Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) Review

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(More customer reviews)The author clearly and concisely explains the fundamental aspects of Android programming. The coverage of Android topics is pretty comprehensive and the depth of coverage was just right for my needs. Mr. Meier provides some background information about mobile programming platforms in general, so the only real prerequisite for this book is familiarity with Java programming. The examples are also very informative and build new features incrementally, which keeps the focus on the most recently covered material, and reflects modern incremental development practices. This book, in conjunction with the excellent materials available online from Google, anddev.org and elsewhere, provide an effective staring point for developers looking to get started quickly on the Android platform.

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A hands-on guide to building mobile applications, Professional Android Application Development features concise and compelling examples that show you how to quickly construct real-world mobile applications for Android phones. Fully up-to-date for version 1.0 of the Android software development kit, it covers all the essential features, and explores the advanced capabilities of Android (including GPS, accelerometers, and background Services) to help you construct increasingly complex, useful, and innovative mobile applications for Android phones.
What this book includes
An introduction to mobile development, Android, and how to get started.
An in-depth look at Android applications and their life cycle, the application manifest, Intents, and using external resources.
Details for creating complex and compelling user interfaces by using, extending, and creating your own layouts and Views and using Menus.
A detailed look at data storage, retrieval, and sharing using preferences, files, databases, and Content Providers.
Instructions for making the most of mobile portability by creating rich map-based applications as well as using location-based services and the geocoder.
A look at the power of background Services, using threads, and a detailed look at Notifications.
Coverage of Android's communication abilities including SMS, the telephony APIs, network management, and a guide to using Internet resources
Details for using Android hardware, including media recording and playback, using the camera, accelerometers, and compass sensors.
Advanced development topics including security, IPC, advanced 2D / 3D graphics techniques, and user–hardware interaction.

Who this book is forThis book is for anyone interested in creating applications for the Android mobile phone platform. It includes information that will be valuable whether you're an experienced mobile developer or making your first foray, via Android, into writing mobile applications. It will give the grounding and knowledge you need to write applications using the current SDK, along with the flexibility to quickly adapt to future enhancements.

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Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Second Edition (Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm surprisingly please with this book. I've been reading up on the topic and associated algorithms in other books for some time; I'm a software developer but don't have a statistics background, and so felt a lot of the texts were too focused on the math and the theory while being thin on content when it came to "rubber hitting the road", or even using clear, simple examples and straight-forward notation.
This book is so well-written that it communicates the concepts clearly, lucidly and in an organized fashion. The section that introduces Bayesian probability was drop-dead simple to follow. Quite frankly, having read a few other treatments on it, I can now say that everything else I read before this was overly complicated. Brevity is the soul of wit, no?
To the reviewer who criticized the authors use of words to describe equations: This is what the authors intended to do. Would you fault them for writing in English if you wanted Greek? Not everyone who can benefit from applied data mining has the requisite background to understand the nitty gritty mathematics, nor should they have to, if they just want to understand the behavior and practical applications of the technology.

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App Inventor for Android: Build Your Own Apps - No Experience Required Review

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(More customer reviews)For many people wrestling an idea for an app into an actual wokring app is daunting. There are issues of setting up a development environment, learning the way the device you are making an app for wants you to code for it, deciphering the vectors and hooks into the device's layers and then crafting your idea thru all those processes into something you can see and touch on the screen of your device. With this book as my guide I was able to get through these processes in a near painless manner.
Each process was laid out before me in easy to understand steps and many of the stumbles I made were addressed before I was about to make them. What problems I did come across where not as problematic thanks to the way the author organized his book. The pacing of the examples were perfect, I felt like I was getting a solid payoff after working thru each chapter. With the completion of each chapter I also felt a little more confident that I would be able to take my ideas for apps and make them actual working apps. After the twitter chapter I was near giddy with accomplishment; I played the proud parent as I showed off the app to those folks I was able to pin down. The bonus online chapter was the perfect reward for finishing up the book. What was even better was finding all the video tutorials on the authors web site, truly an amazing set of learning that just keeps on getting better over time.
The only downside to going thru the book, bonus chapters and web site is I now have more, and more complex, app project ideas that I want to find time to work on. This book was truly empowering as well as educational.
The other unforeseen outcome of going thru the author's works is that my 8 year old son now wants to work on some apps with me. He watched as I worked thru examples with the block editor and was quickly able to tell me what was going on as far as logic and flow was concerned. There is a long road to go before he puts his stamp on a first app but he is well and truly hooked as far as deving for the the Android is concerned.
Much thanks and congrats on a fantastic work.

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Create Android mobile apps, no programming required!
Even with limited programming experience, you can easily learn to create apps for the Android platform with this complete guide to App Inventor for Android. App Inventor for Android is a visual language that relies on simple programming blocks that users can drag and drop to create apps. This handy book gives you a series of fully worked-out apps, complete with their programming blocks, which you can customize for your own use or use as a starting point for creating the next killer app. And it's all without writing a single line of code. Don't miss the book's special section on Apps Inventor Design Patterns, which explains computer terms in simple terms and is an invaluable basic reference.
Teaches programmers and non-programmers alike how to use App Inventor for Android to create Android apps
Provides a series of fully worked-out apps that you can customize, download, and use on your Android phone or use as a starting point for building the next great app
Includes a valuable reference section on App Inventor Design Patterns and general computer science concepts
Shows you how to create apps that take advantage of the Android smartphone?s handy features, such as GPS, messaging, contacts, and more

With App Inventor for Android and this complete guide, you'll soon be creating apps that incorporate all of the Android smartphone's fun features, such as the accelerometer, GPS, messaging, and more. From the Author: Getting Data In and Out of App Inventor Apps In today's mobile world, applications are expected to not only provide functionality locally but also have up to date content and external awareness."How do I get all this data into App Inventor?" is one of the most frequently asked questions by new developers.Initially getting rows and columns of data into App Inventor was a kind of linear equation. You used the TinyWebDB or you turned to some of the third party hacks that are available. The TinyWebDB component is still a possibility for volatile data that needs to be pulled from the internet and placed into App Inventor. It has the added benefit of being quick and allowing write to the web database. For getting rows and columns of data into App Inventor the algorithm would follow these steps: 1. Pull data from WebService and place in temporary variable. 2. Parse data into psuedo-array3. Write data to a local TinyDBThis is still an option for getting tabular data into App Inventor.It has the advantage of being fast and stable. It has the disadvantage of needing the TinyWebDB service installed and running on a web server. Setting up and installing the TinyWebDB service can be complex and frustrating.There is the added complexity of needing a separate application to actually pre-populate TinyWebDB with data. The App Inventor team recently released an update to App Inventor that includes functionality to allow access to the Google Fusion Tables. Google Fusion Tables is an online database solution that allows simple SQL like commands to be sent via HTTP to stored data. There is a nice back-end management solution that allows a user to pre-build and pre-populate data into created tables.All of the data lives in Google's "cloud" service. The back-end management system will be very familiar to users of Google Docs or other Google cloud products. The algorithm for getting tabular data into an App Inventor app using Fusion Tables will follow these steps: 1. Create the desired Fusion Table and populate the table with data using the Web backend. 2. The app will be "initialized" by pulling the data from a Fusion Table.3. The app will store the returned Lists in a local TinyDBThe advantage of Fusion Tables is the ability to easily pre-populate the online data by hand entering or importing a spreadsheet of values. This will allow the developer to maintain the data that all the deployed apps consume. Thereby, fresh content and data could be added to applications by changing the data in the Fusion Table. The disadvantage of Fusion Tables is the data retrieval method. When the data is pulled from the Fusion Table the application stops while displaying a notification that it is pulling data from a Fusion Table. Which appears a little bit hokey on a professional level application. It is also linear and fairly slow. In otherwords you will not likely be repeatedly and frequently pulling data from a Fusion table in the same App session. Instead, an application would likely pull data once when the application starts and then only when specifically refreshed. The options and power that are given to developers with the new Fusion Table has yet to be fully explored and I look forward to some exciting uses of Fusion Tables. (Hint: Someone should use this for a text based MMORPG ... the possibilities are endless. ) The newest version of App Inventor released by the incredible rock stars on the Google App Inventor developer team includes the long awaited Holy Grail. I am, of course, talking about the "WebComponent". Now the web component as it currently exists is a little bit limited and not easy to implement. However, it is REALLY powerful even in its current iteration. It has the power to send HTTP formatted requests to existing web services and web sites and then store and manipulate the returned data.It combines the speed of the TinyWebDB service requests and the flexibility of using existing data like with the Fusion Tables.The web component brings the ability to use HTTP POST and GET commands which are the foundation of most simple web services.The algorithm for using the WebComponent would (or at least could) follow these steps: 1. Establish (or use existing) web service that will respond to GET/POST. 2. Use the WebComponent to send a GET request to the service. 3. Use the Text parsing blocks to parse out the tabular data sent by the web service. The advantage of using GET/POST commands is the speed with which they can be used inline with programmatic functions in an application. Another advantage is the flexibility of using existing data and or maintaining external data in a database behind your webservice.The WebComponent opens up App Inventor to REAL web service and interactive internet services development. I am excited about the direction the App Inventor team is taking this awesome product and look forward to an even more mature Rapid Application Development framework.

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The Art of SEO: Mastering Search Engine Optimization (Theory in Practice) Review

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(More customer reviews)I am one who has been very outspoken about the more shady SEO practitioners and about the ridiculously overprices "courses" that are heavily promoted on the Internet. SEO has acquired some of the taint of huckster marketing because of that.
I hope this book helps eliminate some of that. There's no need to pay some self-styled "Internet Guru" hundreds or thousands of dollars for SEO secrets. There are no secrets: every concept, every "trick", every piece of advice is available on the Internet for free. Of course you have to find it all, you have to learn what things are outdated, what advice doesn't work - or you could find 99% here in this book.
Of course it's not for everyone. It assumes some technical knowledge or at least access to someone with that knowledge. As an example, at several points 301 redirects are used as the solution certain SEO issues. Although some minor direction is given about implementing these, you'd need more than is provided here if you were a neophyte - someone using Blogger or [...] isn't going to become proficient with Apache from reading this.
The only small complaint I can make is that sometimes the authors use too many examples, especially for the more basic concepts at the beginning of the book. However, too many is far better than too few, so I won't complain too much. I definitely can't complain that they left anything out: this could serve as a course book for a SEO class.
I'll be recommending this strongly.

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A well-designed, easy-to-navigate website is useless if no one can find it. If your company is going to succeed in the web economy, optimizing your site for search engine visibility is essential. In this book, four of the most noted experts in the field of search engine optimization (SEO) provide you with proven guidelines and cutting-edge techniques for planning and executing a comprehensive SEO strategy. The authors clearly explain SEO fundamentals, while correcting many common misconceptions. If you are new to SEO, you'll get a complete and thorough SEO education, as well as an array of effective tactics, from basic to advanced. Seasoned practitioners will find this book useful as a complete reference to SEO best practices.

Explore the underlying theory behind SEO and how search engines work
Learn the steps you need to prepare for, execute, and evaluate SEO initiatives
Examine a number of advanced strategies and tactics
Understand the intricacies involved in managing complex SEO projects
Learn what's necessary to build a competent SEO team with defined roles
Glimpse the future of search and what lies ahead for the SEO industry

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Professional Android 2 Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Android 2 is pretty new (as of March 2010) so having an Android 2 book on the market that is good quality was unexpected. I have not read all chapters, but here are my impressions so far:
Pro's
=====
- Author's style is neither dull or exciting, just to the point. Most explanations are clear and thorough.
- I definitely feel I have a good resource to complement the online Android docs. There have been a variety of topics I've tried to answer using Android docs (and Google searches) without much luck that this book covered clearly.
- There are a lot of good topics covered. Space is not wasted on reprinting information readily available online. Instead, author regularly refers reader to web links.
- And, finally, I appreciate the well-edited index.
Con's
=====
- The book is very weak in the illustration department. For example, instead of showing an image of a NinePatch bitmap, the author explains how a NinePatch should be constructed. This is chintzy and unforgivable for a book about a heavily visual technology.
- Occassionally, concepts are introduced without providing context. 'Kinda like when you walk into a meeting and the speakers clearly know their material but forget that 90% of the others in the room need to be brought up to speed before instructing.
- Some conspicuous omissions. For instance, no information on fonts.


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Update to the bestseller now features the latest release of the Android platform
Android is a powerful, flexible, open source platform for mobile devices and its popularity is growing at an unprecedented pace. This update to the bestselling first edition dives in to cover the exciting new features of the latest release of the Android mobile platform.
Providing in-depth coverage of how to build mobile applications using the next major release of the Android SDK, this invaluable resource takes a hands-on approach to discussing Android with a series of projects, each of which introduces a new feature and highlights techniques and best practices to get the most out of Android.
The Android SDK is a powerful, flexible, open source platform for mobile devices
Shares helpful techniques and best practices to maximize the capabilities of Android
Explains the possibilities of Android through the use of a series of detailed projects
Demonstrates how to create real-world mobile applications for Android phones
Includes coverage of the latest version of Android

Providing concise and compelling examples, Professional Android Application Development is an updated guide aimed at helping you create mobile applications for mobile devices running the latest version of Android.
Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

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