Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made easy Review

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(More customer reviews)Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy by Christian Heilmann and Mark Norman Francis left me with mixed feelings. The title lead me to believe there would be some more in-depth information related to the topics, but in reality the end of the title should have been Using Wordpress. The majority of this book focuses on Wordpress and how each of the topics relate to the blogging platform.
The reason I had mixed emotions is because on one hand, the authors made it seem as though web development is so easy your Grandma could do it, while on the other hand sliding in some disclaimers about needing more knowledge on different topics. I think that this book would give someone just enough material to be dangerous, but not enough to really understand web development as a whole. This book is geared to the beginner in web development, so I was hoping for some more solid material.
With that out of the way, lets take a closer look at the book and its contents:
The first chapter simply discusses the reason for starting up a website in the first place. There are many different reasons for many different people as to why they start a site. Some start for financial reasons (make money and advertising), while others start to share photos with family and friends. This chapter discussed several of these reasons for starting a website.
Chapter two was where the book really started to take off. This chapter discusses the Dilemma of "Rolling your Own" Solutions. We also get a brief crash course in several aspects related to web development.
The author gets you started by installing a local server on your machine with PHP and MySQL. After this is completed, the authors walk through an installation of Wordpress as we begin our journey. Basically every chapter after this will use Wordpress in one way or another.
This is where things get somewhat fuzzy. The chapters related to Ajax, APIs, and Libraries all revolve around Wordpress. The topics are not discussed in depth, but merely show you how to install an array of different plugins available to the Wordpress platform. Flickr, Youtube, Odeo, and Google Maps--all of which are presented as plugins for Wordpress.
The last few chapters involved some good discussions on promoting your content, navigation and layout, and finally--how to get help when you hit a roadblock. The last chapter really made this book worth the read, as it discussed the different ways to get help, the places to go, and how to ask for help in the different communities. There are some very helpful and important tips in this chapter as you seek help from your peers and colleagues.
Overall, the book was not a bad read--it just left me with mixed emotions due to the title of the book. The authors are very knowledgeable and that shows in each of the chapters. Though I felt the book made things look so easy, the authors were sure to point out that the solutions there were not in-depth, but enough to get you started. If you are just beginning your trek into web development, then this book would be a good read to get you up and running in no time flat. However--for long term involvement in the web, or a more in-depth discussion of the topics listed in the title, you may want to grab a few more books.

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Building "Web 2.0"/Ajax" applications is all the rage right now, and there is a lot of complicated code involved, but a lot of budding web developers don't realize that most of the hard work is already done for them, and available on the Web, through JavaScript libraries to provide most of that Ajax/DOM Scripting functionality out of the box, Application programming interfaces (APIs,) and hosting services such as Flickr and YouTube to provide all they need to easily store and retrieve their media (be it images, video, or whatever.)All the developer needs to know is enough to successfully wire together all this functionality successfully and responsibly, and this book shows you how. It assumes no knowledge at the start, showing how to set up an effective development environment, then moving on to building up a complete professional "Ajaxy"/"Web 2.0" site step by step, all using ready made functionality available on the web, including storing, retrieving, and displaying content, images and video, and effective site navigation, all topped off with a beautiful CSS layout.But it doesn't stop here. The reader is also shown how to promote their content to attract visitors to their site, and how to find a hosting partner.The techniques contained within this book are becoming increasing more in demand by aspiring and existing web developers, all wanting to be a part of the new generation of the web.

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Cloud Application Architectures: Building Applications and Infrastructure in the Cloud (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) Review

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(More customer reviews)All it talks about is Amazon's EC2, S3, MapReduce. It does not talk about "Application Architecture". It does not have ideas about how to break up traditional programs into MapReduce paradigm. It should be called Cloud Operations Architecture. If it was named by that title, I'd give it 5 stars. The book itself is not bad, but it will get obsolete very quickly due to its specificity to Amazon.
subtitle should be :Building Applications and Infrastructure in Amazon Cloud

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If you're involved in planning IT infrastructure as a network or system architect, system administrator, or developer, this book will help you adapt your skills to work with these highly scalable, highly redundant infrastructure services. While analysts hotly debate the advantages and risks of cloud computing, IT staff and programmers are left to determine whether and how to put their applications into these virtualized services. Cloud Application Architectures provides answers -- and critical guidance -- on issues of cost, availability, performance, scaling, privacy, and security. With Cloud Application Architectures, you will:



Understand the differences between traditional deployment and cloud computing
Determine whether moving existing applications to the cloud makes technical and business sense
Analyze and compare the long-term costs of cloud services, traditional hosting, and owning dedicated servers
Learn how to build a transactional web application for the cloud or migrate one to it
Understand how the cloud helps you better prepare for disaster recovery
Change your perspective on application scaling

To provide realistic examples of the book's principles in action, the author delves into some of the choices and operations available on Amazon Web Services, and includes high-level summaries of several of the other services available on the market today.Cloud Application Architectures provides best practices that apply to every available cloud service. Learn how to make the transition to the cloud and prepare your web applications to succeed.

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Cloud Computing Bible Review

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(More customer reviews)As technology advances, new buzzwords appear in the lexicon. Lately, we've been hearing more and more about "cloud computing." If you use Google Docs, Evernote, Dropbox, or web-based email, you're using cloud computing. According to Wiktionary.org, cloud computing is, "Computing in which services and storage are provided over the Internet (or `cloud')." Pretty simple, right? Maybe for us, as the user, but there are a lot of details that need to be worked out to create a cloud service.
This is where Cloud Computing Bible by Barrie Sosinsky comes in. If you're looking for a book that explains how to use some of the cloud services mentioned above, stop here. This is not a how-to book on specific applications or services. If, however, you're looking to create a cloud-based service, whether for public consumption or your own private company, then continue reading.
Cloud Computing Bible is divided into five parts: Examining the Value Proposition, Using Platforms, Exploring Cloud Infrastructures, Understanding Services and Applications, and Using the Mobile Cloud. Sosinsky goes into great detail explaining what cloud computing is and why it may or may not benefit a particular business. He discusses the architecture of building a cloud, how to address security, storage issues, and managing the cloud. In addition to these, and other topics, Cloud Computing Bible contains loads of diagrams, tables, screenshots, and web links to further explain points or to look up more information.
The only real issue I have with this book is the reading level listed on the back cover. I consider myself relatively technology savvy with reasonable intelligence, and much of the book was far beyond me. Classifying the reading level as Beginning to Advanced is a bit of a stretch. Someone with experience in programming or information technology (IT) would better appreciate everything Cloud Computing Bible has to offer. Intermediate to Advanced is more appropriate.
If you, or someone you know, is thinking of working with cloud computing, the Cloud Computing Bible would be a good starting point.
MyMac.com rating: 8 out of 10
*Original Review at [...]

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The complete reference guide to the hot technology of cloud computing
Its potential for lowering IT costs makes cloud computing a major force for both IT vendors and users; it is expected to gain momentum rapidly with the launch of Office Web Apps later this year. Because cloud computing involves various technologies, protocols, platforms, and infrastructure elements, this comprehensive reference is just what you need if you'll be using or implementing cloud computing.
Cloud computing offers significant cost savings by eliminating upfront expenses for hardware and software; its growing popularity is expected to skyrocket when Microsoft introduces Office Web Apps
This comprehensive guide helps define what cloud computing is and thoroughly explores the technologies, protocols, platforms and infrastructure that make it so desirable
Covers mobile cloud computing, a significant area due to ever-increasing cell phone and smartphone use
Focuses on the platforms and technologies essential to cloud computing

Anyone involved with planning, implementing, using, or maintaining a cloud computing project will rely on the information in Cloud Computing Bible.

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Programming Amazon Web Services: S3, EC2, SQS, FPS, and SimpleDB Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a good overview of the suite of services that comprise Amazon Web Services (AWS), I'd have given it a 3.5 star rating if I could. It talks about all of them, but it spends the bulk of its time, very reasonably, discussing S3 (the persistent storage system) and EC2 (the compute cloud - basically Amazon's Rackspace in the clouds) - each getting about 100 pages devoted to it.
As others have noted it is out of date - but any book would have the same problem due to the moving target that AWS is. The biggest news is that EC2 is going to be getting persistent storage, which I believe will change the game completely when it is rolled out to the public. Instead of needing some elaborate connection with S3, now instances will behave much more like a typical physical machine with real disk drive. The book, on the other hand, provides almost no real advice on how to deal with the problem of non-persistence of EC2's current storage mechanism. This is a signifcant problem that everyone will have to deal with and glossing over it is a failing of the book.
This is also a Ruby book, which I found fairly annoying. Nowhere in the description does it suggest that it is done in Ruby. And while Ruby certainly is trendy these days, the actual number of Ruby developers is small - it gets undue weight in computer texts. At the end of the day, though, it generally provides the actual request strings and XML requests and responses for non-ruby folk to come to their own conclusions.
This is a worthwhile book to get if you're interested in quickly getting a good and broad idea on how to work with AWS. It will give a good foundation to get more out of the documentation and forums found on Amazon's AWS site itself.


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Building on the success of its storefront and fulfillment services, Amazon now allows businesses to "rent" computing power, data storage and bandwidth on its vast network platform. This book demonstrates how developers working with small- to mid-sized companies can take advantage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) such as the Simple Storage Service (S3), Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Queue Service (SQS), Flexible Payments Service (FPS), and SimpleDB to build web-scale business applications.With AWS, Amazon offers a new paradigm for IT infrastructure: use what you need, as you need it, and pay as you go. Programming Amazon Web Services explains how you can access Amazon's open APIs to store and run applications, rather than spend precious time and resources building your own. With this book, you'll learn all the technical details you need to: Store and retrieve any amount of data using application servers, unlimited data storage, and bandwidth with the Amazon S3 serviceBuy computing time using Amazon EC2's interface to requisition machines, load them with an application environment, manage access permissions, and run your image using as many or few systems as neededUse Amazon's web-scale messaging infrastructure to store messages as they travel between computers with Amazon SQSLeverage the Amazon FPS service to structure payment instructions and allow the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computersCreate and store multiple data sets, query your data easily, and return the results using Amazon SimpleDB.Scale up or down at a moment's notice, using these services to employ as much time and space as you needWhether you're starting a new online business, need to ramp up existing services, or require an offsite backup for your home, Programming Amazon Web Services gives you the background and the practical knowledge you need to start using AWS. Other books explain how to build web services. This book teaches businesses how to take make use of existing services from an established technology leader.--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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