Publishing News & Articles

We had a DAM busy week with our Tweet Jam and articles that examined DAM for managing image libraries, the future of digital asset management, the changing needs of publishers and maximizing the potential of localized marketing.

DAM's role in the publishing world has changed as the medium has, in response to the demands of the end user and the increased capability new platforms like tablets offer. With these capabilities come new requirements that are changing the way publishers work with their rich media assets.

The information world is exploding with new technology and devices of all sizes and shapes, bringing with it unprecedented growth in demand for new information products and the content to drive them.

I love to walk into Business Depot and smell all that fresh, unused paper just waiting for my pen. I also love my print magazines. But what I saw at the Adobe Summit last week was enough to make me consider the alternative -- digital magazines -- as almost too enticing to ignore.

It's no question that the popularity of tablets is on the rise. Apple's iPad 2 continues to be a best-seller. Amazon has sold more than 5 million units in the last quarter of 2011 alone. Tablet ownership is even reported to have doubled during the recent holiday period.  Apple is likewise optimistic that tablet sales will soon outgrow PC sales. As such, if you're a publisher, you might want to focus on building apps and content for tablets soon. But before you take the plunge, there are a few things you will need to consider.

Apple's Thursday event won't be a show-stopper in the usual iDevice sense, but early chatter suggests that the company may be about to revolutionize ebook creation. It could achieve this by launching a Garageband-like app to bring content-rich, Web-enabled, digital book creation tools to everyone.

As Apple celebrates its part of 1.2 billion app downloads last week, those centuries-past, paper-based tomes are the focus of the company's first big news in 2012. While we're sure it is hard at work on a budget iPad and a new iOS, Apple is trying to boost its share of the ebook market that Amazon rules.

Google (news, site) recently unveiled its Page Optimization Service, promising anywhere from 20% to 65% page speed improvement. Currently on a free, limited trial, the service supposedly improves page delivery and loading time by distributing the load across Google servers worldwide. But at what cost?

For Microsoft Word users, publishing just got a little easier. Quark released Quark XML Author 4.0 for Microsoft Word, which allows users to more easily create structured XML content. It’s no secret that most content gets created in Word, so it’s only fitting that now you can intelligently create and publish with it, too.

Amazon (news, site) has trumpeted the fact that, less than four years after introducing Kindle books, its customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all print books -- hardcover and paperback -- combined. However, it's important not to take this announcement at face value.

Has it really been two months since QuarkXPress 9 came out? You know what they say, one good desktop product deserves a server version. Or something like that. Nerdy cliches aside, Quark (news, site) is back in the news with the release of QuarkXPress Server 9.

Publishing content management provider Really Strategies (news, site) has announced the availability of RSuite Cloud, a cloud-based print, web and eBook production solution that supports 70 languages. The product capitalizes on three of what are expected to be the biggest technology trends of 2011: Cloud computing, content management and globalization.

Here's an all-new level of geekery: Now you can purchase O'Reilly and Microsoft Press Books from the Apple iBookstore. Download the iBooks app to your iPad, iPod touch or iPhone, and you've got a massive searchable reference pool on the go. 

It's just about the end of August and time for the gears to shift up one. This week, there have been a number of new releases that have focused principally on getting SharePoint 2010-ready. O3Spaces has also been busy, this time adding Linux support.

Wendell Challenger is an "uber bike geek" and a graduate-level science student studying topics related to evolution. He's also one of the volunteer writers and photographers for Momentum Magazine, a free bi-monthly publication for urban cyclists available in twenty cities in the US and Canada.

When it was decided to build Momentum's, um, momentum, by bringing its free content onto the Web, Challenger took on the project. Free and open source seemed a no-brainer between his scientific background and the free, community nature of the magazine. At Open Web Vancouver 2009 (news, site) he shared his experience.