Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Experienced sysadmin topics, 22 Oct 2008
This book is excellent way to get know how Linux kernel works and what it does. For person like me, sysadmin for some years already, the book clarifies what makes operating system to behave some way or other. I will not recommend this book for any junior sysadmin, but for thous who have experience and whom are asked to help when systems work strange way the book can give really good background knowledge.

For example after reading this book I could understand slocate cronjob and page table growing relation. Of course removing slocate from cron is the fix, but knowing why it helps and what it does is related to slabs. Even monkey can fix things without understanding what he is doing or why, that is why the book is so important.

Since this and Solaris internals are only books about this subject (what I know) there is no other option than give five starts. I hope in future there will be even better and less dry kernel internal books. Meanwhile this is one of the best.

Dry reading (Altho I am IT reading adict), 13 May 2008
The book contents are very rich but unfortunately the book was a dry read which is very rare for me calling any IT book a dry read!!

It is the ways to learn UNIX, 27 Feb 2006
Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded (I found on Amazon.com but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com). These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Experienced sysadmin topics, 22 Oct 2008
This book is excellent way to get know how Linux kernel works and what it does. For person like me, sysadmin for some years already, the book clarifies what makes operating system to behave some way or other. I will not recommend this book for any junior sysadmin, but for thous who have experience and whom are asked to help when systems work strange way the book can give really good background knowledge.

For example after reading this book I could understand slocate cronjob and page table growing relation. Of course removing slocate from cron is the fix, but knowing why it helps and what it does is related to slabs. Even monkey can fix things without understanding what he is doing or why, that is why the book is so important.

Since this and Solaris internals are only books about this subject (what I know) there is no other option than give five starts. I hope in future there will be even better and less dry kernel internal books. Meanwhile this is one of the best.

Dry reading (Altho I am IT reading adict), 13 May 2008
The book contents are very rich but unfortunately the book was a dry read which is very rare for me calling any IT book a dry read!!

It is the ways to learn UNIX, 27 Feb 2006
Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded (I found on Amazon.com but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com). These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

Savvy study of judgment and decision-making, 15 Aug 2008
This book's focus fills a hole in the literature on leadership. Bestselling authors Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis concentrate on a key issue that is central to leadership: how leaders make judgment calls, and how you should make, execute and evaluate them. They provide a good, useful framework to guide your decision-making process. They offer intriguing tools, such as using a storyline to spur people to help implement your judgments. The book does have weaknesses, however, and those are due to the authors' definitions of two key terms: "results" and "long-term." While their case studies examine judgment calls they find successful, they define success as meeting "the espoused goals of the institution. Period." This assumes that the institution's goals are already examined and valid, when in many cases they are not. Their definition of "long-term" may strike some as only moderate in duration, or even as short-term. Nonetheless, their work is clearly written and rich in examples. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who is seriously interested in leadership, execution, and organizational strategy and culture.
http://www.getabstract.com/ShowAbstract.do?dataId=8242

Why a great leader "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process", 08 Nov 2007

This is the first book on which Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have collaborated. Separately, each has already authored or co-authored several of the most influential business books, including Tichy's The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win and The Leadership Engine as well as Bennis' Geeks & Geezers (later reissued as Leadership for a Lifetime) and On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic.

In the first chapter, Tichy and Bennis assert that what really matters "is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right." They go on to suggest that effective leaders "not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops."

Of special interest to me are the different perspectives on the decision making process preferred by a number of exemplary CEOs who include Brad Anderson (Best Buy), Steve Bennett (Intuit), Jeffrey Immelt (GE), A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), James McNerney (Boeing), and David Novak (Yum! Brands). For example, Immelt's "Boom, I make the decision" comes after he has obtained all the input needed. "There is a moment when, based on his view of time horizon for the judgment and sufficiency of input and involvement, the leader makes the call."

According to Tichy and Bennis, there is a framework of three "critical domains" within which all decisions are made. Judgments about people are the most difficult, and most critical; the others involve strategy and crisis. They stress that good judgment calls are a process, not an event. Each begins when a leader recognizes a need and frames the decision to be made, with the process continuing through execution and adjustment. They also stress the importance of possessing sufficient self-knowledge because making a right call "isn't a solo performance; support teams are vital." I appreciate the fact that Tichy and Bennis employ a framework of their own when presenting the material concerning the "framework of leadership judgment." Specifically, they anchor several exemplary, real-world decisions in terms of their storyline and then their preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation phases.

For example, Tichy and Bennis provide this excerpt from CEO Magazine in which A.G. Lafley explains the storyline for the future success of P&G, one that created the stage to make critical judgments:

"Everything begins here with our purpose. It's very simple. We provide branded products that improve everyday lives. The values of the company are integrity, trust, ownership, leadership, passion for service and winning...Then we turn to strategy which is choices. Our whole focus has been to grow and profit from the core - and that means core businesses, core capabilities, core technologies...Then (the other piece of this) is selecting, developing, training, teaching, and coaching the leadership team. They are the leadership engine...It's one team with one purpose and one dream and one set of strategic choices."

Many of those who read this book will especially appreciate a substantial value-added benefit: the "Handbook for Leadership Judgment" that follows the concluding chapter. In it, Chris DeRose and Tichy provide what I view as an operations manual that will enable a reader to apply what she or he has learned in ways and to an extent that are appropriate to achieving her or his own organization's specific objectives. DeRose and Tichy make an important distinction between judgment and decision making. "Much of the academic literature and popular notions of decision making culminate in a single moment when the leader makes a decision. In this handbook, we focus on judgment as a process that unfolds over time."

Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have provided a brilliant explanation of how winning leaders make great calls and suggest that the greatest among them also help others to do so. (It is worth noting that Immelt spends approximately 25% of his time helping to develop leadership skills in GE's middle managers.) Although their book will be of interest and value to C-level executives, I think it will also be of substantial benefit to others, especially to those now preparing for a business career or who have only recently embarked on one. It is imperative for them to understand as soon as possible that the process of making "great calls" requires a parallel, on-going process of increasing knowledge about one's self, one's social network, one's organization, and finally, about the context within which each "call" is made and the possible (if not probable) implications and consequences it may have.

The framework that Tichy and Bennis provide gives structure to the process of knowledge acquisition and evaluation; they also suggest a frame-of-reference within which to consider various options when making a decision. As the dozens of real-world examples they citer clearly indicate, all decisions have consequences. Obviously, the more difficult a decision is, the more serious its consequences can be...and usually are. The great leader possesses the judgment to make the "right call." That is why she or he "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process."

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Experienced sysadmin topics, 22 Oct 2008
This book is excellent way to get know how Linux kernel works and what it does. For person like me, sysadmin for some years already, the book clarifies what makes operating system to behave some way or other. I will not recommend this book for any junior sysadmin, but for thous who have experience and whom are asked to help when systems work strange way the book can give really good background knowledge.

For example after reading this book I could understand slocate cronjob and page table growing relation. Of course removing slocate from cron is the fix, but knowing why it helps and what it does is related to slabs. Even monkey can fix things without understanding what he is doing or why, that is why the book is so important.

Since this and Solaris internals are only books about this subject (what I know) there is no other option than give five starts. I hope in future there will be even better and less dry kernel internal books. Meanwhile this is one of the best.

Dry reading (Altho I am IT reading adict), 13 May 2008
The book contents are very rich but unfortunately the book was a dry read which is very rare for me calling any IT book a dry read!!

It is the ways to learn UNIX, 27 Feb 2006
Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded (I found on Amazon.com but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com). These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

Savvy study of judgment and decision-making, 15 Aug 2008
This book's focus fills a hole in the literature on leadership. Bestselling authors Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis concentrate on a key issue that is central to leadership: how leaders make judgment calls, and how you should make, execute and evaluate them. They provide a good, useful framework to guide your decision-making process. They offer intriguing tools, such as using a storyline to spur people to help implement your judgments. The book does have weaknesses, however, and those are due to the authors' definitions of two key terms: "results" and "long-term." While their case studies examine judgment calls they find successful, they define success as meeting "the espoused goals of the institution. Period." This assumes that the institution's goals are already examined and valid, when in many cases they are not. Their definition of "long-term" may strike some as only moderate in duration, or even as short-term. Nonetheless, their work is clearly written and rich in examples. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who is seriously interested in leadership, execution, and organizational strategy and culture.
http://www.getabstract.com/ShowAbstract.do?dataId=8242

Why a great leader "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process", 08 Nov 2007

This is the first book on which Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have collaborated. Separately, each has already authored or co-authored several of the most influential business books, including Tichy's The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win and The Leadership Engine as well as Bennis' Geeks & Geezers (later reissued as Leadership for a Lifetime) and On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic.

In the first chapter, Tichy and Bennis assert that what really matters "is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right." They go on to suggest that effective leaders "not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops."

Of special interest to me are the different perspectives on the decision making process preferred by a number of exemplary CEOs who include Brad Anderson (Best Buy), Steve Bennett (Intuit), Jeffrey Immelt (GE), A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), James McNerney (Boeing), and David Novak (Yum! Brands). For example, Immelt's "Boom, I make the decision" comes after he has obtained all the input needed. "There is a moment when, based on his view of time horizon for the judgment and sufficiency of input and involvement, the leader makes the call."

According to Tichy and Bennis, there is a framework of three "critical domains" within which all decisions are made. Judgments about people are the most difficult, and most critical; the others involve strategy and crisis. They stress that good judgment calls are a process, not an event. Each begins when a leader recognizes a need and frames the decision to be made, with the process continuing through execution and adjustment. They also stress the importance of possessing sufficient self-knowledge because making a right call "isn't a solo performance; support teams are vital." I appreciate the fact that Tichy and Bennis employ a framework of their own when presenting the material concerning the "framework of leadership judgment." Specifically, they anchor several exemplary, real-world decisions in terms of their storyline and then their preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation phases.

For example, Tichy and Bennis provide this excerpt from CEO Magazine in which A.G. Lafley explains the storyline for the future success of P&G, one that created the stage to make critical judgments:

"Everything begins here with our purpose. It's very simple. We provide branded products that improve everyday lives. The values of the company are integrity, trust, ownership, leadership, passion for service and winning...Then we turn to strategy which is choices. Our whole focus has been to grow and profit from the core - and that means core businesses, core capabilities, core technologies...Then (the other piece of this) is selecting, developing, training, teaching, and coaching the leadership team. They are the leadership engine...It's one team with one purpose and one dream and one set of strategic choices."

Many of those who read this book will especially appreciate a substantial value-added benefit: the "Handbook for Leadership Judgment" that follows the concluding chapter. In it, Chris DeRose and Tichy provide what I view as an operations manual that will enable a reader to apply what she or he has learned in ways and to an extent that are appropriate to achieving her or his own organization's specific objectives. DeRose and Tichy make an important distinction between judgment and decision making. "Much of the academic literature and popular notions of decision making culminate in a single moment when the leader makes a decision. In this handbook, we focus on judgment as a process that unfolds over time."

Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have provided a brilliant explanation of how winning leaders make great calls and suggest that the greatest among them also help others to do so. (It is worth noting that Immelt spends approximately 25% of his time helping to develop leadership skills in GE's middle managers.) Although their book will be of interest and value to C-level executives, I think it will also be of substantial benefit to others, especially to those now preparing for a business career or who have only recently embarked on one. It is imperative for them to understand as soon as possible that the process of making "great calls" requires a parallel, on-going process of increasing knowledge about one's self, one's social network, one's organization, and finally, about the context within which each "call" is made and the possible (if not probable) implications and consequences it may have.

The framework that Tichy and Bennis provide gives structure to the process of knowledge acquisition and evaluation; they also suggest a frame-of-reference within which to consider various options when making a decision. As the dozens of real-world examples they citer clearly indicate, all decisions have consequences. Obviously, the more difficult a decision is, the more serious its consequences can be...and usually are. The great leader possesses the judgment to make the "right call." That is why she or he "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process."

Waste of paper!, 20 Oct 2008
Absolutely awful with no redeeming features - don't waste your time reading this and don't believe the review or synopsis - I've actually read the book!
FYI the call centre workers are not selling white goods to americans.
Ok then, is this written in the style of a Bollywood movie? Then I'll concede I don't have a valid opinion but if you're looking for a good read then this does not qualify.
You can probably work out without too much difficulty that I'm very disappointed but if you've read this far and can actually recommend a decent read on this subject I would appreciate it.

A delicious read!, 06 Jan 2008
The synopsis tells you enough about the plot that I won't go into the details. This is such a quirky read and linking it to `The Office' (as Amazon has done) is not bad actually, it has that feel. I picked this up on a recommendation from a friend; she was spot on. When I read the opening chapter I thought yeah right, this isn't going to be that good but Bhagat's writing style is so easy you are soon swept along with the narrative.

In the opening page we are asked to do a task - think about something you fear, that makes you angry and one thing you don't like about yourself. I had a think, came up with an idea and plodded on with the reading. When you reach the end of the novel you find yourself thinking about what you said in the beginning and viewing it in a different way. Clever stuff!

God calling the characters who work in the call centre is a brilliant modern way of asking you not to find religion or allow Him into your heart but really just to trust and know you are watched over. It gave me a nice warm feeling! The characters are funny, they do some good things and some dreadful things all of which we are allowed to view through our own eyes and through the eyes of different characters.

Overall a great read that is well written with funny characters.

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Experienced sysadmin topics, 22 Oct 2008
This book is excellent way to get know how Linux kernel works and what it does. For person like me, sysadmin for some years already, the book clarifies what makes operating system to behave some way or other. I will not recommend this book for any junior sysadmin, but for thous who have experience and whom are asked to help when systems work strange way the book can give really good background knowledge.

For example after reading this book I could understand slocate cronjob and page table growing relation. Of course removing slocate from cron is the fix, but knowing why it helps and what it does is related to slabs. Even monkey can fix things without understanding what he is doing or why, that is why the book is so important.

Since this and Solaris internals are only books about this subject (what I know) there is no other option than give five starts. I hope in future there will be even better and less dry kernel internal books. Meanwhile this is one of the best.

Dry reading (Altho I am IT reading adict), 13 May 2008
The book contents are very rich but unfortunately the book was a dry read which is very rare for me calling any IT book a dry read!!

It is the ways to learn UNIX, 27 Feb 2006
Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded (I found on Amazon.com but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com). These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

Savvy study of judgment and decision-making, 15 Aug 2008
This book's focus fills a hole in the literature on leadership. Bestselling authors Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis concentrate on a key issue that is central to leadership: how leaders make judgment calls, and how you should make, execute and evaluate them. They provide a good, useful framework to guide your decision-making process. They offer intriguing tools, such as using a storyline to spur people to help implement your judgments. The book does have weaknesses, however, and those are due to the authors' definitions of two key terms: "results" and "long-term." While their case studies examine judgment calls they find successful, they define success as meeting "the espoused goals of the institution. Period." This assumes that the institution's goals are already examined and valid, when in many cases they are not. Their definition of "long-term" may strike some as only moderate in duration, or even as short-term. Nonetheless, their work is clearly written and rich in examples. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who is seriously interested in leadership, execution, and organizational strategy and culture.
http://www.getabstract.com/ShowAbstract.do?dataId=8242

Why a great leader "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process", 08 Nov 2007

This is the first book on which Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have collaborated. Separately, each has already authored or co-authored several of the most influential business books, including Tichy's The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win and The Leadership Engine as well as Bennis' Geeks & Geezers (later reissued as Leadership for a Lifetime) and On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic.

In the first chapter, Tichy and Bennis assert that what really matters "is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right." They go on to suggest that effective leaders "not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops."

Of special interest to me are the different perspectives on the decision making process preferred by a number of exemplary CEOs who include Brad Anderson (Best Buy), Steve Bennett (Intuit), Jeffrey Immelt (GE), A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), James McNerney (Boeing), and David Novak (Yum! Brands). For example, Immelt's "Boom, I make the decision" comes after he has obtained all the input needed. "There is a moment when, based on his view of time horizon for the judgment and sufficiency of input and involvement, the leader makes the call."

According to Tichy and Bennis, there is a framework of three "critical domains" within which all decisions are made. Judgments about people are the most difficult, and most critical; the others involve strategy and crisis. They stress that good judgment calls are a process, not an event. Each begins when a leader recognizes a need and frames the decision to be made, with the process continuing through execution and adjustment. They also stress the importance of possessing sufficient self-knowledge because making a right call "isn't a solo performance; support teams are vital." I appreciate the fact that Tichy and Bennis employ a framework of their own when presenting the material concerning the "framework of leadership judgment." Specifically, they anchor several exemplary, real-world decisions in terms of their storyline and then their preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation phases.

For example, Tichy and Bennis provide this excerpt from CEO Magazine in which A.G. Lafley explains the storyline for the future success of P&G, one that created the stage to make critical judgments:

"Everything begins here with our purpose. It's very simple. We provide branded products that improve everyday lives. The values of the company are integrity, trust, ownership, leadership, passion for service and winning...Then we turn to strategy which is choices. Our whole focus has been to grow and profit from the core - and that means core businesses, core capabilities, core technologies...Then (the other piece of this) is selecting, developing, training, teaching, and coaching the leadership team. They are the leadership engine...It's one team with one purpose and one dream and one set of strategic choices."

Many of those who read this book will especially appreciate a substantial value-added benefit: the "Handbook for Leadership Judgment" that follows the concluding chapter. In it, Chris DeRose and Tichy provide what I view as an operations manual that will enable a reader to apply what she or he has learned in ways and to an extent that are appropriate to achieving her or his own organization's specific objectives. DeRose and Tichy make an important distinction between judgment and decision making. "Much of the academic literature and popular notions of decision making culminate in a single moment when the leader makes a decision. In this handbook, we focus on judgment as a process that unfolds over time."

Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have provided a brilliant explanation of how winning leaders make great calls and suggest that the greatest among them also help others to do so. (It is worth noting that Immelt spends approximately 25% of his time helping to develop leadership skills in GE's middle managers.) Although their book will be of interest and value to C-level executives, I think it will also be of substantial benefit to others, especially to those now preparing for a business career or who have only recently embarked on one. It is imperative for them to understand as soon as possible that the process of making "great calls" requires a parallel, on-going process of increasing knowledge about one's self, one's social network, one's organization, and finally, about the context within which each "call" is made and the possible (if not probable) implications and consequences it may have.

The framework that Tichy and Bennis provide gives structure to the process of knowledge acquisition and evaluation; they also suggest a frame-of-reference within which to consider various options when making a decision. As the dozens of real-world examples they citer clearly indicate, all decisions have consequences. Obviously, the more difficult a decision is, the more serious its consequences can be...and usually are. The great leader possesses the judgment to make the "right call." That is why she or he "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process."

Waste of paper!, 20 Oct 2008
Absolutely awful with no redeeming features - don't waste your time reading this and don't believe the review or synopsis - I've actually read the book!
FYI the call centre workers are not selling white goods to americans.
Ok then, is this written in the style of a Bollywood movie? Then I'll concede I don't have a valid opinion but if you're looking for a good read then this does not qualify.
You can probably work out without too much difficulty that I'm very disappointed but if you've read this far and can actually recommend a decent read on this subject I would appreciate it.

A delicious read!, 06 Jan 2008
The synopsis tells you enough about the plot that I won't go into the details. This is such a quirky read and linking it to `The Office' (as Amazon has done) is not bad actually, it has that feel. I picked this up on a recommendation from a friend; she was spot on. When I read the opening chapter I thought yeah right, this isn't going to be that good but Bhagat's writing style is so easy you are soon swept along with the narrative.

In the opening page we are asked to do a task - think about something you fear, that makes you angry and one thing you don't like about yourself. I had a think, came up with an idea and plodded on with the reading. When you reach the end of the novel you find yourself thinking about what you said in the beginning and viewing it in a different way. Clever stuff!

God calling the characters who work in the call centre is a brilliant modern way of asking you not to find religion or allow Him into your heart but really just to trust and know you are watched over. It gave me a nice warm feeling! The characters are funny, they do some good things and some dreadful things all of which we are allowed to view through our own eyes and through the eyes of different characters.

Overall a great read that is well written with funny characters.


For complete beginners, 19 Jun 2007
If cold-calling is your only method of selling (which presumably means you're either daft or have been in a coma for a couple of decades) then this book will be riveting.

If however you've had your eyes opened to other possibilities, then this book will offer you very little.

I was very disappointed.

Ok for beginners in internet marketing, 03 Jul 2006
This book explains in great detail on how you can utilise the power of the Internet to sell your products or services in todays Information Age.Some of the techniques taught in the book are pretty generic and common knowledge. I don't feel that it would suit individuals who understand and possess a good knowledge of internet marketing.

I have my doubts that the techniques can be applied to all industries. I belief a mixture of internet marketing and the conventional cold calling needs to be implemented to achieve maximum result.

A great book for newbies who are new to Internet Marketing though.

Cisco Systems has lately become aggressive in promoting applications of the IP network infrastructure equipment that the company has traditionally sold. Cisco CallManager--the subject of Cisco CallManager Fundamentals--is essentially an IP-based Public Branch Exchange (PBX) that enables companies to carry their voice and data traffic on a single network infrastructure. This book explains how CallManager (originally developed by Selsius Systems) goes about providing call-control services to IP telephony devices and performing reliably as a corporate telephone switch, and offers insight into how the product may evolve. This book provides systems architects, engineers and implementation technicians with the details they need to build strong CallManager systems.

Written by members of the CallManager development team and extensively edited for accuracy, Cisco CallManager Fundamentals uses prose and remarkably clear network diagrams to make its points. People looking for a detailed understanding of how CallManager works will find themselves delighted. While technicians looking for click-this, click-that procedures will be generally disappointed (such didactic techniques are not typical of Cisco Press books), they will find a fair number of sections that explain, in general terms, how to do such administrative work as loading users' names into a CallManager database and routing calls to emergency numbers. --David Wall

Topics covered: All aspects of Cisco CallManager, versions 3.0x and 3.1, of interest to the people who design, implement, and maintain the IP telephony solution. Matters of system architecture (with plenty of information about hardware and network requirements), call routing, media processing, and reporting are all covered. Neither details of CallManager's integration with the Intelligent Contact Manager (ICM) business-rules engine, nor much information on external Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) applications, are included here.

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

Experienced sysadmin topics, 22 Oct 2008
This book is excellent way to get know how Linux kernel works and what it does. For person like me, sysadmin for some years already, the book clarifies what makes operating system to behave some way or other. I will not recommend this book for any junior sysadmin, but for thous who have experience and whom are asked to help when systems work strange way the book can give really good background knowledge.

For example after reading this book I could understand slocate cronjob and page table growing relation. Of course removing slocate from cron is the fix, but knowing why it helps and what it does is related to slabs. Even monkey can fix things without understanding what he is doing or why, that is why the book is so important.

Since this and Solaris internals are only books about this subject (what I know) there is no other option than give five starts. I hope in future there will be even better and less dry kernel internal books. Meanwhile this is one of the best.

Dry reading (Altho I am IT reading adict), 13 May 2008
The book contents are very rich but unfortunately the book was a dry read which is very rare for me calling any IT book a dry read!!

It is the ways to learn UNIX, 27 Feb 2006
Everybody likes easy to read books and I also assume that learning UNIX is not necessarily has to be a struggle. This book stood up to my expectations almost perfectly: it is very well written and clearly expressed work. It does not overwhelm with technical details and does not press too much. It is VERY descriptive and takes you snoothly from subject to subject. I also followed an advise in someone's review and purchased "UNIX Essentials" DVD that is complete unix course recorded (I found on Amazon.com but since they do not ship outside US I ordered it directly from CustomFlix.com). These two nicely complement one another. You watch it and you read it. If you didn't catch it from the first try you watch it again and read it again. In two months I found myself confident to that extend that gave advises to our system administrator and he accepted them because there were subjects that he wasn't completely sure. What I can say, in three month I passed my first interview and got a job! Sure it is a way to start and there are much more advanced reading, however these two provide you with the background !
I can't overstate how much I have learned from them. Don't be naive, though. You will have to learn and memorize many things. The fact of owning neither book nor DVD will not make you knowledgeable, but if you will work it trough, trust me, you will surprise many people around!

Savvy study of judgment and decision-making, 15 Aug 2008
This book's focus fills a hole in the literature on leadership. Bestselling authors Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis concentrate on a key issue that is central to leadership: how leaders make judgment calls, and how you should make, execute and evaluate them. They provide a good, useful framework to guide your decision-making process. They offer intriguing tools, such as using a storyline to spur people to help implement your judgments. The book does have weaknesses, however, and those are due to the authors' definitions of two key terms: "results" and "long-term." While their case studies examine judgment calls they find successful, they define success as meeting "the espoused goals of the institution. Period." This assumes that the institution's goals are already examined and valid, when in many cases they are not. Their definition of "long-term" may strike some as only moderate in duration, or even as short-term. Nonetheless, their work is clearly written and rich in examples. getAbstract recommends it to anyone who is seriously interested in leadership, execution, and organizational strategy and culture.
http://www.getabstract.com/ShowAbstract.do?dataId=8242

Why a great leader "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process", 08 Nov 2007

This is the first book on which Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have collaborated. Separately, each has already authored or co-authored several of the most influential business books, including Tichy's The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win and The Leadership Engine as well as Bennis' Geeks & Geezers (later reissued as Leadership for a Lifetime) and On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic.

In the first chapter, Tichy and Bennis assert that what really matters "is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right." They go on to suggest that effective leaders "not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops."

Of special interest to me are the different perspectives on the decision making process preferred by a number of exemplary CEOs who include Brad Anderson (Best Buy), Steve Bennett (Intuit), Jeffrey Immelt (GE), A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), James McNerney (Boeing), and David Novak (Yum! Brands). For example, Immelt's "Boom, I make the decision" comes after he has obtained all the input needed. "There is a moment when, based on his view of time horizon for the judgment and sufficiency of input and involvement, the leader makes the call."

According to Tichy and Bennis, there is a framework of three "critical domains" within which all decisions are made. Judgments about people are the most difficult, and most critical; the others involve strategy and crisis. They stress that good judgment calls are a process, not an event. Each begins when a leader recognizes a need and frames the decision to be made, with the process continuing through execution and adjustment. They also stress the importance of possessing sufficient self-knowledge because making a right call "isn't a solo performance; support teams are vital." I appreciate the fact that Tichy and Bennis employ a framework of their own when presenting the material concerning the "framework of leadership judgment." Specifically, they anchor several exemplary, real-world decisions in terms of their storyline and then their preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation phases.

For example, Tichy and Bennis provide this excerpt from CEO Magazine in which A.G. Lafley explains the storyline for the future success of P&G, one that created the stage to make critical judgments:

"Everything begins here with our purpose. It's very simple. We provide branded products that improve everyday lives. The values of the company are integrity, trust, ownership, leadership, passion for service and winning...Then we turn to strategy which is choices. Our whole focus has been to grow and profit from the core - and that means core businesses, core capabilities, core technologies...Then (the other piece of this) is selecting, developing, training, teaching, and coaching the leadership team. They are the leadership engine...It's one team with one purpose and one dream and one set of strategic choices."

Many of those who read this book will especially appreciate a substantial value-added benefit: the "Handbook for Leadership Judgment" that follows the concluding chapter. In it, Chris DeRose and Tichy provide what I view as an operations manual that will enable a reader to apply what she or he has learned in ways and to an extent that are appropriate to achieving her or his own organization's specific objectives. DeRose and Tichy make an important distinction between judgment and decision making. "Much of the academic literature and popular notions of decision making culminate in a single moment when the leader makes a decision. In this handbook, we focus on judgment as a process that unfolds over time."

Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have provided a brilliant explanation of how winning leaders make great calls and suggest that the greatest among them also help others to do so. (It is worth noting that Immelt spends approximately 25% of his time helping to develop leadership skills in GE's middle managers.) Although their book will be of interest and value to C-level executives, I think it will also be of substantial benefit to others, especially to those now preparing for a business career or who have only recently embarked on one. It is imperative for them to understand as soon as possible that the process of making "great calls" requires a parallel, on-going process of increasing knowledge about one's self, one's social network, one's organization, and finally, about the context within which each "call" is made and the possible (if not probable) implications and consequences it may have.

The framework that Tichy and Bennis provide gives structure to the process of knowledge acquisition and evaluation; they also suggest a frame-of-reference within which to consider various options when making a decision. As the dozens of real-world examples they citer clearly indicate, all decisions have consequences. Obviously, the more difficult a decision is, the more serious its consequences can be...and usually are. The great leader possesses the judgment to make the "right call." That is why she or he "is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process."

Waste of paper!, 20 Oct 2008
Absolutely awful with no redeeming features - don't waste your time reading this and don't believe the review or synopsis - I've actually read the book!
FYI the call centre workers are not selling white goods to americans.
Ok then, is this written in the style of a Bollywood movie? Then I'll concede I don't have a valid opinion but if you're looking for a good read then this does not qualify.
You can probably work out without too much difficulty that I'm very disappointed but if you've read this far and can actually recommend a decent read on this subject I would appreciate it.

A delicious read!, 06 Jan 2008
The synopsis tells you enough about the plot that I won't go into the details. This is such a quirky read and linking it to `The Office' (as Amazon has done) is not bad actually, it has that feel. I picked this up on a recommendation from a friend; she was spot on. When I read the opening chapter I thought yeah right, this isn't going to be that good but Bhagat's writing style is so easy you are soon swept along with the narrative.

In the opening page we are asked to do a task - think about something you fear, that makes you angry and one thing you don't like about yourself. I had a think, came up with an idea and plodded on with the reading. When you reach the end of the novel you find yourself thinking about what you said in the beginning and viewing it in a different way. Clever stuff!

God calling the characters who work in the call centre is a brilliant modern way of asking you not to find religion or allow Him into your heart but really just to trust and know you are watched over. It gave me a nice warm feeling! The characters are funny, they do some good things and some dreadful things all of which we are allowed to view through our own eyes and through the eyes of different characters.

Overall a great read that is well written with funny characters.


For complete beginners, 19 Jun 2007
If cold-calling is your only method of selling (which presumably means you're either daft or have been in a coma for a couple of decades) then this book will be riveting.

If however you've had your eyes opened to other possibilities, then this book will offer you very little.

I was very disappointed.

Ok for beginners in internet marketing, 03 Jul 2006
This book explains in great detail on how you can utilise the power of the Internet to sell your products or services in todays Information Age.Some of the techniques taught in the book are pretty generic and common knowledge. I don't feel that it would suit individuals who understand and possess a good knowledge of internet marketing.

I have my doubts that the techniques can be applied to all industries. I belief a mixture of internet marketing and the conventional cold calling needs to be implemented to achieve maximum result.

A great book for newbies who are new to Internet Marketing though.

Excellent book for CallManager administrators, 09 Feb 2002
This is definately a must buy for anyone that owns a Cisco CallManager IPT system. It fullys explains all the more difficult concepts contained in what initially looks like a simple GUI.

Excellent book, highly recommended.

Lots of why but little how, 30 Jun 2008
The purpose of this book is to increase your conversion rate, in other words sales on your site using a multitude of different methods. It tries to cover all bases everything from usability issues, writing effective persuasive copy, web analytics, understanding your customers etc. It bashes on about the what's and the why's but often avoids the how's (especially on web analytics) which lets the book down.

If you're new to all this and want an overview then this might be the book you're looking for, the reason I say might is that the book is so repetitive that it could easily have been a third of the size and would still have covered everything it did, this is rather annoying as they could have spent more time digging deeper into topics than just fleeting over them and it made me feel a little cheated.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot of good stuff in here but it still falls short of an in depth study (which it promised to be) and does feel a little disjointed; it's a shame they wasted so many pages repeating themselves.

Oh and one last think you should be aware of would be acronym overload. These boys love their acronyms!


Call to wasting money, 14 Jun 2008
I gotta tell you, this book was absolute cr*p !

Talk about promising you the world and delivering nothing.

Blah, blah, blah, it goes on for ever, but somehow never manages to give you any practical advice that can benefit you in any way whatsoever.

I don't usually bother writing these reviews, but in this case I have made an exception. Don't be fooled by the positive review that is very long and almost certainly written by the author.

I'm having a bonfire this evening, and this book should start it off nicely.



Making websites work. E-Commerce book of the year 2005?, 15 Aug 2005
Why do website conversion rates remain at a gloomy 2-5 per cent?

"Call for Action" focuses on how we can improve the conversion rates. Not from a technical or academic or conceptual standpoint. Instead it takes a rare PRACTICAL and down-to-earth approach on how to improve conversion rates to improve sales and thus profits.

What is CONVERSION? Virtually all websites have a persuasive purpose; to get someone to subscribe, to register, to inquire or to buy something. And if all we get is 2-5 per cent conversion, we ought to review our website. Do we offer a product or service that could meet the needs of more than 2-5 per cent of the market? Can visitors find that, solution on the website? Do they understand our offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are we sure they're coming back?

NAVIGATION is the biggest challenge websites face, the authors argue. The issues are: What to do with the traffic once it lands on the website? How to get visitors to take the first action and click deeper? And once there, how to induce visitors to click to the next step, and the next, and the next?

The fundamental idea is that a PERSUASIVE ARCHITECTURE links a visitor's buying experience to our company's sales process. It bridges the buy/sell process in a measurable way. If you can influence visitor behaviour and empathize with visitor motivations, you can influence results to provide a better experience and more frequent, effective conversions.

The book is filled with illustrative screen dumps of websites (before and after a change). This is a great benefit of such a how-to field book on e-commerce improvements. In my opinion, most e-commerce sites can recover the book's cost price in a few days just by following one or two of the practical suggestions in the many diverse case studies.

The primary focus of this book is e-Commerce. The key messages on conversion, however, are important to anyone running a large website.

This is a rare book. I've been involved in e-commerce since 1997 and read many interesting books on this topic. But I've never found such a practical approach to optimising e-commerce web sites as this one.

The brothers Eisenberg call themselves "wizards of web". I agree and hope my existing and future competitors don't read and act on this book. These secret formulas to improve online results are very effective, indeed.

If you're looking for a conceptual e-commerce theory, please look somewhere else. This is about the nuts and bolts about making money with an e-commerce web site. If you don't have or don`t plan to have such a website; forget about this book. Then it's a waste of time.

I also recommend Jakob Nielsen's books on web usability and Steve Krug's easy-to-read "Don't make me think".

Peter Leerskov,
MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

E