Mike Blonder: Thoughts on Technology, and the Web

The O'Reilly® publishing company offers the Safari Online Bookshelf on a paid subscription basis. if you need to learn something about computers, for example, programming, you may want to consider a subscription to Safari.

Pro
Most reference books are expensive, in the range of $30.00 or more and up. At $19.95 per month for a virtual shelf that can include up to ten reference books, the monthly subscription fee, obviously, can be a bargain. Consider as well that access is immediate, saving a trip to a bookstore. Another plus is the online search feature, which can save a lot of effort that would otherwise be required to leaf through pages to find what you need. Finally, electronic books take up no space, putting an end to clutter in an office, library, or even a kitchen table.

Con
Books must stay on a bookshelf for at least 30 days. Why do I need to keep a book for which I need a quick reference on my shelf for 30 days? O'Reilly® Customer Service tells me that I can purchase the flexibility to "skim and can," but at an additional cost of $10.00 per month, $29.95. Another $120.00 per year spent on the service may not make sense; in fact, I decided to pass.

Reading books online would be great if we all had digital monitors with absolute clarity, brilliant contrast, etc. However, we do not all have such devices. For most of us, regular reading online can lead, rather quickly, to an expensive trip to an optometrist for glasses. Forget about the bargain of the service if you have to buy a pair of glass for $300.00 or more as the result of reading online.

The biggest con (no pun intended) is the nature of reference books, themselves. Whether, or not reading a reference book about a programming language will make one a programmer is subject to debate. After all, writing reference material is a tough job. The range of audience is very wide and "you can't please all the people all of the time." Nevertheless for a guy like me, it is a rare reference book that talks about technical stuff for a non technical eye and ear. This is all to say that the ten books on the shelf may not deliver, so be wary.

Recommendation
O'Reilly® ought to offer more flexibility at the $19.95 per month subscription level. As well, more effort should be spent determining the opinion of the subscribing audience about the materials, so "borrowers" can be forewarned prior to putting a book on a shelf for at least a month.

© Mike Blonder, 2007, All Rights Reserved

IMB Enterprises, Inc. actively pursues opportunities for non-IT computing solutions, including test and measurement. We maintain a web site dedicated to these solutions, Industrial Strength Ethernet.

One of our customers is working on a solution for remote meter reading. Our customer provides management services for utility usage to large industrial clients. As part of his service he publishes electrical usage information every 5 minutes to his customers via his own interactive website. He is collecting information using two devices that he purchased from IMB Enterprises, Inc.:

• 
  SimpleComTools COM1000 Internet Appliance
  and the


• Raven XT Cellular Data Modem from Sierra Wireless

Our customer encountered a problem. The cost of the cellular data bandwidth required to capture readings from remote meters via the Raven XT exceeded his business model. He decided to stop pursuing wireless methods of collecting the data, for now, despite the lower labor cost associated with wireless transmission.

We found him an alternative solution: Drop the need for cellular data communications by implementing point to point, or point to multi point serial radios from Digi Maxstream. We have successfully communicated, bi-directionally with the COM1000 from a PC via these radios.

To solve the need for a custom application to:

1) Query the remote locations/radios as required and
2) Collect the data and save it in a useful format for the customer's application (in this case common spreadsheet software)

we are recommending an "erector set" piece of software, Collect from Labtronics. Collect is an "erector set" in that application-unique steps can be added to Collect in the form of VBA macros; thus, the application is useful for a range of applications. We feel that the acquisition cost for Collect ($500.00 US Dollars at the time of this writing) pales when compared to the hourly cost of custom programming and revision.

Please contact us at (802) 457-2929 if you would like to hear further about this solution.

Please visit Industrial Strength Ethernet for further information on the devices used in this solution.

Copyright © October 9, 2008, IMB Enterprises, Inc., all rights reserved