Among its many amazing applications, Google now has web-based alternatives to many of the applications in Microsoft Office. This comprehensive and easy-to-follow new book enables you to explore Google's new office applications in detail. Once you do, you'll be in good company -- more than 100,000 small businesses and some corporations are already looking to take advantage of these free Google offerings. Google Apps: The Missing Manual teaches you how to use three relatively new applications from Google: "Docs and Spreadsheets", which provide many of the same core tools that you find in Word and Excel; and Google Calendar and Gmail, the applications that offer an alternative to Outlook. This book demonstrates how these applications together can ease your ability to collaborate with others, and allow you access to your documents, mail and appointments from any computer at any location. Of course, as remarkable as these applications are, Google's office suite is definitely a work-in-progress. Navigating what you can and can't do and -- more importantly -- understanding how to do it isn't always easy. And good luck finding enough help online. Google Apps: The Missing Manual is the one book you need to get the most out of this increasingly useful part of the Google empire. This book:

• Explains how to create, save and share each of Google's web-based office applications

• Offers separate sections for Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, and Gmail

• Demonstrates how to use these applications in conjunction with one another

• Gives you crystal-clear and jargon-free explanations that will satisfy users of all technical levels

Many of you already use Gmail, but do you know its full potential? Do you know how you can increase its power by using Gmail with Doc and Spreadsheets and Google Calendar? You'll find out with Google Apps: The Missing Manual. You'll also come to understand why large corporations such as General Electric and Proctor & Gamble are taking a long, hard look at these applications.

Written by industry thought leaders, Java Web Services Architecture is a no-nonsense guide to web services technologies including SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and the JAX APIs. This book is the trusted advisor to systems architects and provides an unbiased look at many of the practical considerations for implementing web services including authorization, encryption, transactions and the future of Web Services.

* Covers all the standards, the JAX APIs, transactions, security, and more.
* Contains CD with author code and software from BEA, Sun, The Mind Electric, Altova, CapeClear, Systinet, Republica, Iona, Parasoft, Ipedo, and more.
* Web enhanced with additional material at http://www.webservicesarchitecture.com.

Java Web Services Architecture is for Web services professionals seeking to understand enterprise architecture, Web services design, and application integration. This book begins with an overview of Web services, their usage, and design, followed by an in-depth look at the necessary standards and technologies (SOAP, EbXML, UDDI, WSDL). This leads into a detailed explanation all of the JAX APIs that are the foundation of Web services within Java, as well as their practical applications. The final section covers numerous advanced topics, including security. While various implementations are exemplified in a running case study, the book remains vendor neutral.

About the Author

James McGovern is an enterprise architect for Hartford Financial Services with sixteen years of experience in information technology. He is the coauthor of two books, including The Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture (Prentice Hall), and writes the "Ask Doctor Java" column for Java Developers Journal. Sameer Tyagi has nine years of experience in software design and development and works as a Java Architect with Sun Microsystems. He is the coauthor of five books on JSP and JDO and has written numerous articles for Java World, Java Developers Journal, Java Pro, Java Report and Programmez magazine (France). Michael E. Stevens is an application architect for Hartford Financial Services with over fourteen years of experience in information technology. He is a columnist for Developer.com and a coauthor of the Practical Guide to Enterprise Architecture with James McGovern. Sunil Mathew has fourteen years of experience in information technology and now manages the Java consulting practice for Sun Microsystems in New England.

Each recipe in Groovy Recipes begins with a concise code example for a quick start, followed by in-depth explanation in plain English. These recipes will get you to-to-speed in a Groovy environment quickly.

You'll see how to speed up nearly every aspect of the development process using Groovy. Groovy makes mundane file management tasks like copying and renaming files trivial. Reading and writing XML has never been easier with XmlParsers and XmlBuilders. Breathe new life into Arrays, Maps, and Lists with a number of convenience methods. But Groovy does more than just ease traditional Java development: it brings modern programming features to the Java platform like closures, duck-typing, and metaprogramming.

As an added bonus, this book also covers Grails. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can have a first-class web application up and running from ground zero. Grails includes everything you need in a single zip file⎯a web server (Jetty), a database (HSQLDB), Spring, Hibernate, even a Groovy version of Ant called GANT. We cover everything from getting a basic website in place to advanced features that take you beyond HTML into the world of Web Services: REST, JSON, Atom, Podcasting, and much much more.

About the Author

Scott Davis is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com. He is also an author and independent consultant. He is passionate about open source solutions and agile development. He has worked on a variety of Java platforms, from JEE to JSE to JME (sometimes all on the same project). He is the co-author of JBoss At Work (O'Reilly), and author of Google Maps API (Pragmatic Bookshelf) and GIS for Web Developers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications (Pragmatic Bookshelf).

With an understanding of the .NET framework, stable and robust multithreaded applications can be developed with minimal effort. Covering the topics related to multithreaded development, this book not only focuses on how a task is performed but also on the more important question of why these tasks are performed. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach to multithreading are analyzed so that programmers and developers can choose the appropriate approach based on their particular constraints. Complete coverage of multithreading development using the .NET framework in both Visual Basic .NET and C# is provided in addition to detailed analyses of threads, delegates, asynchronous execution, threadpools, and locks.

The idea for this book came out of discussions with Scott Christiansen, a leading developer using Microsoft technologies. While working together at a consulting company we spent numerous lunches kicking around ideas for a book and agreed that multithreaded development was an ideal subject. Soon after our discussions, I began a conversation with Manning Publications; this book is the end result.

Rather than focusing on abstract concepts, this book looks at the motivation behind each concept, not just the implementation. Readers of this book should know how to develop in the .NET platform. It is not assumed that you have written multithreaded applications, or programmed at a low level. All concepts beyond those required to write a single-threaded application in .NET are covered in great detail.

This book is intended primarily for architects and developers. Other players in an organization will also benefit from reading this book, but the primary focus is on designing and implementing multithreaded applications.

Since .NET does not require a single language, all examples in this book are available from the publisher’s web site in both C# and Visual Basic .NET. Removing syntactical hurdles allows you to focus on the concepts. The examples alternate between the languages, showing that the fundamental issues relate to the .NET framework, not a particular language.

The code examples in the book are intentionally terse. Rather than including all code relating to an example, only the relevant elements are included. This highlights the relevant portions of code, allowing you to focus on the concept and not be drawn into the unrelated detail. All code examples are available in entirety from the publisher’s web site.

Creative solutions can be challenged and defended in the pursuit of profitability. But first, creativity must be demystified. A process that targets innovation provides leaders with just such a problem-solving approach. The goal is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task—which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk.
Work with the targeted innovation process consists of activities in five areas: stating the problem in a way that encourages creative problem solving, learning and understanding different problem-solving styles, learning and understanding creative pathways and their relationship to problem solving, generating ideas, and evaluating those ideas.
Targeted innovation reconciles creativity with management. Managers can use it to solve problems that meet their organization’s call for innovative answers to current challenges.

The process of practical creativity provides leaders with an especially nimble problem-solving approach. The goal of the process is to produce high-quality ideas that are appropriate to the task--which means groups and organizations can implement them with less risk.

About the Author

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Stan Gryskiewicz is a Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) senior fellow for creativity and innovation, and serves as vice president for global initiatives. He has spent his career developing a more practical approach to creativity in organizations, including the process of targeted innovation. He holds a Ph.D. degree in organizational psychology from the University of London.

Sylvester Taylor is director of the Assessment and Development Tools group at CCL. During his tenure he has applied the process of targeted innovation to a variety of situations in many different organizations. He holds a B.S. degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Welcome to the exciting world of object-oriented programming! In this first chapter, I’ll start by discussing why object-oriented programming (OOP) was invented and why it offers advantages to the programmer. I’ll also provide a quick overview of the main features of object-oriented languages. You’ll learn about the two most fundamental aspects of OOP, objects and classes. Then I’ll focus on a particular kind of object—hot dog stand—and show how real hot dog stands on the street relate to hot dog stand objects in a program. You’ll see how to use C++ to describe a class of hot dog stand objects and how to make these objects carry out tasks.

This approach goes to the very heart of OOP. Most books begin by skittering around the edges of C++, talking about old-fashioned procedural details. This one attacks objects and classes head-on. If you think of OOP as a fierce fire-breathing dragon, then you’re going to walk right up to it, look it squarely in the eye, and tell it you want answers, now!

Mobility has become increasingly important for both business and casual users of computing technology. With the widespread adoption of portable computing devices, such as laptops, PDAs, tablet computers, music players, and cell phones, people can have almost constant access to their personal data as well as to information that is shared with others. A user drinking coffee in a cybercafé in India can access e-mail residing on a mail server in Seattle. A doctor in New York can monitor the health of patients in remote parts of Africa. A mother waiting to pick up her children after school can be instantly notified that her daughter’s soccer practice has been moved to a new location. Teenagers congregating at the mall can use their cell phones to locate not only their buddies but also the hottest sales. Advances in wireless technology, such as WiFi and WiMax, allow people to communicate from their computers with friends, colleagues, and services located around the world. However, providing users anytime, anywhere access to contextually relevant information presents substantial challenges to designers of mobile computing systems.