For heavy LinkedIn users–or those who aspire to be–only.
A primer on the social network LinkedIn and an introduction to Windmill Networking.
LinkedIn is a popular social networking site used mainly to establish professional connections and explore career opportunities and advancement. With 50 million users, it has far fewer members than other services like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter–but, as Schaffer notes, “LinkedIn is by far the biggest social networking site that caters to the professional demographic.” After returning from years working abroad in Asia, Schaffer became a “heavy LinkedIn user,” which helped him expand his “real and virtual networks.” In so doing, he developed the concept of “Windmill Networking,” which involves building up networks of trusted connections, helping others out and reaping the rewards of these connections and favors. The book is a catalog of the basic and advanced functionalities of the LinkedIn network and an explication of–and recruitment tool for–the Windmill Networking technique. Schaffer’s exhaustive guidebook covers everything from self-branding and establishing connections to joining groups and updating one’s status. At nearly 400 pages, The Windmill Networking Approach is so encyclopedic that only the most devoted LinkedIn users will benefit from all of the information it contains (new users might be scared off by the tome’s girth). But the real problem, which the author acknowledges in his preface, is that a book–a static source–can never coevolve at the same speed as the social network it is written about. Furthermore, Schaffer’s advice, when accompanied by caveats like “if my memory is not mistaken” or “I have yet to confirm this,” hardly inspires supreme confidence. Ultimately, the book suffers from an identity crisis–is it a business networking book (replete with terms like “Trusted Network of Advisors” or admonishments to “Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty”) or a book about making the most of a social network? It succeeds more in the latter, but the depth of detail renders it all but inaccessible to most casual users. Newcomers to LinkedIn might be better off exploring the site independently.
For heavy LinkedIn users–or those who aspire to be–only.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-4705-1
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
From Final Cut to The Devil's Candy, there are any number of well-told tales of epic motion picture disasters, but they all pale in comparison to this detailed, devastating account of the grandest debacle of them all. Even by the usual shoulder-shrugging ``Nobody knows anything'' credo of Hollywood, Sony's appointment of Jon Peters and Peter Guber to head up their newly purchased Columbia Pictures was a stunning act of blind faith. As independent producers, Peters and Guber had been responsible for a remarkable string of mediocre successes and outright flops, with Batman one of their few genuine hits. So disliked were they that Steven Spielberg even had a provision in one contract explicitly barring them from his set. But in a town where executives are perpetually failing upwards, it made a strange kind of sense that the two should become studio heads. However such dubious talent didn't come cheaply. Variety estimated that just to buy up Guber and Peters's production company, as well as settle their contract with Warner Brothers, cost Sony nearly a billion dollars. This was just the beginning. From a complete remodeling of Columbia's offices to overbidding on movie properties, the two men went on a spending spree of brobdingnagian proportions. A few minor flops and major embarrassments later, the volatile Peters was off the lot, multimillion dollar buyout in hand. But even as bad went to worse, culminating in such bombs as the Last Action Hero and I'll Do Anything, Guber hung on for almost five years. Despite some awkwardness in their characterizations (particularly of Guber), Griffin, the West Coast editor of Premiere magazine, and Masters, a reporter for the Washington Post, have done excellent spadework, providing a full, lucid, even gripping, account of everything that went so very wrong. A dead-on, damning indictment of Hollywood cupidity, stupidity, and excess. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First serial to Vanity Fair)
Pub Date: June 19, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80931-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
Computer-aided math is now at a point where unaided human intelligence cannot follow the proofs, a fact that has profound implications for future science, according to James (a former executive at Thinking Machines Corp.). He illustrates this thesis by summarizing the role of different forms of math in the history of science and philosophy. Ptolemy constructed his astronomical theory on a geometrical basis of perfect circles. But when astronomers (notably Tycho Brahe) began to collect data that failed to fit the theory, new mathematical tools became necessary to construct a more accurate model of the cosmos: first algebra, then calculus. Descartes's step-by-step sequential method was matched to the strengths of the human mind and gained its most impressive results from a miserly amount of data. But physical scientists came to scorn ``mere'' data collection. A true scientist worked to discover abstract theoretical principles; collecting data and doing arithmetic were the jobs of assistants. The earliest computers mimicked the methods of human calculators; their main advantages were increased speed and almost perfect accuracy. Advanced computers change all that, handling incredible floods of data with ridiculous ease—and in many cases, in parallel streams. It is no longer unthinkable to simply pile up huge quantities of fact and analyze the resulting patterns. The implications of this are most profound in disciplines to which the sequential maths were least adaptable: meteorology, biology, and economics, all of which generate enormous masses of seemingly chaotic data. The computers can analyze these data and discover patterns, even though the programmers can no longer follow their ``reasoning.'' What this finally means is that we humans will increasingly have to accept computers as equal partners in the enterprise of science—and to accept as valid computer-generated results we cannot begin to understand. A fascinating tour of scientific history, concluding with a vision of a future that is at once exhilarating and profoundly unsettling.
Pub Date: July 3, 1996
ISBN: 0-465-00781-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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