Java News from Thursday, May 18, 2006

Rabbit book

I'm pleased to announce the release of Java I/O. second edition (the Rabbit book). This has always been one of my favorite books, and I think the second editions's even cooler. There've been a lot of developments since the first edition was published in 1999, and consequently I learned a lot working on this book. Probably half the content didn't even exist when the first edition was released six years ago. Content you'll find covered for the first time in the second edition (sometimes the first time anywhere) includes:

Perhaps most interestingly, I've now added extensive coverage of I/O in small device environments where not everything looks like a stream. In particular, you'll find chapters on the Generic Connection Framework for J2ME, the Java USB API, and the Java Bluetooth API. Java isn't just for clients and servers any more.

And of course there's still the most accurate and complete coverage of streams, readers, writers, and filters you'll find anywhere. I/O's more powerful and more challenging than commonly assumed; and in Java 5 and 6 that's more true than ever. This book will show you both new and old aspects of I/O that you never considered. It's available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other purveyors of fine computer books. The official price is $49.99, but Amazon has their usual discounts. At the time of this writing it's $31.49, a 37% discount. Wal-mart, of all places, has it for $30.84. (I've finally arrived! Wal-mart stocks my books! ;-) ) Interestingly, that's a 38% discount, exactly 1% beyond Amazon's current discount. I wonder if that's a deliberate strategy to undercut Amazon? However, the cheapest price I've found is at Buy.com which has it for $29.99. Wherever you buy it, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.