Customer Reviews

Mobile Web 2.0: The Innovator's Guide to Developing and Marketing Next Generation Wireless/Mobile Applications

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Reading this book, I was regularly (I don't mean sometimes) stopped my in my tracks because of the typing errors, style errors and layout issues. This book is marvel when it comes to a being a book editors' study material. You can annotate and correct about every page in this book. Obviously this is not published by an experienced publisher, trying to mainain a reputation for publishing serious and worthwile information.

That said, I must say that I learned from this book. Being ignorant about the way the Mobile world is organized, it gives you insight in what to do and what not to do when you consider building applications and services for the Mobile market. It doesn't really give you any design guidelines, but it does sketch the environment and comes with sound advice.

So, if you are really eager for this type of information, you can learn from this book. That is, if you are not put off by the writing and layout. What you cannot learn is how a publication like this is written, edited and layed out, unless you are studying to be a book editor, in which case it makes perfect study material...

This book first details the concept of Web 2.0, then how the mobile technology can be the part of Web 2.0 (Mobile Web 2.0), followed by the description of many components such as location technology and IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem). The authors also discusses the business aspects of Mobile Web 2.0.

This book contains a few interesting observations. Especially the cultural and business difference between the Internet world and the telecommunication industry (labeled as 'Open Gardens' and 'Walled Gardens' respectively) is worth noting. However, I can hardly recommend this book mainly due to its very shallow explanation of related topics. Almost all the references in the book are from web pages, and it contains very very few literal references. I don't think siting web pages itself is a bad idea, but it is embarrassing to see the authors siting and even quoting from Wikipedia without giving a timestamp. This implies that the authors have never done thorough research on the technical topics.

Another problem I see in this book is that the authors' discussions were not really based on the real observation but rather remained very conceptual. I like the idea of using mobile devices to publish information as the authors propose, but this would require detailed survey of device capabilities, user interface issues, and so on. Unfortunately, you cannot find practical information to tackle with such problems.

This text does a great job of introducing the newbie to the concepts of Web 2.0 in the mobile space. The concepts, arising liuke archetypes from the collective group unconscious, form something that's as much philosophy as it is programming; equally pro user design and open architecture evangelia.

The authors aren't shy with their opinions and many of them probably won't generate sustainable models, but they're fresh, in line with the current services-orientation thinking and abundant with real world instantiations.

If you've given up on SOA and the snake charmer's lure of chasing perfectly integrated systems, but still believe in reusable, scalable and open services, give this a read--then pass it on.

This book gives a great in depth look at the issues surrounding Mobile Web 2.0 development and is an essential tool in understanding this sometimes complicated space, written by two of the leading mobile experts around today.

It is a great book to read. My first experience with Amazon and I make a good book selection to read. An open-minded book with lot of issues to think and rethink about wireless.