I’m not a fan of creepy goth music, but I’ve been a big fan of the band Johnny Hollow’s web site for years. Band member Vincent Marcone heads up the production crew for My Pet Skeleton Productions, the label under which they produce their flash content. The original Johnny Hollow site debuted in 2003 and is just as visually stunning today as it was then. Recently they have revamped their new site along with the release of their second album, Dirty Hands.

What’s most interesting about this site is a tightly integrated flash game titled “Scuttle Buggary“. The interface is intuitive, and allows you to discover rather than direct. You easily notice the familiar arrow keys meshed into the design. If you click on them you are told to use your keys to control a beetle on the screen. As you navigate to the game entrance, you receive tips on how to play the game. Game play is simple, use your bug to push globs of goo into a drain. But is enough to keep you from getting bored too quick.

What’s so impressive isn’t so much the game as the game’s commitment to the theme of the site. Most adver-games tend to be a rehash of some existing game, themed with the product, and slapped on to the product site with a link; Scuttle Buggary is part of the whole experience. The game uses tracks from the album both as the soundtrack and the timer for the game. Each level is a new song, and you must complete the level before the song is over. Winning a level unlocks the song on the home page, where you can listen to it in full. Throughout all of this you are never for a moment taken away from that grunge goth mood of the Johnny Hollow music.

I love to use Johnny Hollow as an example of solid web marketing. Their original site was one of the first to offer a complete play list when most offered a 30 second sample. Their new site makes my argument even stronger. Creating a full experience on the web is key to success as radio and television and print become less and less relevant; especially if your target audience is under the age of 20. I suspect that this philosophy of “the complete experience” will become mandatory. Those that are successful will have embraced this philosophy whole hearted.

My new favorite podio book, Playing For Keeps, by Mur Lafferty takes the super hero genre to a whole new level.

It tells the story of Keepsie Branson, a bar owner in the shining metropolis of Seventh City: birthplace of super powers. Keepsie and her friends live among egotistical heroes and manipulative villains, and manage to fall directly in the middle as people with powers, but who just aren’t strong enough to make a difference. Or that’s what they’ve been told. As the city begins to melt down, it’s hard to tell who are the good guys and who are the bad.

Playing For Keeps dives deep into the philosophy of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. It poses the question: What if the super power isn’t very useful. Imagine if, after being bit by the spider, Peter Parker found that his power was the ability to frighten away spiders. It may make him a successful exterminator but it wouldn’t help him fight DocOck. The book features powers such as a waitress who can’t drop her tray, or a bartender that can make people sober instantly.

The lead character, Keepsie, got her name from one of the most creative powers I’ve seen. Whatever she owns, can not be stolen. That concept is taken to some very interesting extremes, making her far more powerful than anyone realizes. Keepsie is caught in the classic struggle between heroes and villains which, in and of itself takes interesting twists. The villains seek her help in their struggle while the heroes overbear her with posturing and threats. Keepsie and her other not-so-powerful friends are left not knowing who to trust.

While the print book is ready for purchase right now (I ordered my copy today), the audio version is released as a free podcast. Playing For Keeps the podcast is about two thirds of the way through so there’s still time to catch up and follow to the end.

How many times have you been on the road with all your electronic devices, laptop, pda, mobile phone, mp3 player, and thought; “Man, I wish I had thought to pack a novel.” Or how many times have you looked around your house and said, “That book case just makes me look too intellectual.” Regardless of what it promises, these are the kinds of problems that the Amazon Kindle solves. Kindle is an amazing product that has been forced entirely into the wrong market. Which is precisely why it will fail.

Anyone with even a passing interest in tech news has heard of the Kindle by now. An electronic book that refreshes its content over a wireless modem. An amazing idea, but Amazon has relegated it to selling books for them. The Kindle has the power to do so much more. True, you can get some live content, but only after a subscription fee, for each item. Even loading your own stuff on it results in a fee, which leads me into my list of failings for the Kindle:

1. Too Expensive
   A paperback novel costs roughly ten dollars. The Kindle costs forty times that amount. That means in order to justify the cost of the unit you must have a need to carry around four hundred dollars worth of books. While that may be true for the average college student, the average college student can sell their books afterward.
2. Too Closed
   I can put music on my iPod that I didn’t buy from Apple. I should be able to put pdfs and even images on a Kindle. Alright, technically I can do that. But only after paying Amazon a ten cent fee to transfer my file over. That fee, and the fact that I must go through Amazon makes the feature void in my book.
3. VERY Limited Online Content
   Again with the fees. For something I get for free on my computer. That very argument is why newspapers are in serious trouble right now. Amazon has positioned half of Kindle’s functionality in a failing market.
4. Inflexible Medium
   Believe it or not, digital paper can be inflexible. Going back to college students, you can’t use a highlighter on a kindle nor can you make notes in the margin. Reference books tend to have corners folded and notes added in pen. Not to mention the need of having several open at the same time. What little of these features can be implemented on the Kindle are far overshadowed by the costs.

All that said, I do love the Kindle. It just needs better software. I would pay four hundred dollars for what is essentially a Star Trek PADD. What Kindle needs to be, is an RSS reader. An open one that will interface with our existing web based readers and work complimentary to them. In addition to the hardware I would expect a monthly fee to operate the wireless modem. A fee that guarantees customers no less than 2 updates a day. Once to download new content and again to update your web based reader, marking off the things you’ve read. I think ten dollars a month is a fair price to replace every newspaper and magazine subscription you’ll ever have.

ePaper isn’t the future of books, audio books are the future of books. Books are static, they don’t have to be electronic because they never change. ePaper is the future of newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals. The RSS reader is the current evolution of the periodical and products like the Kindle are the perfect platform. Once these companies realize this, products like the kindle will be immensely successful.

I’m not a fan of Microsoft Office, nor do I prefer Open Office, iWork, or any modern Office application for that matter. The main reason is that they try so hard to pack in new features that I don’t need while continuing to screw up the basic features I do need. I don’t feel that drafting a business letter or managing my budget is something I need to buy four hundred dollars worth of software for. Nor do I feel that I should have to fill five hundred megabytes of my hard drive. Worse still, if I don’t use the Microsoft format I run the risk of not being able to work on another computer, or vice versa. There’s not much I ask for in a word processor just four basic guidelines that I hold to any software:

• Simplicity – There’s a saying; “90% of Word users only use 10% of its features”. Should we really expect to wade through menus and dialog boxes when we only use a dozen or two functions?
• Reliability – My hatred of Office apps and MS Word in particular began when Word literally removed all formatting from one of my last college papers, hours before it was due. Let me be clear, when I say “all formatting” that includes all spaces between words. Word processing is nearly as old as personal computers. It’s a technology that should be as flawless as a calculator by now.
• Accessibility – I switch between Windows and Linux every day. Occasionally, I use a Mac. All of these operating systems have Office software that works best. MS Office is the de facto standard, but I always have to make compromises when using the Office format outside of Office.
• Affordability – Again, word processors are as old a personal computers. I think we should expect more than WordPad for free. Isn’t it time that Microsoft releases “Office Lite” for free? If they don’t wise up soon they’re going to loose out to products like OpenOffice.

In this mess of desktop software comes Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It’s the only word processor I know of that meets all of my requirements. More than that, it offers something I didn’t know I needed until I had it, and now can’t live without. With Google my documents are held in what I like to call a “null format”. This means, on any connected computer, they are instantly readable, editable, sharable, and downloadable . The last two items are key to my revelation. The pervasiveness of Microsoft Office means that more often than not I’ll encounter something that can at least read a doc or xls file. It’s in the sharing and downloading features where I can no longer use anything else.

It used to be rare that I would share a file, let alone collaborate on one. Keeping track of what word processors my friends had and emailing them the appropriate format was just too much hassle. The Mac users hated MS Office and the Windows users didn’t know there was anything else. At work we all used Office, so sending out files was easy. The pain came in playing round robin with the word dock as you edit it or worse, waiting for the shared file on the server to become available. All this is just annoying to say the least. With Google docs, my files are reduced to a url . I often share drafts of my blog posts with my friends, or share the monthly budget with my wife, which is pretty much all I do with a word processor. Things like this are essential in the business environment making MS Office seem counter-productive.

Though rare, there are cases when I’m on a computer without an Internet connection. Which brings me to my second point, downloading files. The argument I rarely see made is that Google Docs doesn’t lock you in to their service. To that end I can save in many different formats, plain text, MS Office, and pdf to name a few. Sure, MS Word can export to most formats. But this requires a bit of pre-planning on my part. If I suddenly encounter a situation where Word is nowhere in sight, my parent’s house for example, I’m stuck having to track down some utility to convert it. I may be an odd case, but I’m more likely to encounter a computer without Word than a computer without an Internet connection.

This has made Google Docs & Spreadsheets the clear winner in my book. Coming soon is the ability to work off-line which is the final missing piece. Having my documents online with a trustworthy provider has been an immense productivity boost. No more switching between MS Office and OpenOffice. No more copying files around. I think the time will come soon where everything is on the network and removable media such as DVDs and USB Keys seem as efficient as paper tape. The 90% of us that use only 10% of Office’s features can take part in that future right now. Start working in the null format and see if you realize the benefits as well.