Steven Levy: In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · advertising, code, facebook, google, internet, microsoft, search, software, youtube
Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works.
While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow (until Google’s IPO nobody other than Google management had any idea how lucrative the company’s ad business was), Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more.
The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire.
But has Google lost its innovative edge? It stumbled badly in China—Levy discloses what went wrong and how Brin disagreed with his peers on the China strategy—and now with its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete?
Publisher Simon and Schuster, 2011
ISBN 1416596585, 9781416596585
352 pages
video (NPR interview with Laura Sydell)
review (Evgeny Morozov, The New Republic)
review (Siva Vaidhyanathan, The Washington Post)
review (Paul Boutin, The Wall Street Journal)
review (Jack Shafer, San Francisco Chronicle)
Kimmo Karvinen, Tero Karvinen: Make: Arduino Bots and Gadgets. Learning by Discovery (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · arduino, code, floss, hardware, interactivity, open hardware, open source, physical computing, programming, software, technology
Want to build your own robots, turn your ideas into prototypes, control devices with a computer, or make your own cell phone applications? It’s a snap with this book and the Arduino open source electronic prototyping platform. Get started with six fun projects and achieve impressive results quickly.
Gain the know-how and experience to invent your own cool gadgets.
With Arduino, building your own embedded gadgets is easy, even for beginners. Embedded systems are everywhere—inside cars, children’s toys, and mobile phones. This book will teach you the basics of embedded systems and help you build your first gadget in just a few days. Each learn-as-you-build project that follows will add to your knowledge and skills.
– Experiment with Arduino, the popular microcontroller board
– Build robots and electronic projects with easy-to-follow instructions
– Turn your ideas into working physical prototypes
– Use Android phones as remote controls in your projects
– Work with an uncomplicated programming language created for artists, designers, and hobbyists
– Get everyone involved, with projects that even beginners can build
Publisher O’Reilly Media, Inc., 2011
ISBN 1449389716, 9781449389710
295 pages
PDF (updated on 2015-2-12)
Comments (2)David M. Berry: The Philosophy of Software: Code and Mediation in the Digital Age (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · code, computation, computing, philosophy, software, software studies
The Philosophy of Software is a critical introduction to the subject of code and software, and develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age. The book has been written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background and provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms. Software is a tangle, a knot, which ties together the physical and the ephemeral, the material and the ethereal, into a complete system that can be controlled and directed. However, software exceeds our ability to place limits on its entanglement, for it has in the past decade entered the everyday home through electronic augmentation that has replaced the mechanical world of the twentieth century. From washing machines to central heating systems, children’s toys to television and video; the old electro-magnetic and servo-mechanical world is being revolutionised by the silent logic of virtual devices. It is time, therefore, to examine our virtual situation.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2011
ISBN 0230244181, 9780230244184
200 pages
PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
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