Technology: Elvis Stores Your Media Content
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 07, 2008
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Developer DutchSoftware has a tradition in custom solutions for the global publishing market. The company is active in Europe, the US, Asia Pacific and South America. Shortly DutchSoftware is going to be releasing Elvis, not some sixties’ rocker’s site, but a highly scalable enterprise-class media content store based on Adobe’s AIR and Flex technologies. DutchSoftware spent an afternoon with us, presenting their alpha version and explaining what makes Elvis unique.
DutchSoftware has good connections with WoodWing Software. In fact, the very first release version of Elvis will have complete integration with Smart Connection Enterprise built right in. Other integration modules will rapidly follow suit, or integration with other Content Management Systems can easily be configured by the integrator using SOAP. But I’m running ahead of myself: first let’s cover the basics of Elvis. Elvis is meant to be an open source based, flexible and scalable digital asset management solution that has all the advantages of existing DAM products but none or few of the disadvantages.
Rubens Would Have Been a Graphic Designer
By: Erik Vlietinck
March 02, 2008
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The best Graphic and Layout Designers are today what Peter Paul Rubens used to be in his time: tradesmen who understand their tools, know how to use them and achieve desired effects, and create art. Graphic and Layout Designers would have fitted in perfectly with Rubens’ time and age in terms of what they do and why they do it: working on an assignment basis and staying within well-defined limits of taste and “beauty”.
Open Source Conquering The Cross-Media Publishing World?
By: Erik Vlietinck
February 20, 2008
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Open Source software is omnipresent these days. Even Apple is modestly involved in Open Source. Few companies are also using an Open Source business model. Although Adobe and Quark both have software that is open to techniologies such as Tomcat and Java, they keep on selling their software as in the nineties.
Technical Brief: SoftCare K4 v 5.9
By: Erik Vlietinck
February 05, 2008
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SoftCare wasn’t too happy with the results of the Editorial Workflow comparison report we wrote earlier. They asked us to clarify how we got to our conclusion, which we did. After reading our comments, they checked and found that the files for installation their engineer was to provide us with included incorrect libraries, which in turn made the K4 test installation behave the way it did. The below is what SoftCare’s Product Manager said K4 normally should be capable of. I am reproducing his observations as I received them, with no editing and no comments added, as a technical brief of K4.
Report: Atomik Dynamic Publisher
By: Erik Vlietinck
February 01, 2008
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Dynamic Publishing is a fast-growing market. Dynamic Publishing has been defined as a value chain of software that enables the creation, repurposing and publication, and delivery of content across a variety of media (Frost & Sullivan).
We propose our own definition:
Dynamic Publishing is a process that disconnects content from layout and enables remote, collaborative and application-agnostic input, repurposing, and medium-agnostic content delivery, using strong document-centric or story-centric management and workflow functionality. According to Frost & Sullivan, the Dynamic Publishing market will grow to approximately one billion Euros by 2012.
Technology: Empowering Adobe XMP
By: Erik Vlietinck
January 18, 2008
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Most users of Adobe products know XMP from displaying the EXIF metadata that comes with a digital camera image file in Bridge or Photoshop. All Adobe applications have the XMP metadata panel, and professional users will surely use the standard panels to fill in copyright and ownership metadata. Less commonly known is the fact that in InDesign, XMP can be used to drive a JDF workflow through integration with a database, for example.
It is no exaggeration to say that metadata is what makes cross-media publishing projects possible. Without metadata, about 90% of the functionality needed for efficient cross-media document design, authoring, and routing would be lost. In short: metadata is the “blood” that feeds the workflow and XMP is an important vessel to transport the metadata.
Atomik Dynamic Publisher: A Real-Time Cross-Media Publishing System
By: Erik Vlietinck
December 26, 2007
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With Easypress’ deep XML knowledge, a robust document management system (Alfresco) as its backbone, and a lot of sound business logic behind it, Atomik Dynamic Publisher is the first of a new breed of publishing workflow systems. Easypress literally re-invented the traditional publishing workflow system, based on complaints it overheard from users of those systems. It built a true cross-media publishing system that is layout application agnostic.
They created an installer that is as simple to use as a desktop software installer for the Mac, and XML-functionality to support simultaneous publishing to various media, including print. Atomik Dynamic Publisher is scalable from 10 to at least 1000 users with one QuarkXPress 7 or InDesign CS3 server. It separates content from form, and shows none of the typical problems that are related with traditional publishing workflows.
Badia Tools for InDesign CS3 and QuarkXPress 7
By: Erik Vlietinck
December 12, 2007
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InDesign and QuarkXPress each come with a large set of tools and utilities, but firms like Badia can make it just a bit better or at least different. Some of Badia’s tools offer a different approach to what InDesign and QuarkXPress come with by default. Other tools, such as Big Picture and Exportools deliver new ways of doing things that you can only accomplish after some effort.
Report Analyses Smart Connection Enterprise 5
By: Erik Vlietinck
December 01, 2007
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IT-Enquirer just released the results of an in-depth report comparing Smart Connection Enterprise version 4.x to the new version 5, which is a completely new system. The aim of the report was to ascertain how the versions compare, and what sets Smart Connection Enterprise 5 apart from the competition.
The report is available as a free PDF download to Subscribers. Registration is free.
The report finds that Smart Connection Enterprise 5 has become a true publishing platform, offering Blended Media publishing capabilities while keeping all the advantages we found in version 4.x, and which we discussed in our report on Editorial Workflow Systems in general.
Leopard’s Font Book Makes Third-Party Tools Obsolete For Some
Font Book has long been Mac OS X’s least attractive application. It made a market for third party developers such as Extensis and Insider Software. Even Linotype released its own excellent font organiser and offers it for free. But Leopard’s Font Book is no longer the weakest link in the font management chain. It has been updated with features such as Auto-Activation. Throw away those third-party font organisers!
Leopard’s Preview: Can You Throw Away Your Copy of Acrobat Yet?
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has a completely new Preview application, and many of us have been reading about it, and some of us have actually used it. To graphic designers, publishers and document managers, the most interesting about the new Preview is its behaviour. Will its behaviour with images and PDFs let you use it without having to resort to Adobe Acrobat CS3? And the answer is that it may well do, if your needs are modest.
PDF tools from callas software are ready for “Leopard”
callas software PDF tools for professional colour conversion, correction of typical errors while printing and for optimizing PDF files for prepress, printing and long-term archiving with PDF/A already support the new operating system Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard”.
Users of earlier Apple operating systems, Adobe Acrobat Professional and Standard and callas software plug-ins as well as the command line modules can switch to the new operating system without problems. Extensive series of tests at callas software in the last few weeks showed that callas software products ran even under Leopard.
