Getting Real… cheaply.

37 Signals, the Web 2.0 darlings, published an eBook (in PDF format) last year called Getting Real. At the time, I had just bought their other book, Defensive Design for the Web. Defensive Design is a thin tome and is mostly screen shots with some quick notes describing them. After flipping through it a bit, I parked it on my bookshelf and, until I needed its ISBN, haven’t looked at since.

At the time, I passed on purchasing Getting Real. Recently, Fried and the gang have offered an html version of their book for free on their website. Sales must have tapered off or something. I read through it over the last few nights, and my review is as follows:

I paid nothing for it, and got what I paid for.

The book is simply a bunch of essays stitched together by the thread of marketing their products to their readers. Nothing in the book is new or particularly revolutionary. Some things are even scary… like working without any sort of a spec. As they admit, web apps aren’t the same as designing software for NASA, but there’s still a use for some documentation - like thinking through problems before you start solving them. Communicating with your customers and building some buzz ahead of launch make sense. That’s pretty much the playbook for the rest of the Web 2.0 followers.

Over all, it was worth reading, but had I plunked down $19 for the PDF, I would have been highly disappointed.

One Comment

1. Dan said:

   But, how can you expect a customer to know what they want before they get it? Seriously. I get told this a lot. This logic would make Spock scream out, “Pain! Pain!!!”

   November 13th, 2006 at 12:03 pm

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