≈ Relations

Over a year ago i sent two tweets  to @timoreilly. These tweets started  what i think is a showcase of  ultimate customer service and (i hope) helped bringing a new product: the virtual bundle at O’Reilly Media into place.

This blog post is about that story.

Prologue

Regular readers of this blog know that i buy quite some programming and computer science books.  They also know that part of my job is defining and implementing innovative solutions for news publishers in the ebook space. Hence i know that O’Reilly publishes (most of) its books DRM-free in a number of different formats (including PDF and EPUB).

This books can be purchased via the O’Reilly Web store, either as stand alone digital  products or as physical + digital bundles. Whereas the standalone products are priced at approx. 80% of the physical book, the price of the physical plus digital is typically physical + 5$.

The latter option definitely is interesting for guys like me. But here are two problems with it:

1. I still prefer  to buy them at a (certain) physical bookstore.
2. These bundles are only available in the US

I’m lucky to have Lehmanns Fachbuchhandlung  in Hamburg, a science  bookstore dedicated to Computer Science / Programming and Medical Science. It’s staff is quite extraordinary in providing tips, sharing information about books that i might be interested in havin regular meetings of the community (often with very interesting invited talks), … In short: They do a great job and i want to support them in every possible way.

Act I

Late last June  i once again bought a couple of books at Lehmanns, including 3 books from O’Reilly Media. Hence i asked them to ask O’Reilly  if there is a way that i can buy the books at a physical  bookstore and tu purchase the discounted ebook version, i.e. a virtual bundle of the physical book bought at a bookstore and the digital book bought at oreilly.com.

A couple of days later Lehmanns got back to me and told me that  there was a no go from O’Reilly USA for bundle deals. Since i follow @timoreilly on Twitter i knew that  Tim O’Reilly is actively using Twitter for his business. Hence early next morning i sent the following two tweets @timoreilly:

@timoreilly bought (again) 3 oreilly books at local german bookstore.asked them if thr is sum way 2 get a print + epub bundle
@timoreilly bookstore contacted Oreilly germany which responded: No go from oreilly usa for bundle deals #fail

Much to my surprise only 10 minutes later i got the following DM from Tim O’Reilly:

send mail with details to savikas@oreilly.com and me tim@oreilly.com

Since i’ve been to the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing (ToC) conference in February 2009, i knew that Andrew Savikas is the VP, Digital Initiatives  at O’Reilly.

So this DM was basically an invitation to directly tell the two people in command of the business how i think it can and should be improved.

Given that possibility i basically wrote them the the same story i told you:

Hello Tim, Hello Mr. Savikas,

…

So now for the details i was asked for:

Ever since ToC 2009 (BTW great conference) i was wondering if it is possible to buy print plus ebook bundles outside the United States. Me and my wife are avid OReilly fans and i guess that ovet time we have purchased around 100 different titles privately.

We are also fans of our local bookstore which is the best computer bookstore in germany. The level of expertise and service is simply unmatched and we happily shell out some more Euros for that experience (compared to an online store).

Especially for computer science books the combination of a printed book bundled with an ebook is very attractive to me and i guess others to. You read the physical book in order to understand the topics or simply have a good read. But you also want to carry all your bookshlef around and have it available at your fingertips (and fully searchable) when you are at your laptop, iphone, …). I’m fairly sure that similar reasoning led to the print and ebook bundles available at oreilly.com.

Unfortunately this kind of bundles are not available outside the United States at least not at O’Reilly.de . Moreover, as said above i want to support my local bookstore

…

I then took the chance to introduce the bookstore to the bundle concept and how i wanted to be able to buy the physical book at the store and get the ebook as a bundle deal.

They took action and got in contact with O’Reilly Germany and sent me an email saying that O’Reilly Germany got back t hem saying that they are not authorized to do bundle deals.

So ultimately i want to be able to buy a book at the bookstore and then be able to buy the electronic version of that book for a heaviliy discounted price. Other publishers enable this by embedding disount codes into the printed titles, or force one to enter the 14th word in the third line on page 25 or whatever. I certainly want a good user experience but wouldn’t mind to jump through some hoops for getting the discounted eBook. E.g. registering the books at oreilly.com, whatever.

…

So hopefully i’m able to trigger a process within O’Reilly that finally ends in providing this kind of service. Or, even better, just gives me the information how to do this today.

Sincerely

Gerd Kamp

Andrew Savikas got back to me the same day telling me that they were working on a solution for this, but some key people were on vacation and i had to wait a couple of weeks.

Hello Gerd,

..

I agree that it would be good to provide the ebook versions at a deep discount to customers who purchase our print books. I am discussing coding options with our printers, and working with the oreilly.com team on how to implement such a program. They are working on some major upgrades to oreilly.com, including an expanded “membership” program, and ebook discounts for print purchases are a part of that project.

..
Thank you for the kind words about the TOC Conference, for buying our books, and for letting us know how we can make you happier with us and our books.

Regards

Andrew Savikas
VP, Digital Initiatives
O’Reilly Media, Inc.

Tim O’Reilly also answered personally (on July 4th):

Thanks a lot for the info, Gerd.  I will investigate and see how we can do this.  In the meantime, I’m sure we can come up with a workaround for you.

In mid-August i hadn’t heard back from O’Reilly. Since i had just bought another couple of O’Reilly books and was preparing for my own holidays. Since i like to read not only fiction in my holidays  i sent another mail at Andrew and Tim, asking if there would be some way to get early access to their virtual bundle deal.

Since i’m going on vacation at the beginning of september it would be great if we can find a workaround, e.g, some discount code for oreilly.com tied to my account. … This would enable me to carry these books in electronic form

Again the same day someone from O’Reilly got back to me:

We’ll have an ebook upgrade program in place in two weeks. The program will allow anyone who has purchased an English language book (sorry, but no DE titles, yet) to upgrade to the electronic version for $4.99. We’d launch it now but we’re waiting for two people to return from vacation and to make sure the kinks are all worked out. In the meantime, if you send me a list of books you want to upgrade I’ll have our customer service folks take care of you in time for your vacation.

So i sent them a list of the twelve ebooks i wanted to purchase. Again same day:

Dear Mr. Kamp,

Thank your for your request. We have created an order for you of the titles you requested, with the total coming out to $59.88. I have attached the invoice for the order for your review. If you find the order satisfactory, please call our customer service line at (707) 827-7019 with a credit card number and we will go ahead and process it. You may also fax your credit card number if you like to (707) 824-8268. Once payment has been received, we will deposit the e-books into your account and you will have instant access. Thank you again for your order.

So i called them. When i was just beginning to tell them  why i was calling, they told me:

Mr. Kamp, i guess you are calling to give me the credit card for that ebook order of yours. We are a small department so we basically all know the pending issues.

Immediately after giving them my credit card number the books were loaded into my bookshelf at members.oreilly.com and i could take them with me :

After  that i thanked everybody for this most awesome customer service and asked them if it is ok to blog about the upcoming upgrade programme. They asked me to wait until it is in place.

Act II

At the end of September (so it took them more than tqo weeks :-) i received the following offer via email:

Although it announced that the promotion was only valid for one month, it in fact worked at least until the end of last year and i used it to buy virtual bundles of all the O’Reilly books i bought.

I already thought that this would be the permanent option but was a bit skeptical because it was  not officially announced.

Hence i still refrained from writing this post. But after my last purchase i recognized the  MB5UP promotion code  heavily advertised when you log in into your member page (see image at the beginning of this post). This finally triggered me to finally write this story up.

Epilogue

For  me this is a story  of two tales.

Firstly it is about the best ebook offer you can get on the planet. Lifetime access to the digital version of the book, all DRM-free together with a heavily discounted price if you also  bought the printed version.  To summarize, in order to get a virtual ebook bundle from O’Reilly you have to:

1. Buy the book at the local bookstore,
2. Register it with your member account at O’Reilly  (you should always do this because you get access to the errata page of this book)
3. Add the book to your shopping cart
4. Use the code MB5UP at checkout

But secondly, and at least as important, it is a stoy about how to use social media for the most awesome customer service .

[Update:] Since this question came up within  my work at dpa and we are a Google Maps enterprise customer, i contacted the support (a first). They got back to me within 3 hours (not 2 bad) and pointed me to this public page. It is a licensing issue (probably with GIsrael).

I just recognized that the maps that Google show for Israel on their own domain are very different from the maps one gets when using the Google Maps API (even the premier version).

If this an effect of MapMaker data not shown via the Maps API , licensing issues with MAPA GIsrael, just a matter of updating the maps, or other issues ? Does anybody know of other areas of the world where the Maps API maps are significantly worse than the Google Maps maps?

This is a short post about my first impressions after using the iPad and some of the applications i downloaded. I wasn’t able to spend more time yet, because i’m attending wherecamp today and tomorrow and then flying back to germany. But i thought it would be a worthwile exercise.

Buying experience

Since i knew i would be in the area i registered for picking up a 32GB iPad at the Palo Alto Store on March 12th. Yesterday i then decided not to come in early and be at the front of the line. Hence i turned up at the store a couple of minutes after 9am. At that time the queue for preordered  phones was approx. 70metres long while the purchase line was  only about 20metres long. Since i overheard that the preordered  line was served first, i stayed with my  original plan to pickup the preordered one. As expected, not only buyers showed up but also spectators and the media.

As a german i wondered why people showed up to pickup their preordered iPads when the can it have delivered at home. Most of them seemed to be there to meet friends, have some fun and share the experience.

While waiting we the preordered units where checked in by Apple staff with a custom app on their iphones, and we were treated with krispykremes and water. It took me about one hour to get to the front of the  line. While waiting i notices that Robert Scoble was there and overheard him telling somebody else that he was first in line (funnily i also overheard some seemingly senior Apple hardware engineer that came to the store not recognizing Scoble but only talking about “this guy”).

I was assigned a staff member  (Hi, Kevin) that helped me pickup my purchase. As usual with the Apple stores, the store was on my credit card companies blacklist, but as opposed to the store on 5th Avenue, the additional authorization worked at the first  try.

I didn’t buy any additional stuff but the VGA video adapter and was done in about 5 minutes total.

Scott Forstall and Katie (Cotton)

As Scott Forstall was at the store and talking to customers, i had to walk over and ask him about any new details on the europe launch.  Instead of answering himself he took the safe route and relayed the question to Katie (obviously Katie Cotton) who unsurprisingly gave me the official line of  “end of April”.  Nevertheless the fact of Scott being there and me being able to just walk over and ask him was a nice thing.

Activation

You might already have read it: You can’t use the iPad without having it connected to a computer that has iTunes installed. Since it is not neccessary to register the iPad (it is even not (yet) possible to register the iPad with a german phone number) and applications can be downloaded over wifi, there is actual no urgent need to have this step.

I unboxed and activated my iPad at Googles car park before going to Wherecamp2010. Since i already downloaded most of the apps i wanted to test / buy yesterday, i was able to sync them on the device without taking to much time from the conference sessions.

General impressions

In this  post i will only give some general impressions about the device and the various  apps i have used (mainly news related apps). A more detailed review of the different news apps will follow  suitly.  for the general impressions i will focus on the parts that you probably might not have heard elsewhere.

The iPad is definitely the couch surfing / computing / video watching device i had hoped for. Especially watching video, both video synced from iTunes / iTunesU as well as video streamed via wifi (e.g. in the Reuters, BBC and ABC apps) was amazingly good. I definitely can see this device as a major step for no longer needing a TV set. It makes watching video whereever you have a wifi connection so easy and seamless . You can even watch it together  with your spouse without too many problems.

Unfortunately  i’m not sure that you will be able to watch web based video on the big screen, since the VGA adapter seemingly only works with certain applications, such as Videos, Keynote and Youtube. As with the iPhone and the composite/s-video out  it does not replicate the iPad display on an external screen. Since all the apps i’ve seen the video out working with are Apple apps, and i’m not aware of an Video-Out API i’m afraid, that video out might be something that is dissappointing.

Update: Jens tells me that there is an Video Out API. Thanks a lot

Unfortunately i’m right now unable to test if H.264 encoded video will work within safari as well as third party apps.

After reading the reviews i’m also positely surprised of the useability of the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode. It is definitely good enough for me for note taking during meetings and conferences (tested it this afternoon at wherecamp).

Pixeldoubling IMHO works well enough with most iPhone only apps that i’m wondering why the heck they didn’t make it an option that is enabled by default and you have to enable it for every single app. At least it remembers the setting for the app.

As (nearly) anybody else working in media i  am discussing its implications nearly every day at work. Here’s the management summary of  my current state of mind:

• Tablets will be gamechangers  both for personal media consumption and personal computing (if executed right)
• Neither re-enacting /emulating existing media (especially in the newspaper and magazin space) nor re-enacting existing personal computing user experiences will do the trick. “Enhanced editions” of all kinds where one of the most talked about topics at O’Reilly’s Tools of Change for Publishing conference in late February.
• Most media companies have a long way to go until they are tablet-ready. And that means wrt. enabling their existing processes and content, not wrt. building exciting apps. The prior are a necessary precondition for the latter.
• It is nearly impossible to do development for tablets without a physical device. Because good applications wil be based on making the experience as physical  as possible. And that means integrating sensors of all kind as well as direct manapulation interfaces

Apples Human Interface Guidelines

Carefully reading  the iPad Human Interface Guidelines  is presumably the best thing you can do in order prepare for developing iPad applications. Thankfully uxmag published the overview  of these guidelines first. Hence i’m feeling quite confident that i might publish them over here without getting litigated from Apple (technically even these guidelines  are under NDA and only available to members of the iPhone / iPad developer program):

Support All Orientations

Your application should encourage people to interact with iPad from any side by providing a great experience in all orientations. The reason is that people don’t view the device as having a default orientation, because they don’t pay much attention to the minimal device frame and they’re unconcerned with the location of the Home button.

Enhance Interactivity (Don’t Just Add Features)

The best iPad applications give people innovative ways to interact with content while they perform a clearly defined, finite task. Resist the temptation to fill the large screen with features that are not directly related to the main task. In particular, you should not view the large iPad screen as an invitation to bring back all the functionality you pruned from your iPhone application.

Flatten Your Information Hierarchy

Although you don’t want to pack too much information into one screen, you also want to prevent people from feeling that they must visit many different screens to find what they want. In general, focus the main screen on the primary content and provide additional information or tools in an auxiliary view, such as a popover.

Reduce Full-Screen Transitions

Instead of swapping in a whole new screen when some embedded information changes, update only the areas of the user interface that need it. When you perform fewer full-screen transitions, your application has greater visual stability, which helps people keep track of where they are in their task.

Enable Collaboration and Connectedness

Think of ways people might want to use your application with others. Expand your thinking to include both the physical sharing of a single device and the virtual sharing of data.

Add Physicality and Heightened Realism

Whenever possible, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. The more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.

Delight People with Stunning Graphics

The high-resolution iPad screen supports rich, beautiful, engaging graphics that draw people into an application and make the simplest task rewarding.

De-emphasize User Interface Controls

Help people focus on the content by designing your application UI as a subtle frame for the information they’re interested in. Downplay application controls by minimizing their number and prominence. Consider creating custom controls that subtly integrate with your application’s graphical style. In this way, controls are discoverable, but not too conspicuous.

Minimize Modality

iPad applications should allow people to interact with them in nonlinear ways. Modality prevents this freedom by interrupting people’s workflow and forcing them to choose a particular path.

Rethink Your Lists

Consider a more real-world vision of your application. For example, on iPhone, Contacts is a streamlined list, but on iPad, Contacts is an address book with a beautifully tangible look and feel.

Consider Multifinger Gestures

The large iPad screen provides great scope for multifinger gestures, including gestures made by more than one person.

Consider Popovers for Some Modal Tasks

If you use modal views to enable self-contained tasks in your iPhone application, you might be able to use popovers instead.

Restrict Complexity in Modal Tasks

People appreciate being able to accomplish a self-contained subtask in a modal view, because the context shift is clear and temporary. But if the subtask is too complex, people can lose sight of the main task they suspended when they entered the modal view.

Downplay File-Handling Operations

Although iPad applications can allow people to create and manipulate files and share them with a computer (when the device is docked), this does not mean that people should have a sense of the file system on iPad.

Ask People to Save Only When Necessary

People should have confidence that their work is always preserved unless they explicitly cancel or delete it. If your application helps people create and edit documents, make sure they do not have to take an explicit save action.

Start Instantly

iPad applications should start as quickly as possible so that people can begin using them without delay.

Always Be Prepared to Stop

Like iPhone applications, iPad applications stop when people press the Home button to open another application.

Adobe and HPs (lack of) vision

Meanwhile Adobe and HP join forces and publish a video previewing Adobe running on a HP Slate. Not surprisingly they are focusing on the “full web” experience that is enabled by runing a “real” operating system running “real” web sites and “real” applications (based on Adobe AIR).

Meaning: Cluttered OS build for a different kind of system (PC/Laptop) using a different user interface metaphor (Desktop/Mouse) showing websites optimized for both.

IMHO especially the photoshop.com demo in the video below clearly shows the lack of vision and violation of the “De-emphasize User Interface Controls” Guideline from above.

PS.: More dissemination of the video (as well as an alternative takeon it) can be found at crunchgear

Momentan überschlagen sich die Tweets mit Hinweisen darauf wie denn das Abendblatt auch kostenlos zu lesen ist.  Auch ich habe in meinem letzten Post darauf  hingewiesen.

Allerdings zeugt die Häme die dort zum Teil ausgeschüttet wird auch häufig von der Unkenntnis der Situation. Daher hier eine kurze Erklärung und meine Einschätzung.

Das Googleloch und das Googlebotloch sind alte Bekannte. Jeder der schon mal ernsthaft  das WallStreet Journal lesen wollte kennt zumindest das Google-Loch. Im folgenden will ich kurz erklären was die Gründe für diese Löcher sind und das das Abendblatt dies Löcher leicht stopfen könnte und es im Grunde nur eine Frage der Zeit resp. der kaufmännischen Abwägung ist ob und wann diese geschlossen werden.

Das Google-Loch und First-Click-Free

Das Google-Loch entsteht dadurch, dass die Verlage oder sonstige Content-Provider (zumindest die, die halbwegs bei Sinnen sind) nicht auf den Traffic aus der Google-Suche und Google-News verzichten wollen.

Um dies auch für Paid-Content machen zu können gibt es die First-Click-Free-Regelung von Google. Diese stellt im wesentlichen eine Ausnahme von der allgemeinen “Cloaking”-Regel dar die Aussagt, dass den Endkunden und dem Google-Crawler (der sich als googlebot identifiziert) nicht unterschiedliche Seitenversionen ausgeliefert / angezeigt werden dürfen.

Bis zum 1. Dezember besagte die First-Click-Regelung, dass dies für jeden ersten Klick, der von einer Suchergebnisseite / Google News kam, die gleiche Seite angezigt werden musste wie sie der Googlebot gesehen hat, erst Links die von dieser Seite wegführten durften dann auf Seiten führen die hinter der Paywall lagen.

Zum 1. Dezember hat Google, als eines der Zugeständnisse die sie an die Content-Provider gemacht haben, diese Regelung geändert. Seit diesem Datum gibt es die eingeschränkte First-Click-Free-Regelung die es des Content-Providern erlaubt, nach einer bestimmten Anzahl von Klicks am Tag, die von Google-Seiten kommen auch die Seite die auf diesen First-Click hin angezeigt wird hinter die Paywall zu legen. Als Minimum müssen allerdings 5 Clicks pro Tag frei sein.

Die Implementierung dieser veränderten Regelung obliegt den Verlagen (ist auch das einzig technisch sinnvolle).  Jeder der sich technisch halbwegs auskennt, weiss, das das ganze nicht trivial ist und insbesondere auch mehr Last auf den Systemen erzeugt. Daher ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass das Abendblatt die veränderte Regelung noch nicht umgesetzt hat.

Letztendlich ist aber auch eine  ökonomische Frage, ob sich der zusätzliche Aufwand überhaupt lohnt. In meiner Abwägung würde aber der Glaubwürdigkeitsaspekt überwiegen und ich gehe davon aus dass Axel-Spinger dies auch tun wird. Da Abendblatt und Berliner Morgenpost jetzt auf der gleichen technischen Plattform laufen müssen sie es ja auch nur einmal machen.

Ich gehe davon aus dass diese Lücke noch im Laufe dieses Jahres, allerspätestens im Januar geschlossen wird.

Das Googlebotloch

Eine zweite Lücke auf den in den Tweets hingewiesen wird ist das “Googlebot”-Loch. Hier gibt sich der Browser als Google-Crawler aus. Da dieser ja die Inhalte komplett sehen soll (siehe oben) wird der komplette Inhalt ausgeliefert.

Hier verwundert es mich allerdings, dass das Abendblatt diese Lücke noch nicht geschlossen hat. Das Verfahren dazu bescheibgt Google selbst auf seinen Webmaster Seiten. Es bsetht wus einem sog. Reverse DNS Lookup der feststellt ob eine IP-Addresse (die bei jedem Request mitgeliefert wird) auch aus der googlebot.com Domäne kommt, optional gefolgt von einer normalen (Forward) DNS Anfrage die dann verifiziert, ob der im ersten Schritt zurückgelieferte Name auch auf die angegebene IP-Adresse aufgelöst wird.

Dies ist notwendig, da Google nicht die IP-Adressenbereiche der Maschinen die den Crawl  ausführen bekannt gibt. Wäre das der Fall, so wäre eine Filterung der Googlebot Requests auf  diese Adressen trivial.  So ist das ganze aber mit nicht unerheblichem Aufwänden und Kosten verbunden. Darüberhinaus entstehendurch die beiden DNS-Requests Verzögerungen bei der Auslieferung der Seiten.

Im übrigen hat Google ebenfalls vor kurzem (als weiteres Zugeständnis an die Content Provider einen dedizierten Crawler-Namen für den Google News Crawler eingeführt. Dieser heisst: Googlebot-News.