Search Engine Marketing Inc. Bill Hunt & Mike Moran, IBM Press.
Recommended by Mark Cordover at IT.com. Hunt is the man in SEM/SEO. Working my way through it like homework, so it isn’t a fun read, but it delivers the goods.
Autumn of the Moguls, Michael Wolff
This falls into the category of "why do I bother?" Total gossip, snark, and mastubatory inside-baseball about the media morons of the late 90s. Reading Wolff’s description of glomming onto uber-flak Pam Alexander at a TED conference to try to suck up to Rupert Murdoch made me wince, and then wince some more. If anything, this piece of drivel makes me happy, once again, to be off the media bus.
Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang, Jon Holliday
So far (I’m 200 pages into this opus), the authors’ seem to be grinding an axe that is hard to dodge. I like my history served straight up, and this one has an agenda. I’d recommend a pass, but will probably forge onto the end.
Blue Ocean Strategy: W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne
Deepak Advani, CMO of Lenovo and my new boss, recommended this. Good book — comes down to how to open new markets rather than engage in a caged death match with the competition in a fight for the bottom. Best analogy is how Cirque d’Soleil beat the stuffing out of Barnum & Bailey in the Circus market by doing away with three rings, animal acts, and introducing some plot lines into the traditional circus chaos. News note is that Barnum recently reacted and did away with the three-ring format, recognizing that people didn’t want sensory overload in their entertainment.
