Russell Beattie

My email backlog is almost as long as my "blog-thought" backlog. Ugh.

I got an email a couple days ago that O'Reilly's Safari is doing a version-rev and they're fixing a lot of the little things - my only complaints with the system actually. This is very, very nice. Here's a summary of the email:

Early in the week of September 29, Safari will be launching a new and improved version of the Safari Tech Books Online service.

1. More liberal swapping: Swapping will no longer be tied to the user, but rather the individual book. That means you can swap one book on the 5th of the month and a different book on the 8th of the month and a different book on the 22nd of the month and so on. Each book needs to stay on your Bookshelf for 30 days, but you no longer have to swap all books on a given day.

Add and swap books on the fly: Just three quick clicks and...voila! The new book is on your Bookshelf.

The option of an annual subscription: Save money and get the added convenience of only being billed once per year.

2. More precise search results: Filter searches to include only books on your Bookshelf. Limit your search to "code fragments only," helping you find exactly the sample of code you need.

3. Personalized views: The My Safari page gives you a snapshot of all of the books on your Bookshelf, your recent searches, your recent bookmarks and other personal tracking activities all on one dynamic page. Customizable views and sortable search results.

4. Other bells and whistles: Easy-to-print sections: While you still can't print the whole book -- (we've heard you and we're working on copyright issues on that front!) -- each section is now available in a print-friendly format. E-Mail sections: E-mail sections to a colleague directly.

I responded back to the email quickly expressing my pleasure with the changes and got his in return immediately:

Thanks for the nice note Russell. It keeps us going as we are up to the wee hours of the night getting this release out!!
Lynn

P. Lynn Little Vice President of Marketing

Heehee. Now I understand... marketing is promoting features that the developers are still killing themselves to implement! It's nice to know the world works the same everywhere. ;-)

-Russ