Thursday, February 14, 2008

I LOVE O'Reilly Safari Video

Another year and I Still Love my virtual bookshelf. In addition to adding publishers,
they've added Video! Currently over 600 hours.

It's gotten to the point where It's not about available content, but managing the available content. With over 300 books in my favorites (at this point I think of them as marked for perusal) it's getting a bit more difficult to even open existing favs before a whole new set is coming down the pipe. Mmmmm, Information Overload (*Homeresque Gargle...*)



















































I still can't help but recommend this service (can't just call it a site) to anyone that consumes technical books and has an internet connection. For those that prefer real books for the type and layout, there's now an option on many title for reading in print fidelity.

I'm still not a fan of the token system. I use them because I have them, but have no real interest in creating a collection of random chapters. However, this feature is completely obscured by the overall awesomeness of the service.

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posted by Donoho at 11:53 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

I LOVE O'Reilly Safari Library

A year ago I extolled the Safari O'Reilly Bookshelf for granting the ability (depending on subscription) to have complete access to 30 technical books at once (each with a required stay on ones "favorites" for at least a month). In addition to O'Reilly's HUGE stable of titles, publishers like Microsoft Press and Addison Wesley also made their titles available.

The current publisher list includes (but is not limited to): O'Reilly, Addison Wesley, Sams, Prentice Hall, Que, Cisco Press, Microsoft Press,Peachpit Press, New Riders Publishing, Alpha Books, Course Technology, IBM Press, Macromedia, Adobe Press, Syngress, Financial Times Prentice HallMuska & Lipman, MySQL Press, No Starch, Novell Press, Premier Press, Prima Publishing, SitePoint, & Wharton School Publishing. The only one missing of note (to me) is Apress, but they have their own service.

Towards the end of last year, a new subscription option was enabled: The Safari Library. Unrestricted access to ALL titles [GLEE!!]. Currently going for $439.99 (10 hardcovers) it was a no brainer. I was regularly maxing out my bookshelf (30 books), but now have over 80. You might think one can't possibly consume that much information in any reasonable time period, but it's not about reading every book from cover to cover. It's about taking the information you need from every resource available. Now my resources are almost unlimited. Though my quick answers frequently come from Google Groups (formerly Deja) and a good bit of R&D happens via web searches, there is still no real equivalent to a (good) published text (or 5) on a given topic. What about the books with Code Samples, etc on an accompanying CD/DVD? Available via a link at the top of every page. Frequently, these links go the the authors web site with additional info as well. In addition to regularly published titles, one also has access to "Safari Guides", "Short Cuts" and "Rough Cuts".

I've been labeled as obsessive about learning on more than one occasion. Knowledge without application, however, is useless. The more I learn the more I can do. With tools like the Safari Library, I may have more than I can ever use, but I'll almost always have what I need.

As for gripes about the service. No major ones. The Library Subscription comes with 5 tokes a month. A token usually allows for the download of 1 chapter, sometimes a subsection. Each token expires if not used in 3 months. I find the token system a bit too restrictive, but use them because they expire if I don't. Downloaded chapters are watermarked pdfs with account information, allowing any copies in the wild to be traced back to the source. I like this approach Much better than password protected pdfs, but reading a chapter at a time can be a pain. Some books I read through, others I hop around looking for topics I need. The greatest flexibility is available while online.

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posted by Donoho at 1:08 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

I LOVE O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf

I read a lot of technical books. Unfortunately, I buy even more. Whether for reference or ramp up, I get several books on any given subject and consume until I find what I need or feel "comfortable" with the topic at hand. This has lead to a lot of wasted paper, not to mention the occasional frustration of newer editions coming out a month or two after I finally pick up a title (which means I hadn't even started reading it yet).

Although I frequent several publishers, I've been a fan of O'Reilly books for a while. Yes the I think the animals are cool. Cooler still, is the regularly reinforced reputation for solid content.

I don't remember how I was originally introduced to the SB, but it seemed too good to be true. I spend a lot of time searching the internet for relevant and recent technical info. There's a lot of smart people out there who are willing to share. (I hope to be worthy of becoming one of them some day.) This site... no, this Service advertized the ability to search published books. The number of times I wanted to do this flashed before my eyes. I tried it "Free for 14 days". I was hooked in the first couple hours.

I could go into detail about the sheer number of books available or the incredible range of information available. Instead, I'll give the current count (3616) list the categories (mmm cut & paste *homeresque gargle*):

Applied Sciences
Artificial Intelligence
Business
Certification
Computer Science
Databases
Desktop Applications
Desktop Publishing
E-Business
E-Commerce
Enterprise Computing
Graphics
Hardware
Human-Computer Interaction
Internet/Online
IT Management
Markup Languages
Multimedia
Networking
Operating Systems
Programming
Security
Software Engineering

The reason I truly love the Safari Bookshelf is because of how it's transformed how I consume information. As a web developer, I read a LOT of web pages. I'm a little afraid to think how many. What's never occured to me is the ease at which I can intake massive amounts of info from the web. How is that different any other source? When I pick up a technical book (which with most is a mini-workout in and of itself), I read as much as I can in a sitting, put in a bookmark and come back to it when:
1) I need info from that book.
2) I happen to have that book and time to read
3) I happen upon that book and decide to pick up again
I don't necessarily complete a chapter or a section of a chapter before stopping and a bookmark means I stopped at some point within two pages. I'm also limited to the number of books I can afford or want to carry around.

Enter the Safari Bookshelf. As long as I have an internet connection (what kind of web developer would I be if I didn't have access everywhere :p), I have access to 28 books right now. My queue tops out at 30. The amazing thing is ,depending on my focus, I'm actually reading all of them. I'm reading some from cover to cover and others for reference. In amount of high quality info on hand, I fond the contents noticably more readable. I need this next statement to stand out as it is a pivotal point...

Unlike ebooks, which are electronic, page for page, reproductions of their printed counterparts, books on safari have their own unique layout thats broken into logical sections without pritnted material constraints.

Each topic of a book is given it's own page. Some topics are a paragraph. Some topics are an entire chapter. Different books break down in different ways, but whats consistent is that when you get to the bottom of a page, you've consumed a packaged chunk of logic that feels much closer to what the author intended. It's like the difference between a normal conversation and having to pause for a minute each time the combined number of words reached a certain limit. Although, not show stopping, when that restriction is gone, you feel the difference.

Using FreeMind (a free mind mapping software) I've taken to logging the books I've gone through as there's no history I can find. An export of this mind map is avaiable here.

Despite my love of the service, I recognize some room for improvement. Their download options make NO sense to me. After the first couple of months of unused tokens I decide to used them on Eclipse Distilled. 3 months of tokens (the most you can have at once) got me some of the book. Once in PDF format I realized I'd moved backwards to the limitations of printed material and not even a complete work. Soon after I changed subscriptions to remove tokens. Haven't missed them once.

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posted by Donoho at 10:56 AM 0 comments