Good news: REWORK is back on the NYT Hardcover Business Best Sellers list (#12 currently). Some of the reviews of the book from around the web offer up interesting tangents:

In “Books about very specific things that double as manuals for living a good life,” writer/filmmaker John Pavlus talks about REWORK and his other favorite “self-help book in disguise.”

True and False, by David Mamet: This is supposedly a book about how to become a good actor. Actual actors tend to think it’s full of shit, because Mamet doesn’t really care about process, or Method, or “acting” at all in the sense of “how to become better at pretending.” He cares about acting in the sense of “how to become better at doing.” Like, “man of action”-type acting – which, of course, translates just as well to real life as the stage. Putting up or shutting up. Taking action even when you’re scared or uncertain. Just doing it – not because of what “it symbolizes” or because you think you understand your “motivation” – because it needs doing. Like in an “or else I don’t eat today” kind of way. If you want straight talk on how to act – or, in other words, live – with purpose and integrity, Mamet’s your man.

(He also thinks grad school is for pussies, which is an entertaining point of view.)

Business law attorney Frederic R. Abramson discusses how the book applies to the practice of law for small firms.

If you think a competitor sucks, say so. If you are a solo, tell the world that you hate big law firms. It is a great way to differentiate yourself. Hell, I do. I especially hate them when I go to court. They have no clue how to draft a simple order. They love to make useless motions so that they can bill the fuck out of their clients. Sitting through a deposition with a newly minted big law associate is torture. “When you started your first company at the age of 12, was your mother working as a waitress or a podiatrist?”

Geoff Dutton wrote to tell us about a personal experience related to the essay in the book about apologizing.

I’m reading through REWORK right now and am really enjoying it. I especially loved the section on customer service, specifically addressing ‘apologizing’. I recently had an issue with DirecTV where I wasn’t notified that I still owed them money. The only reason I found out is because I checked my credit report and saw a collection item on it. After explaining the situation and how it is a hassle to have to deal with this six months after I cancelled my account (in the politest way possible mind you), I received multiple forms of this:

“I understand this has been a frustrating experience for you. We respect your time and I appreciate that you’ve given me the opportunity to personally address your concerns.”

Okay great, that doesn’t solve my problem though. Plus, the most ridiculous thing is they wanted me to write a letter and MAIL it to their collections department to find out more information. Just ridiculous.

Also, Unshelved offered up a comic strip look at the book — which is a good reminder that you can actually view all 88 illustrations from REWORK in a Flickr set.

Brett Miller’s review notes that the book gets right to the meat.

The design of the book is also a lesson in the unusual; about the only typical aspect are the inside flaps on the book jacket. For example, when I started reading the book, I immediately had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It was only when I finished the book and saw, on the last printed page, the copyright page that I realized the source of that feeling.

Fried and Hansson have pulled a George Lucas, dispensing with all the upfront crap that you usually have to get through to get to the good stuff. Two pages of praise, and then the Table of Contents. Not even a title page. Talk about getting right to the point!

This is something we actually pushed for with our publisher. We asked them why every book has to start with so much noise upfront. They weren’t sure. So we axed everything we could and got right to the good stuff.

Big thanks to everyone who’s taken the time to write about the book!

Below: Q&A with Petr Palas, CEO and Co-Founder of Kentico Software (based in The Czech Republic). He also answered reader questions in the comments. This is part of our “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” series which profiles profitable companies that didn’t take VC and have over $1 million in annual revenues.

What does your company do?
We help web developers have more fun creating websites. We have a single product called Kentico CMS for ASP.NET. Now you may think it’s just another boring CMS. Well, it may be. But we believe it’s different. Most CMS systems are either very simple and thus easy to use or they are extremely flexible and complex. We decided not to make decissions between simplicity and flexibility and mix both of them in a single product. So we built a CMS that makes web developers much more productive, but also allows them to design the website in the way they need.

How did the business get started?
I was building some websites and web applications and realized there’s a lot of routine work I hated. I believed there must be an easier way to do things. I worked in a company that created several .NET components for developers and then I saw there was no good CMS for ASP.NET developers. I suggested that to the employer, but they didn’t see that as an opportunity since there were many web agencies selling their own simple CMS products. So I decided to start my own company in 2004, just with my savings. I gave up my master studies of computer science and put all my efforts and time into my company.

And I was actually lucky, since my first client was Gibson Guitars who decided to use Kentico CMS for their website, although the product was very immature (and they’re still our client!). At that time, I didn’t have any strategy or big vision. I didn’t watch the market and competitors. I just followed what our clients were asking for and tried to add those features as quickly as possible. Thanks to that, we’ve had some features, such as friendly URLs and SEO optimized pages, years ahead of big CMS companies. As we implemented what the clients wanted, we were growing rapidly with every new release.

I didn’t have any strategy or big vision. I didn’t watch the market and competitors. I just followed what our clients were asking for and tried to add those features as quickly as possible.

Then I was lucky again and got a contract for some development based on Kentico CMS for T-Systems, a division of T-Mobile. It gave me some extra money and I immediately invested it into further growth of the company.

I hired three university students as developers to speed up the development. We used students a lot since they were much cheaper and easier to hire for a start up company. At some point, we had 25 employees, 20 of which were students. We still have students in our team, but the ratio is much lower, it’s about 15% now.

As they graduate, they continue as full-time employees. The stability of our team is actually something I’m proud of – we’ve never lost an employee who was excellent and for which the job was a good fit. Now, after 6 years, we have 62 employess, 4 of them in our U.S. office.

That leads me to one important part of the story: We’re not an American company. We’re not even in Western Europe. We are located in the Czech Republic, a former communist country in Central Europe. Still, we managed to grow our client base to 2,000 clients in 84 countries without ever meeting most of them.

At the beginning, I decided I wanted to make the product for the global market since the market size was enormous in comparison to our local market. So I started to sell the CMS online, without any sales staff and with a very small marketing budget that I spent mostly on Google Adwords. We ranked very high at Google because most of our big competitors didn’t bother with SEO at that time. It gave us lots of traffic. We’re constantly trying different approaches to marketing, but it seems to me that the return for every extra marketing dollar is smaller and smaller.

Continued…

The Words episode of Radiolab (iTunes link) features an interesting segment on how Shakespeare behaved like a language chemist, combining words like elements. The relevant story starts at 22:00 in of the episode.

According to James Shapiro, a Shakespeare scholar at Columbia, the un- prefix is something Shakespeare created (at least he was the first to use it in print or on stage). That means he invented the words unaware, uncomfortable, undress, uneducated, unwillingness, unsolicited, and unreal. Also, words like madcap and eyeball. That’s right, the word eyeball didn’t actually exist until Shakespeare came up with it.

Plenty of Shakespeare phrases have stuck with us too. Some examples mentioned by Shapiro:

Truth will out.
What’s done is done.
Dead as a doornail.
Every dog will have its day.
Fool’s paradise.
The game is afoot.
It’s Greek to me.
Kill with kindness.
Love is blind.
All’s well that end’s well.

See more of Shakespeare’s coinages (via EL). It’s neat to think about one person sitting down and actually creating so many of these words and phrases which now seem ubiquitous.

Time: 19:38 | 09/02/2010 | Download MP3

Summary
Three members of the 37signals programming team — Jeffrey Hardy, Jamis Buck, and Jeremy Kemper — answer questions from readers of Signal vs. Noise. Topics include Rails, Git, Mocha, Vim, nginx, Passenger, and more.

More episodes
Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS. Related links and previous episodes available at 37signals.com/podcast.

This is a Q&A with Jeff Butterworth (pictured below), Queen Bee (CEO when speaking to suits) of Alien Skin Software. This is part of our “Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud” series which profiles companies that have $1MM+ in revenues, didn’t take VC, and are profitable.

What does Alien Skin Software make?
We make Photoshop plug-ins for photography and graphic design. Our graphic design plug-ins tend to be glitzy effects like fire and lightning. Most of our photography plug-ins are more practical tools for things like resizing, but there are some cool photo effects too, such as film simulation and oil painting. Our strength is making research level image processing easy to use.

Unlike many of the other companies highlighted here, our software is on the desktop rather than on a web server. As a result, we deal with some old fashioned issues like piracy, resellers, and physical disks. Another difference is that we have been around for 17 years.

What’s your evolution been like with the company?
The early years were exciting because I was experiencing completely new things like travel, leading a team, and handling what, to me, were large amounts of money. On the negative side, we worked very long hours and there was a lot of chaos. These days we don’t experience quite as much novelty, but there is always something new to learn. Now we coordinate our efforts and get much more done in less time. I love our calm efficiency and would not trade it for extra excitement.

You dropped out of computer science graduate school to start the company. What was that situation like? How did you make the decision to jump ship?
I enjoyed computer graphics research, but I didn’t like the unfinished state of most software created in academia. When I figured out that I wanted to make bug free finished tools, it was an easy decision to move into commercial software.

My friend George Browning and I left school together to start Alien Skin Software. I have to admit that we partly did it because we thought we would get rich quickly. I’ll never forget a conversation we had with a friend who was an experienced software CEO. He laughed when he heard our predictions of easy success and said, “I promise that if you ever get rich, you will have earned every penny.” So true! We are successful, but it has been 17 years of challenging work.

An experienced software CEO laughed when he heard our predictions of easy success and said, “I promise that if you ever get rich, you will have earned every penny.” So true! We are successful, but it has been 17 years of challenging work.

How much cash did you need to get up and running? How did you get that money?
I don’t recommend starting a business the way we did. We quit our day jobs, had almost no savings, and I was borrowing my roommate’s computer to work on our products. When our first project was severely delayed by our publisher, we had no financial cushion.

George left for saner pastures and years later founded Zengobi, maker of Curio. I asked my parents for money, but they thought I was being irresponsible (correct at the time), so I got a $2000 bank loan to buy a low end Mac. It’s amazing what fear of starvation will do for your work ethic. I quickly made my first set of Photoshop plug-ins called The Black Box. It started to support me pretty soon, which was easy since I was just living off of burritos in a cheap apartment.

A few years later, I sold my father 1% of the company for $2000. I didn’t need the money by then, but it made Dad feel better about not loaning me money in the beginning. Also, North Carolina law at the time required at least two partners to form an LLC. Since then I’ve never received any type of investment or loan for the company.

How successful is the business?
The company became profitable in 1994 and has been profitable every year since then. We passed the $1M revenue mark in 1996 and have remained well above that ever since. The most important measure of success to me is whether everyone in the company enjoys their work. Money feeds into that, but so does the quality of our products, the competence of coworkers, and happiness of customers. By those measures, I think we kick ass.

The most important measure of success to me is whether everyone in the company enjoys their work. Money feeds into that, but so does the quality of our products, the competence of coworkers, and happiness of customers.

Continued…

Ian Hall writes in:

Just ordered from Bodybuilding.com and got this follow-up and thought it was an interesting way of doing some post-order marketing and outreach to build community. Take a product and talk about it, direct people to more information, and recommend additional things they could use to see better results. Dunno if it’s terribly innovative but I thought it was neat, clean, to the point, and, at least in my case, communicated genuine interest and care.

The final guest speaker at our recent 37signals HQ meeting was Scott Harrison from charity: water.

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Harrison’s personal journey is compelling and it was interesting to hear how CW’s unorthodox approach, especially when it comes to branding and transparency, has helped it stand out from other charities.

Branding
CW’s messaging emphasizes cool visuals, striking videos, and from-the-field reportage. It’s more like what you’d expect from a business or publication than a charity.

For example, the image of the yellow jerrycan — often used to carry water in third world countries — has become an iconic symbol used in CW’s advertising and videos.

This image of a baby bottle filled with dirty water is also used frequently by CW:

Below, a couple examples of the stunning field photography used by CW. Looks more National Geographic than NGO.

CW’s videos are sharp too. Hotel Rwanda Director Terry George directed this PSA starring Jennifer Connelly.

Transparency
Another key to CW’s success is that 100% of donations are used for direct water project costs. (A group of private donors, foundations and sponsors help pay for the everyday costs of running the organization.) CW even pays for the paypal and credit card transaction fees when people donate online so each penny goes straight to actually building a well.

Harrison chose this route because he felt many donors had lost faith in charities due to outsized admistrative costs. Many CW donors decide to give because they know for sure where their money goes. (It’s worth noting this policy presents a big challenge since it makes fundraising for operational costs difficult to scale.)

CW also works hard to document the results of donations. One way this is done: GPS and photos of completed projects.

When donors see photos and videos of the communities they’ve helped, they’re a lot more likely to continue giving.

It’s a great story and it’s neat to see this kind of approach brought to the charity world. Thanks for stopping by, Scott.

Learn more about charity: water or donate.

Seems this Missing Missy exchange has made the rounds already but I just discovered it and genuinely LOL’d (GLOL’d?) so figured I’d share. Will prob hit even harder if you’re a designer who’s ever been asked to craft a “quick” design for a co-worker.

Shannon: “I opened the screen door yesterday and my cat got out and has been missing since then so I was wondering if you are not to busy you could make a poster for me.”

David: “Although I have two clients expecting completed work this afternoon, I will, of course, drop everything and do whatever it takes to facilitate the speedy return of Missy.”

Shannon: “yeah thats not what I was looking for at all. it looks like a movie and how come the photo of Missy is so small?”

David: “It’s a design thing. The cat is lost in the negative space.”

Gets stranger/funnier from there.