It is available in print and kindle editions from major book sources, including Amazon.com. I appreciated it so much that I also added it to The Information Technology Thought of the Day Webstore, permanently.

I will try to get a full review up in the next couple of weeks, as I finish it.  I can already tell though that it will be a modern day classic for the niche that it is targeted at as well as statisticians and current event geeks.

The opening chapter alone is worth the price of admission and really demonstrates well how much the world of warfare has changed in the past 20 years due to the Internet and Information Technology.  I especially appreciated how the author makes the case that Cyber War is real whether you think that it is or not.    I also valued the parallels that were drawn between the dawn of cyber war and the coming of naval aviation and nuclear weapons.  Considering that the author is a leading expert on Nuclear War policy, I figure that he probably knows what he is talking about.

Image Credit: Tesco Books

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It is available only in print from major book sources, including Amazon.com. I appreciated it so much that I also added it to The Information Technology Thought of the Day Webstore, permanently.

Andy Ihnatko, by the way, is one of the premier tech journalists writing today.  His home column is found in the Chicago Sun-Times, where he is their tech writer.  He also appears weekly on the MacBreak Weekly podcast with Leo Laporte.  He makes frequent appearances at conventions on both the stage and as a panel member.

Let’s make one thing clear — this book is not an iPhone, how-to book.  It is a book about being productive with and getting the most out of an iPhone.  It is this difference that makes it such a compelling product.

There were many factors that influenced my recommendation of this book.  Here are the ones that really swayed me.

• Entertaining.  This book managed to take a very dry and dull subject and make it come alive.  There are jokes through out that actually relate to the subject matter.
• Humorous.  Everywhere that he can, the author makes his point with humor.  This is very warming to the reader and makes you feel like he is mentoring you vice teaching you.
• Technique based vice fact based.  Throughout the book, the chapters are organized around how to accomplish another wonder with the iPhone as the conduit.  It steers well clear of “push this button, turn that knob” kind of writing.  It is not insulting to the technically inclined, while still demonstrating how to accomplish new things on every page.
• About what you can do with it not what it is or how it works.  Similar to the above comment, you come away from reading this with wonder for how the device can make you day better, not how shiny it is.
• Dense writing. Stylistically, you pay for this book and what you get is page after page of results and use cases.  There is very little fluff here.  If it were not packaged in the consumer section, I would have classified it more like a technical manual.  Good value for the page count/cost.
• Visual.  The book contains many useful images and screenshots with almost one per page.
• Personality.  Andy has personality.  This book reads like he speaks.  It is a far cry from most of these kind of “manual you should have gotten in the box” kind of tomes.  It is refreshing to see a book on a tech subject that still reflects the author’s character.
• Personal Recommendations.  The author makes many opinionated recommendations throughout the book.  Again, this is greatly appreciated.  I take them from one geek to another and like that he did it. Most of these types of books go out of their way to be agnostic and take no position on anything.  Andy tells you in many places exactly what he recommends and why.

I sincerely wish that more technology books were written in this style and voice.  This unique combination delivers, in my opinion, a much higher quality product that is far more useful to the reader.  I know that I will reference this book many more times than I normally would.  I can only dream of what a wonderful world it would be where Operating System Pubs, Technical Manuals, and Accreditation Standards were produced in this style.  I highly recommend this book and hope that you find it as valuable a read as I did.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for February 16, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: Chicago Sun-Times

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For those of you who are not familiar with the work, Dr. Covey introduced the concepts of paradigm shift, the emotional bank account, synergy, and win-win in this masterpiece.  It was a #1 best seller on the New York Times listing and was on nearly every major business best sellers list for over five years.  It tends to pop back onto the best seller list every January and May showing that it is one of the most gifted books of all time.  Here is how Wikipedia describes it:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, first published in 1989, is a self-help book written by Stephen R. Covey. It has sold over 15 million copies in 38 languages since first publication, which was marked by the release of a 15th anniversary edition in 2004. Covey argues that effectiveness is achieved by aligning oneself to what he calls "true north" principles of a character ethic that he believes to be universal and timeless.^[1]

The book was enormously popular, and catapulted Covey into public-speaking appearances and workshops. He has also written a number of follow-up books:

• First Things First
• Principle Centered Leadership
• The Power Of The 7 Habits: Applications And Insights
• Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families
• Beyond the Seven Habits
• Living the Seven Habits, a collection of stories from people who have applied the seven habits in their lives
• The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness, a sequel to The Seven Habits published in 2004

There are many many excellent summaries of this book available online.  My favorite is from The Quick MBA website’s Summary of Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  I recommend that you read this if you are curious what the “take-aways”  from this book are.  I caution, however, that you are really cheating yourself if you don’t absorb the material as Covey wrote it – in a story and developmental technique.

As a refresher, the 7 habits are:

Habit 1: Be Proactive

Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind

Habit 3: Put First Things First

Habit 4: Think Win/Win

Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

Habit 6: Synergize

As I mentioned earlier, what strikes me most, as an Information Technology Professional, when I re-read this from time to time, is how forward leaning into the Information Age Covey was.  Within a chapter, he is discussion how we have come to the end of the Industrial Age and need to change our thinking, mental maps, and expectations to prepare for the Information Age.  He was writing this before the Internet, cell phones, and even the fall of the US car industry.  It almost seems omniscient today looking back.   He makes the first case that I ever saw for individuals needing to determine their own values and subsequently their value proposition to their employer.  He discusses the need to negotiate from a win-win only position now based upon the fact that it is ideas and not things that create the value of our world.  And, he provides the best argument in favor of diversity as a competitive advantage, vice social norm, that i have ever encountered.  Like most great works, I find myself discovering new insights and applications every time that I enjoy it. 

For more information, please visit:

• Wikipedia – Dr. Covey
• Wikipedia – 7 Habits
• Stephen Covey’s Home page
• FranklinCovey corporate page

I own every version that I know of.  I like the printed book, but particularly like the audio book, and downloadable Audible versions.  The versions that you listen to feature Dr. Covey’s unique voice and inflection that, I believe, significantly adds to the comprehension and appreciation of the message.

I highly recommend this book to any who have never written it.  I also truly recommend that you who have, read it again to find new insights, lessons, and value.  The knowledge contained in this work is of value to anyone, but especially to us Information Technology Professionals.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for January 4, 2010  by Scott Coughlin.

Image Credit: Stephen Covey

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This post is a book review. It is a book that should have a great impact on a great number of fields including that of Information Technology.

Jeff Jarvis has produced a masterpiece of the Information Age that will live as a cornerstone in explaining the future of commerce and the relevance of the Internet forever. The book is What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis . It is a wonderful, conversationally written explanation of exactly what it is about the way that Google, the company, acts that makes it the most successful corporation in the Internet Age and the fastest growing company in history. 

The writing on this book is probably at about the eleventh grade academic level. It comes in print , audio , audible , and kindle versions. There are few illustrations and makes a very good listen or e-read. If you are lucky enough to listen to it, you will be treated to the author’s voice in presentation.

There were a number of fantastic parts about this book.  Jarvis will definitely have you walking around your workplace asking, “What Would Google Do?” after you read this.  I especially liked his explanation of the link-based economy from the lens of the success of Google and failure of Dell earlier this century.  This early section of the book is one of the best story-based explanations of this phenomenon that I have ever read.  Another strong part of the book is description of the value proposition of an information based company today.  He has a terrific explanation of why in the Industrial Age, the goal of a company was to charge the maximum price that the market would bear, but today, in the Information Age, that idea gets turned on its tail.  He suggests that today companies must charge the least that the network will permit to grow and survive without competition.  My most lasting memory of the book, though, will be his link between the simultaneous coming of the Information Age and the Age of Abundance born from an Age of Scarcity and Industrialization,  I truly enjoyed how he made all of these points, and many many more, from the perspective of asking why Google does what it does and how that is so fundamentally different from all organizations that have come before it.

The question that I pose for today’s thought is whether your organization functions more like Google as described in this book or more like the main stream media and dinosaurs of marketing that he profiles? To get you started, I recommend that you read Google’s corporate philosophy.  This is the same place the Jarvis starts his book.  Whether you read the book or not, this is a priceless read for Information Professionals.

What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis is a book that every Information Technology Professional needs to read. I give it my strongest recommendation. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for December 31, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .

Photo Credit: Jeff Jarvis

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.  Don’t forget that our Amazon Holiday Store is still open and a great way to support the site!

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This post is a book review. It is a book that should have a great impact on a great number of fields including that of Information Technology. If you like this post, I would like you to know that it is part of a series of book reviews for works that I think all Information Professionals should take a look at.

I am a big fan of David Allen and his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. The book that started it all is called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and it carries my highest recommendation.  David Allen has been called “The Personal Productivity Guru” by Fast Company Magazine and “The Henry Ford of the Digital Age”.  If you know me, you know that his work has become the foundation of my success. GTD is all about living your life successfully.

By the way, his teachings are very popular in the Information Technology profession.  I am constantly running into fellow practitioners at work.  I think that this is so for a number of reasons. I have heard David suppose that this is because his book provides an all-encompassing recipe or process for handling your life that is very similar to  a developer producing elegant code.  While I agree with him that there are similarities, I think that it is popular because it is so closely aligned with the system engineering discipline that is the basis for nearly all of the information technology field. 

Systems Engineering stresses that all projects begin with a formal set of agreed to requirements.  GTD does the same.  Systems Engineering then accomplishes success by the decomposition of said requirements into technical elements that must be achieved.  These elements are then completed as building blocks and integrated together to form an output product.  The final package can be validated and verified against the original specifications down to whatever required level and forms a perfect closed loop process that has no seams.  GTD basically applies the Systems Engineering commandments to your life and provides a construct to manage everything in your life from remembering to buy milk on the way home from work, to maintaining loving relationships with your family, to even accomplishing your dreams and aspirations.  This is all provided, not through “pie-in-the-sky” platitudes and positive thinking, but by giving you real world advice including how to buy a file cabinet, how to set-up a binder to manage your to-dos, what to do at any time that you find yourself free, and even how often you need to stop and collect your thoughts.

This is how David, himself, describes his system on his website:

Sophisticated without being confining, the subtle effectiveness of GTD lies in its radically common sense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embodies an easy, step-by-step and highly efficient method for achieving this relaxed, productive state.

Wikipedia has a very complete page dedicated on his teachings here.  One gem from that site is:

GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.

Alltop has what I consider to be the best collection of links to GTD web-based content that I have found.  If you want to learn more, first go to the David Allen Company Site and then check out their comprehensive listings of GTD links.

I think that every Information Professional should give this book a read.  I expect that you will find a comprehensive life management system that can have immediate impact on your, your teams, and your organization’s success.

So what books do you recommend for IT professionals?  Feel free to add your ideas in the comments section.

That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for December 27, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .

Photo credits: Amazon.com and DavidCo.com

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones.  Don’t forget that our Amazon Holiday Store is still open and a great way to support the site!

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