Michael's Blog

It’s a lazy Sunday morning, Kerry is reading a book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She likes it, tells me briefly about it and gets back to it. She is a focussed reader and I realize that she’ll be offline for a while, considering this is the first in a series of three.

I decide to read it as well, and check IBooks and the IPad Kindle app. IBooks does not have a lot of content in Australia. Amazon’s store wants me to register my Kindle before allowing me to download any ebooks. I don’t have a Kindle, I can’t find out quickly how to register my iPhone or iPad, so I move on to Kobo. Credit card registration and 30 seconds later the book is on my IPad, ready to read. I love instant gratification.

Cost is less than half of the paper edition, $10 vs $25. This is the same for most bestsellers and will certainly have an effect on the printed volumes.

The Kobo reader app is simple: adjust font size, screen brightness and there you are, ready to flip through pages. If you like, you can change the page transitions, page curl for the traditionalist, fade for the presentation fan. Pages turn instantly, no delay as on some of the e-ink readers.

The Kindle app has a couple of additional features: There are annotations and explanations in footnotes. You can also see which passages of a book others found remarkable, as they are highlighted and when you tap them, the app tells you how many other readers highlighted the word, sentence or paragraph. There is no further explanation or discussion, but it is a basis for forums and other interactivity.

The IPad is a little heavier than a paperback and that makes it difficult to read while trying to hold it with one hand, for example standing in a train. But lying on a lounge, the IPad rests on my chest and holding it is no problem. I have chosen fairly big type and I prefer to keep it in portrait, so that I don’t have to flip pages all the time. Being able to read without glasses is one of the main advantages of e-readers for vain people like myself.
Backlit pages mean you don’t need any additional light, it makes you location independent and is obviously very handy at night. The iPad does emit a lot of light, but it is surely less disturbing than an extra light in the bedroom.
Bookmarks let you find the spot you left off immediately and I never have a problem finding where I left off. The Kobo reader does not have a progress bar and does not show you where you are in the book. I notice during those short reading breaks when you look at he book instead of reading the type and contemplate what you have taken in and what could happen next. Kobo reader gives you a page count within the chapter, so you know you are on page 11 of 26 in chapter 15, but that may not be relevant to overall progress. The Kindle reader gives you a percentage at the bottom of the page, 12% read of the book.
Surveys claim that readers are faster when reading off paper, but I can’t confirm that. Once you have gotten used to the differences, the medium doesn’t really matter that much.
In fact, I finished first, compared to my control group, and now I can put the book away - though I haven’t quite worked out how to do that. One thing I definitely can’t do, is give the paper book to someone else, “you have to read this…”.

The IPad is a cool reading tool, it requires changing a few habits, but the advantages compared to printed books show very quickly. The biggest of them will be the price of the book, printed matter cannot compete with books at half their price. Other benefits are instant availability or books and the adjustability of the display. However, it is not for every situation: in bright sunlight it is useless; reading does use battery power which needs to be managed and a $1000 gadget is not to be left on the beach when going for a swim.

Anyway, time to download the next book in the series.

Ok, I have now been the proud owner of an IPad for a couple of weeks. As expected, there is a lot to like, here are some of my experiences:

Excellent: data abroad

I bought the 3G model. Wireless is faster, but especially in Australia not ubiquitous, so if you need a connection, you may be looking for a while and then paying quite a bit. And connection is what this gadget is all about. It is also finally a solution for data overseas. The iPhone is a great travel companion, but the price of international data cripples it severely. You cannot use urban spoon to find nearby restaurants, any map costs you dearly and don’t even think about social networking. The price of data is way too high from any of the Australian provider. Plan b would be to get a sim in Europe, but that means that you change your number, or need to divert. Taking a second phone is an option, but not a good one. With the IPad, a sim change is easy, and with pay as you go data plans that allow you to pay by month, data on the road has just gotten a lot cheaper. No more paying 10 euros at some airport for one hour of wireless to collect your mail.

The iPad shines when traveling. It is small, so even in an economy seat you can use it, and if you fly virgin America you can be online at 30.000 feet and work through your mails. It also does not need a massive power supply, just the USB cable will do the trick in most airliners.

Laptop replacement?

The iPad is often defined as a hybrid, not quite net book, not just e-reader. If you rely on it as your main computer, there are some limitations to consider: the keyboard is not comparable to a proper physical keyboard, however, if you want to type you can connect Apple’s wireless Bluetooth keyboard, which beats the dock and keyboard accessory in flexibility and weight.
With 1024 x 768 the resolution is below your average modern pc screen, but on par with netbooks and sufficient for most things, one at a time. It cannot multiple task, but hey, neither can I. You sometimes wish you could just flick over to another app, but since the a4 processor is very responsive (much more so than the iPhone’s), this is not that big a problem.

Needs work: File management

One of the things that distinguishes the iPad from a net book is the absence of a filing system, be it a finder or windows. Files are saved by the applications, sharing and managing them is difficult at this point (os 3). This means that you do not have access to your document library, unless you store it in the cloud. Files are often transferred via email, and that means duplications and version control. Maybe there is a good synchronization tool on the horizon, iTunes does not do it.

IPad as an e-reader for books and magazines: things to come

The iPad has a brilliant screen and is very suitable for browsing and reading. For books there are a number of applications to receive and view content, one of them is iBook, Apple’s book store, another one is the Kindle app, which synchronizes with the kindle or the app on a phone (Apple is bringing out iBook for the iPhone with the next update). There are a number of other apps for books, some make public domain libraries like Gutenberg accessible, some are just one book apps. Reading books is feasible, but I would still rather read longer texts from a paper book, if available.
The iPad is not great in sunlight, unlike the kindle. The iPad is also a bit heavy to hold it up for an extended period, for example in bed.

The iPad’s screen is a definitive plus when viewing Colour and multiple media content. An example of what this can look like is the Alice in Wonderland book, it has pictures and interactive elements that let the reader play and experience while reading. It shows, what is possible in kids’ books and in educational publications, where pages can come to life.

Even more than books, the IPad seems suited for magazine display. The popular first Wired magazine app hints at the possibilities and illustrates why print editions will be endangered. Rich content in editorial and ads offers an extended and definitely different reading experience and requires a re-definition of magazines. It also requires content that is often not (yet) available to magazine publishers. Wired is not there yet, not even close. Pages look static and the odd button to a video is not interactive. But it is a start, and once content is prepared with publication on an e-mag reader like the iPad in mind, possibilities for magazine like publications are endless and it will change the market for publishers.

Web Browsing: Safari, Atomic and others

Web browsing is great on the IPad and probably the most useful application. The screen resolution is high enough for most sites (1024×768), the processor is fast enough to render pages quickly, Safari is a solid browser and synchronising bookmarks is a breeze with MobileMe. There are other browser options, one is Atomic, which offers tabbed browsing and a host of other features. Unlike safari, Atomic is often recognised as a mobile browser by web servers, which can be a good thing at times (and usually you can change to the high res version of a site).

Great applications for an IPad: note pad and presentation tool

The iPad is a fantastic notepad, take it to a meeting and you can jot down ideas, draw charts. With one of the free drawing apps, post a quick tweet or look something up online. IMeeting is a free app that even has sound effects like applause etc.
For presentations to a small group nothing beats an iPad with keynote. A PowerPoint or other presentation is quickly transferred and the iPad on a stand is a great little screen.
For bigger presentations there is a VGA connector to plug the iPad into a projector or plasma. For high def video the Apple component cable can be used. No doubt there will soon be some other presentation apps (I could use one that let’s you display the same presentation on several pads simultaneously).

Twitter for business?

If you think you can ignore Twitter, have a look:

Some stats from April 2010:

• Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users
• It gets 300,000 new users a day
• It receives 180 Million Unique visitors a month through web and 3rd party apps
• >50 million tweets per day are published via web, sms, mobile apps
• 90% of content is generated by 10% of users

Some of the things businesses use Twitter for:

• get and publish news
  (many news items are now published through twitter first, broadcast media have long started naming and quoting it as a source of information, prominent examples were the landing on the Hudson, Mumbai, the Teheran demonstrations)
• market analysis
  Twitter is for short messages, often linking to further, more elaborate posts and articles; it is searchable and a search will often give you a snapshot of thoughts and feelings about a topic, more immediate than a conventional search engine)
• research
  (many tweets are pointers to further information online; link journalism)
• creating and observing networks and interest groups
  (by following people and building lists you can create interest groups and collect information about topics and areas of interest)
• broadcasting of promotions
  (within a social media marketing plan)
• direct communication (listen and respond)
  (most bigger marketing departments listen to the stream of tweets and often do reply or connect in some other way with customers or prospects)
• general customer relationship maintenance

Twitter is public, but allows for conversations to be continued in private.

One day after the launch of the IPad, Macmillan – one of the major book publishers in the US – announced to Amazon that they would not agree with the Amazon pricing of their content anymore. The following weekend a showdown happened that eventually concluded with Amazon giving in and changing their pricing model. This was the first public locking of horns about ebook pricing and may be symptomatic of future discussions between publishers and digital distributors.

Amazon wanted to sell books for their Kindle ebook reader at 9.95, Macmillan said they want to determine the pricing of books themselves, not undercut their hardcover editions by that much and sell at least some of them at a higher price (14.95), just like they have always done with distributors/booksellers of paper titles. Macmillan stated that they would not allow Amazon to sell their books. This was communicated by their CEO John Sargent via a paid ad in an online newsletter on Saturday.

Amazon promptly withdrew all Macmillan titles – e- and paper books – from their online store (which had the effect that Macmillan titles shot to the top of the other online retailers, like Barns & Noble).

Eventually, Amazon gave in, allowed Macmillan to set their own pricing and re-instated all titles.

In the meantime, other publishers, like the french Hachette Group, have joined Macmillan. Harper Collins have also expressed their dissatisfaction with Amazon’s pricing.

Amazon’s Kindle Team posts a letter to their customers citing a mission for inexpensive ebooks.

So this was to a big part prompted by the introduction of the IPad by Apple, who will open an ibook store in competition to Amazon, so far the dominant ebook distributor.

The Apple IBook store will work according to the “agency model”, in which publishers determine pricing of their titles, proceeds are split 70/30 between publisher and Apple. Amazon, on the other hand, operates on a low cost model, buying books at a big wholesaler’s discount (70%) from the publishers and selling them at bargain pricing.

So the result is that ebook prices are going up. In the short term. In the long term there will be competition, and many more of these battles will be fought. No publisher will price themselves out of a competitive market, and if titles are available on a variety of platforms, from a variety of distributors, this can only be a good thing in the long run.

2010 will be an exciting year in book publishing and distribution. Old business and pricing models will have to be questioned and revised, and even traditional media producers must re-think, ideally before technological advances, market changes and consumer behaviour force them to.

Sunday morning on Bondi Beach, 27 degrees, time for a swim.

There is a promotion by IKEA for 30 years of their most popular book case, Billy. There are hundreds of books in a very long book case and if you bring an old book, you can exchange it for a new one. You can also buy books, proceeds are donated to the Australian literacy and numeracy foundation.

On the beach, print rules. Magazines and paperbacks go where LCDs are impossible to read and too cumbersome to take. It will take a while until printed media is replaced by IPads here.

This week the Apple IPad was unveiled after much anticipation and speculation. There was a lot of media hype, the most entertaining of which were probably  Jason Calacanis’ tweets before the event about features he pretended to have seen on a prototype, which were taken as truth by some journalists who re-posted them immediately, further raising expectations (and showing the dilemma of confusing tweets with a respectable news source in the process).

The official video is here and the device looks definitely cool.

It does, however, not have anything unexpected, there are no unknowns, nothing magical in the device, it is a 9.7 inch screen that you can use to play games and read news, books and magazines. It is lacking a few features that were expected. It is clearly made to consume contents, not to create.

To me – and I am working in a printing company – the IPad looks like a gaming tool and like print replacement. It has the ability to make online content accessible and trendy.  Apple has used brilliant design to make technology accesible many times before, and I am sure the IPad will accelerate the uptake of online distribution and consumption of content.

“The iPad and other tablets will continue the erosion of preference for printed goods” writes Dr Joe Webb.

I don’t know if it will kick some new life into newspapers or magazines, but it will make their online content available to more traditional readers, who so far have not spent extended time with online reading.

As for books, it really depends on whether Apple can secure the content. If you decide to read for an extended period of time, say a book, you will welcome the fact that you will be able to get the exact content you want within minutes. Whether you will be able to focus on an LCD screen, whether the updates from facebook and messaging applications will not distract you, and whether you will actually have the device ready and powered up where you want to read is another question.

At least now we don’t have to speculate on what the IPad will be and we can start thinking about whether it will bring any change, what it will change and where it will accelerate change.

News (i.e. Twitter) this evening is buzzing with news of the potential withdrawal of Google from China.
Matt Drummond, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer, posted A new approach to China on the Google blog, declaring that Google will take a stand against censorship.  “We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn”, he writes and then “We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China”.

This is a monumental and courageous move. Every other western corporation in China is trying to build relationships and capture the world’s biggest and fastest growing market – Google sticks to its principles and says: not with us, or our collaboration. Everybody else may play along as the government pursues dissidents, imprisons them and disregards values we regard as fundamental like freedom of speech. Or is it about business rather than morals? Figures from the Chinese market indicate, that with 15% gain of market share (to 43%) in the last five months alone, Google was very successful and rapidly gaining ground against competitor Baidu.

Another opinion by Susie Wee, her “main point is that any government has good points and bad points, so we must take a balanced view”.

Paul Carr questions Google’s moral motivation in Soul Searching: Google’s position on China might be many things, but moral it is not, if Google had morals, they would have made this call much earlier, not after four years of censorship. MG Siegler defends Google and states that “it’s never too late to do the right thing”.

So is it more important to be right, or to be effective? Is this a loss cutting exercise, disguised as a moral act? Whether a move like this is effective or not will only show in time, during which the goal of this effectiveness may be re-defined several times. Trying to be right or “to do the right thing”, is a values question, and often a very immediate decision to be made. For Google the point for this decision came after repeated intrusions, they made it and nobody knows, what the implications will be in the long run and how much it will hurt their business. What they do know, is that they stood up and did not tolerate an environment that compromised their practices and values.

The reaction in the traditional News, in blogs and on Twitter: See translated tweets at the China Digital Times.

I spent most of Monday in a Sydney local court, waiting to act as a witness in a negligent driving case. The defendant had no legal representation and was not sure whether to plead guilty, so while he sought advice, the witnesses had to wait.
I was watching the constant coming and going in the court room. Open door, bow to judge, find a seat. Get up, go to door, bow to judge, leave. A number of cases were adjourned, the ones that the judge deals with are mostly first offences and range from traffic offenses to assault.

9 out of 10 offenses were alcohol related.

There is the pub owner, who met some mates on the way home, had a few beers and got caught DUI. He cannot afford to loose his license and has installed a breathaliser in his car that won’t let him drive after drinks. He gets six months without license and 18 months with the breathaliser, it’s not his first offence.

There’s the guy who assaults his girl friend after coming home drunk, telling her in no uncertain terms what he expects of a good girl friend. They are both here together today, she loves him, he gets off on probation and will have to join a course on anger management.

There’s the guy that threw a bottle out of a car at another driver and lucky for both did not cause any damage, there’s the guy who attacked a bouncer who didn’t want to let him into the club and there is the jealous boyfriend who bashed the guy who talked to his girlfriend.

It’s all alcohol. The judge starts another sermon. She mentions the maximum penalty everytime. She stresses the seriousness. She lets most of them off on probation and fills the anger management courses. Chance that they won’t do it again are below 40%, however, they most likely will not get caught.

A very sobering experience, should be compulsory life education.

Sometimes I work on a reply for a long tender request, one of those big documents that ask for a great amount of detail from every bidder, and I wonder wether it might be a good idea to send this back to the tenderer:

Dear prospective customer,

Thank you for submitting your request for tender, we appreciate the work that has gone into the preparation of this extensive document.

Before we prepare a reply we will need to obtain a few clarifications:

1. Confidentiality

During the tender process we will be asked by you to disclose confidential information about our company including financials, equipment lists and specifications, plans for intended new acquisitions, business plans and future strategies.

1.1   Provide written statements from all personnel involved in the tender process that this information will not be disclosed to third parties including a written statement that the submitted tender document, all appendixes and attachments and all other information submitted by us in writing or during a presentation will remain our intellectual property and is copyright by us. Any knowledge gained through this tender process can only be used after our expressive written agreement.

1.2   Prepare and sign a confidentiality agreement relating to all information gained through submitted written and aural information, presentations, factory tours and other materials gathered during the tender process and the subsequent supplier relationship for the duration of the term.

2. Company / Financial Stability

We are planning a long term supplier relationship and need to ensure that we partner with financially stable organizations.

2.1 Give a brief company overview (not exceeding 20 pages) including history, capabilities, SWOT analysis and main competitors.

2.2 Provide your audited financials of the last three (5) years.

2.3 Provide your business plan for the next five years.

2.4 Provide the names of your top fifteen customers during the financial year 20008/9.

2.5 Prepare a detailed declaration containing details of any negotiations with other entities regarding company merges, takeovers, acquisitions and any other business impacting initiatives.

2.6 Provide details of the three most recent suppliers lost including referee contact information. Include reasons for loss and strategies to avoid similar occurrences in the future.

2.7 Outline your occupational health and safety management system.

2.8 Include a detailed business continuity plan.

3. Environmental Policy:

Our company has invested substantial resources to obtain the right to bear at least three (3) logos assessing environmental accreditations on their letterhead.

3.1 Provide certifications and evidence of any environmental initiatives conducted in the last three (4) years.

3.2 Provide your short and long term environmental policy and enclose evidence thereof.

4. E-business capabilities:

During the tender process we will suggest and scope a refined online system to facilitate communications relating to print production, warehousing and logistics.

4.1 Provide evidence of IT capabilities and sufficient resources to ensure internet connectivity and advanced functionality like ftp file transfer.

4.1.1 Outdated and badly maintained desktop software increases costs relating to development, ongoing maintenance and help desk costs. Specify the brand and version number of the web browser software and any plug ins employed within your company.

4.1.2 Describe your IT management team including professional experience and annual budget.

4.1.3 Describe your IT training policy. Include certificates and other evidence of training concluded within the last five (5) years.

4.1.4 Detail your on and offsite backup procedures.

4.2 Provide evidence of the willingness to not just request features like job tracking, but also use it.

4.3 Provide at least three (3) written references of providers of another online procurement system that you were able to operate without forgetting your password on a weekly basis.

5. Account Management:

Good and consistent account management are critical for a successful supplier relationship.

5.1 Nominate your account team.

5.1.1 Submit all qualifications relevant to this position including print experience.

5.1.2 Submit the main contact person’s job description and salary structure including bonuses. This will let us determine the stability of the position and whether personnel change is expected every three months and the contact person we have trained will be substituted by a junior so that we have to start from scratch again.

5.2 Submit an escalation structure including contact details.

5.3 Attach an organizational chart including all related companies. Highlight key management staff.

Please submit your reply by tomorrow noon (12pm) via our online tender tool. Late replies cannot be accepted.

Monthly Computer Pals Meeting

Last week I was invited to talk at the monthly Computer Pals meeting and I met a group of great people that are all interested in learning about digital technology. Computer Pals is a club of seniors on Sydney’s North Shore, they have over 400 members and a waiting list of more than 100.

Computer Pals conduct courses on topics such as using PCs, the use of popular software packages, connecting and communicating via the internet. They organise talks on technical topics once a month.

I was invited to talk about recent developments in print, recent investments into big presses as well as new technologies such as digital printing and ink jet presses. I included a short printer’s winge about dropping volumes in print, technology driven changes and threats from online technologies.

All wired up and talking at the Computer Pals

The audience was great, there were many questions and nobody fell asleep (not just here an important indicator on the quality and suitability of the talk). Almost everyone in the audience had some sort of connections to printing or even the printing industry, either through having worked in it themselves or through relatives.

An interesting topic was the development of digital book printing and the fact that it has become very affordable to self publish and get your own book printed at book shop quality, even at low quantities. Obviously many in the audience saw an opportunity and incentive to write and then produce their own book.

The Computer Pals definitely “got it”, they understand the need to keep learning new technologies and their applications. It was a real honour to talk at the club.