website) takes on issues such as crime, childrearing, and education by applying traditional economic models to analyze human behavior--rational and irrational. Stephen Dubner, co-author of Freakonomics, spoke at last week's VARBusiness 500 awards dinner. You'll find my coverage of the event at Dubner Brings Freakonomics To The VARBusiness 500.

Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:21 AM, June 21, 2007
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Taking on Gladwell

Over at 'Knowledge Is Power' EastSight Consulting President Parmelee B. Eastman blogs about our VARBusiness 500 awards speaker Malcom Gladwell, whose new book 'Blink' extols the power of 'thinking without thinking'. Eastman writes:

"In my experience, instinctive decision-making works in a very limited number of instances. And a big problem with those cases is that you don't know which ones are appropriate until the results of the decisions are known. And even then, you cannot be sure which, or if, another decision would have produced superior results."

She goes on to spell out four specific objections to Gladwell's thesis that, for an unbiased expert, 'snap' judgements can provide better results than decisions that take into account much larger sets of data.

I don't think even Gladwell would disagree with these observations. What he does do is provide a framework for appreciating how often those instant judgements are correct. With a hand in planning and building a number of different websites, I hear ideas daily for new elements and designs, that I find I instinctively categorize: Good; Good but not worth the effort; Good for somebody else; Just Plain Bad.

While, as Eastman notes, that gives me little to use to justify my decisions to management, I find it has helped me be confident in my screening process for investigating the best ideas further.

Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:13 PM, July 19, 2006
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ASP.Net and CSS Books From Wrox

Three books arrived recently from Wrox, including a distant descendent of one of my favorite programming books.

Continue reading "ASP.Net and CSS Books From Wrox"

Posted by Joe Caponi at 10:28 AM, June 22, 2006
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Gladwell and the VARBusiness 500 Awards

Towards the end of my college days, I met a friend of a friend named Shred. Shred was affable and witty, and what's stuck with me was this one line of his: "The best plan of attack is no plan -- because then you don't have to think."

Malcom Gladwell would have known exactly was Shred was talking about.

Continue reading "Gladwell and the VARBusiness 500 Awards"

Posted by Joe Caponi at 04:25 PM, June 14, 2006
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Unknown Quantity

Just bought John Derbyshire's Unknown Quantity, "a real and imaginary history of algebra". Derbyshire is a Long Islander and writer for National Review - I first took notice of him when he wrote one of the earliest, and still one of the best, essays on 9/11 attacks.
But he also writes about math. I read his last book, Prime Obsession, on the Riemann Hypothesis, two years ago, and I've been looking forward to this one since. Like "Prime Obsessions", "Unknown Quantity" alternates between serious math discussion and engaging looks at the history and personalities involved in the development of mathematical ideas. His writing always has a refreshing directness, and he's got an ability to explain complex math that I wished I'd heard more often in my own calculus classes. If I only read one algebra book this summer, it'll be this one...

Posted by Joe Caponi at 11:56 AM, May 21, 2006
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New Book: Ajax In Ten Minutes

In the mail: Sams' Ajax In 10 Minutes by Phil Ballard. The red and blue 'X in 24 Hours' books are ubiquitous around here--I've got six myself--"Apache 2", "CSS", "Java 2", "JavaScript", "SQL", and "XML"--and I see "HTML and CSS" and "Programming With Java" next door in Brad Baymack's office. They're always reliable survey books, with a wide variety of examples, though you'll need a more complete reference pretty quickly once you've started working with a technology. But can the learning time be cut down even more?

"AJAX in 10 Minutes," despite it's smaller physical size than the '24 Hours' books, looks like it covers the equivalent amount of ground as it's bigger cousins, mostly by dispensing with many of the examples. Consisting of 21 ten minute lessons (call it "Ajax in 3 1/2 Hours") it covers topics such as the XMLHTTPrequest object, SOAP, REST, and Web services. I'm particularly intrigued by the opening six chapters, which, in a mere 65 pages, cover the basics of the Web, HTML, HTTP, JavaScript, PHP and XML. That's got to be worth an hour.

Posted by Joe Caponi at 02:10 PM, May 16, 2006
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