Exchange data with FTP and NNTP servers
Sample projects using standard code libraries reinforce these new skills. You'll learn how to create your own webbots and spiders that track online prices, aggregate different data sources into a single web page, and archive the online data you just can't live without. You'll learn inside information from an experienced webbot developer on how and when to write stealthy webbots that mimic human behavior, tips for developing fault-tolerant designs, and various methods for launching and scheduling webbots. You'll also get advice on how to write webbots and spiders that respect website owner property rights, plus techniques for shielding websites from unwanted robots.
As a bonus, visit the author's website to test your webbots on sample target pages, and to download the scripts and code libraries used in the book.
Some tasks are just too tedious-or too important!- to leave to humans. Once you've automated your online life, you'll never let a browser limit the way you use the Internet again.
Customer Reviews:
Must buy for any Webbot programmer.......2007-10-17
great book. very well organized and code in book is available for download and code is well documented
Great Book with Lots of Information.......2007-08-25
This book covers every aspect I could ever hope a book on web bots would cover. It goes into great detail and provides lots of background information about things such as why you should use web bots, security issues, how to authenticate a bot with password protected sites, writing search engine crawlers, parsing HTML, how to handle cookies, HTTP headers, dealing with forms and a lot more.
I was very pleased with how this book covered concepts. The book uses PHP and the cURL library as a teaching tool instead of trying to give a lesson in how to use PHP as a crawler language. The way the code is explained makes it very easy to translate into whatever language you are most comfortable coding in. The book uses fundamental functional programming concepts which make it easy to pick up the general idea without actually knowing PHP.
My boss bought this book to help my group us with a project we were working on, and even my co-workers who had no background with PHP were able to use this book to write a web bot in C# (using the cURL library) very easily. The concepts from this book easily transfered over to object-oriented concepts.
Scour The Internet = FUN FUN FUN.......2007-07-04
'Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers: A Guide to Developing Internet Agents with PHP/CURL' by Michael Schrenk is an absolute GEM of a book for all internet computer nerds that love trying new things and hacking for a hobby!! If you are one of the afformentioned and love to try new things and see how you can scour the internet with the greatest of ease, you owe it yourself to read and DO this guide!! When I say DO I mean don't just read, but input the examples you'll find within and play around with the power of PHP and CURL to be able to quickly and efficiently traverse the web, not for the purpose of mayhem but enjoyment!
A perfect example contained within this book is writing code to programmatically download entire websites. Instead of just right-clicking an image, imagine running code to grab the ENTIRE contents simply and easily?!?
Other fun tasks you'll learn how to do are send SMS alers to your cell phone, decode encrypted files, parse web site data... the list could go on and on!!
If you like to play with the web and create cool apps that will do cool things, pick up this wonderful book, sick back and PLAY!!
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
It's a top pick any comprehensive computer library needs........2007-06-17
Programmers and businesspeople who want to use the Web's resources to make the most of locating or promoting data will find Webbots, Spiders, and Screen Scrapers a key to successful use of the web. From how to decode encrypted files and automate form submissions to unlocking password-protected websites and placing automatic bids on web auction sites, this comes from a developer who has developed webbots and spiders for clients across North America, and who has all the insider keys to usage. It's a top pick any comprehensive computer library needs.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Etra-Ordinary.......2007-06-14
This is the sort of book I've been waiting for. The book is divided in many small, easy to follow chapters.
After reading it, you should be left with the knowledge and real-life PHP codes to help you take PHP to the extremes and go beyond your current use of PHP.
The only complaint I can make about the book is that the codes are written in procedural programming. In light of the much improved Object Oriented capabilities of PHP5 (and soon PHP6) this practice need to be reassessed.
I hope the later revisions of this book uses an OBJECT ORIENTED Approach. Sooner or later we should jump on the OO bandwagon.
I am sure anyone who have started on the OOP path, will find more and more uses for it
Book Description
CAPITALIST NIGGER excels as an explosive and jarring indictment of the Black Race. Capitalist Nigger: The Road to Success (Timbuktu Publishers, September 17, 2000) asserts that the Black Race, is a consumer race and not a productive race. Says the author, Chika Onyeani, "We are a conquered race and it is utterly foolish for us to believe that we are independent. The Black Race depends on other communities for its culture, its language, its feeding, and its clothing." "Despite enormous natural resources," according to the author, "Blacks are economic slaves because they lack the "killer-instinct" and "devil-may-care" attitude of the Caucausian, as well as the "spider web economic mentality" of the Asian." The author is not afriad to use the most hated word, the 'N' word as a title of his book. He says, "It is not what you call me, but what I answer to, that matters most." The further asserts that "Blacks are economic slaves. We are owned lock stock and barrel by people of European-origin ... I am tired of hearing Blacks always blaming others for their lack of progress in this world; I am tired of the whining and victim-mentality. I am tired of listening to the same complaint, day in day out - racism this, racism that. It's getting us nowhere." "Africans have a stance, 'live for today, let tomorrow take care of itself and be damned' attitude," the author says. "We've become a sheep-like consumer race that depends on other communities for our culture, language, feeding, and clothing. We've become economic slaves in Western society." CAPITALIST NIGGER reserves its harshest criticism for African leaders, who according to Onyeani, have allowed Europeans and others to pillage and plunder Africa's wealth, without anything to show for it, other than more starvation, disease, and dictatorships. "We have as little today than when most of the African countries received independence from their colonial masters," Onyeani says. CAPITALIST NIGGER is an anguished cry to the Black race to wake up, stand up and move on." "We must abandon the victim mentality baggage that we've carried for so long: the notion that somebody owes us something," the author says. "We've got to stop whining and stop begging. The Black race needs to wake up and stand on it's own feet." Says Onyeani, "We need to recognize and learn from others what it takes to succeed. We need to adopt the "devil-may-care" attitude and the "killer-instinct and whatever-it-takes attitude" of the white Caucasian, and the "spider web economic mentality" of the Asian."
Customer Reviews:
Review from an Angolan in the Diaspora.......2007-06-24
This book is the ultimate insult coming from one of its own. But history has shown that these traitors have always existed for its own self gain. A scribe that attempts to motivate its own peole by the negative, therefore insulting. It is an insult to the people that fought for the dignity of Africa and its peoples: Patrice Lumumba, Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral, Robert Mugabe and others that fought against the powerfull colonialists Portuguese, French, Belgians, Spanish supported by the American imperialism.
To add insult to injury he does not acknowldge any credits to Africans that reconquered independence and dignity, he rather accepts that Africans received independence from its masters. He mixes inteligence with unscrupulous copying of intelectual property by suporting those who have no respect for innovation of any sort. Africans are artistically innovative, no copists.
The handful of people he admires were pirates called navigators by their supporters; they were rapists, slaves traders but called evangelists spreading christianity by force, Bible in one hand spade in the other, against Christ own words and denegretating indigenous believes. They were without the shadow of a doubt superior in technology, organisation skills, germs and guns but not in inteligence. There is enough research and literature available to demonstrate that the reason for dominance was a set of circunstances not inteligence, but I abstain from letting this person know where that published information is. It would be useless. It would be like asking Hitler to read the Communist Manifesto. It was a set of circunstances that gave them superior advantage called by the author "killer instints". The author is calling us to become barbarians.
It is no surprise that he receives support from self interested groups of people that see in this individual a support for their racist theories. The book is not supported by any historical investigation and its is a load of garbage.
We as people have existed for thousands of years of which the last 500 have been under foreign dominance. 500 years is little time by comparision with our remote brilliant past and by comparison with what the future promises. It will probably after our time on earth that we regain full dignity but if I see the author in the other world I will simply walk past with disdain.
Another Perspective.......2006-12-28
Had this book been written by a white person,he would have been crucified.I'm a South African and I experience what Onyeani is writing about on a daily basis.Athough I'm white,this book is painful to read.
The book came to my knowledge about two months ago and I do not know what kind of a stir(if any)it caused when it was first published.The danger inherent to this book is that it may be abused by militant right-wingers,but anyone doing that would loose sight of the fact that the book was written by an Afro-American and that it is an outcry aimed at Afro-People everywhere to get off their duffs and to be Capitalist Niggers-you have to read the book to understand this expression-and to stop being passive,waiting with cupped hands for the seemingly endless hand-outs.
If one looks at Africa:where are the success stories,the lasting democracies?(Except,hopefully and perhaps,South Africa)I agree with Onyeani-Africa is a beautiful and bountiful continent and it's high time that all its people manage it to its full potential and not run it into the ground as is the case currently,eg,Zimbabwe which became a pathetic,sad,broke and broken country run by a madman 20 years after the 'colonialists' left.
White or not,it's my fervent wish that Oyeani's call to Afro-People everywhere to become Capitalist Niggers,is heeded-it will be to the ultimate benefit of all the people of all races.
About race,race relations and what's wrong with the world in general and Britain in particular,check out THE LIGHT'S ON AT SIGNPOST by GEORGE MACDONALD FRASER,the chapters titled 'Angry Old Man'.Compulsive reading.
Interesting Read.......2006-08-25
This is an interesting book on the economic and social situation of Africans in Africa and the diaspora. The author is very critical of the economic underdevelopment and dependence of African peoples on other races. He ascribes this to inferiority complex and lack of self-confidence and self-discipline in the ability of African peoples to be world-renowned successful entrepreneurs, industrialists, scientists and engineers. He cites several examples of ineptitude by African leaders with the resource rich African continent being heavily debt-ridden with nothing to show where the money went.
Onyeani believes that by following the capitalist path and doing so aggressively, resolutely, persistently and with confidence, it should be possible to uplift the African race from the bottom layers of society where it is largely settled.
It is easy to dismiss Onyeani's ideas as just rantings of a frustrated African but this introspection is a critical first step towards the mental and economic emancipation of the African race. One can accuse the author of advocating a system of "capitalism" which is inherently oppressive and exploitative and is a creation by the Caucasian race which tends to contradict his basic message. However, such thinking misses the basic point that African needs to catch up or surpass the other races in building a better community characterized by prosperity, progress, mutual assistance and support and unity.
Required Reading For All African American Teenagers.......2006-07-19
I went to the store to purchase "White Guilt" but they were out. I purchased this book instead and I cannot tell you how happy I was to read it. It took me 2 days to read it and then I read it again just to let it all soak in. This book uncovers the secret (at least the secret from African Americans) to be succesful. It should be required reading of all AFrican American teenagers age 16 and up. He explains how India and Koren immigrants to this country have acheived more than blacks have and they we should not whine about White People holding us back because by doing so, you CANNOT be focused on becoming an Economic Warrior, i.e., a Capitalist Nigger.
Buy this book for yourself and instead of money or pen sets for graduation gifts for high school and college graduates, make this your standard gift to them. They will appreciate it for years to come.
I would also suggest reading "Breaking the Chains of Psychological Slavery" by Na'im Akbar. It is the perfect book to accompany "Capitalist Nigger." Really, they both should be required reading for African American teenagers.
He's right on it.......2006-07-05
I thought the book gave a raw and uncut truth about africans,etc. Onyeani shot straight from the hip in regards to how we view and approach wealth. We need to become more aggressive, not to the point where we become blinded by wealth, but as far as being more proactive when it comes to wealth. I am an entrepeneur, and I am going to implement some the theories and concepts he mentioned so I can make my community a better place.
Book Description
The Internet, with its profusion of information, has made us hungry for ever more, ever better data. Out of necessity, many of us have become pretty adept with search engine queries, but there are times when even the most powerful search engines aren't enough. If you've ever wanted your data in a different form than it's presented, or wanted to collect data from several sites and see it side-by-side without the constraints of a browser, then Spidering Hacks is for you. Spidering Hacks takes you to the next level in Internet data retrieval--beyond search engines--by showing you how to create spiders and bots to retrieve information from your favorite sites and data sources. You'll no longer feel constrained by the way host sites think you want to see their data presented--you'll learn how to scrape and repurpose raw data so you can view in a way that's meaningful to you. Written for developers, researchers, technical assistants, librarians, and power users, Spidering Hacks provides expert tips on spidering and scraping methodologies. You'll begin with a crash course in spidering concepts, tools (Perl, LWP, out-of-the-box utilities), and ethics (how to know when you've gone too far: what's acceptable and unacceptable). Next, you'll collect media files and data from databases. Then you'll learn how to interpret and understand the data, repurpose it for use in other applications, and even build authorized interfaces to integrate the data into your own content. By the time you finish Spidering Hacks, you'll be able to:
- Aggregate and associate data from disparate locations, then store and manipulate the data as you like
- Gain a competitive edge in business by knowing when competitors' products are on sale, and comparing sales ranks and product placement on e-commerce sites
- Integrate third-party data into your own applications or web sites
- Make your own site easier to scrape and more usable to others
- Keep up-to-date with your favorite comics strips, news stories, stock tips, and more without visiting the site every day
Like the other books in O'Reilly's popular Hacks series, Spidering Hacks brings you 100 industrial-strength tips and tools from the experts to help you master this technology. If you're interested in data retrieval of any type, this book provides a wealth of data for finding a wealth of data.
Customer Reviews:
Very good book.......2007-10-10
This book has a strong perl focus, so make sure you want to use perl. Otherwise, it's a great book with plenty of examples on integrating website data into your site.
Perl-intensive book on web crawler design.......2006-05-16
A spider (also known as a web crawler or web robot) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. This book is about how to create programs that perform the functions of a web crawler, with most of the Hacks being written in Perl. Like the rest of the Hacks series, this book presents 100 bite-sized chunks of code or technique to tackle specific activities. In this book these range from the simple - how to download a set of image files - to the complex - cross-referring the output from one site with another to generate a third set of data. No matter what the complexity, each hack is clearly explained, with the code samples balanced with instructions, examples and notes on how to hack the hack.
As already mentioned, the hacks in this book mostly use Perl, though scattered here and there you'll find some Java, Python and PHP. If you really hate Perl, then you will not like this book. On the other hand the authors assume only a rudimentary knowledge of Perl, and there is no requirement for any knowledge of network programming of any description. After the opening chapter which gives guidance of being a good spidering citizen (how to respect the sites you are taking data from), there is a second chapter which details how to create a spidering toolkit (how to find and install the site of modules that many of the hacks depend on).
With a toolkit in place and a knowledge of good behavior, the book dives into the various hacks that are organized by topic: collecting media files, gleaning data from databases (with many examples for Yahoo!, Amazon, Google, Alexa and other popular information sources), maintaining your collections (more automation with "cron" or other scheduling tools) and a final chapter on giving something back (creating a web service, generating RSS feeds and so on).
The bulk of the hacks are in chapter four, which looks at extracting data from databases. Aside from the obvious sources such as Amazon and Google, these including online banks, tracking FedEx packages and more. There are a range of techniques used to grab and filter the data, so even if a data source you want to use isn't listed, the chances are that one of these hacks can be refactored to do what you want.
If Perl is not your thing then the very light sprinkling of non-Perl hacks probably isn't enough to make this a worthwhile purchase. If you're a Perl hacker interested in spidering there is a ton of stuff for you here without doubt. Also, if you are a student looking for a good supplement on building a web spider from scratch, this is probably not the book for you either, but the various hacks will give you some ideas on what you might want to do in your own spider if you wish to write one in a higher level language such as Java. Amazon does not show the table of contents so I do that here for completeness:
Chapter 1. Walking Softly
1. A Crash Course in Spidering and Scraping
2. Best Practices for You and Your Spider
3. Anatomy of an HTML Page
4. Registering Your Spider
5. Preempting Discovery
6. Keeping Your Spider Out of Sticky Situations
7. Finding the Patterns of Identifiers
Chapter 2. Assembling a Toolbox
Perl Modules
Resources You May Find Helpful
8. Installing Perl Modules
9. Simply Fetching with LWP::Simple
10. More Involved Requests with LWP::UserAgent
11. Adding HTTP Headers to Your Request
12. Posting Form Data with LWP
13. Authentication, Cookies, and Proxies
14. Handling Relative and Absolute URLs
15. Secured Access and Browser Attributes
16. Respecting Your Scrapee's Bandwidth
17. Respecting robots.txt
18. Adding Progress Bars to Your Scripts
19. Scraping with HTML::TreeBuilder
20. Parsing with HTML::TokeParser
21. WWW::Mechanize 101
22. Scraping with WWW::Mechanize
23. In Praise of Regular Expressions
24. Painless RSS with Template::Extract
25. A Quick Introduction to XPath
26. Downloading with curl and wget
27. More Advanced wget Techniques
28. Using Pipes to Chain Commands
29. Running Multiple Utilities at Once
30. Utilizing the Web Scraping Proxy
31. Being Warned When Things Go Wrong
32. Being Adaptive to Site Redesigns
Chapter 3. Collecting Media Files
33. Detective Case Study: Newgrounds
34. Detective Case Study: iFilm
35. Downloading Movies from the Library of Congress
36. Downloading Images from Webshots
37. Downloading Comics with dailystrips
38. Archiving Your Favorite Webcams
39. News Wallpaper for Your Site
40. Saving Only POP3 Email Attachments
41. Downloading MP3s from a Playlist
42. Downloading from Usenet with nget
Chapter 4. Gleaning Data from Databases
43. Archiving Yahoo! Groups Messages with yahoo2mbox
44. Archiving Yahoo! Groups Messages with WWW::Yahoo::Groups
45. Gleaning Buzz from Yahoo!
46. Spidering the Yahoo! Catalog
47. Tracking Additions to Yahoo!
48. Scattersearch with Yahoo! and Google
49. Yahoo! Directory Mindshare in Google
50. Weblog-Free Google Results
51. Spidering, Google, and Multiple Domains
52. Scraping Amazon.com Product Reviews
53. Receive an Email Alert for Newly Added Amazon.com Reviews
54. Scraping Amazon.com Customer Advice
55. Publishing Amazon.com Associates Statistics
56. Sorting Amazon.com Recommendations by Rating
57. Related Amazon.com Products with Alexa
58. Scraping Alexa's Competitive Data with Java
59. Finding Album Information with FreeDB and Amazon.com
60. Expanding Your Musical Tastes
61. Saving Daily Horoscopes to Your iPod
62. Graphing Data with RRDTOOL
63. Stocking Up on Financial Quotes
64. Super Author Searching
65. Mapping O'Reilly Best Sellers to Library Popularity
66. Using All Consuming to Get Book Lists
67. Tracking Packages with FedEx
68. Checking Blogs for New Comments
69. Aggregating RSS and Posting Changes
70. Using the Link Cosmos of Technorati
71. Finding Related RSS Feeds
72. Automatically Finding Blogs of Interest
73. Scraping TV Listings
74. What's Your Visitor's Weather Like?
75. Trendspotting with Geotargeting
76. Getting the Best Travel Route by Train
77. Geographic Distance and Back Again
78. Super Word Lookup
79. Word Associations with Lexical Freenet
80. Reformatting Bugtraq Reports
81. Keeping Tabs on the Web via Email
82. Publish IE's Favorites to Your Web Site
83. Spidering GameStop.com Game Prices
84. Bargain Hunting with PHP
85. Aggregating Multiple Search Engine Results
86. Robot Karaoke
87. Searching the Better Business Bureau
88. Searching for Health Inspections
89. Filtering for Content
Chapter 5. Maintaining Your Collections
90. Using cron to Automate Tasks
91. Scheduling Tasks Without cron
92. Mirroring Web Sites with wget and rsync
93. Accumulating Search Results Over Time
Chapter 6. Giving Back to the World
94. Using XML::RSS to Repurpose Data
95. Placing RSS Headlines on Your Site
96. Making Your Resources Scrapable with Regular Expressions
97. Making Your Resources Scrapable with a REST Interface
98. Making Your Resources Scrapable with XML-RPC
99. Creating an IM Interface
100. Going Beyond the Book
what is in a name?.......2005-12-30
well, sometimes a generalizing lie.
.
IMHO, this book should have been named "(some) Spidering Hacks using Perl"
.
the "100" and "industrial strength" sale pitches they could have spared from the title as well
.
the very little python and java code that was either mentioned and/or included as code examples I think was as a way to pepper the content and apparently make it more appealing to a broader audience
.
._ the book is mostly about Perl scripts (you could compile Perl to C and then use c2java, for example, but why bothering if, as I noticed right away, it was mostly toy code?) I wonder what the "industrial strength" thing was all about.
There is also some gnu utils examples (wget and curl), from which you could get better examples online
._ the book has "examples" that don't make any sense (to me) and not only that but you could see as a total waste of time, why bothering scraping amazon's pages if they offer SOAP/RSS feeds? And not only that but then he goes on telling you how to scrape a site offering financial stocks info, too!?!?! I would have started by splitting the book in two, cases for which you don't really need scraping at all and those for which you do
._ the author in an attempt to reach the "100" mark, included cases on how to download, say MP3 with Beatles songs and PDF files from IRS sites as separate cases :-? I wonder what the difference is once you have a connection to the data feed?!?
.
there is, "Web Content Mining with Java" ISBN: 047084311X and as you see the publishers/authors named this book after what it is all about and if you want to read about "industrial strength" approaches I would recommend "Mining the Web" ISBN: 1558607544
.
usually "hacks" books are about hacks, meaning you already know your stuff and are learning some hacks. If you know the basics of spiders and how to retrieve data off the Net programmatically this book is not for you. If you, on the other had, are new to this subject and are a Perl programmer you may learn a few things from it
.
otf
Good, but needs more variety of languages.......2004-11-13
Nearly all of the examples were written using Perl, but the few pages written with PHP contained some very useful nuggets!
I especially liked the use of the explode() function to split a table-formatted html report into multiple PHP array elements for individual processing. Now, if only the authors had included examples written for ASP, Cold Fusion, etc. they could have appealed to a much wider audience!
Many examples of how to use spiders.......2004-04-09
The book has a nice collection of case studies on how to gather data from disparate websites. You might consider this as showing a simple way for you to use Web Services.
Spidering is the way that search engines gather their data. But you do not have to be Altavista or Google to use spiders. Nor do you have to be scanning a large fraction of the Web. The authors demistify spiders. If you can follow their examples, then you get concrete instances of usage that might help your particular application.
Thoughtfully, the examples are mostly written in Perl, with a few in Java. These languages should be familiar to many. Though even if you don't know them, the logic of the code can still be useful. (That is, you can treat the code as pseudocode.)
While spiders are probably best known as being used by search engines, they are really only the starting point for the latter. The much harder problems start when you have the data amassed by a spider. Now you have to efficiently find correlations between the various web pages. You should be aware that the book does not discuss these with any significant depth. Not surprising, because these are outside the scope of the book. The examples do show how to use the data found by spiders. But most of these are for web pages that sit in a given domain. So the pages are closely affiliated in content and structure.
Customer Reviews:
Small on plot, big on action.......2001-05-03
The Trapster, Titania, Graviton, the Rhino, Magneto, the Incredible Hulk, the Shocker, the Brothers Grimm, Hydro-Man, the Super Soldier Eliminator, Goliath, Dragon Man....Spidey takes them all on single handed - and decks them - in this entertaining trade paperback. True, it's just a series of epic battles with little plot, but who cares when you get to see Spidey blasting Titania through a truck and punching the Hulk into orbit? This is action-packed, and when I say action packed, I MEAN action-packed. New York is almost completely demolished by the climax.
If that wasn't enough, this book also features Doctor Doom, the Puma, the Red Skull, the Wizard, Loki and more in an adventure which sees the wallcrawler pick up some astonishing new powers, and forfill his destiny by battling the enormous Tri-Sentinel to stop it killing millions. Alex Saviuk, Erik Larsen, Todd MacFarlane and personal favourite Sal Buscema supply the artwork. Light, episodic, non-stop Spidey action.
The best spiderman saga ever........2000-02-25
In this amazing adventure we find our freindly neighboorhood spiderman facing his toughest challenge as doctor, doom kingpin, Loki, and the wizard team up and send a variety of supervillins at spiderman hoping to confuse his and attack his weaknsess. This tactic almost works but spiderman is zapped by a mysterios burst of energy that give his almost god like power. Spiderman always felt a stong responsibility for having his powers now he stuggles with having more power then he can handel. I strongly recommend thisnovel to anyone who likes spiderman or any superpowered hero.
Average customer rating:
|
Charlotte's Web (paper-over-board)
E. B. White
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Fiction
| Farm Animals
| Animals
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Classics by Age
| Literature
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Literature
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
White, E.B.
| ( W )
| Authors & Illustrators, A-Z
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Williams, Garth
| ( W )
| Authors & Illustrators, A-Z
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Fiction
| Farm Animals
| Animals
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Williams, Garth
| ( W )
| Authors & Illustrators, A-Z
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Classics by Age
| Literature
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
General
| Literature
| Children's Books
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
All 4-for-3 Deals
| 4-for-3 Books Store
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
Stuart Little 60th Anniversary Edition
-
Charlotte's Web (Full Screen Edition)
-
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
-
James and the Giant Peach
-
The Trumpet of the Swan
ASIN: 0061124958
Release Date: 2006-05-09 |
Book Description
What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done.
-- Eudora Welty, the New York Times Book Review
These are the words in Charlotte's web, high in the barn. Her spiderweb tells of her feelings for a little pig named Wilbur, as well as the feelings of a little girl named Fern...who loves Wilbur, too. Their love has been shared by millions of readers.
Book Description
The fifth book in the Irish medieval mystery series finds Sister Fidelma investigating a murder in a seemingly tranquil town, only to uncover a web of secrets that everyone wants to keep hidden. And now she must race to discover the truth before she becomes the next victim....
"[Sister Fidelma is] a brilliant and beguiling heroine."-Publishers Weekly
"The literary successor to Ellis Peters' Brother Cadfael."-Southern Star (Ireland)
"A treat for history buffs who devoured Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization."-Booklist
Customer Reviews:
Fifth Book in a Captivating Series.......2007-02-01
The author Peter Tremayne obviously has a great knowledge of Ireland in the 7th century and also on the Irish Law of the period. His Sister Fidelma book are attracting what can only be described as a cult following, but they are of interest to anyone who likes historical novels or mysteries. This series of books are set in Ireland in the 7th century, a time when there was total equality for women. The lead character is the beguiling Sister Fidelma. She is a brilliant scholar, a leading authority on Irish law and the sister of a king. This is also a period in history when celibacy was not yet a part of religious life.
In this, the fifth book in the series of Sister Fidelma mysteries the Sister is called to investigate a murder, in what on the surface seems to be a normal peaceful town. But while there Fidelma uncovers a web of secrets that everyone seems to want to keep hidden. What is worse Fidelma has a race against time to discover the truth, or she is likely to be the next victim.
Not Great, but Worth Exploring.......2003-08-01
The Spiders Web finds Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf summoned to the valley of Araglin to investigate a double homicide. One courpse, that of the village chieftan is discovered with Araglin's deaf and mute citizen, Moen, standing over the body with a bloody knife. Upon arrival, Sister Fidelma soon realizes that the evidence does not add up to Moen being guilty of the murders. As Fidelma seeks to find the truth, more crimes are commited, and more dead bodies are found. Fidelma suspects the seeminly peaceful valley of Araglin to be brimming with secrets, lies, and deciet.
This novel set in Ireland in the year 666 has some very enjoyable qualities. The author's interpretation of ancient Ireland is intruging, stimulating, and thought provoking. His research goes beyond that of most historical novels, thus creating a world that has more than two dimensions. The mystery plot although fairly easy to decifer is enjoyable as well. However, the number of crimes and dead bodies that come into the picture as Fidelma investigates the initial murders is a bit over-done.
Tremayne's characterisations however, are not vivid or convincing. The character of Brother Eadulf is totally unbelievable. Eadulf is a high ranking Saxon monk, but his ability to find himself asking questions with obvious answers, in addition to his capability for putting himself and Fidelma in dangerious situations in unparalleled. Fidelma says that one reason she likes Eadulf is because of their ability to debate issues with each other on a friendly level. However, these so-called `debates' never come across like a debate at all. The interactions between Fidelma and Eadulf come across like Fidelma trying to teach a schoolboy a new concept, idea, or way of thinking. Eadulf rarely contributes anything worth debating in these conversations. He simply submits to Fidelma's supposed `higher plane' of thinking. Eadulfs constant lack of common sense is tiresome.
Fidelma herself could also use a bit of fine-tuning. She is supposed to be a strong-willed female heroine, but too often she comes across hotheaded and downright mean. Her interpretation of Christian theology is refreshing, but she often lacks tollerance of other interpretations and ideas. Too often female characters that are supposed to be strong roll models are writen as having cool demenors. Women do not have to be rude, brassy, and insensative to be strong willed. Unfortunately, Fidelma falls victum of these character traits without restraint.
Overall, The Siders Web makes for an interesting read, and escape into the year 666. The shortcomings of this book prevent it from being a great book, but still makes the series is worth exploring.
About my grading system: I interpret Amazon.com's five-star ranking system as follows: 1 star = far below standards, 2 stars = below standards, 3 stars = meets standards, 4 stars = exceeds standards, 5 stars = far exceeds standards.
Single Minded Sleuth.......2003-02-25
If Sister Fidelma buttonholed me at a party I would probably chew my lapel off to escape. Not that I didn't like the book-- I did, but she is a relentless and single minded character. And poor Brother Eadulf the Saxon-- always having to play Watson to Fidelma's Sherlock Holmes.
In this book she gets to be Judge, Advocate, Forensic Pathologist, Botanist and an expert at unarmed combat. Eadulf, on the other hand, sort of follows along providing occasional backup.
While I'm not sure that I totally agree with Tremayne's view of 7th century Ireland, the books give a good view of a time and place not usually dealt with in light fiction. The homicide body count in Araglin is quite high, not to mention other assorted lesser crimes from cattle stealing to allowing your animals to trespass on a neighbor's land and defecate there (very disapproved of). But depend on Sister Fidelma to sort things out!
A Rather Disjointed Story.......2003-01-02
I really like the Sister Fidelma series, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as the others that I've read. I found the story strangely disjointed, and the storyline didn't flow smoothly to me. The premise is a good one. Sister Fidelma and Brother Eadulf are summoned to a neighbouring shire to discover who killed the chief. It was thought that a poor deaf, dumb and blind young man did it since he was found in the bedchamber with the knife that killed the Chief, and covered in his blood. But Sister Fidelma dug deeper and found a family so filled with hatred, deceit and lies that it was quite frightening! She peserveres and uncovers the killer, but not before four more bodies turn up dead. And Brother Eadulf was his usual dolty self. Don't really know why we have him in these stories - a romantic interest for Sister Fidelma?
Fidelma and Eadulf Shine Again. . ........2001-12-02
This is the fifth Sister Fidelma book I have read, and the highest complement I can pay Peter Tremayne is that I've started reading my sixth. As a fan of medieval fantasy and Arthurian literature, I find the Sister Fidelma books right up my alley. Mr. Tremayne captures the spirit and essence of the times and turns them advantage in telling his tales. I truly feel I have been transported to 7th Century Ireland! Mr. Tremayne's other life as a Celtic historian and scholar gives these books a realism they might not otherwise have.
"The Spider's Web" continues in the vein of the previous novels. Sister Fidelma is called in as an advocate to ensure justice is done in the case of a murder. In the spirit of all great detective series', things are not what they seem. The good sister delves deeper and deeper into the web, this time, as in others, with her sidekick Brother Eaudulf. More often than not, Fidelma and Eaudulf make enemies as they draw closer and closer to the truth. The web grows curiouser and curiouser until the final denouement. Simple, not particularly original, but still effective! And the plot in this novel is indeed a tangled spider's web.
To pat myself on the back, I was able to solve this one on my own, before having it spelled out to me. But, am I ready to leave Florida to become a 7th Century Irish religious sleuth. I don't think so, but Sister Fidelma is the only person who could actually make me consider it!!
Book Description
If you’re like most business professionals, you could be losing $10,000, $100,000, or even $1 million a month on the Web! Catapulting your business online is easier than you may think. Thanks to new and emerging developments in Web technology, you can immediately reach more new customers — free. Plus, you can better leverage your “traditional” Internet marketing to get more traffic from the search engines and free publicity from the press.
Internet marketing veteran and Entrepreneur columnist Catherine Seda reveals how to attract new customers, search engine spiders and the press, simultaneously. Use this approach to skyrocket your sales while building your brand.
This book reveals the insider secrets of how to:
• Capitalize on social media, such as blogs, podcasts, and online video, while watching your profits soar from search engines, e-mail, and affiliate marketing.
• Maximize your exposure by building your online reputation as an industry expert.
• Recognize search engine spammers who will get your site banned and kill your cash flow.
• Mimic the successful Internet marketing techniques that have elevated the status of well-known sites.
• Avoid making the “Top 10” Internet marketing mistakes as revealed by industry leaders.
This “non-techie” book is for: consultants, entrepreneurs, corporate marketers, students, investors, journalists and adventurers.
Customer Reviews:
Great SEO book!!!.......2007-07-09
Honestly the whole SEO thing can be a bit mind boggling for those who are just getting into it and like myself I needed a trusted source; especially one that was not overly heavy on the technical side.
Cat does a great job of breaking it down into laymen's terms, from websites, adwords and blogs; it's a great web 2.0 intro book for SEO. Thanks to Cat's book my web site and blog traffic increased several folds!!!
A 'must' for any businessperson who would understand the opportunities and dangers of the latest web developments.......2007-06-17
HOW TO WIN SALES AND INFLUENCE SPIDERS: BOOSTING YOUR BUSINESS & BUZZ ON THE WEB is for any business professional who has heard how much can be made going online and who wishes to take advantage of the latest development in Web technology. Customers can be attracted for free - and here internet marketing veteran and entrepreneur columnist Catherine Seda shows exactly how, revealing secrets such as how to build an online reputation to maximize exposure, how to understand how search engine spammers can ruin efforts, and how to mimic successful Internet marketing strategies. A 'must' for any businessperson who would understand the opportunities and dangers of the latest web developments - and a 'must' for any library serious about catering to modern business people.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Making the Internet less overwhelming.......2007-05-21
Okay, I don't know about you, but for ME the whole internet marking thing is so overwhelming. So much to do, yet so important to learn and master if you want to keep hands on in your business. Catherine Seda's book is so easy to understand. It's as though she wrote it just for me. And one important plus, I have not yet found another book that adequately explained "Spiders" in internet marketing. There is so much great stuff in here, I am still putting it all into practice.
Great online marketing and PR advice that is worth thousands of dollars.......2007-04-22
I learned about Catherine Seda back in 2004, when she published her classic book "Search Engine Advertising". Earlier in 2007, she came back with this other title, "How to Win Sales & Influence Spiders", one that handsomely complements her work and offers marketers and business owners alike a plethora of information to feed from and make the most out of the options available nowadays to catapult your business online.
With the assistance of contributing author Amanda Watlington (another legend in the Search Marketing space), Catherine covers PR, blogging, social networking, podcasting, e-mail campaigns, affiliate marketing, PPC and more sharing her knowledge while she interviews experts in each of the topics and wraps up each chapter with an insightful Success Story (read "case study") to drive the points home.
In the end, between the material covered and its relevance, combined with her fresh writing style, the book ends up being an enjoyable read that is worth thousands of dollars, if you apply her suggestions as a part of your marketing and PR efforts.
Demystifying Website Marketing.......2007-04-18
It's no secret that marketing on the Web takes more than just slapping up a website and hoping people will flock to your URL. Amazingly enough, I still run into clients who use as a haphazard method and believe they truly are marketing.
Now I have an expert resource I recommend so clients easily understand the components of Web marketing. My new secret weapon is Cat Seda's latest book How to Win Sales and Influence Spiders ~Boosting Your Business and Buzz on the Web. Seda skillfully explains the playing field on the web, and she uses language that is easily understandable even to newbies.
Some of the key points, you'll take away from this book are;
- The big picture overview of search engine marketing and SEO
- Step-by-step instructions on how to build links
- A differentiation between black hat and white hat tactics on the web (Reminds me of Mad Magazine spy versus spy. There really is good and evil out there)
- The good the bad and the ugly on squeeze pages
- Social media networking
If any of the items on the bulleted list sound foreign to you, I encourage you to grab a copy of this book today! These are tips and tactics you'll need a good firm grasp on when you begin your Web marketing efforts. You'll discover when you read the book, but there's a lot more to Web marketing than meets the eye.
Plus, Seda uses real world examples with the big players (Fire Mountain Gems & Entrepreneur just to name a couple) and and entrepreneurs. By illustrating how it's really done and showcasing the results, Seda highlights exactly why Web marketing is so important.
As a writer and consultant, I was especially impressed with the example about article marketing to generate a six figure income from one project.
I've been following Seda's work for some time via her articles in Entrepreneur Magazine. I also had the opportunity to meet her in person at Lorrie Morgan- Ferrero's Speed Copywriting Workshop and for what it's worth Cat Seda is the real deal. Her internet integrity is impressive, and when it comes right down to it, I'll do business with the white hats any day. After all, who wants to deal with the spam police? Read this book and you'll be on the right track.
Books:
- Chief of Station, Congo: Fighting the Cold War in a Hot Zone
- Civil Rights Chronicle (The African-American Struggle for Freedom)
- Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality
- Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy And the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East
- Conservatives Without Conscience
- Created Equal, Brief Edition, Single Volume Edition
- Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War (American Empire Project)
- Democracy: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
- Doing Democracy
- Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit
- Designing with Succulents
- What to Do with The Rest of Your Life : America's Top Career Coach Shows You How to Find or Create t
- A Field Guide to Rocky Mountain Wildflowers: Northern Arizona and New Mexico to British Columbia
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
- History: Fiction or Science
- Being Lucky: Reminiscences and Reflections
- Blue Book of Gun Values
- Wiley Practitioner's Guide to GAAS 2003: Covering all SASs, SSAEs, SSARs, and Interpretations
- Marine Painting in Oil
The Secret Garden (HarperClassics)
Mr. Popper's Penguins
