Prior to reading this book, I had an idea of the intelligence behind Google, but I had no idea of the vision. While one may debate (ethically, morally, etc) the direction(s) Google is heading into with their technologies, you cannot argue their ingenuity.
While this book doesn’t delve too deeply, it does give you a solid understanding on how Google started, how they’ve changed over the years and what their work methodology is. It’s not the writing that makes this book so fun to read, it’s the story.
One thing I find truly amazing in design and scale is how Google created a new hardware/software synthesis – Googleware. It’s not just that Google has servers that process search requests from users – its the fact that they have hundreds of thousands of computers networked all across the world that are inter-connected and run on custom software they developed. When Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed their model for search engine computing, it was one-of-kind, a true innovation.
This is just one of many great pieces in the book, there are many more, and when taken all together, it kinda blows your mind. Blew mine at least.
Whether you need a motivational book for starting your business or you want to know more about the company behind that simple webpage with a logo and search box, its a great buy.
The Google Story on Amazon.com
The Google Story – Official Website

New Yorkers are busy people, but most of em are nice people too, but maybe not as nice as this guy:
New York Subway Hero

Switch from an art director with technical experience to a technical director has been a bit jolting, but in a fun, nerdy, roller coaster, kind-of-way. Here’s some information I’ve found useful, some of these I knew, some I didn’t:
OEM – original equipment manufacturer
CDN – Content Delivery Network
SDK – software development kit
API – application programming interface
white label product – is a product or service produced by one company (the producer) that is then rebranded by other companies (the marketers) to make it appear as if it was created by them (from Wikipedia).

Man, UFC rocks. I wish I could find a clip of this fight.
update – I just found a clip of the actual fight on Acquisition/Limewire. 🙂

Nice job Hitachi (Firefox users might need to allow pop-ups to view this site).