Reversing Your Email Composition [Idea] « On Organization
If you have ever sent an email without including an attachment or clicked send before you were done, check out this article.
Here is a nice tip on a different approach to writing emails Reversing Your Email Composition [Idea] « On Organization.
Fight for Kindle access – Disabled Community organizes against Author's Guild
The Reading Rights Coalition, which represents people who cannot read print, will protest the threatened removal of the text-to-speech function from e-books for the Amazon Kindle 2 outside the Authors Guild headquarters in New York City at 31 East 32nd Street on April 7, 2009, from noon to 2:00 p.m
Reading Rights Coalition Urges Authors to Allow Everyone Access to E-books.
As I had pointed out in my precious posts on this subject. This technology would improve access to book for those who would normally not be able to access them and as such should have been treated by the Author’s Guild as a new revenue stream, not a threat to their current business model.
Dr. Peter Blanck, chairman and university professor at Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, said:
As electronic books become the norm, denying universal access will result in more and more people with disabilities being left out of education, employment, and the societal conversation. We will all suffer from the absence of their participation and contribution to the debates that occupy us as a society.
While the Kindle 2 is not currently accessible to blind users, Amazon recently announced on its Kindle 2 blog that it is currently at work on making the device’s navigational features accessible to the blind.
F* the Real World: A video of David Heinemeier Hansson's talk at FOWA Dublin
This is a great speech by David Heinemeier Hansson on how one should believe in an idea and bring it to fruition and disregard the nay sayers who will always find faults and reasons why things won’t work.
I too have found what David speaks of to be the case. Many of the things I have accomplished were only due to perseverance when many said something couldn’t be done. I am currently in the process of developing my idea into a business so this speech came at a good time as it is hard to stay motivated in the face of hearing all the negatives about what I am trying to do. Enjoy
David Heinemeier Hansson – FOWA Dublin 2009 from Carsonified on Vimeo.
Everyone is so G*d D*mn unique
I have yet to find a company that feels that they are just like everyone else. In my career I have been fortunate to work in a variety of industries including Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Semiconductor, Entertainment, Standardized Testing, Software etc. Everyone always thinks they are unique. It’s probably a defense mechanism or an excuse as to why things are so poor in that particular company.
This morning I was watching a live Q&A with 37signals and David Heinemeier Hansson was talking about customizing their application to a specific industry vs. being generic. That’s when he inspired this post with the words that became it’s title.
DHH went on to say:
Everyone thinks they are this perfect little snowflake
What he said was that the things that work are those which work for everyone, like email. I couldn’t agree more. People think that just because some solution worked at one company it does not mean that it will work at theirs. What companies don’t see is that most of what they do is pretty generic. If you focus on the 5% that may be unique, your company will not progress because it will get stuck in never ending analysis.
At a company I once consulted for, they were developing a large piece of software for something I knew other companies were doing. I was not in a position to convince them that they should find an off-the-shelf solution, but I knew it was wasteful to try to build something internally especially if what they were building was not their core competency. Needless to say that company didn’t complete that project because when new management came in and saw the lack of progress, they quickly killed the project and set out to implement the generic off-the-shelf solution which was used at other companies.
If what you are doing is that much different from your competitors and you are not the leader of the pack, then you should seriously analyze what you are doing because your “uniqueness” may be your downfall.
Make an effort to learn what works at other companies even if they are in other industries. You will gain a tremendous amount. I’ve had clients who talk every acronym under the sun from LEAN and Six Sigma to PRINCE2 and RUP. In most cases what they were missing was not a unifying technique for improving their business. What they were missing was a change to their corporate culture which hindered progress. In the end these companies were not unique because of what they did, but because of how they were doing it. So stop thinking you are so special and work on actually getting things done and changing the complacent attitude which is what is really holding you back.
Apple embraces accessibility and helps everyone in the process
Most people don’t know that Macs are by default the most “off-the-shelf” accessible computers sold today. Every single Mac comes with accessibility features for the physical and motor skills, hearing, and vision impaired. This means that a blind person can walk into any Apple store and use any computer without installing any software. They can even carry all their settings on a USB drive so that their customization can travel with them. On Windows computers these features need to be purchased separately from third parties and as such lack the level of refinement and availability of the Apple solution.
Since 2002 Apple has been investing on accessibility on the Mac platform, but in the last year it has been taking steps to make it’s other products namely iTunes and iPods more accessible to the blind.
Today Apple demonstrated how a company can use accessibility to it’s advantage. By integrating Voice Over into the latest iPod shuffle not only did they make the product accessible to the blind, they made it accessible to everyone. Since the shuffle has no screen the product has always been marketed as one where the listener has little control of the listening experience, hence the Shuffle name. Now that the device has Voice Over a listener can select a specific play list allowing them to customize their experience to their current mood.
Making Macs accessible led to making iPod Nanos accessible. This work led to Voice Over in the new iPod Shuffles giving Apple another competitive advantage. A short sighted company would not invest in this feature for a product line where they already own the market. But at Apple this work will not be limited to the iPod line. I am sure this trend will continue at Apple because it makes sense. The iPod “experiment” is just baby steps.
Currently the iPhone is the least accessible device they make, but think of what text-to speech can do for Apple. Imagine your phone reading your RSS feeds and email while you drive to work or speaking the name of the caller so that you don’t need to take your eyes off the road? The iPods currently don’t have enough processing power to actually generate the speech real time, Apple actually does the work on the computer prior to loading the music on the device, hence the different voices depending on whether the iPod was synced on a PC or a MAc. However, the iPone’s CPU is a lot more capable and the next version will be even more so allowing Apple to explore these capabilities on the device.
Apple, unlike Amazon and the Author’s Guild, today demonstrated how a company can embrace accessibility and not only help those in need, but improve its product along the way.
Here is a video of the new iPod Shuffle in action. (Quicktime Required). More info can be found on the Shuffle page.
Bad Design will piss off your customers
Over at the Signals vs. Noise blog there is some great dialog about the poor American Airlines online reservations systems.
As a person who has done a lot of flying as part of my consulting work and as an Industrial Engineer, analyzing processes comes second nature to me. AA.com has always been my #1 worst site. Come to think of it, American Airlines in general has been at the top of my list for worst companies to deal with. The funny thing is that what is being discussed in the post above goes far beyond online reservations, it gets to the root of the real issues at American Airlines and the other major carriers in the US.
Their entire operation’s design sucks…
OK, maybe not all of it, but most of the customer facing ones. Here are examples of things I have encountered while flying AA and other major airlines in the US.
1. Booking online is a nightmare
Most of the websites are designed like it’s 1995 and no one has heard of web 2.0. You can’t do simple searches easily and God help you if you need to change a date once the search results are displayed.
2. Checking in feels like you arrived at a cattle call or you wait and wait…
Anyone who likes using the electronic check-in kiosks at the majors hasn’t flown Jet Blue or Southwest. I flew on United in November and not only did I have to enter my name and destination, I also had to enter the confirmation ID(I think that’s what it was). How about we just do the confirmation number like Jet Blue and output it with a bar code so I can just scan it? If I enter a confirmation number, don’t ask me where I am going, you should know that…
How about redesigning the checkin area so it is less intimidating for passengers? At LAX they actually have an employee at the front of the line whose whole job is to call out which kiosk is open. Ridiculous.
The funny thing is that if you are lucky enough to be a Platinum AAdvantage member as a was a few years ago, you can opt-out of electronic checkin and actually go up to a person. Only problem is that this process is actually slower. Two employees serving a line of about 10 customers takes over 45 minutes. I don’t know why this takes so long, but I sure hear a lot of typing when all I want to do is check into my flight.
3. Why don’t you take my bag?
So you go through the nightmare of checking in, now you get the privilege of waiting in another line. At American Airlines at LAX there is another place you have to take your bags so they can be x-rayed before they go on the plane.
It’s been seven years now since security measures were changed. Maybe it’s time to redesign this whole process?
Why is their design so bad?
I would guess that these airlines approach problem solving from the company’s point of view with little to no regard for their customers. They know they need to reduce costs, so they decide to work on an online reservation system for their customers and when customers don’t use it because it’s lousy, they will just impose surcharges to force them to use it. If they need to cut employees to reduce costs the can just install kiosks and give customers no option but to use them. Security procedures change? We can just add another process as an afterthought and never look back.
Herein lies the problem. No one is thinking “we can make this better.” They are not saying:
- “The internet is here to stay, how do we improve our site so customers WANT to book online”
- “Pre screening the bags is not going to change and electronic checkin is here to stay, maybe there is a way to redesign the terminal so the process is more efficient and less intimidating to our customers.”
- “If we are going to have a loyalty program, we have to make the experience for our most valuable customers exceptional”
I challenge the executives of the major US airlines to fly Southwest, Jet Blue, and travel internationally is I did to Singapore in November to see how much better the process can be for both the customers and the airlines.
If you design your product to meet and exceed your customer’s expectations, you will be able to command a higher price than your competition. On the other hand, if you approach every problem with a selfish attitude and not from the customer’s point of view, you end up like GM and the countless other companies who focused too much internally and too little on the customer.
Marketing to Hispanics
I came across this article today and I thought it had a lot of great insight on marketing to the growing Hispanic population in the US.
Goya is Big, But Not Great (Yet)
I have felt for a long time that many companies miss the boat when trying to market to hispanics especially English speakers. Marketers tend to want to put one generic message that “should” apply to all hispanics, but they miss out on the big picture. In my experience, a lot of this has to do with not really knowing the population. It is one thing to study something, it is another to live it. Companies should focus more on diversifying their workforce to bring in the type of diverse talent needed to reach this market.
There are amazing organizations like NSHMBA and SHPE where companies can attract and interact with top talent. Just like in any relationship, a company can’t expect to just jump into a new market and be successful. First it has to want to slowly get to understand the segment by bringing into the decision making process those who have the insight that will allow the company to be successful.
Amazon caves on text-to-speech, a loss for accessibility
On my previous post I mentioned how the Author’s Guild was putting pressure on Amazon due to the inclusion of the text-to-speech feature in the new Kindle. Amazon eventually backed down and is now allowing publishers to disable this feature on a per book basis.
This is too bad because not only did the industry not realize the opportunity they failed to capitalize on, but it also means that people who could benefit from this technology, namely the blind and visually impaired, also suffer.
As I mentioned before, no one who can read by sight would choose text-to-speech for their book consumption. Not only is it slower to have something read aloud, but it is also not the best experience.
The following article on Slate is among the dozens which outline how poor text-to-speech really is and gets into detail on the technology and the fact that replacing human actors in audio books is still very far away.
Why computer voices still dont sound human. – By Farhad Manjoo – Slate Magazine
Hopefully the industry won’t enforce the option to disable text-to-speech on their books because the only ones who would be hurt are the ones with no other options.
Capitalizing on accessibility, the Authors Guild is out of touch
Today I read a post on TechCrunch about an op-ed piece on the New York Times by Roy Blount, Jr of the Authors Guild. Mr. Blount argues that the text-to-speech feature of the Kindle is infringing on his industry because even though Kindle owners pay to download the text version of a book, they do not pay for the audio rights. Typically audio rights are paid for audio versions of the book read aloud by humans. He goes on to say that computer voices are getting so good that they will eventually be indistinguishable from humans.
This all sounds to me like another industry fighting technology to maintain a monopolistic hold to try to extract profit for individuals at every opportunity. If a person purchases a printed book and later the audio version of that book, do they get some sort of refund for owning the same work twice? Why is the inverse so reasonable then? When I was at USC I was once told by a music executive that a music CD only gave you the right to listen to the music from that CD, not the right to transfer it to another device. In essence he was saying I should have to pay them multiple times for the same content. Why did this make sense to the guy? Because in the past this is what the industry has lived by. Get customers to build a library in one format and then purchase it again when a new format comes along, Vinyl -> cassette -> CD -> digital (end of the road). The issue here is a flawed business model which in the past was able to extract more profit from the release of new technology. I still remember how angry I was when I learned how much more CDs cost relative to cassettes. We never saw a price decrease for music CDs even though they were cheaper to produce.
The real issue with text-to-speech…
By adding text-to-speech Amazon is not “infringing” on the book industry. They are opening up a world of information to the blind and visually impaired. Newspapers and magazines can now be consumed by this segment of the population the same day they are available to sighted individuals. Mr. Blount points to the National Federation of the Blind taking offense to his stance, but they have every right. Where has the Author’s Guild been when the blind and visually impaired could not access newspapers? Did they make their professionally recorded audiobooks available to these individuals? Did they help the Library of Congress or Recordings for the Blind by allowing them to distribute their books on standard CD, DVDs or Downloads which could be played on an ipod? The short answer is no. From the Recordings for the Blind website:
RFB&D now offers AudioAccessSM, which enables downloading of audio textbooks from the Internet for playback on either a Windows computer or a Windows–compatible portable media player. RFB&D’s AudioPlus® digitally recorded textbooks are stored on CDs, which hold more than 40 hours each of recorded materials.
In order to play RFB&D digitally recorded textbooks, you will need to use specially adapted CD players or software
The National Library Service for the Blind has the following:
Books and magazines loaned free by the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress, are available in recorded format on audiocassette. Cassette recordings require specially designed playback equipment (see Part I), which is loaned free to eligible individuals and institutions. Special accessories (see Part II ) are also loaned free. Cassette machines play at either 15/16 inches per second (ips) or the commercial standard 1-7/8 ips.
The above 2 services basically say that if you are blind or visually impaired there is no simple way for you to read a book. You need special Windows only players, big cassette players, or special CD players to consume books. This industry does not have a vested interest in solving accessibility issues, but they are quick to denounce a tool that could help those who are most in need.
Anyone who has ever used text-to-speech know that it is not the fastest or most enjoyable way to read. Most people use the technology because of a need, not as a superior replacement for visually reading text.
Publishers should be helping the blind…
Instead of condemning Amazon for the text to speech technology in the Kindle, the industry should be complaining because Amazon didn’t go far enough. They should make the device more accessible by making menu navigation text enabled so that the blind could better use the device. Apple has been making great strives in this area by making OS X very accessible with technologies like Voice Over and making iPod menu speech enabled, but more can be done in this area.
What some companies miss is that accessibility isn’t just about helping people, it makes business sense. Text-to-speech does not take money out of author’s pockets, it adds to the bottom line because a whole new segment of the market can now purchase their content. This is synonymous to closed-captioning which makes TV shows accessible to the deaf thus increasing the number of people an ad can reach.
A new era…
Target is in the process of settling a case filed against them by the NFB with regards to Target’s formerly inaccessible website. Instead of capitalizing on a market segment which is in more need of online purchasing due to transportation limitations, Target locked those potential customers out.
The web and digital media is for the first time giving hope to millions of Americans which in the past could not get accessible books for pleasure or education. Today these individuals can’t get access to college books because they change so often it is impossible for organizations to keep up with transcription to Braille or audio. I would bet these individuals would pay for an accessible version of a text book were it available. The Author’s Guild should work on capitalizing on this market instead of trying to close the door for these individuals.
Just like TV executives will not be able to stop the progress of internet TV, the publishing industry will not be able to stop text-to-speech. It’s already on every Mac. Don’t fight progress, figure out how to capitalize on it.
Do executives ever try their services? (My experience trying to watch LOST online)
This past weekend when my wife and I sat down to catch up on ABC’s Lost we realized that our DVR had not been recording the show. It turns out that this had been going on for several weeks, but being parents of a 3 and a 4 year old, we had not noticed. In order to catch up I started to look at my options to watch the missed episodes legally.
Don’t Demand so much….
My cable company has an OnDemand feature which allows you to immediately watch a catalog of TV shows and movies. I had recently seen a new category called Primetime On Demand so I thought I would give that a shot. I was presented with content from the following stations:
- CBS
- FX
- NBC
- USA
Not only is this a pathetic channel listing, the content for each of those stations is laughable. Does anyone at Time Warner actually use this? It still amazes me that companies put up services which no one in their right mind would use. In my house OnDemand is a service my children benefit from, that’s it. They don’t mind watching the same show over and over again. I love to introduce my kids to my childhood cartoons and this service helps in that respect, but once we have seen the 4 episodes of The Jetsons which are available, I have to wait at least another month for the catalog to be refreshed.
I am so LOST…
So being the geek that I am I next turn to Boxee on my Mac. Boxee is a great tool which is trying to do for TV what Napster did for music. No, it is not about pirating TV shows, it is about bringing together a unified user experience so we don’t have to hunt for content at NBC.com, ABC.com, etc. Boxee merely presents the content already available on these websites in one place, ads and all. Unfortunately Boxee has to work around limitations and changes on the network’s websites for our benefit. Currently Boxee is working through some of these technical issues with abc.com, so once again i fail in my quest to watch this TV show. If the networks would just work with Boxee instead of against them, these problems would not exist. But have network executives ever tried Boxee?
Off to ABC.com (abc.go.com why are they still on this go.com thing?)
The worst user experience to hit internet TV has to be abc.go.com I had been to their site before and that is why I left it to the end. I must say since I had last visited they have at least improved the site so that you can get to the show page in a few clicks. The problem is the actual experience of watching the show. When you actually try to watch an ABC show, you go through the following:
- You select the show you want to watch, this launches another window with the area for the episode in the middle and the episodes on the right hand side. The problem with this is that you can only see the thumbnails of four episodes at a time, and they put up “enhanced” episodes, so you actually just see 2 episode choices.
- Once you make the episode selection an ad plays, no problem except for the fact that once the ad completes, you have to “click to continue.” This happens at every commercial break, and in my case I guess no ads were available so I got to just sit back and watch a counter countdown to 0 before I could click to continue.
- Once the show starts, you can make the player full screen however, when the commercial comes on, you are taken out of full screen mode back to the player window to see the add, and when you click to continue you are once again taken back to full screen mode. This has got to be the most disorienting and annoying part of the experience.
I have to think that this is a conspiracy by ABC to make people hate watching TV on the internet so much that they will not bother with it. Has anyone from ABC actually sat down and tried to use this horrible service? In my mind, if you are not even going to try to do something reasonably well, why try at all?
A great user experience…
If you haven’t tried hulu.com, you should. It is the closest we have come to a legal way to watch TV on the internet and the experience doesn’t suck. When you find the show you want to watch, all the episodes are clearly listed on the same page. When you start a show no pop ups are thrown at you. Ads are shown on the same player as the episode and you don’t need to leave full screen mode to see them. Best of all, when the ads end, the show just picks up where it left off, no clicking to continue, just like on TV. Wow, how amazing, it’s like rocket science I guess. Hulu even gets this right; if you just want to see what shows they have in their catalog, no problem, there is an alphabetical listing, (can you hear me Joost?)
Why does hulu work and OnDemand or abc.com don’t?
It is obvious to me that the people who developed hulu.com love TV. They actually see a future for instant tv over the internet and they have actually used their service. That’s it, it’s not magic. I am sure they “eat their own dog food” Have the ABC executives ever tried Hulu? I can’t believe they have given what they have on the ABC site. I think the CBS guys learned because their current site tv.com sucks a lot less than their previous attempts.
Even NBC which has a lot of content on Hulu still has news.msnbc.com which is probably the worst place to watch their nightly news. I guess the news division hasn’t been on Hulu, or they would just put their content there.
Trying to hold on to the past
Unfortunately, Hulu only has rights to some of the content from NBC and FOX and a few other stations. Want CBS content, go to tv.com. Want ABC, well, you go through that horrible nightmare of a site. Or do you? Well actually you don’t. You just have to go to bittorrent TV aggregation sites. There you can get all the stations in one place. Every show, even before they air on the West Coast. No commercials, no clicking to continue. Want 720p, no problem. While Hulu’s content is only available in the US, via bitorrent if you are outside the US, no problem. On bittorrent you can even find shows not available legally anywhere else. You can even get content from other countries and with some tools like RSS, new episodes will arrive automatically ready for you to watch just like your DVR, only better.
Have TV executives ever tried these bittorrent sites? Aparently not, because if they had, they would see how poor their services are compared to what’s already available. They are not benefitting by trying to lock content to the US. In this global market it would seem to me more productive to develop a business model that works globally and take advantage of emerging markets. Would Pepsi restrict sales of their drinks to the US only? No, that would be ridiculous. Why does this have to be different?
Lets bury our heads in the sand
When Napster happened, Music labels could have embraced the new distribution channel, but they were intent on protecting the $16.99 per CD they were accustomed to getting. Some artists were used to putting 2 or 3 good tracks per CD and still selling the entire album. Today iTunes has changed the game. Now people get to decide what is good and can pick and choose the 3 tracks they like. They also get to pay a much more reasonable price per track. Some would argue that even at $0.99 the price per song is too high, but at least Apple helped the music industry by giving them a fighting chance. Suing Napster out of existence and trying to lock up their content with DRM didn’t really solve anything. Embracing the changing landscape sooner could have put them in a much better position.
Globalization does not just affect hard goods…
Today we are all more connected than anyone in the history of man. This availability of information means that people in the US can learn of a great show in the UK like the IT Crowd, but unfortunately there is no legitimate outlet to consume the content. Will prohibition work this time? I am sure it won’t. Technology has sped past this road block and while content providers sit back trying to protect their content, I am sure someone is developing even better ways to get around these restrictions.
Carpe Diem..
If the industry is going to prevent their content from being freely distributed without commercials, they must get ahead of the curve. Give users a reason to access the content legitimately by partnering with Hulu, Boxee and others. At the very least if you MUST have total control try to make the experience on your site suck less. Please, this is not so hard.
The only way to learn is to do…
There is no substitute for first hand experience. If you are an executive making strategic decisions about your product or service, the first thing you need to do is use it. No Power Point can ever convey the experience your users go through when setting up and using what you sell. Once you experience your product, try your competition’s product. You don’t have to lift every idea from them, but a TV executive can never know how amazing bittorrent and usenet are until they have tried them.
When you don’t know your product or your competition first hand, it is very simple to pull the wool over your eyes and if you surround yourself with people who won’t bluntly state the realities of the market, you are bound to fail, it’s just a matter of time.
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