Valleywag
books
Posts Tagged “
Books
”
books
books
Steve Jobs ruthless, Michael Eisner clueless according to new Pixar history
Pixar, the computer animation company and digital film studio, was undervalued by everyone in Hollywood, from George Lucas who formed the original team at Skywalker Ranch to Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg at Disney. Steve Jobs, however, understood the potential for the company — and how to milk it for every penny. After buying the company for a mere $5 million, after Katzenberg balked on a $15 million price tag, Jobs hovered over the company like an "ominous cloud," according to Michael Hirschorn's review of David Price's new book detailing the company's history. At one point, Jobs squeezed more stock out the company so that the company could stay afloat — shortly before production on breakout hit Toy Story started production. "I’m sitting around here trying to make Steve Jobs richer in ways he doesn’t even appreciate," one employee quips. (Photo by AP/Eric Risberg)
books
Sarah Lacy to tour middle America
Book tours? So old media — or rather, not profitable enough for book publishers to conduct except for celebrity writers. Sarah Lacy, the author of Web 2.0 nonfiction chronicle Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, plans to defy that wisdom and go on a 10-city tour herself. She's already included her hometown of Memphis and the provincial burgs of Des Moines and Portland, and is asking for suggestions on the other cities — anywhere but New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Our ideas: More »
party report
Photos from Sarah Lacy's book party
Web 2.0 was hot last night. And I mean the kind of heat determined not by Technorati rank, but by the thermometer. Despite the stifling weather, San Francisco's Web stars turned out for a party Sarah Lacy threw for her new book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good at Otis off Union Square. The hole-in-the-wall, two-story bar couldn't handle the crowd, which spilled out on Maiden Lane. Slide CEO Max Levchin, the star of the book, stopped by with fiancé Nellie Minkova to congratulate Lacy, and then immediately left. Runner-up Jay Adelson, whom Levchin beat on page count, stayed longer, as did Twitter's Ev Williams, who came with his wife, Sara Morishige. Also in the crowd: August Capital VC David Hornik, who didn't even rate a mention in the index, despite inviting Lacy to his exclusive Lobby conference. A gallery of photos, after the jump: More »
once you're lucky, twice you're good
The complete index to "Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good"
Sarah Lacy's book about Web 2.0, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, officially comes out today (and there's a book party at Otis on Maiden Lane in San Francisco this evening). We've run the index, in an homage to Web 1.0 memoir Burn Rate, page by page over the past week. Here's the full set: More »
the official filthy rich handbook
"The Technocrat"
He made his fortune — about $18 billion worth — "fundamentally altering the course of human existence." His patron saints are Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen and Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. And like his fellow geek, "the Nerdling," he's featured in Christopher Tennant's Official Filthy Rich Handbook, deliverable in June. An excerpt, below. More »
the official filthy rich handbook
"The Nerdling"
His patron saints are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley. He wears Robert Marc spectacles his publicist picked out for him, and last summer, when he rented a Villa next to Jade Jagger's, Nicole Richie called him a "dork loser." He's the "Nerdling" from The Official Filthy Rich Handbook by Christopher Tennant, due out in June. An excerpt, below. More »
once you're lucky, twice you're good
B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big
Few people outside Silicon Valley have heard of Roelof Botha. But the former CFO of PayPal is famous here. His two claims to fame: negotiating that company's $1.5 billion sale to eBay, and later, as a partner at Sequoia Capital, investing in YouTube and quickly flipping the startup to Google for $1.65 billion. Is it a coincidence that that figure is 10 percent higher than his PayPal score? Few insiders think so. Botha gets four pages in Sarah Lacy's Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good — more than Google cofounder Sergey Brin. Other figures who appear on the second page of her Web 2.0 book's index: John Battelle, Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, Facebook board member Jim Breyer, blog blowhard Jason Calacanis, and YouTube cofounder Steve Chen, whom Botha made quite wealthy. More »
books
First Lady, First Daughter prove Steve Jobs right about future of book industry
In case you missed their guest appearance on Today, Jenna and Laura Bush have collaborated with an illustrator on Read All About It!, the $17.99, 32-page tale of math machine and science whiz Tyrone, a reluctant reader until the books that his teacher read to the class actually came to life. All five-star reviews so far, with the exception of one Zebo Quad, who opines: "This book just proves that celebrities could vomit onto a blank page and publishers would publish it." It also suggests Steve Jobs was onto something when he dissed the Amazon Kindle e-book reader:It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore. Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.
Gary Vaynerchuk latest videoblogger to pen book
Can't get enough of Wine Library TV's hyper host? Preorder Gary Vaynerchuk's 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight and Bring Thunder to Your World today. (Photo by freshtopia.net) [TV Week]
copyfight
British authors shudder deliciously at thought of being ravished by lean, musky pirates with flowing black curls
Getting a little taste of their own doubloon-looting medicine, the Society of Authors in the U.K. has determined that piracy will do to book publishing what it did to the music business. If that means fewer parking permits for glistening pec caresser Danielle Steel here in San Francisco, excuse me if I don't shake my fists at the thunderheads and wail unto the storm. Seriously, what's the real issue here? More »
apple
O'Reilly sells iPhone book to "hackers"
Tech publisher O'Reilly Media has released a book targeted to unsanctioned developers on Apple's iPhone mobile platform. iPhone Open Application Development tells coders how to write programs for "jailbroken" iPhones — those that have been hacked to remove Apple's block on unsanctioned software. All of which seems outdated, now that Apple has released instructions for writing approved apps. O'Reilly will surely rush out another book on that subject. But why not just sell one book to everyone? That seems easier.
jackpot
Google masseuse reflects on nothing
You'd think the tale of Bonnie Brown, the woman who made millions swapping massages for Google stock, would make for interesting reading. In a Huffington Post blog entry, Brown manages to spend 451 words telling us that she dislikes being famous and didn't know what the word "gumption" meant until she encountered it in a movie starring Kate Winslet. Brown has a book out called "Giigle." Are you thinking it sounds skippable? Consider yourself lucky already.
books
Sarah Lacy's Web 2.0 book on Amazon.com
Sarah Lacy's long-awaited book on Web 2.0 is available for pre-order on Amazon.com. The title: Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0. It's due for release on May 15, which means we'll probably see copies circulating in late April. Future reviewers, let us save you the work of coming up with a kicker: Yes, the title practically begs for Lacy to announce a followup oeuvre to prove she, too, is more than just lucky.
theory
The life of a buzzword
A buzzword is no black swan, but when one breaks out of the long tail into the short head and hits the tipping point it still makes me question the wisdom of the crowds. But because the world is flat, I've listed a freakonomical list of the lifespan of a buzzword. Purple cow. More »
4:14 PM on Wed Oct 10 2007
By Nick Douglas
1,253 views,
4 comments
It seems that the mainstream media is too busy writing about shark attacks and traffic patterns to review the media-zinger from Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, It's Not News, It's Fark. Luckily, Slate steps up and tells it like it is. Four months late. [Slate]
woz
You may also like this nuclear warhead from Pampered Chef
While these are both doubtlessly fine books (I'll be reading iWoz and blogging it soon), I'm betting that Wozniak's stories about running a Dial-a-Joke line, building Atari games with Steve Jobs, and handing his friends two-dollar bills...doesn't prepare a reader for Pakistani President Musharraf's memoir about leading a bloodless coup, coming close to assassination, and delicately avoiding nuclear war with India while fighting terrorists with the U.S.
sarah lacy
