 Making IT Better: Expanding Information Technology Research to Meet Society's Needs,
In fact, what the researchers do here is ask the right questions about IT and society, without necessarily coming up with any of the answers. This academic metastudy focuses not on IT, but on research about IT, where it's being done and by whom, and how research about IT may improve IT and society as a whole.
The report accomplishes its academic purpose but won't be terribly useful to IT managers in the trenches. If you're looking to go into research, this is the place to start. Otherwise, stick with something more down to earth. —Kevin Fogarty
by the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of the National Research Council (National Academy Press, 272 pages, paperback, $34.95). Count on the National Science Foundation, which underwrote the research for this book, to look at the big picture about life and IT, while the rest of the publishing world is focused on how-to tech books and New Economy apologia.
|
|
 What could be more down to earth than project management? More specifically, what could be more down to earth than The Project Surgeon: A Troubleshooter's Guide to Business Crisis Management, by Boris Hornjak (Project Management Institute, 130 pages, paperback, $34.95). The publicists pitch this one as a hands-on troubleshooting manual for operational managers—and they're not far off.
Although the book isn't specifically about IT, the guidelines that Hornjak lays down can be applied by almost any IT manager who has to regularly put out fires while simultaneously moving forward on several fronts.
Hornjak, a 17-year veteran project manager, covers business recovery in three parts—Emergency Management, Crisis Management and Crisis Prevention.
Emergencies are projects handled quickly, Hornjak writes; they have a beginning, middle and an end and can be metered, guided and analyzed, just like any other project.
Almost more valuable than the prose and the tips are the charts, checklists and examples of the analytics that not only mark a project's progress, but also show when it should be cut loose and when it's already too late to do so.
But if you're not a project manager, don't even open the book; knowing the details on how badly major projects can go wrong will only keep you up at night. —Kevin Fogarty
One of the most puzzling questions facing modern businesses, especially Web-based organizations, is how to decipher whether and when intellectual property needs to be paid for or protected. On the surface, it seems obvious, but the Napster controversy alone demonstrates that it's not.
|
|
 Copyrights and Copywrongs, The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, by Siva Vaidhyanathan (New York University Press, 189 pages, paperback, $27.95), explores the history and restrictions of copyright law and argues that copyright is more like protecting a monopoly over specific information than protecting the rights of an author.
Vaidhyanathan, a media studies specialist and cultural historian who teaches at New York University, introduces the digital copyright question and how it should be applied to online content. The problem, however, is that he doesn't come up with an argument more convincing than that you can set creativity free by not restricting it too tightly with the binds of intellectual property.
Tell that to the judge who slammed the door on Napster. —Kevin Fogarty
|
|
 Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a Great Place to Work, by John Putzier (Amacom Books, 178 pages, paperback, $17.95). OK, the tech hiring market isn't quite as desperate as it was a year ago. But hiring and retaining the right people is still a challenge, and Putzier, founder of Prospect, Pa.-based human resources consultancy FirstStep Inc., suggests a ton of cutesy tricks designed to get or keep employees engaged.
Most of his ideas are too goofy for the post-dot-com generation, like using airplane banners for recruitment.
Other suggestions include taking a survey of employees' skills and their ideas on how the company can best utilize their abilities, encouraging creativity by letting staffers join projects they've come up with themselves, offering public recognition in many ways, and eliminating bureaucratese. These seem like useful, but not radical, innovations.
Still, most of the ideas in the book cost little or nothing, which is valuable in the current economic environment. And even if only one suggestion would work in your organization, that's probably worth the price of the book. —Kevin Fogarty\
|
|
 The Wireless Web: How to Develop and Execute a Winning Wireless Strategy, by Bryan Bergeron (McGraw-Hill, 272 pages, hardcover, $24.95). This is a solid introduction for nontechnical executives who are ooking for a primer on wireless technologies.
Bergeron, a Harvard Medical School and MIT professor, provides useful insights on how key technologies and customer needs in this segment are converging.
The language in the middle section of the book, which describes various wireless technologies and protocols such as cellular digital packet data and Wireless Transport Layer, can be a bit dry. But Bergeron does a decent job of describing what nontechnical executives need to know about wireless gadgets. This lays the foundation for the third and final section of the book, which focuses on economic and legal issues. —Thomas Hoffman
|
