Category: Brendan Eich

#2160 on Amazon

Ahh, is this like egosearching for book authors?

Now that our book is actually out I’m finding that I’m watching Amazon’s sales figures every day. Today we’re at 2,160 and still have a five-star ranking. That’s out of hundreds of thousands of books.

Well, OK, that’s fun and all, but what we find interesting is how few people buy it by visiting our book blog and clicking on the link on the site. It used to be that having a link on your blog or Web site would bring a lot more direct sales. I wonder if people are starting to ignore anything on the sides of a Web page cause they know it’s probably advertising?

If so, that trend will impact the big advertising companies eventually (er, MSN, Yahoo, Google) and will mean that the industry will need to bring out a new form of advertising to grow revenues and profits.

Remember, we’ve been through this before. I remember in the late 1990s when everyone in the advertising industry assumed that banners were the way to do internet advertising. Remember what came next? Google.

Back to the book. Dan Gillmor, former tech journalist for the San Jose Mercury News, just endorsed our book. That means more to me than anything. Dan’s one of the main reasons I’m on this journey.

“Just say no to Microsoft” an interesting read

Publishers occassionally ask me whether they can send me books so that I can review them. Increasingly I’m turning them down (it makes me feel guilty when I don’t write about them).

But, I met the publisher, William Pollock, of NoStarch Press at BarCamp over the summer and liked him and his books sounded interesting, even if they were mostly about tech topics I wasn’t that interested in.

Anyway, they asked a while back if I’d like some books and I said sure. So, today when I get back from CES I found one waiting for me titled “Just Say No to Microsoft.”

Now, on first reading, you might think I should be offended by such a book. After all, the basic premise of the book is to live life without Microsoft. Switch to a Mac or a Linux machine and all that. The subtitle of the book is “How to Ditch Microsoft And Why It’s Not as Hard As You Think.”

But, I find that I learn more from contrarian approaches than from the “everything is hunky dory” approach and this one hasn’t disappointed yet.

Every Microsoft engineer and product planner should read it.

Why? It’s a great specification for where our products fall short and demonstrates very well how our products and company are being perceived on the street.

If that was the extent of it (to be a bible to people who hate Microsoft, and to be a spec for Microsofties for how to improve our products) then that’d be a fine reason to have this book, but there’s more.

I actually am learning how to do stuff on Microsoft’s products that I didn’t know before. There’s a ton of tips in this book about how to use Microsoft stuff. Which, is sorta funny, given the title and premise for the book.

Oh, and John Dvorak says he isn’t getting paid attention to by Microsoft’s PR folks anymore in the foreward. Oh, John, I thought you were a blogger now and Christopher Coulter keeps telling me not to pay so much attention to bloggers (and particularly to ones that don’t seem to write much about tech)! Just kidding, you know you can just write me an email if you aren’t getting good info from us anymore. I’ll go shoot a video and get all the answers you need.

And, to Tony Bove, you never expected an endorsement for your book from a Microsoft employee, did you?

CNET announces best of CES (but for me there was another best)

CNET announces the best of show, which is a Creative Media Player. They have reviews on lots of other things, including the Celestron which won best of show in a sub category.

But, for me and Shel Israel, there was another “best moment.” Yesterday at about 8:30 a.m. when Shel handed me a copy of our new book. It looks awesome! Here’s a picture of Shel holding the book moments after we met. We proceeded to give a presentation to the top book buyers in the world (including the top ones from Borders, Amazon, Barnes and Noble). We had a spirited and interesting conversation. Much like this conversation that John Furrier (who is the #7 podcaster on iTunes) had with us last week.

In the airport Shel and I put it up on a bookstore shelf just to see how it looked next to Malcolm Gladwell’s book. Looking good!

The entire process of doing the book was documented over on our book blog (and you can buy it there too!)

Anyway, that’s definitely going to be the moment I remember from this CES. Hope you enjoy the book.

Oh, and the reviews are continuing to come in. Kara Swisher, who writes for Wall Street Journal, told me she loved it. There is no bigger compliment than that.

Nine Guy gets lucky in Vegas

Damn, that Nine Guy has all the fun. Here he gets a kiss from Amanda Congdon. The famous face in Rocketboom. I didn’t recognize her at first. I said “you look different when you aren’t in a 320×240 square.”

Seriously, she has a nice set of, um, archives! Rocketboom has become a huge success story. 130,000 daily viewers. Let’s see. There are 130,000 people at CES. Now imagine they all sign in every day to watch Amanda. That just is nuts. Here’s a picture with her and Andrew Baron, the other key member of the Rocketboom production crew. Oh, and how much do they spend again? How about almost nothing?

I met them at CES Camp, which was organized by Albert Lai of Bubbleshare. Great idea, and lots of fun! I left about 200 Channel 9 guys in their hands. We’ll see what happens with them! Bubbleshare is a cool photo sharing service.

The Tablet PC geek dinner was a big success (Rob Bushway has a nice writeup, oh, and everyone got free dinner!) Monstercable’s Chris Greene showed up and gave everyone tickets to see Stevie Wonder. Just got back from that, it’s always fun to see a guy who is a master at what he does.

Oh, and Chris showed off a new remote control that Monster Cable is working on. Controls everything in your entertainment center plus your home automation stuff too. I’ll drop by their booth tomorrow for more details.

Unfortunately today I didn’t get to see much. I had tons of stuff I needed to work on (email, email, sigh). Tomorrow I’ll try to get to everything I missed and then head home late tomorrow night.

I’m excited. Tomorrow morning I get to see our finished book for the first time. Joe Wikert, our publisher, writes that he’s already had his hands on one.

I’ll tell ya what. We forced Joe to start blogging. And what a great blog that’s turned out to be. Special thanks to Jim Minatel. He is a dream to work with. Responsive, caring, professional, connected. I’d recommend the Wiley team to any new book author.

Another guy who says there’s lots of bad business books

Bob Pritchet, founder of Logos Research Systems, wrote me tonight and said he agrees with me that there are lots of bad business books. Proceeded to tell me about his new book: Fire Someone Today.

I was being inspired by his blog and found this entry that talked about a store that closed early, pissing off customers. Oh, that brought be back to the 1980s. My boss would usually open the store back up if there was a customer in the parking lot (we delivered refrigerators together after the store closed in evenings). He told me “someday you might wish you had that customer back.”

Do you fight for every customer? It’s hard to do.

I’m looking forward to reading Bob’s book. Oh, and Bob’s company? Has $9 million in sales, hundreds of employees, and hundreds of thousands of customers. Well done!

Ending 2005 in a book store

We often don’t realize what we have until it’s gone. Today Patrick and I were reading books in Silicon Valley’s Barnes and Noble bookstore. The big one on Stevens Creek. Anyway, while I was looking through a Tom Peters book the lights went out. Total, complete blackness.

“Shit!” a woman next to me said. She wasn’t the only one. There were cheers around the store when the lights came back on after a few very long seconds. People do love their books!

Anyway, I spent most of the time in the business book section. Since our own book is coming out in a few days I wanted to see what the state of business books are.

They mostly suck.

I hate the trend of treating everyone like an idiot. Here’s a book that even teaches you to sell to an idiot. Why would you want to do business with an idiot? They might take their business elsewhere even though you’re better.

And what’s up with the trend that says you have to be a jerk to succeed in business? Here’s a book that tells women that nice girls don’t get the corner office. Has everyone gone all Donald Trump?

What’s the point of getting a corner office if you have no friends and people don’t like you?

I looked through dozens of books and I still love Tom Peters’ books the best. He’s one guy who challenges your assumptions.

Here’s one: he tells Microsoft that we should pay attention to senior citizens in his book “trends.” Huh? They’ll never use a computer, right? Screw that! Actually, he doesn’t specifically point out Microsoft, but talks to all businesses. Why are seniors important? Buzz Bruggeman, CEO of ActiveWords, told me a while back that seniors have trillions (and will pass on trillions in wealth over the next couple of decades).

Anyway, another trend in business books is the war metaphors. Winning. And all that. Oh, and branding. Geesh, if all you learn about business is learned from these bookshelves you’d just do Superbowl commercials.

I want books that tell me how to convince people to do strategic acquisitions (Tom Peters says that businesses must do weird acquisitions and not kill the weirdness that is in the new company). I want books that tell how to help a team make a great product. After all, at the end of the day that’s all that matters. To be able to build a great brand like the one Apple, or Google, or the Xbox has (yes, there were Xbox 360s there and, you couldn’t play one without waiting in line cause the machines were constantly busy) you first need a great product. Or a great store. Or a great service. Only then does the brand really matter.

But, building a great product isn’t something that many people know how to do. And, what isn’t often talked about is that building a great product is a messy process. Have you ever talked with someone that Steve Jobs fired from Apple when he got back? Neither have I, but I know they are out there (a former boss used to work with one of those guys).

Anyway, if you want a good business book I’d look to Tom Peters’ new Trends book. It won’t teach you how to be a jerk. Or how to fight a military battle. But, it got me to think in new ways, and that’s just what I needed to go into 2006.

Happy New Years, hope your new year sees great success in life!

Oh, and Tom, I know you love pushing PowerPoint to the edge. Wait until I show you PowerPoint 12. Wow.

Disclaimer, Tom wrote the forward for our new book. Oh, and thanks Andrew Watson for the very nice review!