Education
Pennsylvania State University.
(Written with full cooperation from top management, includ...)
Written with full cooperation from top management, including cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, this is the inside story behind Google, the most successful and most admired technology company of our time, told by one of our best technology writers. Few companies in history have ever been as successful and as admired as Google, the company that has transformed the Internet and become an indispensable part of our lives. How has Google done it? Veteran technology reporter Steven Levy was granted unprecedented access to the company, and in this revelatory book he takes readers inside Google headquarters—the Googleplex—to show how Google works. While they were still students at Stanford, Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin revolutionized Internet search. They followed this brilliant innovation with another, as two of Google’s earliest employees found a way to do what no one else had: make billions of dollars from Internet advertising. With this cash cow, Google was able to expand dramatically and take on other transformative projects: more efficient data centers, open-source cell phones, free Internet video (YouTube), cloud computing, digitizing books, and much more. The key to Google’s success in all these businesses, Levy reveals, is its engineering mind-set and adoption of such Internet values as speed, openness, experimentation, and risk taking. After its unapologetically elitist approach to hiring, Google pampers its engineers—free food and dry cleaning, on-site doctors and masseuses—and gives them all the resources they need to succeed. Even today, with a workforce of more than 23,000, Larry Page signs off on every hire. But has Google lost its innovative edge? With its newest initiative, social networking, Google is chasing a successful competitor for the first time. Some employees are leaving the company for smaller, nimbler start-ups. Can the company that famously decided not to be evil still compete? No other book has ever turned Google inside out as Levy does with In the Plex.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416596585/?tag=2022091-20
(The iPod has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon, giv...)
The iPod has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon, giving us a new vocabulary (we shuffle our iTunes on our nanos), revolutionizing the way we experience music and radio through the invention of podcasting, opening up new outlets for video, and challenging the traditional music industry as never before. The design itself has become iconic: there is even a shade of white now called iPod White. Steven Levy has had rare access to everyone at Apple who was involved in creating the iPod -- including Steve Jobs, Apple's charismatic cofounder and CEO, whom he has known for over twenty years. In telling the story behind the iPod, Levy explains how it went from the drawing board to global sensation. He also examines how this deceptively diminutive gadget raises a host of new technical, legal, social, and musical questions (including the all-important use of one's playlist as an indicator of coolness), and writes about where the iPhenomenon might go next in his new Afterword. Sharp and insightful, The Perfect Thing is part history and part homage to the device that we can't live without.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743285239/?tag=2022091-20
Pennsylvania State University.
Levy is the editor-in-chief of the tech hub for Medium. Previously he was senior writer for Wired, following a dozen years as chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has had articles published in Harper"s, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone.
He is regarded as a prominent and respected critic of Apple Incorporated.
In July 2004, Levy wrote a cover story (which also featured an interview with Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs) which unveiled the 4th generation of the iPod to the world before Apple had officially done so, an unusual event since Apple is well known for its tight-lipped press policy. In 1984, he wrote a book called Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, in which he described a "hacker ethic", which became a guideline to understanding how computers have advanced into the machines that we know and use today.
He identified this Hacker Ethic to consist of key points such as that all information is free, and that this information should be used to "change life for the better". Levy was a contributor to Stewart Brand"s Whole Earth Software Catalog, first published in 1984.
In 1978, Steven Levy rediscovered Albert Einstein"s brain in the office of the pathologist who removed and preserved lieutenant
Levy received his bachelor"s degree from Temple University and earned a Master"s degree in literature from Pennsylvania State University.
(The iPod has become a full-blown cultural phenomenon, giv...)
(Written with full cooperation from top management, includ...)