I was filling out a questionnaire this morning and it had a surprisingly tough question on it.   “Hobbies?”  Yikes, I thought, I don’t really have any! I have 3 kids under 4 years old and I like my work a lot – so that’s most of my time right there. The only “hobbies” I could think to put down were reading and watching TV. The sad thing is that the only thing I read are non-fiction magazines. The New Yorker, The Economist, Runner’s World, ESPN, and GQ (go ahead, laugh at that one, I deserve it).

So I thought I would share the best of what I’ve read lately. Read these fast as magazines tend to not have their content available online forever.

• “The Jefferson Bottles” in the New Yorker. Patrick Radden Keefe writes the story of fraud and forgery in the super-high-end wine business. It’s written as a detective story – how one uber-rich guy decides to try to take down the master wine forger. If you love great writing, detective stories and have a bit of disdain for wine snobs, this one is for you.
• “Inside the Googleplex” in the Economist. Given the obsessive nature with which search bloggers follow Google, I was surprised the article didn’t get more coverage.  Having just been at the ‘plex for the Google dance and having worked with them since the days of CPM ads, I thought the Economist did a very good job giving their readers an accurate picture of the company.  They did very well in boiling down the business fundamentals (as always). Google’s profit is driven by one unbelievable cash machine (AdWords). The company also has a bunch of low-marginal-cost but low (or no) revenue add-on products. YouTube may be the worst – lots of server load and no revenue.  My favorite line of the article was this: “everybody there is a rocket scientist, so everybody is also insecure and the back-stabbing and politics are reminiscent of an average university’s English department.” Gotta love it.

J:K (read the New Yorker article!)