Review of Learning Networks: A Field Guide to Teaching and Learning On-Line (Hardcover)

I appreciated this "field guide" and think it should be a recommended read for educators who are new to technology.Itprovides a thorough overview of teaching and learning even though it includes"outdated" information. What was interesting to me, as a HigherEd faculty member, was the number of K-12 activities of which I wasunaware. The chapter on Problems in Paradise really rings true in Higher Edas well; lack of support, lack of planing, lack of time, limitedaccess....yikes. I think a wonderful ancillary might be an updated CD/ROMwith the newest links and information on distance learning programsavailable, similar to the "old fashined" yearbook.

Product Description
"[A] book that should be on the shelf of every educator, elementaryschool teachers as well as university professors, interested inexploring CMC technologies....Learning Networks is an importantcontribution to computer science, information sciences, and education."-- J. R. Miller, Information Processing and Management

Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) technologies such as electronicmail, bulletin board services, computer conferencing systems, and theWorld Wide Web are having a profound effect on education. LearningNetworks is a complete guide to the use of these new technologies atthe primary, secondary, university, and adult education levels. Drawingon the authors' own considerable experience of teaching and learningonline, it describes the learning networks that are available as well asnew examples of learning networks that can be created.

Part I provides a selective survey of the field: what are learningnetworks and who is using them, what kind of courses can be taughtonline, what approaches to teaching and learning are most successfulonline, what curriculum can best be supported by networking, and whatkinds of teachers and learners benefit from this medium. Part II dealsexhaustively with the design and implementation of learning networks aswell as the roles of teachers and learners and gives a realisticassessment of potential pitfalls. In Part III the authors discuss CMCtechnologies as a paradigm for education in the next century.

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Review of Software Ecosystem: Understanding an Indispensable Technology and Industry (Hardcover)

At the *intersection* of software and business, and the business of software. The authors draw on research in economics, IT, and strategy and bring them together to draw excellent insights at their intersection. The book is not really about business or software per se.

Depending on your background, you might want to skip entire sections that are right up your own alley. If you are a manager looking to REALLY understand how the architecture of IT systems (e.g., at the enterprise level) interacts with business strategy, this book will provide a good exposure. If you are a propellerhead or uber-geek wanting to understand more about how your work shapes, hinders, or facilitates business strategy, this book is just right. I keep up with new research developments in the business of software and feel comfortable saying that the insights in this book are not to be found in other books that exist on the market.

The book is very well written, but be forewarned, it is deep. Fully appreciating it requires thought, reflection on what the authors are saying, and a tempered pace. It is not a quick read and not a "how-to" book. My only quibble with this book has nothing to do with its content: Once you get rid of the dust jacket, the quality of its binding and cover printing is absolutely shoddy. Very highly recommended and worth every penny of the forty dollar price.


Three year (June 2008) update on my 2005 review: Nothing yet comes close to the wide array of thought provoking questions that this book raises. I'm wildly speculating here, but the fact that one of the coauthors is an electrical engineer rather than a software developer is perhaps the reason why the nature of this book is so refreshing and original. Sometimes, it takes an outsider without the baggage of insider assumptions to bring a fresh perspective. At the new paperback price, it's better than a red-tagged bargain that you'd find at the aisle end caps of Target!

Product Description
Software has gone from obscurity to indispensability in less than fifty years. Although other industries have followed a similar trajectory, software and its supporting industry are different. In this book the authors explain, from a variety of perspectives, how software and the software industry are different--technologically, organizationally, and socially. The growing importance of software requires professionals in all fields to deal with both its technical and social aspects; therefore, users and producers of software need a common vocabulary to discuss software issues. In Software Ecosystem, Messerschmitt and Szyperski address the overlapping and related perspectives of technologists and nontechnologists. After an introductory chapter on technology, the book is organized around six points of view: users, and what they need software to accomplish for them; software engineers and developers, who translate the user's needs into program code; managers, who must orchestrate the resources, material and human, to operate the software; industrialists, who organize companies to produce and distribute software; policy experts and lawyers, who must resolve conflicts inside and outside the industry without discouraging growth and innovation; and economists, who offer insights into how the software market works. Each chapter considers not only the issues most relevant to that perspective but also relates those issues to the other perspectives as well. Nontechnologists will appreciate the context in which technology is discussed; technical professionals will gain more understanding of the social issues that should be considered in order to make software more useful and successful.

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Review of Invisible Engines: How Software Platforms Drive Innovation and Transform Industries (Hardcover)

Ever wondered what iPods, Windows, Xboxes, PDAs and smartphones have in common? This book provides a useful analysis of the successful business practices that cut across all of these industries and have made their pioneers extremely rich and famous. I found it very insightful and surprisingly well-written - there are lots of well-chosen anecdotes which help the reader cope with the complexity of the subject.

Product Description
Winner of the Business, Management & Accounting category in the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.

Winner of the Business, Management & Accounting category in the 2006 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc.

Software platforms are the invisible engines that have created, touched, or transformed nearly every major industry for the past quarter century. They power everything from mobile phones and automobile navigation systems to search engines and web portals. They have been the source of enormous value to consumers and helped some entrepreneurs build great fortunes. And they are likely to drive change that will dwarf the business and technology revolution we have seen to this point. Invisible Engines examines the business dynamics and strategies used by firms that recognize the transformative power unleashed by this new revolution-a revolution that will change both new and old industries.

The authors argue that in order to understand the successes of software platforms, we must first understand their role as a technological meeting ground where application developers and end users converge. Apple, Microsoft, and Google, for example, charge developers little or nothing for using their platforms and make most of their money from end users; Sony PlayStation and other game consoles, by contrast, subsidize users and make more money from developers, who pay royalties for access to the code they need to write games. More applications attract more users, and more users attract more applications. And more applications and more users lead to more profits.

Invisible Engines explores this story through the lens of the companies that have mastered this platform-balancing act. It offers detailed studies of the personal computer, video game console, personal digital assistant, smart mobile phone, and digital media software platform industries, focusing on the business decisions made by industry players to drive profits and stay a step ahead of the competition. Shorter discussions of Internet-based software platforms provide an important glimpse into a future in which the way we buy, pay, watch, listen, learn, and communicate will change forever. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.

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Review of Social Thinking--Software Practice (Hardcover)

This book is an interesting collection of essays on the soft elements of software engineering.Most of the essays deal with organizational and process aspects from a cross-functional perspective, and there is an emphasis on requirements and business/IT alignment in the overall theme of this collection.

Each of the five parts and 21 essays are grouped by a book structure that aligns to cross-functional cooperation from a software engineering point of view:
Part I Deconstructing
Chapter 1 -Developing and Embedding Autooperational Form Chapter 2 -On Foundational Categories in Software Development Chapter 3 -Making Use of Social Thinking: The Challenge of Bridging Activity Systems Chapter 4 -Challenging Traditions of Inquiry in Software Practice
Part II Informing
Chapter 5 -On Retrieving Skilled Practices: The Contribution of Ethnography to Software Development Chapter 6 -Representing and Modeling Collaborative Practices for Systems Development Chapter 7 -The Locales Framework: Making Social Thinking Accessible for Software Practitioners Chapter 8 -What Doesn't Fit: The "Residual Category" as Analytic Resource
Part III Grounding
Chapter 9 -On the Intertwining of Social and Technical Factors in Software Development Projects Chapter 10 -Software Practice is Social Practice Chapter 11 -"Yes-What Does That Mean?" Understanding Distributed Requirements Handling Chapter 12 -Doing Empirical Research on Software Development: Finding a Path between Understanding, Intervention, and Method Development
Part IV Organizing
Chapter 13 -Changing Work Practices in Design Chapter 14 -Information Systems Research and Information Systems Practice in a Network of Activities Chapter 15 -Reaching out for Commitments: Systems Development as Networking Chapter 16 -Participatory Organizational and Technological Innovation in Fragmented Work Environments Chapter 17 -Large-Scale Requirements Analysis as Heterogeneous Engineering
Part V Reorienting
Chapter 18 -Useware Design and Evolution: Bridging Social Thinking and Software Construction Chapter 19 -Discontinuities Chapter 20 -Localizing Self on the Internet: Designing for "Genius Loci" in a Global Context Chapter 21 -Intent, Form, and Materiality in the Design of Interaction Technology

Anyone who is concerned about business/IT alignment and software process improvement, especially readers who are working in a CMM Level 3 or above environment or in an IT or consulting organization that is a profit center will benefit from the many (if not all) of the ideas in this book.Even if some of the information is not actionable in your organization, it will cause you to view software engineering from multiple perspectives.

Product Description
Software practice--which includes software development, design, and use--needs to go beyond the traditional engineering framework. Drawing on a variety of social theory approaches, this book focuses on interdisciplinary cooperation in software practice. The topics discussed include the facilitation of collaborative software development, communication between developers and users, and the embedding of software systems in organizations.

About the Author
Yvonne Dittrich is Assistant Professor in the Software Development Group at IT University of Copenhagen.

Christiane Floyd is Professor in the Department of Informatics (Software Engineering Group) at the University of Hamburg.

Ralf Klischewski is Assistant Professor in the Department of Informatics (Software Engineering Group) at the University of Hamburg.

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Review of From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry (History of Computing) (Hardcover)

This is a history of the Software Industry. "Software" was coined to distinguish it from hardware; it describes the spirit that activates electronic machines. There are three sectors: software contracting, corporate software products, and mass-market software products (pp.3-8). The book covers events from around 1950 to 1995 in the USA. Chapter 1 gives an overview of the sources available. Chapter 2 tells of the origins of software writing, and its need for high-maintenance. Could errors arise from "one minor change"? Early users cooperated in sharing software. FORTRAN and COBOL became the first standard programming languages. But high costs and slipped schedules became typical. Government support for SAGE helped establish US dominance of the computer industry (p.48). The "Great Society" led to investments in non-defense projects.

Chapter 3 discusses "Programming Services". The established techniques of engineering management filtered into programming projects. Program flowcharts became institutionalized, then flushed away by the "fad for 'structured programming'" (p.69). The boom for software companies in the late 1960s reminds me of the dot-com fever in the late 1990s. All fueled from government spending (p.75, P.80). The arrival of minicomputers around 1970 allowed middling companies to own a computer. Chapter 4 tells about the change to "Software Products". Computers were more plentiful and more powerful (pp.90-91), programmers didn't keep up. Lines of code used increased 1000% every 5 years, the cost of developing quadrupled by 1965. Page 100 discusses flowcharting, whose purpose was to graphically represent a program's operations. Sort of like a condensed slide presentation of a topic. Page 102 tells of a secret machine instruction used to improve sorting speed (what was it?).

Chapter 5 tells how the software industry acquired its current shape, and gives an overview. Software products was a capital goods business. Industry specific software requires in-depth knowledge; in systems software programming skills are critical. The success of CICS can be compared to a system of roads where applications can freely travel (p.151). Chapter 6 discusses the maturing of corporate software packages, and growth through acquisition. It focuses on three large firms that became prominent in the 1990s. Some grew by acquiring smaller firms for their products (diversification). The rise of the relational database had an adverse affect on older database technologies. The use of fully integrated business application software (ERP) created new companies. Pages 182-4 overviews the successes of Computer Associates. A relational database did not require knowledge of the internal structure of the database; ever faster computers masked its relative inefficiency. Sales of SAP R/3 benefited from the "fad for business re-engineering" (p.195). Page 197 explains why SAP is more important that Microsoft.

There are strong parallels with other historical systems, such as railroads to airlines. If the database was bundled with the operating system there would be no independent vendors. European firms were able to pioneer ERP because they not not been locked into "legacy software" (p.199). The remaining chapters discuss the history of the personal computer.



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