Most of the obvious things have been said already, so here are some things I’ve noticed but haven’t heard:

1) I bought a DODOcase and it has been wonderful. It looks great, feels much more comfortable in my hand than the pas by itself, and it had kept my ipad looking brand new. My only complaint is that the corner foam pads don’t hold the ipad in very well when you’re laying down and the case is vertical or facing downwards.
2) there’s not a great pdf reading solution that i’ve found. Any pdf that’s formatted with wide margins is a problem. iBooks doesn’t preserve zoom across pages so you have to rezoom every page. Goodreader preserves zoom but doesn’t turn the page the same way when the pdf is zoomed. Converting PDFs to epub with calibre can mess up page formatting and stick page headers and footers in the middle of pages (this is probably because the ebb and PDF pages wre different sizes.)
3) My kids love it. Of course they love the Dr Suess books and games, but their absolute favorite? The Elements, especially the song at the beginning. No more “Twinkle twinkle”, their lullaby starts out with “there’s antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium…”

There’s lots more to say but it has already been said. If you use a computer to entertain yourself, then an ipad will entertain you even better and I would recommend without hesitation that you buy one.

If you’re like me (and let’s face it, since you’re reading my blog, odds are you’re like me), you’re probably what I’d call a Hacker News Entrepreneur.  By that I mean someone who probably grew up with computers, love them, have been programming for ages, maybe studied CS, and have an interest in starting a tech company.  Hacker News, a community news website run by Paul Graham and YCombinator, is a fantastic place for people like us.  There’s a mix of tech and startup related articles with some of the smartest and most civil discussion you’ll find anywhere on the internet.

If you read Hacker News a lot, you can’t help but have some of pg’s startup philosophy rub off on you.  Some aspects of this include quick iteration, incorporating user feedback, making things simple to buy and use, and taking something valuable but difficult and democratizing it.  The cornerstone principle and motto of YC is “Make Something People Want”.  A side effect (or maybe driving principle?) of this is that there’s a tendency towards having many small customers who require little support or interaction to get value from your product.  This does NOT mean pg discourages customer service – it just means you should make your offering so simple, intuitive, and well explained that most of your target market can figure out how to buy and use it without your help.  Indeed, not only do YC companies have wonderful products, they provide the fastest, friendliest service I’ve encountered on the Internet.

This mindset and strategy is extremely alluring to computer nerds like us because we have a stereotypical (and let’s face it, well deserved) reputation for social awkwardness.  For us, networking involves IP packets, not business cards.  The media is something you burn isos on, not court for attention.  Speak softly and let your code do the talking, etc.  For people like me, Jason Calacanis comes off as a braggart, a schmoozer, a suit, a talking head, etc (I’ve heard worse but I’ll leave it at that).  It seems to my kind that he cares more about the press than the product, more about promoting himself than creating value, that he’s got more hot air than great ideas.  I know that before I started watching his new show This Week In Startups, this is the impression I had of him.

What changed?  Lots of time watching listening to him talk and work.  (And I do mean lots.  Through episode 13, I’ve probably watched 25-30 hours of Calacanis TV.)  The impression I described before is a caricature created by people who don’t know or don’t like him.  Anyone can be caricatured – let’s do one of pg for fairness sake.  This is a guy who sneaks around college campuses, encouraging people to quit their education and give him the fruit of their labor in exchange for the coins he has in his pocket.  He’s telling the children (the children! Think of the children!!) that sleeping on couches and eating Ramen is the key to success.  Ridiculous, but with a grain of truth, just like all caricatures.  Given the chance to see anyone for who he is and getting to know what they actually do lets you form your own image of them.  And I saw that he’s an enthusiastic, generous, hard working, just plain cool guy.

The grain of truth behind Jason is that he is a hustler, in the very best sense of the word.  He makes things happen.  His gift is in always making something happen.  The contrast is striking on TWiST between the tentative callers unsure of how to express themselves and Jason’s fast talking, confident snap decisions.  There were a couple times when a nervous entrepreneur described their project to him and he offered to invest in them on the spot.  He’s often trying to move the conversation along when someone is belaboring a point that has already been made.  He’s a talker, a communicator, a catalyst.  He makes things happen in the real world.

That’s the key reason why all Hacker News Entrepreneurs should watch TWiST: For people most comfortable talking to a compiler, TWiST is your admission letter to Sales, Marketing, and Media University.  You’ll pick up a ton just from the stories he tells, the way he interacts with people, how he manipulates the media, and the advice he gives.  For instance, he demonstrated how to push peoples’ button to get attention when he made a PSA against Apple Fanboys that got a ton of attention.  It’s hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you see it.  It might not be your style (it’s certainly not mine) but it is eye opening and even if you don’t do everything he does, you’ll be a better entrepreneur if you’re aware of all the tools he showcases.

In Episode 13 (from August 28) he used several of these tools.  Every week he dhows how to advertise by example but this time he was more explicit about what he was doing.  Several times throughout the show he has a sponsor break where he has everyone on Twitter thank the show’s sponsors.  This starts with the couple hundred of people that watch the show live and then there’s a long tail over the next couple weeks as people download and watch the show on their time.  This gets a ton of tweets for the sponsors and cements them in the viewers’ minds since he gets them to take action in response to the ad rather than listen passively. (BTW, thank you to DNAmail, Ustream, WebSpy, and Audible!)

Another lesson (it really was a lesson, he prefaced it and everything by saying “I’m going to teach you marketing”) was about intelligently using money for marketing.  He had three contests for three different purposes.  First, he offered a $500 Apple gift card to the person who wrote the best review of the current episode.  This is straightforward marketing (using money from one product to market the same product) but amplified by the contest.  Next, he used one platform to promote two others.  He offered a Mahalo prize pack, a schwag bag with a Mahalo hat, beach towel, mug, iPhone case, etc to the first 100 viewers to see the movie We Live In Public that a friend of his made.  Finally, at the end of the show, he gave the promotional ad for audible (50% off first 3 months) and then chipped in $1000 of his own money to cover the other 50% for the first 50 viewers.  This was adding money to increase the value to the sponsor (people signed up faster – 7 signed up before the end of the show), increase the value to the viewers (by $1K) and increase the value to his show (because more people are participating in it and will talk about it).  So in a couple hours he showed three different ways to amplify marketing dollars and get the most attention and action for your buck.

There’s no way this next trick would work, not on savvy readers like you.  You’d never fall for an inflammatory statement that manipulated you into action would you?  Twice Jason use that trick.  First, when announcing the episode review contest, he said “I don’t know if this will work.  Probably only 5 people will do it.”  I wrote in my notes right then “Fat Chance”.  I suspect Jason knew exactly how that statement would motivate people and I just want to know how close his estimate was to the final number of reviews.  Second, when talking about We Live In Public, he called out anyone that considers themself a social media guru and said if they don’t see this movie, they don’t know anything about social media.  I’m sure this caused a lot of people to bristle and say “I’ll show you Calacanis, I AM a social media guru.  I’ll see your little movie.”  And they will.  And the beauty of it is, Jason got them to do what he wanted, and he doesn’t even know who they are! Watch and learn.

Enough about Jason, what else can you learn from the show?  Every week Jason and his guests answer questions from listeners who call into the show.  It’s a great opportunity for rookie entrepreneurs to get advice from two or more veterans, and the questions have covered a wide range of topics.  They spend 10-20 minutes with each caller so there’s a lot of quality discussion.  For instance, this week someone called asking about doing a consumer electronics startup, and another person asked about tips and pitfalls when consulting for a big company.  Previous calls have been about what to do if you’re have a family but want to do a startup, what to do with a stagnant product that’s no longer competitive, and many more.  All of them have been interesting, and if your topic comes up, it’s pure gold.

Something that debuted this week was Jason’s Shark Tank, where people call in with a two minute pitch.  After the pitch, they receive a critique of their product and their delivery.  Jason is even looking to angel invest in pitches he likes.  I don’t think they’ll ever settle an investment on the air but I wouldn’t be surprised if he does invest in some of the people that call in.  The first two were about a Digg for emotions, and a LinkedIn for teens (they both sounded better than the 3 words I gave them).

The biggest single part of each show is the interview.  Because of his media background and the fact that he’s in Los Angeles instead of Silicon Valley means that he gets a different set of guests than the usual Silicon Valley faces.  This week was Matt Mickiewicz, founder of SitePoint, 99designs, and Flippa.  Like most of the interviews, he talked about his life and entrepreneurial background, current projects, future plans, and tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.  I hadn’t heard of any of the guests before they came on the show so it’s refreshing to meet a whole new set of faces.

So after 1,700 words mostly praise (with the occasional backhanded compliment), is there anything I don’t like about TWiST?  The biggest drawback (which is also a strength) is the length of the show.  Most shows are about 2 hours, with some crossing the 2.5 hour mark.  I dread the day when there’s a Return of the King length episode what makes my iPod catch on fire.  On the other hand, the content is all entertaining and valuable, so I consider it an investment.  You really have to care about startups or the show just won’t be worth the time.  But if you do care about startups, consider it a free survey course from the University of Mahalo School of Business.

Having said that, I was very excited to hear about her new book “Bootstrapping: Weapons of Mass Reconstruction”.  It’s a book full of interviews with entrepreneurs who have successfully bootstrapped their companies from a kitchen table to millions of dollars of revenue or an acquisition.  I like this kind of book because it goes into more detail than a typical blog post or article, and the interview style is more human than the usual business book third-person style.  So I went into the book with high hopes, and those high hopes were met (with a caveat).

My favorite interview of the whole book was the first one, was with Greg Gianforte.  I’d read Greg’s bootstrapping book Bootstrapping Your Business: Start And Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money before and heard him talk – he’s an engaging, funny speaker and writer and I’d recommend him to anyone.  I also felt a stronger connection to his story because he was more of a software entrepreneur like me (well, like I’d like to be).

The interviews in the rest of the book were every bit as lively and entertaining, but most of the founders were in media, advertising, or content, not specifically software.  For someone who was interested in one of these areas, this book is a gold mine of experience and insight.  I ended up reading them because the writing and the characters were interesting, but the stories didn’t seem as personally relevant to me.

One more thing, despite the word “Bootstrapping” in the title, most of the companies either self funded or bootstrapped a prototype together enough to get angel or VC investment.  So it’s bootstrapping in the sense of product before investment, not strict bootstrapping in the sense of avoiding all investment.  Not a problem, just a clarification.

All in all, this book is every bit as good as Founders at Work, albeit with less well known companies and a media/content/advertising focus.  It’s a good read for anyone interested in entrepreneurship and would be a priceless reference to anyone in those fields.

Now, I have a driving commute and my reading has ground to a halt. I’ve also started writing much more in general, so I thought I’d pick up my old book reviewing pen and take another crack at it. One twist: this time, I’ll use a classic Threadless/Tim Ferriss technique: demand measurement. Rather than me choosing which reviews will be most valuable, I’ll let you, yes you, my dozens of readers, decide which of all the books I’ve read you’d like to hear my take on. And if I don’t hear from anyone, I’ll just write other stuff!

(Funny story that got me thinking about book reviews again: when I was looking at the Search Engine terms that led people to my blog, I noticed several searches for book reviews. Not bad considering I’ve only written four. I also saw “pictures of a head in a vise” and wondered what my blog had to do with that. Well, I have a category “Pictures”, my blog title is “What’s in Peter’s Head”, and I wrote a review of a book by David Vise. Organic search results at their finest!)

Here are the books I’ve already reviewed:

The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor–and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car! by Tim Harford (review)
The Google Story by David Vise (review)
Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor by John Allen Paulos (review)
The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken (review)

And here is a list of books I’ve read in the last couple years but haven’t reviewed (don’t worry, I’m not as anal as this looks. I have a wish-list on Amazon where I keep track of books as I finish reading them. A little text-munging got me this list), alphabetical by author’s first name, then title. Please leave a comment to cast your vote.

A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America’s Best High Schools by Alec Klein
A Death in Vienna by Daniel Silva
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: Including a Life-Cycle Guide to Personal Investing by Burton G. Malkiel
A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition by Burton G. Malkiel
ANSI Common LISP by Paul Graham
Basilica: The Splendor and the Scandal: Building St. Peter’s by R. A. Scotti
Beautiful Evidence by Edward R. Tufte
Beginning Ruby on Rails E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional (Rails) by Christian Hellsten
Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine by J. Storrs Hall
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature by Janine M. Benyus
Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
Bringing Down the House : The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich
Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond by Paul Shirley
Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels by Jill Jonnes
Contact by Carl Sagan
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough
Creating the Not So Big House: Insights and Ideas for the New American Home by Sarah Susanka
Envisioning Information by Edward R. Tufte
Flight Capital: The Alarming Exodus of America’s Best and Brightest by David Heenan
Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront by Lois Wille
Free Prize Inside: The Next Big Marketing Idea by Seth Godin
Genius Denied: How to Stop Wasting Our Brightest Young Minds by Jan Davidson
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 2) by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Book 4) by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Book 5) by J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3) by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) by J. K. Rowling
Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life by David D. Friedman
High Season: How One French Riviera Town Has Seduced Travelers for Two Thousand Years by Robert Kanigel
Home by Design: Transforming Your House Into Home by Sarah Susanka
Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences (Vintage) by John Allen Paulos
Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity by Joel Spolsky
John von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing (History of Computing) by William Aspray
Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire, and the Birth of Europe by William Rosen
Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega by Gregory Chaitin
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken
Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute, Revised by Jack Chapman
Not So Big Solutions for Your Home (Susanka) by Sarah Susanka
On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins
Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers by Seth Godin
Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva
Rich Dad’s Rich Kid, Smart Kid: Giving Your Children a Financial Headstart by Robert T. Kiyosaki
Satan, Cantor and Infinity and Other Mind-boggling Puzzles by Raymond M. Smullyan
Sixty Million Frenchmen Cant Be Wrong by Jean-Benoit Nadeau
Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel by Austin Grossman
Talk of the Devil: Encounters with Seven Dictators by Riccardo Orizio
Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss
The Art of UNIX Programming (Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series) by Eric S. Raymond
The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky by Joel Spolsky
The Big Red Fez: How To Make Any Web Site Better by Seth Godin
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Bootstrapper’s Bible: How to Start and Build a Business With a Great Idea and (Almost) No Money by Seth Godin
The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric S. Raymond
The Children Of Men by P.D. James
The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke
The Confessor by Daniel Silva
The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists by Michael Brower
The English Assassin by Daniel Silva
The Flight of the Creative Class: The New Global Competition for Talent by Richard Florida
The Golden Ratio: The Story of PHI, the World’s Most Astonishing Number by Mario Livio
The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business (Collins Business Essentials) by Clayton M. Christensen
The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen
The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva
The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan by Robert Kanigel
The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer (Great Discoveries) by David Leavitt
The Messenger by Daniel Silva
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition (2nd Edition) by Frederick P. Brooks
The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live by Sarah Susanka
The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt
The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life by Richard Florida
The Secret Servant (Gabriel Allon) by Daniel Silva
The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop by John Marchese
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition by Edward R. Tufte
Turing (A Novel about Computation) by Christos H. Papadimitriou
Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative by Edward R. Tufte

Thanks and I hope some of these titles sound interesting!

Quick Review: Hidden Order meets Freakonomics. A fast-paced set of everyday problems and sensible economic solutions that are explained and repeated in a way that teaches economic principles with novelty instead of pain.

Economics is a subject that some people fear, some people love, and some accept as a powerful tool not to be disregarded. I fall in the third group. I took one Microeconomics class in college and have a keen interest in figuring things out, or at least learning how they work. For most of my life, I understood economics about as well as most people: something about GNP, tariffs, and taxes and how governments handled numbers with a lot of zeroes. I was therefore quite stunned when I ran into an old college friend who was getting a PhD in economics. When I asked the usual lame question about working for the World Bank or the Federal government, he explained (patiently, with the air of someone who has done this before) that economics is about allocating scare resources (that is, all kinds of resources). That sat with me for a while until I took my own class, which taught me the mechanics of economics but not the purpose.

This book serves a purpose for economics, both micro and macro, that every intimidating college subject could use: a clearly written and accessible book (NOT a textbook) that gives a little bit of how and a whole lot of why. This book contains no math, no word problems, and a clear progression of ideas that builds upon previous concepts. Anybody taking or considering taking an econ class should read this book first to understand these concepts before they have to solve problems.

Some of the topics include how coffee is priced and who makes the money, how supermarkets work, why there’s traffic congestion, why American healthcare is so expensive, how corruption keeps poor countries poor, and what changes can be made so that standard of living could be raised for billions of people. The last three chapters about poor countries, globalization, and China, are both sensible argument and passionate plea to lower barriers to trade, encourage small steps that even the most poor and corrupt countries could take, and most of all, don’t forget about people when you’re dealing with economics. There are some killer takeaway sentences in these sections that deal with concerns that people have about globalization and free trade. Some of my favorites are:

· “A ‘no imports’ policy is also a ‘no exports’ policy”

· “Rich countries are mostly trading with each other”

· “If American environmental standards are really so strict, why do the most pollution-intensive American companies spend only 2 percent of their revenues on dealing with pollution?”

· “Foreigners are bringing dirty industries [like bulk chemical manufacturing] to the United States, but American companies are bringing clean industries to the world.”

· “Sweatshops [in developing countries] are the symptoms, not the cause, or shocking global poverty. Workers go there voluntarily, which means – hard as it is to believe – that whatever their alternative are, they are worse.”

· “Because coffee is such an easy business to get into, I am willing to make a prediction: coffee farmers will never be rich until most people are rich. If coffee farmers became rich but other farmers or workers in sweatshops were poor, the others would switch to farming coffee. High coffee prices will always collapse, until workers in sweatshops become well-paid blue-collar workers in skilled manufacturing jobs, who don’t find the idea of being even a prosperous coffee farmer attractive.”

The author faces and explains big problems that are in the news every day, and he gives solutions that make sense both emotionally and intellectually. What began as an introduction to economics turns into a treatise on how to improve the world, the environment, and the lives of billions of people. You’ll certainly get more than you bargained if you read this book!

About the Author: (from the author’s website)

Tim writes the ‘Dear Economist’ column for the Financial Times, in which readers’ personal problems are answered, tongue-in-cheek, with the latest economic theory. His other weekly column, ‘The Undercover Economist’, reveals the economic ideas behind everyday experiences from buying a cup of coffee to getting stuck in traffic. He is the presenter of a TV series for BBC2, called ‘Trust me, I’m an economist’.

Tim was the first Peter Martin fellow at the Financial Times and rejoined the newspaper as economics leader writer in April 2006. Tim’s other experience includes time at the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank), as a scenario expert at Shell, as a tutor at Oxford University, and as a speechwriter for Stanley Fischer, now Governor of Israel’s Central Bank.

Tim lives in London with his wife and daughters.

Other books by this author:

The Market for Aid by Michael Klein and Tim Harford

Quick Review: A quick read, a whirlwind tour of the brains and business behind a company that has changed my world and the world around it while I watched. It has an exceptionally positive tone, but that’s the nature of writing about a company that hasn’t ever lost a big battle.

In the interest of full disclosure, I love Google. I wouldn’t go so far to say that I’m a fanboy (no branded clothing, no pilgrimages to the Googleplex, etc), I have switched to several of their products because they were so clearly better while quickly forgetting the other companies’ products that I left. Case in point, the other day I was looking up parking garages in downtown Chicago, and one company had links to maps to their garages. I clicked on the links and it went to MSN Maps. What a blast from the past! I used to be one of the biggest supporters of MSN maps and told all my friends how much better it was than MapQuest (no one believed me). But when Google Maps came out, I switched so fast and so completely that I forgot MSN Maps existed. That was several years ago and Google Maps is all that I’ve used since then. Same with Google Search, GMail, and Google Reader (I wanted to use Google Talk, but none of my friends or family would switch, so it was dead in the water).

That being said, I even thought this book was exceedingly positive and almost hagiographic at times. Granted, Google as a company has had a charmed history from the beginning. If there were any great hardships, failures, or losses up to the time this book was written (2005), the author went out of his way to exclude or minimize them. But in all fairness, in order to go from a grad school lab to a garage to high-flying startup to $150 billion giant in a decade, you can’t have too many speed bumps!

The books is about the story and history of the company, but very little about the technology used. I guess that not everyone is as nerdy as I am, and a chapter on A* search, eigenvectors, and distributed dynamic load balancing algorithms probably would have cut deeply into sales. It explains in fairly simple terms some of the steps Google took that gave them a technological and computational advantage over their competitors, which I suppose is enough for most people. I did chuckle at the thought of Google employees scouring the newspaper for sales at computer stores and then organizing raids to all of the Fry’s electronics stores in the Bay Area when there was a good sale! Those people are now holding shares worth nearly $600 each, so their frugality was definitely rewarded.

The chapter about the catered lunches at the Google offices impressed me the most. I love good food but mostly get what’s cheap or easy. The best benefits I’ve had from work included sodas in the fridge and donut day once a month. The fact that Brin and Page wanted not only to reward and impress their employees, not only to keep them together and near work, but to give filling, easy to digest food that would energize their employees instead of make them sluggish. I thought it demonstrated the company’s brilliant attention to detail, performance, and economy better than any other story in the book. They carefully calculated every action taken by the business, and made sure that each action met several goals.

In the end, I’m a computer programmer who has heard the stories about how wonderful an employer Google is. The crazy, creative work environment, the wonderful perks, the innovation-centric organization structure, and of course, the food. How much of it is true is hard to say; Google has tight NDA forms yet seeks publicity and recognition for its hiring practice, competitors want to claim that it’s all exaggeration, and the company is too big, young, and prominent for journalists to get a complete picture. The impression I get is that the Google of The Google Story was a dream come true and an amazing experience for all involved, but now the company is too big, too rich, and too diverse for that experience to be universal. Some parts of the company may still be like that, but now matter how much they try to act like an exciting startup, there are too many facts of life that come with being an industry titan.

I guess this is less review of the book and more commentary on Google, but I guess that’s the whole reason for reading a book like this. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in “the Google”.

About the Author: (from Greater Talent Network

David Vise is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post, where his beat focuses on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and Time Warner/AOL. Vise has covered the FBI and the Justice Department for the Post, along with numerous other beats since joining the paper in the 1980s.

A 1982 magna cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Vise has an M.B.A. from the Wharton School and an Honorary Doctorate of Literary Letters from Cumberland University. A former Wall Street investment banker at Goldman, Sachs & Co., Vise also studied at the London School of Economics.

Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Vise started in journalism at The Tennessean, first as a copyboy and later as an intern reporter. He has been the recipient of numerous honors, including the 1990 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism and the 1992 Distinguished Alumnus Award from University School of Nashville. He also has won awards from the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association for coverage of the nation’s capital city, the D.C. financial control board and other ground-breaking journalism.

In Washington, Vise has volunteered at Children’s Hospital and Martha’s Table Shelter. He is president of Washington Hebrew Congregation and a board member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. David and his wife, Lori, have three daughters, Lisa, Allison and Jennifer, and live in Bethesda, Maryland.

Other books by this author:

The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History

Sweet Redemption: How Gary Williams and Maryland Beat Death and Despair to Win the NCAA Basketball Championship

Quick Review: If you’re really into philosophy or math, read this book. If not, go for one of the author’s other books.

I got this book because I had read and enjoyed Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences by the same author. That book explained a number of mathematical concepts like statistics and combinatorial logic and how they help understand everyday situations. It was a good combination of clearly explained mathematical lessons and clever insights. In addition to the usual mathematical puzzles like how you only need 23 people to find two with the same birthday, it pointed out things like how many people overestimate the danger of rare, spectacular events like shark attacks while underestimating much more common risks like obesity, smoking, or driving without seatbelts. It was brief, witty, and well written.

I had high hopes for this book, expecting it to be even wittier considering the subject matter. However, the book was less about being funny than it was about comparing the philosophies of mathematics and humor and looking for parallels. It also attempted to explain the quirky sense of humor common to mathematicians and how that helps in mathematical analysis.

Unfortunately for me, I’m not a mathematician, I don’t know any mathematicians, I’m not a philosopher, and I don’t know any philosophers, so it was difficult to get into this book. It had the same engaging writing style as Innumeracy, but the subject matter was too far from my current interests. I read the first half of the book but chose not to finish because I wasn’t into it. Learning higher math is one of my medium term goals, and learning philosophy is one of my long term goals, so I will certainly revisit this book later.

About the Author:

John Allen Paulos is a professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia who has gained fame as a writer and speaker, usually on the topic of mathematics and the importance of mathematical literacy [from Wikipedia].

Other books by this author:

Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper

A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market

Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man

Once Upon a Number: The Hidden Mathematical Logic of Stories

Quick Review: Sustainability isn’t enough – as business and the world population grows, society needs to move away from the current system of waste and resource extraction and towards closed loop ecosystems and green taxes and fees to restore the environment and the economy.

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution is one of my favorite books, one that made a huge impression on me. Despite many other books I have read since I read it last year, it remained my mind and I decided to look up other books by Hawken. I was looking for Growing a Business, which was recommended by Joel Spolsky, one of my favorite tech bloggers, but my local public library didn’t have it, so I settled for Ecology of Commerce instead. I certainly was not disappointed by it!

Hawken starts out by sharing an experience where he was accepting an environmental award on behalf of the company he worked for, when he realized that conventional sustainability measures like household recycling, refilling ink cartridges, and the “paperless office” would not save the environment or heal the planet. There were fundamental issues of far greater magnitude that have to be changed. The three problems are linear rather than cyclical resource cycles, externalized costs, and large corporations’ insatiable need for growth.

In the richest, most diverse, and most productive ecosystems on the planet, there is no waste; any byproducts from one organism are food for another, so the entire system is a closed loop where the same resources are cycled through over and over again. Once the ecosystem has reached this mature state, the only ingredient necessary to make it run is sunlight. This is true for all types of systems, from rainforests to tundra to tallgrass prairies and coral reefs. Our economy and society function like a different type of ecosystem – invasive colonizing weeds. We don’t seek a stable equilibrium – we take more and more out of the environment and emit wastes that are unusable and even deadly to nature. If our manufacturing and economic systems were redesigned so that any byproducts could be used by other businesses could use them as raw materials, then waste and natural resource extraction would be greatly reduced or eliminated. This would benefit the environment and the economy as the inefficiencies of harvesting and waste were removed.

Hawken’s second point is that although our market system is unmatched at setting prices for an efficient economy, it does not include the full cost of any goods or services. This means that because companies aren’t required to pay the costs of environmental or cultural damage, they can offer a lower price (and therefore have an advantage in business) than a responsible company that avoids causing that damage. For instance, a farmer that uses lots of fertilizer and pesticide on a single crop monoculture can sell at a lower price than a small scale organic farmer that builds up topsoil and biodiversity and employs more labor and fewer machines. If the first farmer had to pay for damages to soil, water, and air, his costs would be higher than the second farmer and his farming methods would no longer be competitive. If damaging activities were taxed according to the damage they caused, then all the advantages and efficiencies of the market economy would be harnesses to heal and regenerate the environment instead of destroy it.

The final point he makes is a rather damning assessment of the impact large corporations have on society and the environment. Because they exist for one purpose and one purpose only, to grow and make more money, they have the incentive to take drastic and destructive measures to meet that goal. This includes the usual cost externalization he talked about in his second point, but taken to another level. The world’s largest corporations have grown so large that they supersede any level of government and so have gained power over governments. They can avoid countries that have costly environmental protection laws and play countries and governments against each other when planning to locate factories and offices. They have so much money and the stakes of their business are so high that they infiltrate and influence government for their benefit, and to the detriment of the environment and citizens. He argues that although this single-minded pursuit of efficiency has been used for destructive ends, that application of proper taxes and fees would channel that single mindedness for good. However, the scale of the largest corporations and their ability to operate in multiple countries means that those green taxes and fees would have to be instituted at an international level.

Overall, this book was excellent, thoughtful, provocative, and well researched. Some of it was familiar to me because Hawken gives a similar, more developed argument in Natural Capitalism. If you haven’t read Natural Capitalism yet, then Ecology of Commerce would probably be even more striking. Anyone with any interest in the environment, business, economics, or social issues should read these books and find out more about what Paul Hawken is up to.

About the Author:

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and best-selling author. At age 20, he dedicated his life to changing the relationship between business and the environment, and between human and living systems in order to create a more just and sustainable world. His work includes starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce upon the environment, and consulting with governments and corporations on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy. (from Wikipedia)

Also see his personal webpage and the website of the Natural Capital Institute.

Related Books:

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by William McDonough

Other books by this author:

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Growing a Business

Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (available May 10, 2007)