Authors: Elisabeth de Graaff.
Paperback, 66 pages
Publisher: iUniverse, Inc.
Publication Date: 2007-12-19
Edition: 0

Reviews :

    Elisabeth “Bep” de Graaff was just entering her teen years in Holland when World War II invaded her life. For the next five years, her life was turned upside down as she and her family struggled through the Nazi occupation. From watching bombing raids to hiding Jews to enduring the terrible “Hunger Winter” of 1944–45, Bep experienced more before she was 18 than most of us experience in a lifetime.

This, in her own words, is Bep’s story. She shares her memories of that time in her life, and how her faith in God has carried her through the trauma of war and her experiences afterward.

The Girl From Rotterdam is a touching story of growing up in wartime, and how spiritual faith can help one through the harshest of hardships.

...

Authors: Adobe Systems Inc..
Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Publication Date: 1985-01-11


Reviews :

    In spite of Parkinson's Disease, he has committed his life with his wife, to direct fundraising necessary for the University of Arizona's Neuroscience Research at the top of their list....

Authors: Charles Ferguson. Charles H. Ferguson.
Hardcover, 400 pages
Publisher: Crown Business
Publication Date: 1999-10-18


Reviews :

    High Stakes, No Prisoners is a sharp, brilliant insider's account of the way Silicon Valley really works: the sharks, powerful incumbents, and old-boy networks who play hardball all the time and the geniuses who make the products that have changed the world.

Charles Ferguson started Vermeer Technologies and turned his very cool, very big idea into FrontPage, the first software product for creating and managing a website. A mere twenty months after starting the company, he sold it to Microsoft for $133 million, making a fortune for himself and his associates. FrontPage now has millions of users and is bundled with Microsoft Office. But getting there wasn't always fun.

High Stakes, No Prisoners is the book about the Valley and reflects Ferguson's unique experience not only as a successful entrepreneur but also as a policy analyst, computer industry consultant, and academic.

Reveals A Great Internet Success Story

High Stakes, No Prisoners is a highly personal account of what it really takes to win as a high-technology startup, especially in the Internet industry, where any speed below warp nine doesn't get you to takeoff. From securing venture capital to getting both the strategy and the technology right, from dealing with Microsoft's power to working with some of the quirkiest, smartest people on the planet, it's all here. The Valley story has never been told with this much depth and honesty.



Reports from the Trenches of the Internet Wars Vermeer was right in the middle of the battle between Microsoft and Netscape. Both companies wanted to either acquire Vermeer or kill it.

Skewers the Sacred Cows of the Valley

Yes, Microsoft declared war on Netscape, but the latter's demise was caused as much by itself as by Microsoft. Ferguson, for example, sees Jim Barksdale, the former CEO of Netscape, as arrogant, ignorant about technology, distracted by politics and glamour, and running a company in partnership with a twenty-three-year-old who'd never held a serious job before." Here's Netscape as it has never before been revealed.

Explains the Real Problem with Microsoft Microsoft's business model is unquestionably one of the great creations of American business. But its power has become so great, its behavior so unrestrained, and its abuses so dangerous that intelligent action has to be taken. Ferguson's analysis of what must be done is a major contribution to one of the most important public-policy questions of our time.

Silicon Valley is the crown jewel of the American economy and a critical driver of American technology. It's electric, addictive, vulgar, full of brilliance, brutally fair and brutally unfair, fiercely competitive, often dishonest, tremendously exciting, and utterly unique.With High Stakes, No Prisoners, the real story has finally been told--with frankness, insight, and great wit....

    If you've ever gone out to lunch with a coworker and suddenly found yourself witness to a savage stream of unflattering assessments of bosses, wicked gossip, and the-emperor-has-no-clothes analysis of your industry, you'll know what it's like to read High Stakes, No Prisoners. Ferguson, an MIT Ph.D., started up a company called Vermeer Technologies in 1994, a rough time for startups in Silicon Valley. The country was coming out of a recession, the stock market was stagnant, and the Internet wasn't yet taken seriously by those with money to invest. Vermeer had a software program called FrontPage that only someone who understood the coming power of the Net could appreciate. Even in Silicon Valley, few were so prescient.

Most of High Stakes is the story of Vermeer, from its startup to its sale to Microsoft. (Now bundled with Microsoft Office, FrontPage is used by more than 3 million people worldwide.) Along the way, Ferguson met the players in the Valley and formed strong opinions of them. He describes Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale as an egomaniac and technological dolt in way, way over his head. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is "severely warped." One of his best lines sums up Silicon Valley as a place where "one finds little evidence that the meek shall inherit the earth."

But this isn't just the technological equivalent of WWF trash-talking. Ferguson is very tough on himself, too, and details his own shortcomings as a person and a businessman. Mostly, it's a gloves-off account of how things really get done in high technology today, as refreshingly honest and acerbic an account as you'll ever read. --Lou Schuler...

Authors: Tom Ashbrook.
Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 2000-05-15
Edition: 1

Reviews :

    In 1996, Tom Ashbrook was an international reporter who, in a crisis of the soul, resolved to join an old college classmate on the Internet rocket ride. THE LEAP tells the story of how he walked away from an enviable career to launch a risky new business venture, and it could serve as a template for anyone with e-commerce fantasies. As a deeply felt tale of a man who risks and rediscovers his family and purpose, it also has all the hallmarks of a classic.
Ashbrook undertakes his white-knuckle journey in pursuit of the dream of an Internet startup without business experience, a technical background, or money. "I always knew you would do something crazy in the middle of your life," his wife, Danielle, tells him as their relationship careens through a dramatic rebirth of its own. "I just never knew it would be this kind of crazy."
Ashbrook's odyssey is also the great American joy ride -- the story of two guys in the laboratory, in the garage, on the frontier, betting the ranch and then racing, half scared out of their wits, half giddy with adrenaline, toward the finish line. Success, when it finally comes, is sweet, but it is Ashbrook's story of self-transformation along the way that wins our hearts with its candor, its unabashed zeal, and the self-deprecating humor the author shares as he throws himself and his family over the edge in the middle of life to reach out for a new beginning....

    These days, if it isn't a dot-com venture, it's no adventure at all. But in early 1996, when Tom Ashbrook jumped from the world of ink and paper to that of computer screen and mouse, Internet start-ups were largely the domain of computer geeks and 18-year-old whiz kids--not exactly the most obvious place for a journalist with a family to support. But with big dreams and a midcareer itch, Ashbrook took The Leap. The result is a look back at those adrenalin-pumped years that's filled with honesty, humor, and a healthy dose of introspection.

Neither a geek nor a whiz kid, Ashbrook was an award-winning writer for the The Boston Globe, where he had worked for 15 years. Shortly after winning a coveted one-year sabbatical in Harvard's Neiman Fellowship program, Ashbrook began talking Net dreams with an old college friend, Rolly Rouse. Their vision was to launch a Web site that would present home-design information and images and enable users to create online idea portfolios and buy quality products for their dream homes. Ashbrook soon quit his job and plunged into the project full time, endlessly revising business plans, tapping anyone and everyone for advice, courting venture capitalists, hoarding free credit cards for backup "security", and forever trying to convince a sane and worried wife that he wasn't zooming headlong over a cliff. As a case study of HomePortfolio.com, it's a story of manic speed and energy. As the story of one man's midlife adventure, it's a tale of trepidation, fear, ambition, love, and wonderment.

Ashbrook writes with eloquence. His descriptions are imaginative, juicy, and always dead-on. For example, Harvard Business School "was a gleaming, vitamin-enriched, brick and marble and white-trimmed monument to economic steroids," and its old buildings "always looked next-to-new, like rich, pampered matrons on full-dose nip-and-tuck regimens of estrogen and plastic surgery." And he remembers the Myers-Briggs personality test "smelled a little like horoscopes for eggheads to me, with its big gumbo of letters and pat descriptions." Occasionally, Ashbrook's tendency to spice up his descriptions gets a bit much as he throws in too many metaphors; it's as if his brain is on hyperlink overdrive. Overall, though, his graceful prose flows with alacrity, and the pace is infectious. Forget the quiet comfort of your favorite reading chair; you'll be stomping down the sidelines, hoarsely shouting, "Yes, yes, you're almost there, go, one more push!" For that's what this is, a breathless tale of giving birth, an exhausting, exhilarating play-by-play of sweaty labor and life-changing success. Beware... it'll give you the itch. --S. Ketchum ...

Authors: Alfred Strohmayer.
Paperback, 254 pages
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Publication Date: 2007-11-25


Reviews :

    If by chance, you don't understand yourself; you don't understand why you are the way you are, take the time to reflect on your past.

Many answers are there waiting for you.

It may not be the easiest thing you have ever attempted, but it might just be the most rewarding.

In It All Matters, the author searches his past to better understand himself. He recalls his childhood and the people and experiences that most affected him. He relives his early adult years: a time of challenge, accomplishment, and disappointment.

Retirement brings frustration in an ever changing world he neither likes nor understands.

All described with enough wit to keep one laughing and thirsting for more. A dog helps to free restrained love. A man of the cloth shows him the way, and he turns to God. A son falls to stress, and he himself is threatened by illness. His faith is challenged....

Authors: Ellen Ullman.
Paperback, 189 pages
Publisher: City Lights Publishers
Publication Date: 2001-01-01


Reviews :

   

Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where "weird logic dreamers" like herself live "close to the machine." Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love, and the need to communicate face to face don't easily fit into lines of codes or clicks in a Web browser. At every turn, she finds she cannot ignore the social and philosophical repercussions of her work. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyber culture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation-it is the vulnerable creation of people who are not so sure of just where they're taking us all.

Ellen Ullman has worked as a software engineer and consultant since 1978. She is the author of The Bug and her writing has been published in Resisting the Virtual Life, Wired Woman, and in Harper's Magazine. She is a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered.""

...

    If there is such a thing as a typical computer programmer, Ellen Ullman is not it. She's female, a former communist, bisexual, old enough to be a twentysomething's mom, and not a nerd. She runs her own computer-consulting business in San Francisco and in Close to the Machine explores a world in which "the real world and its uses no longer matter." This memoir examines the relationship between human and machine, between material and cyberworlds and reminds us that the body and soul exist before and after any machine. The wit Ullman brings to her National Public Radio commentaries shines through in the prose....

Authors: Gil Amelio. William Simon.
Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Collins
Publication Date: 1999-05-01


Reviews :

    On the Firing Line: My 500 Days at Apple is Gil Amelio's gripping and fast-paced recollection of what happened during his seventeen months as the CEO of Apple. This is the revealing story of how a proven high-technology turnaround artist took on the biggest challenge of his careerand perhaps his life.

At once a frank revelation of the inner workings of Apple and a cautionary tale of business in today's changing marketplace, On the Firing Line is a must-read for Apple devotees and anyone interested in the politics of today's digital economy....

    It's hard to think of a company that has captured the public imagination as much as Apple Computer. The rise and fall of the business that single-handedly created the PC market and then let it slip away has been the fodder for several books, most notably Insanely Great by Steven Levy and more recently Jim Carlton's Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders. Now in On The Firing Line, former Apple CEO Gil Amelio tells his own story about his 500 days at Apple.

The book provides some insight into the significant events that occurred under Amelio's watch, such as Apple's failed in-house development of Copland, the search to license an operating system for the Macintosh, as well as details about those who would buy Apple including Sun Microsystems and Oracle. But the real focus of the book is Amelio's own frustrations in working with Apple's chaotic and undisciplined culture as well as Steve Jobs, the man who would eventually fire him. Although Amelio's account is at times overly self-serving, On the Firing Line is an interesting read that should interest most Macaholics....

Authors: Brian Harvey.
Paperback, 340 pages
Publisher: The MIT Press
Publication Date: 1997-02-14
Edition: 2

Reviews :

    This series is for people—adults and teenagers—who are interested in computer programming because it's fun. The three volumes use the Logo programming language as the vehicle for an exploration of computer science from the perspective of symbolic computation and artificial intelligence. Logo is a dialect of Lisp, a language used in the most advanced research projects in computer science, especially in artificial intelligence. Throughout the series, functional programming techniques (including higher order functions and recursion) are emphasized, but traditional sequential programming is also used when appropriate.

In the second edition, the first two volumes have been rearranged so that illustrative case studies appear with the techniques they demonstrate. Volume 1 includes a new chapter about higher order functions, and the recursion chapters have been reorganized for greater clarity. Volume 2 includes a new tutorial chapter about macros, an exclusive capability of Berkeley Logo, and two new projects. Throughout the series, the larger program examples have been rewritten for greater readability by more extensive use of data abstraction.

Volume 1 Symbolic Computing, is addressed to a reader who has used computers and wants to learn the ideas behind them. Symbolic computing is the manipulation of words and sentences, in contrast both to the graphics most people associate with Logo and to the numerical computation with which more traditional languages such as Pascal and C are most comfortable. This volume is well known for its clear and thorough presentation of recursion, a key idea in computer science that other texts treat as arcane and difficult.

The Logo programs in these books and the author's free Berkeley Logo interpreter are available via the Internet or on diskette....

Authors: Kyle Harrison. John Lusk.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Free Press
Publication Date: 2002-09-02


Reviews :

    Created from their personal journals begun at business school comes an intimate, insightful and often funny look inside the minds of two young entrepreneurs as they chronicle the adventures of their start-up business. In the spring of 1999 John Lusk, erstwhile business school student and budding entrepreneur, found himself in a very difficult position. Graduation was fast approaching and he had yet to find the 'big idea' which would launch his undoubtedly successful start-up business and his entrepreneurial career. He knew that he didn't want to join his fellow students in the dot.com bonanza but that's about all he knew. Then one fortuitous day he came across Kyle Harrison, another Wharton man shying well clear of the dot.commers and looking for a start-up of his own. But what Kyle had in his favour was 'the idea'. Thus armed with their credit cards, MBA degrees and the very simple idea of a computer mouse shaped like the head of a golf driver, sketched out on the back of a coaster, the authors chronicle their successes, failures and the emotional rollercoaster as they strive to take their MouseDriver from classroom to shopfloor. Full of passion, wit and peppered with concrete information, this wonderfully entertaining book crosses the boundaries between pop culture and business and will appeal to anyone whether they are a would-be entrepreneur or not....

    John Lusk and Kyle Harrison seemed slightly out of their minds when, unlike their fellow MBAs, they skipped on flashy, lucrative offers from dot-coms to become entrepreneurs. Specifically, to produce and sell a computer mouse designed to look like a golf-club head (a state-of-the-art titanium driver to be exact). "I wanted to feel the pain of starting a company," Lusk writes in this clear and insightful memoir, "to go into debt, have my ego crushed and experience first-hand the thrill of working like a dog for months without a paycheck." Since he also expected to make a million in two years, it's not surprising that all these come to pass. The duo struggle with the fundamentals of making and selling, run-ins with typhoons, shabby off-shore manufacturing, and soon dot-com envy sets in. But when the dot-coms start going belly-up, this little-retail-product-company-that-could shows that the basics of business still apply--a handy lesson for those wondering what happened after the dot-com crash, as well as any would-be entrepreneurs wanting to make a go of it. --Lesley Reed ...

Authors: Konrad Zuse.
Hardcover, 243 pages
Publisher: Springer
Publication Date: 1993-08


Reviews :

    Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computer age. He created the first stored-program computer in 1941 and continued to build machines for a quarter century, as well as writing books and articles. This is his autobiography--full of fascinating details of his life, work, and philosophy....

    Personal computers didn't appear until the 1970s, but as early as 1941, the first automated, program-controlled, and freely programmable computer was up and running. The Computer-- My Life is the story of Konrad Zuse and his revolutionary invention--the computer (or mechanical brain as he liked to call it), which Zuse built in his parents' living room. Zuse writes his autobiography simply and directly to be accessible to a wide audience of non-technophiles and includes hand-drawn diagrams of computer functions, as well as cartoons from his younger years when he dreamed of becoming an artist. The book also includes appendices with detailed technical information for the more technical reader....