Books

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Jon Sculley: Being Steve Jobs Boss

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Interesting article in Bloomberg Business week about John Sculley's new book in which he discusses his tenure after leaving Pepsi and becoming CEO of Apple.

This bit confirms what I have long said about Steve Jobs: that he's really good at saying NO, but that is OK because he is a genius.  If he were also wrong, it would be disaster. As culley putrs it:

 

Q:That drives some people a little bit crazy. Did it drive you crazy?

A: It's O.K. to be driven a little crazy by someone who is so consistently right. 

 

Amazon affiliate sales higher for available titles

In response to a UK publisher's strategy of making a DRM-free version of a novel availabe online for a limited-time before the book went on sale in paper form drew an agitated but smart response from Cory Doctorow, who has himself written a number of books and released them for free in their entirety online.  His rant includes  great data point about search and affiliate marktgin, and shopping intent:

I know from watching my affiliate link payments here on Boing Boing that ten times as many of you buy books that are on sale when I blog them than buy books that have to be pre-ordered. The Internet exists in an eternal NOW, and expecting someone who downloads a book to hold onto the impulse to buy it for four days is so unrealistic, it makes me suspect that this strategy was conceived of by someone who doesn't actually use the Internet.

The growing trend of NOW has data somewhere- I want more....NOW!

Link: Scott Sigler's INFECTED -- free download, inexplicably limited - Boing Boing.

Air Travel Security Update

I read fairly widely, and I find thata book is a great commute companion, escpecially with the NYC subway.  Tuning out the MTA with an iPod is often a close second.  I'm almost done with Assasin by Ted Bell, part of the Alex Hawke series, featuring an impossibly rich British-American commando-gentleman who saves the day.

The book features a fiendishly wide-reaching terrorist plot, and I  have just reached a description of an airliner attack over the pacific, with the explosive force  generated by a binary liquid explosive triggered by an MP3 player.  The book was written in 2004-thank you, TSA, for being on top of "the literature."