Steve Holden's Blog

Book Reviews: Dead Sea Scrolls, Google, Freemasonry

I finished reading several potentially interesting books during our recent family vacation trip to Vashon Island, WA:

• Weston W. Fields "The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Short History"
• David A. Vise & Mark Malseed "The Google Story"
• S. Brent Morris "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Freemasonry"

I really have to recommend the Fields book on the Dead Sea Scrolls.  It is very well documented and historically interesting - plus it has some great pictures.  Part of the Dead Sea Scrolls are on display in San Diego (through December 2007) which is the main reason I picked up the book.

The Google book is also recommended for those interested in technology, Internet history, and business & organizational ideas.  I personally only had a minor understanding of the history, technologies, and personalities related to Google so I found this book very interesting.

The Freemasonry book was entertaining but nothing spectacular.  I enjoyed it because my father and his father were Masons, and I learned a lot about what they probably went through.  The background history was interesting and I enjoyed the humor of the author.

 

Podcast Recommendation - Interview With New Media Author Philip Meza

Chris Gondek over at the Invisible Hand Podcast had a great interview with Philip Meza the author of the book "Coming Attractions: Hollywood, High Tech, and the Future of Entertainment" that is definitely worth a listen.

The one great thing in the podcast was that Chris let Philip outline some key recommendations that companies and organizations should be doing to excel in this new media world.

Open Source Rapid Prototyping - PDF, Nagios, & VMWARE

The combo of open source and virtual machines is really providing some powerful options for rapid evaluation and prototyping. 

Here is an example ... "Want to do some network management?" ... then download the $10 PDF of "Network Monitoring with Nagios", then get the VMWARE Player, and then check out the Nagios appliance deployment for VMWARE. 

In a couple of clicks, your up and running and ready to do some network management.  If you like what you see, a couple of file transfers, and some more clicks, and you can be in production mode. Nice.

Thanks to a recent HomeNetworkHelp.info podcast for getting my thoughts moving in this direction.

Survived the DC Trip - Theodore Roosevelt Island, Beer Recommendation, & W.E.B. Griffin

I managed to survive and still have a good time on my recent business trip to Washington DC (the way back was DCA to Dallas to SAN). 

One of the main reasons I had a good time, was that I managed to sneak in three great runs in the Rossyln area of Virgina. One of the better ones included an exploration of Theodore Roosevelt Island which is part of the George Washington Memorial Parkway that is operated by the Virgina Turkey Run Park.

I'm also going to have to recommend the following beers:

• Rogue's Kell Irish Style Lager
• Ridgeway Brewing's Very Bad Elf Special Reserve Ale (7.5% AlcVol which is based on a 1795 Thames Valley recipe)
• Weisse Hacker-Pschorr Traditional Wheat Ale

Lastly, I have to admit I'm becoming a fan of "reading fiction books" while in transit, vice pulling out the work Tablet PC or the personal iBook or a tech journal.  Right now, I am busy quickly turning pages of W.E.B. Griffen's By Order Of The President.  This is my first Griffen book (definitely not my last Griffen book). I had heard his name before, but never got introduced until I listened to his recent podcast at Pritzker Military Library.

Today's Podcast Attention Report

What if there was an easy way to aggregate information like my podcast consumption for today:

• 0715-0750: In my car to work [The Bitterest Pill; 4 x Career Opporutnities]
• 1050-1130: At my desk [doing other things ... not really focused ... ie. perfect for Daily Source Code]
• 1200-1250: On a run [6 x 43Folders; 10 minutes of Doc Searls 90 minute personal podcast (not sure what the point is, I guess it is to be personal with Doc, but I'm not sure I have the time for that. Sorry Doc!); Endurance Radio]
• 1730-1810: In my car going home [projected -- Endurance Radio; TWIT]

Across 1000s of like minded people.  A mixture of private and public data collected and distributed in an open-source fashion. And it also tracked other media: DVD, video, TV, web surfing, books, events, etc.   

If it was honest, trustworthy, & transparent, I am pretty sure the current survey and marketing companies would probably not be happy.

Custom Book Creation and Binding

Forbes FYI for Oct05 had a potentially interesting pointer to Vogel Bindery that builds custom books and amazing book covers.  Not for the cheap though, average price is $1000 each.

Friday (050605) Linkfest

Podcasting

• The Anatomy of the Exceptional Podcast
• Todd Storch is podcasting
• Disney podcasts [via MWGBlog & Todd Storch]
• FamilyFriendlyPodcasts.com Provides Safe-Haven for Podcast ...
• Business:
  • Infinity Broadcasting Launches Podcast Station
  • Sirius Signs Podcast Inventor For Exclusive New Program
• News:
  • Chicago NBC Station Podcasting
  • Denver Post Launches News Podcast
  • Philadelphia Daily News Unveils First Podcast This Friday
  • San Diego KPBS Joins Public Radio Podcast Revolution
• Books:
  • "The Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting" by George Colombo & Curt Franklin from Que Publishing
  • "Podcast Solutions" by Michael W. Geoghegan , Dan Klass [weblog]
  • Or just check out "Podcasting for Dummies"?
• Technology:
  • Bill Gates Interview Podcast
  • John Markoff: Tech Nation
  • Steve Gillmor to bring back Gillmor Gang and add daily podcast
  • Tim O'Reilly and Rael Dornfest: O'Reilly Radar: News from the Future
  • Dan Gillmor: South by Southwest Interactive Festival 2005

Weblogs

• WinXP photo upload registery hack for TypePad uploads
• Flickr Creative Commons
• Vocality: Email newsletter from Michael Sampson
• radar.oreilly.com

TabletPC

• Fujitsu ST5000 Series Full Review
• HP TC4200 [TabletPC Buzz]
• Averatec C3500 Tablet PC ($800?)
• Concept TabletPC (aka UltraMobile PC) [TabletPC Buzz, Microsoft-Watch]
• Hitachi FLORA-ie 55mi
• Electrovaya’s Scribbler SC 2200 1.1 WXA
• Toshiba M4 TabletPC
• IBM X41

Gear:

• 110,000 Volt Taser Cannon
• Hilton Technology Room
• AOpen’s XC Cube Mini MZ855-II
• Sony's new noise-canceling headphones MDR-NC50

Mobile

• ZyXel ZyWall P1 Personal Internet Security Appliance
• USB EVDO device from Falcom
• Centrix MVP-100 review (digital media player)
• Notebook powered by Powered Over Ethernet (PoE)
• MAKE: Aux Input for MP3 Players
• Phil Windley's new digital 'moible' mixer
• Laptops:
  • Fujitsu LifeBook P7010 Review
  • Sony VAIO VGN-T140P/L Reviewed

Music

• Road House Podcast: "The finest blues you've never heard"
• Terry Storch on Lincon Brewser [a great musician]

Finally Some Help For PowerPoint Presentation Builders

My name is Steve, and yes, I've been guilty of producing "Death by PowerPoint."  But ever since I starting reading the beyond bullets weblog I have been trying to recover from my errors.  Now there is a "book" version entitled Beyond Bullet Points and the author has posted the first chapter up in PDF (here).

The Written Word Thread (Kawasaki, Scoble, Windley)

An interesting pattern emerged over the last week relating to books. 

On my trip to DC last week I started to read my complimentary and signed copy of Guy Kawasaki's "The Art of the Start."  I had sent in a couple of ideas to Guy after he posted awhile back on his Garage.com mailing list looking for thoughts.  I was shocked when he said he wanted to send me a copy of this book as a thank you for what I considered to be very limited input, and then I was really shocked after I started to read the introduction (page vii) and my name was listed in the thank you section.

The book is very good so far (I am on page 66).  I am underlining things to do, and jotting notes into my TabletPC to remember thoughts of interest.  As someone in an established organization trying to "transform" and implement emerging technology, Guy has made sure to cover this area in the book, as well as covering areas for the complete bleeding edge entrepreneur.

Robert Scoble is also reading this book right now, and he is apparently going to be writing a 'blogging for business' book via a blog in the future [Link #1, #2, #3].

And one of my favorite weblogers Phil Windley announced recently that he just finished writing a book on digital identity management, and he is also doing a podcast now.

I just finished Franklin Graham book called "Rebel With A Cause." It is a quick read with a lot of good stories that keeps it moving along. Pretty inspirational story and message.