The death of the printed word? or why I’m self-publishing

Some of you may know, I’ve just completed my first novel. After much thought and discussion, I’ve decided to go it alone and cut out the middleman. This decision means that success or failure will be entirely within my control – depending on whether it’s a good enough book and whether I market it well enough. Maybe I’m a control freak (I am a control freak!) but that’s how I like it. And the good news is we control freak writers have never had it so good with the open doors of Amazon just a few clicks away and the publicity opportunities offered by social media.

This morning I came upon a couple of articles via Twitter, one based on an anonymous insider view from a publisher that Amazon is in the process of killing off the entire publishing industry, and the other bemoaning the innate conservatism in publishing which is causing many excellent authors to take the self publishing route.

I think we’ve actually reached a tipping point in the book industry. According to the Guardian this week, 1 in 40 UK adults got a Kindle in their Christmas stocking. I didn’t – but then I had one already – as do most of my friends and family. I started out reading books on an iPad (great for magazines) but have found the Kindle perfect for reading fiction. I don’t believe that we’re suddenly going to see printed books go the way of illuminated manuscripts – well not entirely – but this is an industry that’s ripe for change – and ripe for disintermediation. To quote the anonymous publisher

Long-term there’s no future in printed books. They’ll be like vinyl: pricey and for collectors only. 95% of people will read digitally. Everybody in publishing knows this but most are in denial about it because moving to becoming a digital company means laying off like 40% of our staffs. And the barriers to entry fall, too. We simply don’t want to think about it. Amazon is thinking about it, though, and they’re targeting the publishers directly.

Leaving aside the venom spat out by rejected authors about publishing houses, there’s a lot of evidence that it’s an industry that has rested on its laurels for too long and has become deeply conservative and fearful of change and experimentation. Before you accuse me of gross generalisations, I know there are exceptions, but most large publishing houses have been doing things in exactly the same way for decades. It also seems unfair that the smallest slice of the money cake is the one that the hard-working author gets – and publishers can get away with that because authors will carry on writing even if they have to give their books away free ( as some of the self-publishers are doing in order to break through).

Another problem with publishing houses these days , from an author’s standpoint, is the dominance of the Marketing department. Now as an ex marketer I should be delighted – but what it means in reality is that niche titles, first-time authors, and books that are a bit different just don’t get the attention that the latest ghosted celebrity oeuvre is going to get. And that’s if the title doesn’t get vetoed by Marketing at the get-go – despite having editors lined up behind it singing its praises.

Another downside for publishers is the way they are lining up to hold back the Amazon tide by setting pricing. Readers are not stupid. They know that e-books save on paper, ink, storage and distribution and expect some acknowledgement of this. I recently bought a copy of George Orwell’s Burmese Days for my Kindle – it was £7.99 whereas the paperback was selling for £6.99. Amazon had annotated the price with the words “price set by publisher”. So attached am I now to my Kindle that I bought the book anyway, gritting my teeth with fury. Imagine my anger when I found that the publishers had not even scanned the text correctly – the entire book was littered with typos, sometimes rendering passages completely indecipherable. Amazon refunded the money and removed the book from sale when I highlighted some of the choicer errors to them. This smacks of sloppy profiteering by the publisher – certainly not by the late departed author.

Recently there’s been a reader campaign on Amazon to punish the authors of books with excessive Kindle pricing by rating the books with one miserable star – the works of Iain Banks have apparently been targeted in this way – although on checking now, all his are priced at £4.99, with the new one at £8.99 – a big saving on the hardback price – but maybe that means the campaign worked!.

Amazon, unlike the publishers, has opportunities to really milk a huge amount from its Kindle customers. It’s my first port of call for online sales – I’ve recently bought a vacuum cleaner, printer supplies, DVDs, a camera, a tripod, cushion pads and sewing notions. The lifetime value of a customer like me makes low margins on Kindle book sales a no-brainer for Amazon.

It’s a cut-throat world out there and maybe I’ll wish I’d shown some patience, given up some control and gone down the traditional route. Although as I’m not a footballer’s wife, a pneumatic Essex blonde, an X Factor contender  or a stuffed meerkat I’d probably be left at the back of the queue. Maybe the hassle of formatting the book for different devices, tweeting away, and developing a publicity campaign will have me tearing my hair out. But the book has taken a long time to write and just as long to edit and restructure – if I could afford the effort for that I can afford the effort to get it out into the world. And who knows? – I may even make a bit of pocket-money at the same time!

P&G’s corporate ad campaign

Several clients and colleagues have commented to me about Procter & Gamble venturing into the world of corporate advertising for the first time in the UK, with its Mother’s day campaign “Proud sponsor of Mums”. This is a real departure for my former employers, as the brands were always very much the heroes in my day and the company took incredible pains to stay in the background and keep a low profile. This was not so universally – P&G brand ads have long carried corporate endorsement in Asia as the culture there demanded it.

So why the change of heart here in the UK and does it make sense? P&G are sponsoring the Olympics (sponsorship – another no-no in my day!) and as such need to take a corporate approach rather than a series of  linkups with individual brands. However it seems there are other more compelling reasons.

P&G ran a precursor of the campaign (Proud sponsor of Moms) at the Vancouver Olympics and  apparently it generated an additional $100M in revenue and achieved a 30% improvement in brand recall. Their research indicates that loyal users of one brand are not always aware of  the other brands in the company stable – and that trust and loyalty builds and transfers when people are made aware.

There are an average of 5.7 P&G products in UK homes – leaving plenty of scope to cross sell other ones. The highest reach of any of the brands is Fairy Liquid (one of the brands I was lucky enough to manage back in the day!) and making all those Fairy users aware that the same company also makes Pantene, Pampers, Max Factor, Ariel, Olay and many others, could mean big gains for the company. And P&G is not alone – both Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser have been running corporate ads for a while.

The other aspect of all this is that the first ad in the campaign – see below – is cheap as chips – it’s a few photos (apparently of the families of P&G employees), a voiceover at the end and some library music – so big savings on production costs – always a consideration!

One thing about P&G – it may have a lot of sacred cows – but it isn’t afraid to slaughter them!

Irrelevant Innovation

Last week I went to Inamo, an oriental restaurant in Lower Regent Street, for a pre-theatre meal. My companion suggested it, as he’d heard the food was good (it was – especially the spicy ribs) and it has a new and different twist – computerised dining tables.

In front of each diner is a mouse pad and the whole table is a digitised display. There’s a choice of landscapes for your table – so you can choose your own personal ambiance, from vivid tropical landscape to abstract expressionism. The mouse pad also controls the visual menu, broken down into drinks, starter and main courses, as well as an option to call for a waiter and a games console.

I suppose if you’re in the habit of going for a meal with an incredibly boring person, having a games console on your table during dinner may be an attractive diversion. And if you like the kind of establishment that offers illustrated menus, having one that visualises each dish as if it was a plate in front of you, may have its attractions. For the rest of us it’s a pointless feature.

I found the ordering process surprisingly stressful and time consuming (mouse management!) as well as rather anti-social. My companion ordered a second glass of wine for himself without telling me – when he’d normally have said ‘shall we have another?’ – which made it all seem very individually focused and not very sociable. I  found scrolling through the (picture) menu tedious and frequently got mouse paralysis. The novelty had worn off in about 45 seconds!

All this raises a question. Just exactly what unmet need is a computerised dining table and menu meeting? What is so difficult about looking at a printed menu? It’s MUCH quicker. It allows you to scan the whole offering – as opposed to looking at one item at a time. I can imagine there are benefits for the restaurant – more speedy and accurate transmission of orders from table to kitchen – and the fact that you probably end up spending much more than normal (we certainly did!).

It reduces the waiters to mere delivery vehicles and removes one of the most important elements of dining -  interaction with the waiters. When all they do is plonk something down on your table, it becomes a very souless and impersonal transaction.

Yes, you can apply technology to dining. Inamo have shown that. They delivered everything we ordered in a timely and accurate manner. But just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should!

I wonder how many of their diners make a return visit. Nice as the food was I won’t. I want to escape from computers when I go out to eat. I want to talk to my companion, not play with a mouse or challenge him to a game. I like to have a bit of repartee with a waiter – or ask for the recommendations – and in doing so glimpse his or her personality, not have a cipher silently deliver dishes to my table. They may as well be androids! And call me old fashioned – but give me  a well starched, linen table cloth in preference to a digital display any day.

What’s Mine is Yours

Review of What’s Mine is Yours – How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live, by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers

I need to declare an interest upfront,  in that I know and have enjoyed working with Rachel Botsman, one of the co-authors of this book. Rachel is a graduate of Oxford and Harvard universites has worked for President Clinton and as a successful management consultant. But no bias on my part – this is an interesting, engaging and important book!

What’s Mine is Yours posits that we are at a tipping point in a new way of living – based on sharing, bartering and helping each other out. This is partly driven by rejection on the part of newer generations towards the excesses in consumption of their Baby Boomer parents, partly by a desire to husband our earthly resources better, partly by increasingly straitened economic circumstances for many, and all of this facilitated by technology and new connectedness that we enjoy now through social networking and mobile communications.

The book is written in an involving anecdotal style, using real stories and experiences to bring the concepts alive. Botsman and Rogers have interviewed a number of key entrepreneurs and opinion formers. It sets up the context for collaborative consumption and explains the socio-demographic and psychological forces that have encouraged the desire to share instead of own, to be more “we” and less “me”. There are plentiful examples to demonstrate what collaborative consumption is, how it has arisen and the many forms it takes. Finally the authors explore how this phenomenon will further evolve and its likely long term impact.

I’ve always been a bit of an early adopter, so several of the emerging organisations and companies practising collaborative consumption were already known to me: I’ve rented a van from StreetCar; rented out my own car several times to strangers through Whipcar; I’m in the process of negotiating a house swap in Australia; I’ve acquired  jars for jam-making via Freecycle and given away furniture through Freecycle and Street Bank; I regularly rent DVDs through Lovefilm and have bought and sold on eBay. I’m also a co-founder of a website dedicated to living sustainably and creatively by making and mending things rather than buying and binning. All that may indicate I’m heavily pre-disposed towards the concept of collaborative consumption, but  as someone who has been an Olympic standard conspicuous consumer and big spender in my time, I think it says more that  if people like me are getting into this, then Botsman and Rogers have identifed a very real element of the zeitgeist and we are going to see a lot more examples of collaborative consumption before long.

Not only is it happening: it also makes a lot of sense. To use an example from the book, when doing a spot of DIY we want the hole not the drill (apparently the average usage of an electric drill is 12 minutes in its entire lifetime!). You want to see the film – not collect plastic boxes to sit idle on your shelf. It’s about access not ownership.

But collaborative consumption is about more than accessing ‘things’ – it’s also about sharing and accessing services and skills. Bartering requires a “double coincidence of wants” a lawyer with a leaking tap might normally struggle to find a plumber in need of legal advice but the Internet has dramatically changed that. Apparently there are already around 500 online barter exchanges in the Americas, including Bartercard with more than 75,000 members across nine countries who exchanged over $2 billion of goods and services though its network in 2009.

Obviously a pre-requisite of collaborative consumption is trust. One of the theses Botsman and Rogers put forward is that  to establish trust we will increasingly rely on our personal reputation capital. At first this sent a chill up my spine – another excuse for people to monitor and spy on my activity online? But already we are all subject to credit checks, like it or not, so checks on our reliability and trustworthiness are probably an inevitable consequence and facilitator of collaborative consumption. This is already operating extensively in peer ratings – as done by the self policing system on eBay – but it does also raise a concern that one’s reputation could be blown by a spiteful comment from an individual – as some hoteliers have found with abusers of Trip Advisor. It means we’ll all need to be vigilant and active in developing and protecting our ‘reputational bank accounts’.

This is a very well researched and thought-provoking book, packed full of entertaining examples and written in a very accessible and conversational story-telling style. You can buy it on Amazon What’s Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live

The dangers of multi-tasking

A couple of weeks ago, frustrated that I had made little recent progress on my eternally ‘almost finished’ book, I blocked out three days and marked them in the diary as if they were external meetings. I told  colleagues and friends what I was doing to help cut down on unnecessary calls – usually I get lots of Skype  calls throughout the day. The real test came when I had two requests to meet clients during the allocated days (Sod’s Law). I decided to hold firm and (without saying I was working on the book) explained that I couldn’t make the chosen times. Both people suggested alternative dates. Normally I would have just forgone the writing time and accepted the initial suggested meeting timing.  As a result of my standing firm I manged to finish the first draft of the book. I know that would not have happened otherwise.

During those 3 days, I only checked my email at the beginning and end of the day – and used my phone or iPad to do this so I could avoid getting hijacked once I was working on the book on my Mac. I kept my browser closed and only went online (again via my iPad) to fact check when needed. I was amazed at how much I got done – averaging 3000 words a day plus a lot of editing and research.

This afternoon I was reading a piece on information overload, from The McKinsey Quarterly and it rang a lot of bells for me. Today was a classic multi-tasking, always-online, kind of day (including reading the McKinsey piece which I came across while browsing my Twitter stream) and I got done only a fraction of what I wanted to do, despite having no client meetings and only a couple of calls to distract me.

I realise now it was because I was trying to work on several tasks at once and failing to give enough attention to any of them. The McKinsey piece explains why multi tasking , far from being a virtue, can actually be bad for you in terms of productivity, creativity and wellbeing.

It refers to recent research in which participants who completed tasks in parallel took up to 30 percent longer and made twice as many errors as those who completed the same tasks in sequence.

The same article references a Harvard Business School study among 9000 individuals which showed that the likelihood of creative thinking is higher when people focus on one activity for a significant part of the day and collaborate with just one other person. That certainly mirrors my own experience.

On top of that multi- tasking also creates anxiety and lowers job satisfaction. So much for us women thinking we had an inherent advantage in being able to multi task better than men!

In this digital, always on age, where we rarely venture forth without a smart phone and where we are always connected and reachable, it’s worth taking stock every now and then and thinking about disconnecting, even if only for blocks of time. I’m also going to do my work in sequence rather than grass-hoppering about between projects and tasks.

I’ll let you know how I get on!

The Lucky Dip – a New Year tip for the self-employed

One of the most common challenges for the ever-increasing ranks of the self-employed is staying motivated – especially for those who work from home.

Having earned my crust as a successful independent consultant,  working from my home office for over ten years, I’m often asked how I stick at it and avoid distractions.

The answer is that often I do get distracted, and I’ve learnt over time that when this happens it’s best to go with the flow and let it happen, as usually it means that my brain in is in “processing and cogitating” mode – even if subconsciously – so I just let it get on with it while I do whatever diversionary activity comes my way!

The real challenge is not the times when I skive off to do a spot of gardening or nip to the hairdressers – I see these diversions as the balancing benefit of all the other times when I’m sat at my desk at midnight or on a Sunday afternoon – it’s the times when I have nothing  pressing and instead of capitalising on that, the guilt kicks in and I do all sorts of pointless stuff while sat firmly at my desk. How much better to grab the opportunity and get out and do something else, like go to an exhibition or meet a friend.

As a result I must waste large amounts of time “quasi-working” when I could get far more benefit from giving myself permission to go play. “Quasi working” is where I make myself  stay at the desk but go off on a completely pointless round of trivial displacement activity. Far better to stop agonising over what still needs to be done on the long to do list and either do something mindless and easy but nonetheless essential  - like pulling together papers for the accountant or alternatively get out and play!

But the issue for me is justifying to myself what to do –  in the desperate attempt to prioritise I end up doing nothing.

So I’m trying a new approach. It’s called The Lucky Dip. I’ve cut up a couple of sheets of paper into small pieces and written a task on each. These now sit in a bowl ready for the next time when (like today) I have an hour to spare due to a postponed meeting  The tasks are a mixture of stuff I’d otherwise avoid or put off (such as tidying the office, updating my expenses), stuff I never have time to do (such as telephoning a client or colleague that I haven’t spoken to in a while, writing a piece for this blog) and stuff that’s a treat (curling up for an hour with a good book and a cup of tea, going out to buy myself some flowers, going for a walk, listening to a TED Talk ). So the plan is that when I get a window of time without a pressing call on it I take a lucky dip and then follow the instructions – no cheating!

I’ll do an update to this piece in a month or so to let you know how it’s going! If you have a go too I’d love to hear how you get on.

Harnessing the power of social media

When I was sent this book to review, my first thought was “not another book on how to make a fortune from Facebook and Twitter”. Social Nation : How to harness the power of social media to attract customers, motivate employess and grow your business by  Barry Libert is instead a serious book which issues a clarion call to businesses to re-focus on people rather than products and services.

In this 21st century connected world, the old doctrine that, like children, customers are to be seen but not heard, is not only no longer valid – it’s positively dangerous. This is becoming even clearer as I write this – with Wikileaks stealing the headlines, flash-mobbing exploits against corporate  tax evasion by Top Shop and ActionAid’s online campaign against SAB Miller. No, the days of corporations happily ignoring their consumers and constituents are definitely numbered.

But Libert’s book is not a warning, so much as an enticement and encouragement to companies to get out and actively engage with their customers (and employees) and create communities for them. From open innovation and collaborative working to providing information and a forum for customers to air their views and share information and advice with each other, there’s a wide spectrum of ways to tap into the “social nation”. Libert illustrates his points with well-chosen examples from Pepsico to the Jewish grandmother  who offers online daily recipes and a Yiddish word of the day on her website “FeedmeBubbe”. His style is engaging and very quick and easy to read.

The book sets out 7 Guiding Principles to develop a social nation strategy in your company and dedicates a chapter to each, bringing them to life with examples and stories. The first principle is to develop your own social skills in order to become a social leader yourself and the author has an online tool for you to measure your personal Social Quotient. He cites examples and role models – including Andrea Jung of Avon and Meg Whitman when at eBay.

Successful Social Nationhood involves a big cultural shift and the creation of a corporate culture that is people-centric. Again there are well-illustrated examples, notably Zappos and Google.

One of the key principles is surprisingly – but wisely – etiquette (or netiquette) and I liked the simple suggestions of Peter Post (great grandson of Emily Post, the original 1920s arbiter of good manners) for corporate social skills – Be on time and Say please and thank you.

Business is built on trust and trust is built on strong relationships and strong relationships are built on etiquette.

The book contains  an interesting case study on Ducati motorbikes in the USA and how the company was re-engineered around a social community – driving a 60% increase in sales and involving re-deployment of most of the marketing budget into the community rather than traditional media.

Libert has a useful model to differentiate friends and followers  from fans and fanatics and posits the need to develop a strategy to address each nation with the priority that is appropriate for your business. Right now 80% of businesses operate mostly in the bottom left quartile – Apple would be top left. Operating in the top right quartile means benefiting from both the active participation of fans and fanatics as well as the significantly larger more passive community members who will happily follow where the fans and fanatics lead.

So if you’re wondering whether social media could play a bigger part in your business and want to understand it as a long term strategic tool to help make your business more customer-centric, this book is a good place to start.

>> My review of Delivering Happiness (the Zappos story)

>> Do the Social Quotient test

 

Open IDEO – crowd sourced innovation for social good

Applause to IDEO for their new initiative, Open IDEO, which is crowd sourcing innovation for social good.

I’ve long been a fan of Open Innovation and this particular effort looks like an exciting way to get some creative brains thinking about some of the world’s challenges. The way it works is you sign up then you can participate in all or any of the four stages of all or any of their current challenges. Right now there are two – Jamie Oliver asking “How can we raise kids’ awareness of the benefits of fresh food so they can make better choices?” and “How might we increase the availability of affordable learning tools & services for students in the developing world?”

The  stages are :

1. Inspiration – sharing stimulus – including videos, photos etc and build on other people’s. What exists already that could help with the challenge?
2. Concepting – sharing your own ideas and building on others
3. Evaluation – rating and commenting on other people’s ideas
4. Winning idea

Each participant earns points for each stage and these add up to give you your personal DQ or Design Quotient.

This little video explains how it works.

Introduction to OpenIDEO / OpenIDEO.com from IDEO on Vimeo.

I’m really looking forward to joining in and to seeing the outcomes. The only problem is I may find it so engaging that I never get any other work done!

Check it out >> Open IDEO

My yellow card to Apple

I need to declare an interest up front. I’m writing this on a Mac, I have an iPod, an iPhone and an iPad. My first ever computer was an old Macintosh and, after years of corporate life which forced me down the PC railroad, I was ecstatic to get back to the Church of Apple. Lately however, while still a believer, I’m beginning to experience some doubts and now I’m wondering  whether Apple’s got just a bit too big for its rebellious nonconformist boots. Here’s why.

To me the big appeal of the Apple brand has always been the way they made things so easy. They took care of the horrible technology and all I had to do was show up and be creatively inspired (or more often not!).

When I had to use a PC after enjoying my first 2 years on a Mac, I nearly cried in despair. I couldn’t understand the complexity of all the directories. Everything was just so difficult and apart from the stupid time-wasting Solitaire game that came as part of the Windows package, I found it all a bit too much for my tiny brain. But needs must. I learned and eventually Windows became second nature, albeit a frustrating a complicated experience.

In contrast Macs were so great because they are intuitive. They work in a very easy to grasp way – they’re almost human! Certainly the user experience is human. Dragging things into folders to tidy them away. Clear and obvious icons. Nothing to worry about but what you wanted to create. And everything so aesthetically pleasing. Little wonder they became such a huge hit with creative people. The badge of honour of the non-business person. My friend Douglas Atkin in his book The Culting of Brands devotes a whole chapter to why Apple is a religious experience for creative people.

But now things are changing. Firstly the wonders of Apple’s almost perfect technology have been dealt a heavy blow by the debacle of the iPhone4 and its wonky antenna. This has come on top of some initial problems with early iPads around wireless capability. The iPad itself is arguably a contradiction of Apple’s own successful Mac vs PC advertising – unlike the fully loaded Mac ready to run when you take it out of the box, the iPad won’t run Flash, has no camera and no USB slot. I’ve never been a Flash fan and I don’t really care about the camera but I really do want that USB slot.

I don’t have an iPhone4 but iPhone 3GS is actually a pretty lousy phone. I can forgive that as I love the apps and the compatibility with everything else Apple I own. But why do I hardly ever get a decent signal? why does it keep dropping texts?  why will it only re-try to send them manually? – and why does that battery last less than a day?

All these points could be temporary blips to be sorted with the next generation hardware and none of them counter the fact that Apple keeps on coming up with game-changing developments in every category it plays in. From iTunes and the iPod which opened up the digital music market, to the Genius Bar which transformed the retail experience, to the way Apple encouraged developers to populate its mobile devices with a plethora of applications that make the user experience so special.

But – and it’s a big but – there is a real risk that the wonderfully human experience of the Apple brand is also being trashed by a customer service experience that is anything but perfect. A Mac RAM and drive disaster caused me to have to go to not one but three Apple stores in quick succession. First of all I have nothing but praise for all the staff I met there – fantastic friendly people who went out of their way to help me and who have restored my Mac to working order – and a special thanks to Alfred at Westfield who convinced me to invest in an external hard drive just before my system crashed – he must have been hired for his psychic powers – he certainly saved my bacon!

No, my problem is the way you have to fit Apple’s idea of customer communication. You can’t use the Genius Bar without an appointment – no matter how willing you are to wait hours for a cancellation or a gap in the schedule – at least that’s the story in the London stores especially Westfield. You can book your appointment online but you can’t cancel it. This means the stores don’t know if they’ll get any no-shows and hence can accommodate the poor suckers who do turn up on spec.

The store phone numbers are a joke. I called the Westfield store 8 times across 2 successive days and each time got a recorded message that I was Number 9 in the queue, a ranking that didn’t improve no matter how long I hung on the line. I called Brent Cross four times and each time I navigated the call system I was greeted with the words “The other person has hung up”. Sorry Apple not good enough! I’d rather talk to someone in a Bangalore call centre  than be unceremoniously dumped after navigating my way at my expense through your multiple choices. When I raised this with the lovely store staff they said “Well we’re really busy and there’s only one person upstairs answering the phone”. Excuse me Apple this is the 21st Century! Maybe call answering technology is not to your taste but a non-Apple experience that results in an answered call is better than the blind anger and frustration that results from your abject failure to answer the bloody phone!

Look this is a bit of a rant. I do love Apple. My Mac is now fixed and I’m so happy to have it back after a week on my HP laptop with its constant downloads of updates and interruptions and muddled directories and my inability to find anything I’m looking for. But as someone who believes in brands and has long rated Apple as one of the best of them, this is your yellow card Steve! A brand is not just about the physical product, breakthrough ideas and fabulous styling: it’s also about every touchpoint with the consumer. Most Apple fanatics have huge reserves of goodwill towards this most iconic and cultish of brands, so please don’t abuse that Apple – that way lies the graveyard of once great brands.

Funny that Apple always stood for creating (Think different!) and now with iPhones, iPads et al is this a move to consuming? And maybe the consequent flood of mass market consumers is what’s causing the human customer experience to look  as though it’s in need of some creativity.

New tools for organising information

I’ve been using two new tools in my ongoing battle to simplify and organise all the information in my life.

The first, Flipboard, was only launched this week, so I haven’t given it an extended test drive yest – but so far I’m loving it. It’s for i-pad and, like the Twitter Daily I recently posted about, it’s a way to sort your social media into a more visually friendly format. In other words a look just like a quality print magazine but on your i-pad. Unlike Twitter Daily, Flipboard also turns your Facebook information into a magazine format too, along with any other sources you want to consult. I’m loving it BUT it’s early days and apparently they’ve been massively oversubscribed so new users may experience some delays in setting it up.

What I’m absolutely LOVING is Evernote. I now have this on Mac, PC, i-phone and i-Pad and it syncs across all these using cloud technology. If I’m on a webpage and I want to save it, I just clip a little icon in my Browser and it grabs the URL as a bookmark AND scoops in the whole content including pictures. If I want to jot down an address,  make a  few notes or take a picture I can drop them into  Evernote on my phone and then there they are waiting for me on the computer when I get back to the office.So no matter where I am, I can access things that matter to me and everything syncs immediately. It’s magic!

Within Evernote I now have a series of notebooks, one with work-related material: articles and stimulus, one with background material for a book I am writing, another related to my online business, Make it and Mend it, where I gather stuff I want to follow up on later, and the rest sits in a general notebook – everything from holiday ideas to quickly scribbled notes to remind myself to do things.

Evernote is absolutely free – although there’s a premium version for a small monthly fee. So far the free app is proving perfectly adequate for my needs. Give it a go!

Evernote

Flipboard for i-Pad