I'll start with a quote from Tom Igoe, the author, who says "Networking objects is a bit like love. The fundamental problem in both is that when you're sending a message, you never really know whether the receiver understands what you're saying , and there are thousands of ways for your message to get lost or garbled in transmission."

Mr Igoe takes you by the hand and walks you through his world of connectivity and methods for connecting physical objects ... and it's fun! There are loads of books on networking out there but they do tend to be a little, shall we say, BORING ... rest assured there is nothing boring about "Making Things Talk". The journey includes the tools you will need, various networking theories, programming guidelines, insider tips from the author and loads of hands-on projects to get your teeth into.

The main tool that is covered through concept to implementation is the Arduino microcontroller, and, as luck would have it, the author is one of the original developers of this tool. You can read more about Arduino here. On the plus side, you don't need to solder, the software is free and the electronic bits aren't that expensive. This opens up the connectivity jam jar and allows anyone to dip their hand in and take a bit.

Mr Igoe says that the book is aimed at "people who want to make things talk to other things. Maybe you're a science teacher who wants to show your students how to monitor weather conditions at several locations around your school district simultaneously, or a sculptor who wants to make a whole room of choreographed mechanical sculptures. You might be an industrial designer who needs to be able to build quick mockups of new products, modeling both their forms and their functions. Maybe you're a cat owner, and you'd like to be able to play with your car while you're away from home." All these sound pretty impressive reasons to read this book.

You may have noticed that I like an author who can write and who makes me feel that I can learn from reading their text, I embraced this book with my usual enthusiasm and I didn't feel Mr Igoe lost the plot at any point in my reading. His writing style is cool, even when writing about geek oriented topics like Mounting XBee Radios on a Breakout Board.

This book receives a hearty thumbs up from me.