Good writing is when I open a vein and distract myself until something major comes out. It always does.

Good writing is when I read a piece over and over again and get so into it that I forget what day it is. Good writing is a moment that comes and then is gone just when you were both getting to know each other.

I thought about the mystery of good writing when I continued my fruitless search for an article I wrote about The Great Gatsby that appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian sometime in the 1990s. I loved that piece. I can’t find it anywhere: not in my files; not on the website’s archives.

My high school junior English teacher, Mr. O’Brien, taught us the ins and outs of The Great Gatsby. He also taught a certain love of reading and taste for pictures, images and feelings in good writing. It’s all in the article, somewhere.

One day, I’ll find that article again. It’s worth a re-post, if only to get back into the moment one more time.

We’ll spend some time here on ereaders – why I chose Kindle (for now), why I chose ereaders at all, and what features on these little gewgaws add the most value to the consumer for the least expense and risk to the… what are they? Publisher? Manufacturer? Retailer? Shopping mall in a box?

Still, I’m looking forward to getting my Kindle. In a way, my “consumer choice” wasn’t much of a choice at all. It was tempered with:

• Nook: Barnes & Noble released a buggy device, according to some reviewers. They subsequently ran out of stock smack in the middle of the 2009 holiday shopping season which, surprisingly, is turning out to be a pretty decent retail sales period.
• Plastic Logic: Wasn’t there supposed to be a product release in late 2009? Yes things slip, it’s really OK. Why again, really, do some retailer  bet the farm on the holiday shopping season? That’s a crappy model for reliable revenues. (More on that some other time.)
• eReader: see “Plastic Logic”, above. Plus, its lack of connectivity is an issue. More on features later.
• My impatience: Perhaps consumer impatience is a benefit to retailers, at least the one who know how to tap it with impulse buys, loss leaders, and more.
• My anxiety about this market space: Are single-use gadgets able to stand their ground among the multi-use items like iPhone, Verizon’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One phone? Am I wasting my money? (By the way: Droid or Nexus One – which one should I get? That will be my April toy.)

So Kindle is my starter toy, but I’m looking to see how later readers, especially the cleaned-up Nook and Plastic Logic, come out when they’re released later. It may be that first to market is a huge advantage, but I wouldn’t suggest that the Kindle folks write off Nook, or anyone else.

I’ll check in here periodically to see how it actually goes with my new toy. Starting with delivery: It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow!

My interest here is not the nitty details of programming languages but rather each app’s usability, interface, the way it integrates with and contributes to the overall Zoho brand. (I don’t know the recipe for Coca Cola either, but there should be a similar discussion about Coke’s products relating to the Coke brand. And those bottles!)

Let’s start with a look at the universe of applications available. Check out again the apps shown in this image at right.

How cool is that? This is the rare moment where less isn’t more. In fact, for years Microsoft and its partner PC makers have front-loaded new PCs with lots of applications that most consumers wouldn’t use. It only got annoying when brands like AOL and Quicken used the PC desktop as a shopping mall to push consumers to buy software they didn’t know they needed.

But what is the best muli-application scenario for Zoho?

Zoho is creating a complete, portable office suite of most applications that most consumers and business user will need. In fact, Zoho anticipated by several years Google’s push for a fully web-based computing platform in its Chrome OS.

Why have a PC at all? This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just consumer choice. Remember France’s Minitel? I do remember as a kid seeing all the magazine ads in high school French class which said at the end “Composez le XX-XX-XX sur votre Minitel”. I thought it was the coolest.

How should Zoho bring in new apps and get consumers’ attention?

I note the thoughtful comment from Raju on the multitude of Zoho apps:

Having multiple entry points for Zoho is a deliberate design. Given the number of apps we have, not many people use all apps. A CRM user or example doesn’t care about the navigation on the left as he doesn’t care about other apps.

Yes, I can imagine most users would not use most apps. I’m sure that I won’t use all of them. But consumer choice is a more powerful force than most of us remember (in my own business too, it’s easy to forget the power of offering choices). So if all these applications are available to the user, what do they all have in common? I’ve already burned up enough pixels on branding, interface and user consistency. This time let’s look at the physical space in which apps are created.

Another comment gives us some insight into how applications are developed at Zoho:

We let the individual apps mature first before integrating them. If you have been following us, we focused on launching several apps in the first 2 years and we let them mature individually and then we started integrating our apps. Integrating not-so-mature apps will slow down the entire development effort. So we tend to let individual apps mature before we integrate them.

It’s a skunkworks: It should allow the developers flexibility to grow apps without worrying who is looking over their shoulder. This grow-the-tree-first-then-trim-it model has a proven track record – just look at that app list again above.

And yet, at what point do you rein in the skunkworks innovators? When does one expect consistency and a clean interface?

At what point should the category-killer design of Zoho Notebook be required to integrate into the rest of the Zoho suite? Should this occur before or after the application is released for public use?

At what point should Zoho Tasks and Planner be combined, or at least encouraged to talk to each other and use the same data? What about Zoho Notes and Notebook – shouldn’t they also share data?

In fact, imagine if Zoho developers were required – from the beginning – to use the same data structure, so that neat little packages of data can bounce freely between all of them: Calendar, Planner, Tasks, Mail, CRM, Projects, and more. Would the consistency and interface issues have popped up in the same way? Perhaps not. Would such a requirement stifle the creativity of the developers? No way.

Ultimately, between the skunkworks innovators and the corporate central planners, who should answer to whom?

I am of course in no place to answer these questions. But consider a push-and-pull between the innovators and the planners; they answer to each other. Their foremost goals might be solid and creative applications, while commercially useful and adding value to the Zoho brand. Even while the brand’s equity is forever intangible, so is the skunkworks’ promise of the next big thing.

This is a singularly critical point for an office solution like Zoho, because the interface brings together all of the apps’ functionality and keeps them in the same sandbox under the Zoho brand. The “front door” of any web app – or any consumer brand at all – is where impressions count. Here is what I’ll call Facebook‘s front door:

This is Zoho’s front door:

This page appears after I log onto www.zoho.com.

In an earlier post I alluded to my discomfort about Zoho and its interface inconsistency. It implies somehow that Zoho lacks a solid foundation where I can safely store my data, reliably share it with partners, and know it will be there in the future when I need it.

This sandbox is more like a leaky sieve rather than a strong wall that differentiates My Stuff from the Big Bad Web. Let’s look in detail at some elements of the Zoho interface before the sand leaks out.

The ubiquitous Facebook navbar is so reliable, simple and clean that thousands of Facebook denizens are quick to panic and complain whenever it changes.  Facebook is a fair comparison with Zoho in that they both host large numbers of users and offer a wide variety of applications. It’s easy to get lost in the shopping mall of web toys that is Facebook, and this navbar is a comforting guidepost.

The next screenshot is www.zoho.com after I’ve logged in. From here I can jump to an application or to the Personal page. Remember this layout, because you won’t see it again. I wouldn’t mind not seeing that page again, because I like this one much better:

Zoho Sheet Version 1: Accessed through Zoho Personal

Check out the navbar on the left. How cool is that? It doesn’t take up a lot of screen real estate, and on smaller screens it shows fewer apps plus the “More” button at bottom. Perfect for my netbook.

On the bottom left is a nice looking set of links that acts like a system tray, linking to contacts and notifications. It might be even nicer if that system tray had more options, but I’m not going to quibble.

By clicking on the navbar tabs, I can bounce over to whichever app I need, although there is sometimes a delay and a weird flash of the login page. But what if I wanted to go directly into Zoho Sheet (the “Excel”-like application) by either typing sheet.zoho.com or clicking on the “Sheet” link from the Zoho’s front door (above )?

I end up here.

Zoho Sheet Version 2: Direct access without Zoho Personal

See the difference? Let’s look closely at Versions 1 and 2 of Zoho Sheet. Version 1 has the familiar navbar on the left. There’s the familiar system tray at bottom left, and a simple control panel and universal settings menu at top right. Those items sit comfortably there as I switch between apps.

In Version 2, the navbar is gone, as are the system tray and the universal menus at top. Instead, there is a curious set of other menus at top. “Switch to” is the menu that allows me to switch between apps. In this screenshot I’ve hovered over the link in order to illustrate the Javascript drop-down menu that shows each app. But wait! Here are further points where Version 2 differs (and not for the better) from Version 1:

• Each new application accessed from “Switch To” opens in a new tab. Before I know it, I could open a half dozen tabs just in Zoho alone.
• Each application’s “Switch To” menu has a different layout, different fonts, background colors, menu dividers and placement.
• Some applications in Version 2 have a “products links” menu (not sure what that means) and a multiple languages menu (very cool).
• In some applications (but not all) the system tray is in fact there.

Other oddities:

In Version 1, I can click on yet another navbar (this one horizontal and underneath the universal settings links; follow me so far?) which gives me the options for “Compose – Document – Sheet – Presentation – Task – Note – Link”. While a little redundant, it is useful in that it directly opens up a blank document in that respective Zoho app. However, it opens up that blank document in Version 2, not Version 1.

Confused? Imagine I’m working on my spreadsheet as in Version 1, above, with the great navbar. I realize that I need to start working on my slide presentation, so I click on “Presentation” which should take me to Zoho Show and open up a new file for me to start making my slides. I actually end up here:

I’m in Zoho Show sure enough, but it’s Version 2. No navbar, no system tray, it’s in a new tab, and there’s that “Switch To” menu again – in a different color, no less.

Good Fences

These are minor but meaningful quirks in the Zoho solution that make me wonder what is going on and where I am. It’s disorienting, and disorientation is something the user wants to avoid while trying to gain comfort with posting personal documents in the cloud.

From what we’ve looked at in this post, there is not just one front door into the Zoho Universe, but rather there are several side doors leading all over. Zoho would benefit from stronger boundaries and firmer walls, which might ironically help it relate better with the world outside. In any context, good fences make good neighbors.

Here is my guess: Version 2 came first, and Version 1 is the new, more consistent approach to a single Zoho entity that covers all the apps. If so then I applaud that approach and hope that Zoho does away with Version 2 faster than you can click on your browser’s “new tab” button.

Next: The application development pipeline

So I uploaded the PPT file that was emailed to me into Zoho Show, then hauled my laptop into my meeting, crossed my fingers, and hoped for the best. Here is what happened.

Once I got my grouchy projector running, I downloaded the PPT file from my work email and uploaded it into Zoho Show. The presentation generally went well and we powered through the PPT slides without much of  a hitch. It worked much as Microsoft PowerPoint would work.

Below is a screen shot of the Zoho Show interface, which all you PowerPoint warriors will be able to work through easily. This time we’re running Firefox 3.5.5 on my little Dell laptop running Vista:

Again, so far so good. Zoho Show made my life quite easy, and it’s important to give credit where credit is due. Plus, I didn’t have to make 10-15 copies of a 23-page PPT file, even with 3 or 6 slides per page. Why waste the paper? We’re going green, right?

And yet I had trouble with a certain slide. As luck would have it, my guest speaker’s final slide – the big winner that would drive the point home – came up muddy in Zoho Show:

Each of those colored squares in that PowerPoint table should be fitting precisely into the grid. In fact, here is what it should have looked like:

This final screenshot is the same PPT file shown in Google Docs, and I assume (but didn’t check) it would appear this way in PowerPoint. Each of those  colored boxes was created by (I think) a separate text box filled in the appropriate color. In the Zoho Show rendering of the slide, the boxes were blown up too big, even though the numbers (text) are precisely the correct size in the table. Google Docs wasn’t perfect either for a different reason: I was unable to make the full slide fit on my screen – here it falls off the the bottom.

In the end, I could have run my meeting today just fine using either Google Docs or Zoho Show. I don’t have PowerPoint on this laptop. I do have OpenOffice Impress and could have used that as well, but OpenOffice is not a web app.

Being the first is not the same as being the best, but it’s still first

So if a business person were to need a PowerPoint-like presentation tool, Zoho Show and Google Docs are reliable – and free – alternatives. But let’s get back to that rendering issue for a minute. In my corner of the business world, I rely on these tried-and-true standards:

• Documents, such as MS Word
• Spreadsheets, such as MS Excel
• Presentations, such as PowerPoint
• Email, ’nuff said
• Databases, such as MS Access or certain web apps. I currently use Dabbledb and love it. I am intrigued about Zoho Reports and Creator, and may get there eventually.

I chose the Microsoft products as examples because they set the standard by virtue of getting there first. In my daily work I never receive documents that are not .doc files, and I never work on spreadsheets that are not .xls files.

Microsoft will not own those standards forever, much as they would try (see: “Kleenex”; “Xerox”). Meanwhile, other providers like Google Docs and OpenOffice must grapple with the same issue. When I use OpenOffice Writer – an excellent alternative to MS Word – I save my files as .doc and not as OpenOffice’s preferred ODF format, despite their dire warnings. Why? Because so few of the people that I collaborate with in my industry use anything other than .doc or .xls or .ppt files, or for that matter .pdf files either.

The standard has been set (for now) not because it’s right or the best but because it has the most users. More people speak English than Esperanto, and yet Esperanto was supposed to be the super international mode of communication when it was created a century ago. And it’s not, much to the chagrin of Esperantists who chafe at English’s dominance which, in their view, is dominant for all the wrong reasons.

I do not know the underlying technology in Zoho Show (or PowerPoint) and I do not understand the rendering error that occurred. However, I submit that the Zoho folks should ensure that their products match the standards that are currently in use out in the world. It’s a matter of speaking the same language.

First, a caveat: I am not a Zoho insider and have no knowledge of its inner workings, so much of my guesses and assumptions are just that. Much of these observations are what a customer/client/enterprise/IT manager without insider information might see and surmise.

Part of the issue is technology, part is the relationship with the end user and part is branding. Zoho Planner is still in beta, which is a perfect time to iron out these kinks. After getting past a problematic logon process, Planner is held back by a funky interface which ironically shows how it impacts the overall Zoho brand.

Since I started with Planner in my last post, we’ll go there now. But first I want to illustrate the login issue. Here is my Zoho mail page:

This screen grab is showing Zoho on a Dell Vostro laptop running Vista (for now) and Google Chrome. So far, so good. The dashboard/menu bar at the left launches whenever I log into personal.zoho.com. It shows “Zoho Business” because I’m experimenting with the Zoho Projects app.

Zoho Planner is not currently showing on the Dashboard, so I would click on “more” which would bring up a submenu showing other apps – I choose Planner and get this:

I’m stuck. It’s been like this for more than ten minutes. I get the similar results on Firefox and Explorer. The app is not frozen, and I can click back to another app any time.

On the face of it, this is a software/security/password management issue, and I’m sure will be resolved in due time. But it bears thinking about why this affects Planner and no other Zoho app. Has it happened before?

Let’s stretch the idea further: Is Zoho the Company laid out in a similar fashion as Zoho the Web App? Does each app reside in its own corporate division, or are they more tightly integrated? Is the Planner team off on its own in a skunkworks somewhere, and not tied in with the other app development teams? Is Zoho the Company at risk of balkanizing its pieces into dreaded corporate silos?

One hopes not. Zoho is not a public company and I have no access to its corporate structure and no way of knowing its internal dynamics. But it just kinda makes you say hmm.

The Interface is the Message

Still trying to get into Planner. In order to see my stuff, I need to open a new tab or window, and then type in planner.zoho.com. After a bit, I arrive here:

Whoa! Different interface. As in, a really different interface. Again, it (rightly or wrongly) raises the silo issue, because this interface looks so little like those of the other apps.Yes, that it a concern – even when this is a beta product. Why? It approaches the fluffy gray area where technology gives way to branding.

Software, and now web apps, have little tangible stuff like, say, what a Coke bottle has. Why did Coke start marketing images of the old vintage bottles? For that matter, why did they start bottling Coke in plastic bottles that were shaped like the old bottles?

That bottle shape tells a story. It conjures a feeling and even a subconscious connection in the consumer. For software and web apps, the first, most repeated and most powerful connection is the interface. The interface is the brand – there is nothing else really tangible, unless you count the box that the product comes in. Think fast: What does Microsoft Word’s interface look like? Firefox? Google Docs? Facebook?

When you think of each of those brands, you get a picture in your head (at least I do) of what it looks like on your screen, and you start thinking in terms of how you act when using that application. When you saw Facebook above, were you tempted to stop reading this and go check your Wall? Of course you were! Branding.

What is Zoho’s brand? How does it come across in the interface? It’s a little hard to pin down, since each Zoho app’s interface is oh-so-slightly different. More on that next.

In the coming posts we’ll look more at Zoho. It really is  cool. I’m a big fan of compact and portable apps that are feature-rich, integrated, and can be hidden away when not used. Less is more, friends.

So why am I so unhappy about Zoho? I really want Zoho to succeed. I really do. It just seems so cool. In some aspects, Zoho is miles ahead of Google in the web app space, while in other areas Zoho is so sloppy and inconsistent that it acts like a big paper tiger that no one is paying attention to.

I’m sure Zoho will succeed without me as a client (whether paying or free) of their product. For now, I’ll repeat below a Zoho forum post I entered on November 24, yet as of today (November 29), my forum post hasn’t found any moderator to release it for public view, much less respond. Is anybody home? Granted, it was the Thanksgiving holiday. I have much to be thankful for, as do our friends at Zoho — and Google. But much work remains to be done:

The disconnect and overlap with Tasks and Planner is a big issue – in fact, it speaks to the overall feeling on the whole Zoho platform. For example:

• Why don’t tasks/todos/meetings etc. pop up on the same calendar interface?
• Why does Project have a different calendar interface entirely?
• Why are the Nav buttons slightly different in each app? Look closely at the navigation tools for Writer, Sheet, Planner, Tasks, Project, Notebook. They’re all different – just slightly different enough to make me uncomfortable that Zoho is really one comprehensive package the way that MS Office/Outlook is.
• How do I know that these different applications are talking to each other?  In fact, I don’t think they are at all – I have no way of knowing it.
• As was noted in a different forum, I also have had trouble emailing items into planner. Why can’t that somehow be integrated with the existing Zoho mail application?
• Can I email a todo, task, meeting, word doc, sheet doc, etc. into my zoho mail address and have it integrate directly into the correct application? How?
• Why does planner not even load when I jump to it from the Zoho Personal dashboard? I have to log on separately. That, along with the above noted failures to email directly into Planner, suggests to me (rightly or wrongly) that Planner has no relationship at all with the other applications in Zoho. But isn’t that the point of the whole thing?

Apologies to all for this post – this is a little off topic for this forum question. HOWEVER: this issue is critical, and is the single-most concern that is holding me back from using Zoho, paying for Zoho premium, and telling other people to use Zoho as well.

Dear Zoho friends:

Please fix these minor concerns, ASAP. The technology exists, and you clearly have the resources, power, and intelligence to get it done. This is more than just fluffy public relations; I just don’t see consumers (i.e. me) will really get into this product without that foundation of visual and functional consistence that implies a secure, reliable killer app that is around for the long run.

Since my forum post is unavailable to you as of today, dear reader, I re-post it here as a public service. More to come in future posts.

So goes the zippy narrative and biting humor of An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Sam, convicted of murder, blames his crime on the crude stories his mother told him about the Dickinson House after his father, her husband, left for three years.

In the middle of murder whodunit, dysfunctional family nightmares, and a wicked parody of highbrow literature and its adherents (admittedly an easy target), Arsonist’s Guide stops in the middle of the sentencing hearing to ask complex questions about the stories we tell:

The judge interrupted and said, “Those must have been some good stories.”

“But then again,” the judge said,”…if a good story leads you to do bad things. can it be a good story after all?”

…

It is any interesting question, is it not? Can a story be good only if it produces an effect? If the effect is a bad one, but intended, has the story done its job? Is it then a good story? If the story produces an effect other than the intended one, is it then a bad story? Can a story be said to produce an effect at all? Should we expect it to? Can we blame the story for anything? Can a story actually do anything at all?”

“You’ll have plenty of time to think about the question in prison, Mr. Pulsifer… make sure you do.”

So who is guilty of murder, in the end? Literature itself? If not, then at a minimum, literature drove the getaway car. No one is innocent in our world, least of all the books we read and the stories we tell.