Reading today’s episode of hackoff.com gave me the chills.  Tom has deeply woven the events of 9/11 in his story as Chapter 10 happens on 9/11 (and several of the main characters are in the World Trade Center South Tower at the time.) 

While I wasn’t in either tower on 9/11, I was in Manhattan having taken a red eye from San Francisco the night before.  I got to my hotel (The Benjamin) at about 7am and went to sleep to get a little more rest before my 10am meeting.  I woke up at 9:15 (to the clock radio – I remember it vividly – it was a fancy Bose clock radio like the one I had at the time in my bedroom at home) to an announcer saying that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane and was on fire.  At first I thought it was a joke (I was completely zoned out from the red eye and generally tired from the events of the previous five years) so I got up and went to the bathroom as though nothing spectacular was occurring.  A few minutes later, when I walked back into the bedroom, the discussion on the radio has turned to panic, so I did something I never do – I turned on the TV in the hotel room.  I sat there for the next 30 minutes in a trance as I watched the towers fall.

My story is a much longer one, but as I read through George Harcourt’s email to his wife Janet, all I could think about was the phone call I got from Amy on her way to the airport (DIA) to fly to New York to spend the week with me.  She was in tears because no one knew what was going on and I hadn’t been answering my phone (I’d shut it off while I was sleeping).  I assured her that I was fine and safe in the hotel, that I had no clue what was going on, but she should go back home, not come to New York, and I’d call her as soon as I knew what was up.  That was the last phone call I was able to make the entire day, but I fired up my computer, connected to the hotel Internet, and remarkably was able to email and IM all day long.

The chills came from the story, knowing that Tom experienced something powerful that day, and unexpectedly remembering pieces of it.  There was no need to suspend disbelief on this one – Tom is really showing his skills as a writer.

Tom Evslin’s brilliant blook hackoff.com is grinding through the April 1, 2000 – June 30, 2000 time frame.  If you were an executive at a company during Q200 you’ve got to read Chapter 9 as part of a sick, twisted reminder of what was going on.  Today’s (and yesterday’s) episodes are the first of the “exec meetings from hell” where the public company realizes it is going to miss it’s numbers in Q200.

The entire blook – soon to be released as a book – is phenomenal and getting better chapter by chapter.  If you are a reader, give the whole thing a try.  Tom lived this stuff at ITXC and has done an awesome job of capturing the backdrop while incorporating the sex and violence we all expect from a contemporary murder mystery.

David Baldacci is in my regular “mental floss” book rotation – whenever one of his books comes out it immediately ends up in the “read when you need a break from serious stuff” pile.  His latest – The Camel Club – didn’t disappoint me.  It started off slower than most Baldacci books and it took me 100 pages to get completely sucked in.  When I finished, I realized that he needed more time to set up all the characters in this one, as he had a large number of interconnected plots.  My evening was sacrificed to the reading gods as I downed 300 pages of riveting storytelling.  Spies, conspiracies, government corruption, secret societies, old CIA training facilities, presidential kidnapping, secret service heroics, many bad guys (some Americans), a bunch of scary dudes running the country including a few that thought nuclear war was a solution, computer hacks, meglomanics, near miss surveillance incidents, characters with major pasts coming back to haunt them, OCD, a little romance, and excellent gunplay made for a good evening.

I needed a break so Amy and I hopped on a plane and flew down to Hope Town, Bahamas (next to Marsh Harbor – where the airport is) to hang out with some friends.  Hope Town is far enough off the grid where my cell phone didn’t work and while our friends had high speed Internet, I couldn’t get my computer configured correctly to use their cable connection so I chilled out instead and gobbled down some books, only occasionally checking my email via the web.

I started with The Real Story of Informix Software And Phil White: Lessons in Business And Leadership for the Executive Team.  Steve Martin (no – not the funny guy who played a mean banjo on last night’s TBS special “Earth to America“) has written a thoughtful and balanced account of the rise and fall of Informix Software and its charismatic CEO Phil White.  There was a point – in the mid-1990’s – where the real software industry battle was between Oracle, Informix, and Sybase for database dominance.  Sybase fell first (they shipped a product that simply didn’t work, missed their numbers, and never recovered).  Informix had Oracle on the defensive for a while, but then bought Illustra for $400 million, announced a product that didn’t exist, and then shipped a product that didn’t work.  Predictably they missed their numbers and fell apart.  In the middle of this, they did a few marginal accounting things which White got caught up in and our friendly, neighborhood government decided to make an example of him.  Martin digs beneath the surface and explains the actual accounting and legal issues that tripped up both Informix and White – after reading the book it definitely seems like White got a much harsher treatment than he deserved.

Bootstrapping Your Business: Start And Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money by Greg Gianforte was next.  I was on a panel – with two other VCs – that Greg moderated recently.  He started the panel out by asserting that entrepreneurs don’t need venture capital, that VCs add very little to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, and that many VCs are marginal excuses for a collection of protoplasm.  Greg has created several successful companies – including RightNow Technologies – and – as the self-proclaimed “nation’s top bootstrapper” – asserts that bootstrapping is the future of business.  Once you cut through the hyperbole, the book has lots of good advice for starting and growing a business – which apply to both bootstrapped and non-bootstrapped (e.g. venture-backed) businesses. 

Next up was The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth.  As a happy PayPal user and sometimes eBay purchaser, I vaguely remembered the rise of PayPal in the collective consciousness.  Eric Jackson – Confinity (PayPal’s original name) employee number 27 and the first marketing guy – has written an entertaining book on the creation of PayPal.  It’s a quick read that I expect will be an enduring part of the history of the Internet 100 years from now.

I finally gave in to the inevitable and stopped reading business / tech stuff.  Stephen Hawking’s new A Briefer History of Time stared imposingly at me with its Salvador Dali clock cover. When I read Hawking’s original A Brief History of Time : From the Big Bang to Black Holes, I only understood parts of it and its half life was about 24 hours.  This version promised that it was “The Science Classic Made More Accessible, More Concise, Illustrated, and Updated with the Latest Research.”  It lived up to its billing – the pictures were great.  I don’t know if it was that I really understood more of the original than I remembered, had a better understanding of physics from Mr. Taylor, my high school AP Physics teacher, or Hawking just did a magnificent job of making this book accessible (ok – it was the latter) – I thoroughly enjoyed A Briefer History of Time and when I put it down, I actually felt like the information would stick with me for at least a week.

I’m out of books and now that I’ve infected our Bahamian hosts with Suduko puzzles via Sudoku Easy Presented by Will Shortz Volume 1 : 100 Wordless Crossword Puzzles, I’ve been reduced to running, relaxing, and blogging about my long weekend.

So Brad was pretty bored by my first two reviews so I figured I’d tackle something a bit more complex this time around, the Roku PhotoBridge HD. In short the PhotoBridge HD allows you to stream audio, video, and pictures from PC’s connected to your network to your television/home theater – all in high definition, or at least that’s the idea.

I got my PhotoBridge back in June while I was recovering from surgery. I was excited to get it as I’d been following this class of product for quite a while. I specifically wanted the PhotoBridge as it was the first (and only at the time) device that would stream video in HD – something that was key to me to use with my new plasma TV.

However, I was painfully disappointed.

I had one primary goal for the PhotoBridge – to allow me to stream DVD’s in their native resolution from my PC to my home theater – allowing me to build a mini-jukebox of DVD’s that I could watch at any time (like my TiVo). It failed, miserably. There are several reasons why, the biggest being that the PhotoBridge is not ready for prime time. As I suggested on their forums (which are thankfully very active) it should be called a “reference platform” since the one key thing they did right is run embedded Linux on it. As a result of this and the fact that they have released an API (albeit a very limited one) there are several third party software applications that almost get it there.

Almost.  The main reason I gave up was that in the end it wouldn’t support subtitles, DTS sound, DVD menus, true fast forward/rewind (it only had 30 second jumps), and was extremely buggy. The interface is terrible, the remote is lousy, the software is limited, it locks up constantly, and you have to jump through hoops to get basic things to work. One positive – photos look amazing on an HD set – really awesome. However, while I love to play with toys when it comes to my home theater I just want things to work. After 40 hours with the PhotoBridge (upgrading, reinstalling, reading, posting, reading, installing, tweaking) I punted and sold it on eBay. Up next, the Buffalo Linktheater Hi-def Mediaplayer (should be here this week).

As for the PhotoBridge I give it a strong pass, that is unless you feel like playing with something that in the end will never live up to the marketing hype. Very disappointed.  … Ross

Ross (and everyone else that has one) appears to love their Nano’s but they have this little annoying “scratching problem.” I’m trying to encourage Ross to stop playing with his Nano long enough to play with something new, but so far I’ve failed.  He has, however, found a solution to that scratching thing.

As you all know I recently got an iPod Nano. As you also probably know from my review the iPod Nano has had some rather bad screen scratching issues. After getting some feedback from users on the invisibleSHIELD line of protectors I decided that I’d give them a try. I’m very glad that I did.

While other protectors look cool (some with cartoon characters on them) this one seemed to get better reviews. I assumed it would work like many of the other “stick-on” protectors where you peel the film off and have to be careful to stick it on without any air bubbles.  I wrong (and pleasantly surprised).  While it’s very hard to apply it, once you get it on it is well worth the effort. Take a look at the videos demonstrating the material – it’s actually the same material that is used for clear bras on cars.

Once you get it on the Nano (it took me about 30 minutes) you have to let it dry overnight so the glue sets. Once it’s dry, it’s virtually invisible.  It does make the Nano a little less smooth – which really is a good thing since it was hard to use the jog wheel when it was that slick anyway. I’ve shown it to several friends and no one could tell the protector was on it until I pointed it out.  If you have, or are planning to get, a Nano (or any other iPod for that matter) get one of these to go with it.

Dear Ross – ok – I’m protected – now give me something new and exciting to play with.

Have you ever wondered how the splits between selling shareholders in a secondary offering get negotiated? Tom Evslin covers it flawlessly in Chapter 7 of his blook Hackoff.com: An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble.  I’m loving Tom’s blook (which will eventually be a real book) you can pre-order hackoff.com at Amazon (Tom promises that it will be a signed copy).

If you are only interested in how the secondary works – hop online and read Chapter 7 – Episode 1, 2, and 3.  Alternatively, if you are interested in a potential view of how – if you buy DSL from SBC, they will someday, if they can, charge you or Google extra if you want to Google over that DSL connection – then take a look at Tom’s blog.

The man knows of what he speaks.  Tom – good stuff all around.

Ross Carlson – who is my “IT guy” – loves to play with toys even more than I do.  I suggested that he start writing some of them up and I’d post them on my blog.  He’s started with a tame one which happens to be my toy of the month also (Nano – sweet) – look for the wild, wacky, and esoteric nerd toy reviews to start to appear occasionally.

Recently I (Ross) was lucky enough to get an Apple 2 GB iPod Nano (so was Brad). I’d seen the ads, read the reviews, and was really looking forward to finally getting one. This would be my third iPod (Brad has N where N is a large number) – I’ve also got an Apple 1 GB iPod Shuffle that I use for data and to boot Linux (oh yeah and music too) and an Apple 40 GB iPod. I wasn’t exactly sure how I’d use this iPod but after seeing it I knew I wanted it. I was right.

When you see pictures of it you know it’s going to be small. Hell, it’s thinner than a pencil. You don’t really get how small it is until you hold it – it’s amazing. Like many Apple products, once you see it you have to hold it and once you’re holding it you can’t put it down. So, ok, it’s thin but what else? It’s obvious that having a color screen is nice – but it’s more than nice. Remember back when the first color cell phones came out and we all thought it was kinda silly? Everyone quickly realized that the huge benefit of color isn’t necessarily that it’s color (which is great don’t get me wrong) but that you can read it so much easier. That’s what’s great thing about the Nano screen – while it’s not super high res it still looks great making everything so much more readable.

Sound quality is what you’d expect from an iPod – excellent. The Nano includes the same ear buds as all previous iPods. Navigation is just like previous photo iPods. The new smaller click wheel with the big center button is easy to operate making accessing everything a snap. Syncing with iTunes for music and photos is easy – even though I hate iTunes with a passion. So far I haven’t found any third party software for the Nano like I use for my other iPod and my Shuffle.

Ok, so I love it but I’ve got to hate something right? Scratches. If you haven’t read about the scratching problems (here, here, here, here, or here) then keep reading – and read carefully. Due to all the scratching issues I’ve read I haven’t removed the protective sticker that came on it and I haven’t used it much yet (only enough to write this review). It’s sitting in my 3rd generation doc right now (ah Apple, smart enough not change the dock connector for every model) waiting for the protective case I ordered. Order a case for it when you order the Nano. One other minor thing – the headphone jack is at the bottom, not the top. This isn’t that big of a deal but the top would be better. The problem is the thing is so thin they couldn’t fit the screen and the connector at the top.

The Nano is what you’ve come to expect from Apple iPods – it’s great looking, great sounding, easy to use, and amazingly small. If you’ve been considering a smaller sized portable player this is probably it. It comes in 2 GB and 4 GB versions, holding 500 and 1000 songs respectively. Highly recommended.

Hard Driving is the story of John DeLorean and DeLorean Motor Company (DMC) through the eyes of William Haddad.  While it’s a 20 year old book that I found at the Strand Book Store, it was better than most murder / intrigue / terrorist / thriller books of today.  And – best of all – it’s non-fiction.

As a teenager, my dad had a good friend – Dr. Casey (a pediatrician by day) – who had a hobby of fixing up smashed up sports cars.  He went through phases – for a long time he was into Corvettes (we had two of his – a 1975 and a 1978 that I got to drive in high school), then TR-7s, then Porsches.  At one point he got into DeLoreans – I still remember the first time I saw one.  Teenage boys were always hanging around the Casey’s house – I could never figure out if it was the cars or his three very attractive teenage daughters.  Nonetheless, there was plenty of car repair action to be had – day and night. 

The stainless steel DeLorean always stuck in my mind.  When DeLorean was busted for dealing coke (proportedly to try to save DMC) and then acquitted because he was entrapped, all I could think was that I’d never end up with a DeLorean.

Of course, the end game of DeLorean’s failure never really scratched the surface of the story.  Haddad – who was friends with DeLorean going back to DeLorean’s GM days, and then went to work for DMC as VP Communications and Planning, tells an incredible entrepreneurial tale set in a very different time then today (the late 1970’s and early 1980’s).  The pacing and interaction is radically different then we deal with in business today, but the underlying issues, problems, interactions, and opportunities feel very similar.

Fundamentally, DeLorean comes across as a completely self-centered, manipulative, semi-delusional person that is gifted with immense charisma, vision, and desire yet struggles with right and wrong.  The line between success and failure for him is narrow and he almost pulls it off, but doesn’t quite get there, at which point everything implodes.   

There are many lessons in this book, both about entrepreneurship and ethics.  Haddad is an excellent writer and does a great job of injecting his own emotions at the appropriate points while hanging back and telling the story at others.  Refreshingly, he lets DeLorean’s actions tell the story rather than feel the need to moralize. 

This was a powerful and enjoyable book.