The decision to source software development to an overseas firm (offshoring) is looked at frequently in simple economic terms - it's cheaper, and skilled labor is easier to find. In practice, however, offshoring is fraught with difficulties. As well as the considerable challenge of controlling projects at a distance, there are differences in culture, language, business methods, politics, and many other issues to contend with. Nevertheless, as many firms have discovered, the benefits of getting it right are too great to ignore. This book explains everything you need to know to put offshoring into practice, avoid the pitfalls, and develop effective working relationships. It covers a comprehensive range of the important offshoring issues: from ROI to strategy, from SLA to culture, from country comparisons to provider marketing. Written for CTOs, CIOs, consultants, and other IT executives, this book is also an excellent introduction to sourcing for business students (Cambridge University Press book description).

Offshoring and outsourcing have generated substantial savings and often controversial news coverage for many companies. But these technologies aren't even close to being the real story. Two of business' leading strategy thinkers argue that the only sustainable advantage will come not from using technology to cut costs-;but to get better faster than rivals. The authors identity two key forces-;dynamic specialisation and productive friction that will dramatically reshape the competitive landscape and show what firms must do to understand, build and exploit these forces before their competitors do (Amazon Book Description).

There was a time, not too long ago, when the typewriter and notebook ruled, and the computer as an everyday tool was simply a vision. Revolution in the Valley traces this vision back to its earliest roots: the hallways and backrooms of Apple, where the groundbreaking Macintosh computer was born. The book traces the development of the Macintosh, from its inception as an underground skunkworks project in 1979 to its triumphant introduction in 1984 and beyond. The stories in Revolution in the Valley come on extremely good authority. That's because author Andy Hertzfeld was a core member of the team that built the Macintosh system software, and a key creator of the Mac's radically new user interface software. One of the chosen few who worked with the mercurial Steve Jobs, you might call him the ultimate insider. When Revolution in the Valley begins, Hertzfeld is working on Apple's first attempt at a low-cost, consumer-oriented computer: the Apple II. He sees that Steve Jobs is luring some of the company's most brilliant innovators to work on a tiny research effort the Macintosh. Hertzfeld manages to make his way onto the Macintosh research team, and the rest is history (Amazon, book description)

In this sharply written account, Clark provides the ultimate insider's look at Netscape from its launch in summer 1994 to its sale to America Online in late 1998. Netscape's origins can be traced to when Clark was forced out of the first company he founded, Silicon Graphics. Bolstered by a "minor fortune" of $15 million, Clark was determined to do financially better for himself in his next venture. At the suggestion of a colleague, Clark met with Marc Andreessen, a recent graduate of the University of Illinois who had led the team that developed the Mosaic Web browser. The two hit it off, and after some false starts, they decided to form a company dedicated to building a "Mosaic killer." With the decision made, events moved at a rapid pace (what he calls "Netscape Time"). As Clark tells Netscape's story, he sheds light on the different mindsets of managers, programmers and venture capitalists (From Publishers Weekly).

Speeding the Net is a thrilling read, and Quittner and Slatalla revel in their storytelling. The excitement and informality of the early browse-design sessions is apparent and infuses the book with a dynamic, raucous energy. The book tells the story of the creation of the Mosaic browser, the precursor to the wildly successful Netscape Navigator. Speeding the Net presents a thorough and compelling history of the programmers and business minds behind Navigator. Along the way, the authors also place ongoing developments in context: the universality (up until the explosion of the Web) of LANs, the creation of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the release of Java by Sun Microsystems. Speeding the Net is the best of all worlds: part biography, part primer on Web history, and part journal of the history of an infamous and revolutionary start-up company (Amazon Book Review).

Robert Reid explores the history of the Net from a business perspective--how a communication system nominally built for national defense and in effect taken over by education and research came to erupt as the most important medium since television--and with greater speed and intensity than any communication medium ever. Each chapter examines the Web's business development through the story of one of its pioneers--including Marc Andreeson of Netscape, Mark Pesce of VRML, Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Halsey Minor of CNET, and more. Its an exciting story of frantic activity in a whirlwind environment and of the individuals who rode the tornado to success (from Amazon).

UMCP McKeldin Library: Stacks - HD9696.C63 U5644 1997

Rather than write a book strictly about the rise of Google as a business, technology journalist Battelle targets his research on the concept of Internet search, beginning the book with a discussion of an abstract idea he terms the "Database of Intentions," defined as the sum total of all queries that pour into search engines daily, revealing the intricacies and idiosyncrasies of our culture. Though most of the book is devoted to the search engine giant (which Battelle reports corners 51 percent of the search engine market), the author also includes chapters on "Search, Before Google" and the "Who, What, Where, Why, When. And How (much)" of search. Battelle is at his best when describing the creation of Google, especially through the yin-yang personalities of its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and in describing the company's culture (from Publishers Weekly).

This lucid but impersonal memoir conveys some vital history and intriguing philosophy concerning the Internet, written by the man who invented such ubiquitous terms as URL, HTML and World Wide Web. British-born physicist Berners-Lee is now the director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which is based at MIT and sets software standards for the Web. In the late 1980s, he wrote the first programs that set up the Web, thus revolutionizing the Internet by allowing users to hyperlink among the world's computers. It was a quantum conceptual leap, and not everyone instantly understood it (some researchers had to be convinced that posting information was better than writing custom programs to transfer it). The release of graphical browsers such as Netscape Navigator made the Web much easier for home users to navigate and led to the commercialization of the Net. Although Berners-Lee calmly eschewed opportunities to get rich, he doesn't subscribe to the notion, common among pre-Web denizens of the Internet, that commercialization is a pox upon cyberspace. After short takes on current issues like privacy and pornography, Berners-Lee moves into prediction and prescription: the Web needs more intuitive interfaces and integration of tools, "annotation servers" that allow comments to be posted on documents and "social machines" that enable national plebiscites. And while he's no digital utopian, he thinks an Internet that balances decentralization and centralization can contribute to a more harmonious society. Berners-Lee's tone is more lofty than quotidian. He'd rather muse about the benefits of decentralization that his revolutionary technology makes possible than respond to Internet skeptics and critics. But he was very, very right a decade ago, and he's well worth reading now. First serial to Vanity Fair; 7-city author tour; 25-city radio campaign (from Publishers Weekly).

Kaplan's book is a history of the Valley, from the time when Stanford professor Frederick Terman encouraged David Packard and Bill Hewlett to establish their own company to when Sequoia Capital invested $1 million in a startup founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. In between are the many Valley legends, including Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, Kleiner Perkins, Apple, Oracle, and Netscape--as well as some of its most notable failures and tragedies, such as William Shockley and Gary Kildall. While the book begins with the opulence of Woodside, California, it ends surprisingly enough in Portland, Maine, with Bob Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, who fled the Valley for something "fresher" and "more alive."
As he traces the short history of the area, Kaplan, a senior writer at Newsweek, detects a not-so-subtle change in its values. He writes, "Nobody appears to be having quite as good a time in Silicon Valley. Passions have become mere professions; impulsiveness is now compulsiveness.... The Valley once was a new machine. It changed the world. It may do so yet again. But the machine has no soul anymore." Here's a thoughtful and colorful read for anyone interested in one of the most dynamic places on the planet. --Harry C. Edwards

Al Gore’s groundbreaking book, An Inconvenient Truth, brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world, as well as photographs, charts, and other illustrations to document the reality of global warming--and to sound a warning bell for action before it’s too late. Filled with personal anecdotes and observations about how this issue has become a central focus in Mr. Gore’s life--and why he believes it is the crucial issue of our time--AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH argues that global warming is not just about science, nor is it just a political issue: it is a moral issue and we have a responsibility to do something about it. Destined to become a classic, this accessible, entertaining, and thorough book is a unique reference for anyone who wants more information about global warming as well a guidebook for those who want to join the fight (book description, http://www.climatecrisis.net).

Discussing overlapping themes of transnational consequence, the contributors to this volume describe how the global character of technology, communication networks, consumer culture, intellectual discourse, the arts, and mass entertainment have all been affected by recent worldwide trends. Appropriate to such diversity of material, the authors approach their topics from a variety of theoretical perspectives, including those of linguistics, sociology, economics, anthropology, and the law. Essays examine such topics as free trade, capitalism, the North and South, Eurocentrism, language migration, art and cinema, social fragmentation, sovereignty and nationhood, higher education, environmental justice, wealth and poverty, transnational corporations, and global culture. Bridging the spheres of economic, political, and cultural inquiry, The Cultures of Globalization brings crucial insight into many of the most significant changes occurring in today's world. This volume will inform readers interested in current and future global challenges and those intellectuals involved in cultural, postcolonial, and neocolonial studies in various regions of the world from Latin America to Africa, Asia/Pacific, and the Middle East (From Google Book Search).