My review of "Microsoft XNA Unleashed" by Chad Carter. XNA is Microsoft's game development platform for Windows and Xbox 360. This book provides a great introduction to game development with XNA, covering key concepts like componentization and game components/services. It also touches upon physics and AI. While the book is light on visuals and the AI chapter could be more substantial, it's a good starting point for C# programmers wanting to explore game development using XNA. It's less suited for experienced graphics programmers or those unfamiliar with C#. The release of XNA v2 might make some parts of the book outdated.
I read Chris Anderson's "Long Tail" and found it insightful, albeit a bit verbose. While many of the concepts about choice, aggregators, and filters felt obvious, the book effectively highlights their importance. I realized I'd already implemented a "long tail" approach on this blog by creating a tag directory (http//:www.kinlan.co.uk/tag/{anytag}) to link related posts and resources. This led to the development of Topicala (http://www.topicala.com/), a meta-search engine that aggregates results from multiple search engines based on tags.
I'm diving back into XAML after a break and reviewing "Programming: Windows Presentation Foundation." So far, the book is well-written with clear C# and XAML examples. While the initial XAML overview is a bit fast-paced, the layout section (Chapter 2) is excellent, offering helpful examples for each concept.
