Hello old friends! This post is to announce — well, more like admit — what the recent dearth of posts has hinted at: Bits & Bytes 2.0 is on indefinite hiatus.

I’ve been off pursuing new opportunities that demand all of my creative writing energies, and as much as I wish I had a clone to write fresh blog content, that marvelously terrifying day has yet to come.

A premature post-mortem

To those who’ve visited this site, and especially those who offered feedback in some form, please accept my heartfelt thanks. This project was a lot of fun for me, and personally instructive, too: it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for hacking, in the original sense of the term.¹ I thoroughly enjoyed re-immersing myself in the nitty gritty of DNS, combing through server plug-in libraries, and especially picking through — and breaking, and having to fix — PHP and Perl code. It reminded me all over again that I really do love this stuff. Once a geek, always a geek!

In a broader sense, entrepreneurship and marketing are such long-held passions of mine that they’re no longer areas of interest so much as lenses through which I perceive the world. And so…

I’ll (maybe) be back

While I don’t currently plan to post any new articles, it seems likely that I’ll return to this venue at some point in the future. As a result, this site will remain online indefinitely.²

If you’d like to be notified when there’s new content, please consider following me on Twitter or subscribing to the RSS feed (or both!). I’ve also started using Twitter to share the various “bits” that formerly comprised the Weekly Links.

Contacting Chris Colón

Finally, a quick personal note: for those of you who’ve filled out the contact form over on my rinky-dink personal site, thank you. I am genuinely happy to hear from you, even though I probably haven’t gotten back to you yet. The list of people to whom I owe a response is now several years long, and I’ve only just started to slowly work my way through it. I’ll be in touch, eventually. Hopefully before Blade Runner happens.

Signing off, for now…

- Chris Colón
   Seattle, WA

1. It was pure, happy serendipity that I just stumbled over an encyclopedia entry which happens to use the term “bits and bytes” in its definition of hacking! [↩]
2. Some of the articles remain strangely popular, traffic-wise, and I still use others as reference material. [↩]

Via Gizmodo, here’s an amazing new concept in portable commuting. It’s a 13″ flexible multitouch display that works as either a laptop or a tablet. While only a prototype, I can’t stop drooling:

In other the-future-is-now hardware news, check out these 1 millimeter thick speakers from Yamaha.

I’m occasionally asked, as a business owner and known book nerd, if there are any specific books that I’d recommend to an aspiring entrepreneur. I’m happy to say that there are!

The following books, in my judgment, offer the most bang for the buck as far as not just theory, but especially practical advice and readability. Because time is our most precious commodity, each one is relatively short, and all of the following are available as audiobooks as well:

• The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael E. Gerber — In exploring the Entrepreneur (E-)Myth, Gerber seeks to investigate “why most small businesses don’t work, and what to do about it.” This is a classic of the entrepreneur genre, and its solid advice hasn’t aged a bit. Required reading for those considering their own startup.
• The Art of the Start, by Guy Kawasaki — Billed as “the time-tested, battle-hardened guide for anyone starting anything,” Kawasaki delivers the goods. Each section offers a solid entry-level overview on all of the many, varied aspects of running a new business.
• The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun — When starting something new, we have a tendency to overvalue the importance of genius and originality at the expense of simple dedication and hard work. While not entirely about how to start a new business, Berkun’s marvelous book is packed with practical insights for any would-be entrepreneur, and will get you in the right frame of mind for the exciting journey ahead.

Those three books should be enough to get any new business owner inspired about their enterprise, with a knowledge of which pitfalls to avoid and a head full of practical advice. For additional reading, consider the following supplemental books:

• Built to Last, by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras — In a stunning project, two professors from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business exhaustively researched 18 visionary companies and identified their common characteristics. Some of the examples haven’t aged very well, due to management choices since the book’s publication, but the lessons are well worth understanding. (I found Collins’s follow-up, Good to Great, to be engaging but inferior.)
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B. Cialdini — Being in business doesn’t just mean working and playing well with others—it also involves endless amounts of trying to get people to go along with your plans. Cialdini’s book remains a classic for executives, salespeople, and anyone who wants to make their vision a reality.
• Getting Things Done, by David Allen — A new business owner is going to discover almost immediately that there isn’t enough time in the day to accomplish everything that needs to be done. David Allen’s no-frills, bottom-up approach can help revolutionize your productivity with a simple, practical, stress-free method for Getting Things Done.
• The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss — Building on the earlier works of Gerber and Allen (listed above), Ferriss offers tons of practical tips for designing the entrepreneurial lifestyle that will allow you to most enjoy your life. This book is very strongly recommended if your new business is involved in online sales, as it includes a detailed blueprint for a self-managing e-commerce enterprise.

Do you have an opinion on any of the books I’ve listed? Do you have any favorites that aren’t included here? Let me know!