Five years ago this week I left an incredible job at a great company to co-found my own business with Jenny and Walter — Jackson Fish Market. Leaving the security of a big company and a job that most people would kill for was incredibly counter-intuitive. And building your own business is way way harder than you may imagine. The press loves to talk about amazing success and spectacular failure, but people who are plugging away building their businesses one (virtual?) brick at a time do so mostly outside the spotlight. Luckily, there’s no magic to this effort of building your own business. Every time I learn a lesson (which I do almost daily) the inevitable conclusion is that more hard work is required. And that’s something I can do.

But the question still remains, why leave the great job at the big stable company to work your ass off in anonymity with no guarantees of ever recouping your lost wages? There are many reasons people give for this, but I’ll give you mine, and it’s the same as the day we started JFM five years ago.

Anyone familiar with the innovator’s dilemma knows that companies who’ve achieved incredible success doing one thing have trouble shifting gears. And in my experience, conservative thinking, and those who come up with reasons to say no are the ones who are trusted to be in positions of responsibility. Nobody usually gets fired for saying “no” to a risky idea. There’s almost never proof that it was the wrong call so there are almost never any consequences to folks who say no. And as a bonus, saying no makes you seem more like a grownup at a big company. Big successful companies like people who seem like grownups. After all, the company has a franchise to protect. You don’t put people with wacky ideas in charge of protecting something valuable. And in truth, ideas are a dime a dozen, so why not have some grownups there to weed out the good from the bad? The thinking is sound on paper.

In running my own business I have learned that the only way we make progress is by trying 100 things. For every 100, 2 usually show some promise. We then come up with 100 new ideas based on the learnings of the 98 failures and of the 2 modest successes and try to make some more forward progress. This is an awful lot of work, but there’s no magic to it. And that’s reassuring as I never got an owl from Hogwarts.

But at most big successful companies, where your job is to protect the franchise, trying 100 things and having 98 of them fail is career suicide. In fact, investing in only 2 ideas and having 100% of them show only modest returns is a “career limiting event”. The internal ecosystem is brutal. And if you don’t have a runaway hit out of the gate, your project is usually done. Interest flags, and the project is tagged as failure. Nobody wants to be associated with it. So let’s say you even manage to get your idea going internally, there will be an endless amount of people tweaking, tuning, and “improving” your idea to make sure that it has the best shot of success. And this is important, because inside the big company, the perceived cost of failure is enormous. (Whether the real cost is so large I’m not entirely sure.) And because everyone is so worried about failing (or as they put it – “giving your idea the best chance to succeed”) the amount of time the company invests in your idea goes up. As the investment goes up, so do the stakes. And the cycle reinforces itself.

This cycle is familiar to many. But here’s what I consider the worst part. The point of trying things even though most of them will fail is to learn something, iterate, and keep trying. By the time the original idea has been through so many cycles of peer and executive feedback, it usually is so far from what the originator conceived that the only thing they learned is not to let people fuck with their ideas anymore. And not because the idea would have been successful. But because at this point, they haven’t learned anything. At the end of the day, the originator keeps saying to themselves, “if we’d just done this the way I conceived originally, maybe it would have been successful”. Maybe it would have. Maybe not. But at least there would have been learning.

I left the generosity and stability of a large successful company so that my failures could be my own. I geniunely want to be good at what I do. The only way I know how to improve is to learn from my mistakes. But they must be my mistakes, or I’m not learning. Thanks to the incredible patience of my business partners, I now learn on a daily basis. Creating your own business is treading water in a sea of failure until you’ve built something small that can float. I’m so grateful that I’ve had the time and latitude to build our cozy little rowboat called Jackson Fish Market. Don’t be surprised if after a few thousand more failed experiments it turns into a pretty nice sailboat.

So many times, when designing a software user interface, it’s helpful to ask yourself if you would enjoy interacting with a human being who talked to you the way the software did. If the answer is “no” then you have more work to do. Inevitably, this exercise gets turned on its head when user experience experts spend time dealing with actual human beings. Is my call to the sales or support staff of a company any less of a user experience than my interaction with their website or their app?

But often it seems like there is even less care given to the experience customers have with live human beings at a company than the interaction they have with the software. Nowhere is this more evident than the incredible aversion that many customer service personnel have to saying “I don’t know.” – which for bonus points can be preceded by “Good question.”, and followed by “Let me find out for you.”

I don’t think someone is dumb, or a company is awful when someone doesn’t know an answer to one of my questions. What does make me borderline insane is when they try to bullshit their way through an answer that I know is simply not true. And of course, once they start down this path, things can only get worse. If I gently give evidence that their answer is without a doubt wrong, it just makes them stick to their guns even more. Now that they’ve claimed to know, the only course of action is to back up their claim at all costs. And now, for disagreeing with the “expert” I’m the asshole.

Attention customer service departments and any business group that has people speak or interact with customers in any way. Rule #1 should be, it’s ok to say “I don’t know.” The customer may not get their answer immediately, but at least they won’t be subjected to some nuttiness that just wastes their time.

And while we’re at it, Rule #2 should be: if you ask a customer for their credit card number after they just typed it into their phone, you should be shot.

That is all.

There’s something about this trailer for GTA V that amazes me. It’s not that the graphics are higher resolution or more photo realistic. They’re not. I’ve seen new games recently that look much more realistic. Especially when it comes to the people. But the world illustrated in this trailer is amazing nonetheless. It just feels realistically alive. There’s a shot of a guy just crossing the street at the 0:54 second mark that just feels flat out real. I think this shows that there’s more to making a realistic virtual environment than pixel density.

I have always considered myself a video game nerd. I grew up with an Atari 2600, an Atari 800, a Sega Genesis, a Dreamcast, a Playstation, and both Xboxes. I also played games on Macs, PCs, and even spent many hours of my youth playing games in actual arcades. Pretty typical for many guys my age and background. Over the last 10-15 years something happened that put me further on the periphery of gaming. I don’t know if it’s the nausea I feel playing first person shooters, or just my lack of interest in blowing shit up, but most games seemed not for me. More recent games that I have loved included SimCity, Age of Empires, Escape Velocity, World of Warcraft, Diablo II, Railroad Tycoon, Torchlight, Lego Star Wars, etc. I know there’s some mayhem in these games, but each of them has an emphasis on collecting things, building things, or exploring things as well. Those are the things I enjoy. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve spent plenty of time playing Angry Birds, Bejeweled, various Scrabble games, and more.)

I have not played Farmville or other games of that ilk. I get uncomfortable spamming my friends (unless it’s something I’m selling), and paying to advance in a game (rather than to unlock new content) feels unfun to me.

When I first saw Tiny Tower I was enamored of the 8-bit graphics, the jazzy soundtrack, and the memories it brought up of one of my favorite games of yesteryear — Yoot Saito’s SimTower. It was free in the app store. I downloaded it to my iPad and started playing. The goal of the game is to build your tower with a mix of residential and commercial floors, keeping your ‘bitizens’ employed in jobs they like and are good at, and keeping your commercial ventures stocked with inventory and making you cash to spend on more floors. There are plenty of artificial delays built into the game that you can skip by spending some of the ‘TowerBux’ you can earn (or purchase via in-app purchase).

I’m no expert on game mechanics and psychology, but I know enough to know that while levels usually require progressively more investment, they also yield progressively more exciting rewards. Not so in Tiny Tower. The only thing that appears to increase in Tiny Tower with each level is the amount of time you have to spend to get anything done. Now… I understand why this is. They’re hoping at some point that I reach my breaking point and give in spending actual dollars in exchange for TowerBux that I’ll use to accelerate my progress. My pain increased exponentially while my rewards moved linearly. A very different dynamic, despite which I achieved 100 floors in Tiny Tower (evidence below) without any in-app purchases or cheating. (I also had 164 of my 182 Bitizens in their dream jobs at this point.

When my wife and I used to play lots of Age of Empires she would invariably look up the cheat codes. Driving her huge American car all over the maps and shooting anything that moved was fun for her. But for me the cheating was a novelty but not fun. And it was only something I chose to do after I’d exhausted the gameplay. She went straight to the cheating. I’m not making an ethical statement (it’s just a video game) but I really can’t distinguish between the Age of Empire cheat codes, and the TinyTower in-app purchases (or buying black market gold for WOW for that matter).

I understand that this is where the money is these days in games. And the number of people who would pay 99 cents (or even 199 cents, or — amazingly — even 499 cents) for a Tiny Tower that was tuned for regular gameplay is probably dwarfed by the number of people who want to pay to get ahead. I wonder what would happen if they made two versions. One for people who like to work/play hard to earn achievements, and another for people who like to pay their way to the front of the line and see which one makes more money over the long term. In my version the developer could even use the in-app purchase system to let me buy access to a second tower, or other cool features.

Here’s my prediction (which of course is worth what you’re paying for it)… paying to advance in games is clearly popular (even though I find it decidedly unfun myself). And while I understand that it’s letting companies like Zynga essentially print cash, I think it’s got a short shelf life. Just as it seems consumers are getting bored with daily deals, I think they’ll get bored with games that are just designed to inflict pain in exchange for actual cash. Well… I hope that’s the case. Otherwise, i foresee even fewer video games in my future. (Maybe we’ll have to make some games just to have something enjoyable to play.)

Recently I saw an article about a new startup called Small Demons. The premise was vague, but had something to do with the publishing industry. Being interested in publishing I signed up to be notified of their launch. Today I went to their website and was introduced to their premise of cataloging real world details mentioned in books and visualizing the connections between them. OK.

Cataloging large amounts of data with interesting connections and visual representations is always a fun user interface challenge. There are usually lots of opportunities to do something interesting with the UI. And the video (starring ubiquitous hipster startup video spokesperson whose name currently escapes me) doesn’t disappoint. Well, at least not at first. The video is set in a room full of books with our friend slowly explaining what the site does. Details from books are flying out of said books in 2.5 dimensions. UI is hanging in the air and sliding all over the place. Very creative. Lovely and inspirational aesthetic. On point and well done.

Our friend is grabbing details from the air and using them in real life. Really fancy.

And then the UI of the actual experience makes an appearance. What a fucking disappointment.

Hey there boring grid on white background. Nice to see you… AGAIN! There’s nothing wrong with a grid or white background per se. But where’s all the inspiration from the UI that was in the video? Where’s the aesthetic? (Or any aesthetic?) Where are the small details that reinforce why I’m on this site passionately combing through the “Storyverse” as they call it. The people who made this video clearly understood how to articulate the passion behind the site in a visually expressive and inspiring form. Could those people have not been used to design the user interface that the users would actually use? It’s like the difference between the picture of the steaming, delicious, appetizing, tasty burrito on the box of frozen burritos and the actual mess that comes out of my microwave.

No. I don’t expect the service to deposit me in a 3d virtual world where i can wave my hands Minority Report style and navigate their interface (grabbing items from the virtual world into the digital world in the process). I’m sure there are lovely and smart people working on Small Demons and I wish it nothing but success, but this just seems like an opportunity lost. I would have hoped that the folks at Small Demons would see the contrast between the aspiration articulated in their video and their UI and realize that quite a bit more “special” was called for to deliver on the promise they made.

Perhaps in v2.

Two years ago, we launched an online children’s book service called A Story Before Bed. The service lets parents, grandparents, teachers, authors, and even kids record videos of themselves reading a children’s book that can be played back over and over again. We’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing children’s book publishers who’ve put their books up on A Story Before Bed including Charlesbridge, Soundprints, Orca Book Publishers, Chronicle Books, Sourcebooks, Immedium, and more. It’s possible that being around all those great children’s books inspired us to create some of our own. Or maybe we just always had it in us and needed a venue to express it. Either way, in the course of creating A Story Before Bed, with an amazing team of authors and illustrators we’ve hand-crafted almost sixty children’s books. And while we’ve talked about it informally, we’ve decided to officially launch our publishing imprint — Jackson Fish Market Books.

To celebrate the launch of this new venture, we’ve decided to do something a little different. We’re taking our entire catalog of books, and making them available for download completely free for non-commercial use. Kids, parents, grandparents, teachers, librarians… go crazy. Download them all. They’re all completely free.

Expect more creativity from Jackson Fish Market books in the coming months and please spread the word that all the books are free to download right now.

Every year at the beginning of October Seattle sees the advent of one of the biggest Lego conventions in the country. And each year lego hobbyists (like me) start working months in advance on their Lego creations to display at the convention. Enormous spaceships, moon monorail layouts, entire cities, castles, sculptures and more fill every bit of surface area. This year I decided that my Lego creations would be collaborations with each of my three children. My 10-year-old son Sivan and I decided to build a miniature Lego arcade cabinet. But what to do for the actual game? Instead of building a screen out of Lego we decided to use an iPad as the arcade monitor. And on that iPad we would have a game. A game made entirely of Lego. Not just for display, but actually playable. And then we decided that the game would be good enough to actually put up for sale in the app store. And thus Lila the Ladybug was born.

The characters on the top of the cabinet are the actual Lego we scanned in to make the characters in the game.

Clearly this was an insane idea, but once we started there was no stopping us. We started with the game. It was originally going to be Frogger, but with a ladybug. Cause… well… ladybugs are cute. But that turned out sucky. So we shifted gears and created something a touch more original. Sort of a Centipede/Kaboom combo starring our adorable ladybug… Lila. And while most ladybugs do eat aphids, some are veggie eating leaves and mushrooms and avoiding raindrops that can derail them from their munching progress. The game is targeted at little kids which is only fitting since a 10 year old did a bunch of the programming, designing, and building.

Lila the Ladybug is available for iPad and iPhone today in the App Store. Sorry, the Lego Lila arcade cabinet is not included.

In case you were wondering… my collaboration with my 8 year-old daughter Bella was a reproduction of Nathaniel Currier’s 1846 lithograph of the Boston Tea Party. And my 5 year-old daughter Rakefet and I built a modular princess castle based on the Jonathan Coulton Song, The Princess Who Saved Herself. Maybe next year we’ll do some games based on those.

As you may know, Jackson Fish Market is a bit of a hybrid business. We’re a software startup with products like A Story Before Bed and Thrilled for You, but we also have a user experience consulting side that helps other companies make their software special. We’ve worked with dozens of companies and are proud of all our collaborations. We also are wary of taking more than just a smidgeon of public credit for the results. While we are proud of the role we play, there’s a lot of work on those apps that goes beyond our design efforts to bring them to market.

But, we’re going to show off a little bit more than usual when it comes to the new eHarmony app for iPad. We’re proud of the work we did providing a deep set of initial designs for their app. But, the eHarmony team took the ball and ran with it. No… they sprinted with it. Not only was it amazing for a successful business to come to us with such open minds and hunger for innovation, but they took the work we did it and made it way better. They executed our contributions beautifully, but took them to the next level as well. Various transitions and animations are fantastic. Navigational systems were extended with style. And small touches of personality (make sure to tap the coffee in the coffee cup on the opening screen) are pixel perfect (not to mention adorable).

Even if you’re not looking for that perfect partner, I highly recommend you download eHarmony’s new app for the iPad. The screenshots below just don’t do it justice. This is an example of a next generation user experience that can’t be ignored. And here at Jackson Fish Market, we’re very glad to have played a small role in helping make it happen. Bravo eHarmony team.

There aren’t many things more enjoyable than the surprise learnings you get from shipping a piece of software and seeing how people actually use it. We created A Story Before Bed to connect families, but were surprised to see just how useful teachers and educators found the service for use in their classrooms. Imagine letting kids record books at school and then watch the recordings at home in the evenings with their parents?

With difficult budget situations across all 50 states, school teachers are finding it more and more difficult to do their jobs every day. For that reason, A Story Before Bed is giving away 100,000 free recordings to teachers for use in their classrooms. Please help us spread the word.

Teachers can sign up here for their free 2 month subscription to A Story Before Bed. It gives them unlimited recording of 50 pre-selected books from our catalog. And even once the subscription expires they can keep all the recordings they’ve made.

If you know a great teacher, we’d appreciate you letting them know so they can take advantage of our offer before we run out. Thanks!

We’ll be talking to the makers of TinyTower about their unlicensed use of our images.

Jared Spool recently posted about “Why the Valley wants designers that can code.” Basically, he makes the good point that hiring managers at startups are always looking for ways to get more value for their dollar. And so based on that understanding he recommends “If you’re a designer, you don’t have to learn to code. But if you do, and you get good at it, you’ll find more opportunities as time goes on.” And in this he’s right. But of course his comments would be just as valid if he wrote a post titled “Why the Valley Wants Marketers That Can Code.” Or Engineers that can write press releases. Or any other combination of useful skills.

Except… the Valley doesn’t want marketers to write code or engineers to write press releases. Because, they don’t trust marketers to write code, and they feel that writing press releases would be a waste of the engineers’ valuable time and skills.

So what’s the real reason that many companies look for designers who can code? Because fundamentally they don’t understand and therefore properly value what great software designers do.

Spool says: “If you’re in a room filled with designers, bring up the topic of whether it’s valuable for a designer to also code. Immediately, the room will divide faster than Moses split the Red Sea. One side will tell you coding is an essential skill, while the other will vehemently argue how it dilutes the designer’s value.” If I’m in a room full of designers and any of take either of these positions, then I’m in a room full of designers I would prefer never to work with.

High quality software designers are true singer-songwriters. They can deliver a combination of interaction and visual design that don’t just make a product shine, they make the product what it is. They create its essence, its DNA. Should they have deep empathy for the software development process? Yes. Should they understand technology and be “technical” to a degree? Yes. Should they have passion for software as their medium? Yes. Much like a designer focused on print projects should understand how various ink/paper/press combinations will impact their final product’s design as well as cost, software designers should understand the canvas on which they are painting. But do I want a true software designer spending time fighting the various inconsistencies between browser CSS implementations to get the UI perfect? Nope. It’s a waste of their time. They should be doing more designing.

(If you’re annoyed by the previous paragraphs, this next one will make you crazy.)

Are there true singer-songwriter software designers that can write high quality code? Yes. But they are the exception. Anecdotally, I’ve found that most (not all) “designers” who can code are in fact coders who have empathy and passion for design, and may even have some good interaction design chops. But often they are weak when it comes to visual design. In our left-brain dominated industry, visual design is often looked at as fluff. Often people will say things like “art is the last step” or “that’s the lipstick”. I believe that when you treat the visual elements as some sort of layer of paint, then all the visuals can be is a layer of paint. And I believe that most “designers that can code” aren’t really designers at all.

The worst part is that design schools are complicit in this misunderstanding of what software designers should do. They’re busy teaching HTML, CSS, and Flash (yes Flash) to art students as if these skills are mandatory for them to succeed as high end software designers. These potentially talented software designers have an allergic reaction to spending their careers writing markup instead of drawing and decide to focus on “print”! Print! Pardon the profanity, but… WHAT THE FUCK??? The most incredible canvas in the world for designers — software — exists, and needs them. It lets them combine text and images and video and audio and user interaction in incredible ways, but they want to go make business cards and annual reports. Our industry needs a fleet of talented software designers and design schools are failing to produce them.

At some point, we will have more than a smattering of true software designers in this industry. They won’t be employees either. They’ll be founders and co-founders. And their companies will produce beautiful usable products that stand out from their competitors. And some of these designers will even be able to code. But we won’t let them, because we’ll want them spend every minute designing beautiful software.

A note: I’m sure that some of you will take exception to this post. Many of you will be annoyed because you either subscribe to the notion that designers should code and that it’s a good thing, or that you are designer that writes code and you are annoyed that I question your visual skills. Understood. I hear you. Please know, just because someone doesn’t fit the model of the designer I think we should be replicating, doesn’t mean I think they aren’t a valuable contributor.

And finally, some of you may criticize me and say that it’s easy for me to lobby for this model for software designers when my co-founder Jenny Lam exemplifies it. And to that I will say… you’re right.

When we started building A Story Before Bed in late 2008 there was really only one place to have customers record videos of themselves reading children’s books – inside a web browser on a PC or Mac with an attached webcam. So that’s the path we pursued. But a year and a half later when the iPad was announced, we realized immediately that there was no better device on which to record (and watch) yourself reading a bedtime story than on a bedtime computer. And while A Story Before Bed is definitely a positive experience on a PC/Mac with a webcam, the cuddle factor is decidedly low.

While the first iPad didn’t have a camera (front-facing or otherwise) we knew that it was only a matter of time before it did. We worked hard over the past year to slowly bring the functionality from the web app to our iOS app until last Sunday night we submitted version 2.0 of our app to Apple. And now, if you have an iPad2, you can:

• record any of 350+ books right into your iPad2′s front-facing camera and mic (just the 3 freebie books if you’re not a Mega subscriber)
• have those recordings sync back to our website so anyone with a PC or Mac or with any of the Apple mobile devices (iPad1, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.) can watch the recording
• and of course sync recordings made on a PC or Mac down to the iPad as well

Record from anywhere. Watch from anywhere. Everything synchronizes beautifully. It just feels… lovely.

I mistakenly thought that when we launched our service in November of 2009 that it was ready to show people just how magical this scenario can be. We had a lovely launch and did a good job getting there. But, the service we have now is so much more mature, deep, and ready to really make families happy with the over 350 books (and growing) in our catalog. The journey is definitely taken one small step at a time, but it’s nice when there are milestone moments where you can pause for a brief second and enjoy just how many customers you can now make happy.

OK. Moment over. On to the next round of improvements and investments.

In our efforts to connect with the potential audience for A Story Before Bed, we’ve spent lots of time finding folks online who care about things that A Story Before Bed can help with… like connecting families, and promoting literacy. On the literacy front, these blogs are among the best:

• Educational Technology in the Classroom
• Jen Robinson’s Book Page
• Jerz’s Literacy Weblog
• Literacy Launchpad
• Literacy Toolbox
• The Book Chook
• The PESD Language & Literacy Blog

(currently under reconstruction)

• dot.Learnt

They’re super thoughtful sources of information, and while I haven’t met any of them in person, the authors seem like good folk.

All the more reason we’d want to cultivate positive relationships with them. Instead, I did the exact opposite.

Awhile ago I thought it would be cool to aggregate their content into one source and have that source connected to our children’s book service. I go to their blogs regularly, and know that i often want to see them all together so I can browse that topic in one place. Aggregating feeds of different sources of information is a fine thing to do on the internet as long as you attribute, generously link back, and only post an excerpt – not their entire post. It also helps if you add some value to the post your linking to with some original thought. I screwed up. While we did attribute, and link back generously, we reposted entire posts (not cool to say the least), and hadn’t gotten around yet to getting the site to where it should be which was adding original content and value to their already thoughtful posts. It also helps to ask permission depending on the context. I didn’t do that either. (Strike three.)

When the bloggers noticed (and were rightfully super annoyed) we pulled down all the content immediately. (Deleted!) We also sent out apologies to each blogger (where we had contact info) and offered free subscriptions to our service if they would like. We’re super sorry, and of course will use drastically improved judgment in the future.

The nice thing about the internet is how easy it is to do whatever you like. The other nice thing is how many people will tell you when “ur doin’ it wrong”. Thanks for the course correction, and we’ll work hard in the future to make entirely new dopey decisions and not repeat ones we’ve already made.

We shipped A Story Before Bed, our recordable children’s ebook service back in November of 2009. In the year preceding the launch we spent plenty of time talking to publishers to see if they would license us their books for inclusion in our service. And we did find three intrepid publishers (Immedium, Charlesbridge, and Bubblegum) who were willing to take a chance on us at launch (we’re now up to 350+ books from over 20 publishers). But in the early days, that was far from certain. We worried that we would show up on day one with a great service for recording children’s books minus the actual books.

We may have been naive but at least we were brave… we decided that as a backup plan we should make some of our own children’s books. If publishers didn’t license us their books, at least we’d have a dozen or so books of our own on hand. How hard could it be? It turns out that making children’s books isn’t hard at all. Making good ones however is a challenge.

Lucky for us, our genre of books has a pretty rich catalog of public domain stories and characters that can get you off to a good start. Disney itself started by doing interpretations of public domain children’s stories (and still does). We picked a bunch of stories, hired some writers and illustrators, and set to work. Our results were not bad. And in some cases, they were pretty decent. Our books had some rough edges but they had some cute moments. We threw away the ones that didn’t make our cut, and put the ones that felt professional on our site. And then we realized that because we owned these children’s books we could do pretty much as we pleased with them… including giving them away to get people to try our service. What we had thought was a backup plan turned into an incredible asset. What we thought was a one-time effort turned into an ongoing investment.

A year later we’ve created over 60 children’s books that are featured on A Story Before Bed. Two examples that I’m particularly proud of include Lil’ Red Riding in the Neighborhood – by Aleen Adams and illustrated by Elizabeth Haywood and Snow White in the City by Shanon Lyon and illustrated by Cate Kennedy:

In our early creations I don’t know that we had a perspective or a style other than trying to make them as professional and entertaining as possible. But as with most things, the more you do it, the better you get (and the more opinions you form about how it should be done). I particularly love both of the books above because while they’re based on familiar tales, they feel fresh and modern both in terms of the writing and the illustrative style. Elizabeth Haywood’s illustrations are so striking they could be in a fashion magazine, and everyone falls in love with Snow White’s hair. The creators of Lil’ Red have worked on many more books for us. And I’m proud to tell you that the creators of Snow White in the City have agreed to a two sequel deal… Snow White in the Country, and Snow White in Paris are coming to A Story Before Bed (hopefully before the end of the year).

Our business model is different than most publishers. We have our own distribution direct to consumers, and we don’t really worry about individual sales. Since our business is primarily a subscription business, we mostly care about adding value to the overall offering. The more quality books we have, the more valuable our subscription offer is for our paying customers. Unlike the big publishers, we don’t need a hit book to carry us. We can offer all kinds of books that only a few customer may love. The Raven for example. Not exactly right for smaller children, and with a ballpoint pen illustration style that’s definitely mature. We know it’s not for everyone, but we love it. And we have room to experiment. We’re not constrained by the number of pages a printing press in Taiwan can print books at. We’re not constrained by what Barnes and Noble or Wal-Mart is willing to feature. We’re only constrained by the talent we can find, and our own inexperience at creating children’s books. But we’re getting more experience every day, and finding more talent as well.

And besides… it’s fun.

Right before Valentine’s day we came across an Etsy creator, Stephanie Burrows, who was making cool scientist valentine’s cards. Alan Turing saying “Decode My Heart” and Werner Heisenberg saying “I’m certain about you.” Very nerdy. Very cute. We were inspired. Why not create kids books around these famous scientists. If you’re old enough you might remember the Muppet Babies cartoon on TV. Basically the main Muppets from the Muppet Show but as babies. We have a fascination with younger versions of things I think. (Little Archie, Young Indiana Jones, Superboy, etc.). How about a series of books about scientists when they were kids where their young adventures foreshadow their later discoveries? Not historical fiction exactly. It would be strictly accurate on the science, take some liberties with the story, but keep to the spirit of the character and their accomplishments.

We have done exactly zero market research.

We have done no focus groups.

We have done no competitive analysis.

We just don’t care about that stuff. This sounded like a cool series of books. We would start with Marie Curie. Cause, well, she’s Marie Curie. Now all we needed was a writer. Enter Jennifer Swanson, accomplished children’s writer and middle school science teacher. Here she is in her own words:

Jennifer Swanson’s lifelong interest in science began with her flower collection at 5. Of course, they weren’t in a vase—no– she would take them apart to analyze their insides. Then, at the inquisitive age of 8, Jennifer created her very first science club, right in her garage. Much to her mother’s dismay, Jennifer felt the garage was not the best place for her most valued discovery – a cow skull. Many chemical sets and several science projects gone awry later, Jennifer found herself graduating from the U. S. Naval Academy with a degree in chemistry. After teaching at the prep school level for two years, she decided it was time to pursue her other love – writing. Taking class after class, Jennifer learned to create characters, dialogue and setting. She went on to receive her Masters in Education in K-8 science from Walden University. Her overwhelming desire was to share the fun and excitement of the science world with children. With this in mind, Jennifer took a job with Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth as a middle school instructor. In addition to her teaching Jennifer has authored several books, both fiction and non-fiction. Uninvited Guests and Body Bugs will be published by Capstone Press in December 2011. The Child’s World will publish 5 of Jennifer’s books in fall 2011. These books are part of their “How Things Work…” series. When not at her computer, she is out in the backyard, yes, taking apart more flowers.

As you can see, Jennifer was the perfect choice. She’d already written two books for us (both still in production) a version of the Secret Garden on an urban apartment building rooftop, and a version of Aladdin set in an archetypal Disney tween version of high school. We knew she could write and we knew she had range. We were so happy to discover her love of (and expertise in) things scientific.

With that, we’re happy to give you a preview of the first few paragraphs of “Question Everything: Marie Curie’s Guide to Life”. The first book in our new Kid Scientist League series of books.

As a child, Marie Curie was filled with questions.
“Why is the sky blue, Mama?’
“Why does the lake freeze over with ice when it’s cold?”
“Why does the moon light up?”
“I don’t know Marie,” said her mother.
Marie sighed. Her mother never had time to give her a proper answer.

The youngest of five children, Marie was often left by herself. While her older brothers went to school, her sisters stayed home to help with the chores. Since she was small, Marie didn’t have many chores. Instead, she spent her days dreaming about going to school.

Sitting on the grass, Marie would close her eyes and see herself in a classroom, studying science. She imagined that when called on, she could answer every question asked. In fact, her teacher would be so happy to have her in class that he would proclaim to everyone what a fantastic student she was. School would provide the answer to all the questions she had about the world.

It was an impossible dream. At that time, most girls didn’t go to school, let alone study science. Instead, they were taught how to read and manage a household. Still, Marie, had hopes.

We don’t know how long it will take for this one to be finished but we’ll keep updating you periodically as we make progress… sharing sketches, illustrations, and some finished pages until it’s done. As the illustration department gears up on this book, Jennifer is already hard at work on the second book in the series starring a young Nikola Tesla. Electrifying!

(BTW, we’re looking at doing a Kid Artist League as well. Think Picasso and Chagall as kids. And we need an amazing writer with a passion for fine art and artists. Let us know if that’s you.)

I just happened upon an article by Matt Marshall on Venture Beat: “How HTML5 will kill the native app.”

Ugh.

This article reads like an HTML5 marketing document. There’s good reason to be excited about HTML5. But I believe there are a couple of key things missing from this discussion:

1. The value of cross-platform code to developers is a myth. — Yes, many people say they would love to standardize on one platform and write once and save “billions”. But in reality, developers like to learn new skills, platforms, and languages. And clearly having to rewrite code to a brand new platform hasn’t stopped hundreds of thousands of apps getting written for iOS. The best modern developers are well-versed in a variety of client and web-based technologies and platforms, and recognize that one solution doesn’t fit all. And ultimately they, and the businesses that employ them will flock to any platform that has a real promise of commercial success and novel functionality no matter how much new code they have to write. Do we really think iOS is the last time that a new platform will attract tens of thousands of developers to write hundreds of thousands of new apps from scratch? If that’s true the software industry is dead.

2. HTML5 has still not addressed a critical piece of the UX — responsiveness. – HTML5 and it’s predecessor Flash have are not focused on the degree of responsiveness we demand from really polished software. It’s true that in many cases, we don’t need instant responses. And with the advent of AJAX style development web-based apps have come a long way from needing to reload the page every time you make a state change. However, the fundamental value of an HTML page (and app) being able to load progressively is often counter to the type of rock-solid responsiveness that we need from many software experiences. I know that most user’s will live with little delays and not even be able to articulate that there’s a problem. But like the soft click of a door closing on a well-engineered luxury car, customers do know when something just “feels right” (and conversely… when it doesn’t). When I can load thousands of items in a list on a webpage without having to do pagination, when that loading feels instantaneous (even though there may be progressive loading of the data into memory), and when scrolling feels smooth as butter and super fast, then I’ll feel like web apps are getting closer. I don’t think there’s a technical limitation on this per se in HTML5, it’s just that it’s not optimized for these types of interactions. Responsiveness is one of the unsung heroes of a polished user experience, and even with all its innovations and AJAX goodness, GMail can still be frustrating to use for heavy mail users.

To be clear, I’m a fan of HTML5 and here at Jackson Fish Market we will use it as appropriate. It’s a tool, like many other tools in our toolbox. We’ll use it when it’s the right tool for the job. And we’ll use other tools when they are appropriate. The most rational and easy to work with developers I know share this philosophy. I’ve found that developers who like to spend lots of time arguing about which tool is the “end all be all” are doing me a favor by letting me know up front that I shouldn’t be working with them.

Without realizing it, we’ve been spending the last two years building software destined for the iPad2.

The first is the newest version of A Story Before Bed (www.astorybeforebed.com). It’s our children’s books service. Customers subscribe to the service and can record themselves reading their favorite child a kids book. While you could view the finished recordings on an iPad (via our iOS app that’s been downloaded over 300,000 times), recording always had to be done on a PC or Mac with a webcam. Not always optimal.

On Friday Apple approved our latest update to our iOS app. When installed on a shiny new iPad2 (with a front-facing camera) you can now record books right on the iPad2. It’s only 3 books from our growing library of 300+ books, but it’s a start. Soon we’ll add support for recording any of our books right on an Ipad2, and then books can be recorded and played back at bedtime on a true “bedtime computer”. (A Story Before Bed for iPad2.)

∞

The second creation is Thrilled For you (www.thrilledforyou.com) It’s a wedding video guestbook that we originally created for our co-founder Jenny’s wedding. Guests walk up to the software running on an iMac and leave video well wishes for the happy couple. We liked it so much we put it out as a product. We have lots of happy customers but what people really wanted was a touch version. As the iPad had no front-facing camera, it wasn’t really an option… until now.

The iPad2 has given us a platform on which our video guestbook software can really shine. And the version we put out isn’t just for weddings, it can be used for anniversaries, birthdays, corporate events, or parties of any kind. And of course, the videos can be incorporated into the professional videographers final video production. (Thrilled for You for iPad2.)

BTW, we’ve also simultaneously released a version of Thrilled for You for iPhone 4s and the latest generation iPod touches (both with front-facing cameras of course). Check it out.

We made a video demonstrating both A Story Before Bed and Thrilled for You running on an iPad2 to show off how they work.

BTW, the music at the beginning and end of the outro was made on an iPad in Garage Band.

For us it’s super exciting. We’ve been investing in each of these experiences for over a year. The iPad2 feels like the first time each of them has really had a chance to sing.

∞

We also have one more announcement to make… a new website that we’re very proud of. As we’ve built a reputation for Thrilled for You we’ve realized that there are lots of cool resources for tech-savvy folks and people like us who are getting married. What doesn’t exist is a place to find all those cool geek wedding ideas… hence the Geek Wedding Guide was born. It’s updated regularly with links and content that could keep a geek couple in Mario themed invitations, and Lego shaped cakes for multiple wedding receptions! Even if you’re not getting married any time soon it’s always fun to see what your fellow nerds have come up with. Definitely check it out and pass the word.

Jackson Fish Market World HQ is moving soon. We aren’t going too far away from Pioneer Square. Here’s a sneak peek. Can you tell how excited Hillel is???

On October 20th, 2010 we announced we were giving away 100,000 free children’s books to parents in the U.S. military using our kids books online service A Story Before Bed. Between then and March 2nd, 2011 we’ve given away an average of 746 children’s book recordings each day to families with a deployed or deploying parent. Children’s recordings have been made from as far away as Iraq and Afghanistan and as close as Fort Lewis, WA. Seeing our strong, tough, and brave soldiers sit down in front of their computer and sing The Itsy Bitsy Spider to their small children is an incredible and moving scene.

Sometimes soldiers sit down and record a dozen stories at once before their deployment. In other cases you can see the service member sitting down in their barracks under the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights, in their fatigues, with their close cropped haircuts gently reading one of their child’s favorites stories, wishing them sweet dreams, and asking them to be good for the parent who’s remained at home to take care of them. (And sometimes it’s the spouse or children back at home reading a story to the soldier stationed far away from home.)

So you can get a sense of how cool this is, we’ve gotten permission to share these two recordings with all of you. These soldiers are reading to their far away little ones from somewhere in the world.

• Watch a soldier reading (and singing) The Itsy Bitsy Spider. (Awesome hand motions.)
• Watch a soldier reading Prince Kai and the little Mermaid. (Fatigues hanging in the background of course!)

Even before we’d written a line of code, or designed a single screen of A Story Before Bed we knew that we would be giving the service away to deployed parents in the military. We understood how useful a service like this could be for families separated for months at a time. But nothing could prepare us for the very real impact these stories have had on the families that use the service.

We get e-mail all the time from families the service has touched. Hannah, a military spouse wrote in:

“I just wanted to say a huge thank you! We were very honored to receive the free books for deployed service members. My husband got to record a few the week before he left. When my two year old asks to see Daddy again, and I am at a loss for words, I am able to put a story on for her. This not only temporarily satisfies her, but also put a dozen smiles in my heart, being able to hear his voice. Thank you!”

Randall, a Captain in the military wrote:

“What a great thing you’re doing!!!! I read about 15 or more books to my son for my deployment to Iraq. He didn’t just watch them at bedtime, he used them to keep a conection with me while I was gone. KEEP IT UP!!!!!”

Naturally, our focus here is to build A Story Before Bed into a successful business. We’re essentially creating “Netflix” for children’s books. Of course we’re excited as can be about that mission. And while giving away free recordings doesn’t directly impact our bottom line in a positive fashion, it’s become clear to us that the small role A Story Before Bed is playing in connecting these families is absolutely critical and needs to continue. It gives us essential purpose every day when we come into work. In other words, just because we’ve given away 100,000 recordings doesn’t mean the need has gone away for the service.

So today, we’re super pleased to announce that we are extending our military giveaway program from 100,000 recordings to 250,000 recordings. And we need your help getting the word out.

Deployed and deploying miltary parents can head over to signup for kids books online from A Story Before Bed. Here’s the page to send people to – http://www.astorybeforebed.com/military. If you don’t mind, make sure to “like” the page and “fan” us on Facebook. For those of you recording stories make sure to share the recordings with your Facebook friends. And finally, for those of you who aren’t parents in the U.S. Military, we have very reasonable plans and pricing to use A Story Before Bed for you as well. Record some free kids books today for yourself to see how it works.

Building our children’s ebook service, A Story Before Bed, has been an educational process to say the least. One of the coolest things about it is the role that accidents play in our modest leaps forward. One of my favorite is the creation of our library of free children’s ebooks read by authors and illustrators. We love the work done over at the Children’s Book Council by Robin Adelson and her crack team. Each year they put on the Children’s Choice Book Awards. Last year we agreed to have some of the authors record themselves reading their own books. Everyone was very sweet about it, but it was the first year, and it was a bunch of work. We only managed to get three of the authors to record their stories in our compressed time frame. I knew the result would be good, but I wondered whether it was worth all the work.

And then we launched the page just in time for the awards themselves. Check it out for yourself. And while it just had a smattering of recordings, the response was fantastic! Teachers, librarians, and parents all converged on the page in droves. While children’s book authors will periodically show up at a local bookstore for a reading, having that reading done virtually, and available on demand using A Story Before Bed was novel and super useful. Especially for the educators. It was like having a director’s commentary of a DVD, but for a children’s book to show the students.

Once we saw the response, we knew we had to expand on the concept. And thus, StoryTime at the Reading Room was born. We have authors and illustrators with books on our site record their own commentary filled version of their creation and post it on the site for free. Have an “in-store reading” with a children’s author wherever and whenever you want. There are so many investments we made, and things we have tried that I was absolutely sure were going to pay off big. I would have bet money. And yet, so many of our successes have been quite… well… surprising. I’m prepare to concede that my instincts are off. But even more importantly, I think we know now that the important thing is just to try as many small bets as you can. You never know what customers will respond to.

I’ve been management at various companies, and I’ve certainly been subjected to management at the same companies. I’ve been a victim of this disease and I’m not proud to say that I’ve also been a vector for it. That said, management is the disease in almost every fucked up company.

It comes down to management’s reason for existing. Management exists to make sure the people under them do a good job. This assumes that a) you’ve hired people who without management won’t do a good job, and b) that the people in management have any ability to identify what “doing a good job” looks like. But here’s the worst part. Let’s say that you have hired people who do a good job, and management actually knows what it looks like. It’s still against management’s best interest to let good people do their jobs well without intervention. Because if everyone’s doing well on their own, then management has nothing to do. And because management gets paid more than others, they have even more incentive to look busy and useful even at the expense of good people who just need to be left alone to do their jobs.

As a cherry on this shit sundae, if it’s understood that management’s role is to make sure that the people under them don’t make mistakes, then every decision has to be evaluated with a scrutiny that it often doesn’t require. After a screwup, why would any manager explain to their uber manager that the mistake was worth it because it was the most efficient way to learn the right path forward. The uber manager’s only logical response would be: “then why do I need you here if I can just let people find the right path through conscientious and thoughtful trial and error”?

And that after all is the exact right question to ask about almost every single manager in your organization. Why do we need them?

I say put ‘em to work.

New York, NY, January 25, 2011 — Digital Book World announced last night that A Story Before Bed (http://www.astorybeforebed.com) won the first ever Publishing Innovation Award in the Children’s category.

Jenny Lam, Co-Creator of A Story Before Bed (and Co-Founder of its parent company Jackson Fish Market) added: “We couldn’t be more pleased to win the first ever Publishing Innovation Award. Our passion has been to connect families through the experience of reading children’s books and the creative use of technology. Seeing our creation recognized by our colleagues in the publishing industry is a great affirmation that we’re helping consumers and publishers by not only extending the children’s book business, but by growing it creatively in the digital space.”

A Story Before Bed launched in November 2009 as the first and only service where consumers could record a video of themselves reading a children’s book. Children could play back the story as often as they like. Just over a year later A Story Before Bed has grown their catalog of books tenfold with the help of publishing partners including Charlesbridge, Chronicle Books, Orca Book Publishers, Soundprints, Sourcebooks, Parragon, Immedium, and more. The customer base has grown significantly as well with thousands of customers now using A Story Before Bed to record children’s books. Additionally, since mid-2010, customers have been able to view their recorded stories on the iPad and iPhone with the A Story Before Bed app having been downloaded over 270,000 times from Apple’s App Store (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/a-story-before-bed-personalized/id364887654?mt=8). Today, A Story Before Bed remains the only children’s book service in the world providing personalized recordable video read-a-long functionality.

A Story Before Bed is also giving away 100,000 children’s book recordings for free to deployed and deploying parents in the U.S. Armed Forces connecting families who are separated in service of their country (http://www.astorybeforebed.com/military). To date they’ve given away over 75,000 stories for free towards their goal.

Bill Burnham, Founder and Director of Corporate Development for Soundprints, an imprint of Palm Publishing LLC, said, “As a publisher of quality children’s books, we spent a long time looking for the right partner in the digital space. A Story Before Bed is a fabulous service for consumers that will feature our content in a first class fashion. Additionally, the folks at A Story Before Bed treat their publishing partners with the same care and attention they give their loyal customers. We’re very pleased to be introducing our titles on A Story Before Bed in the coming weeks.”

Hillel Cooperman, Co-Creator of A Story Before Bed and Co-Founder of Jackson Fish Market said, “While A Story Before Bed has grown by leaps and bounds during its first year, we still have an enormous amount of work to do to bring even more high quality children’s books to the millions of customers who would benefit from our service. We believe in a future where there is no such thing as a child reading a book without the ability to watch grandma reading it to her any time she wants on any device she can access. With our loyal community of customers and our forward-thinking publishing partners we working hard to play a leadership role in showing the world what a great children’s book experience can be, and how to bring not just children’s books, but the children’s book business to the modern digital world.”

A Story Before Bed (http://www.astorybeforebed.com) was launched in Novermber of 2009 by Jackson Fish Market (http://www.jacksonfish.com), a small bootstrapped software startup in Seattle, Washington founded in 2006 by Jenny Lam, Walter Smith, and Hillel Cooperman. A Story Before Bed is the leading provider of children’s books with personalized digital video accompaniments in the world now featuring over 250 books in its catalog from over a dozen publishing partners.

As part of my job here at Jackson Fish Market when I’m working on our children’s book service, A Story Before Bed, is to license books for our library from children’s book publishers. (BTW, I recently read an article where Netflix has at least 80 people doing this job for them for movies. ) Getting most publishers on the phone or to respond to e-mail is pretty hard in its own right when you’re a small reseller, much less getting an agreement with them. Despite that we have over a dozen publishers whose books we sell, and we have more lining up all the time. That said, it’s super hard.

Where I really should be spending my time is in selling their books by making sure we have the absolute best possible experience on our service. But instead, I’m making phone calls, bugging publishers, and sending contracts back and forth.

Since I come from a software background I keep thinking about the web services I use. What if much like Amazon’s web services, or services like Heroku, iStockPhoto, or even Amazon’s Associates program I could just go to a website, fill out a form, and start selling trade publishers’ books on my service?

I recognize that publishers have traditionally worried about the context in which their books are sold. And that they may still believe that the digital book marketplace will narrow down to just a couple of players that they need to deal with. This seems so fundamentally backwards to me. If Amazon is worried that I’ll host a site they don’t approve of using their back end they put it in their terms of service. And if IP protection is the issue, iStockPhoto also puts the guidelines in their license to the material. I’ve even heard… “you won’t sell enough books for us this year to justify how much it will cost us to assign lawyers to review your agreement.” Maybe the right answer is not for each reseller to sell some larger number of books, but for the publisher to lower their own costs of letting smaller resellers sell their books. After all, how can small resellers become bigger resellers without being able to sell the publisher’s books?

I understand that a publisher could give me a long list of the challenges in doing this.

However, I believe that today’s book publishers should believe that the scenario where they can let a thousand resellers bloom is the one they want to enable in a friction-free fashion. I am convinced that once they focus on that scenario, the problems they need to solve in order to make friction free relationships with resellers will be eliminated.

Today at Digital Book World in New York City, Michael Shatzkin said that he thinks the thing that separates trade publishers from other publishers is that they depend on others to sell their books. He added that it’s a good thing for many publishers as they infrastructure and expertise necessary to sell directly to consumers is non-trivial. So if a trade publisher’s only customers are its resellers, why would their infrastructure be designed to exclude most of their potential salespeople?

Yahoo learned this lesson the hard way with overture. They designed their ad system to focus on the largest part of the market – the advertisers with the biggest budget. Google took the exact same ad placement concepts and opened them up to everyone – even mom and pop dry cleaners. We know what happened here.

I’m happy to say that our publishing partners, all fundamentally understand this to some degree. They work every day to lower the barriers for more resellers to be able to carry their books. They don’t focus on whether their reseller partners will sell 1 or 1000 books for them that year because they know that the more resellers they work with, the more books they’ll sell. And isn’t that the point?

Jenny, Walter, and I founded our little company back in late 2006. After some time trying other possibilities, we finally found our first major product when we decided to build A Story Before Bed in late 2008. In November of 2009 we were the first and only service on the internet that let you record video of yourself reading (and in sync with) a children’s book and play it back as often as you like. We had 25 books and zero users. In January of 2011, a little over a year later, we’re still the only service that lets you record video of yourself reading children’s books, we have more than ten times as many books, and thousands upon thousands of users. You can use our service on the web and even on your iPad or iPhone. We’ve given away over 76,000 free children’s stories to parents in the U.S. Armed Forces who are separated from their children while they serve our country. And just today we were nominated of for a publishing innovation award from Digital Book World. We find out on monday if we won, but it’s an honor just to be nominated.

How did we do it? We didn’t take investment money, we didn’t kick in our own, we’re basically a mom and pop software company. The three partners plus a few helpers who contract with us and make up our extended family. And of course, the final component is you – people who look at what we’ve made and say to themselves… “this website looks nice, feels nice, and seems like something that should be a part of my life.” And to be honest, there are some (not all) web companies who are doing it very differently than us. They get a lot of money from investors, hire a bazillion people, spend a ton of money building something and marketing it and hope it will be an overnight success. When it isn’t, they often move on to the next startup. We’re more of the slow and steady types. We like to think of ourselves as craftspeople, slowly building our software one polished pixel at a time.

So back to the original question, why would you care about whether our business succeeds or not? I have no problem with large businesses or people being successful. But I also know that there needs to be room in this world for the small creators, the small business people. Those are typically the businesses that you love instead of just use or need. We want to be a business that you love. That’s why we work so hard on every book. That’s why we make sure the site keeps moving forward by polishing every rough edge. And that’s why we answer our own phone when you call and give you our e-mail addresses to get in touch whenever you want.

And to be clear, many of you have already done more than enough to help this small business succeed. You’re reading this blog, you may have registered for our site, or gotten a free santa book, recorded a book, signed up for our mailing list or even purchased a book or a subscription. And we appreciate it so much. But if you have the inclination, if you have a few minutes, and if you want us to keep making our site better, faster, smoother, more beautiful, and have even more great books for you to read to your kids, here are a few things you can do that would help us immeasurably.

Ten quick and easy things you can do if you Love A Story Before Bed and want to help it succeed. (Choosing one would be awesome. More would be amazing!)

1. Record a free book on our site and share it with your friends and family on Facebook.
2. Not on Facebook? Record a free book on our site and send the link out to your friends and family via e-mail.
3. Think of five people you know who might like our site (the parent who travels frequently for work, the distant grandparent, etc.) and tell them about it.
4. When you tell folks about our site, remind them there are books that they can try completely free (and if they run into trouble, we have free 1-800 technical support).
5. Got an iPhone or iPad? Head over to the app store and download our app. Make sure to give us a rating and leave some comments.
6. Got a blog or a website? Post a link to A Story Before Bed on your site and write about your experience with our site. Post a link to one of your finished recordings.
7. Fan of someone else’s blog who might be interested in our site? Perhaps a parenting blog? Or children’s book site? Leave comments on their site about A Story Before Bed with a link to us. Or even contact the author of the site and let them know about our site.
8. Know an accomplished children’s book author, illustrator, or publisher? Tell them to contact us to get their books on our site. We’re always looking for more great books.
9. Know a teacher with a class from pre-K through fifth grade? Show them our site. They’ll immediately figure out ways to use it in the classroom!
10. Know a journalist/reporter/talk show host? Tell them that there are thousands of parents in the military reading stories to their kids from distant lands thanks to A Story Before Bed and it would make a great story.

And one extra…

11. Let us know what we can do better. We’re not a huge corporation with hundreds of staff, so we don’t always move as quickly as we’d like, but we do listen, and we care deeply. You can even let us know if there are things on this list that we’ve missed.

Thanks for even considering doing any of the above. We appreciate it! And we have a couple of tidbits for you this week:

1. Head over to our Facebook Fan page. We’re having a contest where you can tag yourself on one of the books listed and vote for which book we should be free. At the end of January we will make the winning book free for a weekend! Our gift to you. And one lucky person who tagged themselves will win a free super subscription to A Story Before Bed.
2. Head over to our new site: I Miss My Kids. It’s a live feed of people on the internet who miss their kids, We think A Story Before Bed can be a small part of helping ease that situation. If you like it, tell your friends about the site.

We believe that in the future, when a parent or grandparent can’t be around, every children’s book will let the child be read to by a loved one. And we believe that these recordings will be memories that families treasure for generations to come. That’s a future we’re working to deliver every day.

I love being in the software industry. So many things are being reshaped right now and I get to participate in my own small way. Here’s a vision piece from some European newspapers describing the newspaper of the future.

News+ concept live from Bonnier from Bonnier on Vimeo.

The problem is, there’s really nothing new here. Yes, this seems great. Basically go down the checklist of every feature that the internet and sexy hardware devices have, and leverage them all to make a digital newspaper. Tablet? Check. Roaming across devices? Check. Video. Check. Photography? Check. Discussion with the writers? Check. Alerts? Check.

I get it. I get it.

I’ve been on many projects where my team’s job was to come up with videos and prototypes exactly like this one.

Here’s the problem. Maybe a better newspaper, a digital newspaper, a newspaper that leverages all of the features that are sexy on the web and touch devices today isn’t what anyone wants. Or certainly isn’t what anyone is willing to pay for to the point that would support the infrastructure necessary to create this kind of production. Maybe the problem that newspapers are facing is intractable. Maybe there simply is no solution and they have no choice but to die.

It’s not the news business that’s dying. It’s the newspaper business.

The same seems true of record labels. Their economics just couldn’t last in this new world. People still love music. People still pay for music. It’s just the economic structure of record labels that is becoming extinct.

Adding more features is easy. I get asked to do it all the time. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen a situation where even the greatest collection of features can overcome the fact that the core of the experience isn’t something people want (or want to pay for).

I’m not saying that finding those core experiences is easy. It’s not. I just feel bad for all the effort and resources that went into this video and countless other visions like it. The blogs and websites I read, the google alerts I use, the social networks I frequent, all give me this experience already today. I don’t need a newspaper to deliver it to me in one package.

We have a new iPhone app from a little known subdivision of Jackson Fish Market — Acme Toolkit.

Acme Toolkit, provider of toolkits for specialty professionals is proud to announce the latest in its line of field tools – Spy Toolkit. Today’s field agent needs a reliable set of tools in a compact package. Hidden behind a sliding bookcase (to deter access from undesirables) are three state of the art intelligence gathering tools. The compact lie detector is incredibly useful during interrogations. Targets with something to hide fear its accuracy. Need a secure spot for a clandestine conversation on the fly? The bug sweeper functionality is something you won’t be able to live without. Not only does it detect listening devices, but allows you to neutralize them right from the scanning screen. No need to dig through flower pots and behind picture frames. Finally, when you’re rifling through papers that you need to leave in their original spot, collecting the data can be hard with traditional cameras and scanners. The built-in spycam shoots multiple pictures at a time, quickly, and at high-resolution. You won’t miss a detail of those confidential weapon schematics when you review them later on the big screen. And the government you stole them from will be none the wiser.
Normally, today’s professional intelligence gatherer/secret agent needs to carry three separate devices to perform even some of these functions. Thanks to Acme Toolkit’s Spy Toolkit, all three of these tools are available in one compact package. The entire device looks like a smartphone with a collection of eBooks to the untrained observer.
Professional spies from all over the world sing its praises:

“Spy Toolkit’s Lie Detector has saved me one more than one occasion from getting blood on my tux during a tough interrogation. Thanks Spy Toolkit.”
—Anonymous Agent

“Spy Toolkit’s built-in spy cam was instrumental in getting me the plans for ******* **** ********* from ******** ** *******.”
—************ *****

“Before Spy Toolkit, opposing intelligence agencies were always listening to my conversations. Even personal ones. It was humiliating. No longer now that I use the built-in bug sweeper in Acme Toolkit’s Spy Toolkit.”
—Anonymous Agent