Comments Off on In the Company of Good and Evil (by Winn & Power) February 21, 2002 — Last October, I praised an extraordinary book called Dot.Bomb, an entertaining chronicle of the rise and fall of Value America by J. David Kuo. At that time, I wished for more information about Value America’s technology, and a more detailed account of the pre-IPO days. Be careful what you wish for. Read more »
Comments Off on Dot.Con (John Cassidy): Worthless February 10, 2002 — Late last year, I read a truly awful book: Stephan Paternot’s A Very Public Offering, a poorly-written account of the rise and fall of TheGlobe.com. The company has consistently been cited by critics as one of the worst/best examples of absurd internet-stock mania, but this book by the company’s founder offered no real apologies, and provided very little insight. I don’t blame Paternot, a young man who was willingly manipulated by “market makers,” and who clearly is not a professional writer.
But John Cassidy can make no such excuses for Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. Cassidy offers no insight, and even fails to identify the “con” promised by the book’s title. And his sloppy writing, riddled with factual and typographical errors, insures that the book can’t be accepted even as a “digest” of the events he reports. Read more »
Comments Off on Two More Business Books (Godin & Locke) (February 3, 2002 — Over the past two months, during a lull in my consulting work, I’ve read more non-fiction books than I’ve probably read in the past year. I’ve had some good luck, with fun titles like The MouseDriver Chronicles and thought-provoking books like Republic.com.
Alas, I have also suffered through several mediocre business books, which manage to stretch a few interesting ideas wastefully into book length. Read more »
Comments Off on The MouseDriver Chronicles (Lusk & Harrison) I apologize that this particular “Perspective” is long and complex, but I could find no other way to write it. I hope you’ll be patient enough to read this one through. Read more »
Comments Off on The AT&T @Home Fiasco: A New Business School Case December 2, 2001 — This story comes in several parts. Read more »
(October 26, 2001) I read a great book today, cover-to-cover, and I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wonders what really happened in the dot-com explosion and collapse. Indeed, I’d recommend it to anyone who is interested in business; heck, I recommend it to anyone, period.
The book is called “Dot.Bomb ” (beware, it’s one of two books released this fall with the same title). The full title is “Dot.Bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath,” by J. David Kuo. (I decided to buy the book after reading a brief comment about it in the fall issue of Brill’s Content magazine.) Read more »
Comments Off on E-Commerce Business: Focus, Focus, Focus October 29, 2001 — Last week, when I read the book Dot.Bomb (by J. David Kuo), one amusing recurring theme was quite familiar. It seemed that every few pages, Kuo’s CEO would “announce” (or another employee would “suggest”) a drastic new direction for Value America, which was started as an internet retailer. Read more »
October 15, 2001 — A month after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I remain somewhat numb and confused, but my outrage is starting to take root.
My outrage is not at the criminals who sought to bring terror to daily American life, but at the Americans who have accepted terror and violence as proper responses. Read more »
Comments Off on Public Surveillance Cameras During my first vacation to Europe in early September, one of the things I noticed was the conspicuous presence of thousands of surveillance cameras in public places. Whether for general anti-crime or specifically aimed at terrorist campaigns, these cameras seemed to be everywhere. Read more »
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