The cover is not final, and I welcome your feedback. The book is nearing completion, and is on track for publication in May 2008. There is no real product information on Amazon.com yet, so here’s a blurb describing the book:

Anyone who has explored the history, technology, or theory of computers has likely encountered the concept of the Turing Machine. The Turing Machine is an imaginary — not even quite hypothetical — computer invented in 1936 by English mathematician Alan Turing (1912 – 1954) to help solve a question in mathematical logic. As a byproduct, Turing also founded the field of computability theory — the study of the abilities and limitations of digital computers.

Although the concept of the Turing Machine is well known, Turing’s original 1936 paper is only rarely read. This neglect may have something to do with the paper’s title — “On Computable Numbers with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” — and perhaps the paper’s extensive use of a scary German gothic font. That’s too bad, because the paper is not only a fascinating read but a milestone in the history of computing and 20^th century intellectual thought in general.

This book presents Turing’s original 36-page paper and a follow-up 3-page correction with background chapters and extensive annotations. Mathematical papers like Turing’s are often terse and cryptic. Petzold has elaborated on many of Turing’s statements, clarified his discussions, and provided numerous examples.

Interwoven into the narrative are the highlights of Turing’s own life: his secret work in cryptanalysis during World War II, his involvement in seminal computer projects, his speculations about artificial intelligence, his arrest and prosecution for the crime of “gross indecency,” and his early death by apparent suicide at the age of 41.

]]> http://ckwebb.com/publishing/books-and-writing/working-with-charles-petzold/feed/ 1 http://ckwebb.com/publishing/and-for-our-next-trick-introducing-wroxs-asp3wiki/ http://ckwebb.com/publishing/and-for-our-next-trick-introducing-wroxs-asp3wiki/#comments Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:58:41 +0000 Chris http://ckwebb.com/publishing/and-for-our-next-trick-introducing-wroxs-asp3wiki/ Recently we launched Wrox Blox, our bite-sized e-content products for programmers.  Today we continue with new e-content initiatives and have announced our partnership with Near-Time to produce a new line of wiki-based products.

The first of these new products is ASP3Wiki, and is best summarized by this post on Jim Mintel’s blog.

Wrox’s ASP3Wiki is the complete contents of one of the best-selling web programming books ever, Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0, free, online, in wiki format. Why? Well, we know from our traffic on p2p.wrox.com that ASP 3.0 is still a widely used web platform, even today 8 years after it debuted. Think about that: how many web programming tools are still in as widespread use as ASP 3 is 8 years after they launch? So, even though the sales of the paper book finally slowed to a tricked about 12 months ago, we know there’s still demand out there for this information and we’ve decided (along with the blessings of the lead authors thank you Dave Sussman, Jon Duckett, and Chris Ullman!) to make this freely available on this wiki.

This is just one of several e-content experiments we are working on in our Wrox brand.  If feedback is positive on ASP3Wiki, we plan to roll out additional wikis on current topics, perhaps consider bundles with printed books and wiki access and so forth.

If you feel this format works for you, let us know. We want to build product you want and want to hear from you.

So, what are Wrox Blox?

• DRM-free
• PDF format
• Bite-sized (generally 20-40 pages)
• Faster to market than traditional books
• Introductory priced at only $3.99 US

The initial roll out consists of 4 titles, with many more in the works to be available shortly. Beginning today you can purchase and instantly download:

• iPhone and iPod touch Programming : Handling Touch Interactions and Events for Mobile Safari
• Silverlight 1.0 Animation
• Leveraging LINQ in ASP.NET 3.5 Projects
• Building a Photo Gallery with Adobe AIR

Hopefully we have responded to customer needs with a great new product. What do you think? Is this type of publishing the right direction? How can we improve Wrox Blox?

The German designers chose to build an ambitious 3-D sword and sorcery title with extremely detailed graphics. Their game, DungeonQuest, looks impressive all right — as players creep through shadowy caves, their torches leave a smoke trail and reflect off the glistening walls.

I can tell you from my personal experience in working with Benny that he is a coding machine – the guy is unstoppable, so I was not surprised when he told me back in February that we was going to participate in the event.  I can also tell you that his games are top notch, and he is an excellent teacher.  So, if you want to aspire to sling game code like Benny does, you should check out his book.

From the back cover:

Built on the .NET 2.0 platform, Telligent’s Community Server allows web developers to implement a robust community site where users can share, discuss, and interact in very powerful ways. With its open API and available source code, Community Server is customizable using available 3rd party modules, or you can write your own code to extend Community Server’s functionality.

Inside this book, our Community Server experts guide you through the product’s implementation and customization and will get you started with your first community site quickly. You’ll learn methods for UI modification and enhancement, how to add new functionality through modules, and how to write your own custom module code. You’ll also get tried-and-true advice for administering your Community Server site, creating reports, implementing security, building localized installations, and more.

What you will learn from this book

• Techniques for troubleshooting installation issues
• How to understand and customize Community Server’s ASP.NET config files
• Tips for installing and configuring modules on your site
• Methods for enhancing your implementation with themes, modules, and add-ons
• How to write modules and modify Community Server code
• All about implementing skins, changing the look of custom controls, working with master pages, and more

Who this book is for

This book is for both experienced developers and general enthusiasts who are interested in building their site using Community Server. You should have prior experience in web server management and configuration.

Readers who wish to extend and customize Community Server should have previous experience with ASP.NET and related .NET technologies.

Benjamin Nitschke

Amazingly the project was completed in just over a month, though you wouldn’t know it to look at or play it: Nitschke believes it to be one of the the best-looking XNA games available today.

I agree, and the game play is great. Once the book publishes next month we will release the source code for all 6 games:

XNA Pong
Tetris clone
Rocket Commander XNA
Space Shooter
Racing Game
Speedy Racer