Hackoff.com
Our twenty-first title is live. Time to drink. (Hope you get the reference…) May I present, Hackoff.com
Larry Lazard, CEO of hackoff.com, takes his company public and watches its stock price soar and collapse. Following a hostile takeover attempt, Lazard is found dead in his office of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Author Tom Evslin, a serial CEO, also took a company public in the Internet bubble and fought off hostile takeover attempts in the subsequent rubble. Unlike Larry, Evslin lived to tell what may be the definitive story of those strange times.
The mystery moves backwards and forwards around the time of Larry’s death. Sex, power, money, farce, and tragedy mix in boardrooms and bedrooms, the parties of the World Economic Forum in Davos, and the smoky stairway of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
hackoff.com – not a porn site – provides anti-hacker protection for e-commerce. Larry Lazard started the business after his release from prison to which he was sentenced for a confessed hacker attack on banks.
The folks at hackoff track the company’s stock price with fatal fascination; an online chat board provides a Greek chorus of contradictory explanations and expectations; analysts spin golden fantasies from websites and eyeballs; traders conjure real fortunes at their trading desks; and everyone who can clamors for “friends and family” stock.
hackoff.com’s characters include CFO Donna Langhorne, Larry’s ex-lover and classmate from Harvard Business School and a former swimsuit model; Chief Technical Officer Dom Montain, who dropped out of Caltech to write video games; Detective Mark Cohen, NYPD, who’s investigating Larry’s death; Larry’s wife Louise, who is certain her husband was murdered; and Ahmed Qali, who represents a group of Palestinian programmers in Jenin to which hackoff out-sources work. Along with the bankers, CEOs, and CFOs of dotcom America, are eavesdropping limo drivers and waiters, venture capitalists, hackers, terrorists, and the victims and heroes of 9/11.
If you’ve ever wanted to be a fly on the wall of the boardrooms, private jets, and ornate meeting rooms of brokerage firms, hackoff.com gives you your chance. You’ll be better prepared for the next bubble if you read this book but that’s not why you’ll eagerly download each online episode. You’ll do that because the cleverly woven mystery will have you dying to know whodunit.
April 6th, 2006 at 12:32 am
Is it just my equipment, or do episodes 8, 9 & 10 have big blank spots at the end of them?
April 7th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
No, it seems to be a problem with the files. I’ll reach out to the creator and see if we can’t get it fixed soon. Sorry about this.
May 22nd, 2006 at 1:06 pm
Something in one of the later episodes released in the batch of 90 ruins the feed in itunes. Also I can’t force beyond episode 99/100 for soem reason. Is there a way to get a release all button? =)
Thanks,
Oberonix
May 25th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Where is episodes #41 and # 42 ?
May 25th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
My mistake episodes #40 and #41?
Sorry, Howard
June 30th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
So what is the deal with the 99/100? I’m missing episode 40 and can’t *make* it download. Sorry, I’m stoopid. Love the website though, keep up the good work!
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hey I like this one, anxious for 99 & 100 to be fixed, Evo notified the author so hopefully it ought to be fixed before too long.
August 17th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Great story. While I initially struggled with the narration quality, it almost evolved into a literary tool, only available in audio format. I don’t image Mr. Evslin did this intentionally, but, in the end, it definitely worked. Very good story, requires patience, but it’s worth it.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I enjoyed this book, in spite of a few things that would keep it from being pay-worthy:
1. Audio quality – as others have mentioned, the fade in/out and some scratchy recordings make it tough to keep volume control at a good level.
2. The first few chapters of ‘data’ should be condensed. I understand this is the narrative voice of the entire novel, and you’re setting the tone – but these news stories, blog accounts and financial reports are boooooring when read in their entirety. Excerpts would have served the same purpose, and kept readers’ interest much more readily.
3. Switching to a semi-dramatic read on a few chapters didn’t work well for me. Audio quality on these in particular was just abysmal, making me actually skip through 2 1/2 chapters on my first listen (I went back through and listened to them on my second listen).
March 29th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Audio quality is not very good, but the story and the way it’s told is absolutely great! It’s compelling right from the start.
We could do with more excellent books like this.