Technology

The book consists of the learnings which the author had while working on his startup IMVU. The book focuses on the concept of validated learning and the build-measure-learn feedback loop. It tries to bring in a systematic approach to measuring the progress of a startup. A startup has a true north, its vision. It employs a strategy that includes a business model, a product roadmap, and a view of partners, competitors, and customers. The product is the result of the strategy. Products constantly change ( engine tuning). Strategy changes occasionally ( pivot). Vision rarely changes. In general management, failure to deliver results is caused by failure to plan or failure to execute. Both are frowned upon. But in the modern economy, both are useful tools for testing new ideas.

The authors are founders of 37Signals. The book talks about how to go about remote work, its advantages and pitfalls. Here are some key takeaways from the book.

The book is an insightful journey into the contemporary understanding of the human brain and how scientists are trying to replicate it. Major takeaways from the book are listed below. Thought experiments in the world Charles Lyell was the first person to propose that steady movement of water carves out gorges and canyons. This became the inspiration for Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Both of them engaged in thought experiments looking for how things around them attained their states and discovered underlying phenomena. Similarly, Einstein, after reading about the experiments which concluded that the relative speed of light is always constant, engaged in thought experiments that eventually lead to the “Theory of relativity”. The human brain is remarkably amazing in its ability to identify such patterns and discover underlying phenomena just by thinking.

The book Winners take all is a collection of interesting insights into how companies in the high tech sector succeed and fail. The book was written in 2006 (pre-iPhone era) so it’s interesting to see how some companies mentioned by the author (notably, Apple and Google) succeeded and how some others (notably, Symantec and Nokia) are struggling.

The book tries to reflect on an individual’s professional growth in the contemporary era of fickle employment guarantees. The best part about the book is that it tries to offer pragmatic, as opposed to principled advice, regarding career development and branding.

Just completed reading " The Tangled web: A guide to securing modern applications" by Michael Zalewski. The book is surprisingly small given the amount of information it covers about the interaction of web browsers, websites, and client-side web technologies. The book starts with a discussion of what a valid URL could look like (http://yahoo.com:80@google.com/microsoft.com - think which site is being connected to here) and then discusses several fundamental building blocks of the modern web (like cookies) as well as standard technologies (like Flash) in depth....

An amazing book which describes Google’s journey right from its beginning in the Stanford dorm. The author interviewed several top echelons of Google and presented several interesting insider anecdotes and stories of Google. The book provides details of major projects like Gmail, Google Desktop, Google News and Google Toolbar, Google Books and the failure of Orkut. It also describes the process of acquisition of YouTube, Blogger, Docs, GrandCentral and Double Click. Following are the few salient points. The book has many more interesting anecdotes which I am forced to skip here.