Preview of The Blue Nowhere, by Jeffery Deaver

So there I was, feeling pretty tired from working too hard, thinking to myself that I really need a break from everything related to educational technology. “I really must get out more.”, I told myself.

Definitely worth reading!And indeed I have, metaphorically speaking, by embarking on a novel by Jeffery Deaver, called The Blue Nowhere. It involves computer hacking. (It’s possible that I haven’t quite got the concept of getting away from it all.)

Like all Jeffery Deaver books, there’s an intriguing plot and, no doubt, plenty of plot twists to come. I have read only about an eighth of it, therefore I cannot review it exactly, just give my impressions so far.

It features a computer hacker who selects his murder victims and then gets to know all about them by hacking into their computers.  As an aside, it’s interesting to note how much seems to have changed, in both technology and terminology, in the nine years since the book was published in 2001. For example, do we continue to draw the distinction between hackers (the good guys, or at least the not-really-evil guys), and crackers, the nasty pieces of work? Does anyone still do phreaking, that is hacking into telephone systems in order to make free calls overseas? If so, haven’t these people heard of Skype?

Of course, they did it, and possibly still do it, for the challenge. This isn’t directly relevant in regards to this book, but it’s of tangential interest.  An understanding of human behaviour, and human nature, is an essential weapon in the true hacker’s armoury. It’s long been recognised that the biggest hole in sophisticated security systems is the human element, and serious hackers – the really serious ones -- are very adept at social engineering. That is, appearing to be someone you’re not (a computer repair person, for example) and, like all good con artists, brilliant at getting people to actually want to help you.

This is very much a theme in the book, as is the issue of keeping oneself safe online. The book is probably too long to make it feasible to set as an assignment (though it might go on a recommended summer reading list if you teach older ones), but there is much to be drawn from it in a professional sense.

• For example, what could victim #1 have done to protect herself whilst online?
• Can hacking ever be morally right? Discuss.
• Data protection is the sort of topic which can be as dry as dust and little more than trying to memorise the laws that have been passed. This story highlights issues which illustrate (or can be used to illustrate) important data protection issues.

You would have to go about this sensitively. Without care, using the book to bring out these kinds of issues could lead to some students – and their parents – becoming totally paranoid about going online at all. As you’ll see if you read the book, keeping safe isn’t entirely a matter of ‘stranger danger’ and not meeting online friends in real life.

But if you’re worried about scaring the kids then you could just read the book for its own sake, for relaxation.

Which is what I’m going to do for the rest of the day.

To purchase the book, click on the picture above and you'll be taken to Amazon UK, where you can buy the book and thereby help me to put some more crumbs on my family's table, courtesy of the Amazon affiliate scheme. Thank you.



Book Review of How to Do Everything With Web 2.0 Mashups, By Mike Nardine

Book Review of How to Do Everything With Web 2.0 Mashups
By Mike Nardine

How To Do Everything With Web 2.0 Mashups By Jesse Feiler
McGraw Hill 2008
$29.99

This book grows on you. I originally purchased it to find out something about mashups. I'd come across the term before and hadn't been satisfied with the explanations I'd found. This book at once did an admirable job of that; I'm satisfied I now know a mashup when I see one.

What put me off about the book was its almost mechanical approach. Written in terse, no-nonsense unemotional prose, it had none of the humorous dry quips I'd come to appreciate in other Internet-related books. It drove from point to point as if building a house rather than a concept. Liberal arts major that I am, I guess I'm uncomfortable with that. Of course it's possible others, more technically inclined than I, might enjoy the book precisely because of this approach.

The book's first chapter is titled "Welcome to the World of Mashups" and that's the last bit of gratuitous amicability you'll find. After that it's, bang! "Understanding the Mashup World;" and bang! "Use XML to Structure Data;" and bang! "Use JavaScript to Script the Mashup Page," and so forth until your head spins. I set the book aside.

I picked it up again a month or so later when I suddenly discovered that it had done an excellent job of acquainting me with the central mysteries of mashups. I finally recognized them for what they were when I came across them, and found the book had given me the ability to actually understand how they did what they were doing. I wasn't quite ready to start building my own mashups, but I did enjoy the feeling that I'd learned something interesting and wanted to learn more-I guess that might be even more important than the humor I found in some lesser books.

Instead of struggling against it I found myself appreciating the way the book broke mashups down into their component parts and put them back together. Anyone who has struggled with JavaScript, RSS, XML, Php and API's as separate unrelated entities will get a sudden flash of understanding from each seeing them now working as parts of a larger whole. Still, I wish the author put a bit more of himself into the prose.

Mike Nardine operates http://www.CheapMikesDomains.com Mike sells domains and hosts websites at competitive rates. He reviews books at http://www.yourbookreview.com

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New to Web 2.0? Here is a Book Review of a Great Book For You -- by Mike Nardine

New to Web 2.0? Here is a Book Review of a Great Book For You
By Mike Nardine

Exploring Web 2.0:Second Generation Interactive Tools-Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis, Networking, Virtual Worlds, and More
By Ann Bell Katy
Crossing Press 2009 Copyright

Web 2.0? Whatever happened to Web 1.0? For that matter what's the difference? And even more to the point, who cares?

According to the author, Ann Bell, an Online Instructor and Course Developer For the University of Wisconsin-Stout, Web 1.0 faded away shortly after the Dot Com debacle at the beginning of the new millennium. Before that, she says, the information paradigm was "publish and browse;" the web was there to be read from, not interacted with. Today, in Web 2.0 data streams from every conceivable source are continually mixing and combining. As to who cares, knowledge, as they say, is power; any businessperson planning to make a living on the Web would be wise to pay heed to some of this stuff.

And this is a fine book for someone who wants to learn more about the Internet but doesn't want to get bogged down in the technical morass. Author Bell doesn't torment us estimating kilobytes or explaining domain name servers. Web 2.0, she says, depends on sharing among users, and she sets out to show us how we all can benefit from this collaboration. The chapter on RSS Feeds, for instance, gave the clearest explanation of what RSS is and how to use it of anything I've yet read on the subject. Information diced and sliced and delivered to your plate to suit your needs. She also gives us a list of valuable links to use in building our own RSS system.

For those of us that have always gone blazing by such nonsensical words as metadata and folksonomy, there is an interesting section explaining these terms and showing how they are important in Social Bookmarking, another system any businessperson who hopes to succeed on the net should be aware of. Are you on delicious.com yet? Good, then you understand tagging. Of course there is still Podcasting, Vodcasting and ScreenCasts, Wikis, Mashups and Virtual Office applications to be discussed.

Virtual Office applications, or cloud computing as it is called by many, is a valuable addition to any business office. Free software and free storage that is well beyond the reach of your crashed hard drive. You don't know where to find this valuable stuff? No problem, Ms. Bell lists several of the better-known services: Google Docs, Microsoft Live Office and Zoho. (I tried Microsoft Live Office for the first time and found it overly complicated; I'm back to Google Docs.)

Some readers might find this book a bit on the light side. Ms Bell spends very little time on technical questions. Except for the section on RSS she tends to be more descriptive than helpful in using the various items she describes. But the book does serve as an excellent introduction to the new interactive resources of Web 2.0.

Mike Nardine operates http://www.CheapMikesDomains.com. Mike sells domains and hosts websites at competitive rates. Mike also writes book reviews at http://www.YourBookReview.Com.

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Review of The Making of a Digital World

The Making of a Digital World has a very promising subtitle: The Evolution of Technological Change and How It Shaped Our World. It sounds like a more academic version of Thomas Friedman's 'The World is Flat' – and in many respects it is. To be more precise,

The central question of this book can be … formulated as follows: do the past patterns of global system development still hold true for its current transformation or are we witnessing a structurally different development, whether technologically induced or the result of its increased complexity?

The book is certainly detailed: the wealth of historical data and the breadth of literature cited are impressive.

Unfortunately, however, I found the book to be almost unreadable. Now I realise that some may protest that academic books are not meant to be readable: they are there to be consulted, which is not quite the same thing. I would have to disagree: the best written work is always gripping, even if it is intellectually alien. For example, I sometimes read Scientific American. The technical terminology used in some of the articles renders large parts of them effectively inaccessible – but that does not prevent my enjoying the bits I do understand.

Not so with this book. Long and complex sentences (such as the one quoted at the beginning of this review) do not make the reading easy. But it's not just that: the book is also – there is no nice way of saying this – poorly written. Take the following sentence, for example, which I do not think is atypical of the book as a whole (although it is one of the worst examples):

This process is nested in the process in what Modelski terms the active zone process, defined as the spatial locus of innovation the world system, representing the political process driving the world system evolution, and unfolding over a period of roughly two thousand years (again separated into four phases).

Dorothy Parker once said, in reviewing a book,

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

I dread to think what she would have done with this book.

So, is there anything positive I can say about it? Well, there is the enormous amount of data it contains, along with references for further reading. The author has done an impressive job of drawing together many disparate sources into an overarching conceptual framework. I have to say that the price is somewhat alarming, but if you can persuade your local library to stock it you might use it for source material for assignments and discussions.

Bottom line:

Try to persuade your nearest library to buy it.

8 Reasons to Look at the Books Page

Some time ago I set up a book page on this website, because I thought it would be handy to have all the books I've reviewed in the same place. It would also make it easy for readers to purchase books too.

What I have now done, to give the page additional value, is put a brief extract from each review alongside each book. If you like what you read, you can click on a link to be taken to the complete review; otherwise, you can just skip it and go on to the next one.

I think in due course I will probably have to create more such pages because that page is already starting to look rather long -- the number of books has been set to 25, but I may start a new page before then. I suppose I'll also have to figure out how to put them into alphabetical order, although it may be easier to create an index, or even just to leave it altogether: I have tested the website's search engine for finding books, and it works very efficiently.

I'd be interested in your views on such matters. I've devised a survey that will take about 2 minutes to complete and is anonymous. I hope you will be kind enough to use it to have your say.

Oh, and the 8 reasons referred to in the title of this post? Eight of the books have been reviewed and published on the page so far; there are several more to come.