Category Archives: Technology

Digital pricing – it’s not difficult

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Still on the digital books theme as I’m loving iBooks on the iPhone right now.

Pretty much the only reason I visit a real bookshop these days is to browse and let the kids enjoy kiddies book sections. Inevitably I go away and order online (yes through Amazon), for the printed book, as it’s cheaper and not just a bit cheaper.

Last weekend on such a browsing session, I spotted a book called “The Art of Running Faster”. It looked great, (and yes I’m trying to run faster) so I went to Amazon but then thought no, let me check on Apple’s digital bookstore. And yes it was there and about 30% cheaper than the printed one. Sample downloaded, read and enjoyed and I went to click the buy button. Suddenly the price had jumped up to more than the printed book in the real shop. Say what? Why on earth have they done this? Convenience yes but more expensive to download and read on my phone? No thanks. Right now we’re in the transition to digital for books so we need to be incentivised to buy digital. You don’t get more features, it’s just a bit more convenient. It should be cheaper.

What to do? I decided to check out the Kindle app on the iPhone – a first for me – and it was there and even cheaper than the first cheaper price on iBooks. Brilliant. So buy I did, and boy is the purchasing process on Amazon good. So simple and quick. A top result. And yes the Kindle app works well. iBooks now has a competitor.

Please please get the pricing right. Digital should be cheaper. The production costs and other costs of sale should be cheaper. Help us consumers make the transition to digital. Don’t have wildly different prices across digital shops and not more expensive than physical…

iBooks – yes it works (or digital books are now main stream)

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Another nail in the physical content coffin – books. Back on the commuter trail into London, I’ve been using iBooks on the iPhone (my trusty 4S) for a while now. It’s near perfect for train reading. You can hold it in one hand, navigate through the book with your thumb and one finger and with the right type of books, you couldn’t ask for a better reading (consumption) experience.

The books I’m reading right now are a series of history books – “History In An Hour“. Ok so they do take me, a bit more than an hour – 20 minutes here, 20 minutes there (journey in isn’t one hour) – but they’re very readable and hey I’m learning something. South African history, World Wars One and Two, The Afghan Wars (there have been a few), The Cold War and The American Civil War to name a few.

The huge plus with reading them on the iPhone, is the convenience. The phone’s pretty much always with me and very accessible. No more having to carry books around with me, that take up more shelf space at home. Yes I am a huge fan of printed books and my home office wall resembles a small library. That bit about physical books I love and also reading for the little Nobles, but there is a need now for me for digital books and Apple’s iBooks application is the answer. The genius of Apple usability and customer experience helps big time!

Link

Silence for a bit too long – new position back up in the city (London) and lots to do, so quiet on the blog front.

US court to rule on ReDigi’s MP3 digital music resales

But a very interesting article I saw tonight – yes again on the BBC – about a pending court ruling about whether MP3 music files can be resold.  Hmmmmmmm.  Makes you wonder.  As an individual I bought them, as long as I’ve not copied them I should be able to re-sell them.  I can do it with physical goods, so why not digital?  For a business though?  Well why not – you get second hand shops (including for music, videos and games and books) for physical goods and they’re total legal and everyone’s happy about them. What difference does it make that it’s digital, just a different medium for consuming the content?  None really – other than it’s potentially easier to copy the content.

One to watch in the courts – and will it set a precedent?  US only?  Music only?  Watch this space…

Why testing is important…

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Another Olympic post – this time on the genius (not) that is the London 2012 Olympic ticketing system.  This will be a vent of sorts, as I’ve spent too much time messing about trying to buy tickets as have millions of others.

The games themselves have been nothing short of amazing and what all the athletes have accomplished is incredible, but sport is also about people watching it.  And for an event of this scale you need a good mechanism in place to get people to see the sports they want to see.

Before we get started on the main theme of the post, Royal Mail have done it again.  We managed to get tickets for the Paralympics that start in a couple of weeks time.  An e-mail from LOCOG confirming we’d got them arrived (and we’d paid £6 for super delivery rather than picking them up at the event).  But no details on when they’d arrive, even roughly – so a black hole and left hoping they would arrive in time.  Then an e-mail from Royal Mail telling me the tickets were ready to be delivered…

Followed by another to tell me the tickets would be with me the next day.  And then one to confirm they’d been received by me, literally within seconds of me electronically signing for them with the local postie.  Now that is real service and great to see the Royal Mail – that great British institution – as a shining beacon in the whole Olympic ticketing fiasco.

The actual ticketing system went live around April 2011 – so over 16 months ago – and in that time it hasn’t changed one bit (as in problems fixed, updates done etc).  That’s a year with no new development.  How can that be right?  Was it perfect when first released?  Had all the testing that was done shown it to be perfect?  No and that’s one big no.

Rather than go into all the issues myself there is a great post on BuzzFeed Sports by Alex Rees that very nicely gives you all the juicy details – see below (it’s worth a read)…

It is very apparent from this that virtually no real testing on how the site or service works can possibly have been done.  User acceptance testing?  No – why do we need to do that, it’ll work.  Load testing?  Will many people be wanting to use the site at the same time?  Surely not.  Performance testing?  It’s just a web site.  Problems identified by the public (the users or customers), should we fix them within 16 months?  No, what’s fixing all about?

Any of these are part of computing for beginners 101, and to get onto building a web-site 101 you have to have got the first certificate already.

So why has this happened?  Good old outsourcing.  LOCOG clearly aren’t a software house and don’t build ticketing or e-commerce sites.  So they put together an RFI and get it out with all the big boys in the market place, including ticketmaster (who won it and built the site).  And it will have come down to money – ticketmaster will have bid and bid at a price they could win at and LOCOG will have picked the cheapest so they keep costs down.  Now I may be making some assumptions here, but I’ll bet they’re right!

The site will have been designed to some brief specs (or even an Agile type user story) – we need to sell tickets for the Olympic events for the public – it couldn’t be simpler.  They will have been paid to build it and maybe run it for a little bit but future development, fixes, upgrades etc?  Never – why would we need them, it’s only the Olympics and it’s only on for a short known period.  It’s not an Amazon type service that will keep running.

That’s the key here.  This has never been built to improve or do the job well, it’s been built to just (almost) do the job and no-one’s re-visited it (the design) since and has no intention to.

Testing before we go-live?  Why would we possibly need to do that?  Testing with our actual end users and listening to what they say?  Surely not, you only get…

  • Empty seats
  • Bad press
  • Frustrated British public

But like I said at the start it has been an absolutely awesome Olympic games, the best I’ve seen – and we did get some tickets (for the rowing) and saw some of the free events (road cycling) and today we’re off to see the men’s marathon in London.  And my favourite bits –  the men’s 100m, 200m, 4x100m and the men’s 10,000m and 5,000m.  Mo Farah – a local Teddington man who went to St. Mary’s University in Twickenham (where we do our karate now) and a Bushy Park Parkrun runner – is my hero of the games!  What an athlete.

The little Nobles doing the Mobot after his 5,000m win last night and the man himself with Mr. Bolt…

Don’t charge for digital when printed is free…

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You’ll remember from my recent posts (“It’s official – the 6 year old’s verdict is that digital magazines are better!“) that I’m now a convert to digital newspapers, when done well – like the good old London Metro (which is free for both the printed paper and the digital iPad version).  So this week, starting the London commute again and picking up the free London Evening Standard each night on the way home (at the London tube stations), I was excited to read about their new iPad version.

All looks good, so where do I get it and how?  But then reading the smaller print, what’s this, you can get a free trial?  And then what?  Oh then it’s £4.99 per month.  But the printed one, the one everyone picks up at the tube and train stations is still free – yes with ads (lots) but it’s free.  The iPad is pretty much the same version, with ads, but I have to pay for it?  That’s all wrong!  Ok, the printed one used to be paid for but it’s not now, and hasn’t been for some time.

I’m now one customer the Evening Standard won’t get with their new digital version.  With this new planned business model, I’m not even going to go for the trial.  Why should I?  It’s too easy for me to get the printed one every evening and hey I could get a few if I wanted, and all for free.

Digital is not about a new way of making money from subscribers.  It’s about a different, and yes new, channel for how we as the customer want to be able to access the same content.  That’s it.  Why should it cost me more to consume?  It cost you more to build it?  Ok, but that’s all about investment for the future – digital is the way it’s going so get on-board quick and get some earlier adopters with you to iron out problems etc, then maybe look at new pricing.  Like a monthly charge for premium content, not the normal free content.  But not a short term return, that won’t work.

Some reviews of the Evening Standard iPad app from the Apple Appstore…

… it’s not just me!

The Metro are still – by a long way – the only newspaper publisher (in the UK at least) who are doing this well.  Their printed and digital versions are free, and their digital version offers more than the printed version, and hey yes I may now be willing to pay extra for the digital one because it offers more.  I said may – still not 100% convinced.

Yoda as a mentor

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Another fine post from GeekWire, again written by Brandon Koeller and this time about Yoda and his not great mentoring skills.  As opposed to Darth Vader’s project management endeavours  – “10 reasons why Darth Vader was an amazing project manager“.

Let’s start by defining what mentoring is…

Here’s what Yoda does wrong…

And the 10 reasons he wasn’t a great mentor are:

  1. Too much micro-management.
  2. Lack of transparency.
  3. No clear goal setting.
  4. Lack of clear and consistent communications.
  5. Not providing authentic and real assignments.
  6. Authority (and relationship) problems.
  7. Not relating training to things you know and your existing experiences.
  8. Forget about cult myths and hero worshipping.
  9. Lack of accessibility.
  10. Learning new things isn’t about magic – it’s about consistent hard work.

Yes I am a huge Star Wars fan – which means I like posts like this by default almost.  But what I really like about Brandon’s posts (and his writing style) is the ability to provide very useful info about topical subjects, that are relevant to most people and wrap them up with Star Wars – something that everyone loves – that makes them fun to read (and remember).

Mentoring is something that many organisations don’t do and so they miss out on the huge opportunities it can provide.  Someone in the organisation helping inspire and motivate others, can never be a bad thing!

Are you a mentor?  Does it work for you?  Do you enjoy it?

The future of games is also mobile

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A great post on PocketGamer.biz from Keith Andrew talking about the new CEO of smartphone studio Kwalee – David Darling – and his recent blog.  David founded Codemasters so he knows a fair bit about games and games consoles and what games’ players want and what they like.

Darling rightly states that the industry is transitioning from boxed to digital games and it’s not just games that are transitioning but all types of content – see my previous blog post on this very topic, “How digital are you?“.

Here’s my big statement – games consoles have a limited lifespan.  They’ve served a great purpose and given millions top quality interactive entertainment in the living room and most of us have grown up with them.  I remember well the Atari 2600 my mum and dad got us when we were 10 and but we then moved to pc’s like the Apple 2 fake (yes fake – we grew up in Hong Kong) and all the delights they brought with them.  Then the BBC Micro at school and IBM style pc’s at home!

A quick detour via the Nintendo Gameboy – the original (that must have been the original mobile gaming computer, with more than one game and great controls).

Then more consoles – Sony’s PlayStation 1, Microsoft’s Xbox, Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360 – our current console.  Yes we missed the SNES and others but pc’s were the gaming platform of choice for me at home then.

Console games – and pc games – have always been a bit pricey though and as David points out that’s one of the problems.  They typically cost £40 or more.  Compare that to the £0.69 game on a phone – that’s a huge difference and it’s such a difference that it changes how you view the value of games.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not undervaluing games – not at all.  I know what goes into making them and particularly making the best ones.  It’s just the pricing and models – we need to rethink these.

Now with the AppleTV and the ability to stream games from my iPhone directly to my HD TV in the living room, why do I need a console?  Yes consoles now act as media centres and you can watch movies, play music and mess about with social media but I can do all that on my phone and my phone is always with me.  And yes everybody has a phone.

That’s the fundamental difference – everyone has a mobile phone and everyone now has access to great, and good priced games.  You don’t need a separate games console any more.  Some maybe yes – e.g. the more hardcore gamers – but the vast majority no.

Unless of course they come up with some new killer feature that only the consoles have.  Like gesture control with Microsoft’s Kinect or the Wii before that.

With mobiles the whole experience buying the game is much much easier, the different app stores we use already and know how they work and don’t have to go anywhere to buy the games!  We can also read reviews our friends and peer groups have written for the games, giving critical feedback to the games developers to improve the games.  And new levels, new characters, bug fixes and more can easily be pushed out via updates.

Tablets add another dimension to this but for me they’re still mobile devices just different ones.  They use the same basic technology as phones (operating systems).

Another great dimension mobile games add is the ability to play a game whilst out and about – e.g. on a train journey – and then continue it on the big screen when you get home from exactly where you left off.  This is the concept of content anytime, anywhere and anyhow again and it’s coming.  Back in my Sony days, part of the digital services roadmap I put together was all about this.  It makes so much sense and it’s what consumers want.

Apple are making great strides in this space – they don’t need a separate console.  They’ve got iOS on the iPhone and iPad and then the AppleTV and the actual Apple TV (note the space there) – when it’s released.

Add GPS location tracking, multi-player, game centres where your ranks and scores are stored, cameras (and video cameras), AR (augment reality) plus more mobile innovations and this gets very very exciting.

The future is not about consoles, it’s about mobile.

Is this the future of photography?

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A fascinating post by John Neel at Pixiq about Google Glasses and the future of photography…

How far off mainstream these are I’m not sure.  I’ve seen the ads and videos, read the posts, dreamt the dreams and yes can see how cool they look and the potential applications.  But when?

To quote John Neel from the Pixiq post…

This really is major step.  Additional relevant data and information about things you’re looking at, when you’re looking at them.  The possibilities are endless and what was your mobile phone providing you with computing power, is now strap to the side of your head in your glasses.  The next step – in your contact lenses or implants?  Think Cyborg as John says.

And big data as we know it today is only going to get a whole lot bigger very quickly.