Tag: Reading

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Latest read: Free The future of a radical price

Just finished reading Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson.  I very much enjoyed his previous book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More. (review here)  The first time I read about this idea was an article he wrote in his 2008 Wired article.  Have to admit I was skeptical.  Free invites you to learn about new “radical sales techniques” that have actually been around for some time, but could not take off without the influence of the global internet economy.

And YES you can read his book for free online at Scribd and at Google Books.  You can also download a full unabridged 6 hour audiobook for free — or purchase a 3 hour abridged copy.  Get it?

Like me, if you have not been paying close attention to the Free Economy, there is much to learn from this book.

Anderson traces the history of “free” products (Gillette razor blades in 1895 and even Jello) and services and intelligently outlines how “free” is driving sales in our culture today.  Even in our current economic recession.

He introduces the idea by recalling a famous announcement from Monty Python, who’s pirated movies were already on YouTube.  They decided to establish their own YouTube channel, place higher quality clips online with links to their DVD products….and placed a hilarious insult letter to all their fans.

Even though they were placing movies online for free, fans purchased their DVDs at Amazon, driving them to the #2 sales rank with an increased sales volume of 23,000%.  That’s no typo: a 23,000% sales jump!  Clearly Free can work.

Anderson has done great research to help explain (he calls them “sidebars” in the book) to help you see where you have already run across “free” in your daily life including radical ideas including air travel, cars, silverware, textbooks and even a university education.

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Design Education Globalization Innovation Internet2 Network OLPC OpenSource Reading Rich media Smartphone Technology

Latest read: The Future of the Internet

Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University wrote The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. This book is very interesting for all the wrong reasons. BTW: The cover is not an actual photo rather a Photoshop’d image. However the image clearly represents his message.

The Future of the Internet

Zittrain documents that existing, closed, controlled systems are damaging the internet an if continued, he writes will negatively impact our future access and interaction.  I enjoyed reading the book and dedicated blog established by Zittrain to keep his conversations moving forward.

The book is about Generativity impacting the internet.  Ultimately his argument is to place generativity at the core of all open technologies that tap into the internet.

Zittrain begins Part I in the book with a tbit of historical reflection: The Battle of the Boxes, Battle of the Networks and CyberSecurity.  He followed on the impact of legal lessons learned from Wikipedia.  There are plenty of examples how open, generativity systems make the internet better.  Here are a couple of examples Zittrain addressed that do not:

Law enforcement agencies have used network devices to manually turn on OnStar (the in-vehicle security, communications, and diagnostics system from GM) to record and monitor conversations of unknowing passengers.  OnStar is installed in over 50 models of GM cars alone.

The FBI requested from a judge the ability to turn on the microphone of a unsuspecting cell phone owner allowing law enforcement to tap, track and record conversations.

Think about that for a moment. Ever take a picture with your digital camera or cell phone?  Millions of people do this everyday and upload content to photo-sharing websites like Flickr.  Can you imagine taking a series of photographs — only to later realize the camera (via remote commands) copied all your photos without your knowledge.  Zittrain addresses how your personal content can be affected by a judge in Texas while you live … say in Ohio.  Don’t believe it? Read Chapter 5: Tethered Appliances, Software as Service and Perfect Enforcement” to see how a judge in Marshall Texas did just that — regarding a copyright case involving TiVo.

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Education Reading

Jump in line now

I’m a fan of Gladwell’s previous works The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (review posted here) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (review posted here) naturally I’m glad to see his new release Outliers: The Story of Success is scheduled to hit bookshelves everywhere this November.

If you enjoyed his previous work, I’m sure you’ll agree it will be worth the wait.

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Education Reading

Latest read: The Last Lecture

Have you ever been so moved by an event that you drop just about everything and rip through a book as quickly as possible?  Along with millions of people (6.5 million actually) I watched Randy Pausch’s famous last lecture at Carnegie Mellon on September 18, 2007 and was very moved to read his bookThe Last Lecture.

It goes without saying that the news of his passing was very sad.  And to make matters worse, I was unable to finish his book before his death. This has left me with a sense of being cheated in some way.

The book is very much the lecture with a bit more background on all his points from his famous presentation.

Randy wrote about one of the more important projects that has been handed over to a former student, Alice which is available at Alice.org.

Alice is a breakthrough 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing.  And best of all for schools and educators, Alice is FREE.

This project helps young children learn computer programming.  His description in this book has provided a bit of inspiration for me to talk with my niece Maya about becoming a computer programmer.

Thanks to Randy and his students, young girls including my niece will be able to learn computer programming and use this as a foundation for their education.  His work lives on….and that’s a great thing.

Book website | Oprah Winfrey Show Appearance

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Design Education Globalization OpenSource Reading

Latest read: Once You’re Lucky Twice You’re Good

There was something from Sarah Lacy’s book Once You’re Lucky Twice You’re Good which really hit home.  Today kids look to FaceBook as their exclusive communication tool.  They don’t do email like our generation overdoes email.

That’s a key indicator of how different today’s Web2.0 kids are changing the rules.  Can the establishment keep up with them?  Well see in the very short term future.

This was a great read and I must thank Kate Olson who was able to get a copy for me to read and post my review.

Lacy’s book, IMHO starts with the best story first.  Max Levchin.  His inspiring story of fleeing Ukraine the night of the Chernobyl disaster was amazing.  He flees from a hospital in the middle of the night to later leave college to start PayPal.

Yes, that’s right a kid who flew the USSR makes his way to Silicon Valley and San Francisco to put his amazing mathematical skills to use and builds an amazing tool that would later be purchased by eBay.

Sarah also documents the story of Kevin Rose, founder of Digg.com and proves again that Marc Andreessen really is a jerk. But from the outside many of us would not know the ins and outs of the Web2.0 world and all their financial venture “vulture capital” stories.  Pretty rough from the outside…but Sarah makes this work.  Interested to know more about the inner circle of the Web2.0 world?  Read Once You’re Lucky, Twice your Good!