 Amazon Hacks, 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
by Paul Bausch
web page
Reviewed by: Cary Sheley
Paul Bausch’s book from O’Reilly provides information on how to utilize the services and enhance your shopping experience available on the web at Amazon.com.
I’m sure most of us are familiar with the web shopping available at Amazon.com and have visited the site at some time. Amazon.com has grown considerably over the last few years and could truly be considered a giant in online sales. Mr. Bausch’s book will help you better utilize all that is available from this online location.
The book could be considered a reference in that you do not need to read it from to cover to cover as it were. The tips & tools (hacks) are organized in a table of contents and are rated by difficulty. You can browse and just spend time on the information that interests you. There is much that is available from beginners to advanced computer users.
Amazon.com is very intuitive and will help you to your purchase, with suggestions based upon your shopping queries. This book can better help you find what you are shopping for amongst the millions of products available. The book also can help you fine-tune your preferences, recommendations and information. It can help you to participate in the Amazon community, by writing reviews, creating book lists, writing guides. That all seems a little obvious to me.
What I wasn’t aware of is that you can link amazon.com to your own site via the Amazon’s Associates Program. You can sell your products with your own “storefront” via links to amazon. In addition, Amazon has made available it’s own billing, inventory and marketing infrastructure to anyone who would like to take advantage of it. For more advanced computer users the book can help you build full-scale desktop and server applications on Amazon’s Web Services API.
Mr. Bausch’s book is well laid out and contains useful information on how to buy or sell with Amazon.com. If you are an online shopper or want to sell a product online, it’s worth taking a look at.
 Learning Unix for Mac OS X
by Dave Taylor & Brian Jepson
web page
Reviewed by: SMUG member Wayne Spitzer
I started with Macs in 1989. At that time, and up until the introduction of Mac OS X, Apple used it's own proprietary system to run all of it's cpu's. With the advent of system X that has changed. A form of Unix, called Darwin, is now the foundation upon which OS X is built.
The advantage of using Unix is that there are huge numbers of free and low cost Unix applications available on the internet. The Fink project, available from SourceForge, brings many "open source" packages to Mac OS X. The book lists several other sources for Unix apps.
"Open source" is the key phrase that changes the ballgame for Apple. It means that any developer can get his/her hands on the operating system and build apps to work with that system. That is unlike what Apple has done in the past. In the long run, it is hoped that this would result in a much wider sale of Macs.
The biggest drawback to taking full advantage of Unix for most Mac users is that it means learning the language of Unix. This book is an attempt to help Mac users make that beginning.
It took me a while to read through this very short book (ten chapters,128 pages). I started out with my laptop, my favorite easy chair, this book, a marker and a pen. My goal was to try each and every command on my laptop so that I could learn the basics of Unix. As a teacher, I know that it takes a number of repetitions before transference takes place. And my goal was to at least make a beginning.
After working through the commands on my laptop for the first three chapters, I opted to just deal with the book for the last seven. As I read command after command, my mind flashed back to my pre-Mac days when I dealt with learning Dos, with it's numerous commands. Painful memories intruded on my reading and my stress level rose.
Adding to my stress was the authors occasional use of comparisons of how the same Unix function could be accomplished in Mac OS X. Then, too, the authors reference to commands that "will be explained in a future chapter" was also irritating. But, I plowed on, looking for something that would really sell me on using Unix.
The first five chapters are really "basic" to any understanding of Unix. You will find a few "that's neat" commands, buy not something you will likely jump up and down about.
However, the last five chapters begin to open up just how you might do something unique using Unix. My interest was piqued when I started to read about "pipes and filters" in chapter six. Getting two programs to work together and use input from another is intriguing.
Here are the chapters:
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1. Getting Started
Working in the Unix Environment
Syntax of Unix Command Lines
Types of Commands
The Unresponsive Terminal
2. Using Unix
The Mac OS X Filesystem
Protecting and Sharing Files
Superuser Privileges with Sudo
Graphical Filesystem Browsers
3. File Management
File and Directory Names
File and Directory Wildcards
Creating and Editing Files
Managing Your Files
4. Customizing Your Session
Launching Terminal
Customizing Your Shell Environment
Further Customization
5. Printing
Formatting and Print Commands
Non-PostScript Printers
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6. Redirecting I/O
Standard Input and Standard Output
Pipes and Filters
7. Accessing the Internet
Remote Logins
Transferring Files
8. Unix-Based Internet Tools
Fink
Lynx, a Text-Based Web Browser
Electronic Mail with Pine
Usenet News
Interactive Chat
9. Multitasking
Running a Command in the Background
Checking on a Process
Canceling a Process
10. Where to Go From Here
Documentation
Shell Aliases and Functions
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Reading this book, while not yet fully understanding all of the "in's and out's" of the Jaguar version of OS X and knowing that the Panther version will soon be released, causes me to wonder just where I should spend my time (and money).
One way to look at it is that if you learn Unix you will have useful knowledge that will work for you regardless of what new system Apple puts on top of it (As long as Apple sticks with Unix).
My only advice is to that if you want to learn Unix be prepared to spend a lot of time. It will not come easily to most people. For those who want to take the first step this will be a helpful book, one whose sections will have to be read more than once.
 Mac OS X Hacks
100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools
by Rael Dornfest & Kevin Hemenway
web page
Reviewed by: SMUG member Dave Emmons
Having been into computers for over 15 years now, I guess I can be considered somewhat "old school". By that, I can recall using a 300 baud modem, BBSes, and the only hacking done around here was getting into the real estate system here in town. Being old school, I'm often surprised at how often and incorrectly the word hack.
But this review isn't meant to discuss the merits of the title, so let's dive in.
This is a great book, once you get past the title. It's well-organized and is divided into 9 chapters.
I. Files
II. Startup
III. Multimedia and the iApps
IV. The USer Interface
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V. Unix and the Terminal
VI. Networking
VII. Email
VIII. The Web
IX. Databases
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Each hack is anywhere from one to four pages long, includes screenshots and other pertinent information to the hack. Hacks include everything from maximizing the iApps to using a variety of UNIX utilities from Terminal. For instance, one of the hacks descibes how to publish iCal calendars to a non .Mac server. Another will teach you how to download POP mail with fetchmail. All hacks are written in easy-to-understand language. While you may not understand everything you read, as you make your way through the book, you will understand more and more.
Here are some of the hacks, listed in no particular order:
Creating Mail Alises
Taming the Entourage Database
Turning on WebDAV
Saving Web Pages for Offline Viewing
Sharing an Internet Connection
Running Windows on and From a Mac
Introducing the Terminal
Opening Things from Terminal
Hijacking Audio from Mac Apps
Getting a Glimpse of the Boot Process
Something I feel differentiates this book from many other computer books is that it is published by O'Reilly. And as such, you can depend on that fact to supply information above and beyond what's in the book. You are encouraged to access information from O'Reilly's MacDevCenter.com web site. O'Reilly also maintains a companion site for each of it's books where it publishes errata, sample code, and other useful information.
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If you own Mac OS 10.3, you should own Mac OSX: The Missing Manual, Panther edition. This book is much more than a manual, a word which conjures up images of dry, technical discussions and flowcharts. It is chock full of useful information, yet David Pogues' writing is so entertaining that one could almost read this book just for the fun of it. The format goes well beyond a basic "how to" guide and provides tips, tricks, and shortcuts for power users as well as easy-to-read, but never condescending, introductions on basic topics. There is something here for everyone.
It is not a book to keep on the shelf for troubleshooting, though there are appendices with some helpful information along those lines. This is a guide to discovering everything that you ever wanted to know about the Mac OS but never thought to ask. Get yourself a cup of coffee, get comfortable in front of your computer and flip through the pages - as you read you will want to try some of these tips yourself. And don't skip the basic chapters just because you've used a Mac for 20 years...I learned how to make the ñ in jalapeño in the Keyboard & Mouse section of System Preferences (Bringing Dead Keys to Life, page 248)!
The new "heads up display" in Panther (page 121) is an especially cool feature that may not ever reveal itself to those who navigate strictly by mouse. Pressing the Command and Tab keys brings up a display of all of your open programs. Each tap of the Tab key cycles through the open programs. If you keep a lot of icons in your dock, or keep your dock hidden, this is a great way to switch between applications. In the "Power Users' Clinic" sidebars you can find some really helpful tips. One great idea that I have put to use is a method of placing the System Preferences in the dock so that you can open just the one you want with one click (page 258). I knew there had to be a way to do that, but I never would have come up with it on my own! One caveat though, some of the information in the sidebars is not indexed very well, so when you read something that you think will come in handy, flag it so that you can find it again. If you're like me, you'll have lots of flags sticking out all over your copy. I had no idea how much I didn't know!
Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther edition is a useful and entertaining book that should be included in that big box that those little Panther CD's come in, but it's not. So I recommend that you make use of the User Group discount and order it soon. Find out what you're missing!
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