electronics-industry

So useful that my copy was tattered and dog-eared when Amazon delivered it to me! In an industry brimming with half-talented, self-pretentious posers, Sanger is a shining exception; fully-talented, highly innovative and original, he manages to warm my heart with his innate kindness and constantly positive outlook.
Inside this book we find many key lessons about life and business that Fat has uncovered along the road. Indeed, the title says it all: "Tasty Morsels"; I smiled all the way through it. This book is a must-buy for anyone interested in either the computer game industry or in starting a small creative business.

My current audio career is primarily doing audio for games. I occupy a small niche on the periphery of the industry doing mostly online Shockwave games. In the industry there is one name that looms (pun intended) above all others, that name is The Fat Man. A.k.a. as George Sanger, The Fat Man has simply done more than anyone else in the audio for games. Sure there are several other greats like Tom Tallarico and Aaron Marks but take my word for it. Fat is The MAN!
What does this have to do with you, you ask? If you are a musician, composer. engineer or somehow try to make money from sound or computers you need to read the book "The Fat Man on Game Audio: Tasty Morsels of Sonic Goodness" While this book is about game audio, it is more about art, life, the universe, and everything. sort of like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" without the morose bits. If The Fat Man is a great white shark then I am a hungry remora fish feeding on the "tasty morsels." And tasty they are. He is a philosopher, (learn to travel between the pillars of fear and desire) he is pragmatic, (build equipment racks from 2X4s) he is a swaggering, cowboy hat wearing, Rolls Royce driving, jester in the court of "golden eared" Audiots. Oh. and BTW I've met him and call him friend.
Buy the book NOW!.

Whether you're a newbie to the music industry trying to get a leg up on your career, a hardened gamer who has seen and done it all, or someone who's just in the mood for a good laugh -- you owe it to yourself to buy this book! George, "The Fat Man", Sanger is one-of-a-kind and tells a story like no other. You may even learn something from his life-lessons along the way. I know I did!

David Rippy
Ensemble Studios

Game Over is a terrific account of Nintendo's past, and is must reading for video game enthusiasts and historians. Mr. Sheff had what seemed to be unparalleled access to Nintendo's inner workings, and brought back a fascinating story on a family business made good in the international community. Unfortunately, the book falls for Nintendo's predictions for the future (many of which were designed by Nintendo solely to draw attention away from its rivals rather than to provide insight into their future business plans.) As long as the last parts of the book that attempt to chart the future course for video games and Nintendo are ignored, the book stands as an important work in video game journalism.

I do have a few complaints with the contents and focus of the book; there are the usual small factual errors which may obscure future historical video game research; there are the regurgitations of various industry spokesmen without proper interpretations; and there is the unwavering focus on Nintendo which tends to downplay the parts played by their competitors/rivals in the industry. I have yet to read the updated version of Game Over (Press Start to Continue), and the new version may rectify some or all of these shortcomings. Regardless, Game Over stands as a slightly flawed, but amazingly useful research tool and entertaining book.

Wow... I read this in 5th grade and it was worth it! And then I read it again in eigth grade... The reason i love this book so much is that i won the contest for Nintendo with the information in this book. (animal crossing pioneer)

Well, I can't say enough for this book. I own the hardback, and plan to get the updated paperback soon!

This is ONE book that I just can't get out of my mind! This book is a must get for gamers & Nsiders (The Official On-line Nintendo Club)!

Game Over gave a near-perfect insite to Nintendo's beginning of a handfuda card company (Japanese cards), develop into a game / toy company, & eventually entering the Video Game company.

David Sheff did an excellent job in writting this book & does go in depth into things as well as actual translation of the name ("Leave Luck to God" is my favorite).

If the Nsiders is a cult/ religion, this would be our bible!

This is a great book to read, even though there are slight minor flaws & this version only goes up to 1993. It's a must read good & would Highly suggest picking up the revised sequal, "Game Over: Press Start to continue"

I found this to be a concise reference manual that will benefit any Help Desk Analyst.

It provides information on Help Desk operation aimed specifically at the analysts who staff your Help Desk.

Its full of tips, examples, and case studies, while teaching skills in effective listening and problem solving that every analysts needs.

I have made this mandatory reading for my Help Desk staff.

This book is packed with useful information that will make you a more well-rounded support person. Help desk and technical support in general is so much more than just technical know-how. The non-technical aspects are just as important and this book will help you in those areas. Has information on standard methodologies of technical support, full of tips. Has gotten me higher job ratings and a nice raise in the past year. You need this to compete in today's tough job environment. I think this should be required reading by all help desk/technical support staff. Great book.

This is the second book I have read by Ms. Czegel (the first was Running an Effective Help Desk). Where the first book leads you through the help desk planning, implementation and operations process, this one focuses on the people issues. My experience has shown that the best help desk technologies you can buy, and problem management processes you can develop and implement are worthless if you don't take care of the people part of the equation.

Ms. Czegel jumps right in with roles. She systematically goes through the various roles a help desk analyst must assume. The ability to switch from one character or personality type to another that is the hallmark of a truly great analyst gives you some keen insights into why there is an epidemic of burnout and high turnover among support professionals. Aside from this insight, it also shows you what to look for in candidates and gives you a good foundation for coaching and training. It also gives you some ammunition for getting their pay and bonus structure aligned to the high stress the job casues.

As in her other book Ms. Czegel never loses sight of the business side and part two of this book gives an intelligent description of help desk stakeholders and their unique needs based on their level in the organization and how their functions intersect with the help desk mission and objectives. The next two sections cover issue management processes and procedures and help desk technology. Some of the material is close to what is in her other book, but is not identical.

The remainder of the book duplicates a lot of the material in Running an Effective Help Desk, but is excellent if you only buy one of Ms. Czegel's books. A reason to buy both, however, is the different focus of each and some expansion of topics in each book.

Overall, I like this book a lot and gained much from it. I came away with an appreciation for and empathy with those thick-skinned folks who staff help desks. I also came away with some good ideas about how to motivate and train help desk analysts and design processes that make their life easier. I highly recommend this book and give it 5 stars.

Bob Johnstone accomplished the long awaited account of the enormous effort Japanese entrepreneurs have put in innovations in the electronics industry. Western economists have tended to overlook the personal contribution in the success of the Japanese electronics industry. After reading the book, it is just laughable that some in the West have accused the Japanese of stealing western technology. Johnstone provides the details of how painstaking the development of semiconductors was. Yet, the more detail, the less generalisations. Johnstone's stories are not representative, they are selective. It is not true that all technology was created in the US and all technology applied in Japan as Johnstone makes us believe. The book "only" proves that the success of Japanese firms was based on hard work. One of the problems of the book is, that the contribution of Europe are almost (with one exepction) totally omitted (there was considerable scientific progress in seminconductors, LCD, solar cells). This is problably to much to ask for, but it means that the book is incomplete. The second problem is, that the book does not really explain the dominance of Japan in several products lines. Entrepreneurship exists in the US as well, big companies that are unable to develop new industries exist in Japan as well. Johnstone is not convincing that there is a general difference between the US and Japan in entrepreneurship. Maybe he should have looked more into the domestic markets (military customers in US vs. consumers in Japan).

A must read book for all electronics/computer technology professionals/hobbist. Bob's comprehensive research and writing style made it easy to read and informative.
The book gives you retrospect on what had happened and how it happened. Although they were history but it gave us lesson on the past and we can plan or predict the future. It also gives a lot of insight on technology management. What made things happened and what screwed things up. In another prospective, as a technology worker, it also taught us not to give up easily.
Highly recommended.

Bookstores in the US are buldging with entertaining and informative "insider" books on Apple Computer, Microsoft, IBM, Xerox PARC etc. and a similar English-language writeup on Japanese companies such as Sharp, Sony, and Seiko is long overdue. Fortunately the Japanese stories and characters are every bit as entertaining and there are the bureaucratic villains as well. As a bonus, nice background information on the growth of the worldwide semiconductor industry is weaved into the narration. "Japan INC" seems a lot less monolithic after reading this book.

The author is married to a Japanese national and apparently devoted much of his adult life to researching this story.

Having co-founded a fledgling broadband E-business in 1996, you could say I've been at the bleeding edge of E-business for an eternity. Needless to say its been like a roller coaster ride - largely fun - but so scary at times... If "experience" is what you get when you can't get what you want - I've got experience!

The fascinating thing about "Digital Storm" - is how much understanding and insight the authors provide, about planning and setting up and running an e-business - I wish I'd read it earlier.

For those thinking about committing real money to an e-business venture - or just wanting to understand how e-business works - Digital Storm is the best strategic guide - you will get for the money.

In a time where many of the rules of business are changing as fast as we can identify them, it's nice to find a book that identifies not only successes and failures, but also what's behind them. The authors use strong examples in explaining why online e-marketplaces have evolved the way they have, and they do a great job of laying the groundwork to help leaders navigate through the future innovations we're likely to see. There are a lot of B-to-B books out there, I'm recommending this book to my friends above many others I've read.

In the late 1990s, it was widely expected that the B2B space would explode, far exceeding the B2C marketplaces. It didn't happen. A great number of e-marketplaces imploded instead, unable to attract the necessary business volume. Likewise, many specialized infrastructure players are in deep trouble and will likely have to cede their dominance to the incumbent enterprise software vendors such as SAP or Oracle. Philipp Gerbert gives an excellent account of the rise of the e-marketplaces and the digital storm they encountered by their pioneering acts. Gerbert does not just show what went wrong; he also shows that the potential of the e-market places will continue to be in a networked environment, albeit a different one. This is a definite must-read for every business executive who needs to understand the pitfalls in building e-marketplaces and how to exploit their potential.

David has done a good job of compiling material here, but most of what you'll read you'll get the feeling you've read before...and you probably have.

The book is fun and funny and worth getting as a late night read or a bathroom book to read in your off-minutes away from a computer.

I love doing site visits to companies . . . and my favorite part is talking to the people who operate the help lines. First, I like to see how busy they are. If no one is there and they have nothing to do, I assume that they are doing a great job (or the phone lines are disconnected). If there are lots of people and they are busy, I wonder what's the fuss. Second, I like to find out what these people find funny about their jobs. Over the years, I have heard some terrifically funny stories about phone calls that have come in. But nothing I heard in all these site visits compared to the stories in this book.

The bottom line is that people who have never seen a personal computer before find it pretty confusing to figure out what everything is used for and how to employ them.

As an example, consider the mouse stories. Some people operate them over the keys, while others use the monitor screen. Some people keep them in the plastic bag, thinking this is a dust cover.

Every help desk knows that the most common problems are that computers are either not plugged in or not turned on. The stories here nicely embellish on those themes. One woman worked barefoot and kept hitting the surge suppressor switch with her big toe, turning the computer off. Some people can't find the power switch (what power switch?). One major thought that off stood for official, and wondered why his computer wouldn't conduct official business. One computer system crashed every lunch hour (a contractor had installed a plug in the ladies room, and someone unplugged it at lunch to use the hair dryer daily).

Floppy disk drives present another opportunity. Some people think you just keep putting more and more floppies in, without ever taking one out. Others fail to notice that they don't have a floppy drive, and push floppies into the chassis to just sit there.

Some people find the icons confusing: one woman took the whole family out of the house at 3:37 a.m. when an icon that looked like a bomb came on the screen. She didn't want anyone to be hurt by the bomb in the computer when it exploded.

Of course, the software isn't always that intelligent, either. One program told the user: Cannot find keyboard. Hit F1 to continue.

You will not only find this book humorous, you'll also appreciate the difficulties that other people have with computers. You'll feel better the next time you can't figure out why your computer won't cooperate.

I think it's all an antidote for the one hour and forty-five minutes I spent on a weekend trying to get help from a software vendor without ever getting any useful information. At least I never tried that again. Maybe I should send in my story for the next edition!

Overcome the misconception stall that everyone else has less trouble with computers than you do!

Donald Mitchell

Coauthor of The Irresistible Growth Enterprise (available in August 2000) and The 2,000 Percent Solution

(donmitch@fastforward400.com)

If this book doen't make you laugh, check your pulse...you're probably dead. This is no surprise to those of us familiar with Mr. Pogue's own books. Anything he writes is hilarious, informative & great. Naturally, anything he edits is great. I have planned to give this little jewel with every holiday gift. Eileen Siralewker@aol.com

An original book (yes there are with e-something) about dedicated "click and mortar" companies approach to the web.

It comes with a full set of tools (tests, frameworks, ...) that are very useful to practicionners

Most of the facts at the detailled level are relevant and informative the only pitfaall is that most analysis are initiated not truly deepens.

De Kare-Silver wrote "E-Shock" to help retailers and manufacturers understand the online marketplace evolution. Full of case studies and examples, he provides practical guidelines, tools, checklists, and strategies for decision-makers.

This book gives you the information to make informed choices, formulate heads-up sales strategies, and create savvy 21st century marketing plans.

This book stood out when I first saw it at an American Management Association book store. The author focuses on the successful pioneers of the E-commerce revolution, and he helps us anticipate the future. A number of practical e-commerce business strategies are also offered for aspiring Web-preneurs. You can't ask for much more!

I found much of this content to be very interesting and intelligent reading. Unfortunatly, I found Stan Liebowitz to be a pompus author who I was not nearly as impressed with as he seems to be with himself. He strikes me as the type who speaks to hear the sound of his own voice, and writes in much the same style. Many of the examples he used were innaccurate and were out of date, even when this book was published in 2002. It doesn't change the theories that are presented, but it sure makes reading this book unpleasent. Hopefully in future editions, Mr. Liebowitz will write this more like an academic journal and keep some of the first person references and broad generalizations out. People who buy cars on impulse have a "personality disorder"? I'm not a psychiatrist, but that seems very broad and unfounded. If you make a statement like this, you should clarify it or back it up with evidence. "....as I write this book", "...as I discuss below", "I have to admit....". Get over yourself. First person references have their place, and are used in the appropriate context many places within this book, but examples like the above show up on almost every page. It elevates the book to a level of arrogance that I find difficult to ignore while reading.

The internet offers incredible opportunities, provided businesses and their advisors do not lose sight of the traditional, fundamental concepts of commerce and economics.

The old rules still apply is the message of author Stan Liebowitz, economist and professor of managerial economics at the University of Texas at Dallas. The Internet creates value by lowering the costs of information transmission. Internet boosters went wrong when they sought to re-write the foundational laws of economics practiced by their bricks-and-mortar competitors. The impact of economies of scale depends on the industry, not on whether the company is internet-based or not.

The author also debunks three other "new" economy myths:
•The first mover advantage. Many internet companies mistakenly rushed to market with inferior products and services - and paid the ultimate price.
•Not everything can be sold on the Internet.
•Customer service still counts.

Liebowitz argues network effects, economies of scale; instant scalability and winner-take-all strategies provide advantages and disadvantages to the consumer. To know which products are likely to succeed on the Internet, the business person must consider:
•Size and bulk of the product relative to its value.
•Immediate gratification factor.
•Perishable items are not meant to be shipped over long distances.
•Some products need to be experienced.

This well-written, often witty book is the first I have come across that seeks to salvage lesions from what is commonly thought of as the "Internet Bubble." The impact of the Internet on our society is not to be trivialized. Information is now available in abundance. Discovering the lessons the media's boosters ignored, Liebowitz argues, if one seeks to learn what the media's "boosters" ignored to their peril, will benefit the reader.

"Re-thinking the Network Economy" is an almost deceptively simple book, and that is all to the good for readers. Stan Liebowitz is a highly skilled economist with the ability to make his professional work accessible to interested laymen. Even more interesting to me, as a small businessman, is his intuitive grasp of the entrepreneurial process. His work just has a natural fit to the business world I know, and that is rare among academics, in my experience.

Though some of his humor can make a businessman wince at times, say his: "And of course, once computers are taught to bend the truth, they can replace salesmen of all sorts".

I once observed a young American woman, on a sunny July day in 1974, practicing her college Italian in one those street bazaars in Florence. I think it must have been written in some Intelligent Woman's Guide to Tourism in Cute Mediterranean Countries, that haggling was expected. When the woman responded to a merchant's price quote with a lower offer, he said in perfect English: "Look lady, it's hot, I'm hungry. If you insist on haggling, come back after lunch, but you're going to pay the price I just gave you anyhow."

She bought the dress, but you can find the reason for the merchant's attitude in chapter 4 of this book.

Also, I'm old enough to have been attended to, as a child, by a doctor who made house calls. The reasons why doctors no longer do so are to be found in Liebowitz's explanations of the efficiencies of supermarket shopping: Customers prefer to substitute their uncompensated time for the paid time that delivered groceries would necessarily entail.

So, why did so many smart people lose billions of dollars trying to make viable businesses out of delivering ice cream, chicken, and orange juice? Liebowitz hazards a few guesses, not all of which are going to sit well with some of his colleagues who gave advice that may have inadvertently encouraged such nonsense. Those of us with first-hand experience of how expensive it is to operate trucks and pay their drivers, who were scratching our heads watching refrigerated trucks drive through our neighborhoods, wondering how this could possibly be a cost effective way for consumers to shop, can have a lot of fun reading about it though.

The penultimate chapter, "Copyright and the Internet" has some, perhaps, counterintuitive arguments to make about digital reproduction and transmission of copyright materials. Including a novel explanation (to me) of how charging libraries for photocopying articles from scholarly journals actually increased the importance of those journals to scholars. This seems to me a major lesson to be learned in the current contentious copyright debates.

In short, Re-Thinking the Network Economy, packs a lot of useful information into its 224 pages. It's erudite, witty, and might have saved the New Economy, and its investors, tens (and maybe hundreds) of billions of dollars had it been published even five years earlier.

This biopic of the telecommunications industry portrays the shifting alliances and deals all geared at not offering the best service, but applying the best marketing spin to gain political favoratism, industrial recognition, and that all important big paycheck brought around by big profits! It chronicles the striking similarities between the cable industries ascent in trying to attain these goals from the power grip of the broadcasting programmers in the past to today the satellite industry trying to do the same, while the cable moguls thwart their efforts. The big man really does win in this situation, but the interesting thing is all these megolomaniacs achieved their powers and success through their hard perseverence.

This industry personifies perseverence and an iron-will at deal-making when one moment your most glorified partner can become your closet-door backstabbing enemy. This powerplay between giants such as John Malone's TCI, Charlie Edger's EchoStar, Bill Gates, Brain Roberts of Comcast, Ted Turner, and Mediaone's Rupert Murdoch is truly fascinating and a good case study in the battles fought between strong, hard-nosed personalities seeking to gain a greater piece of the pie from such a lucrative market.

While Rupert Murdoch creates sub-par programming and the degradation of television as an educational instrument and turns it into your car chasing, animal attacking, cop shooter cheesy entertainment nightmare, he racks up bigger and bigger profits through conglomeration and horizontal dispersal. It is clearly visible that Edger's Echostar costing less than $50 a month and providing over 200 niche channels would've seemed like the best service provider to consumers, but Malone's sellout to AT&T and Murdoch's stake in that deal sealed the fate for much of satellite's potential market.

Two-facism's and shallow, questionable character's aside, this book is a good introduction into the vast amounts of luck, money, power, and psychological dominance needed to succeed in the electronic oilfield industry.

Surprisingly, this is not a flatly-written text book about the battles that brewed and continue to brew between the cable and satellite industries. Instead, Keating book injects some rakish zip and intrigue that makes it extremely fun to read. Expect a lot of insightful background on EchoStar chief executive Charlie Ergen, but not much on Dr. John Malone. After reading, it's clear who of the two main characters (Ergen and Malone) spent quality time with Keating for his book. The book also puts the DBS companies like EchoStar and DirecTV in a positive, swashbuckling light, while the "cable gang" (a term Keating uses ad nauseum) comes out looking like a bunch of thugs, bording on crookery -- a rather lopsided view.

"Cutthroat" deals aside, Keating also supplies terrific accounts regarding the births of the cable and satellite industries. A good read all around. If you haven't paid much attention to the DBS and cable industries, you will after reading this book. In addition to his book, I used to read Keating's telcom news coverage in the Denver Post. He's off that particular beat now (perhaps because there could be a conflict of interest in covering DBS and cable after he wrote the book), but Denver Post readers are the ones who are suffering. The person who handles the telecom beat these days does a satisfactory job, but needs to get a better understanding of each industry before the new reporter's coverage will ever rival Keating's.

I've just completed "Cutthroat" by Stephen Keating; it has the most details and and reference sources I've seen on the subject, through the tracking of a few of the big hitters in the field. He goes through a history of cable tv and satellite by focusing on several of the players, Malone, Ergen, Murdock, and the Roberts, relating how they built their positions. By including a lot of financial stats and numbers, this book gives a very good perspective of the size of the industry. For many persons, it is the 4th or 5th largest personal expenditure, $40 to $60 per month for many of the 85 million households which have cable or satellite. Yet, little is known about cable tv, the players, who picks the channels shown on your local system, how the monopolies were maintained for so many years, etc. This book helps to debunk some of the myths, such as the 500 channel system. I don't really think anyone needs even 200 channels of different programing (unless you want to see Ron Popeil and his rotisserie evey 1/2 hour).

For all of the cutthroat competition, the system seems to be working, or is it? It appears that most homes will have their choice of either 1 - 2 cable servers or satellite tv. But how about captive customers in apartment buildings or condos, which is about 1/2 of all persons living in most high density Eastern cities and suburbs? Will they have a choice? And why is the price so high? Insofar, as most of the channels in expanded basic are advertising supported, why do the bills average $35? Why not $19.95 like DISH charges for a pretty good basic package. I think Mr. Keating's next book a few years from now on the subject will probably be able to answer these kinds of questions. But for now, this is the best information source that I have seen.

The best part of this book is a chapter that explains how a game goes from an idea to a finished product and even explains how games are marketed as well as recounting how much difficulty game programmers and artists have trying to meet milestones.

While I enjoyed the book I think it is more suited to people wanting to know how the game industry works and what the key players are instead of how to actually BREAK into the game industry.

It has some suggestions on how to make it big in the computer video game world but these are more common sense then anything, for example it suggests finding people that are in the business and becoming friends with them.

One thing that keeps this book above average is the countless tips from actual experts from big publishers and developers.
One thing this book will not tell you is what you should learn and what technologies are specifically involved in creating games. This is my one big gripe with the book. However other then that, I give this book 4 stars...

This book explains the gaming industry, beyond, how to program or the history of games. I have been interested in how the gaming industry works as a whole, and have not been able to find a book on it. I think this a great book for anyone interesting in working in the game industry.

Until I read this book the world of computer gaming seemed mysterious and impenetrable--an elite group of smart, young people having a great time at "work." Well, it's still clear that an elite group of smart people get to do this kind of work, but GAME PLAN shows you how to join them. Barajas, Gershenfeld and Loparco demystify the process of breaking into the game business and break it down into useful information, concrete steps and practical advice that anyone serious and dedicated can--and will want to--follow.