Tizra Blog

Columbia University Press Signs with Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:04:00 +0000

America’s fourth oldest university press today became the latest in a string of prestigious organizations that have chosen to manage, distribute and sell electronic versions of their books and other content using Tizra's highly flexible web publishing platform. Great validation for the idea that, in an era of commodity content, some publishers really understand value of their brands, and are taking steps to extend and build on them.

Read the full release.

Webinar: Why not Use Your Content to Build YOUR Brand?

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 05 May 2010 17:44:00 +0000

Update: New Session Added.

Join us for a live webinar, Friday, May 21 at 1pm EDT

If you own valuable content, there's a dizzying proliferation of new ways to sell and otherwise distribute it electronically...from downloadable Apps, to embeddable widgets to expensive custom XML-based websites. All have their tradeoffs, but at Tizra, we think there's one factor that, more than any other, should guide your long-term strategy:

Does it build your brand?

Brands aren't just colors and logos. Brands are what happens when publishers deliver content that readers believe in visit after visit, and build audiences that authors want to reach.

Like Joe Esposito, we believe in the power of publisher brands. And we agree with Mike Shatzkin that the publishing brands of the future are being built right now on the web.

Our software sits quietly in the background, helping some of the most respected organizations in the world promote, sell and deliver their own electronic content under their own names. In the process, we're helping to ensure a bright future for credible, content-based brands. We'd welcome the opportunity to show how we can do that for yours.

Session begins Friday, May 21 at 1pm EDT.

The Best Freaking Web Browsing Machine Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 10:19:00 +0000

Contrary to our recent post, we do not actually believe Apple intended the iPad as a Tizra viewer. For all the talk of Apps and iBooks, the iPad's real significance is that it does a better job than anything we've yet seen of lowering barriers to using the web.

You don't have to wait for it to boot up, it doesn't need to be recharged all the time, is small enough to keep on you most of the time, but is big enough that you don't have to squint or scroll too much when reading and can fit enough of your fingers on it to type reasonably well. Plus its touchscreen is intuitive enough and response is fast enough that you don't lose your train of thought while getting from one place to another. As Tim Bray says, "speed is a feature."

All these things come together to create something that enables us to work the web—with all its incredible power to inform and facilitate interaction—into more and more of the corners of our lives where it didn't fit before. Those places where there would be that awkward pause in the conversation while you stooped and moused around on your laptop to find that thing you wanted to show someone. Those places where people would say "yeah, but you can't use it while you're…[under the hood of your car, out in the field with a client, lying on a scaffold under the Sistine ceiling, etc.]"

We're still not ready to take it into the bathtub, but this is just the beginning. Apple's done a great job of finally making the idea of a tablet computer real and practical. Others will follow, and who knows how long it'll be before people think WWW stands for Works When Wet?

iPad Mania: Thanks, Apple for Making Such a Great Tizra Viewing Device

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:39:00 +0000

We were in line with everyone else at the Apple Store this morning, eager to see how the sites our customers have built on Tizra would look on the iPad's web browser. The verdict? Fast, easy and beautiful. A great new way to search and access content on Tizra-powered sites (and anywhere else on the web).

Thanks, Apple!

Browser thumbnails present a smörgåsbord of Tizra-powered sites.

A page from Document Engineering on the the MIT Press CISnet site.

An appetizing page from eat.shop sf bay area.

Search results on the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation's Tizra site.

As always, Tizra's search takes you direct to the exact page of the document you're looking for.

A Postcard from Tools of Change

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:20:00 +0000

Think back to the summer of 2007. The first iPhones are just hitting the stores. Kindle is still a gleam in Jeff Bezos' eye. And in the words of Publishers Weekly, "a festival of practical geekery" is taking place in San Jose, CA.

That festival was the first Tools of Change for Publishing conference. We were there, of course. And while comparatively small, it was the largest gathering we'd found of people who cared as much as we did about the transition from print to digital books.

That's still true today, which is why I'm excited to be on the floor of ToC 2010 as I write this. The show's a lot bigger now, and has spread beyond its geeky roots to focus on seismic shifts we're all aware of…the explosion of handheld devices, social software and changes in the ways all of us find and use information.

If you're here, come see us. We'll be in booth 114 with our partners Digital Divide Data, and you can always reach us via our contact form. If you're not here, we'll be posting updates on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/tizra

We believe change is not only good, it's constant, and we're looking forward to what comes next.

Rhode Island Releases Green Economy Plans on Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:20:00 +0000

You may have read that Rhode Island's making a serious push to establish itself as a hub of innovation and economic growth in the green energy sector. At the core of this effort is a document called "A Roadmap for Advancing the Green Economy in Rhode Island," which was unveiled today by Governor Carcieri, Senate President Paiva Weed and RIEDC Executive Director Stokes at an invitation-only event keynoted by retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark.

Perhaps less well known is the fact that the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation tapped Tizra to deliver the document, which can be found on their website at…

http://publications.riedc.com/view/qe2ne/default

It's a great example of how an organization can simultaneously provide faster and easier access to information, while simultaneously fostering local economic development, and preserving natural resources that might otherwise go into printing hundreds of copies of the document. Or for all you P-Bruins fans, you could call, it a hat-trick—three goals scored by the RIEDC!

What's Bigger than Amazon, Google, Microsoft & Apple?

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:31:00 +0000

The web.

Duh. But with Apple's anticipated Tablet [Update: iPad!], Google's Nexus One phone and any number of other shiny objects to distract us, it's easy to forget that even the most massively successful of these platforms—the iPhone—has maybe 60 million users, whereas the web has about 1 billion.

Maybe this is why the Nexus One's tagline is "web meets phone," and why even though few really know what capabilities Apple's long-rumored tablet will have, it's a safe bet it will feature a great web browser just like the iPhone does.

The simple reason is that the web is simply too big for even the biggest device makers to ignore.

Which is very good news for those of us looking for the best ways to reach large audiences with digital content. The fact that all these great companies are coming out with more great devices just means more ways for users to access the content we serve.

As long as open web standards prevail, those of us who stick with them don't really have a horse in this race. In fact, just the fact that there is a race means we win.

MIT Press Webinar Video & Slides Now Available

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:39:00 +0000

Thanks to all who participated in last week's webinar, and to MIT Press for a presentation that drew fantastic attendance and uniformly favorable comments. Video of the full presentation is below. Slides are available for download in PPT and PDF formats.

Free MIT Press Webinar: Building an Ebook Site with Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:35:00 +0000

Exploiting Tizra's iPhone compatibility is one topic on the webinar agenda.

When MIT Press launched CISnet just over a year ago, they were trying something radical: Creating a custom ebook site without investing in custom software and without expensive content conversion. The result was in the words of revered computer science professor Hal Abelson, "a treasure." Now MIT Press has very kindly agreed to share some of what they've learned from their experience developing CISnet on the Tizra platform, and some of their ideas for future expansion.

Join MIT Press Editorial Director Gita Manaktala, and Digital Publishing Manager Jake Furbush for a free webinar…

Tuesday, October 27 at 3pm EDT

Space is limited. Reserve your seat now! We look forward to a fascinating discussion.

Association of Research Libraries Goes Live with Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:37:00 +0000

After extensive internal testing, the Association of Research Libraries has begun offering recent issues of its flagship publication on a public test site hosted by Tizra.

The organization announced recently that Research Library Issues is now available in full-text searchable form at…

http://publications.arl.org

We're thrilled about this, not only because because it's a vote of confidence from a high profile organization, but also because ARL's membership includes some of the most prestigious research institutions in the world (including the libraries of MIT and Indiana University, whose presses are already using Tizra).

In addition to greater production efficiency and flexibility, ARL's use of Tizra stems from a desire to provide members with capabilities including…

Better full-text search.
More targeted references via social software and other links.
Better compatibility with web enabled mobile devices like the iPhone.

We are proud to count ARL—and RLI readers—among the users of Tizra!

Faster than Google!

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:42:00 +0000

Don't get us wrong. We love Google, as anyone who remembers what web search used to be like in the days of AltaVista, Excite and even the World Wide Web Worm has to do. But there are certain things even Google doesn't do particularly well, particularly taking users to the relevant part of a long document...without long downloads and repeat searches.

Here's a quick video showing how Tizra solves this problem (among many others), based on actual experience we had looking up our trademark on the official US Patent and Trademark Office site.

Note: Click the little TV icon above to see it big!

Tizra gets faster

noreply@blogger.com (David G. Durand) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:26:00 +0000

Non-technical summary: things are lots faster at Tizra sites and admin tools. There's certainly more to do, but we've got more tricks up our sleeves! Because the big current speed boost is related to one cause, and it took me a while to track down, the geek appendage to this post describes what we found and how we fixed it.

Geekly details

I spent a bunch of time last week looking at system performance. As we've been adding customers and usage, we were beginning to feel the pinch. Performance always varies, but the range of response times was getting wider as things slowed, leading me to think that there might be some systemic issues that would give us a quick improvement (and indeed there was some Linux tuning that helped a bit). But data access seemed to be the real issue, so I spent a bunch of time looking into hibernate, and our caching and querying, and then wound up spending a day or so basically watching all the queries go through Postgres. And you know what? most of them seemed much slower than they should be, even though they are pretty hairy.

Of course, the next step was to check for database indexes, and how the query plans were using them. But in hand testing the plans looked good, and the indexes were sensible. But when run by hand the queries were also significantly faster than when hibernate ran them! This was much easier to see now that we have a live load, which is inevitably different from a test setup. So why the difference? Postgres was ignoring our indexes only when Tizra publisher made the queries.

Turns out that there's an old bug in Postgres where it would ignore indexes on bigint fields in prepared statements unless there was an explicit data type cast. (That type confusion was an obscure result of skew between Postgresql and the SQL standard.) And that was the behavior I was seeing, even though we were using a much more recent vintage of all the software. This was terrible for us, because we have a multi-tenant publishing system for large document collections and we use bigints as primary object identifiers!

So, why the old problem if the bug is gone, and we are not using postgres 7? It turns out that we dynamically build those hairy queries, in HQL (hibernate query language), using the String trick. But nowadays instead of making your indexes work, it breaks them! The differences are invisible in the SQL. It turned out that we were in a version "donut hole." Our database was recent enough so the String trick worked the opposite way (preventing fast queries for our prepared statements), but the JDBC driver wasn't making the calls in the right way to make the old trick work. End result: we're now running the latest JDBC driver with compatibility options set while we update our hairy query generator. And now we can really start tuning our setup!

If the web had not provided the history of the old bug, I would have had a much worse time even knowing where to look to find our somewhat subtle configuration issue. So enjoy the speedup, I sure am!

The New, 2009 1/7 Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 12:00:00 +0000

Right now, our favorite thing about being a Software as a Service company is we can upgrade Tizra Publisher whenever we think it's right, without regard to ship dates or marketing rollouts. Or as the old Beetle ad said: "When we find a way to improve the Volkswagen, we do it. Then and there."

It's been less than a month since we announced instant web signups for Tizra Publisher, but we've already found several ways to improve. So we upgraded our software. Then and there.

A few hightlights...

Downloadable Chapters & Subsections

Tizra Publisher has always let you break documents up into smaller chunks, such as chapters, which can be sold or distributed independently, or remixed into new online products or collections. Now this capability is even more useful because you can let your users download the chunks for offline reading or printing. Each download is watermarked with your site's address, so there's no forgetting where they got it!

Here's how it looks on the CISnet site MIT Press runs on Tizra Publisher.

Note that while in this case, MIT Press is using it to provide free samples, it works just as well for paid or access-controlled content.

More Control Over Who Sees What

If you're selling eBooks, you want the world to know what's in your catalog (while of course controlling full-text access), but if you're doing enterprise knowledgement management, or you're a consultant or other professional services firm distributing documents to clients, you have to be more picky. For these applications, we recently added the ability to selectively suppress display of documents in title listings and searches. For example, if you're a law firm sharing documents with a client, no one else will even know those documents exist.

To use the feature, you just tag users to put them into groups, then select which groups you want a given document to be visible to. Below you can see the controls set to limit visibility of a document to a group called "Investors."

To ToC or not to ToC?

For long documents, like the 910-pager from the New York Botanical Garden Press shown below, Tizra's ability to automatically create web Tables of Contents is a boon...just upload a bookmarked PDF, and bam, you've created an easy browsing experience for your users. But if your document's just a few pages, who needs a ToC? Now you have the choice. Just say No to the Display Table of Contents option, and your users will go straight to page 1 with no unnecessary stops.

REST API & Other Power Tools

Many of the organizations we work with already have ecommerce, access-control, or related web capabilities in place, so we've added a straightforward, standards-based REST API, which enables those systems to exchange information with Tizra Publisher to create seamless end user experiences. For example, if you already have a database of users, your developers can set things up so those users can access content you host on Tizra Publisher without a separate sign-on. Same holds true if you want to sell Tizra-hosted products via your own shopping cart software.

Other new features for power users, include macros that let you selectively display information to users based on their login status, membership in user groups...even what browser software they're using.

It boils down to a package of capabilities that's not only very easy to get started with, but like the old Beetle, can take you a long way very economically.

TAKE IT FOR A FREE TEST DRIVE NOW!

Online Publishing for Tough Times

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:15:00 +0000

"I didn't invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella"
Almost Famous

In an economic climate that led Publishers Weekly to predict 2009 would be "the worst year for publishing in decades," eBook sales are growing at more than 100% a year, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF).

We think it's time more content owners—both inside and outside the traditional publishing industry—had access to serious online publishing tools that will open up this kind of opportunity. That's why we're rolling out free, self-service signups to Tizra Publisher. This is the same software that MIT Press is using to sell a collection of more than 170 computer science books on its CISnet site, and you can get your hands on it right now…

FREE 60 SECOND SIGNUP

If you'd like to learn a bit more, here's quick overview of what Tizra Publisher can do (click the little TV icon at the bottom to see it big!).

This Weds: Come see us at Providence Geeks!

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:15:00 +0000

Later this week, Tizra's presenting at the Providence Geek Dinner:

Wed., Dec 17
5:30-9pm
AS220, 115 Empire St., Providence, RI

We'll be demoing new features of Tizra Publisher, and discussing some of the mindblowing work our CTO Francisco Rosa has been doing behind the scenes. We've been big fans of the Geek Dinner since its early days (we gave a sneak preview of our software at one of the very first ones) and hope we'll see you there.

PS: We also hope you'll bring something for the Geeks for Good canned food drive!

AppGap: Tizra more than just a "great tool for content sellers"

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 11:13:00 +0000

Bill Ives has been writing about knowledge management since the days when for most people that meant color coding your files, so we were really pleased when he agreed to evaluate Tizra Publisher in The AppGap, a blog on the future of work. We were even more pleased when he said "I see this service as a great tool for content sellers."

But we thought his keenest insight was into applications beyond traditional publishing...

[Tizra Publisher] can also be a useful content distribution system for enterprises that need to manage the presentation of their information. This will be especially useful for verticals with a lot of internal content such as legal firms, pharma, and other research oriented enterprises.

Ives saw Tizra's combination of easy and yet precisely controlled content distribution as key for these users, and others needing to share marketing and technical information.

Read the full review.

"How to deliver content digitally without going out of business"

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:06:00 +0000

That's how The Chronicle of Higher Education described the quandary many publishers face. We think it's apt, particularly since they also said Tizra Publisher offers "a cost effective new model to try out."

A key reason? We start with the "dreaded PDF" files publishers already have, which means…

Tizra doesn't require an investment in high-priced technology or legions of IT helpers. Presses don't have to convert files to a more flexible XML format or invest scarce resources in custom-designed software.

Read the full article here.

Slater Reinvests in Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:33:00 +0000

In business there's only one thing more meaningful than having someone trust you to make good use of their money, and that's having them do it again! That's exactly what Rhode Island's Slater Technology Fund has done by announcing they'll increase their investment in Tizra.

Slater's been involved in Tizra from the days when we were just a few guys with an idea--initially with advice, and then with investment. They've been a great partner, always pushing us to dig deeper, think harder, do better and ultimately to believe in the potential of what we're doing. Now that that potential is bearing fruit, we're thrilled to see them increasing their involvement.

An AAUP Ebook Partnership, AND, Free, at last!

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Orens) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:00:00 +0000

On October 1^st, Tizra will hold the first of a series of joint Tizra/Association of American University Presses (AAUP) webinars, webinars whose purpose is to put our platform directly in the hands of the AAUP membership as quickly as possible.

We’re honored to be the first e-publishing service the AAUP has chosen to sponsor (press release).

We are, after all, a software as a service platform, so we’re also really excited to be previewing our new self-service offerings and plans (yes, including FREE), and giving hands-on access to a group known for innovation in electronic publishing. You’ll be hearing more as we begin to open up access group by group, or let us know if you want to try out the service for yourself. So,thank you AAUP, and we can’t wait to get started.

MIT Press CISnet Officially Launched

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:00:00 +0000

After a period of quiet testing, MIT Press is now rolling out CISnet, a library of more than 160 books (and growing) running on the Tizra Publisher platform.

More details in the press release.

It's been a busy summer...so busy we haven't been able to keep the blog up-to-date. More on that soon.

It's so cool!

noreply@blogger.com (David G. Durand) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:00:00 +0000

I'm a real fan of MIT Press books, and have been for years. Lots of interesting stuff for me in Computer Science, New Media, Electronic Music, and all are well designed, beautiful books, which also matters to me. I have a bunch on my shelves, and more on my "buy someday" list. And this week, we have the public announcement of the Tizra-hosted MIT Press CISnet site.

This makes me feel really good because it's very much something that came from a daydream I had last year. I was up at MIT to talk with the (excellent) Venture Mentoring Service, and stopped in at the MIT Press bookstore after the meeting. As I was looking around, but not quite able to find one volume to buy, I thought that I'd pay right then to have access online, like the ACM digital library. I'd happily pay to browse around, search and use books for reference, and then later I might buy volumes that I really wanted to dive into.

So we approached MIT Press with the idea, and now there's a great electronic library subscription -- less than a buck per book/year of access. Even the pricing is on the order of magnitude of my daydream.

Thank you MIT Press, for doing such a great job!

Time for me to buy my subscription!

MIT Press Teams with Tizra to Build an Online Computer Science Library

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:00:00 +0000

The headline says it all. Details in the press release.

TidBITS Signs with Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 19:25:00 +0000

We honestly didn't intend for this blog to degenerate into a rah-rah series of signing announcements, but gosh, there's been an awful lot of that lately! The latest is TidBITS, a truly pioneering publisher of books for Mac users (and, yes, we described them that way before they became a customer).

Even if you're not a Mac user, you have to appreciate a company that's been publishing online continuously since 1990. For TidBITS, online distribution is the core of their business, not some new add-on. The Take Control ebooks, which they'll be publishing via Agile PDF, were written, edited and designed from the outset as digital products. They're a great example of information packaged and priced based purely on what readers want and will buy, regardless of traditional print constraints like what size clump of physical pages it's economical to manufacture and distribute.

We think this approach makes TidBITS a great partner for us…they're already thinking along just the lines that Agile PDF was designed to support! It's also interesting that they've chosen to distribute their ebooks in PDF—the first format we decided on as well. Unlike many publishers, their reasoning has nothing to do with the fact PDF is an easy byproduct of print production. They like PDF on its own merits—it gives them design control that lets them optimize pages for on-screen reading, yet supports features like linking and searching. We're really excited about what will happen when these features are combined with the those added by Agile PDF.

The Satisfactions of Matchmaking

noreply@blogger.com (Anne Orens) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 22:31:00 +0000

As a company with a newly launched service we're naturally looking for partners whose services complement ours, and who can recommend us to their customers. At least that's how we assumed it would work. But recently we were in the fortunate position of being able to turn the tables by playing the matchmaker between Bibliovault, a leading provider of highly complementary digital conversion and archiving services, and one of our newest customers, New York Botanical Garden Press.

Founded in 1896, The New York Botanical Garden Press has one of the largest publishing programs of any botanical garden in the world, and, as you can imagine, unique print titles waiting for online exposure. Tizra had already been accepting bulk transfers of book content from Bibliovault on behalf of Duke University Press, making the uploading and data management process seamless.

So when The NYBG Press talked to us about their need for a reliable partner to facilitate print and digital distribution, we immediately thought of Bibliovault. Not only do they have the technical expertise to convert print to digital files optimized for online distribution, but they have an outstanding reputation for preserving valuable print content. It’s a win all the way around, and we’re looking forward to helping The NYBG Press make the most of Bibliovault’s services.

The New York Botanical Garden Press Signs with Tizra

noreply@blogger.com (Abe Dane) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:29:00 +0000

Famed for its plant collections, architecture and setting, The New York Botanical Garden is not only an exceptionally beautiful place, but a place for cutting edge research. The New York Botanical Garden Press communicates discoveries made there and elsewhere, and with three journals, five book series and more than 200 books, it is one of the largest publishers at any botanical garden in the world.

We're thrilled to announce that this renowned institution has chosen to begin making its publications available online with Tizra's Agile PDF. It's pretty exciting when an organization that's been around since 1896 decides to work with one that's been around since 2006. But consistent with their forward thinking spirit, we get the sense they're pretty excited, too.

"I am convinced that online publishing is a key part of our future," said Nate Smith, associate director of the press. "We've wanted to make our books available online for years, but until now none of the options really made sense for us."

I'm sure we'll have much more to say about this partnership in the days ahead, but for now, it's hard to think of a more authoritative endorsement of the hard work that's gone into Agile PDF.

PS: As a bonus, we're hoping we may finally learn a bit more about the obscure Tizra plant, from which our company gets its name!