A. Tee. Dub. » Kindle

The Branding Exercise of Punching In

ateedub — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:57:41 +0000

Punching In has a great opening that describes through example what a brand really is. In my mind, it’s the sum of all of the interactions that take place within and with a company/product/etc. It’s so good that I’m assigning the intro to my class as reading on brands. The dive into the first meaty chapter on UPS was also fantastic; Alex Frankel’s experience as a temporary package deliverman drew me in.

But the book kind of petered out. Frankel’s immersive experiences at UPS and Enterprise were very interesting and certainly instructive. But I wanted more of them, and less of the ‘trying to get a job with one of these companies analysis‘. And definitely less reflection on the experience outside of the direct narrative. I definitely prefer to draw the (very obvious) conclusions on my own, and not listen to Frankel restate them.

The Gap, Starbucks, and Apple segments didn’t have the fascination factor for me that UPS and Enterprise did. I think I knew more about those brands and companies going in (thanks to books like this), so there weren’t as many revelations about them. Other readers see some of these experiences as a means to compare companies.Though presumably not the intention of the book, I now have a much greater respect for UPS and their drivers. Despite their spotty service at my house, and the awkward experience of being asked out in the middle of a crowded office hallway by the UPS guy who delivers to my office, I now really appreciate the company and didn’t before (for those reasons). And I realized just this week that the UPS guy at work knows my name, despite having only delivered to me a handful of times over the past 2 years (and having his heart broken by me over a year ago).

Interestingly, I just had a job candidate come through who had spent a year in Enterprise’s management training program. He talked about washing cars in his suit and dealing with a number of customer horror stories. (He decided this was not what he wanted to do, thus the interview.) It seems like Frankel’s experience was pretty spot on, but it didn’t help the candidate get my job.

On a final note, this was the second complete ‘for fun’ book I read on my Kindle, and I loved it. I got through the whole book without needing to charge the battery once. And I think I’ve worked out the right text size and page change rhythm that lets me read at a more normal speed (which I recognize is probably really fast to most people).

Parts of this review are also on my Goodreads.

Finishing My First Kindle Book

ateedub — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:16:11 +0000

I just finished reading the first novel on my Kindle. I’ve had it since February, but have only had time to read newspapers, magazines, and assigned readings on it.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a crazy reader. In a normal life in a normal week I’d go through a book and two magazines (cover to cover). I don’t have a normal life right now, so I squeeze all of my novels into my vacation. In this case, it was a four day trip to Colorado that included a mini-family reunion and some quality time in Vail mountain biking and whitewater rafting. In case you’re wondering, that’s my way of saying sorry for not posting over the past week …

Anywho, what I really wanted to talk about is the Kindle reading experience. In short, I’m hooked.

I was sitting on the plane and struggled to resist the urge to physically turn the page. I honestly kept lifting my right hand to the top right hand corner of the device. That’s when I realized how into it I was. I flew through the pages, learning to change the page as I reached the third to last line of the current screen so my rhythm was uninterrupted.

I’m still not thrilled with the size of the screen. I don’t feel like I can skim through the text as quickly as normal because I can’t leap through as much text on one page, even when I make the text size really small (and then it’s too small to read easily).

The other big issue with the Kindle is that you have to turn it off during take-off and landing. I had a particularly fussy flight attendant on my flight back from Colorado who wouldn’t let me keep the Kindle on my lap during take-off, I had to actually put it away…like in the back seat pocket. Of course, the woman next to me kept reading her paper book. When will the world catch up with technology?

On the other hand, Seth Godin wants to move the Kindle even further forward. He recently suggested that the Kindle should be configured as a social media tool, allowing people to share favorite passages and view tagged items.

That’s a little too much for me. I agree more with Marketing Ninja who calls this polluted reading, but I admit that I will probably change my mind as I become more neurotic (or less focused) in my reading. It would be awesome to follow the comments of some of my favorite literary critics or authors, but I would have to limit the information and be able to subscribe to specific channels. Perhaps it can be optional for Kindle 2.0 (or at this rate, 3.0).

Oh, the book? Don’t bother reading the second half.