The widespread adoption of agile methods has brought the need for effective testing into the limelight, and agile projects have transformed the role of testers. Much of a tester's function, however, remains largely misunderstood. What is the true role of a tester? Do agile teams actually need members with QA backgrounds? What does it really mean to be an "agile tester?"Two of the industry's most experienced agile testing practitioners and consultants, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, have teamed up to bring you the definitive answers to these questions and many others. In Agile Testing, Crispin and Gregory define agile testing and illustrate the tester's role with examples from real agile teams. They teach you how to use the agile testing quadrants to identify what testing is needed, who should do it, and what tools might help. The book chronicles an agile software development iteration from the viewpoint of a tester and explains the seven key success factors of agile testing.Readers will come away from this book understanding- How to get testers engaged in agile development- Where testers and QA managers fit on an agile team- What to look for when hiring an agile tester- How to transition from a traditional cycle to agile development- How to complete testing activities in short iterations- How to use tests to successfully guide development- How to overcome barriers to test automationThis book is a must for agile testers, agile teams, their managers, and their customers.

    … The book the National Security Agency wanted never to be published." –Wired Magazine "…monumental… fascinating… comprehensive… the definitive work on cryptography for computer programmers…" –Dr. Dobb's Journal"…easily ranks as one of the most authoritative in its field." —PC Magazine"…the bible of code hackers." –The Millennium Whole Earth CatalogThis new edition of the cryptography classic provides you with a comprehensive survey of modern cryptography. The book details how programmers and electronic communications professionals can use cryptography—the technique of enciphering and deciphering messages-to maintain the privacy of computer data. It describes dozens of cryptography algorithms, gives practical advice on how to implement them into cryptographic software, and shows how they can be used to solve security problems. Covering the latest developments in practical cryptographic techniques, this new edition shows programmers who design computer applications, networks, and storage systems how they can build security into their software and systems. What's new in the Second Edition? * New information on the Clipper Chip, including ways to defeat the key escrow mechanism * New encryption algorithms, including algorithms from the former Soviet Union and South Africa, and the RC4 stream cipher * The latest protocols for digital signatures, authentication, secure elections, digital cash, and more * More detailed information on key management and cryptographic implementations

    Negroponte's fans will want to get a copy of Being Digital, which is an edited version of the 18 articles he wrote for Wired about "being digital." Negroponte's text is mostly a history of media technology rather than a set of predictions for future technologies. In the beginning, he describes the evolution of CD-ROMs, multimedia, hypermedia, HDTV (high-definition television), and more. The section on interfaces is informative, offering an up-to-date history on visual interfaces, graphics, virtual reality (VR), holograms, teleconferencing hardware, the mouse and touch-sensitive interfaces, and speech recognition. In the last chapter and the epilogue, Negroponte offers visionary insight on what "being digital" means for our future. Negroponte praises computers for their educational value but recognizes certain dangers of technological advances, such as increased software and data piracy and huge shifts in our job market that will require workers to transfer their skills to the digital medium. Overall, Being Digital provides an informative history of the rise of technology and some interesting predictions for its future.

    And it’s still short, profusely illustrated…and best of all–fun to read.If you’ve read it before, you’ll rediscover what made Don’t Make Me Think so essential to Web designers and developers around the world. If you’ve never read it, you’ll see why so many people have said it should be required reading for anyone working on Web sites.

    Each essay distills complex concepts and challenges into practical nuggets of useful advice, and the new edition now adds more value for leaders and managers of projects everywhere. Based on his nine years of experience as a program manager for Internet Explorer, and lead program manager for Windows and MSN, Berkun explains to technical and non-technical readers alike what it takes to get through a large software or web development project. Making Things Happen doesn't cite specific methods, but focuses on philosophy and strategy. Unlike other project management books, Berkun offers personal essays in a comfortable style and easy tone that emulate the relationship of a wise project manager who gives good, entertaining and passionate advice to those who ask. Topics in this new edition include:How to make things happenMaking good decisionsSpecifications and requirementsIdeas and what to do with themHow not to annoy peopleLeadership and trustThe truth about making datesWhat to do when things go wrongComplete with a new forward from the author and a discussion guide for forming reading groups/teams, Making Things Happen offers in-depth exercises to help you apply lessons from the book to your job. It is inspiring, funny, honest, and compelling, and definitely the one book that you and your team need to have within arm's reach throughout the life of your project. Coming from the rare perspective of someone who fought difficult battles on Microsoft's biggest projects and taught project design and management for MSTE, Microsoft's internal best practices group, this is valuable advice indeed. It will serve you well with your current work, and on future projects to come.

    Relentlessly practical, the book delivers insight, not documentation, to teach developers what they need to know to build the next generation of SOAs.After explaining the advantages of service-orientation for application design and teaching the basics of how to develop SOAs using WCF, the book shows how you can take advantage of built-in features such as service hosting, instance management, asynchronous calls, synchronization, reliability, transaction management, disconnected queued calls and security to build best in class applications. "Programming WCF Services" focuses on the rationale behind particular design decisions, often shedding light on poorly-documented and little-understood aspects of SOA development. Developers and architects will learn not only the "how" of WCF programming, but also relevant design guidelines, best practices, and pitfalls. Original techniques and utilities provided by the author throughout the book go well beyond anything that can be found in conventional sources.Based on experience and insight gained while taking part in the strategic design of WCF and working with the team that implemented it, "Programming WCF Services" provides experienced working professionals with the definitive work on WCF. Not only will this book make you a WCF expert, it will make you a better software engineer. It's the Rosetta Stone of WCF.

    They treat it as a craft. They are professionals. In The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers, legendary software expert Robert C. Martin introduces the disciplines, techniques, tools, and practices of true software craftsmanship. This book is packed with practical advice-about everything from estimating and coding to refactoring and testing. It covers much more than technique: It is about attitude. Martin shows how to approach software development with honor, self-respect, and pride; work well and work clean; communicate and estimate faithfully; face difficult decisions with clarity and honesty; and understand that deep knowledge comes with a responsibility to act. Readers will learn What it means to behave as a true software craftsman How to deal with conflict, tight schedules, and unreasonable managers How to get into the flow of coding, and get past writer's block How to handle unrelenting pressure and avoid burnout How to combine enduring attitudes with new development paradigms How to manage your time, and avoid blind alleys, marshes, bogs, and swamps How to foster environments where programmers and teams can thrive When to say "No"-and how to say it When to say "Yes"-and what yes really means Great software is something to marvel at: powerful, elegant, functional, a pleasure to work with as both a developer and as a user. Great software isn't written by machines. It is written by professionals with an unshakable commitment to craftsmanship. The Clean Coder will help you become one of them-and earn the pride and fulfillment that they alone possess.

    He is a mentor, teacher, and trailblazer to many photographers, and a hero to those who feel Jay's teaching has changed the way they see and create their own photography. He is a living legend whose work is studied around the world, and whose teaching style and presentation garner standing ovations and critical acclaim every time he takes the stage.Now, for the first time ever, Jay puts his amazing insights and learning moments from a lifetime behind the lens into a book that communicates the three most important aspects of street photography: light, gesture, and color. Each page unveils something new and challenges you to rethink everything you know about the bigger picture of photography. This isn't a book about f-stops or ISOs. It's about seeing. It's about being surrounded by the ordinary and learning how to find the extraordinary. It's about training your mind, and your eyes, to see and capture the world in a way that delights, engages, and captivates your viewers, and there is nobody that communicates this, visually or through the written word, like Jay Maisel.Light, Gesture & Color is the seminal work of one of the true photographic geniuses of our time, and it can be your key to opening another level of understanding, appreciation, wonder, and creativity as you learn to express yourself, and your view of the world, through your camera. If you're ready to break through the barriers that have held your photography back and that have kept you from making the types of images you've always dreamed of, and you're ready to learn what photography is really about, you're holding the key in your hands at this very moment.

    In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle.You'll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You'll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak with your users. Then, once you've compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing.User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other proxies Writing user stories for acceptance testing Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach.

    In this one-of-a-kind text, author V. Anton Spraul breaks down the ways that programmers solve problems and teaches you what other introductory books often ignore: how to Think Like a Programmer. Each chapter tackles a single programming concept, like classes, pointers, and recursion, and open-ended exercises throughout challenge you to apply your knowledge. You'll also learn how to:Split problems into discrete components to make them easier to solve Make the most of code reuse with functions, classes, and libraries Pick the perfect data structure for a particular job Master more advanced programming tools like recursion and dynamic memory Organize your thoughts and develop strategies to tackle particular types of problems Although the book's examples are written in C++, the creative problem-solving concepts they illustrate go beyond any particular language; in fact, they often reach outside the realm of computer science. As the most skillful programmers know, writing great code is a creative art—and the first step in creating your masterpiece is learning to Think Like a Programmer.

    You'll learn the principles of good product behavior and gain an understanding of Cooper's Goal-Directed Design method, which involves everything from conducting user research to defining your product using personas and scenarios. Ultimately, you'll acquire the knowledge to design the best possible digital products and services.

    It is packed with stories and anecdotes from behind the image. There are tips on using social media to get your images seen by millions. The book offers advice on hiking, travel and the great outdoors as well as useful information on technical subjects such as where to focus and shooting RAW. After reading this book, not only will your photography start to improve, but you will be inspired to get up and out at dawn and stay out until dark. This book is for the beginner as well as the seasoned professional. Travel, Learn, Explore, Shoot.

    You have also created a website for your business that details the products or services that you offer, but it doesn't allow potential customers to purchase anything online. Don't risk losing business-learn to create a dynamic online environment using only three programs. PHP, MySQL and Apache are three popular open-source tools that can work together to help you create a dynamic website, such as an online shopping experience. Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One is a complete reference manual for all three development tools. You will learn how to install, configure and set up the PHP scripting language, use the MySQL database system, and work with the Apache Web server. Then you'll take it a step further and discover how they work together to create a dynamic website. Use the book and the included CD to create a simple website, as well as a mailing list, online address book, shopping cart and storefront. Updated to reflect the most recent developments in PHP and MySQL, including the final stable release of MySQL 5.0, you will open your website to limitless possibilities with Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache All in One.

    Now you can learn how to photograph children with the style, clarity, color, and beauty you see in professional photographs. This fun guide combines humor with solid know-how to show you how to compose shots, handle cameras from basic compacts to advanced dSLRs, take portraits or candids, create prints that impress, and even work with kids Packed with beautiful examples and written in a down-to-earth style from one mom to another, this book will help mamarazzis everywhere take better photos.Moms are one of the fastest-growing segments of the camera-toting demographic, and the blogosphere has a term for them, "mamarazzis"Mixes information, inspiration, and fun for women who want to take better photographs of the children in their livesExplains how to set up a camera and use the controls on basic compacts up to advanced dSLR camerasCovers shot composition, determining settings, exposing images correctly, the essentials of printing images, how to process for clear and bright color, and moreIncludes stunning examples of portraits and candids of childrenBecome a better mamarazzi with this fun and informative guide

    With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it.Programming Collective Intelligence takes you into the world of machine learning and statistics, and explains how to draw conclusions about user experience, marketing, personal tastes, and human behavior in general -- all from information that you and others collect every day. Each algorithm is described clearly and concisely with code that can immediately be used on your web site, blog, Wiki, or specialized application. This book explains:Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset Search engine features -- crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in a dataset Evolving intelligence for problem solving -- how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game Each chapter includes exercises for extending the algorithms to make them more powerful. Go beyond simple database-backed applications and put the wealth of Internet data to work for you. "Bravo! I cannot think of a better way for a developer to first learn these algorithms and methods, nor can I think of a better way for me (an old AI dog) to reinvigorate my knowledge of the details."-- Dan Russell, Google "Toby's book does a great job of breaking down the complex subject matter of machine-learning algorithms into practical, easy-to-understand examples that can be directly applied to analysis of social interaction across the Web today. If I had this book two years ago, it would have saved precious time going down some fruitless paths."-- Tim Wolters, CTO, Collective Intellect