Programming Android: Java Programming for the New Generation of Mobile Devices Book Review

The second edition of this book came just at the right time. I am currently working on a project that uses Microsoft's Web Api RESTful services to interface with iPhone, iPad, Windows 8 Phone, Windows 8 Tablets, and Android devices. The Android devices are the last in the initial build of the framework to be added to the architecture. This book was perfect for getting me over that hurdle quickly. It starts with a chapter on downloading, installing, and configuring, Eclipse, the Android SDK, and the Android Developer Tools. It also walks you through creating an Android Virtual Device. After failing to get the Android tools to successfully setup up on Windows 8 three times, I decided to set up my development environment on my MacBook, which was one and done. The book is broken down into four parts. I have listed each one along with the chapters they contain. I. Tools and Basics 1. Installing the Android SDK and Prerequisites 2. Java for Android 3. The Ingredients of an Android Application 4. Getting Your Application into Users’ Hands 5. Eclipse for Android Software Development II. About the Android Framework 6. Building a View 7. Fragments and Multiplatform Support 8. Drawing 2D and 3D Graphics 9. Handling and Persisting Data III. A Skeleton Application for Android 10. A Framework for a Well-Behaved Application 11. Building a User Interface 12. Using Content Providers 13. A Content Provider as a Facade for a RESTful Web Service IV. Advanced Topics 14. Search 15. Location and Mapping 16. Multimedia 17. Sensors, NFC, Speech, Gestures, and Accessibility 18. Communication, Identity, Sync, and Social Media 19. The Android Native Development Kit (NDK) As you can see by the chapter's names, the book covers a lot of topics. I found the author covered the topics with enough detail to thoroughly explain the topic at hand. I liked Chapter 2, Java for Android. Coming from a C# and Objective-C environment, I thought the chapter did a nice job of covering the syntax of Java. Chapter 3, The Ingredients of an Android Application, is absolutely essential for anyone coming from Windows Phone, Windows Store Apps, iPhone, or iPad development. It does a great job of covering the high-level concepts of programming on the Android Platform. It introduces you the Android language and concepts. Chapter 5 was a nice touch. The author takes the time to cover what Android programming looks like in Eclipse. I have used the Eclipse Process Framework, TOPCASED, Archi, GOSU, and a few other configurations. It was nice to just have the Android environment explained instead of having to figure it out. The author has all the examples used in the book available for download. They're very well organized and usable. All of the examples ran without needing any modification. You can import them into Eclipse and hit run. Just make sure you download the code for the second edition. I downloaded the first edition's code initially. The Android environment is a complex one. At least I found it to be more complex than iOS and .NET. Without this book I would not have gotten very far. The author did a great job of explaining activities, intents, tasks, services, and contents providers early in the book which help me understand the context in which the different elements live. This book is great for reading from cover to cover as well as using it as a reference. I plan on keeping this book by my side. This book is for anyone looking to get into Android programming or anyone looking for direction on building Android applications with the latest APIs, tools, and best practices.

Programming Android: Java Programming for the New Generation of Mobile Devices

For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013

Master Your Mac: Simple Ways to Tweak, Customize, and Secure OS X Book Review

This book is a great addition to my collection of Mac how to books. I like this one because it steps over the line into the more technical side of Mac features than most of the Mountain Lion guide books do. The book is broken down into seven parts. I have listed the parts below along with the chapters they each contain. I. Back to Basics 1. The Best Shortcuts (and How to Make Your Own) 2. Starting Applications Automatically at Login 3. Finding Files and Folders Fast 4. Organizing Windows 5. Cleaning House 6. Adjusting Energy and Display Settings II. Boosting Productivity 7. Launching Applications Fast 8. Customizing Trackpad and Mouse Gestures 9. Connecting Multiple Displays to Your Mac 10. Talking to Your Mac III. Automation 11. Automating Tasks with Macros 12. Automating Tasks with AppleScript 13. Creating a Bluetooth Proximity Monitor 14. Automating File and Folder Actions 15. Triggering Location-Based Actions IV. Managing Your Life 16. Managing Your Email 17. Killing Spam 18. Creating Quick and Easy Alerts 19. Managing Your Music V. Internet and Networks 20. Creating Your Own Safari Extension 21. Turning Websites into Applications 22. Storing Files in the Cloud 23. Accessing Your Mac Remotely 24. Turning Your Mac into a Web and FTP Server 25. Wirelessly Sharing a Printer and Hard Drive 26. Synchronizing Files Between Computers VI. Serious Security 27. Creating Strong Passwords and Storing Them Securely 28. Enabling Firmware Password Protection 29. Encrypting Your Mac’s Internet Connection 30. Enabling Firewalls 31. Preserving Your Anonymity Online 32. Encrypting Your Hard Disks and Backups VII. Monitoring, Troubleshooting, and Maintenance 33. System and Process Monitoring 34. Repairing Disk Permissions 35. Verifying and Repairing the Hard Disk 36. Making Better File Backups 37. Maintaining a MacBook’s Battery 38. Creating an Emergency USB Drive One of the things I like about the book is the way it is laid out. It has a very comfortable and easy to read format. Each chapter starts with an overview of the topic, the project goal for the chapter, and a What You'll be using section. The author then digs into the details of the topic. At the beginning of each chapter there is a "What You'll be Using" section. This section lists all the tools the author takes advantage of in the chapter. The tools are not all free open source tools. There are some tools listed that must pay for, but I would rather have the tools that get the job done right, than just partial open source tools. Some books I've read have only used open-source tools and a lot of times they've been limited in their functionality. The author's writing style makes the topics at hand very easy to understand and makes the book a very easy read. It not only can be read from cover to cover, it also make a great reference. Some of the chapters that were a pleasant surprise were Turning Your Mac into a Web and FTP Server, Preserving Your Anonymity Online, Encrypting Your Mac’s Internet Connection, Creating Your Own Safari Extension, Automating Tasks with AppleScript, and Creating a Bluetooth Proximity Monitor. The author covers downloading, installing, and configuring MAMP. The author helps you get Apache and MySQL up and running in no time at all. I love that the author introduces the Tor Browser Bundle and Vidalia Bundle in the Preserving Your Anonymity Online chapter. Not many people know about it. I have used it several time when running through white hat hack attacks during security testing. This book will stay in my backpack. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to take the Mac user skills to the next level.

Master Your Mac

For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013

Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML Book Review

This book is the perfect size and the perfect depth for getting up to speed quickly with building Windows 8 Store Applications. The book starts by introducing WinRT. This introduction includes a really nice history of how Microsoft got to where they are now. It starts with a look back at MS-DOS, MS-DOS Executive, the Win32 API, COM, and.NET. The introduction leads us up to NUI (Natural User Interface) and the Windows Store Application Design Principles. The first chapter ends with a look at the Windows 8 tool that are available to developers and designers. They include, Blend for Visual Studio, C++ and XAML, HTML5 and JavaScript, and VB/C# and XAML. I have listed all the chapters below. 1. The New Windows Runtime 2. Getting Started 3. Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) 4. Windows 8 Applications 5. Application Lifecycle 6. Data 7. Tiles and Toasts 8. Giving Your Application Charm 9. MVVM and Testing 10. Packaging and Deploying The Getting Started chapter covers setting up your environment, which includes Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012, and expression blend for Visual Studio. It also covers the details of all the available project templates that come in the Windows Store category of Visual Studio's project templates. The book then continues on with a nice overview of XAML. The author does a good job of covering a lot of topics as well as going in-depth enough to give you a thorough understanding of the topics that he chose to cover. XAML is a big topic, but the author did a great job of covering the essentials needed to get started. Chapter 4, Windows 8 Applications, starts out with a nice overview of the Windows 8 simulator that comes with the development environment. The chapter continues on covering the application view states, semantic zoom, how to handle user input, mouse support, keyboard support, sensors, the application bar, and much more. The one thing that the book really brought to light was a big flaw with the Windows Store Applications design. Not so much by explicitly pointing it, but rather by having nothing to say about it. That flaw being, a complete lack of capability for the applications to be run off-line with any sizable local data store. There really is no large data storage available to the Windows Store Applications beyond application state persistence. That raised a big red flag. In searching the web, I found a lot of people having big issues with that. It looks like SQLite has come up with a solution they say will make it through the Windows Store approval process. The chapter Giving Your Application Charm covers contracts and Windows 8 Extensions which allow for application information sharing handled at an operating system level. This is one of the coolest features built into Windows 8. The book ends with a short chapter on MVVM and unit testing, and a short chapter on packaging and deploying. The author has all the examples used in the book available for download. They're very well organized and usable. All of the examples ran without needing any modification. Overall I found this book an enjoyable read. I thought the author's writing style made the book very easy to read from cover to cover. I will also be keeping it by on my side to use as a reference. If you are planning on building Windows 8 Applications with C# and XAML, I recommend you start with this book. It will give you a great foundation on which to build your experience.

Building Windows 8 Apps with C# and XAML

For more book recommendations check out my .NET, iOS, and Java Architecture and Development Book Recommendations for 2013

Learning Unix for OS X Mountain Lion Book Review

This was a perfect size book for what I needed. What I needed was a book that would get me back up to speed quickly on UNIX. I have not used UNIX since the late 80's, and I have not used Mac since the early 90's. The book starts off with a nice introduction to you Unix and why you would want to use it. The second chapter using the Terminal, is a nice introduction to Terminal's capabilities and shows you how to customization. After the first two chapters the book starts digging into the details of what you can do with Unix on the Mac. I have listed the chapters below. 1. Why Use Unix? 2. Using the Terminal 3. Exploring the Filesystem 4. File Management 5. Finding Files and Information 6. Redirecting I/O 7. Multitasking 8. Taking Unix Online 9. Of Windows and X11 10. Where to Go from Here As you can see from the chapter names the author covers some of the most important topics you need to know with a chapter dedicate to each. The only chapter that is not completely clear on what it covers is Taking Unix Online. That chapter digs into remote login, web access, and FTP. Although the book talks about using the code samples that come with the book, I could not find any online. That did not take anything away from the book. The samples are short enough to be able to type them yourself. I found that I wanted to read this book with my Mac turned on to try the different samples that the author covered. The author has a great writing style that makes the book an easy read. I have some other UNIX books where that is not true. Overall I think this is a great book for getting up to speed with UNIX quickly. This book along with my Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide have covered everything that I had to look up to date.

Learning Unix for OS X Mountain Lion: Using Unix and Linux Tools at the Command Line