Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data

Book Description

Dashboards have become popular in recent years as uniquely powerful tools for communicating important information at a glance. Although dashboards are potentially powerful, this potential is rarely realized. The greatest display technology in the world won't solve this if you fail to use effective visual design. And if a dashboard fails to tell you precisely what you need to know in an instant, you'll never use it, even if it's filled with cute gauges, meters, and traffic lights. Don't let your investment in dashboard technology go to waste.

This book will teach you the visual design skills you need to create dashboards that communicate clearly, rapidly, and compellingly. Information Dashboard Design will explain how to:

Avoid the thirteen mistakes common to dashboard design
Provide viewers with the information they need quickly and clearly
Apply what we now know about visual perception to the visual presentation of information
Minimize distractions, cliches, and unnecessary embellishments that create confusion
Organize business information to support meaning and usability
Create an aesthetically pleasing viewing experience
Maintain consistency of design to provide accurate interpretation
Optimize the power of dashboard technology by pairing it with visual effectiveness

Stephen Few has over 20 years of experience as an IT innovator, consultant, and educator. As Principal of the consultancy Perceptual Edge, Stephen focuses on data visualization for analyzing and communicating quantitative business information. He provides consulting and training services, speaks frequently at conferences, and teaches in the MBA program at the University of California in Berkeley. He is also the author of Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten. Visit his website at www.perceptualedge.com.

Customer Reviews:

Buy this Book!.......2007-09-12

This book is great, it gets to the point, tells you what you need to know, provides many examples and is entertaining at the same time. The people who are still fascinated by all the colors in their kids Crayola boxes probably would object to some of Few's points.

Over-raed approach to stern looking dashboards.......2007-09-03

The key elements of dashboard design (avoid clutter, focus and limit visual cues, beware of rainbow colors, carefully chose when to show numbers, tables or (appropriate) graphs), converted in a very lengthy and expensive piece of litterature. And the results is by all accounts debatable in terms of look and feel, in particular as very little attention is given to who your audience is...
I would not recommend this book.

Another Tech Book Killed by Frills and Filler .......2007-09-02

There can be no doubt that the pages of this book contain some of the most original and decisive ideas about dashboard design of any book to come out on the market. Yet this strength cannot quite redeem it. This book is mostly pictures, figures, and graphs, many of which are not needed. The same could be said of dashboards in general. The prose is watered down and childlike, as if the author would spoon feed his ideas, one per chapter, to an infant audience. In the end I am forced to conclude that, like many tech books in HCI, a hard core text filled with complex ideas, lean, well-written chapters, and something like wit is both outside the reach of its authors and outside the bounds of contemporary techie marketing. This book may sell, but it does nothing to promote a sophisticated, confident HCI core at a time when awareness of the profession is still patchy. It will be a great day for HCI when its "Gurus" stop condescending to their audience.

Excellent Treatment of the Material.......2007-08-17

This is an easy to read book which does a fantastic job of conveying the topic material. I strongly agree with Few's perspective and think that you wouldn't go wrong with a design that's in alignment with this book.

Great design principles.......2007-08-08

This manual is a great resource for best practices and principles for designing dashboards. It doesn't matter if you buy or build, the material is golden.

Management Information Systems & Multimedia CD PK (9th Edition)

Average customer rating:

Decent book

Management Information Systems & Multimedia CD PK (9th Edition)
Kenneth C. Laudon , and Jane P. Laudon
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0131694553

Customer Reviews:

Decent book.......2007-01-15

Decent book but I felt the information and topics were not that well organized. Some of the figures/charts/pictures were rather remedial and childish. I bought the book becuase it was required for an MIS class for my MBA program. I started the class not knowing much about IT/IS and finished the class learning very little more. I blame the class more for that then the book. Like I said, a decent book.

Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia Information and Systems)

Average customer rating:

one of the best book on search engineering
A Comprehensive Introduction To Text Retrieval Systems
Great Book on Information Retrieval
The Wonderful Thing Is: It's the Only One
Very clear, but misses some key real-world issues

Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia Information and Systems)
Ian H. Witten , Alistair Moffat , and Timothy C. Bell
Manufacturer: Morgan Kaufmann
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1558605703

Amazon.com

Of all the tasks programmers are asked to perform, storing, compressing, and retrieving information are some of the most challenging--and critical to many applications. Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images is a treasure trove of theory, practical illustration, and general discussion in this fascinating technical subject.

Ian Witten, Alistair Moffat, and Timothy Bell have updated their original work with this even more impressive second edition. This version adds recent techniques such as block-sorting, new indexing techniques, new lossless compression strategies, and many other elements to the mix. In short, this work is a comprehensive summary of text and image compression, indexing, and querying techniques. The history of relevant algorithm development is woven well with a practical discussion of challenges, pitfalls, and specific solutions.

This title is a textbook-style exposition on the topic, with its information organized very clearly into topics such as compression, indexing, and so forth. In addition to diagrams and example text transformations, the authors use "pseudo-code" to present algorithms in a language-independent manner wherever possible. They also supplement the reading with mg--their own implementation of the techniques. The mg C language source code is freely available on the Web.

Alone, this book is an impressive collection of information. Nevertheless, the authors list numerous titles for further reading in selected topics. Whether you're in the midst of application development and need solutions fast or are merely curious about how top-notch information management is done, this hardcover is an excellent investment. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: Text compression models, including Huffman, LZW, and their variants; trends in information management; index creation and compression; image compression; performance issues; and overall system implementation.

Book Description

In this fully updated second edition of the highly acclaimed Managing Gigabytes, authors Witten, Moffat, and Bell continue to provide unparalleled coverage of state-of-the-art techniques for compressing and indexing data. Whatever your field, if you work with large quantities of information, this book is essential reading--an authoritative theoretical resource and a practical guide to meeting the toughest storage and access challenges. It covers the latest developments in compression and indexing and their application on the Web and in digital libraries. It also details dozens of powerful techniques supported by mg, the authors' own system for compressing, storing, and retrieving text, images, and textual images. mg's source code is freely available on the Web.

* Up-to-date coverage of new text compression algorithms such as block sorting, approximate arithmetic coding, and fat Huffman coding
* New sections on content-based index compression and distributed querying, with 2 new data structures for fast indexing
* New coverage of image coding, including descriptions of de facto standards in use on the Web (GIF and PNG), information on CALIC, the new proposed JPEG Lossless standard, and JBIG2
* New information on the Internet and WWW, digital libraries, web search engines, and agent-based retrieval
* Accompanied by a public domain system called MG which is a fully worked-out operational example of the advanced techniques developed and explained in the book
* New appendix on an existing digital library system that uses the MG software

Customer Reviews:

one of the best book on search engineering.......2007-04-20

It has been 8 years since it was published and I could see it is still one of the best in IR field. Without much long magic equations, it is not hard for common user to pick it up. There are mainly 2 parts in the book, the first book is compression, most of them are just principle introduction since it does not make sense for the read to invent or implement an algorithm. The second part is indexing (plus some query) which I highly recommended because it is "practical".
The authors are smart guys who could do sth, google mg for their website and mg4j for the ported java implementation.

A Comprehensive Introduction To Text Retrieval Systems.......2005-07-30

A wonderful feature of this book spans out practicality for various topics including compresion algorithms and theory, document and imaging system and information retrieval. On my personal interest, the authors highlight a vast list of not only the theory but present it in a simple common sense logic.

There are several examples that break down complex processes into simple and easy to understand logic and the pages provides a smooth flow of the structured topics. Well organised, presented and fully informative.

Truly an ideal book. This serves as a superior text for students studying document and imaging systems, processing and information and multimedia retrieval subjects. Beautiful!!!

Just on a personal note, it would be great to see some emphasis in the future editions in regards to web mining applications.

Great Book on Information Retrieval.......2004-05-03

Managing Gigabytes is the best book out there on information retrieval. If you're interested in implementing your own IR system, there's nothing available that comes close to this book. But the book is good not just because it's the only one out there: the writing is excellent, the algorithms are presented clearly and explained well, and the coverage is thorough. Additionally, the coverage of compression algorithms is the best I've found in any book. All algorithms and pseudo-code in the book are presented clearly enough such that any competent programmer should be able to implement them. If all else fails, however, the free downloadable source code for the mg system can fill in any gaps.

All in all, this is the best computer science book I've purchased in years. I wish all CS books were written like this one: it doesn't skimp on the theory or on the implementation details.

The Wonderful Thing Is: It's the Only One.......2001-12-21

This is the only book there is that will actually teach you how to build an information retrieval system (aka search engine). It discusses all the algorithms and tradeoffs, and comes with free downloadable source code to experiment with. Some of the material is standard, but covered in more implementation detail here than anywhere else. Some of the material is novel: you won't find better coverage of compression unless you hand-assemble twenty research papers, and reverse-engineer them to figure out how they're implemented. But with "Managing Gigabytes", it's all here. (Although, after a particularly envigorating discussion of how to string together a bunch of techniques to compress their corpus and save a couple 100MB, I did a check and found you could buy 512MB of RAM for less than the cost of the book. Knowledge is Power, but sometimes a little cash is more powerful.) The only negative is that this book is not called "Managing Terabytes", as the first edition promised/threatened it might be. RAM and disk are cheap, but not that cheap, and for now terabytes (and sometimes petabytes) are managed only by NASA, Google, and a few others. I can't wait to see the third edition!

Very clear, but misses some key real-world issues.......2001-08-15

As others have said, MG is a good introductory text for Information Retrieval. However I think it spends a little too much time on compression techniques and lacks a good discussion of incremental or on-line indexing. The book tends to assume that the set of texts to be searched is static - if new documents can be added or old ones deleted it makes the whole problem much harder and many of MG's techniques are no longer relevant. That said, I strongly look forward to Managing Terabytes (if it ever appears).

Average customer rating:

excellent book
Very Useful, but it's Hit-and-Miss
Succinct and clear to understand . . .
Perfect binding keeps the book open at the desired page
It was perfect to get me moving on LINUX

Linux Cookbook
Carla Schroder
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596006403
Release Date: 2004-12-01

Book Description

This unique and valuable collection of tips, tools, and scripts provides clear, concise, hands-on solutions that can be applied to the challenges facing anyone running a network of Linux servers from small networks to large data centers in the practical and popular problem-solution-discussion O'Reilly cookbook format. The Linux Cookbook covers everything you'd expect: backups, new users, and the like. But it also covers the non-obvious information that is often ignored in other books the time-sinks and headaches that are a real part of an administrator's job, such as: dealing with odd kinds of devices that Linux historically hasn't supported well, building multi-boot systems, and handling things like video and audio. The knowledge needed to install, deploy, and maintain Linux is not easily found, and no Linux distribution gets it just right. Scattered information can be found in a pile of man pages, texinfo files, and source code comments, but the best source of information is the experts themselves who built up a working knowledge of managing Linux systems. This cookbook's proven techniques distill years of hard-won experience into practical cut-and-paste solutions to everyday Linux dilemmas. Use just one recipe from this varied collection of real-world solutions, and the hours of tedious trial-and-error saved will more than pay for the cost of the book. But those who prefer to learn hands-on will find that this cookbook not only solves immediate problems quickly, it also cuts right to the chase pointing out potential pitfalls and illustrating tested practices that can be applied to a myriad of other situations. Whether you're responsible for a small Linux system, a huge corporate system, or a mixed Linux/Windows/MacOS network, you'll find valuable, to-the-point, practical recipes for dealing with Linux systems everyday. The Linux Cookbook is more than a time-saver; it's a sanity saver.

Customer Reviews:

excellent book.......2007-03-26

Excellent Linux book! Gives step by step answers to common Linux problems in a "Problem - solution" style way. I'm a tad disappointed in the SAMBA section, but that really is a topic deserving of a book of its own.

Very Useful, but it's Hit-and-Miss.......2006-09-11

Because this is a "cookbook," it gives you recipies -- step-by-step instructions for performing specific tasks.

This makes Linux Cookbook EXTREMELY useful when it has a recipie you need, and it often gives you a good starting point when you need to do something that isn't specifically covered.

For example, let's say you need to setup a mail server, which you've never done before. As long as you're willing to use the mail tools she describes (which are perfectly good tools), then this book is the fastest way to get the job done. She also shows you how to make sure the server will be secure.

I'm glad I have this book on my shelf, I recommend it, and I refer to it whenever I need to do something new in Linux. The problem is, you can't have a step-by-step recipie for everything. When this book hits the mark, it's the best book you can have, but you cannot rely on this as your only Linux book.

Succinct and clear to understand . . ........2006-05-10

A well-organised and clearly written collection of useful commands and solutions to help one along with the often exasperating arcana of Linux. Covers all flavours and is a 'must have' book.

Perfect binding keeps the book open at the desired page.......2005-09-28

... which comes in real handy considering how often I reference it.

Chapter 10 (Patching, Customizing, and Upgrading Kernels) and Chapter 12 (Managing the Bootloader and Multi-Booting) helped me recompile my kernel for the first time. Not only are the instructions clear, but the author also made sure to explain each step so I knew why I was typing a certain command. There's even a section on how to create an initrd image for SCSI drive users, which I had a hard time finding on the web.

This book does an excellent job covering all the basics, and it's worth spending the time to read it from beginning to end. I certainly see myself getting a lot of mileage from it.

It was perfect to get me moving on LINUX.......2005-08-10

I wanted to become more experienced with UNIX so I had the Ubuntu distribution installed in my computer. I spent six months having a hard time getting simple things done until I came accross this book.

It is organized in such a way that it is easy to get to do what you want/need and, what's better, the explanations provided give you insights on how UNIX works. After a while, you will find yourself doing new stuff on your own.

If you want to get into UNIX but knows little about it my advice for you is: get this book and jump into LINUX - it is worth it!

Image Databases: Search and Retrieval of Digital Imagery

Average customer rating:

Image Databases: Search and Retrieval of Digital Imagery

Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0471321168

Book Description

The explosive growth of multimedia data transmission has generated a critical need for efficient, high-capacity image databases, as well as powerful search engines to retrieve image data from them. This book brings together contributions by an international all-star team of innovators in the field who share their insights into all key aspects of image database and search engine construction. Readers get in-depth discussions of the entire range of crucial image database architecture, indexing and retrieval, transmission, display, and user interface issues. And, using examples from an array of disciplines, the authors present cutting-edge applications in medical imagery, multimedia communications, earth science, remote sensing, and other major application areas.

Professional Content Management Systems: Handling Digital Media Assets

Average customer rating:

Great book !

Professional Content Management Systems: Handling Digital Media Assets
Andreas Mauthe , and Peter Thomas
Manufacturer: Wiley
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ASIN: 0470855428

Book Description

Content and Content Management are core topics in the IT and broadcast industry. However these terms have not been clearly defined for those learning the field. The topic is complex and users from different industries have different backgrounds and a varied understanding of content issues. Multimedia Content Management helps to clarify the subject area, define problematic issues and establish a universal understanding of content and its management.

Provides clarity in the subject area
Defines potential problems and establishes a universal understanding
Builds an architectural framework upon this account and different aspects of the industry and solutions are reviewed
Comprehensively describes the different users working and accessing content, the applications and workflows

Essential reading for students, engineers and technical managers, in the area of data, storage management and multimedia, requiring an overview of this complex topic. The topics discussed will also prove highly insightful for executive managers and media professionals with a technical understanding and broadcast executives in the field.

Download Description

Today, among the various chiral discrimination methods, chromatography and capillary electrophoresis techniques have become powerful tools in environmental analysis. Therefore, there is a need to describe the art of the determination of the chiral pollutants in the environmental matrices. This book provides the complete information on the types of the chiral pollutants, their toxicities and methods of determination by chromatography and capillary electrophoresis.

Customer Reviews:

Great book !.......2006-08-07

There are several books on Content Management Systems (CMS). But there are only very few books on the market covering the topic of Digital asset management (DAM). Three books stands out:
"Professional Content Management System: handling Digital Media Assets", "Digitial Asset Management: how to realize value of video and image libaries" and "Expanding a Digital Content Management System: for the Growing Digital Media Enterprise".

Each book describes the subject in different perspectives. The "Digitial Asset Management: how to realize value of video and image libaries" by David Austerberry is more like introduction to DAM and related concepts and technologies. While "Expanding a Digital Content Management System: for the Growing Digital Media Enterprise" by my former collegaue and friend, Magan Authur is discussing how to plan and implement a large scale digital content management systems.

The Professional Content Management Systems by A Mathure and P. Thomas empersizes much more on (and deeper in) technical and applicaiton design aspects. Besides the basic concepts, it covers a wide range of topics on DAM from user requirements;video production use cases and workflows; media formats and standards; system architecture and integrations; hardware infrastructure and application requirements. The deepth of the discusions on systems architecture of both software and hardware are incrediable. The application modules and use cases scenarios presented for broadcasting industry are very well illustrated. The book reveals fully the authors vivid imagation, creative and industry experience.

Even though I may not completely agree with every piece of the design described in the book, some of the core concepts and use cases described are really valuable. (I have built one of succussful commercial enterprise DAM system used by by many large enterpises in broadcasting, advertising and Coorporate Marketing before this book was published).

I especially recommend this book to Product Managers and System Architect who are trying to build a DAM system; or trying to build applications on top of the DAM System. I have read ths book twice since I brought it over 1 year ago. It's still very refreshing to read it.

disclaimer: I have no association with the authors of the book (don't know them) or BlueOrder.

Chester Chen (Xiaoguang Chen)

Introduction to Data Compression, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia and Information Systems)

Average customer rating:

Accessible textbook on compression does not sacrifice rigor
A great textbook
Very good coverage
"The" Definitive Guide
Very well-written book, software not so good

Introduction to Data Compression, Second Edition (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia and Information Systems)
Khalid Sayood
Manufacturer: Morgan Kaufmann
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ASIN: 1558605584

Amazon.com

Khalid Sayood's textbook-style Introduction to Data Compression is the definitive guide to all kinds of compression schemes. Early chapters establish the mathematics involved in basic compression techniques, including lossless and lossy compression as well as the fundamentals of information theory that lay the groundwork for common forms of compression. (The book contains all the relevant formulas, although those who don't need such mathematical detail will still be able to understand the book.)

A good portion of the book examines various compression schemes, their strengths and weaknesses, and what content they work best for. Introduction to Data Compression begins with lossless compression schemes, which lose no information during the compression/decompression process. Huffman Coding, a well-established compression scheme, and arithmetic and dictionary coding also receive excellent treatment. In addition, the author takes on lossless compression for images.

For lossy compression, Sayood discusses schemes that use quantization, where a range of values is compressed in some way. He also describes scalar, vector, and differential encoding and fractal compression. A final chapter looks at video encryption (which often combines techniques from earlier chapters). Many of the compression schemes include examples from image and sound files, but the book considers a wide variety of video schemes too. This rich and confidently written text collates a lot of research and can serve as both textbook and source for designers who need a readable and mathematically solid introduction to data compression.

Book Description

The second edition of Introduction to Data Compression builds on the features that made the first the logical choice-for practitioners who need a comprehensive guide to compression for all types of multimedia and instructors who want to equip their students with solid foundations in these increasingly important and diverse techniques.
This book provides an extensive introduction to the theory underlying today's compression techniques, with detailed, instruction for their application. All of the coverage has been updated to reflect the state of the art in data compression, including both new algorithms and older methods for which new uses are being found. And the downloadable software gives you the opportunity to see firsthand how various algorithms work, to choose and implement appropriate techniques in your own applications, and to build your own algorithms.

* Fully updated to cover the most recent lossy and lossless compression techniques, including wavelets, subband coding, predictive lossless techniques, and Huffman coding variants.
* Explains established and emerging standards in depth: JPEG 2000, JPEG-LS, MPEG 2, Group 3 and 4 Faxes, JBIG 2, ADPCM, LPC, CELP, and MELP.
* Includes an new chapter providing the mathematical background required for understanding wavelets and subband coding.
* Via the companion Web site, provides source code that enables you to experiment with a wide range of compression techniques, along with sample data and updates on the latest developments in the compression field.

Customer Reviews:

Accessible textbook on compression does not sacrifice rigor .......2007-05-19

This is one of those books that only gets a new edition when the author has something genuinely new to say, and this third edition of Sayood's excellent introduction to data compression is no exception. This particular edition is different from the second mainly in that there is a new chapter on audio compression that includes a description of the mp3 algorithm. Also there is additional information on the new video coding standards as well as the new facsimile standards.

As to the target audience for this book, if you are tasked with designing hardware or software implementations of data compression algorithms and you have some background in either electrical engineering or computer science, then this is a good book from which to learn and then to practice what you learn via some very good exercises. Some prior knowledge of information theory and random processes wouldn't hurt either. There is also an abundance of examples that are sprinkled throughout the book to illustrate concepts as they are presented. The author's approach in each chapter is to explain each concept in as an accessible manor as possible, present relevant equations, and then work an example using what has just been presented.

The book presents the mathematical preliminaries in chapter 2, and chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to coding algorithms which include Huffman coding, arithmetic coding, Golumb-Rice codes, and Tunstall codes. Chapters 5 and 6 describe many of the popular lossless compression methods and their applications. These methods include LZW, BWT, and DMC. Chapter 7 describes various lossless image compression algorithms such as JBIG as well as their applications. Chapter 8 discusses the mathematical background of lossy compression standards. Chapters 9 and 10 concentrate on quantization since it is the basis of most lossy compression schemes. Chapter 11 discusses differential encoding techniques such as DPCM and delta modulation. Included is a discussion of the CCITT G.726 standard.

Chapter 12 is the third and final chapter dedicated to mathematical foundations. It is meant to prepare the reader for the chapters on transform, subband, and wavelet based methods that encompass the following three chapters. The JPEG standard is covered in chapter 13, the CCITT G.722 standard in chapter 14, and the EZW, SPIHT, and JPEG2000 standards are covered in chapter 15. Chapter 16 focuses on audio compression and includes descriptions of the various MPEG audio compression schemes including mp3. Chapter 17 switches gears somewhat and covers techniques in which the data to be compressed is analyzed and a model is produced. This model is then used to synthesize the data and is quite useful in speech compression. Chapter 18 deals with video compression and diverges from the book's central theme of dealing with techniques rather than applications. The chapter discusses the H.261 standard as well as MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 standards.

The website for the book, found at the publisher's site, contains a large number of C programs dealing with compression. I haven't tried to use any of these yet, so I can't speak to their validity.

A great textbook.......2006-02-11

This book has all the ingredients for a great textbook. It provides good theoratical background without going into unnecessary details, gives lot of discussion about applications, provides great exercise problems, and above all it has outstanding examples that makes some of the difficult concepts easy to understand.

Data compression needs a lot of background in information theory and other areas specific to speech, image processing etc. It is impossible to give a rigourous theoratical treatment of all of those in one volume. A strong point of this book is that it gives you just enough background on a variety of topics - without making the whole book obscure. In that respect, it is very application and implementation oriented. It is in fact what it says it is: A very good "INTRODUCTION to Data Compression"

Very good coverage.......2004-12-27

The best thing about this book is the coverage and organization of the material. Sayood covers a wide variety of compression topics without getting into the nitty gritty details of them all. Thats why its an "Introductory" book. This book is a valuable resource for those who want to know the basics of various compression techniques and can be used as a starting point for further details. Some topics like arithmetic coding are covered in more detail than others. The book is also organized nicely with mathematical foundations provided as and when necessary.

"The" Definitive Guide.......2004-02-16

Amazon claims that this is "the definitive guide". I have to agree with them because this book is the only broad grey pages introduction to data compression that I have been able to find, and it is very well written.

If you are only casually interested in data compression this book is not for you.

If you are interested in adding compression to your application and your data falls into a common category, sound, video, text ect this book is probably not for you. You should look to the open source community or buy an off the shelf product.

But if your data is odd or unique like say telemtry data (I'm sure there are other examples I just can't think of any) and you need to design a compression scheme for your data this book is "the only" book for you.

If you want to begin research into data compression and you are a newbie this book is a must have.

Very well-written book, software not so good.......2003-04-25

The book is one of the clearest I have read as a text book. Why cant everybody write like this?? There is very good flow throughout the text.

Book Description

By focusing on what you will need to know in the "real" world and working through exercises in Authorware 6, you will learn to create highly interactive training and educational applications for delivery across the Web, LANs, and on CD-ROMs. Everything you need to know to become a skilled user is covered in this book! You'll begin with an orientation to the Authorware interface, icon palette and flowline to build simple presentations structures. From there, you'll jump right into building a variety of interactive learning strategies, structures to control navigation, user log-in and information tracking, reading/writing to external files, and more!

Customer Reviews:

Good Book but Really High Learning Curve for Software.......2007-05-09

I am a professor and purchased Authorware to create online educational content. This is a good book on the subject, but the learning curve for this software is horrible. It has taken me several weeks to get through even the basics of the software, and that's not really the fault of the publisher or author. Just don't expect to buy this book and learn Authorware overnight. On the other hand, if you're experienced with the software and want a book to take you to a higher level then this one will do the job.

One step forward....three steps back.......2005-05-29

Normally I hope that a reference book will teach me everything I want to know about the subject matter. Sometimes I'm am pleased if I come away with a handful of new tips and insights. On some occasions I find I have wasted my time and money on a book that failed to teach me anything. Really, however, have I bought a book that actually leaves me STUPIDER after completing it.

This book is bad. Typos, rambling, disjointed thoughts and, most disturbing, incorrect information. I learned things from this book that I eventually found were either bad ideas or were completely wrong. This kind of mis-information is bad anytime but its really damaging when trying to learn a software package with as steep a learning curve as Authorware 7.

Luckily, I finally found:

1) Authorware 6 VTC Training CD
2) The AWARE user's list
3) The Macromedia User's guides.

These three resources helped me the most in my learning process. I would highly recommend all 3 - but PLEASE skip this worthless book - it will only set you back in the learning process.

One final suggestion - get Michael Allen's Guide to E-Learning - while not specific to Authorware it is a GREAT resource for planning and developing the programs you're going to design in Authorware.

Great book, but too many errors.......2004-05-14

I'm a teacher learning to create learning software for high schoolers. I bought this book in 2002 to learn AW6. It's been a great resource that has made me a proficient user. However, I'm disappointed that the files for chapter 16 were missing from the CD which are the meat and potatoes of the program. That alone cost it 2 stars. Along with other errors people have mentioned. To the publisher, stop being sloppy, lazy and cheap. CLEAN UP YOUR EDITING!!!

Wilson/Thornton Authorware 6 Text FULL of Mistakes!.......2004-02-20

I am a new user of Authorware 6 and am using this text for a college-level course. Despite my novice status as an Authorware user and developer, I have 20+ years in using computers, programming, and developing computer projects; thus, I am no notive when it comes to computers. This text is RIDDLED with mistakes, some small and foolish, others major and appalling. (My favorite laughable one was "Ctrl + Shirt + R" found on page 537 rather than "Ctrl + Shift + R"!! Even a novice editor should have caught that one, so it gives you a good idea as to the overall quality of the editing.) Typographical errors appear throughout the text, particularly the later chapters; some files on the companion disc have different names from those in the text while other files aren't available, buttons or graphics that should be available are not, and the list goes on and on. For example, Step 10a found on page 503 has at least two errors: (1) ":=True" should be "=True" and (2) "ButtonBackup" should be "ButtonForward". If you use error (1) you receive a warning message that your expression is incorrect, and if you use error (2) your navigation will not work as it should. Perhaps most annoying, the book takes a step-by-step approach that guides the user through the development process, which is a great idea. HOWEVER, steps are occasionally omitted or a sentence is missing that makes you think you have done something wrong---until you retrace your steps (another waste of your time) and realize the book has neglected to mention something. Using this text to learn Authorware has been a frustrating, frustrating experience, a waste of many hours of my time, and has made me think seriously about wanting to develop software using Authorware. Having only recently purchased this text in January 2004 (text was copyrighted in 2002), the publisher should be ashamed not to have yet published a newer edition of this text to correct many of these errors. Grrr!

Good, but certainly not what it could be........2003-06-04

This book is very focused on the beginner and goes through each property icon describing in depth their functions and purposes. It's much better than the ridiculous manual that comes with the software, but many of the exercises (which make up 80% of the book) are redundant.

For those wanting to advance beyond the basic drag-drop-publish routine I'd recommend staying away. There is very little content on coding and no tutorials on creating Knowledge Objects/Wizards or anything of the sort.

Book Description

Security is a major concern in an increasingly multimedia-defined universe where the Internet serves as an indispensable resource for information and entertainment. Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the technology by which network systems protect and provide access to critical and time-sensitive copyrighted material and/or personal information. This book equips savvy technology professionals and their aspiring collegiate protégés with the latest technologies, strategies and methodologies needed to successfully thwart off those who thrive on security holes and weaknesses.

Filled with sample application scenarios and algorithms, this book provides an in-depth examination of present and future field technologies including encryption, authentication, copy control, tagging, tracing, conditional access and media identification. The authors present a diversified blend of theory and practice and focus on the constantly changing developments in multimedia applications thus providing an admirably comprehensive book.

* Discusses state-of-the-art multimedia authentication and fingerprinting techniques
* Presents several practical methodologies from industry, including broadcast encryption, digital media forensics and 3D mesh watermarking
* Focuses on the need for security in multimedia applications found on computer networks, cell phones and emerging mobile computing devices

Customer Reviews:

covers all the major ideas in DRM.......2006-10-17

With the ever increasing pervasiveness of the Internet, and greater storage on personal computers, the issue of protecting copyrighted material like songs and movies is a front burner. The editors have compiled a collection of papers that describe the state of the art in 2006 of Digital Rights Management.

The chapters span a variety of ideas. Biometrics are one mooted solution. Digital watermarking is another. Along with multimedia encryption and authentication.

And with the inevitable migration of film to digital film, the question arises of how to protect the latter. It is expected that the digital film will be sent via an electronic network to cinemas. Far quicker and cheaper than the current approach of mailing the analog film canisters. But anything that is digital runs the risk of unauthorised copying. Especially for new releases of films. So one chapter goes deeply into this conundrum.

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