Microblogging service Twitter has undeniably been a hit, with growth rates that were at times in excess of 1400%. The growth was rapid enough that the site became well know for its periodic and at times extensive downtime. Even with these issues, the service continued to grow rapidly, and with celebrities getting into the mix Twitter was quickly on the radar of mainstream media. The ubiquity of twitter and ever increasing coverage of ‘tweets’ has also brought the inevitable backlash. As with anything that gains high profile popularity there are plenty of Twitter haters out there, though the role that Twitter has played in the recent Iranian elections seems to have brought more legitimacy to Twitter in the eyes of many. With popularity come books and quite a few are already out there about and for twitter, but my favorite so far is The Twitter Book by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein.

What makes The Twitter Book work so well is that it functions in a manner very similar to the service it describes. The book itself is small, 8×5.9×0.7 inches, and the font is a bit larger than most tech books. This means the most text dense pages probably contain the same content as one third of a page in a traditional O’Reilly book. Most pages aren’t text though, there is a liberal use of color, bold text and graphics. When a page is relatively heavy on text, the facing page will be equally focused on graphics with pictures, graphs or large colored bubbles around text.

All this combines to make The Twitter Book contain many of the same elements that create such a passionate response, positive or negative, to Twitter itself. This means if someone absolutely hates twitter, can’t think of a single reason it should exist and wishes it would go away; they are probably not going to like this book. On the other hand anyone that loves Twitter and wants to learn all the ins and outs of the service, there is a high likelihood they are really going to take to this guide. It’s format is one of those genius moves that seems incredibly obvious in hind sight. When I’ve shown it to other fans of Twitter, the usual initial response has been, “A twitter book, really?” and they are not all that enthusiastic. But once I start flipping through it and letting them see the way it is formatted, the reception becomes much warmer and quite a few have quickly flipped from skepticism to a desire to take my copy.

O’Reilly and Milstein both have been using the Twitter platform extensively and speak from experience and data that backs up their assertions. The format may make the whole thing look rather simple, but there is a lot going on here and one can very easily find a lot of bad advice out there on how to get the most out of Twitter. The Twitter Book leaves the reader in good hands that have already tread the paths they lead one down.

Of course this does raise and important question, is a guide to microblogging really necessary? All one does with twitter after all, is post 140 word updates. If kids can text vociferously, who needs how to do the equivalent to a web site? Well, there are two things in play that I think make this worth having. The first, and I think possibly the more important, is that Twitter is a social service. Beyond the simple technical aspects of the various clients, and technologies supported for the sending and receiving of tweets, there are the mores and customs of what has already become an established community. O’Reilly and Milstein aren’t just guiding the reader through a simple how to, they are giving an introduction to a massive community that can save the reader from making more than a few mistakes that could really make getting going with microblogging a rough start.

The second reason is that while basic twitter functionality is drop dead easy, some of the more powerful or useful features are not built into twitter itself. They are methods and tools that have come up from the user base itself. Some of them require a little thinking outside the box as it were and are not immediately obvious. Others do seem incredibly simple once they’ve been implemented but their simplicity belies their usefulness. The book gives solid information on third party clients and tools. Tips on use are backed up with statistics on existing use within twitter.

As this is The Twitter Book, I have been talking about Twitter quite a bit. I’m sure the name is going to help the book sell but much of the information is just as valuable in the context of microblogging in general as opposed to just Twitter. The only real exception may be the clients and tools mentioned previously. Some of them have been slow to support other platforms. I think this book is just as useful still, to anyone microblogging with another service such as idenit.ca. Identi.ca is built on the free and open Laconica software. I personally base all my microblogging from identi.ca and forward things over to twitter. I still interact on twitter because at this point is where the majority of the players are at. But the social guidelines and strategies laid out in The Twitter Book carry over directly to identi.ca.

I don’t really have any issues with the book. The scope is purposefully narrow and within the defined limits the authors have covered everything very well. I’d have loved to see something on identi.ca or Laconica but that would have widened the scope quite a bit and I think we can all relate to hating scope creep in a project. SlideShare has a nice preview of the book. Of course this format is not suited to every purpose. Any in depth study of just what makes twitter so popular and the impact it is or is not having on society will need to take place in a manner more suited to such topics. This is simply a case of using the right tool for the job. But dismissing this format as useless would be a mistake it is uniquely appropriate to the job at hand. I think this book is a lot like a screw driver. When used in the manner intended, no tool is better at the job. The only way to break a screw driver is to use it in an unintended way. In that case it isn’t the tool’s fault. Looking for a meaty discourse on the pros and cons of twitter? Do not look here. But if getting the most out of the service is the goal this may just be the best tool available.

Title: The Twitter Book
Author: Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein
Publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Pages: 234
ISBN: 978-0-598-80281-3
Rating: 9/10
Tagline: If you want to learn how to use Twitter like a pro, The Twitter Book will quickly get you up to speed.

Web applications are all the rage. Web applications that function within the context of social networking sites doubly so. I think it is safe to say that pretty much anyone looking to garner a large audience on the web, for financial or any other reasons, has to be considering how they can reach people on sites like Facebook, or all those users out there accessing the web via their iPhones. Sun Microsystems has entered this arena by providing a set of web based development tools and a platform on which to host the resulting products that is now in beta and named Zembly. And while Zembly has not been open to the public for all that long, two of Zemblys architects with the help of two writers have published a new cookbook for the aspiring Zembly developer, Assemble the Social Web with Zembly.

Zembly is relatively new and the name doesn’t offer any insight into just what it is, so before I get to the book itself, I’ll explain a little about just what Zembly is. It is a Sun project. In their promotional material on the site they claim, “Over two decades ago, Sun’s motto, ‘The Network is the Computer’, foreshadowed the advent of today’s cloud computing movement.We like to say that zembly is the development environment for Sun’s bold vision…” So Zembly is an on-line development environment. But more than just being an on-line editor, it is development in a social context aimed at social tools. The code written by one Zembly user, is available to any other user.

Along with providing a social development environment, Zembly also provides the platform and resources where the applications developed there will live. To put it in literal terms the framework is comprised of Solaris, Java, Glassfish, and MySQL. It operates via Sun’s Network.com cloud-computing business. That framework supports the use of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, FBML, and FBJS. There are templates in place to develop applications for several popular social networking sites and there will be more as users add them.

Assemble the Social Web with Zembly is an introduction to all this and serves primarily as a cookbook to help the reader get their head around how all the pieces work together, giving them a jump start into the process. As Zembly is all about colaberation it seems appropriate that this book is the product of four authors. Gail Anderson and Paul Anderson are experience authors, with a number of published tech books between them. Todd Fast is the architect and CTO of Zembly. Chris Webster is another Sun employee and the Technical lead for Zembly and also a published author himself.

The book covers an overview of Zembly, a chapter on how to use the tool set and then moves through a series of chapters that provide examples of building widgets and services for Flickr, Zillow, Facebook, Dapper, and web apps for the iPhone. There is also a widget section that makes use of WeatherBug, Google Maps and Yahoo! Pipes. The results can be published as applications within those sites or embedded into other sites. I see the real potential for Zembly in places like Dapper and Pipes, where Zembly becomes an endpoint for those types of services that can consume almost anything. The usefulness of Zembly comes in allowing to integrate that into the social sites and the scaleable hosting is already built right in.

The book is well organized and black & white illustrations are put to good use in making directions clear. The index is thorough. The authors do not assume a lot of prior knowledge on the part of the reader in regard to how the various social networks operate. This did mean at times I had to plow explanations of things that really didn’t have anything to do with Zembly. The information on what Facebook applications are and what they do is a good example. This was a little annoying but fortunately these sections were short. I found the writing to be clear and to the point. The authors do not try to be hip or cool and focus on content.

To really get the most out of the book a reader should be familiar with JavaScript, html and css. It wouldn’t hurt to also understand RESTful web services. Once the first two chapters explaining Zembly are over, this really is a cook-book, or set of examples/tutorials rather than instruction on how to code or do markup. The experienced developer could probably slide by even if they were not working regularly with these technologies. Someone who has never written a bit of code may want to spend some time building some familiarity with javascript before they tack this book. Zembly itself has some quick tutorials that require almost no knowledge of programming. I watched a graphic art guy at work throw together a facebook widget/app in about 10 minutes using Zembly.

Zembly is still in what has become the ubiquitous beta state for on-line applications. And as it is under active development this book probably has a very short shelf-life. It wont be all that long before the platform moves along and leaves it behind. In an effort to shore up against that inevitability all the code and resources for the book are stored in Zembly. If changes are made today, tomorrows reader will be able to work with the updated structures. The book itself is also available in traditonal ebook formats and through Safari.

One of the nicer things about the Zembly approach is that it removes the barrier of hosting costs to participate in this space. In turn the developer surrenders up their work to be used by others. This may be problematic for those who would rather keep all their code to themselves, but fits in-line nicely with the fact that the entire stack is built on FOSS products. Of course, once again the beta status means that this free ride is not something that is guaranteed for perpetuity. I’m guessing that at some point, this type of central hosting is going to necessitate an attempt by Sun to generate some income from the service.

Getting in on the front end of a technology can often be rather difficult. The Sun folks seem to be ahead of the curve on making it easier for people to participate with Zembly. There are excellent tutorials and documentation on the site itself. For those who want to take it a step further, there is this book with a wealth of examples and explanations that will really accelerate the learning process. I’m not sure if Zembly will become the next big thing or not, but anyone who wants to gamble that it will, here is a chance to make the most of the ride.

Title: Assemble the Social Web with Zembly
Author: Gail Anderson and Paul Anderson with Todd Fast and Chris Webster
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Pages: 385
ISBN: 978-0-13-714431-0
Rating: 8/10
Tagline: Let’s Make a Social Application. Right Here. Right Now. Together.

I vividly remember the first time I was able to dial up a bbs with my Commodore Vic-20. It was Star Trek themed and I was excited to see that the Sysop was online. We typed a few lines of text back and forth while I hollered to everyone in the house that I was talking to someone through the computer. Things have come a long way since then and I’ve put in quite a few hours experiencing one of the more exciting sides of the internet, participating in community. Of course it hasn’t all been great. Communities on-line are just like any other in that there are differences of opinion and issues that arise. Some are handled well, some are not. Social interaction can be very complicated and learning how to manage a social site can be a process that involves a lot of painful lessons. Fortunately not all of our learning has to come through direct experience. Sometimes we have the opportunity to learn from the experience of others. Patrick O’Keefes book Managing Online Forums is that guide to the budding leader of the webs next great community.

Since the reader will be relying on O’Keefes experience and opinions, his personal history in the subject at hand is extremely relevant. He has been involved in web site design since 1998 and managing online communities since 2000. As the founder and owner of the iFroggy Network he has extensive experience in managing site policy, staff and members. O’Keefe is also active in other communities including his role as a moderator for Sitepoint. Patrick has also published articles there on forum management.

The book’s byline is that it provides everything that you need to know to run a successful community discussion board. There is a wide range of topics covered though the emphasis is primarily placed on what I would call the soft side of community management. The technical discussion is limited, though it is there. There is no real discussion of how to go about setting up software. There are some suggestions as to choosing a domain name and software. Two options are given for software, vBulletin and phpBB. Each is described in a summary consisting of a few paragraphs of basic information. There is little discussion of installation from a technical standpoint. The most technical information deals with the core issues of security and backing up data. I didn’t see this as a real weakness as there is already plenty of documentation on these choices and many more. Adding it all in would have really bulked up the book while distracting from the primary mission which is informing the reader on building successful communities.

While there is not much technical detail, there is discussion of features from a social perspective. O’Keefe doesn’t discuss whether or not a feature should be used because performance or storage ramification but rather focuses on the positives or negatives in terms of managing how participants might view or use those options. This is the information that is not already out there in multiple places. O’Keefe is able to discuss from experience how he has seen users react to these features in the past as well as warning of any possible benefits or pitfalls. This is of course his opinion on these matters. This fact about the nature of the book is going to make or break it for the reader.

I envision that someone would come to this book from three possible positions. They may already have a strong opinion of the issues presented and disagree with the author. On the other hand they may agree. The last group would be people who come without strong presuppositions. I think that the first group would not enjoy the book, there is no objective evidence or argument that will bring these people over. This is after all, subjective opinion. The other two groups I think have a lot to gain, the third group most of all. A person who comes to the material with an open mind, looking for options and guidance will I gain a strong preparation for dealing with a number of issues that are almost certain to arise in online groups.

The book begins by quickly reviewing a set of basic questions that should be asked before a site is set up for a new community. They are fundamental but important and I think it is surprising how many endeavors to build communities don’t seem to have considered them. The are, “What will your community cover?”, “Whom do you want to attract?”, “What will the benefits of your community be?”, and “How will you support the community financially?”. All of these questions, the naming of the community and site, hosting and software are covered up front.

In each of the following major sections, the author’s advice is accompanied by example templates and policies. In chapter three, “Developing Guidelines”, the community guidelines for KarateForums.com and SitePoint.com are printed. There are excellent documents in the chapter on managing staff that give good examples of staff guidelines that can be used in those communities that grow and the work of management needs to be shared. All of these are built on real policies and guidelines. The staff section also includes a nice decision matrix for various situations that may arise, such as hot linking or cross posting.

The chapter “Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos” is of course full of interesting examples and history. It is also very valuable. The fact is any successful community will need to deal with adverse conditions and this is where inexperience can be the most costly. O’Keefe outlines likely scenarios and how to handle them. He also gives further examples of guidelines that can help the administrator in staying above the fray and maintaining their sanity when things can be very contentious. From the personal anecdotes, O’Keefe has already been through much of the worse that the web has to offer. This chapter and all that it entails is balance by a chapter on creating a good and healthy environment as well as the importance of keeping things interesting.

Two other chapters deal with what I think of as the business side of running forums. There is a chapter on developing traffic. I was glad to see that this included not only what to do but also what not to do. And there are similar warning within methods that can be used in a positive way or a negative way. O’Keefe cautions against activities that may bring what appear to be short term gains but do not really build sustainable community. While physically separate in the book, I found that this section dovetailed with the chapter on generating income. O’Keefe basically runs down all the various methods for making money with a site. Once again he give the pros and cons as well as strong warnings against the things that are going to be counter productive.

There are three appendices. The first is a list of resources, the second is a set of blank templates that match the examples given in the body of the book and the third is a glossary. I think that glossary is an important because I believe that this book would be an excellent guide to anyone who wants to not only form an online community but is new to the whole idea. These folks may be very caught off guard by the things they will probably need to deal with, beyond the technical issues of getting a site up and running. This book would probably be something that anyone out there setting up sites for others could quickly recommend to help the new manager to be be successful once the site is up and live.

I think there is a lot here also for those with some experience on-line if they don’t have a lot of experience running a community site or if they are just looking for some new ideas. I’ve been corresponding with others electronically for quite a while and I still found quite a bit here that was of value. There is also the strength of going in with policies and actions that are built to head off problems rather than respond to them once they have taken place. I would think this gives any new community a much higher chance of growing and thriving. Managing Online Forums is unique in this regard, to my knowledge. Taking on the human side of managing a site rather than just the technical components.

Title: Managing Online Forums
Author: Patrick O’Keefe
Publisher: AMACOM
Pages: 312
ISBN: 978-0-8144-0197-2
Rating: 9/10
Tagline: Everything you need to know to create and run successful community discussion boards.

Facebook became the largest worldwide social site in the middle of last year. If their current pace holds they will pass MySpace as number one in the U.S. some time next year. Those numbers have led a number of people to strike out and develop Facebook applications, hoping to grab a piece of that huge audience. One aspect of writing such applications is knowing Facebook Markup Language, which has been described as the icing on the Facebook API cake. FBML Essentials aims to be the resource that provides hopeful app writers with what they need to use FBML successfully.

FBML Essentials is a slim little volume in the world of massive technical books. The author, Jesse Stay has accomplished something many projects and authors can’t seem to avoid, scope creep. This little book stays right on target providing FBML documentation with a few extras as book-ends.

The reference portion of the book, as I said, is the bulk of this guide. This section does provide more thorough information than what one would find at the FBML tag section of the Facebook developer wiki. (Which sometimes holds contradicting information for the use of some tags.) There is not only a brief explanation and example but more detailed coverage of options and ramifications. Tags are also grouped in a way that takes into account functionality and what a developer may want to do. This means that while it might not be a thrilling way to go about it, one could read through the reference material in a topical matter while learning how to use FBML in applications.

The first two chapters, before the reference section begins, introduce Facebook applications, walk the reader through prerequisites for development and html considerations within the Facebook environment. This book assumes a solid understanding of markup and specifically html. There is an extremely brief treatment of hosting and general architecture of the Facebook platform.

The last chapter after the reference is a quick introduction to Facebook Java Script. FBJS is a limited form of javascript and Stay does not spend much time with it. There is a quick list of methods, listeners and dialogs with a small amount of illustration on how they might be used as a whole. There are not examples given for each.

There isn’t a whole lot here and that ought to be encouraging to anyone who would want to write a Facebook application but doesn’t want to invest a huge amount of time. Stay gives an example of building a simple application using nothing more than FBML. It’s nice to know that such simple functionality can provide one with an entre into a huge community of potential users. I am also glad that Stay was able to resist the urge to start pulling in every possible aspect of development for Facebook. Instead of a bloated guide the result is a compact and efficient guide to FBML, keeping costs down and avoiding wasted time trying to find what the reader needs.

The index is solid and I highly recommend this handy reference to anyone doing Facebook application development.

Title: FBML Essentials
Author: Jesse Stay
Publisher: O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Pages: 185
ISBN: 978-0-596-51918-6
Rating: 8/10
Tagline: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals

It doesn’t seem like it has been 3 years since the Mambo dev team split and a new content management system, Joomla! was born. Over the last few years Joomla has grown to be very popular and has very strong developer and user communities. Joomla is extremely flexible and a wide array of extensions exist that allow the system to provide many different capabilities. In “Joomla! A User’s Guide”, Barrie North provides everything needed to get anyone up and running with a Joomla based site, even if they have little or no experience with creating web sites or applications.

The book is written with language and content squarely aimed at someone new to the tech side of building and running a web site. The language is very simple and even relatively basic terms are explained. As someone with some amount of experience working with software and the web, I didn’t find it to be tedious. North does not go on at length, but just gives the information necessary so that someone without the background will be able to keep up. He can also be rather sympathetic to the reader, encouraging them with things that he says can be difficult. That did get a little tiring at times, though I would imagine for his target audience these affirmations could be really assuring. If you are someone who just wants to get a jump on how Joomla works, I wouldn’t worry too much about this emphasis on the basic. The book is not overly verbose and so the more basic content does not seem to stretch on forever. North covers a lot of ground in what is a thin book in comparison to much of what seems to dominate the tech book market these days.

While North doesn’t wallow in the most basic material and explanations, he never moves on to the really advanced stuff either. If you are interested in coding extensions, or working with the core code, you wont find much here. If you would like a definitive guide with an explanation for every feature and option that exists in Joomla you wont get that either. What North provides is a guide to the most used and most useful information about how to install, set up and run a Joomla based web site. Probably the most advanced material in the book deals with building templates for customizing the look of Joomla. Along with instructions on working with Joomla itself, North also takes some time to also deal with how to generate traffic to a site. For some that chapter may be a bit uncomfortable, though North does a good job of laying out a basic explanation of how things work, as well as practices to avoid. There is a matching appendix on SEO, which is a dirty word in some places. I think that North approaches it with a nice balance between reaching for visibility while avoiding actions that are less than desirable.

The book ends with 3 example sites that the reader can be built as they work through the book. These cover a nice range of cases with one being for a school, another for a business and the third is a blog. This gives the reader nice opportunities to play with the software while having guidelines that keep moving things forward and give it all some useful context. A nice companion to this is an appendix with six case studies on existing sites that use Joomla. North interviewed someone from each site and gives an introduction to the site, a screen shot of their front page and then the questions and answers about the site. Together this forms very nice coverage on just what kind of possibilities exist from a real world perspective as opposed to keeping everything purely theoretical.

The book tends to lean towards explaining platform specific items, like installation, from the Windows perspective. I think the assumption is that Linux users will probably already know how to install what they need and are quite likely to already have all the supporting pieces in place. North explains the installation of WampServer for windows users, to get them started with a local install for working through the book. Everything is very hands on and while the screen shots are not in color they are clear and easy to understand. There are also highlighted notes that give the reader reinforcement on what is most necessary to take away from a section.

The support for the book outside of the copy itself is very good. The book comes with 45 days access through Safari. North’s site for the book has downloads for the associated files from the book as well as sql dumps from the MySQL databases that correspond to the example sites from the book. Everything necessary to build out the examples in the book, or compare one’s work to the authors should problems creep up.

I consider myself to be somewhat technically proficient and at times I did find myself skimming over material that I didn’t need. But I did want to use Joomla well and gain that skill quickly and this book was very helpful in that regard. I would think for anyone else who didn’t want to waste any time hunting around, this could be a useful guide. Another good use I could see for the book is that it would make an excellent gift to anyone who is not a ‘geek’ but is using a joomla based site. This could be a client that has a new site you just built for them, or a relative or friend who would like to have a site of their own but seem to call you for support a little too often. I know if I hand off a Joomla site to anyone in the future, unless they are already experience with it, they will be getting a copy of this book.

I’ve given the book a final rating of 8 on a scale of 10. I do so for two reasons. The first is that Joomla is constantly under development and it is more than likely that in a couple more years or less these instructions will need a major over haul. The second is that while the information on generating traffic was somewhat interesting, I’d have gladly traded it for more information on Joomla itself. Those are relatively minor complaints and from what I’ve seen, this may be the top Joomla book available right now.

Title: Joomla! A User’s Guide
Author: Barrie M. North
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Pages: 480
ISBN: 0136135609
Rating: 8/10
Tagline: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website

Much like anyone else who spends a decent amount of time on the internet, I find myself turning to Wikipedia quite regularly. I am unaware of any resource as thorough or as quick for many of my information needs (or whims) on a day to day basis. Detractors point out that anyone can edit Wikipedia and this can lead to inaccurate information. For me, the open editing is one of the draws. I’ve been reading Wikipedia for some time, and each time I find myself thinking that it would be fun to be more than a passive consumer. There are a few topics where I might be able contribute in a meaningful way. A brand new addition to the O’Reilly Missing Manual series, “Facebook The Missing Manual” was the last nudge to push me into full involvement.

Broughton has been actively involved as a Wikipedia contributor for almost 3 years. What he has created here is a great guide for the budding Wikipedia editor. It is not only technically thorough but it covers the trickier side of editing, the social and political aspects of the process. Wikipedia is itself very well documented. The book points out the shortcuts and pages that include the information a user will need. Like a lot of other software, and especially open projects, the person who prefers to learn from what is available on-line may find that this book is not needed. I like to have something I can carry with me and have open as I work. And unfortunately, while I do love the idea of Wikipedia, the nay sayers are right about some of the problems in regards to public access. Sometimes parts of Wikipedia that are intended for the new user, have been vandalized and are not available in the correct state. They will be fixed quickly, but that doesn’t help the person looking to learn right then. With this book, the reader has confidence in the quality of the information and the assurance that it will be available, whether they are on-line or not.

The book is divided into five parts and follows a very natural progression for the reader. It begins with “Editing, Creating and Maintaining Articles”. I signed up for an account and hit the link that was to take me to the introduction. It looked like someone had wiped out the information there and left a blank template. The book initially sends the reader to the sandbox to play with the editing tools. My first visit there was interesting as I was also introduced immediately to some of the problems. The parts of the template that is to be left in place were gone and some rather offensive photos and text were in their place. The edits I made were often wiped out before I could look at them and see how they turned out. I moved past this quickly, read through the instructions and tried making some small edits to sections of actual articles. I did not have any problems working through the book in this manner. My initial bumps in the road with the introduction and sandbox were a little discouraging, but I feel pretty confident those areas are just easy places for trolls and the like to try and have an impact.

All the sections have very detailed instructions as well as screen shots to compliment those instructions. There is a great value in just that material, but I appreciate that Broughton steps beyond a simple how-to with excellent information on why things are the way they are and pitfalls to avoid. He gives help with guidelines on what type of material is desirable and the best way to go about contributing, setting up a personal workspace, dealing with vandals and more. These are the foundational basics to the entire process.

The second section, “Collaborating with Other Editors” has great content with similar features. There is the information that informs the reader as to what tools are available and how to use them. The conventions explained here are especially helpful to know up-front as they will allow a contributor to be more helpful and less harmful. They can also give the aspiring Wikipedia editor a higher level of confidence when stepping into situations that may have a higher chance of becoming heated or contentious. I personally have little taste for conflict, but am excited about the tools and prospects for working alongside others to make articles even stronger and more useful.

Section three is one of the shorter of the five, dealing with formatting and illustrating articles. This is probably the most straight-forward content in many ways, the only extensive explanation needed is in dealing with images. Broughton explains Wikipedia policy in regards to open images and the exceptions that may allow for the use of non-free images. This section leads to the fourth which is “Building a Stronger Wikipedia.” This section covers a variety of topics including cleaning up articles, categorization, deletions and making citations stronger.

One of my favorite sections was the last. “Customizing Wikipedia” is just the ticket for guys like me who like any environment they work in to be just so. This is the shortest section, but it covers how to use preferences and javascript to make the interface truly unique to the user. It certainly isn’t necessary for the reader who just wants to use things out of the box. There is nothing here that is necessary to editing or adding content.

The three indices are somewhat interesting. The first is a tour of a Wikipedia page. Everything here is covered pretty well throughout the book. The author describes it as a place to check for a quick reference if needed. The book is very clear, this felt a bit tacked on and unnecessary. The second is “Reader’s Guide to Wikipedia.” Broughton says that, “Most of this book is aimed at folks who want to edit Wikipedia articles and become more active in the Wikipedia community. But this appendix is all about appreciating Wikipedia as a reader.” Actually, other than this little piece, the entire book is about editing and getting more involved. I’m not sure what to do with this. It’s not too big a deal, it’s just a few pages, but it struck me as odd. I guess it does complete the coverage so the manual is all about Wikipedia, not just editing. The last appendix “Learning More” is a typical list of other places to go for further information.

The index is thorough and the table of contents does a good job of breaking things down to a useful level. Chapter titles, descriptions and sub-chapter headings are helpful and not cryptic or cute. On the whole I found this to be up to what I think of as the high standards of the series. 45 days free access to the electronic version are included via Safari. The book makes clear that there are many variations of Wikipedia, serving up information in an array of languages. The manual does not try to cover all these versions. The manual is written with 100% of its focus on the en.Wikipedia.org domain, or the English version of Wikipedia. All version are built up from the same tools and I imagine that the differences are not too great.

Title: Wikipedia The Missing Manual
Author: John Broughton
Publisher: O’Reilly Media Inc.
Pages: 477
ISBN: 0596515162
Rating: 9/10
Tagline: The book that should have been in the box.