Johan de Moor is one of Hergés former assistants and a master of "the claire line". In this book (which is the first in a trilogy) he works together with Stefan Desberg to create a wonderful fantasy tale about a boy who enters a mysterious place invaded by the humans. I liked the book but the sequels are better.

Anyone who know Howard Roffman's photography knows he has done many wonderful books of Male Nude Photography. This new postcard book #27 featuring Johan Paulik, one of Bel Ami most admired models, is a welcome edition that was issued about the same time as the new hardcover book featuring Johan Paulik by Howard Roffman. There are 29 postcards featuring black & white photos of Johan by himself that are shot mostly indoors. This is a Johan that is a little more mature & older, but still very attractive, cute, and innocent looking. These are wonderful postcards to enjoy yourself, or to send to your friends, etc. Highly Recommended!

This book grew out of a Scandinavian conference titled: "Information Authority and User Knowledge" at Boraas University, Sweden, April, the 27.-28. 1993. The Key speaker was Patrick Wilson. The conference was organized by late Professor Erland Munch-Petersen (Denmark/Sweden) and Professor Johan Olaisen (Norway). Of the original seven presentations (including the introduction) four are published in this book, while seven new chapters are added. The table of content is as follows:

Johan Olaisen: Information, Cognitive Authority and Organizational Learning (p. 7) *Patrick Wilson: Some Consequences of Information Overload and Rapid Conceptual Change (p. 21) Birger Hjørland: Overload, Quality and Changing Conceptual Frameworks (p. 35) Peter Ingwersen: Information and Information Science in Context (p. 69) Jon-Arild Johannessen: The Cognitive Authority of Information: Information Science, the Theory of Science and Ethics (p. 113) Ragnar Audunson: Comparing Change Processes in Public Libraries - an Institutional Perspective (p. 135). Pertti Vakkari: Library and Information Science: Content and Scope (p. 169). *Erland Munch-Petersen: Patrick Wilson and the Classics (p. 233) Ken Friedman: Individual Knowledge in the Information Society (p. 245) *Johan Olaisen: Pluralism or Positivistic Trivialism: Criteria for a Clarified Subjectivism (p. 277). *Patrick Wilson: The Future of Research in Our Field (p. 319) List of contributors (p. 325)

* identifies the original conference contributions

The original theme of the conference was broadened in the book by adding views on Information Sciences by some leading Scandinavian researchers in this field.

In my opinion this book has a certain Scandinavian "touch" in the way we approach Information Science, and it can be recommended as a book that presents this touch.

(The book had a hard birth and was delayed. In Books in Print it was listed as canceled, when I decided to make this review, and I had to bring it into the catalogue of Amazon.com because it was not listed here).

In addition to the "Instructions" given to Governor Johan Printz, this book contains court records from New Sweden, correspondence from Gov. Printz, and information relative to the Swedish colonists' relations with the Dutch. Furthermore, it contains several valuable photographs of critical documents, places, and historical markers.

See also Isreal Acrelius's A History of New Sweden (1874).

Gieskecke has written a good introduction to epidemiology in general, but focuses on infectious disease epidemiology and how it is different from the other fields of epidemiology (e.g., the victims of an infectious disease can also be the source for new infections). I liked the organization and structure of the book. This is a good book for the beginner, but not someone seeking a thorough grounding in the issues.

This quick reference guide to Perl 5.000 was always close at hand when I was learing Perl. It provided just enough detail to remind me of the sticky points of syntax and usage while being lean enough to find items fast. It is a truly useful companion to both the Camel book (Programming Perl, 2nd edition) and the Llama book (Learning Perl).

These days I don't use it as much, mainly because my knowledge of Perl has grown to the point where I have fewer questions of usage, but also because I have the CD-Rom edition of O'reilly's "Webmaster in a Nutshell" which contains a full text version of "Programming Perl". I can now look things up electronically in about the same time I could on paper.

Perl's quirky syntax and the attitude built into the language of there's always more than one way to do it, makes having multiple reference sources a requirement, if only to find the Perl guru who thinks like you do. Vromans uses a clean, straightforward style which is a refreshing change from the sometimes too humorous style of Larry Wall and Randal Schwartz.

'PRIME MOVERS' Define Your Business or Have Someone Define it Against You

How did Nokia come to lead in mobile phones? How did Tetra Pak revolutionise milk packaging? How did VISA become so central in payments? How did Caterpillar become 'the' reference in Earth-moving equipment? How did photocopying come to be called Xeroxing?

This book tells the story of companies that have revolutionised their markets, some more than once, by completely changing the logic of value creation in them. Such companies are called 'prime movers'. The book explains this logic and provides detailed frameworks for implementing it.

The New Logic of Value Creation

The main thesis of the book, and the value creation framework it proposes, is that the role of a business is to identify, utilise and package its capabilities into offerings that help customers create value for themselves and their customers and counterparts.

This framework is fundamentally different from one that considers products (instead of capabilities) and markets (instead of customers). It captures not only the value of an offering to customers, but the whole value chain, including customers' customers. The overall network, in which value is created both with customers and their customers, is called a 'value constellation'.

An example shows how this was implemented by Xerox Corporation, which converted xerography into a commercial success. Later, competitors entered the market with smaller and cheaper machines. Xerox reconfigured the market a second time with its 'document processing' strategy.

An Architecture for Value Creation

The authors provide a framework for understanding the various value logics in the value chain and resulting value constellation. They show how to define a business model which should answer the question: what value do we want to create, and for and with whom? This comprises the capabilities to be deployed, the co-production partners to be involved, the offerings to be co-produced, and the customers to be targeted.

Different routes can be taken to create value:

* A firm aligns its value-creating logics to those of its customers.

* A company harnesses its existing capabilities to create new offerings for existing and new customers.

* A company develops and utilises new capabilities to create new offerings and attract new customers.

The book rests on the premise that value is customer-dependent. For example, a shirt may be bought by several different types of people. One may view it entirely as a piece of clothing, its value being based on its price relative to its quality. Another may be interested in minimising the time taken to acquire the shirt, and therefore buy it from a mail order catalogue or the internet. A third may be looking for something that will become an integral part of her wardrobe. A fourth could be a fashion student, who buys it to learn about design. Or the purchaser could be an environmentalist, concerned about the origin of the material, the environmental impact of the production process, and whether it can be recycled. Each of these customers has a different view of the value of the shirt, which needs to be taken into account when creating the offering presented to them.

Some Comparisons

'Prime Movers' has a common theme with 'Leading the Revolution' by Gary Hamel. However, it differs markedly in presentation and content. Both argue that to succeed, a business has to reinvent itself, often more than once. But whereas Hamel's revolution relates mainly to changing the organisation, Ramírez and Wallin's revolution is in rethinking the business.

It also has much in common with 'The Profit Zone' (Slywotsky and Morrison, John Wiley, 1998), in that both books focus on what customers value. However, whereas Slywotsky and Morrison look principally at the customer's point of view, Ramírez and Wallin also consider the firm's capabilities and its customers' customers.

This is not an airport bookshop best-seller, with a single idea and which can be read in a few hours. It is thoroughly researched, with notes and references on each chapter. It is very rich in ideas which demand careful attention, and its layout enables it to be read a chapter at a time. For a summary of these ideas, one can do no better than quote one of the concluding paragraphs. "Offerings reverse the ground of attention to which strategists have given priority. Instead of actors, interactions should be considered as the focus. Instead of companies, it is relationships. Instead of positioning within a given context, it is the enlarging and redefining environments which can deliver more effective companies, helping their customers to become more effective creators, ultimately making up better value constellations."

Maybe there is too much to Perl to squeeze into one tiny guide? Maybe Perl can't be organized like that? For whatever reason, I find Learning Perl (another great O'Reilly book) to be the perfect "Pocket" reference, even though it's a standard book. This Pocket reference is too small to be of any real use, unlike many of their other Pocket references.

Why such a small book wastes 2 pages on a useless forward by Larry Wall is beyond me.

Larry should stick to writing code.

This is just what I needed - a quick reminder to refresh my memory occasionally without referring to the other perl books or docs. It's small and inexpensive -I keep one at home and one at the office. This book is great for jogging your memory to remind you of use and syntax but it should not be relied on as a true "reference". If you have the Camel and the Llama book this is a perfect addition.

In this book, "Choose Peace: A Dialogue Between Johan Galtung and Daisaku Ikeda," world-renowned professor of peace studies at the University of Hawaii and founder of the International Peace Research Institute, Dr. Johan Galtung, and Daisaku Ikeda, Buddhist scholar and current president of Soka Gakkai International, the world's largest Buddhist organization, explore the interface between Buddhist philosophy and nonviolent solutions to war and political conflict. The two scholars share various painful memories of growing up during World War II. Mr. Ikeda suffered illness as well as the loss of his dear older brother who died in combat, adding to the anguish his family sufferred. In Dr. Galtung's case, during the Nazi occupation of his homeland, Norway, Dr. Galtung's father was imprisoned in a concentration camp in retaliation for his resistance activities.

Their shared quest inspires concrete proposals that are directly relevant to conflict resoulution today, including such hot topics as the death penalty, nationalism and regional unification, religious fundamentalism, the proliferation of nuclear arms, and the role of the United Nations in peacekeeping around the world.

"Choose Peace" is presented as a dialogue between these two scholars, and identifies the various sources of violence and unrest, while demonstrating the role of Buddhist philosophy in formulating solutions that will lead to lasting peace.

In Choose Peace, Johan Galtung, the founder of the International Peace Research Institute and currently a professor of peace studies at the University of Hawaii, and Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist leader, explore the interface between Buddhism and nonviolent solutions to global conflict. The two men share bitter personal memories of World War II. During the German occupation of Norway, Dr. Galtung's father was imprisoned in a concentration camp for his resistance activities. In Mr. Ikeda's case, his older brother died in combat, adding to the terrible anguish he felt during the war.

Far from abstract, their quest inspires concrete proposals that are directly relevant to the political agendas of today, such as the death penalty, nationalism and regional unification, fundamentalism, arms reduction, and the proliferation and supervision of nuclear technology, and the role of the United Nations in peacekeeping initiatives.

Presented as a dialogue between the two men, Choose Peace identifies sources of global violence and unrest and demonstrates the role of Buddhism in formulating peaceful solutions.

In Choose Peace, Johan Galtung, the founder of the International Peace Research Institute and currently a professor of peace studies at the University of Hawaii, and Daisaku Ikeda, a Buddhist leader, explore the interface between Buddhism and nonviolent solutions to global conflict.

The two men share bitter personal memories of World War II. During the German occupation of Norway, Dr. Galtung's father was imprisoned in a concentration camp for his resistance activities. In Mr. Ikeda's case, his older brother died in combat, adding to the terrible anguish he felt during the war.

Far from abstract, their quest inspires concrete proposals that are directly relevant to the political agendas of today, such as the death penalty, nationalism and regional unification, fundamentalism, arms reduction, and the proliferation and supervision of nuclear technology, and the role of the United Nations in peacekeeping initiatives.

Presented as a dialogue between the two men, Choose Peace identifies sources of global violence and unrest and demonstrates the role of Buddhism in formulating peaceful solutions.

A professional web developer, I expected, based on the description of this book, a practical guide to redeploying a client web site as a wireless application. Anything but a practical guide, this book presents nearly 400 pages of design philosophy, with tidbits of information scattered throughout. I've read the book, and I am no closer to finishing my project. This was a waste of my time and money.

Overall, I think this covers the essentials of wireless. Since the wireless revolution will definately be bigger than the internet revolution, this book helps you to understand how to develop your wireless strategy from design phase to implementation.

Wireless information systems is not only Wap. It really is designing anything optimized for viewing on a cellphone. If you need a good, high-level overview of wireless information systems, this is the book. I can't realy recommend it for most technicians, as the market aspects may be too overwhelming and the basic concepts too daunting. But it is a very good guide guide on how to design sites and other services to take advantage of the mobile market.