As many of you, I too have this huge pile of books somewhere in the house correctly named by Homer J. Simpson as “the to-read-pile”. One of the books that’s been on there quite a while is “Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat: How to Win in the Information Age” by Archibald Putt (a pseudonym).

The books handles the topic on how to be successful in a hierarchy of companies (or departments) whose core business is technology. Sometimes, you read a Dilbert-cartoon and laugh going “it’s funny cause it’s true”. I’ve had that with this book all the time. I’ve read its 170 pages in two days and had to agree for many times with the author’s description of the reality we live in. When it seems that management takes weird decisions, absurd conclusions,… this books explains why they have. I absolutely recommend this book for everyone who is in the technology-business.

Interested in the book?

United States (in $) / United Kingdom & Europe (in £)

A very interesting read, written by Haralambos Marmanis, Dmitry Babenko, on how the web provides us with a rich user experience with the help of algorithms. Topics such as ranking and recommendation systems are explained very well and are illustrated with examples. Also, API's from well known sites such as Google, eBay and Facebook are discussed.

The book on amazon.

A new list of free e-books on Microsoft technologies has been released on the Microsoft Press blog. Below is the list of available books (including sample code if available).

Programming Windows Phone 7 (Charles Petzold) PDF - Sample Code C# - Sample Code VB.NET
Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (Ross Mistry and Stacia Misner) XPS - PDF
Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions, From the Desktop to the Datacenter (Mitch Tulloch) XPS - PDF
Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2 (Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker with the Windows Server Team at Microsoft) XPS - PDF
First Look Microsoft Office 2010 (Katherine Murray) XPS - PDF
Deploying Windows 7, Essential Guidance (Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson,...)  PDF
Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (Patrice Pelland, Pascal Paré, and Ken Haines) XPS - PDF - Sample Code

(original post)

Another MSDN-flash newsletter was send out covering various topics such as Windows Phone 7, PDC10, MVVM Light Toolkit for Silverlight and WPF and much more. If you want to subscribe to the MSDN-Flash newsletter (and all other available Microsoft newsletters), you can do so at the Profile Center.

Now, about the e-book:

The book is called “Moving to Microsoft Visual Studio 2010”, written by Ken Haines, Pascal Paré and Patrice Pelland. For more information about the authors, please check the original post on the Microsoft Press Blog. The book is divided in three parts: part I for developers moving from VS2003, Part II is for developers moving from VS2005 and part III is for developers moving from VS2008. You can provide feedback by filling out the survey on the Microsoft Learning site.

Download the book: PDF (18.2MB) / XPS (30.5MB)
Download the sample code

The new MSDN Flash arrived this morning, and it offered 7 free e-books (actually 6 e-books and some reference cards) on .NET and architecture. For the original article that was posted in the newsletter, click here.

The books:

- Foundations of programming (Karl Seguin)
- Microsoft Application Architecture Guide, 2nd Edition (Microsoft)

- Rob Miles C# Yellow Book 2010 (Rob Miles)

- Threading in C# (Joe Albahari)

- Improving .NET Application Performance and scalability (Microsoft)

- Applying Design Patterns (Anoop Madhusudanan)

And some References Cards (RefCardz) from DZone:

- Getting Started with WCF 4.0 (Scott Seely)

- Getting Started with Silverlight + Expression Blend (Victor Gaudioso)

- Essential F# (Chance Coble, Ted Neward)

When cruising the MSDN-forums I found the following free e-book:

Introducing Windows Server 2008 R2, by Charlie Russel and Craig Zacker with the Windows Server Team at Microsoft.

Chapter 1    What’s New in Windows Server R2    1
Chapter 2    Installation and Configuration: Adding R2 to Your World    9
Chapter 3    Hyper-V: Scaling and Migrating Virtual Machines    25
Chapter 4    Remote Desktop Services and VDI: Centralizing Desktop and Application Management    47
Chapter 5    Active Directory: Improving and Automating Identity and Access    65
Chapter 6    The File Services Role    91
Chapter 7    IIS 7.5: Improving the Web Application Platform    109
Chapter 8    DirectAccess and Network Policy Server    129
Chapter 9    Other Features and Enhancements    147
Index    163

source (original MSDN post)

Download the e-book in XPS (28 MB) or PDF (11 MB).

The IT industry contributes to climate change through consumption of fossil fuels. At the same time however, the IT industry can become green and provide the 'technological fixes' we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus form a solid base for the Low-Carbon Society.

Today Western economies are largely characterized by service-based economies, sustained by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Our economies evolves around ICT: Our public sector is based on it, the financial sector is based on it, the energy sector, the transport system, the education system, the health system - all are largely dependent on Information Technology.

Our societies developed this way, because IT was able to make daily routines easier, quicker and more efficient. IT has optimized a number of processes and has helped society progress.

Globally IT is responsible for around 2 pct. of the world's emission of greenhouse gases. The IT sector itself contributes, through its massive consumption of energy, to greenhouse gas emissions – and thereby continuously adds to the cause of the problem. At the same time, however, the IT industry can provide the ‘technological fixes’ we need to reduce emissions and form a solid base for the Low-Carbon society. We call this Green IT.

Find the book release on Greening IT