Anthony Cangiano is my blogging guru. He literally wrote the book on technical blogging. But it’s not his fault I don’t post more often. I think this blog is going to have a higher priority for me this year, so I may be posting more regularly. A key to making that happen, though, will be scheduling blog posts.
I just tweeted this:
#replacementfortwitter trending?
I was trying to be cute, but Twitter’s new API policies have started a firestorm among developers, and it seems reasonable to expect that there will be efforts to dethrone Twitter. The natural place to push such a campaign would be on Twitter, and I wonder if Twitter could resist the urge to censor hashtags like #replacementfortwitter …
Seth Godin has some advice on how to run a problem-solving meeting.
I’m sure he’s right. He usually is. But there’s another model that seems to get results.
You grab a dozen people at random, lock them in a room, and tell them that they’re not getting out until they reach a unanimous decision.
And that if they don’t, they’ll be hung.
Meetings like this are held every week in every city in America, and they do get results.
“Fire in the Valley is the memory lane of personal computing’s early years… Reading like a high-tech Three Musketeers, but with characters out of Dickens by way of Popular Electronics… A book not to be missed, just plain good reading about the drama of the kids next door turning their dreams into millions.”
– New York Times
“Swaine and Freiberger capture the communal spirit of the early computer clubs, the brilliance and blundering of some of the first start-up companies, the assortment of naivete, noble purpose and greed that characterized various pioneers, and the inevitable transformation of all this into a major industry. Must reading.”
– Philip Lemmons, editor-in-chief, BYTE Magazine
“A complete and authoritative history. Great reading.”
– John C. Dvorak
“Much of the book could also be called ‘Those Magnificent Men and Their Computing Machines.’ Their portrait is of creative and caring people whose sense of adventure and curiosity weighs heavier than their pursuit of profit.”
– Los Angeles Times
“The first book to chronicle not only the technological innovation, but also the social legacy created by the true ‘fathers’ of the personal computer… a very human, sometimes funny and always articulate story of the industry’s otherwise cloudy origins. The pages are filled with the people, the projects, and the frenzy that built the personal computer industry.”
– Computer Currents
“Like indulgent gods, Freiberger and Swaine seem to love all of Silicon Valley’s children, but their hearts are clearly with the hobbyists and hackers, gifted weirdos and insanely curious oddballs, the ones they show us most clearly.”
– The Industry Standard
“I couldn’t put it down.”
– Steve Wozniak
Paul Freiberger and I just signed the contract to do the third edition of Fire in the Valley through the Pragmatic Bookshelf.