Welcome to the Safari Jungle 211
| (various) | |
| author | (various) |
| pages | (various) |
| publisher | O'Reilly and other participating publishers |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Robby Russell |
| ISBN | (various) |
| summary | Technical book rental is here, and you may find the convenience a compelling enough factor to give up the paper versions of the available titles. |
O'Reilly has come up with an interesting solution to your lack of physical shelf space: a virtual bookshelf. Safari Bookshelf is a great resource for all things technical. They recently went over 1,000 titles available online, 24/7. Several publishers have joined forces with O'Reilly to provide so many titles. Que, Alpha, Sams, Microsoft Press (and O'Reilly itself) are a few of the big-name publishers that are part of Safari. Currently, 75% of all O'Reilly books are available through Safari. (With plans for adding 10+ books per month, the selection is growing rapidly, too.)
Safari subscriptions can be had in 10-, 20- or 30-slot varieties, depending on how much you care to read (and spend). Prices end up close to $1.50 per slot each month, with slight discounts if you buy annually rather than by the month. (A $9.99/month 5-slot shelf is available too, if you just want to test the waters.)
Recently, I had the privilege of giving Safari a test-run thanks to the generous offer made to user groups.
The website's navigation was fairly easy to grasp, and I was able to start searching for books as soon as I logged into the system. O'Reilly's made browsing pleasant, by listing the main categories and allowing you to branch down into subcategories to find the book you may or may not be looking for.
I was given a 10-book shelf to start my trial of Safari. This account would typically go at $14.99/month (or $159.99/year). The bookshelf is great. You can add a book to your bookshelf and you keep it there for 30 days, after which you can remove the book and replace it with a different one. So, you can have 10 books in your "shelf" at any given time, and switch no more than 10 books a month under this account level. That is 120 books a year for roughly $1.33/book. That's impressive.
It just so happened that I was currently working on migrating from Sendmail to Postfix recently and wanted to read up more on Postfix to see if there was more I could do to keep my server running happily. I typed in "postfix" in the search, and voila! 109 books were found with that word in the title or description. The search results allowed me to View by Book and/or View by Section (which I found really helpful by showing me a section of the book that contained the word "postfix"). I scanned a few more books in greater depth, looking at the Table of Contents of various books and even looking at the books' chapter previews. A lot of text to look at before I even decide on checking out a book. Being in a bookstore wouldn't have been this good: you can't search through a bookstore for a specific keyword in all texts and get back these kinds of results.
After reviewing a small handful of books, I felt comfortable with my decision and checked out the appropriately-titled book by Sams, "Postfix" by Richard Blum and added it to my bookshelf. The book will be on my bookshelf for the next 30 days. Immediately, I went over to My Bookshelf and found myself looking through the same text you would find in the paper version of this book (but in the font face and size that I set in my browser preferences). It lets me print a page, send the page as an email to someone, etc. I was reading about open relays, and added a bookmark to the page which shows up on the "My Safari" personal page listing all the books I have currently checked out. That page also shows recent searches, newly available books, public notes, etc. With a few clicks, I can go from my computer desktop to page 152 of The Perl Cookbook which is quicker than me looking through my library of paper books and finding my place.
I have since added six more books and visit My Safari page roughly 5+ times throughout my day to read more on various topics. All this content available anytime I need it, and I still have spaces left in my bookshelf. They do offer 5-slot Safari Bookshelf for those who don't need 10 books a month, which is probably where I would fall. The great thing is that this is very affordable. (After calculating the costs of all the books I had bought in the past year, I could have paid for and viewed roughly 232 books plus the 8 technical books I bought last year.)
On the downside, colleagues who come by my home or office won't see my new copy of MySQL Cookbook because it is online rather than on my shelf showing another O'Reilly animal. I might have to print out the covers and tape them to my old school books to deal with that for the time being, but I am sure that Safari Bookshelf is how I plan to spend money on technical documentation from now on.
If it were a Tom Robbins book however, I couldn't see myself sitting in a cozy chair reading it on a laptop; this idea only makes sense to me for technical information because I am sitting at my computer anyways -- and where else would I need technical documentation?
If this idea intrigues you, visit O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf page. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
finally a viable business plan for ebooks (Score:2, Interesting)
Paper books still useful for display (Score:5, Interesting)
When I walk into my professors office, they have two walls of metal bookshelves stacked to the wall with books. It's like walking into their mind.
With a cursory glance, you can roughly tell what schools of thought they subscribe to, who they've read, their area of expertise, what subjects they're familiar with. It's really nifty.
decent (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting to note that many books authored in troff are not available (currently including the Sendmail book from O'Reilly, not mentioned in the review though Sendmail was). Books authored in FrameMaker (and books eventually converted to it) are more easily converted to their online format.
Company subscription? (Score:2, Interesting)
You told us how the system works and that it seems to be a great way to be up to date and not waste space.
do they have any company subscription plans which a major company can subscribe to.. so that its employees dont have to pay for it? This might be helpful to even start a virtual technical library similar to the public libraries out there... except that they you wont find Clive Cussler out there.
Coming to think of it, if that occurs, companies can cram more employees into the same amount of space.. cos hey... your cube space just got smaller as you dont need to maintain any printed material at all !! One chair and desk would do... with wireless access and laptops. You would get up only to switch batteries or go to the restroom!!
I like dead trees. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Safari is wonderful! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Libraries (Score:5, Interesting)
Since safari, I haven't bought a single paper-book. As a matter of fact, I gave most of my books away to my staff. Safari is the first link on my browser's toolbar, and have almost 20 books in my bookshelf, all for reference. There's the added bonus that the books are searchable, which dead tree technology lacks.
Another advantage is you have access to you books anywhere. I program at the office, at home, on the road, and even from coffee shops sometimes. Shlepping books to and from is not an option.
My only complaint is the site is a bit slow, but understandable considering the complexity of the site. With any luck this will improve someday.
Safari is ...a good supplement. (Score:5, Interesting)
But what I found was that it just doesn't replace the convenience of having the actual book on your shelf. I found navigating the site very slow at times. Searching for books was excellent, however, searching for text inside an individual book left much to be desired.
In the end, I canceled the service. Only to come back a few months later. It turns out, Safari is an excellent *supplement* to your existing library. How many times have you left a book at home or at work or at a friends house? How many times have you needed just that tiny bit of info that slipped your mind but is an hour away sitting on your night stand? With Safari, I now just check go and look up the book and find that tidbit I missed. Its defitely expensive when you buy the book anyway, but sometimes its invaluable.
What I would propose to O'Reilly is that when you buy the hardcopy, you get the electronic version on Safari as well. I would even pay a premium of a few dollars for this, as well.
Re:Paper books still useful for display (Score:2, Interesting)
Once I'm done with them they will look relatively unused, other than a couple of post-its I've added either with my personal notes or as book marks to interesting concepts. I just won't need much of the book as a daily or even occasional reference. I'm reading the books from cover to cover and doing most of the problems, sort of like doing a course without a professer haranguing me to do stuff. This is the way it is with most of my texts, I read them, I learn what's in them and then they sit on my shelves for occasional reference.
10 Slots != 10 Books (Score:1, Interesting)
Most Safari books occupy a single slot on your bookshelf. In most cases, a 10-slot bookshelf equates to a 10-book bookshelf.
(emphasis added)
*Most*, not *all*. Just wanted to bring it up.
Re:I played with this a while ago (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I have my Perl bookshelf for on the road. I don't need Safari yet, but the breakeven isn't much considering the price of new books. (a 10 bookshelf is about the same cost as between 4 and 5 real books on your shelf). I guess the next time I need to extend my zoo or to get newer animals, I'll expect to go on safari.
Bandwidth and presentation make this unattractive (Score:2, Interesting)
- It took too long to download the pages which were presented with unnecessary (for presentation) extra framing
- Having once downloaded a page there was no way to cache it with Squid, so I had to download it again if I wanted to flip back and forth (which is what I do with tech books
I completely understand why OReilly made these design decisions, but it makes them non-useful for me. I prefer to get CDs of etexts or just the good ol' paperback (pity about the reduced quality bindings they've introduced)>How I use it, and why it's a good service (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been a user of Safari for over 16 months and I find it a very useful service - especially once they got other publishers and authors to jump on the band wagon. When they started this, it was ONLY O'Reilly books - and not very many of them.
What drew me to the service was the ability to have access to a set of books and not have to cart them from home to the office (even when you live 3 blocks from your office, a pile of books every day is too much!), or off to a meeting with a client.
That way if I have a particalar question on something I'm actively working, and I'm home, I can just look at it on the web on the shelf of books I have checked out.
There is one feature that would be nice - if you are subscribed to a book, get a special discount if you order a physical copy - yes, you still need the book sometimes, but it has gotten less. Lots of the folks in the office use this service - and O'Reilly does offer office plans.
I recommend the service, it's not for everyone, but if you can afford it, it will pay for itself.
Gil
NOTE:light-emitting displays may inhibit cognition (Score:2, Interesting)
ISBN 0-7737-3293-4), pp.78-81: "Since television viewing severely reduces the healthy stimulations of high-beta wave activity in the brain, we should expect that the patterns of chaos in healthy brains are missing in television viewers, and there is strong evidence that they are. Studies conducted at the Australian National University in Canberra by the Emerys, a husband and wife team, determined that television viewing reduces cognition to low levels and thwarts learning, in the normal sense of material being subject to conscious recall.
"The evidence is that television not only destroys the capacity of the viewer to attend, it also, by taking over a complex of direct and indirect neural pathways, decreases vigilance- the general state of arousal which prepares the organism for action, should its attention be drawn to specific stimulus." [the Emerys]
"The Emerys display their findings in a "Summary Map of Relativities for
Radiant and Reflected Light Perception." This chart shows the slowness
and relative speed of brain-wave activity given specific tasks. The
results when compared across several other investigations are clear: all
perception attending to television viewing is considerably slowed down,
whereas watching reflected light, from film to book reading, produces
significantly faster brain waves."
"It remains to be seen just what effects projection TV has on brain-wave
function."
"Television viewing leaves the left hemisphere almost in darkness.
Magnetic resonance imaging and EEG techniques, too, give us mesmerizing
pictures of the brain's dynamic actions. These techniques show that
verbal centres shut down and all lively brain activity is severely
reduced in response to tv watching."
He then goes on to write about how CRT/VDTs (including computer monitors,
and this would include LCDs, though perhaps less) incur similar effects
in hampering learning.