Rethinking the Internet of Things: A Scalable Approach to Connecting Everything
By Francis daCosta
This book bypasses the hyperbole of many books about the Internet of Things (IoT) and addresses the qualitative differences between the Internet as we now know it and the Internet of Things that is evolving. As billions of sensors and actuators are wired up, the architecture of the Internet will have to change to scale up and accommodate differences in not only the quantity but also the type of information exchanged by machine-to-machine connections that do not have human involvement. The author, who has a background in autonomous robotics, embedded systems, big data analysis, and wireless networks, describes how a network could be built to maximize the potential of the IoT. Thought leaders, executives, and leaders in the development of standards for the IoT are the target audience for this book, but it is of interest to a much wider technology-minded audience. Rethinking the Internet of Things was a 2014 Jolt Award Finalist, the highest honor for a programming book, although it contains no code. Apress, 2013, 192 pp., ISBN-13: 978-1430257400
A Primer of GIS: Fundamental Geographic and Cartographic Concepts, Second Edition
By Francis Harvey
This book differs from many introductory GIS books in that it is concept-centric and software agnostic. The first section covers the goals of cartography and geographic science, how we represent the world, and a brief history of GIS. The second section provides a background in the technologies associated with GIS. The third section contains information on techniques and practices. The fourth section addresses the fundamentals of geoscience analysis. This book is designed as a classroom text. Each chapter contains further readings, web resources, exercises, and questions. The author heads the Department of Cartography and Visual Communication at the Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography and is a professor of visual communication in geography at Leipzig University in Germany. He currently serves as chair of the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographic Information Science. The Guilford Press, 2015, 360 pp., ISBN-13: 978-1462522170
