I have finished reading Getting Real. There are good advices in that book but, unfortunately, most of these advices make sense ONLY if you are in the authors position. That is....beeing a small webshop and having the liberty to create the products you want. If you develop software at a "larger" scale you will find it , let's say funny, to read that "functional
specs are useless" and that developers should also do technical support. :)) Also, it seems to me, that some advices in the book seem to go over the top in implying that over simplification is good. Less features are good ? Don’t add features to your product and let your product users “get creative” in finding ways to overcome the missing features ?! Nope…that’s really not the way i see it. I see the point in “thinking outside the box” when creating a product that will compete with huge established behemonths ……but, unfortunately, this is not a piece of advice you should take for good. From my experience balance is everything. For every point in the book, i can come up with many counter examples to prove that over simplification is bad.
     But, i repeat, there are valuable advices in there. I especially liked the chapter about "Staffing". If you're in a small webshop  developing your own apps, then you should get the book. Otherwise i can't really recommanded it.

Wired has a very interesting article about the circumstances under which Jim Gray went missing. Reading the article i've really felt sorry for Jim. The world looses a well respected database researcher and such a cool guy (i mean....the guy named his bedroom Gondor :). How cool is that ? ).