Beginning HTML5 and CSS3: Next Generation Web Standards, by Christopher Murphy
Filed under: CSS, CSS3, HTML5, Non-fiction, book review, web design
This is a new and very exciting book on modern use
Beginning HTML-5 and CSS3 provides an in-depth look the new capabilities—including audio and video—that are new to web standards. It also addresses the new HTML5 structural sections, plus HTML5 and CSS3 layouts. You see how to create transitions and animations with new technologies.
- Cutting-edge web development techniques with HTML5 and CSS3
- The new features of HTML5 and how to work with HTML5 and CSS3
- The new web standards being implemented by all the major web browsers
- How to work with the new HTML5 structural sections
- How to create HTML5 and CSS3 layouts
- How to create transitions and animations without using Flash
- New web typography solutions
- A new vision of web development with HTML5 and CSS3
This book is for web developers and anyone involved in web design who wants to embrace the new web standards and cutting-edge features of HTML5 and CSS3. With a practical, accessible approach, this book is for anyone who wants to push their websites forwards with the latest technologies.
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.Building Findable Websites: Web Standards SEO and Beyond, by Aarron Walter
Filed under: Non-fiction, SEO, book review, recommendation
SEO is important. But there is more to getting traffic to your web pages than just SEO. You want people to be able to find your sites, partly via search engines. However, once there, you also want users to find the content of interest to them on your sites. To achieve this, you need to know how people 
But the alternative approach – which more or less says that content is king and the answer to your prayers – will most likely not cut it either. The reason is that you need content people can find, you need traffic from search engines, you need content that is organized well so that the right content is easily available to as many users as possible, and you need a web site that is alive – where things happen, where new content is added – so that users have a reason to return.
Walter’s approach encompasses both SEO and the more content focused approach. Thus this is not another SEO book written for marketing professionals. Building Findable Websites is a book full of practical advice and examples for people who build websites aiming to reach their target audience. Chapters introduce best practices and fresh perspectives on how to accomplish the goals I outlined above in the first paragraph of this review.
The book discusses Web standards, accessibility, and technologies like Ajax, APIs, Flash, and microformats, focusing on the larger ideas behind these technologies. Aarron’s book shows you how a website built semantically using XHTML, CSS and javascript can make your web site findable for your users and for the search engines. . It emphasizes building attractive content first, then removing any roadblocks that would prevent search engines from finding it.
Building Findable Websites is an interesting blend of high-level strategy and low-level techie tools and techniques. It is a book that lays out a sound philosophy, provides tools consistent with that philosophy, and show how to use them. So it’s a useful book. It is also a very well-written book. Building Findable Websites is, to my mind, a very worthwhile read for anybody concerned with web site traffic!
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, by Eric Freeman and Elisabeth Freeman
Filed under: International bestseller, Non-fiction, book review, web design
This is currently the #1 book on the amazon bestseller list for computer and 
Head First HTML with CSS & XHTM breaks down elements of HTML, XHTML, and CSS so that it beomes possible figure out what is going on and what needs to be done in web page design using these technologies. Also, this is a great choice for a textbook if you need to upgrade your skills!
This book covers the basics of HTML, putting your webpage on the Internet and linking to other web resources. It also tackles XHTML. Next, it introduces CSS along with the properties that can be controlled via CSS. And it does it all in a plain, nice way with lots of illustrations.
The authors show you how to do pretty advanced layouts using the tools available to you without you even noticing that you’ve been “studying”.
The book’s final chapter is appropriately entitled “The Top Ten Topics We Didn’t Cover”, and thus acknowledges that this is not an advanced book on webpage design.
Beginner books about Python 3
Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback), by Mark Sommerfield
Python 3 is used more 
Now, leading Python programmer Mark Summerfield demonstrates how to write code that takes full advantage of Python 3’s features and idioms. The first book written from a completely “Python 3” viewpoint, Programming in Python 3, brings together all the knowledge you need to write any program, use any standard or third-party Python 3 library, and create new library modules of your own.
Summerfield has many years of Python experience. He has deep insights into Python 3 development that you won’t find anywhere else. He begins by the eight key elements of Python you need to write robust, high-performance programs. Building on these core elements, he introduces new topics designed to strengthen your practical expertise–one concept and hands-on example at a time. This book’s coverage includes:
- Developing in Python using procedural, object-oriented, and functional programming paradigms
- Creating custom packages and modules
- Writing and reading binary, text, and XML files, including optional compression, random access, and text and XML parsing
- Leveraging advanced data types, collections, control structures, and functions
- Spreading program workloads across multiple processes and threads
- Programming SQL databases and key-value DBM files
- Utilizing Python’s regular expression mini-language and module
- Building usable, efficient, GUI-based applications
- Advanced programming techniques, including generators, function and class decorators, context managers, descriptors, abstract base classes, metaclasses, and more
It is a great beginning book, loved and recommended by readers. As one reader writes: “This book takes an approach that gives the reader a quick overview of the language that is complete enough to start using Python by page 40! When the book mentions a topic that is covered elsewhere, there is a little box in the margin that tells the page that topic is covered – foward and backward. Great idea! That is very handy.” This is certainly a book I recommend!
Another very good book for people starting with Python is
Python Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition (Paperback), by Michael Dawson
This is a more basic book, not intended for programmers. So If you are a programmer looking to learn the Python language, this book is not for you. It’s for people who want to learn to program, and for whom Python may well be the weapon of choice. 
The sample programs are realistic. They’re also short enough that someone can type them in as they go along. The author takes the reader all the way from “no experience required” all the way through OOP. Each step is gentle and encouraging. Along the way, the author points out what is a requirement and what is just convention. Computer jargon is explained in comfortable terms for the beginner.
Some of the main points the book touches on, i’m not going by any particular order…
-If, elif, else structures
-While loops
-For loops
-Functions
-Classes
-GUI’s and everything that entitles
The book comes with a cd which has all the source code you need to start programming. I highly recommend it for beginner programmers, as it is very good and very basic! Good luck!
Links to Python at amazon US
Syndicating Web Sites with RSS Feeds for Dummies, by Ellen Finkelstein
Filed under: Non-fiction, blogging, book review, web design
RSS or
- Use RSS to drive traffic to your Web site and build brand awareness
- Choose and install the right software, set up RSS feeds, and decide on the format that meets your needs
- Create RSS feeds from scratch, or put a news reader on your Web site
- Improve your site’s ranking in search engines and build customer loyalty
- Enable your customers to choose when and how they receive updated information
- Tailor information for your audience and publish all your updates quickly and easily
- Promote your RSS feed and explain to your customers how to use it
- Provide added value for your customers
Making the most of RSS can make life easier for both you and those who do business with you. Syndicating Web Sites With RSS Feeds For Dummies will help you maintain fresh content for your Web site, blog, or e-zine, promote your site and establish links to it, and even update vital documents like employee guides, price lists, and procedures manuals, quickly and easily.
Doyle Brunson’s Super System: A Course in Power Poker 1 & 2
When this book was first published in 1979, it caused a sensation. Immediately 
There is some truth to this accusation. Poker is an evolving game. Write a revealing book and the old games disappear more quickly and the “rocks” have to learn the new game in order to continue to make a living.
What makes Brunson’s Super System more interesting than many other other poker books, is partly the prestige and celebrity of the writers, especially Doyle himself, but also Bobby Baldwin, David “Chip” Reese, Joey Hawthorne, David Sklanski; and Mike Caro (MJC). Sklanski, for instance, is one of the game’s great theoreticians and the author of several excellent books on poker. Caro, known as “the Mad Genius of Poker,” has formed his own “Poker University”, and has become quite a poker entrepreneur.
Second, there is the comprehensive coverage of the games from five card draw to no limit hold’em. Not everything is explained and some of the tricks are held back. Still, in my library of poker books, this is my favorite, and reading it was a great learning experience.
This is a poker classic, and a must read for students of the game. A lot of intriguing ideas and notions, and interesting commentary as well. Also, it is very well written!
More reviews of poker books!
Links to Doyle Brunson’s books at amazon UK
Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business, by DL Byron & Steve Broback
Blogs have come to stay. There are now millions of blogs on the net, about every possible subject you can imagine. Some blogs are extremely informal, reporting on the everyday lives of their authors, while others are corporate ones, run by companies that try to establish new, more conversational types of communication with their customers.
Here
Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business is a little gold mine about blogging. It is short, only about 180 pages long, but it deals with most of the topics that are relevant to establishing and running a blog. It covers topics like blog design, tools you need for blogging, writing and launching your blog, as well as managing and monitoring your blog. The tone is informal and conversational. And the authors have a solid background as bloggers and as corporate advisors to corporations that have established blogs aimed at customers (like Boing or Bluefly).
Publish & Prosper: Blogging for Your Business is a well written, very informative book that covers a wide range of topics about blogs and blogging. Recommended!
A few other books about blogs and blogging that may be of interest to you:
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Links to amazon US for these boooks: Publish and Prosper: Blogging for Your Business
The Non-Designer’s Web Book, 3rd Edition, by Robin Williams
Filed under: Non-fiction, book review, web design
While the second edition of The Non-Designer’s Web Book won’t 
Any artist can tell you that you have to know how a medium works to get the most impact from working in it.
A basic understanding of how the Web works enables the good designer to create the most effective sites. This book thoroughly discusses the different kinds of graphics that are used on the Web, when to use one over another, how to make the most of text styles, and how to design navigation systems.
The comparisons are the best stuff here–good design vs. bad design, why designing Web pages is different from designing printed pages, and why a site looks terrific on one monitor but terrible on another. Two chapters on properly preparing graphics and setting typography for use on a Web site describe how to avoid obvious mistakes that would make your work look amateurish.
Not limited to design, the Non-Designer’s Web Book shows how to get a site up and running, register the domain name, and add it to search engines. After the design is finished and implemented, the site has to be uploaded and updated; this is explained, too.
The Joy of Sex, new edition!
Filed under: Non-fiction, The Joy of Sex, book news, book review, recommendation
The Joy of Sex, originally released in 1972, was parked on the New York Times bestseller list for the longest time. As Washington Post says, “It scintillated, it titillated, it taught French you never learned from Madame Cousin. But most of all, it normalized. In the boudoir, everyone was okay, and everyone could be taught.”
The Joy of Sex is subtitled “A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking,”, and has chapter headings like Starters, Main Courses and Sauces & Pickles.
The revised version of the book deals with an array of modern topics like Internet pornography, AIDS and Viagra, and features photographs (and drawings, when things get too graphic) of a couple. And it has been thoughly revised and updated. It reflect the latest research about the biology of sex. There is new material on the arousal cycle, hormones, pheromones, the clitoris, the relevance of the nipples, how erections work, aphrodisiacs, and more. Also, in addition to the elusive G spot, there is material about two other spots women can also enjoy, should they be lucky enough to locate them: the A spot, deeper inside the vagina than the G spot; and the U spot, between the clitoris and the vagina.
So, there it is. It’s a beautiful book, still fresh, and a great book to read to learn more or get som new ideas.
The new Joy of Sex available both in England and the U.S. It is highly recommended. Check it out!
| Amazon US | Amazon UK |
See also the bestselling books (links to amazon US): The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Amazing Sex, Third Edition
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