Letters to Steve

Nice easy reading for the holidays...  a collection of Steve Job's email responses...
and no, it's not just a book full of "Nope" and "Yep"... :)

Maybe a little bit too close to the Steve Jobs Bio by Walter Isaacson which I finished only a couple of weeks ago.

Public Parts - Finished

So I finally managed to finish Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis.

The book starts (and ends) with a couple of excellent observations and thoughts on privacy versus publicity... and also how those two concepts came to be.

Good read... but if you know Jeff Jarvis' blog and other statements already, this will not be news to you. Also he devoted too much space on essantially a re-cap of his earlier book What Would Google Do?

I still highly recommend both books.

My Kindle Experience So Far

I have read a couple of books on my Kindle so far. Here's what I found out:

1. The Kindle is an excellent reading device. The e-ink display has the perfect contrast for reading... Once you started reading on a Kindle (or just looking at it) you'll never ever consider reading a book on the iPad again. Trust me.
   Not surprisingly, the display/e-ink quality was my reason for buying a Kindle:
   My actual craving for this device started on the tube in London, when I first got a glimpse at a kindle of a fellow passenger. My first thought was "This is a mockup". Honestly. I really thought someone just glued some paper on some dark carton, before I realized this was the real thing. (Well, the real kindle... not real paper).
2. Buying books for the Kindle is - of course - even more instant than buying a paper-book on Amazon (which is still amazingly simple). It's a matter of seconds.
3. That said, I still browse for books and buy them from my PC/Laptop. I do this very rarely on the Kindle directly. The userinterface and "browser" speed there is simply not suitable for this. It's a reading device after all. Not a tablet or a PDA.
4. Sharing books - forget it.
   With my wife working in a book store, we share a lot of books. It was quite common that I picked up a book which she just had finished (reading). Well, it's different now on the kindle, because I would have to share the device with her..
   So while I'm reading book A (on the Kindle) she of course cannot read book B (on the same Kindle). This used to work pretty well with real books :)
   Maybe she should get her own Kindle[1].
5. Privacy
   When you read a book - say - on the underground, everyone can see what you're reading. This could be embarrassing... depending on your choice of books. With a Kindle, no one knows what you read.
6. Publicity
   As I just said, with a Kindle, no one knows what you read.There's no visible/public bookshelf - in your home. So you cannot brag with your library. Most of us judge people by their library, in a way. And really, browsing the backs of the books on a friend's bookshelf sometimes gives excellent conversations and recommendations. This will have to work differently with a Kindle. You will have to ...
7. ... share
   So if you want to have the publicity about your reading habits, about your library, you'll have to do this actively, like in a blog, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google+, on Goodreads. You'll even have a bigger audience there.
8. As for the act and experience of reading itself. NO DIFFERENCE.
   We'll maybe for books with illustrations :-)
   But when it comes to being able to concentrate, or (not) getting distracted, or getting tired... no difference to a real book. I came to prefer the Kindle over books when it comes to the shape and how you hold the thing... it's lighter (in most cases), there's no clumsy page turning (as with thick books), ...

Don't get me wrong; I still LOVE real books. And I still read them... (see the problem with sharing above). But there is nothing to be said against the Kindle. 

--

[1] yeah right... like booksellers would buy a Kindle...

Public Parts

Thanks to the Amazon Kindle pre-orders, I'm now proud owner of Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis on my Kindle.

Or am I? "Owner" that is  - with all that DRM nonsense?

Anyway... I have it... and can't wait to read it.

In The Plex

I just finished this book:
In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy.

Excellent reading, good insights into Google; a bit google-sided but not too much.
I highly recommend this to anyone involved with or interested in Google... (even the opponents and Google haters).

Book: iWoz - by and about Steve Wozniak

A couple of weeks ago I read iWoz: How I invented the Personal Computer and had fun doing it by and about Steve Wozniak.
Only I forgot to blog about it then. So here you go.


Fascinating book... well, when I say that, it will not win the Nobel prize, but it is so full of memories.
That is,

• if you ever did something in hardware;
• if you ever (like I did at TechU Vienna) designed some chips (integrated circuits - not crisps or fries)[1] 
• if you ever designed a small computer system, with CPU, memory, and all the device controllers
• if you ever had to write BIOS functionality or at the operating system level
• if you ever wanted to do more with some gadget than the manufacturer intended you to do
• if you ever spent[2] days optimizing some machine instructions / assembler programs to use 2 cycles less

If you ever were a geek, if the name Steve Wozniak has any meaning to you... go and read this book.
An experience quite close to time travel

--

[1] by the way my first contact with SunOs

[2] read: wasted

Spooky

It's really spooky to listen to the E3[1] review on this weeks TWiT podcast, while at about the same time reading Freedom TM by Daniel Suarez...

What is being rendered as sort of a nightmare in the latter, has just been presented an demoed as the latest and greatest at the former.

Kinda gives you the creeps.
--
[1] the Electronic Entertainment Expo 

Book: Daemon - by Daniel Suarez

I just finished reading Daemon by Daniel Suarez. It was recommended on twit a couple of weeks ago as an audible book. I still chose to read it on paper.

What distinguishes this novel is the technical accuracy... Suarez does not just throw buzzwords up in the air. The are accurate, then he talks about IP/network characteristics and effects, DDOS attacks, ... etc etc

Totally nerdy & geeky.
But really good.

The Geek Atlas

This sounds interesting ...

The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive by John Graham-Cumming(jgc).

As mentioned on Twit two weeks ago.

Nicholas Carr: The Big Switch

I just finished Nicholas Carr's new book The Big Switch: Our New Digital Destiny
a couple of days ago.

I fully agree with his main observation, that IT (equipment, installation, development, operation) will move from in-house data centers to some IT utility providers, like we saw a century ago with electricity. No one will manage and operate their own CRM, ERP, Mail, ... in the future.

And just for the fact that with his book he brought this very idea to a broader audience, I applaud him.

Then again, I don't really like the rest of the book. Instead of describing what some players in the IT industry (IBM, Sun, ...) are doing with respect to this development, Carr just expresses his love with Google and its founders.

A missed opportunity.

Nevertheless, ... well, see my first point.

Glassfish book

I just noticed that Glassfish (the Sun lead open-source JavaEE Application Server) has its first book.

Java EE Development Using Glassfish Application Server

There is a review by Arun Gupta (one of my favorite Java bloggers).

More on Glassfish here.

Book: Core Memory

A computer coffee table book ? Yes, in a way.

"Core Memory" is an illustrated book full of great photos of vintage computers, like the french minitel, the Apple II, Cray I (with all the cabling), Zuse Z3, good old IBMs, etc, etc.

Book: Everything is miscellaneous

Here's the book link to my earlier post on Everything is miscellaneous by David Weinberger.

Enterprise SOA Book

James McGovern challenges the publisher of (co-authored) book Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture:

If I were to convince my publisher to make this available under Creative Commons would folks find this noble or throw daggers? Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is and make a strong commitment. If 50 bloggers trackback to this blog entry, I will ensure this happens by August 1st.

This is something to support - creative commons at work...
So here's the link... (count++)
Enterprise Architecture: Thought Leadership: Links for 2007-06-14

User Generated Content ?

I dislike the term "User Generated Content" for various reasons... I for example, when I blog, do not consider myself as a "content creating user"... much less a generator...
To me, it is not "content" what I produce/write/publish/"generate"... just thoughts, rants, bits and pieces of information ... "Content" is too generic a term to apply to ones own ... eh ... things.

As a consequence, I usually like to mock the term as "Useless, generated content" (fully aware that it of course can be applied to my own blabber here).

But just a few minutes ago, I learned what "useless, generated content" really is: just browse the "Books starting at 2.98 EUR" section at Amazon... the number of totally useless and pointless books you can find there... wow...

Scott Rosenberg: Dreaming in Code

I just finished reading Scott Rosenberg's very insightul journal-like book about the opensource Chandler project:

Dreaming in Code

Excellent book; a must (just like Joel Spolsky's writings) for everyone responsible for SW development.

Frankly, I sometimes had the feeling he was not too sure about how familiar his (intended) audience is about development.

But boy, it does good to be reminded of Brooks again (and again).

Scott Rosenberg: Dreaming in Code

Open Source conversations have a good interview by
Scott Mace with David Rosenberg about his new book
Dreaming in Code about the software development of the Chandler project.

Seems to be a good reading; I'm gonna buy it and probably report on it.
There is also a website with it.