Apple gets involved in Coffeegate – The Inquirer – Should Apple be censoring adult podcasts from iTunes?
Author Archives: Ron Bieber
Music giant BMG uses bribery to get airplay
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Keith and The Girl – Robots and Parental Units
As I’m catching up on the Keith and the Girl show, I just finished Episode 81: Earning Daddy’s Approval and haven’t laughed this hard in a while.
In this episode, Keith reads articles about new robots coming on the market in Japan and proceeds to talk for a bit about his fear of robots taking over the world. It sounds like this is the first episode in which his organization H.U.A.R. (Humans Unite Against Robots) was officially named. He then talks quite honestly about how crazy his father is and recounts interactions between him, his brothers and their dad.
This was a funny episode. If you want to laugh your ass off on the way to work, check this episode out as a really good sample of what you get 5 days a week on the Keith and The Girl show.
Microsoft Virtual Desktop – From the Power Toys Collection
Photo by rbieber
Screenshot of my machine running the Virtual Desktop Manager Power Toy for Windows XP.
So, I’m sitting in a meeting on Monday and I subtly glance over at Tom the Architects computer and I see him flipping through desktops like he was on a Linux box. This bothers me. This is something I’ve wanted on my Windows machine for a while — so this sticks in my head.
It winds up he is running The Virtual Desktop Manager, one of the programs from the Microsoft Powertoys for XP. A screenshot is included above.
This is a feature that has been missing in Windows forever, that I really got used to having on Linux. I’m glad to see it’s been addressed. You can download the Virtual Desktop Manager from the link above.
James Gosling : Happily Subversive?
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James Gosling: Happily Subversive? – Gosling writes about entertaining Subversion + SVK as the new version control system at Sun.
svnmerge – Subversion Merge Tracking Tool
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How does Subversion Compare To XYZ Version Control System?
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How does Subversion Compare To XYZ Version Control System? – Aggregation of discussion lists and email threads comparing Subversion to other version control systems.
UK scientist who linked smoking to cancer dies
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Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
I’ve been in kind of a weird situation over the last few months, as I have started about five books at the same time, as they all seemed important for me to read now. The list consisted of The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution, The New Art of the Leader, Smart Mobs, and The Wisdom of Crowds. Once I finished the first three, someone recommended the book Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. I put Smart Mobs and Wisdom of Crowds aside (again) and grabbed this one.
What an easy and interesting read! Steven D. Levitt is what some people call a “Rogue Economist”. His knack is looking at questions that people fail to look at and finding some amazing answers in the data surrounding these questions. This book hits a ton of really interesting questions, and Mr. Levitt does a really good job of walking you through the data and explaining the answers he has found by looking at the data from a different perspective.
When this book was first recommended to me, I was reticent to pick it up. Economics always seemed boring to me, mainly because I didn’t actually know what it was. One look at the table of contents piqued my interest and convinced me that I had to pick up this book.
Mr. Levitt attempts to answer some pretty bizarre questions. Some of these questions include:
- What Do School Teachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have In Common? – in which he explores the “beauty of incentives as well as their dark side” – in other words, cheating
- How is the Ku Klux Klan like a Group of Real Estate Agents? – Talking about the power of information, or more specifically the power of hiding information.
- Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms? – In which he explores the corporate like structures of the drug industry
- Where Have All The Criminals Gone? – The effect of things like Roe vs. Wade on the drop in crime rate
- What makes a Perfect Parent? – In which he discusses parenting and things like the effect of your name on your ecomomic future
The most interesting thing I got from reading this book is the value of data analysis and of what economics really is. The study of data and its effect on the social system. The subject matter is fascinating and another really good example of taking an academic area such as economics and bringing its value to people by articulating it in real world applications that make sense to the common man. The subjects he uses to illustrate basic concepts like incentives and cheating are something that every person can relate to, making the book a really quick and information packed read.
On a personal level, this book was extremely valuable as it showed me the practical benefit one can realize by looking at the data that is floating all around you. Finishing this book motivated me to spend a week digging for data to realize the effects of our conversion over five year period to an automated build process and open source tools to articulate the business value these decisions have made on the productivity of our development team, which was mentioned in the closing paragraph of a previous post I wrote this morning. Not only was I able to articulate the bottom line cost savings these decisions helped us realize in labor and licensing, but it also finally gave me a personal feeling of satisfaction over the amount of progress our teams have made over the past five years and gave me the tools I needed to interpret it and share it with the people who made it happen.
I highly recommend that everyone read this book. I realized a lot of personal value out of reading it and I’m sure you will too. This one was definitely worth the anxiety I felt putting off the completion of my reading queue to read.
Now I have to finish the last two books so that I can actually talk meaningfully about them with Tom the Architect.
The New Art of the Leader by William A. Cohen
I am currently enrolled in an executive development program for future IT leaders, which runs for a few months with sessions designed to help future IT leaders network with each other and learn about leadership. One of the requirements of the course is to read the book New Art of the Leader by William A. Cohen.
New Art of the Leader is extremely well written and keeps you engaged throughout with its numerous examples taken from history going all the way back to Winston Churchill, Eisenhower, Grant, and Napoleon. The examples are perfect for the subject matter the author is trying to address and gives you real life illustrations of the principles he is talking about in action, in a way you can relate to them.
The book begins by outlining and explaining the eight universal laws of leadership that the author defines in describing the “combat model of leadership”. Military leadership is used as the primary illustration of these principles because warfare is the “worst case scenario” in which these principles and laws are practiced.
These laws consist of the following:
- Maintain Absolute Integrity
- Know Your Stuff
- Declare Your Expectations
- Show Uncommon Commitment
- Expect Positive Results
- Take Care of Your People
- Put Duty Before Self
- Get Out In Front
Once the eight laws are defined, the book goes through a number of interesting topics, with many illustrations of them from both business and military scenarios. The topics covered include (lifted straight from the table of contents):
- How To Attract Followship
- The Four Direct Influence Tactics
- The Four Indirect Influence Tactics
- Developing Self-Confidence as a Leader
- Building An Organization Like A Winning Football Team
- Building High Morale and Esprit de Corps
- How to Coach Your Winning Team
- Secrets of Motivation
- Seven Steps To Taking Charge in Crisis Situations
- Seven Actions To Develop Your Charisma
- Leadership Problem Solving and Decision Making
Here’s the most interesting thing about this book. As you are reading through it, most of it seems like common sense. I spent a lot of time ruminating over how completely obvious these principles are as I walked through my experiences in leadership situations. Unfortunately, I also spent a lot of time noticing how hard these principles are to practice and how many times I had failed to do what, as I read the book, “seemed obvious”.
These are hard principles to live by. Many times you find yourself reacting contrary to the way a leader should react in order to ensure a successful team. If nothing else, this book calls your attention to where your shortfalls are as a leader and lifts these principles as a priority in your mind, making you more conscious of what your role is in regards to the people and organizations you are responsible for. It calls your attention to the fact, if nothing else, that your primary job is to value your people, build them up, and most importantly, go first. People follow those who lead by example – not those who lead by positional authority alone.
This book is extremely enlightening and a must read for those in leadership positions. For some, it could change your whole perspective on your job, calling your attention to things you may not have thought was a part of leading a team to success. For me, it called attention to things that I had already known intellectually, but many times fail to practice in every day life.
Both scenarios are an advantage to increasing your effectiveness as a leader. The illustrations from history and real life experiences of the author help in bringing these principles into something “real” that the reader can relate to, rather than a bunch of theory that seems either impossible or impractical to practice in real life. One can tell by the book that the author has done his research.
If your looking for a book that describes leadership in its base form, with real life examples to illustrate each point, this is the book for you. Grab it, read it, and take what the author has to say to heart. It very well could change your life and the lives of the people who work for you or with you at a peer level.
Bieber Labs 