Happily Ever 3X09_3X10

O'Reilly just rocked your world

O'Reilly is one of my favorite publishers for their innovation and support of the open source and security communities. And their principled stance on eBooks, while keeping them off the Kindle, is good seasoning by me too.

And now they've brought continuous publishing to fruition through their Live Editions.

I'll say it again... Amazon and Skiff need to get together with O'Reilly and bring an era of eBook peace and harmony to the world. Cue music, lights, fog machines, and clouds. Cheers, -Pk

Book watch: The Watchers

Since Yule I've been wanting to get "The Watchers" and figure out how to get Shane Harris to keynote something big. Harris wrote a great preview in the WSJ and I expect plenty of coverage when this book hits the mainstream.

Surveillance society, police state, whatever you want to call it... things just aren't going in a healthy free direction anywhere in the anglo-axis. Furthermore, what is the ROI from the *cough* War on Terror so far? Set aside legalities and, oh, the US Constitution for a moment.. could the *cough cough* War on Terror be fought without the extensive surveillance society? And furthermore, can professionals in private settings learn from Guv'ment missteps?

Buy this book early and often. And prey on Amazon Vine. Cheers, -Pk

What e-readers need next

As I continue to donate, Freecycle, and occasionally burn my book collection my requirements of e-readers get more complex. And for my purposes only e-ink devices will do (so no XXXL iPhone). Here is a short list of what I think is missing from the currently announced crop of e-readers.

• Security. You want me to put my engineering documents, presentations, etc. on them but you have no defined security model, encrypted storage, over-the-wire self-destruct, etc.?
• External display. Again, carry my documents but can't get them via cable or BlueTooth to a projector?
• Integration with BlackBerry Connect and similar services for email and calender use.
• Support for multiple profiles for family use along with the already established multi-device syncing capabilities. Just set two or three of these around the house for the whole family to use.

If you can manufacture a fully-capable tablet computer with e-ink display and days worth of battery for cutthroat prices then great. Until then I don't expect tablets, regardless of who backs them, to take away from the Kindles and Skiffs of the world. Third-party developers will start porting CRM, ERP, and other resource planning systems to e-reader devices too. I also expect e-reader rentals with unlimited access to news and books to be available at airports.

Of course this is all a matter of preference really so we'll see how the market shifts. -Pk

Book review: Reality Check

Guy Kawasaki is always a smooth, entertaining, and frictionless read. His main talent seems to be in selling books because I keep buying them and not really learning much from them. The occasional laughter or material for an eventual amateur comedy night is about all I walk away with in the end. Yet somehow I feel engrossed and satisfied during the read. "Reality Check" was no different and once again I feel foolish in the end.

If you're looking for your first tome about starting a business, especially a technology business, then this is a reasonable book. It has all the basics of Silicon Valley infectious start-ups and attitude. If you've read anything decent before or even attended your local community small business development course then you should pass. And if you have no idea what book to look for consider Executive Book Summaries to get distilled flavor from a lot of business books.

With that said there is a specific benefit reading Guy Kawasaki provided me.. it helped me understand effective self-promotion and marketing. If you read this book trying to take stylistic cues and language then you might learn quite a bit. It's not worth buying for just that purpose but it's something to consider if it's already in a shelf accessible to you.

This isn't really a review, I couldn't write a real review of this as a book. Perhaps as a graphic novel with a *KAPOW* on occasion but otherwise I just can't find enough enlightening meat. Sorry Guy but this is a miss. -Pk