EBM400 - Notes and Resources

Text: "e-Business and e-Commerce: How To Program", Deitel et al


General Hacker Stuff

The Jargon File 
This is the place to go to learn 'hacker-speak' if you're so inclined.  There's also a print version but the online one is updated more frequently.  

IBM DeveloperWorks - A great resource for developers, with articles, tutorials and links to software.

O'Reilly Network Weblogs - A great collection of essays and pointers from the authors and editors at O'Reilly Publications.  Updated frequently, I check in several times a day.

O'Reilly.Net - An excellent source of programming tips/tricks/articles for just about every platform you can think of.

Dr. Dobbs - If you're planning on being a professional software developer, this is a magazine you need to know about - plenty of great articles and tutorials.  (I recommend subscribing, but you can get a lot of the content from their Web site if you prefer.)  In continuous publication since 1976, this is possibly the most long-lived computer publication ever.

Top-Coder.com - If you're interested in showing your stuff, here's a place where programmers get together and compete in coding contests online.

Course-Related Links

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - An organization of industry, government and academic representatives who determine the coding standards for the World Wide Web.  Everything you always wanted to know about HTML and related technologies flows from here.

Open Source Web Design - According to the description on the home page, this is "a community of designers and site owners freely sharing designs as well as design information."

W3Schools.com - The best things in life are free!  Tons of tutorials, examples, guides, you name it about you-know-what.

Tim Berners-Lee home page - The father of the World Wide Web himself.  Yes, he's still around and still working hard.

The Web Standards Project - An independent organization of Web developers who are trying to convince Web site designers, browser developers and other folks to adhere to published Web standards.  (It may sound dull, but it's a good site.)

Information Architecture Tutorial - brought to you from the good folks at WebMonkey

Mozilla 1.x Demos - Links to several impressive demonstrations of what you can do with a Web browser that adheres to open, published standards.

Web Development DevCenter - A nice site from O'Reilly Publishing. This is where you can learn about going beyond simple HTML. Some of the articles and tutorials are a little 'tech-y' but if you're using tools like Flash, JavaScript and GoLive, you might want to give them a look-see.

Textbook Downloads - A load of files including code, Powerpoint slides and sample chapters.

The Cluetrain Manifesto - A radical approach to marketing in the age of the Internet.

Organizations/Projects

Mozilla - The Mozilla project is producing the next-generation Web platform.

OpenOffice - The OpenOffice project is producing a free, open-source competitor to Microsoft Office.

Virtual Network Computing - Remote desktop software similar to PC-Anywhere, except it runs on every platform you can name and it's free.

Tools

Xampp - The home page for the Xampp project, which provides a free, open-source development platform for n-tier Web applications.  It's available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Solaris.

Apache - Home page for the Apache Web server project.  Plenty of documentation and HOWTOs here.

PHP - Short for PHP:Hypertext Processor, a very popular scripting language for Web applications

MySQL - A popular, open-source RDBMS widely used on the Internet

SQLite - a self-contained, embeddable, zero-configuration relational database system.

PHPMyAdmin - A web-based frontend to administer MySQL.

CuteWriter - A free PDF convertor for Windows.  It lets you create PDF files from any Windows application that can print.  Very useful for  creating cross-platform documents.

Dia - a free, cross-platform technical drawing tool.  (This site only supplies the Windows version.)

OpenOffice.org- The OpenOffice.org project is producing a free, open-source competitor to Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice.org can read and write Microsoft Office files and has database and drawing tools as well.  Bonus features: built-in export to PDF and the ability to export presentation files to Flash format.

ConTEXT - A very nice freeware programming text editor for Windows

UltimateZip - A good freeware archiving utility for Windows.

Tutorials and HOWTOs

MySQL Tutorial - A basic introduction to MySQL.

SQLite Tutorial - A quick introduction to using this light, fast, embedded relational DBMS.

PHPMyAdmin Tutorial - An overview using the Web-based administrative frontend to MySQL.

PHP/MySQL Tutorial - A nice overview of connecting to a MySQL database using PHP.

PHP Manual - The official documentation for PHP, including a tutorial.

Ming Tutorial - Ming is a library designed to generate SWF (Flash) animations

CSS Introduction - Straight from the World Wide Web consortium, a good overview of Cascading Style Sheets.

DHTML Tutorial - A nice overview of Dynamic HTML

Cheat Sheet Round-up - A treasure trove of cheat sheets for developers of nearly all sorts.

Dia Tutorial - Some tips on using Dia, the free, open-source technical drawing tool

GIMP Tutorials - The GIMP is a free, open-source image processing tool similar to Photoshop (well, Photoshop Elements).  Here's a page of tutorials and examples to get you up to speed.

General Resources

ComputerWorld - If you want to see how computers are really used in real businesses, this is a good source. Essentially an offshoot of Computerworld magazine (available as a free subscription if you can convince them that you influence buying decisions where you work) , this site is pretty platform independent and has a decent career section, as well as a 'gossip' column where actual IT folk write in anonymously and describe the various ways that management can screw up the techies.

The O'Reilly Network - From one of the top publishers of computer books, this site has articles, tips and how-tos on a wide variety of computer topics.  Highly recommended.

SoftPro Books - This is an excellent source for computer and networking books. You can order online or go to one of their local stores. (They have one at Yosemite and Arapahoe in Englewood and another in Boulder.) You can usually get 10-20% off the list price and if you join their 'frequent shoppers' club (it's free) you can get additional savings. 

GoCertify - A nice site that has information on just about every technical certification you can get -- who offers it, what you need to get it, where you can get training and where/how you can take the test.

BrainBench - Another certification site, but this one does their own online certification exams in a wide variety of technical subjects.

Yahoo! Briefcase - 30 megabytes of free online storage.  Floppies are awkward and obsolete! (Requires free Yahoo! account)

Google Images - A good site just got better.  Search for images from all over the Internet.

Online References

Online Computer Dictionary - Stuck trying to figure out an acronym or computer term? This is a good site to look it up. 

Google - THE best search engine. 

igrep - A new search engine, for the more technical folk.

Just for Fun

Ubersoft - A funny comic strip about a mythical software/OS vendor located somewhere in the Pacific Northwest....

User Friendly - Yet another comic strip that looks at the funny side of computing.

Computer Stupidities - This site collects actual dialogues between real users and real tech support folk. The range of misunderstandings and confusion is frequently hilarious.

Peter's Evil Overlord List - Thinking about a career as an Evil Overlord? Think you have what it takes to be the next Darth Vader? Check out this site for a collection of SuperVillain Do's and Don'ts including 'My ventilation shafts will be too small to crawl through'.

The Voice Actor Page - Want to know who does the voice of Larry 3000 on Time Squad?  Find the answer to this and many more questions about the men and women who do the talking for your favorite cartoon characters.  Search alphabetically by show title or actor name.  (By the way, Larry is voiced by none other than Mark Hamill.) 

Stupid Plot Tricks - Expanding on the Evil Overlord lists, this contains lists of rules for henchman, good guys/gals, bad guys/gals and even sidekicks.  Very funny read.

Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics - This site examines many popular movies to see if the action is in line with real physical laws.  An interesting, entertaining and even educational read.

The Invisible Library - Dedicated to books that don't exist but should.
 

Notes Study Guides and Misc.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed on this site are those of the author and are not necessarily those of his employer, Westwood Technical College or its affilliates. This material is intended to supplement the class lectures and text and is not required to complete the course.

You can e-mail me here .