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ACM Online Books and Courses Newsletters for Student Members October 2008 Dear Student Member: Welcome to the premiere issue of the ACM Online Books and Courses newsletter; it is our intention to send you this newsletter on a quarterly basis, timed with the book swap for Books24x7. This newsletter will also feature course additions/enhancements; member testimonials; and a Highlighted Topic (for this issue it is Java) that includes suggested courses, books and applicable Digital Library articles. The least utilized books (125) in the Books24x7 collection have been removed and replaced with books which our members requested or are in areas of high interest. Books24x7
Some of the new titles include: Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals SQL All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies You can see the complete Books24x7 book listing at http://pd.acm.org/books/b24x7_books.cfm . With your ACM membership you can upgrade to the ITPro collection at a 40% discount. You gain access to both broad and deep coverage of over 100 different technology topics in over 20,000 books, making this collection a must-have resource for just-in-time learning. Premier industry publishers, such as Wrox, McGraw-Hill, Microsoft Press, and many more, contribute front-list, best selling, classic and niche titles. Popular book series, such as The Complete Reference, Inside Out, Bibles and many others provide multifaceted, multi-skilled approaches to topics. Go to http://pd.acm.org/books/purchase/login_books.cfm?id=252 to find out how Skillsoft
Introducing Windows Server 2008 Mentoring 70-536 VB - TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 - Application Development Foundation Introducing .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 You can see a complete list of all the courses at http://pd.acm.org/sks_listing_courses.cfm Browser Updates for Skillsoft As of November 1, 2008 SkillSoft will discontinue support for certain older browsers across all product lines. In general, these browsers are no longer supported by the vendors, and recent statistics has shown Skillsoft that the usage share of the web browsers listed below is very small. Effective November 1, 2008 the following browsers will no longer be officially supported:
Currently released products should continue to function as expected on these older browsers; but as of November 1, 2008, SkillSoft will no longer test product releases and updates against these unsupported browsers, and will not be addressing issues specifically associated with them. New product releases such as SkillPort 7.0 will not be tested against and likely will not function properly using these older browsers. If you like to test whether your browser will still work, go to: http://browser.skillport.com/bh/default.asp. An ACM Member Talks about ACM's Skillsoft Program I have spent over 30 hours taking [some of the] SkillSoft courses. I have been focused on courses that develop my non-technical skills, such as time management ("You and Your Time" and "Techniques for Better Time Management"), and for managing my career ("Management Development for Technical Professionals", "Communication Skills for Successful Management" and "Strategies for Transitioning into Management"). I highly recommend those SkillSoft courses, as they have not only improved my non-technical skills, but also opened new perspectives to my work, notably on the business aspects, which, in turn, helped boosting my career [opportunities]. The courses, which I took, are complete, concise and concrete. For instance, the time management courses gave me concrete techniques on how to say "no" to demands of bosses and coworkers. I wish I had known those techniques earlier in my career. Each course is structured into self-contained sections which can be studied each in a 2- to 3-hour session. The format of the courses is attractive with short bulleted texts, images, talks and tests, each of which allowed me to remain concentrated and motivated during each session. The SkillSoft User Interface also allowed me to plan and track the training progress very flexibly. Overall, I found that ACM SkillSoft's non-technical courses are more convenient and flexible, and much cheaper than face-to-face classes, while offering equivalent contents and quality. Romain Lenglet
An ACM Member Talks about ACM's Online Book Program I have found [ACM's Online Book Program] to be a great resource for both new books and for electronic access to my existing books. I have also benefited from electronic access to books like 'Cryptography: A Very Short Introduction' by Fred Piper and Sean Murphy. While I have the paperback version, it was invaluable to be able to bring up the Books 24x7 version while away from home in order to verify information. Cathy Olson
Blogger's Perspective of the ACM's Online Book Program Tech Republic highlighted ACM's book offering in their blog entry, 10 ways to learn new skills on the cheap, page down #6: Associations and user groups and see their recommendation. Highlighted Topic - Java
Courses: Java Programming with J2SE 5: Getting Started with Java Java Technologies for Web Services Books 24x7: Advanced JavaScript, Third Edition (NEW!) Computer Graphics for Java Programmers, Second Edition Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework Digital Library Articles (Highest cited articles since 2006): Effective static race detection for Java A machine-checked model for a Java-like language, virtual machine, and compiler Feedback: We are always looking for feedback and recommendations on our course and book offerings. If you know of a book or a course you would like ACM to consider offering, please email me at Schneider@hq.acm.org. Best regards, David Schneider
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The recently added Books24x7 offering can be found at 
Skillsoft has added a number of new courses. Unlike the books which are swapped, courses are continually added and improved. Among the newest courses are: 
One of the most popular topics in the ACM Books and Courses Program is Java. Below are some of most highly used course, books and articles in the ACM Digital Library on the subject: