The Decline and Fall of IBM

Cringely_eBook-cover_1563x2500Well my IBM eBook is finally available. Right now that’s just on Amazon.com for the Kindle (just click the link to the right) but by next week it will be on every eBook platform (iPad Nook, etc.) and there will be a trade paperback as well as an audio edition. I’ll announce all of those here as they appear. 

I feel I owe an explanation for the long delay in publishing this book. I finished it in early January, about a week after my mother died, only to learn that my old-school book publisher didn’t want to touch it. Or more properly they wanted […]

By |June 4th, 2014|2014, Books, Breaking News, Business, Companies, Computing, Finance, Industry, Outsourcing|229 Comments
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Scarface: He’s got Boris Yeltsin eyes

scarfaceLast Wednesday night I posted my most recent column, turned out the lights in my office, walked down eight stone steps, tripped and smashed my face into the side of our house with a thunk that brought everybody running. Ten stitches and two days later I took the picture you see here in which I look way better. So if anybody wonders why I was a no-show tonight at the Computer History Museum’s reunion for the Homebrew Computer Club, this is my excuse. I can’t see well yet and I sure as heck can’t drive. Woz didn’t make it either I’m told.

I wish I had been at the museum, of course. Those who were […]

By |November 11th, 2013|2013, Books, Companies, Family, Health, history, Uncategorized|49 Comments
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Cringely comes back from the dead… again!

Twain“The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated,” wrote Mark Twain when his obituary prematurely ran in the New York Journal. I can certainly relate to that because it turns out I’m not going anywhere.

Regular readers will remember my pledge last year to retire from this rag and get the hell out of Dodge before all my hair falls out or I starve to death, whichever came first. Well something happened while we were all enjoying those 8000-word blog posts that constituted my serialization of Accidental Empires: I signed a contract with a major publisher to write a pretty significant book that I’m not yet allowed to tell you anything about.

While you might think […]

By |April 7th, 2013|2013, Books, Breaking News|80 Comments
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Accidental Empires, Chapter 17 — Do the Wave

surf_board-legAnd so our two month retrospective comes to an end with this 17th and final chapter, circa 1996. I hope you have enjoyed it. Tomorrow I’ll be back to talk about the eBook version of this work as well as what I’ve been up to for the last eight weeks. It’s more than I ever expected… and less.

ACCIDENTAL EMPIRES

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DO THE WAVE

We’re floating now on surfboards 300 yards north of the big public pier in Santa Cruz, California. As our feet slowly become numb in the cold Pacific water, it’s good to ponder the fact that this section of coastline, only fifteen miles […]

By |April 3rd, 2013|2013, Books, Business, Companies, Computing, Entrepreneurship, history, Internet, Software, Technology|56 Comments
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Accidental Empires, Chapter 16 — But Wait, There’s More!

MoreFive years after Accidental Empires was published in hardcover and four years after the paperback, we got a chance to do a somewhat revised paperback edition to go with Triumph of the Nerds, my Channel 4/PBS miniseries based on the book. Revision may be too strong a word, because all I was allowed to do was add two extra chapters at the end. This gave me a chance to catch up with some of the major characters, correct a few mistakes, explain what had happened in the intervening half-decade and — oh by the way — finally say something about the Internet.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

January […]

By |March 31st, 2013|2013, Books, Companies, Computing, Entrepreneurship, Gadgets, history, Internet, Software, Technology|17 Comments
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