Publishing stories and more

Apple textbooks and EPUB 3 vs. EPUB 2

2012-01-26T02:58:00.000-08:00

It took some time to get back with a new post. May be the fact that nothing really interesting happens should be considered a reason.
Well .. actually things happen but are any of those things really revolutionary?
The last few days I was bombarded with information about the Apple textbook initiative. This really looks revolutionary but it is not. It is just a company that has enough power to try to disrupt what everybody thinks that it has to be changed. On the other hand they are trying to much to secure the revenue from this. This is too visible to alow the program to be revolutionary. They are just flexing some muscle.
On the other hand I can't say I don't appreciate the effort. At least they do something. This is not somethig to be said about anything in the commercial or open source / public area.

To be fair I did not even bothered to look for details about the format. I suppose they decided to do what it takes to have something viable and this is what they should. If you care too much about the standards nothing new will get in front. The format is just a matter of strategy ... Tim Cook is good at executing things and I'm sure it has the strategy. Considering the fact that they havea product on the market they definitely have also a vision .... whether this vision is correctly targeted with the strategy and aligned with the market capacity to absorb something new is another thing to be seen.

The apple textbooks offer text wrap around objects, multimedia content and .. and actually that's all we can say about them.

If we look at the features that EPUB 3 bring on, I don't see a good reason for them to depart too much from the standard:

Feature	EPUB 2	EPUB 3	Functionality
CSS3 support	No	Yes	Better control over line break, hyphenation etc.
Multiple style sheets	No	Yes	Supports the ability to include multiple style sheets allowing for improved layout control
Embedded fonts	No	Yes	Allow fonts to be delivered along with the EPUB file.
SVG support	No	Yes	Bring on the vector graphic functionality to EPUB area. It was strange not to have something like that in a pure electronic publication.
epub: type	No	Yes	Support for semantic meaning
epub: trigger	No	Yes	Support for creation of user interfaces for controlling multimedia objects.
XHTML 5 support	No	Yes	Inherits most of the definitions of semantics, structure and processing behaviours from HTML5
MathML	No	Yes	Direct embedding of MathML supported ... enables rendering of mathematics content as text instead of images
Scripting	No	Yes	Support for scripted content, ie interactivity, using JavaScript language
Audio&Video	No	Yes	Inherits support for HTML5 rich media elements

Apple had anything at hand in the standard. May be they just palyed with the implementation. This remains to be seen.
Wish you all the best.

How long the name can be?

2011-07-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

A friend asked me a very simple question.
And lucky me I had a computer in front to check my answer before telling him something stupid.
The question was: "I am on a Windows 7 machine. And it looks like I am not able to put my files in a deep subfolder. How many characters are allowed in a Windows 7 path?".
My first thought was to say: "around 32k". Before saying I've checked the info and it looks I was wrong.
The 32k is ok for the filesystem but the operating system is a different story. According to MSDN

"In the Windows API (with some exceptions discussed in the following paragraphs), the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters."

This is definitely something to keep in mind when you work with lots of files folders and data in general.

Not so much about publishing but ...

2011-03-11T04:16:00.000-08:00

Asked about what industry I serve the answer is always "information industry". One of the aspects involved in this is programing, development of web applications and so on. In fact all of them are formating, processing or distributing information.
I do a lot of my projects in Python and one thing that I've faced several times was the clasic file upload.

Here it is the smalest snipet of Python code I use for that:

input type="file" name="selectedfile"
input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Upload"

upload_dir = "c:/"
fileitem = request.file('selectedfile')
name=fileitem.filename[string.rfind(fileitem.filename,'\\'):]
fout = file(str(upload_dir+name), 'wb')
while 1:
  chunk = fileitem.file.read(1000)
  if not chunk: break

fout.write (chunk)
fout.close()

I've looked over the web for something like that and all solutions looked like incomplet and not that direct.
Hope you will find it usefull.

The better eBook

2011-03-10T04:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I wrote about making an ebook from an art book. It was like a call for ideas. And here it is one sample of that. An article struck me right this morning: Future of publishing: Reinventing the concept of the book
It is a pleasure to see that somebody understand the real use of the interactivity in the books life.
I'll try to search for more products like that and post them here. Would be an interesting journey.

Make an ebook of that

2011-03-09T00:11:00.000-08:00

The news that draw my attention this time is about a special book. I is something like an art book for chiefs. You can find it here.
I bet it is a delight to turn a pages of a book like that. On the other hand I wonder something very simple. Are we able to put such a feeling into an ebook?
I'll start the answer to that using another question: What is that thing that makes an art book?

If you read the article you understand some of the aspects:
- Special support (art-quality paper and a kitchen-proof plastic-coated manual)
- Very good design (most cookbooks are very good at that)
- True workmanship (50 people participate to this project for as long as 5 years)

I think I've already answered the main question.
I'm not worried about the support. You just have to think about a case enhancement for one of the leading slates on the market. Take an iPad for example, put it in a nice leather cover and here you have the support. Shiny, and very luxurious.
What about the rest? Well the rest is the same old story. Designing an ebook is like doing the same thing for a good book. You just have more freedom to use not only good typography and nice images and lots of free space but also new media and smart features to surprise the reader.
Depending on the features you want you can create an entire app to serve as a book or if you want to have it cross platform create it as a PDF using all the clever things the format provides.
Actually if you sell the device with the book already loaded you might find that the production costs are lower than the paper version.
Here we are again with the same old question: Why nobody tries to create good looking ebooks? Or may be I don't know about them? Please be so kind and give me a sign if you know about any.

Protected or not ... The PDF story

2011-02-10T04:13:00.000-08:00

I definitely don't want to start a flame war regarding the DRM capabilities of the PDF format or of any of the asociated solutions. This is the year of the ebook so the inevitable happened. A friend asked me to give him some options to chose from in order to publish his books in PDF format and have at least minimal protection for it.
This was a trigger for an interesting ride. Interesting because I realized that in order to have a winner you have to define the most important features.

I am at least a little technical inclined and I understand the concept of features, benefits and advantages from a technical standpoint. On the other hand I am not the owner of the content and I don't intend to use such a solution at least for the short-medium term.
Given this situation, how do I select the best DRM solution for PDF? The answer is ... I can't select it.
I can continue of course by listing here long tables with features bet let's be fair. Who will read them?
Instead I will just give you my Top 3 DRM solutions for PDF protection and list some aspects that I consider relevant when I chose them.

Here they are:

Top 3 DRM solutions for PDF protection

1. LockLizard PDF Security: http://www.locklizard.com/pdf_security.htm
2. Vitrium ProtectedPDF: http://www.protectedpdf.com/
3. FileOpen Toolkit: http://www.fileopen.com/products/fileopen-toolkit/

Now the reason for the positioning of each of those suppliers/products:

Locklizard has a very easy to understand business proposal. The price is there on the website and you know what you buy. You start at 2495 USD per year or a 4995 USD for a perpetual licence.

Vitium ProtectedPDF looks like a more complete document protection solution. At first sight it is cheaper too at a 1200 USD per year price tag. There is an issue that minimize those advantages. The licensing scheme was created in such a way that it sound like "Hey, we are here to take your money not to give you a solution". May be it is just me but I don't like that. On the other hand If you want to start small and don't expect to distribute many document to many readers then Vitrium has definitely a leg start becouse of it's low price.

FileOpen Toolkit it is ... how should I say? It is a framework that offers you a lot of flexibility. That comes with a price. They don't give us an estimate of costs. You don;t know how much It will cost you to create that book selling machine of you dream. Of course, we can always ask but when it comes with software licenses + some development and integration costs we can be sure the price tag is not very low. Anyway it worth keeping an eye on them. Who knows what the future will offer us.

Hope that you will find this post useful. It is not the definitive guide you probably expect to find but it gives you a lead. I wish you all the best in your own research and hey .. if you find some usefull information on the subject you can always come back and make sugestions here.

Google eBook device? May be sooner than expected. Hope so.

2011-01-20T01:22:00.000-08:00

After the disappointing launch of the Nexus S, who by the way looks very dull, a news cached my eyes (see it here). Google buys eBook Technologies.
For whom is not aware of, eBook Technologies is the company that continues the legacy of the defunct Gemstar ebook effort. Yes it's thru, somebody still sells those good old REB devices (renamed ETI-2 ... you can see it http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBookwise-1150). The litle one especially is a better reading tool than most if not all of the current one. It has good battery, decent screen and fills very well the hand.
As a sideline, a book has to feel god when you grab it. I was disusing with a friend about a new collection of books published by a newspaper (yes I know, the world is turning on it's head), and compared the feeling of those books with an older collection, published 30 years ago or so. The old ones are heavier and it's fells nicer when you grab it, hold it and turn the pages. That's the true book feeling. The ebook producers should take notice.
Anyway, coupling this devices with the recently launched Google ebook store (http://books.google.com/ebooks) it looks like there is something in the gun. I'm sorry for Apple and Kindle but if Google is doing it's homework well they will have a run for their money. The iPad is not at all an ebook reader (don't mess with me on that ... please try reading one month on it until you've lost the whaaaaa factor and get back here) and Kindle is just an improvised one (if you get out the ePaper screen, there is nothing to remember about it).

I'll be patient. Hope Google will surprise me and do a good move on that front.

eBook design

2011-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

At least it happened. Somebody tells the truth: http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/01/ebook-design-conversion-quality.html
The best thing that can happen in the ebook world is to begin working on the design side of the page. It is really strange the fact that so many good publishers that have good looking books in print avoid doing the same thing on the electronic side.
Wake up please.
Just converting to EPUB is not enough. You have to put something else in that file to make it a readable book. A page means typesetting, spaces and proportions. If you put also some video and sound you have to be more than a simple designer ... better be a director.
Enjoy reading the article.

Library with ... no books

2010-08-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

The title sounds strange so first thing first, please read here: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/july/enginbooks-072610.html
Now think again. what happened there it's logical. What is the role of the library in fact. Storing the book is definitely not an object of a library ... more of an archive. The library has to put you in contact with the information. How is doing that it's a matter of creativity.
And a librarian has to be creative.
Good job Stanford.

ePub ebook WYSIWYG editor

2010-08-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

I know, sounds unreal but finally happened.

Somebody ... Thank you Strahinja! ... finaly did it and now we have a working and truly a very useful ePub ebook editor.

You can find the project and download the package from: http://code.google.com/p/sigil/

What's more:

You can edit directly the packaged file
It helps you edit the syles
You have also an image viewer showing all the images included in the book
There is an metadata editor in the Tools menu
A TOC editor is found in the Tools menu as well

There is also a manual if you are the kind of person who reads manuals.

It looks nice as well:

There is not much more to say. It is a nice piece of software that is simply doing the job.

Enjoy

What Is I.B.M.’s Watson?

2010-06-21T08:23:00.000-07:00

This is ground breaking for sure and is definitely not having to do with the publishing space: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/magazine/20Computer-t.html?pagewanted=1. On the other hand it has a lot to do with the information space and that's enough for me.
It shows what a company can do when is using it's resources. It is the kind of development I expect to see more often because there are so very few things happening in the software space that it becomes boring. As the article said there is no reinvented wheel there. They just use creatively what already exists. I'm kind of an IBM fan and news like that engage my thought in a very positive way. It makes me think somehow positively about the corporate world.
Good job Mr. Ferrucci.

Publishing evolution

2010-06-17T02:38:00.000-07:00

Last week I've seen how Wired looks on iPad (http://tv.adobe.com/watch/xd-inspire/introducing-wired-on-ipad/). Or should I say I've seen:
- how a magazine should look in digital form
- how digital content had to be displayed for years
- how a typesetter has to work to get things done for a digital device
... and the list can be much larger.
It looks nice, It looks as we should expect it to look. And this has to be the beginning.
I have to add that this has been created using InDesign and most probably is in fact just a heavy enriched PDF file. Nice work.
Enjoy the present :-)

Fix A Broken Photoshop

2010-05-27T14:15:00.000-07:00

I am always horified when I hear the expresion "reinstall".
This is typical for the clasical IT admin who does not bother to find out the issue. Laizy.
Remembered this when a friend asked me for a solutions ... "My Photoshop is broken ... What should I do?".
First thing firt ask yourself what exacly happens. There are a lot of reasons for Photoshop to refuse working. Some of them are:

Broken collor profile
Isssues with any of it's palletes (found also in it's profile)
A broken font
Issues related with the scrach volume

First two are the most probable. If your Photoshop is breaking when loading a pallete or color profile (is teling you that in the splash screen with a small font but you have to pay attention) or the palletes are looking strange, most of the times you just have to reset your Photoshop profile.
You do that by doing the following steps:

Close Photoshop if it happens to be opened
Hold Command + Option + Shift on Mac OS or Control + Alt + Shift if you are on a PC
Restart Photoshop (while keeping those keys pressd simultaneously). This will bring up a dialogue box where you can choose to delete your settings file.
Press yes and you should be up and running.

Hope that will make your day some time. Enjoy.

What about the cover

2010-04-01T02:15:00.000-07:00

The cover is a big issue in the ebook era.
Yesterday I wrote to a friend having a business in the design area about that.
I urged him to start adding the ebook cover design service in it's offering (I'm a consultant but some time I do consulting for free).
One day later I found this article.
The cover maters in a big way in every kind of book edition and on every channel. May be you don't see and do't show it to much when reading a Kindle but the first thing you see on any online bookshelf is the cover. If that cover is not optimized to be seen online and on the ebook display you loose customers. That's as simple and clear as death and taxes.
So ... my advice to book designers around ... start thinking about the digital channel from the design perspective. that will help you keep the editor/client alive and attract orders.

Kindle e-book reader available on BlackBerries

2010-02-22T00:36:00.000-08:00

Nice to hear that Amazon tries to grow up and make kindle a mature publishing platform. It has more to go but at leas they realized that "if we stay closed we day". Until now the reader is available on iPhone, BlackBerrie and of course Kindle ... and will be available in the near future on iPad and common Apple computers. I suspect a version for Windows Mobile and netbooks will follow. It's just a matter of marketing calculated delays like "we have to keep something for the next month too".
The next question is "Is the Kindle (software) reader a good reading platform of this century?".
Well I doubt, and this is not Amazon fault. It's the way we think about reading devices (and by "reading devices" I uderstand everything starting from the carved stone to the ultimate ebook).
I'll come back on this in the near future.

The new book

2010-01-25T06:27:00.000-08:00

I know that in couple of days we will find out what's the nextg big thing from Apple. Whether is a a tablet/ebook or not I really don't care too much.
I specifically tried not to write about it because I don't want to align in the row of commentators.

I think that more important is to define what are those features that will make an electronic device a worthy adversary to the god old paper book (or at least to a hard cover).

I plan this for long enough but never made the list. Let's try doing it today.
The list will not have a specific order. May be letter I'll make a prioritized list.
Today I will use bullets:

ePaper like screen - I like the sensation it gives you in contrast with the LCD. It's better under powerful sun light, has much better contrast, no reflexive, etc. Better to be in colors.
the size is around 7x9' / 17x24cm - I consider this the optimum size for a device that should be capable to display fiction , scientific content or daily newspaper articles. This is a size that fits well in the hand.
allows some physical flexibility - a device that's not capable to bend a little, even if only the outer shell bends in reality, is hard be compared with a book that's able to accept so many punishment from the reader
at least 2 days of battery power - it has to last longer than a day even if is on all the time
very simple docking station (touch only) complemented with solar cells for longer life - I don't want to use a big black clunky device to load some juice in my book, thank you. Better if it just use the solar cells. I can accept a dumb device that's not playing video or something else if it's capable to work on solar power only
no buttons - even if some technophiles appreciate a technological design this device has to avoid buttons. even the best product designer will make mistakes and place one very important button in the worst position possible. we have touch screens people. let's try using our fingers on it. we use them on a paper sheet, why don't we do the same on a screen
always ON - it has to be always on. or just switch off the screen if let alone for a while
good handling capabilities no matter the orientation - when you keep a book in you hand you use your opposing fingers to bend it in such a way that it fits better in you hand. if you can't replicate the same flexibility in a device at least think about a design that will give the reader a good handling sensation. look at the DSLR. it's a device designed to be kept in your hand. it was designed to be manipulated with one hand and have a good grip while you're making the photos.

That's it for now.
I'll try to add some more tomorrow.

Amazon: feeling the heat

2010-01-21T07:52:00.000-08:00

What a god thin is competition. Until recently nobody had really targeted the Amazon turf ... selling eBooks for Kindle. Until recently becouse now the game has changed. Why target Kindle, let's broaden the market. Let's make this a device independent market. Now there are at least 10 ebook devices fighting for a place under the Sun and Google prepares the release of Google Editions, the services that will make 500 thousand ebooks available to any device who is prepared to open them.

The Google proposal is simple: Google takes 37%, the publisher has the rest of 67% of the list price. The deal amazon had with the publisher was much though for them.
Now amazon has to fight back and it does exactly that. The new proposal: 70% for the publisher, 30% for Amazon. That's fair enough.
Now let's wait for Apple proposal.

How we read yesterday, today, tomorow

2010-01-21T01:45:00.000-08:00

The following lines are in fact a reply to a forum post that tried to convince me that we can read the same on a device as our ancestor have done than on stones:

"Does there have to be a better way to read, besides scrolling and turning pages?"
If you consider reading just a repetitive action of understanding letters the current way of doing thing is OK.
If you consider reading as a method of acquiring information then the old fashion way has a lot of drawbacks.

Aren't you bored by the fact that after 7k years of evolution and 50 years of computer technology around we still read the same?

We have to change. Why do you use the airplane today when the horse was so good yesterday? Because is better.
Be sure that in 10 minutes we can find together better ways of doing things.

Think for a moment at the times when you open a book in order to learn something. At that moment you don't just read the characters. You have to link the ideas the you acquire with information coming from other sources. Compare things, check notes or supplementary materials, theorems, videos, etc. It's simply impossible to put everything in the space of a page and still keep it simple to navigate. And I'm not speaking here about small screens ... it's hard to do a good placement on a full page. I've done this for more than 20 years for newspapers, magazines and all kind of books. Believe me it's a hell to have good information architecture on a simple polygon of a given size and with a fixed amount of letters.

I am definitely not thinking at eye ball tracking. It is just about information architecture and marrying that with the capabilities of the support that now is dynamic not just a simple stone or sheet of paper.

My grandfather had to consider limiting the number of pages for economic reasons. On a display you don't have any limitation on size. And I'm speaking about any size (font, row, number of colors, etc).

Wouldn't be better if, for example, we will rethink the book so that we read not one page at a time but one phrase having around all the information related to it. It will be easier to have just a phrase on screen and all related info at hand than a page filed with side boxes, end notes, footnotes, headings, etc. I'm not saying that this is the way to go ... it is just an example of rethinking the book.

Now let's look at another aspect.
We all know how much the readability depends on the length of the row and the number of characters per row. The number of words on a row will influence also how easy it is to understand the idea.
What if we will adapt the layout to the current phrase.

Some ideas are hard to layout in a page and still transmit the importance of the fragment. We tend to extract them and place a duplicate as a side box or something similar. What if we will think the book as something dynamic not by placing a video betwen lines but having those lines adapt to their importance. Good design implies using a small number of font variations but if change helps in the process of communicating the idea be sure that every designer will understand.

It is not change for the sake of change. And we are not speaking about technology but about reading and information.
The name of the game is improvement and we have to improve the way we read (or the way we prepare information for reading).

Epub editor how to?

2010-01-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

Just found here an introduction to a series of articles that will present us how to develop an epub editor yourself. Sounds promissing.
You can found there also a civilized presentation of the epub format.
Good work Colin!

Batch image processing in OS X (for free)

2009-11-04T14:46:00.000-08:00

I know, I know ... this is not my usual type of story. Anyway, I will try to come up with more of this.
One week ago one friend needed a tool to rescale few thousands photos scattered in tens of folders. Unfortunately the images were in jpeg format and using a simple Photoshop/Automate/Batch was not possible (it asked about the compression quality at every save).
Most of the known batch processors were of commercial kind and given the ideea of being as cheap as posible I had to find a solution.
The best til now is to use Phatch (thanks Stani for this great tool).
The only issue I have with Phatch is that the instalation is not as straight forward as you would expect. For that reason I tried to compil a short How to for Phatch instalation procedure.
First thing first download everything you will need:

wxPython
Pil (Python Imaging Library)
zlib library
IJG jpeg library
... and most probably the latest Xcode development package from Apple

Fortunately you can use the default Python that came installed with OS X. If you use OS X 10.5 you will have Python 2.5 and that perfect for the job.

wxPython has a nice installer for OS X so you will not face any issues with it.
Right after it you have to install Xcode (if you din not used it before). Unfortunately that's a large package (over 900Mb). You can find it here: http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html
(I'm talking about the Mac only version). This also has a nice installer so I will not get into details.
Next you have to unpack the IJG jpeg library downloaded from here: http://www.ijg.org/. After unpacking open terminal, navigate to the folder where the content of the archive is and type:
sudo ./configure
sudo make
sudo make test

of course you have to press Enter after each line :D
If that doesn't complain, do
sudo make install

Now let's do the same for Zlib. Go to http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz , download the file and unpack it.
Go to the folder in terminal an type again:
sudo ./configure
sudo make test
sudo make install

The last step is to instal Pil itself. That is in fact tham main brick in the wall.
You can download the package from here: http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/
Got to the folder in terminal and type:
python setup.py build_ext -i
python selftest.py
If the report shows that you have support for the libraries you need yo can go to the last step of the instalation and type"
sudo python setup.py install

Now in order to run Phatch you have to open a terminal, go to the folder where you've made a copy of the Phatch subfolder from the original archive and type: python phatch.py

Most probably that will not work and you will face an error.
The solution is to go in Terminal / Preferences menu and there in Advanced tab uncheck "Set LANG environment variable on startup". Close the teminal window, open it again, go to Phatch folder and type: python phatch.py

That was all.
Now you can do a lot of processing on you images just making some drag and drops from here to there.
Enjoy your Phatch :)

Color matters

2009-11-03T00:24:00.000-08:00

This morning I passed by a Porche dealership and a particular Panamera model draw my attention. My eyes returned on it no matter what.
I remembered a quote made by Jeremy Clarkson about the model. He said that it's ugly. I'm not very happy with the design either but that particular Panamera was different.
It was like any other in the parking lot but different.
What happened?
It was it's color. Looked a couple of minutes on the web and found out something.
Some time ago a research made at Seoul International Color Expo and various institutes around the world showed that 84.7% of the population consider that half of the decision for buying a product is made based on it's color (source).
Good stuff. This is something to keep in mind on the next design project.

What cover is cheaper to create?

2009-10-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Just found a good question on a linkedin group discusion.
The question was: "It should be cheaper to create a book cover for an ebook?"
There were two answers saying "Definitely yes" (well .. with some variations).
My opinion was the other way.
I truly think that you have to put much more efort in designing an ebook cover if you are looking for a great end product. Why? Becouse you have to consider the size of the screen, the colour reproduction capabilities, the impact of the device color and so many other similar factors.
Considering the fact that you don't have to wory to much about colours and how the printing house will reproduce them on paper in a modern cover designer shop I think there is no need to insist in proving my point.

The new ebook wave

2009-10-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

I've come back from Frankfurt last week with a mixed feeling about what is hapening in the publishing industry.
At the last year fair the train that everybody was running for was Print On Demand (POD). Everywhere on the fair floor there was a conference on that subject.
This year the lord of the game was the "mighty" ebook. Yo be fair I can't believe what is happening. It is something I am expecting for the last 5 years and still not sure that it is relly happening.
It looks like we are living again the ebook buble from the begining of this century. Remember the Rocket and Gemstar and goReader and the begining of the OeB Forum. It was the golden age but it was a flop, a big one from teh business point of view.
Technologicaly we are not at all more advanced now than at that time. The only difference is that now we have EPUB as almost de facto format and the ePaper for the screens.
There were at least 6 devices presented in this year Frankfurt Book Fair. Neither of them was a revolution. Most of them are good enought to read a book but that's not all. It looks like many are producers are loking for a novel aproach (dual screens, one for reading and the other for navigation, split screen and so on). They do not realize that those devices are stil not cheap enought for the mass market. How many people you know that will pay 250-500Euro for a device that most probably will be obsolete in 6 months and will be forgoten in the drawer after one year.
One more thing ... there is no business proposition for publishers. Nobody came with something similar with what Jobs made for the music industry with the iTunes + iPod duet.
There are many other issues that have to be considered.
More on that in a future post.
Good night.

Priviledge of being readed

2009-09-23T03:21:00.000-07:00

Just found a great small article here http://www.pubexec.com/blog/the-no-1-rule-b-to-b-audience-development-301301.html.
It is about publishing and the fight for audience. This days the fight is not about convincing somebody to buy your content, but about convincing them to read what you give them (most probably free). Most authors are well under paid for the effort done writing articles, novels ... you name the material. On the net at least they knew somebody is interested in that material. That's a reward in itself (let alone the fact that you get your payment from google when you put "add sense" inside).
One way or another the commercial publishing will exist and publishers will still sell content, whether as ebooks, paper books or whatever else, but they have to accept the fact that the selling applies only on some specific kind of content. And nobody established what's that specific kind.
That's the beauty of life ... we have to discover that.

A new start

2009-09-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

I've just started another blog. The mouse idea below was one that should have been written elsewhere. I like to be organized and put everything in it's place so a blog for ideas was a natural decision.
In fact I wanted something more than a simple blog but that means time and so on.
May be one day that dream will become real.
If you find two minutes please go also to http://deepfreethoughts.blogspot.com and enjoy what you find there. It is about innovations, ideas and hopefully new business practices.

A better mouse

2009-05-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

It does not sound as a publishing problem but it is. One of the most useful tools in you hand at this very moment is the mouse.
May be you would consider it as being perfected over the decades but it is not.
May be you've seen those huge game dedicated pads with track balls and lots of buttons.
The ones most appreciated can detect the slightest move of you hand and react in an instant.
I've looked even to something like that but did not found a very simple feature.
What if I need to move the mouse on a perfectly straight line. A vertical, horizontal or at 45 degree. Just that ... a straight line. There is no function for that, no button, no nothing.
I know .. some applications have their own functions for that but to be fair most of them don't.
It is so simple ... just put a button there that will let the user select the direction, or even easier let the user select such a function with a keystroke.
What do you think? Does it make sense for you?

Book on demand ... or ... one at a time please...

2009-04-27T04:31:00.000-07:00

On Demand Books released the version 2 of its printing equipment. Strangely everybody is thrilled by the news. Why that happens? Looks like good marketing because in fact the product is not that new and the idea is really really old.

If you look at the specs and the image you will realize that this is just a group of two printers coupled with a box with the folding and finishing mechanics. Considering the fact that the those days we are capable to produce computers smaller than a mobile phone and write the entire bible on a nail it's strange how anybody could be thrilled by such a piece of equipment. The Gutenberg press was in many ways more flexible and transportable than this monster.
Don't get me wrong. What Mr. Epstein did is awesome and I send them a big THANK YOU.
What disturbs me is the fact that an industry capable to build space ships is not able to create something that will not look as it was produced in my kitchen.

Should we say "Goodbye MySQL"?

2009-04-22T00:25:00.000-07:00

Well the question is more or less a remark not a real question.
Oracle buys SUN. That makes everything clear. When the same phrase contained IBM instead of Oracle I did not had any issues. But now ...
It does not make much sense for Oracle to keep MySQL in it's stack. That is very clear for everybody.
What has this to do with the publishing area? It has a lot.
When you say publishing you say information and storage and architecture and presentation.
For most part of the modern publishing that means at least partially: databases.
Except for the OS and the programing language, the database is one of the core technologies you use when you do web publishing or you present yourself to the world using the web.
To be fair I'm not as disturbed as you might think. I use MySQL a lot but ... but it is by no means the only database I use (the other is Postgres).
In the end this might even be helpful for the publishing area as a whole. Who knows. May be XML will gain some momentum because the easiest way to avoid using it for most programmers was to use MySQL. Now they might face an interesting situation: they have a number of choices and XML has it's advantages.

Books vs. eBooks

2009-03-21T13:01:00.000-07:00

Books are better for reading than ebooks. Period.
There is no argument about that ... and thats said by "me" ... somebody who's happy to read ebooks even on his mobile.
I just wana make a list with all the things that are still to be improuved on the ebook side of the road.
First thing first a definition. I hate that but has to be done.
What is an ebook?
Well ... in my humble opinion an ebook is the assembly betwen a device and the electronic package that describes the book.

When you imagine a car you always consider the road, the gas, the actual car and the driver.
You should do the same for an ebook.

Starting from this point, the major factors are:

"Easy" factor - It's one of those things that you can do with any book you have. You just throw it in your bag and take it out when you have a moment. For an ebook to do that you have to solve a lot of issues related with the following factors:
- sturdines - most devices are desktop tools not ready for a truly "road adventure")
- acces time - even the best ebook device will have a lag here ... a book you just open it at whatever page and that's it, for an ebook you have press a button, make sure that the content is there, then you check your bateries, then open the file with the book, then navigate to the page, and so on. If you wana look in it just to read a paragraph that's way too much. ).
- flexibility - it's easy in your hand, you can bend it, make notes on it, you can read it in any position and condition as long as you have some light and so on.
- security - a book is just a book. If you've lost it or you did anything stupid with it there is no big deal. Go and buy another one. Can you do that with a device costing you 400 dolars and an entire collection of files that you forgot to back up? That's also realted with the next point in discusion ...
Price factor - So ... most of the electronic editions are cheaper ... but not cheap enought cosidering that the production cost are much much lower than for a printed book. If you consider the price of the device the discusion ends here.
Perception factor - There are two aspects here:
- The external perception - get a Sony device in your hand and you'll understand the idea. You don't feel like reading. You are just showing off the fact that you use such a gadget. On the other hand when you read a god book you also make a statement, a statement that will not be made by your new gadget ... there are no hardcovers with titles and so on.
- The personal perception - you don't have the feeling that you own the book ... you fill that you own a device ... that's a really diferent story.
"Quality of service" factor - You don't have the same contrast for the text and the same resolution. Simple as that .. no coments to be made here.

If you have any reamarks or adition I'll be happy to learn about you opinion.
Wish you a god reading :)

Free Journals of eLearning

2009-03-12T06:02:00.000-07:00

I'm doing a lot of stuff around the e-learning area and had to compile a list of sources of information.
There are some free access journal in this area and that list could be of interest for some of you:

Journal name	Web address
Australian Journal of Educational Technology	http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet.html
Chronicle of Higher Education	http://chronicle.com/
Educause - Quarterly	http://www.educause.edu/pub/eq/
Educause - Review	http://www.educause.edu/apps/er/index.asp
e-learning and education journal (eleed)	http://eleed.campussource.de/
European Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning	http://www.eurodl.org/
First Monday	http://www.firstmonday.org/
Innovate: Journal of Online Education	http://www.innovateonline.info/
Interanational Journal of Instructional Technology & Distance Learning	http://www.itdl.org/index.htm
International Journal: Emerging Technologies in Education	http://www.online-journals.org/index.php/i-jet
J. of Computer Assisted Learning	http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0266-4909
Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks	http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/index.asp
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication	http://jcmc.indiana.edu/
Journal of Educators Online (JEO)	http://www.thejeo.com/index.html
Journal of Interactive Online Learning	http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/
Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT)	http://jolt.merlot.org/index.html
Language Learning and Technology (LLT)	http://llt.msu.edu/
Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration	http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/
The International Review of Open and Distance Learning	http://www.irrodl.org/
T.H.E. Journal	http://www.thejournal.com/

Who is the publishers worst enemy?

2008-12-15T02:35:00.001-08:00

That seams related with the previous post about google digitization program but I'm not sure it is ... it was just started by it ;-)
I think what's happening with Google is not more different than what happened to other business partners in the publishing history. Think about Amazon ... is a good partner but if you talk with somebody working with them they'll love to criticize how the big bad Amazon is eating their profits.
Well ... when you do publishing just for profit you can be sure that Amazon is THE enemy, but if you do it in order to spread knowledge and leave a good life from that occupation may be the perspective will change. That does not imply that Amazon is a candid company ... is just doing it's business like any other retailer.

The bad, the ugly and ... the google

2008-12-15T02:25:00.000-08:00

Why there are so many people in the industry scared about Google digitization program. If you refuse to let Google digitize your content you can keep it ... no problem ... but is that in your own interest? Google grew because they concentrated on a specific market niche "give people access to information". Publishers have a related business "give information to people". There is a common word you see? Somebody gives access and the other gives the information. Google knows how to make money from that ... why publishers can think at something? In fact Google is helping publishers reach a much larger audience ... that should be seen as a good thing. If they stop considering Google as the enemy may be something positive will come up.

Digital library metadata

2008-12-15T00:48:00.000-08:00

I wrote some time ago a study on digital libraries and there is something that keeps jumping thru my mind. Lot's of people are saying that there is a lack of standardization in the field. In some aspects I have to agree. On the other hand ... it looks like there are enough XML schema standards in the metadata area.
MODS is accepted in libraries and archives, and can easily conquer many other areas if needed...
PREMIS is really doing what it should in preservation ...
METS is already considered to be the universal glue in the library world ...
If you need anything specific you can add it as a finding aid and reference it.
Why should anybody need to design a different metadata architecture.
It looks like we have the standards ... I am missing anything?

Why publishing?

2008-12-12T01:12:00.001-08:00

This morning when the blog page was displayed I realized that the initial bulet that crosed my mind about the content is not nearly as focused as initially intended. I fact I think that most of the time at anything but publishing. I suppose that's why I still love the area ... because I'm not so focused on it. I can still dream about boats and cars ... and preserve "the publishing virus" inside :). Have a nice day.

So much for transparency ...

2008-12-11T04:09:00.000-08:00

I am in the midle of a research for a licencing and copy protection module. I know that one of the issues is the cost attached to each product and thought that it will be better if I'll recommend an all in one offering like what Upload.com had. Or at least I knew they had some time ago.
With that in mind opened the upload.com pag and searched for any info about that particular service. Upload.com is a service offered to publishers of software products. Any service providers should primarily display all the information about their services for easy understanding. After ten minutes of looking thru de FAQ and the Help Center, realized that I'm out of luck and decided to find another way, tried to google the issue but the first search was not the most efficent so my mind was still focused on the upload.com thing in the background.
Something in the brain (not me) remembered that in fact upload.com was just making a reference to a partner named Protexis and that in fact the thing that I was searching was offered by Protexis, and a note on the upload.com site said that the clients who were using Protexis should get there directly. That's ok for me ... and there I am opening the Protexis page. They have a new offering named RED, something that looks too complex for what I need but what the hell ... I'm paid to gather the info so let's rumegate.
I even think that I understood the ideea of the new ofering but there was no info about costs involved. I've even started to search on the web for any references ... about the initial cost, about any percentage that will be taken from the sale and so on. Not very lucky. There were lots of references to shoping carts using Protexis and more references to the relation betwen them and upload.com. One of the first results was even pointing to Microsft Marketplace and found out the they just changed the aproach and will provide only references to other MS portals ... but that's another issue.
The ideea is that after two hours I still don't have any info about the protexis licencing cost and all I can do is to get in contact with somebody from the sales deptartment to obtain that info. And that's all about the transparency of the web. There are so very few companies that provide real information about their services and products on the web. In fact they are looking at the web as just another marketing flyer that's giving everithing but what you wanted to hear.

"The supplier" (Pilot episode)

2008-11-24T13:27:00.001-08:00

One of my daily activities involves the discovery and managing the initiations phase for suppliers of publishing services. I know that most people don't know what to do with the "request for work" emails that hit their emails but somebody has to do this kind of job also.
I have to deal in that sense with suppliers from China, Germany, India, Maroco, Philipines and Romania and with freelancers form wherewer you could imagine.
It is a business like any other, just that the entrance bariers are very low. That should normaly drive the evolution of the industry in the god sens but unfortunately does not.
When I first got in contact with the industry most of the people involved had a god ideea of the specific tehnologies and processes. Everybody knew what an AQL was. And everybody knew that XML is the next big thing (it was the SGML era).
7 year after a project manager from Springer told me that he did not found a single provider at a fair who knew what DITA was. Today if I make a typo in an email refering a specific quality level expected on a volume, 1/3 of the receivers where not aware if that fact and will ofer me the writen level (wrongly spelled) instead of something you would expect.

What hapened? It is a matter of small prices and knowing what to ask for. They are used to be client driven. If the client ask for the lowest price they will ofer it. But that comes with a "price" also. The quality is much lower than what you would expect. In order to give you a good price they will use somebody unprepared for the job and if you don't qualify your suplier you will have a big surprize when the deliveries start coming.
In the last week I had to do two "train by email" sesions for using an OCR with supliers who did not know that using such and application is not a "press a button job" if you want to do a god job. What should I expect from the Quality Assurance team of such a supplier. I'll tell you: more than 50 errors in a batch where only 10 were alowed.

What you should do then if you need to find a supplier?

From my experience there are some simple rules that will save you job and your wallet:
1. Do you homework ad contact enough posible suppliers to chose from. If you have to find a decent supplier expect ... or may be I should say force yourself to test at least 5 for the job. If the job is something complex most probably you should double that number. If the job is big and the timeframe short ... count that and search for much more providers.
2. Prepare an set of specifications for the pilot phase. Something clear, and easy to understand. Try to create a complete package with samples of input and output, expected procesing steps and so on.
3. Define the quality level.
For data capture that involves a number of errors per 10k character (betwen 1 and 5) The industry standard is 2 errors per 10k character.
For conversion to XML, you should expect no errors at the structure level.
4. Be very specific and define what an error means in your case. If for example your project requires data capture you have to avoid "mising characters and spaces, badly recovered characters, broken paragraphs, aditional spaces and cariage returns, missing or badly recovered punctuation".
5. Send a sample of input of few pages and ask for it to be procesed in order to see if they understood the job and if they respect the quality level. The test will not cost you a dime. Is a standard process in the industry. A test will help them also to understand the dificulty of the job and to give you an evaluated price not something from the stomach.
6. Analyze the test output carefully. Usualy a supplier will do his best for the test samples. If they are not capable to give you good sample for the test you should not expect for more during the project. Let them know what was the result of the test and what was your expectancy. They're humans and ned to know what hapened. May be next time will do better if they know what was wrong.
7. Adjust you're requirements if you discover unexpected types of error in the samples.
8. Chose a set of suppliers form the best performers and try to improve the results by letting them know what was wrong. Chose the best price and tell the others what's the best price. They will try to beat that price for sure.
9. Prepare an work order and write all the info in it: specifications, error definition, expected quality, etc. Mention there if you can allow multy level quality (different prices for different quality levels). Be sure to writhe that you will not pay for batches that were not conformant with the expected quality level defined in that document.
10. Broke the job in batches that you can manage and send them one by one to the suppliers you chose in the end (you should chose a single one only if the project is small enough). Make sure you check the quality level provided at least for the first 2 or 3 batches from each supplier. If you find errors, more that expected send feedback and send back the job for rework. They should do the rework for free. When it comes back analize again ... if you still find erors you should not pay for that batch.

I shall continue this series in a new post during the next days. Good luck!

Digital libraryes news ... no news

2008-11-21T03:14:00.000-08:00

I'm doing a research for a project that involves reviewing everything that's new and bright in the digital libraries and it looks like there are not too many news in this area.
The area is developing but without the librarians. It looks like very few people in this branch realize that the concept itself has changed in the past few years. They still discus about classification and metadata but that's old news. You have to think about YouTube and P2P about how to integrate those in the library. There are lots of blogs and there are no legal deposits for them. If you exclude Internet Archive from the equation there is nobody to do this. Where are the true librarians?

This year's Frankfurt (2008)

2008-11-20T14:13:00.000-08:00

It looks like the indian companies promoting publishing services were very few compared with previous years. As usual most of them were located in the 4.2 hall and you can count the stands with one hand alone. Small profiles also.
On the other hand the western providers had a much better presence this year. It looks like they understood that you have to promote yourself in order to do some business.