Tizra Blog

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!

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 o...

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...

"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! ).

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!

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 .

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 .