Media Asset Management

Back to the DAM Future?

Wednesday, March 10, 2010 by Mark Norris

As the Brand Development Manager here at Widen I’m constantly looking forward. Where are the markets going? What are the latest trends? What is the next Big Thing in rich media management that we need to be a part of?

So it was kind of a fun “looking back at looking forward” exercise I went through when Newsweek re-published an article that they had originally published in 1995 titled The Internet? Bah!.

In it, Clifford Stoll, the journalist who is unfortunately linked to his couldn’t-be-more-wrong predictions for life, laments against the value of the internet and how it will never be a big life-changer everyone wants it to be.

While I could pick nearly any sentence out of the article and show how Clifford was wrong (e.g. “The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper” – tell that to the newspapers of today!) the more interesting aspect was what Clifford got right by getting it all wrong. You see he came to those conclusions by considering the tools that were available at the time and to illustrate that he started it off with “Consider today’s online world.” That was his first mistake. If the online world stayed how it was in 1995 (think text based usenet groups and 2400 baud modems – a 30k image would easily take 30 minutes to download!).

If you consider the future based on the tools we have available today then the future will always look impossible. What he wasn’t considering was that cell phones of today would have 100x the power as the computers of 1995. Or that downloading a full movie today would take 5 minutes, when downloading a simple JPEG image in 1995 takes 30 minutes!

But in uncovering all these problems Clifford was uncovering opportunities – unfortunately he just didn’t know it or didn’t care to act on it. In the article he talks about the lack of social communities in 1995 – hello Facebook, MySpace, etc. He calls the internet a “wasteland of unedited data” – hello Google! And his rant against the future of ecommerce because of a lack of secure online purchasing (PayPal, Google Checkout, SSL, etc.) and lack of social feedback (Amazon rating system, review sites).

The point is that every single one of the problems he mentioned later became billion-dollar industries and, in many cases, companies in their own right. So Clifford was so right by being so wrong!

How does this all relate to DAM Asset Management? Well, just like Clifford I’m not sure yet.

We as a company and an industry have become comfortable with the markets we serve and the use cases from those markets. For example here at Widen we started off serving primarily the manufacturing and retail industries (via their Marketing departments), though more recently DAM software is catching on with Healthcare, Government, Education and other sectors.

We make some assumptions that our product is not the right fit for, say, an individual. Or a sole-proprietor. For all the reasons you might think and agree with—it’s too complicated. Individuals don’t need all those features. People prefer storing their images locally for speed reasons.

But after seeing Clifford’s 1995 example I have to challenge you and myself on these – how many of these are legitimate roadblocks, and how many are glowing opportunities waiting to be solved by the next Bill Gates?

I’d be willing to be bet that the 2025 version of us will kick ourselves for not acting on these ideas sooner.

What is the best digital asset management product?

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 by Jake Athey

What is the best digital asset management product? That’s a good question… and a common question among those beginning to research digital asset management technologies and vendors. The purpose of this post to help those understand how to decide what is the best digital asset management product for you.

Organizations of all shapes and sizes are adopting digital asset management systems and practices to improve efficiency, brand consistency, accountability, intelligence and effectiveness. When asked, “what kinds of companies need digital asset management?” my response is typically any company that has sophisticated enough creative or marketing operations that they’re creating significant amounts of digital content – images, videos, brochures, etc. – that need to be used and repurposed. That digital content is to be centrally managed and readily available for multiple users to access the content they are supposed to. DAM is particularly valuable to organization’s that have distributed user networks and workers who require remote, self-serve access to a central library of digital assets. There is no exact right or wrong answer to know if a company needs DAM. The size and scale of a DAM implementation varies. When the “traditional” methods of using the shared drive, email attachments, and FTP site start to bring reoccurring pain, then DAM might be something worth considering.

Organizations that are finding success in adopting DAM software solutions include the following vertical markets: manufacturing, retail, marketing & advertising agencies, media, entertainment, publishing, sports, colleges & universities, healthcare, insurance, financial services, non-profit organizations, hospitality, food service, government, engineering, construction, hi-tech.

When asked “What is the best digital asset management product?” … There really is no right answer. It varies. The digital asset management analyst community will tell you the same thing. The best DAM solution really depends on you and your company. It depends on what kind of company you are and what your functional goals are. The size of your company or industry you’re in may matter (or may not). The size of your digital asset library may matter (or may not). The types of assets you predominantly need to manage may play a part. The quantity of users and their location (internal or external) may make a difference.

The digital asset management analyst community will tell you to consider the types of solutions vendors offer to fit different use cases. It is important to understand the business scenarios that fit each vendor’s product strategy to find the best digital asset management product for your particular circumstances. The DAM analyst community has helped those looking for DAM solutions by rating vendors according to common scenarios useful for understanding which types of products tend to work better according to the type of projects. These use case scenarios can be divided into three buckets to include: (1) Image Management, Brand Management and Marketing Operations – segmented further by Digital Asset Library, Photo Archive, Brand Management, Marketing Collateral Production and Distribution, and Ad Production services; (2) Publishing – segmented further by Periodicals Production & Distribution, Multi-Channel Publishing, Catalog Publishing, Rights-Managed Content Syndication and Distribution services; (3) Video Production – segmented further by E-Learning, Video Review and Approval, Short Form Video Production, and Broadcast Video Production services.

Other things to consider when looking for a digital asset management vendor (in no particular order) include:

How long has the vendor been around? … How long have they been offering DAM? … How much of their focus is on DAM? … Is DAM a core part of their business or just a side activity? … How many DAM clients do they have? … How many DAM clients have they lost? … Do they have experience in your industry? … Do they offer complementary services? … Where does their experience come from? … How stable is the company? … Have they been bought or sold? … Is their DAM offering home grown or purchased from someone else? … How sophisticated is it? … Is it evolving as the marketplace changes? … What does their product roadmap look like? … Do they have one? … How often do they come out with new upgrades and innovations? … Who installs them? … Do they have a technical services team? … Do they have a help desk? … What are their hours? … How do you reach them? … Who handles the implementation? … Do they offer training? … Do they perform integrations? How? … What information technology resources will be required internally? … What is the cost to deploy? … What is the cost to maintain? How do you achieve an ROI? … What are the extra costs? … What are their security practices? … How can they ensure my assets are safe? … Is it customizable? … How much customization is required to make it work? … Is it scalable to grow with my business?

These are just a small set of the many questions to ask when looking for the best digital asset management product for your organization.

Leave a comment if you have other advice for those looking at DAM for the first time or share your experiences.

How many videos do I need for a marketing campaign?

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Al Falaschi

A friend who works in Marketing was starting to use video as a tool. She called me up to ask me about video asset management software, and also "how many video's" she should have. There's no hard and fast rule on how many you need. Content is king. If it's not good or does not benefit the viewer in some way, it doesn't make a difference if you have 1000 videos. One, really good video, that is watched a lot can be a very effective tool in a marketing campaign. If you start with a number in your head of how many videos you "need," you will start making up garbage to fill that number. Remember when you had to write a 20 page book report in high school. Eight pages of it was good, and the rest was fluff and filler. Same deal!

You are using online video publishing as one tool in a mix of other tools to run a marketing campaign. It is another way to present information, evoke emotion, serve as a call to action, and entertain. Actually, entertainment is one of, if not the most important parts.

Pretend there is a slider between Education and Entertainment:

Education: --|---------------:Entertainment

More towards the eductaion side is very informative

Education: ---------------|--:Entertainment

More towards the entertainment side is not as informative, but keeps more viewers in for its entertainment/emotional value.

There is no rule as to where you should sit on this, but IMHO, it is better to lean more on entertainment, less on information, and do more videos to get out all of your information.

Great example are the Blendtec videos on Youtube.

All you need to do is watch and you will get what I mean. They are about 99% entertainment, and 1% information... but they have very effectively pounded home the message that they can mess stuff up in a hurry.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec

BTW: I highly recomend watching the Chuck Norris one.

And of course, the more videos you produce, the more video asset management systems can help you organize and distribute your content.

Happy Birthday Photoshop!

Friday, February 12, 2010 by Mark Pajari

They grow up so fast, don't they?

Adobe Photoshop turns 20 years old this month. It seems like only yesterday that little 6 year-old Photoshop 4.0 discovered nondestructive image editing with Layers. Or when he was 8 years old and impressed you with his multiple undo History Palette. But at the same time you wanted to send him to bed without dinner for the horrible way he mismanaged color in 1998. We all watched as Photoshop went from the pimply pre-teen years of 6.0 to when he began developing facial hair with CS2's Bridge and Smart Objects. And now he's off in college... sniff...

Ah, memories. I recall the first time I played with Photoshop. I was a young kid with a dream. Well, okay, I was a 20-something working on a Scitex Prisma workstation. Scitex was what all the cool imaging people were working on in 1990. Then along came this program called Photoshop 1.0 from Adobe. Some of my coworkers at Quad Graphics knew it as a funny program with the creepy bitmapped eyeball icon running on that little beige box called the Macintosh over in the corner. Back then it was not so much of a photo editor as it was a paint program with a few image correction and optimization capabilities.

By 1993 I was weened off the Scitex system, and had my own speedy Quadra 950 running Photoshop 2.0. Back then, Photoshop was no replacement for a high-end CEPS system. The Mac, running at a speedy 33MHz, was dreadfully slow (by today's standards), RAM was very limited and expensive, and the tools in Photoshop did not compare to a $200,000 workstation like the Scitex Prismax. What a difference 17 years makes.

Today, with Photoshop 11 (CS4), Adobe has created a something that has transcended proper grammar, as the noun "Photoshop" has morphed into a verb in many circles. The phrase "We can photoshop that out." is as popular as "Please hand me a kleenex." or, "Can you make me a xerox?".

Did the Knoll brothers ever imagine what would become of Barneyscan XP (Photoshop 0.87) back in 1988? I don't think it's making too much of a leap to say that Orville and Wilbur Wright are to air travel, what Thomas and John Knoll are to digital imaging. Okay, I'll give Russell Brown some props as well.

The Photoshop 1.0 Splash screen with the spooky eyeball logo.

Photoshop evolved into the tool it is today because the digital imaging and desktop publishing markets around it flourished at the same time. First it was low-cost desktop scanners, then digital photography. This digital revolution helped define what Photoshop has become today.

It is impossible to imagine any image you see in a magazine, newspaper, catalog, billboard or a website that hasn't been touched by Photoshop. Sure, you can do a lot of color correction and image enhancement in RAW processors like Apple Aperture or Adobe Lightroom, but for full feature image editing, Photoshop what you need.

Over the years, there were many programs that came and went that were supposed to kill Photoshop, or at least compete with it. There was software like Live Picture (anyone remember FITS files?), and in 1995 Quark announced plans for Xposure, the Photoshop killer that never made it to market.

When I was in art school in 1984 (yikes!) I can recall my instructors trying to put aside our fears by saying the computer would only be another tool for an artist to use. They used to say things like, "You could take a computer programmer and ask them to create art on a computer and they couldn't do it. But train an artist how to use a computer, and it becomes another tool in their arsenal.".

Who could forget this little bit of photo retouching from 1994? Time Inc. turned OJ's mug shot into an illustration with a little help from Photoshop. See more of these famous manipulated photos here.

Over the last 20 years, Photoshop has become that indispensable, omnipresent tool for every artist. In the right hands, amazing, original works of art can be created. In journalist or marketing hands, it can even be used to slant the news or make the unreal seem real to support an accompanying story. See the OJ photos above. It can do something simple like subdue a red cast from your child's face. Or clone the barf stains off the carpet from the 20 year old Photoshop's all night kegger at the fraternity last night.

Here's to another 20 years. There is still so much for that Photoshop kid to learn...

The Apple iPad Changes the Publishing Landscape

Monday, February 1, 2010 by Mark Pajari

The worst-kept secret in consumer electronics history was finally made public last week as Apple introduced us to the iPad. Yeah, it's a funny name, but the iPod sounded a bit strange back in 2001 too. Now that name is woven into the fabric of our technological lives.

And just like the iPod changed the way that many of us listen to music over the last decade, the iPad will change the way many of us read books, newspapers, magazines and maybe even catalogs in the decade to come.

As I covered in the blog I wrote last July called, Pulp Fiction: Is Print Dead? the e-reader concept is absolutely in our future. Amazon's Kindle was not really the first e-reader to the market. E-readers were introduced about ten years ago, but the timing wasn't right for a number of reasons. So they never took off. Speaking about the Apple iBooks application during his speech, Steve Jobs showed a photo of the Kindle and said, "Were going to stand on [Amazon's] shoulders and go a bit further here."

Apple didn't invent the personal computer, they just made it a lot better with the Macintosh. Apple didn't invent the cell phone, they just made it better and a whole lot more useful with the iPhone. And the iPad will do the same thing with e-readers.

I believe the introduction of the iPad is on scale with the introduction of color in magazines and catalogs. Back in the 60's and 70's, the body of most magazines were in black and white. Most newspapers did not use much color in their production. The desktop publishing and digital prepress revolution of the 1980's made color in publications as common as sequins and feathers on Lady GaGa. And the brilliant, colorful display of the iPad will make dull black and white readers like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader show up on eBay faster than you can say "16 shades of gray."

It is not a stretch to imagine that in the not-too-distant future, the heavy backpacks filled with textbooks that our kids tote around will become as odd-looking as a CRT monitor. Five of the worlds biggest book publishers are already online, and as Jobs put it, "We're going to open up the floodgates for the rest of the publishers in the world, starting this afternoon... We're very excited about this."

I'll tell you some that aren't very excited about this... Book printers. Book binders. Magazine printers. Barnes and Noble. Borders. Look at the music industry. Certainly there are many people that still purchase CDs and DVDs. But lots of record stores that were around in 1990, are no longer in business because so many people download their music from sites like iTunes. When was the last time you walked into a Musicland or Sam Goody's? Traditional paper back and hard-cover books, textbooks, and glossy magazines will have a market for some time to come. But each year more people feel right at home downloading electrons in front of a glowing screen instead of buying atoms at a brick and mortar store. Perhaps because they literally are right at home.

Of course let's not forget that this device is not just for reading. It is a true multimedia player (albeit without support for Flash right now)... It's a web browser, a photo viewer, an email device, a video player, a gaming device, a music player, a calendar, an art canvas, and a lot of other things not yet realized. The iPhone has over 140,000 apps available to download. And it's only been about a year and a half since the SDK release. Expect lots of apps created specifically to take advantage of the iPad.

But it's the iPad as an e-reader that is perhaps most important from the standpoint of changing cultural habits. When was the last time you touched a photo in a book and something amazing happened? Like a digital equivalent of a pop-up book. Or imagine this... You receive a digital catalog in your inbox, and as you flip through the glowing pages and touch a photo of a model wearing a jacket, a window opens and a video begins playing with the model wearing that jacket in some cool location. A voice-over describes the jacket's details as music plays in the background. It's a mini infomercial that came to life on the pages of a digital catalog. I can't decide if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

Digital Marketing Shift – Part 1: More Cost-Effective Marketing Strategies Come With Digital Asset Management

Tuesday, January 26, 2010 by Jake Athey

Marketers have been shifting budgets and focus to Digital Marketing strategies for quite some time in order to be “multi-channel” and leverage the power of digital media, online and other interactive channels. These strategies allow brand owners to be more efficient in reaching their target audiences with their message. Leveraging new ways to push messages, publish content and interact with customers is the easy part because the ROI is clearer. However, marketers should not overlook the methods and technologies that assist in creating, managing and distributing the “assets” that power digital marketing strategies. Although managing digital assets is not seen as the “sexy” side of marketing, it is a critical component to increasing efficiency with operations, ensuring consistency in presenting a brand to the marketplace, and maximizing the return on marketing investments.

As marketers leverage more cost-effective means of reaching their audiences, they should also adopt more cost-effective means of managing their digital media with Digital Asset Management solutions.

An Integrated Approach to Marketing

There’s a lot of evidence to show that digital marketing is more targeted, more impactful, and better tied to other vehicles and channels. More appealing to marketing executives is the opportunity that digital marketing brings with reporting, tracking and accountability. While many marketers are not entirely doing away with traditional marketing and advertising programs (TV, print, direct mail, etc.), they have shifted more focus on an integrated approach. Digital marketing helps marketers better engage customers to complement more traditional approaches targeting the masses. Digital marketing is often more cost effective, builds awareness quickly, fosters relationships and is measurable in ways traditional advertising just can’t match.

As companies make moves in the way they deliver their message and connect with customers to be more cost-effective, they should also make moves in the way they manage the content of their brand. The solution to being more cost-effective with how to manage that content is better known as digital asset management (DAM).

What DAM Provides to Digital Media and Brand Assets:

Greater ability to organize and find approved and available assets
Greater ability to share and repurpose assets across multiple channels
Greater ability to ensure compliance and consistency with approved assets

Driving Brand Awareness with DAM

Marketers seek to improve brand awareness by being in more places in front of more faces. However, if the brand does not appear consistent from one customer touch point to the next, than that is more damaging to the brand than not being there at all. DAM helps marketers repurpose digital media across multiple channels and do so consistently with assets meeting the quality standards for each channel. For example, image assets were historically developed with the specific channel in mind i.e. print catalog. Now, image assets are developed for multiple channels--print catalog, brochure, store signage, website, email marketing, online video and other social/interactive media.

What Drives DAM Adoption? (From the 2009 Aberdeen Benchmark Study)

Improved Operational Efficiency – streamlined digital supply chains
Improved Brand Consistency – approved brand assets used in multiple channels – as opposed to communications coming from disconnected departments
Improved Return on Marketing Investments (ROMI) – greater opportunity to find and reuse or repurpose existing assets and reduce re-work or costs of re-creating lost assets

Now that we’ve covered the core reasons why marketers should leverage digital asset management technologies to improve marketing efficiency and effectiveness, I’ll cover why SaaS is the most cost-effective delivery model for marketers to deploy digital asset management solutions next.

Download Whitepaper: Why DAM Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010

Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010

Monday, January 25, 2010 by Jake Athey

Why DAM Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010

The last several years have seen a dramatic shift from traditional media to digital media such as online marketing and social media. The move to digital media has led to an exponential growth in digital marketing content, which has in turn created bottlenecks and inefficiencies in managing this content and difficulties in measuring the performance of campaigns and in maintaining a consistent brand image.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) technology can overcome these problems by automating the process of ingesting, archiving, searching, managing, repurposing, sharing and publishing content in a seamless and collaborative environment. DAM adopters achieve substantial return on investment including reducing time to market, improving the performance of marketing campaigns, reducing marketing costs and improving brand consistency. This article will examine in detail how DAM can rapidly generate ROI by improving the performance of digital marketing efforts.

In order to give power to your marketing programs in 2010 and be more efficient in doing so, Digital Asset Management should be your first technology investment.

Widen has released a new whitepaper that addresses 5 key benefits that DAM provides to marketing operations, including:

Generate additional revenues by reducing time to market
Reduce costs of finding assets
Reduce costs of distributing assets
Save money on physical samples
Improve brand consistency

This whitepaper is an interactive PDF containing videos of customer interview segments from InSinkErator, Brady Worldwide, Knaack and Sub-Zero and Wolf.

Download: Why Digital Asset Management Should Be Your First Technology Investment for 2010.

What's the next big video format?

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by Al Falaschi

A coworker recently asked me: "What is the next big format that will hit after 1080p? I'm curious what is on the horizon."

There are a number of ways to answer that question. In terms of factual numbers, 1080p is a "resolution." The next logical larger sizes are 2K and 4K. But those exist already... so the answer switches from fact-based, to opinion-based.

I am a video tweak head, so I am always interested in the next video format that can squeeze in one more pixel of resolution. But I realize that I am in the minority, at least as far as a business case goes for an entire industry to adopt a format. Moving from standard definition video to HD (specifically 1080p) was a no brainer. There are clearly visable advantages in clarity and overall viewing experience. But if you look at what is next in terms of higher resolution, we run into a wall.

The wall is the ability for the human eye to see the detail that the device is displaying. Here is an interesting article on the science behind what the human eye can see. It basically says that there is almost no visable difference even between 720p and 1080p when watching a 50" screen from 8 feet away, which is the average viewing distance in the average home. Therefore, in order to need more detail than what 1080p can provide, you would either need to sit closer than 8 feet, or need a screen larger than 100". Video is mostly consumed on a TV, or online. As far as online video publishing is concerned, most online video is downres'd from 1080. So higher res will not get a push from online video management either.

My coworker also asked what the next "big" format would be. If you define "big" as something that will change the entire industry, including aquisition, editing, display, and broadcasting, I don't think 2K or 4K will be the next "big" format. There isn't enough of an advantage for large groups of consumers to make a switch.

I really think that the next "big" format change will be something regarding 3D. Something that does not require wearing nerdy glasses. We will also have to keep a close watch to see how it affects digital asset managment tools.

The Popularity of Video in Digital Asset Management

Thursday, December 10, 2009 by Al Falaschi

The growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.

More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). (Remember an earlier post, Gartner Predicts 25 Percent of Content in the Workforce to be Images, Audio or Video by 2013.) Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve.

Director of research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Dr. BJ Fogg, writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, it requires a “behavior change.” Fogg’s behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to occur – a trigger, ability and a motivation. Motivation is strictly tied to “sensation.” Inherently, video combines the use of more human senses than most other traditional sales and marketing tools. Read more about the reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

How does that impact Digital Asset Management? Video is a digital asset. As its popularity grows, enterprises will struggle to manage the creation, storage, and distribution of it. Video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. Version control is nearly impossible since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content. Beyond that, an increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs struggle with.

We can learn a lot just by looking at trends within Widen’s own organization and DAM software customer base. There are notable increases in not only the number of video assets being added to our DAM systems, but also in the rate of videos added per year. Due to the raw size of high resolution video, the percentage of the overall file size of our DAM taken up by video has grown extensively. Again, the rate of growth per year is also increasing as we choose to use video more and more for marketing, sales and customer service purposes.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are dramatic increases in the coverage of video as a topic in many of our sales calls, and in RFPs that we receive. There are a number of factors that are causing these increases. One is the growing popularity of video. Again, this is well documented. In addition, there is the entire social movement. For video, this requires organizations to not only produce video content, but to make it accessible and publish it to as many online video channels as possible.

An often unnoticed factor is the shift in video camcorder technology from “tape” to “tapeless.” Tape has been a crutch for video storage and backup for… well, for forever. With the new tapeless camcorders recording very high resolution files resulting in very large file sizes with no tape to put them on, suddenly, organizations are faced with storing, securing, backing up, and distributing files that are ten times the size of the files they are familiar with managing. And remember, it is GROWING!

Bottom line, the increasing demand for video will place demands on DAM software and digital asset hosting providers to make sure that video is handled seamlessly alongside all other assets.

Stats on video usage from VideoBloom's VIEW Index (Video-Enabled Web Index):
100 Web Sites Surveyed

In August of 2009, the VIEW main index for the 100 surveyed companies was 30-75-25, which indicates that 30% of the companies had video on their home page, 75% had video on their site, and 25% didn't use any video on their Web site.

41% of the 100 surveyed companies have placed their Web videos 1 click away from the home page.
25% of the surveyed companies have placed their Web videos deep into their Web sites, 3 clicks or more away from the home page.
25% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video.
32% offer a full-fledged "video center" comparable to a corporate TV channel.
21% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
12% display video ads for products on their site; 7% display video ads on their home page.
36% offer full-screen video option.
4% have video on auto-play (i.e. video starts as soon as the user lands on the page).
11% open video in a new browser Web page.
18% use a pop-up window to display video.

Video uses: 48% of the surveyed web sites use video for promotional purposes, 24% use it for informational purposes, 20% use it for demonstrative purposes, 6% use it to deliver news, 5% use it for entertainment purposes, 1% use it for other purposes and 0% use it for UGC (user generated content). (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because many sites use online video for several different purposes.)

Video formats: 61% use Flash video, 21% use Windows Media Player, 8% use QuickTime and 4% use Real Player. (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because some websites use more than one video format.)

The reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by Al Falaschi

In light of a recent post that zappos.com reported a 6 to 30% increase in sales on items that are accompanied by a video, I wanted to talk about “why” that is. There are a number of research reports on the rise in popularity of online video publishing use within the enterprise. Aside from the obvious answer of “increased sales,” the question of “why” is not so easy to answer. That is probably because we first need to definine "how" it works.

I have been reading the research of Dr. BJ Fogg lately. He directs research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab. He writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, requires a “behavior change.” His behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to happen.

There needs to be a “trigger” (cue, prompt, call to action, request, etc.), the consumer must have the “ability” (financially, access, simplicity of UI, etc.), and they have to have “motivation.”

One of his key concepts within motivation is “sensation.” Video, by default, combines the use of more human senses than other tools used in traditional sales and marketing scenarios. The more senses you, as a marketer, can stimulate in your audience, the more emotion and sensation you can evoke, aiding in motivating your customers.

IMHO, I also feel that a video evoking emotion or motivation in a potential customer could also serve as the trigger. Two for one. That should help your ROI if you are looking at adding online video to your marketing efforts and needing a video asset management system.

Of course, as more businesses realize the power of video in their marketing campaigns…those videos will need to be managed in a Digital Asset Management system. Have you ever heard of Widen? ;)

Widen Premedia Services Video Case Study – Part II: Digital Sampling and Color Retouching

Monday, December 7, 2009 by Jake Athey

Intro

Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

To get up to speed with the photo shoot and Widen photography workflow management capabilities, check out Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.

Color Production
The image work for the project was done by the Widen Color Production department, which consists of six master graphic artists. They are the ones that go in and clean-up the files… They take the camera raw data and optimize it for the best environment for lighting of the flesh tones, hair color, garment color, detail and sharpness, etc. Widen’s color retouching experts have a knack for understanding the customer expectations, which was very simple and natural for them given the jobs they work on every day.

Digital Sampling
The Digital Sampling department is the group that applies the graphics to the garments shot on the models and mannequins. The color operators take artwork from Illustrator and merge them onto the actual photograph in Photoshop. There challenge and expertise is to make sure the graphics follow the contours, shapes, highlights, shadows and wrinkles in the garments as they apply logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client's technical specs.

Many people don't realize what a huge production process there is that goes on behind the scenes to get garments sent to Widen, put on models, styled, shot correctly, color-optimized, digital-sampled, posted to a database and eventually marketed on a website or print catalog, signage, etc.

Color Management
Consumers only spend a few seconds shopping for garments online, so it’s critical that what they see on the screen is what they’ll get in real life. We don’t use our eyes to confirm what we “think” we like on a screen, we use technical data that comes from a strong color management umbrella over the top of everything we do in production. From our cameras to our proofing devices, everything is color managed for the desired output – website or printed material.

In the end, Widen created approximately 500 images, which are upload to their digital asset library also hosted by Widen. From there, the images are ordered for placement on any number of websites. Posting images via embed links will help to ensure the most current images are used across all web domains.

The Widen Advantage caters to the life cycle of a digital asset by offering all of the production, management and distribution services under one roof. The blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management solutions working together help clients in a number of ways, including:

Cost Savings - Increases efficiency in creative/production cycles plus centralization of re-usable assets minimizes efforts re-inventing every process of the creation-production-distribution value chain.

Faster Time to Revenue - Shortens time to market and increases effectiveness of marketing execution by empowering sales channels with on-demand access to use brand-approved digital assets.

Competitive Advantage - Improves brand consistency with quality representation of products and ensures compliance across targeted, multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Better Planning and Strategy - Tracking of usage patterns including reuse and repurposing of assets allows for more effective budgeting, resource allocation and planning of future marketing campaigns.

Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part I - Photography Workflow Management.

Widen Premedia Services Video Case Study – Part I: Photography Workflow Management

Monday, December 7, 2009 by Jake Athey

Watch the interview with Brian Becker, VP of Client Development for Widen Enterprises, as he talks about the prepress production processes performed for a large apparel marketer. Part I focuses on Widen's digital photography and photography workflow management capabilities in the life cycle of a digital asset.

Intro
Widen recently helped a large apparel company improve quality and streamline creative production processes by utilizing a blend of Widen premedia services and digital asset management technologies. Widen helped the client make the move from showcasing garments currently shot on mannequins to garments shot on live models for a new women's sports licensed apparel campaign. In meeting the goal of going live inside 30 days, Widen created over 500 images with 20-25% of their shots featuring garments on live models versus mannequins.

This is a case of having a DAM customer, in which Widen provides the technology and service to manage thousands of images, take advantage of Widen’s expertise in premedia services to create their digital assets for this particular campaign.

Models and Apparel – Connecting one DAM Customer with another DAM Customer
Since this apparel customer wanted to use live models for the photo shoot at Widen, we were able to help because we have another DAM software customer that is a model and talent agency. In essence, we were able to connect one DAM client with another DAM client to complete the photo shoot. To get started, the apparel company was able to browse model shots by viewing assets from the Rock Agency online image management system and select the talent for the shoot.

Digital Photography, Review and Approval
When it came time for the shoot in Widen's photo studio, we brought in the models, photographer, and did all the make-up and styling so that we could capture a single garment before it was off to our digital sampling and color retouching departments to create all of the products and get them ready for the customer’s campaign. (Learn more about Widen digital sampling and color retouching services in Part II.)

Leveraging Widen's online photo approval application, Widen could post the best shots for client approval before the models had even left the studio. Widen’s photo approval system allowed for same-day sign-off by the client who was over a thousand miles away.

Color Retouching, Image Management and Distribution
Once the preferred shots were selected, Widen’s Digital Sampling department created the other variations of the garments by applying logos, team names, numbers and names, etc. supplied in the client’s technical specs with Illustrator files. Widen's Color Retouching department also created the one-of-a-kind pieces by taking a photo of the garment on the mannequin and applying color retouching techniques to create quality digital apparel samples optimized for e-commerce websites. All of the final images were organized and managed in Widen’s online photo asset management system where the client could select the best shots for executing the campaign.

The end result helped the client achieve superior image quality and color consistency for the product images on the web to best represent the real-life garment.

Check out the Widen Premedia Workflow Study Part II - Digital Sampling and Color Retouching.

The 2009 PIA Color Management Conference

Tuesday, November 24, 2009 by Mark Pajari

Desert Training

While reading an on-line forum recently, I ran across an interesting quote that somebody had placed on the bottom of their post. It went something like this, "It is better to train people and risk they leave - than to do nothing and risk they stay."

In the spirit of that quote, I thought I'd devote a few words to one of the best investments in training that any company with a color critical workflow can make. Whatever corner of the industry you call home - printing, prepress or premedia services, photography, graphic design, color retouching, packaging, brand management... If it involves the need for accurate color reproduction then you should consider a presence at the upcoming PIA Color Management Conference.

To be held again at the beautiful Hilton Tapatio Cliffs Resort overlooking the sparkling desert city of Phoenix, The 11th annual PIA Color Management Conference runs from December 6th through the 8th, with a special pre conference program on Saturday the 5th. Each year the advisory board, working with the PIA (Printing Industries of America), assembles some of the top speakers in the industry that address all aspects of color reproduction and color management. Among the many excellent speakers scheduled to present this year are Steve Upton president of Chromix, Don Hutcheson from HutchColor LLC, Dave Hunter, president of Pilot Marketing, Steve Smiley from Vertis, Dr. Abhay Sharma from Ryerson University, and Kelly McCathran from Adobe Systems.

The conference this year includes almost 60 sessions and hands-on labs. Among them...

Color Meets the Frontier of Electronic Paper
Dr. William Ray with NthDegree Technologies Worldwide, discusses how color management is applied in the developing field of Printed Illuminated Paper which lights up and creates the illusion of motion. He has created a unique color model for emissive color that draws on both RGB and CMYK.

How to Compete in the Global Marketplace with Monitor/Softproofing
This session covers how adopting soft proofing will help you save money on materials, labor, time and transit costs. This session will give examples of companies that made the switch from contract proofs to soft proofs and saved themselves and their customers money.

Real World RAW from Large Format to Digital SLRs
Steven Johnson, world renown photographer and last year’s excellent keynote presenter takes a look at where we are in color management and where the technology is going as it relates to the uninterrupted stream of data in RAW workflows.

RGB Working Spaces
Don Hutcheson discusses the difference between RGB working spaces and how to choose the correct space for Web, publication, fine art photography, RAW export, image archives, etc. He will talk about the benefits to wide-gamut spaces, and if there is one perfect RGB space for all work.

The program this year also includes two great keynote sessions...

Delivering the Color for Broadway
Representatives from King Displays, a Manhattan printing company, will discuss how they produce 90 percent of all the signs and displays for the Broadway theater market. Everything they produce is color critical and they will show how they meet the needs of a distinct clientele with demanding color needs and quick turnaround times.

Forecasting the Right Colors
James Martin, the president of the Color Marketing Group, will discuss how his group of color designers comes together each year to collaborate and then interpret their shared information into salable colors that will ultimately make up the color directions for all industries, manufactured products, and services.

I can speak from experience that this valuable, one-of-a-kind conference is very much worth attending. Color management technology is still in a state of evolution. Whether you live in the world of print or the Internet, every year new products, best practices and procedures are developed that benefit everyone involved in the exchange of color. See the PIA Color Management website for more information.

Follow my tweets and updates from the conference December 5-8 on twitter @widenpremedia.

Mark

Why Now is the Right Time to Implement Digital Asset Management Programs

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 by Jake Athey

There are a lot of companies that will say “now is the time to gear up for the new year so that you can hit the ground running,” but this customer video compilation goes to show why top marketers implemented Widen digital asset management programs to improve their marketing operations. See why these marketers have made the investment in Widen’s hosted DAM software to create efficiencies, improve productivity, and increase brand consistency throughout their marketing channels.

Are you wasting precious time and resources managing and fulfilling requests for brand assets?
Are you looking for ways to improve marketing efficiency, effectiveness and agility?
Are you seeking fool-proof ways to achieve brand consistency across all customer touch points?
Do you want to empower sales channels to be more effective?

In the first segment, Jim Magruder, Senior Marketing Communications Manager at InSinkErator, talks about their growing problem managing and distributing brand assets. He explains what a problem it was to regularly get calls from customers, sales reps, ad agencies and PR firms needing digital assets and there was no easy way to provide them what they needed in a timely matter. Sound familiar? He knew they needed a more efficient digital media asset management system so he wouldn’t lose precious time having to duplicate the same process over and over again fielding requests such as “I need an image and I don’t know what format I need.” Each time, he would have to stop what he’s doing to find the asset, convert it, ship it, etc. Widen DAM asset management services changed all that and removed the burden of having to manage and distribute assets “the old way.”

In the second segment, Jim Scarlata, Senior Marketing Operations Manager for Knaack LLC, explains that there was one gatekeeper to their digital asset library and there was no easy way to achieve brand consistency across all marketing channels, ensure the most current brand assets were always available (and used), and make assets easily available to all channel partners. With Widen’s help, Knaack has a single online location for all of the most current digital content to be globally available to any approved user.

In the third segment, John Wernecke, Global Marketing Manager (Former Public Relations Manager), Motorola Mobile Devices talks about the ease of use when it comes to digital assets management with the help of Widen. The Widen Media Collective provides Motorola with enterprise-wide ability to share and collaborate interactively 24 hours a day, which has allowed marketing and creative groups to come together at a central location that is always accurate and working.

In the fourth segment, Michele Bedard, Vice President of Marketing, Sub-Zero, Inc. and Wolf Appliance, Inc., explains how Sub-Zero and Wolf is all about the brand and making sure customers have a consistent brand experience across all touch points. The Widen online digital asset management tools provide the people in the field with access to the most current assets so Sub-Zero and Wolf brands look the same from whatever source anyone would see it.

In the fifth and final segment, Michele Kowalkowski, Catalog Manager North America, Brady Worldwide, Inc., talks about how the Widen corporate image library empowers sales people to carry out their jobs and supports relationships with their distributor networks. Without always having to be reliant on the marketing team, they have a digital asset library they can trust to be accessible when they need assets and get them instantly in the format needed to complete their project.

To get more takes from the pros, watch more Widen Customer Interviews.

Rebranding Your Company

Monday, November 9, 2009 by Jake Athey

The branding article in the September / October IPA Bulletin titled "Rebranding Your Company" by Nancy Lowther features an interview with Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering.

Recognized for its comprehensive coverage of issues and challenges facing graphic solutions providers, the bimonthly IPA Bulletin magazine features in-depth articles on technical innovations, standards, and business development in graphic communications.

Go straight to the article: Rebranding Your Company.

Here's a summary of the main points in the business branding article:

Branding is the most valuable and fragile asset to an organization.

Brands have two sides – an external and an internal. Externally, it is the perception of the products or services delivered to the marketplace. Internally, it’s a personality... a set of defining characteristics to which a company aligns.

How is Widen an example of a company re-branded? Like other traditional prepress services companies and printing companies offering prepress services have done, Widen has evolved and diversified into areas to include digital media management, digital content management, photography and premedia services. However, this goes beyond “re-branding” but also includes a company reinventing itself.

Why do companies rebrand? Companies look to rebrand if and when they say yes to any of the following questions:

Is your revenue declining?
Has your revenue been the same year after year?
Have you lost customers?
Are you losing key employees?
Have you lost market share due to market changes and trends?

Companies must face the rebranding question to answer this one: "If we continue to do what we’ve always done, will we still be in business 10 years from now?”

How do companies rebrand? Branding goes along with a company’s Vision, Goals & Objectives and Strategies.

A Vision is how you see your ideal future. Without a vision, you may not recognize opportunities that can get you to that ideal future. Things to consider include: the perspectives from key leaders and possible roadblocks, market demand and competition. You have to interpret the unarticulated demand of the market to recognize an opportunity. Brand building involves connecting at an emotional level and establishing trust to build brand equity. Brand positioning defines where you place your products/services relative to your competition and where you place in the minds of your customers. A Vision for your brand is achieved by learning what your customers need and want to be successful.

Objectives and goals are what shapes your vision. Every employee must know what an organization’s goals and objectives are. Objectives and goals are shapes by an organization’s major strengths (core competencies) and how they can be built upon. You must not forget to look for deviations from what it is and what it should be. Goals and objectives can also be developed by categorizing products and services according to a lifecycle state—startup, growth, mature, declining, etc. Other factors in formulating goals and objectives include a gap analysis of the market, products, services, customers, employees, finances and technology.

Strategies are the action steps on how to achieve your objectives. There will be one or more actions for every objective. Marketing actions are included for most objectives. Marketing uses this information to create a marketing plan. However, this is not owned by just the marketing department. Business and technology strategies must be aligned and every employee and manager must know how to implement them.

“Marketing Your Brand” - With an abundance of marketing and customer touch points and channels, brand consistency is a major concern for organizations of all shapes and sizes. Centralization of branded content and brand asset management is critical to making sure your audience hears and sees a consistent message. Your branded content involves everything from your stationery and business cards to brochures, website, packaging, signage, trucks, how you present yourself at a dinner meeting, how the company phone is answered and how the front lobby looks. As the old saying goes: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.”

Read the full article in the IPA Bulletin: Rebranding Your Company

Are Canon’s Colors Mushy and Nikons Not? by Matt Anderson, Premedia Guru

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 by Matt Anderson

Mushy Colors or Not?

By Matt Anderson, Landscape Photographer & Premedia Guru
Image Specs: Canon 5DMII 70-200mm f/4 L IS at 165mm ISO 50 3.2 Seconds

Pewitt's Nest Baraboo Wisconsin by Matt Anderson Scenic Landscape Photography

I think there is a bit of a brand misconception that has brewed for years. I’m not here to say one is less mushy than the other. I think the proof is in the pudding. Even more so, I dare say a global statement like “Nikon’s colors are this or Canon’s colors are that” is a bit ... ah, um, well, ignorant. How can you summarize a whole brand of various product and technology in one quick categorization? That’s like saying “all GM cars are slow gas guzzlers” or “everyone from California is a pretty movie star.”

In my humble opinion, the mushiness stems from lack of skill from camera to output. Sure Canon or Nikon might have weakend the CFA for better transmissiveness. A less dense CFA means possibly having less separation between hue and less defined chroma details. If you have ever worked in prepress or premedia, most of the time you don’t have the luxury of controlling the capture stage. All too often you’re handed a digital file that has suffered from bad decision making from the start. No matter. Get this file into the hands of a skilled color production artist and stand back! Like the Army, a savvy color correction specialist knows how to let the file “be all it can be.” Gazillions of tricks have been created to solve every image problem possible. This is the part where I typically insert before and after images of various wars and miracles I have courageously battled thru. Well, not today mister. No Sir, Today I’m going to give you a RAW file you can do your own R&D with. Today I let you, this here blog reader, download one of my precious RAW files to examine for yourself. (Just don't take credit for the shot and distribute it please!) Today you can process the file however you deem appropriate and make your own assessment(s).

Does Canon have mushy colors?

I would recommend you process the file in DPP, Canon’s proprietary RAW processor. In doing so, you will have honored all the integrity of the file and the decisions I made at capture time. Yes I know, not everyone has DPP, unless you bought a camera from Canon, you won’t have access. That’s why I also am providing you a full res JPEG to boot! A JPEG that has been exported from DPP with all the nifty decisions I made. (Hopefully I didn’t select the mushy color button!) And, just so you know, I also shoot with a Nikon D3, D300, D200, and medium format. I’m no fan boy. My loyalty is not to some camera making company. So for those of you who want to dig and find out, “Does Canon have mushy colors”, feel free to download the zip file located at the end of this rambling, and make your own assessment. Good-day-mate!

Download: Zip file containing the RAW Canon 5D Mark II Image and Jpeg Exported from DPP

Keywords: Photography, Color Manipulation, Correction, Retouch, RAW, Processing, Digital Image Management, Image Distribution, Canon, Nikon, Digital, Photo, Professional

Video Asset Management In High Demand As Viewership Climbs and Marketers Use More Online Video

Monday, November 2, 2009 by Jake Athey

Widen is seeing increased interest in Video Asset Management solutions to store, manage, access and deliver digital video for online video marketing purposes.

As Sean Callahan recently reported in the Marketers Make Move to Online Video article in BtoB’s Best 2009 special issue for Marketers and Creative, the “Internet has accelerated the creative use of video in b-to-b marketing, which is one key trend we saw in the submissions for this year’s BtoB’s Best.”

Online video has become an affluent medium for both b-to-b and b-to-c marketers alike. Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve. Best of all, online video isn’t just for big companies. An abundance of devices and software for video capture and editing are becoming popular additions for many marketing departments. Furthermore, Web-based DAM technologies are making the management and distribution easier and cheaper for organizations of all sizes.

In terms of viewership, the Nielsen Company recently reported viewers have substantially increased the time they spend watching online videos with YouTube being by far the single largest provider of streaming video. Nielsen's time-per-viewer metric rose to 195.2 minutes per month in September, a 25% year-over-year increase. Read Time Spent Viewing Video Online Up 25% per Viewer to learn more.

While the popularity of creating and consuming online video continues to skyrocket, the problems with video asset management are still there for nearly all marketers. The downside is video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. It also makes version control nearly impossible, since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content.

When you add all those factors, it makes a compelling argument for software-as-a-service that simplifies the tasks associated with managing, finding and distributing video content across the Web. The problem is that a lot of organizations that can benefit from distributing their content in the form of video; they just don’t have the internal infrastructure to support it. Like most projects that are challenging to do on your own, digital asset management can benefit from a software-as-a-service model that allows customers to focus more on what they want to accomplish than figuring out how to go about building and maintaining it.

In Widen’s recent article, RAM: Bandwidth on the Run, the increased demand for video content creates four issues that require more efficiency in how we manage video assets:

Not enough bandwidth to meet demand.
Difficulty moving video files from one user to another.
Multiple copies in multiple locations.
Lack of searchability.

However, digital media asset management technologies provide much more than simple file management or a video hosting service. Digital media files become assets of value through the attachment of metadata because they can be indexed, versioned, secured, stored and assigned a lifecycle state, a unique ID and an owner. Digital Asset Management systems serve as the keeper for both the files and metadata.

Benefits of digital asset solutions summarized from the Bandwidth on the Run article, include:

All users watch the same file from the same source.
Easier distribution.
Greater control over what is being viewed.
Simpler, more effective organization.
Simplifies backup.

For an expanded explanation, read the article titled RAM: Bandwidth on the Run by Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen Enterprises.

Digital Media Management and Digital Asset Management Market Drivers

Thursday, October 1, 2009 by Jake Athey

The recent KMWorld article DAM takes on many roles reports “The market for digital asset management (DAM) solutions remains robust, driven by increasing demand for rich media on Web sites, for marketing materials and in technical documentation. Ideally, assets for those purposes are managed centrally and published as needed to different destinations.”

KMWorld reports the annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. ABI Research forecasts the market to top $1 billion in 2013.

Feeding the DAM growth is the increased volume of rich media coupled with the wealth of devices to create, send and receive digital media. Furthermore, The Association of Graphic Solutions Providers (IPA) reports an increasing number of multi-channel targeted marketing programs have caused an explosion in the number of digital assets to manage.

Moreover, Frost & Sullivan reports that apart from the increased creation and use of digital media, the average file size of content is also increasing. To take the example of images, both the files size and the pure number of digital images taken have steadily increased each year. This is true for almost all media types from text to images and audio/visual content. The emergence and popularity of high definition video has been further fueled by the availability of numerous devices to receive content. This burgeoning demand has created a huge infrastructure challenge. High resolution images and video are storage and bandwidth intensive. For more on the DAM Market Overview and Challenges, download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 Whitepaper from Frost & Sullivan.

It’s a “Wired” World – Devices to Create, Send and Receive Digital Media

The increasing volume of digital media is again fueled to the increasing number of devices available to create and consume digital media. The mobile wireless market for handheld devices is another market that has become a huge user of digitized media. Interestingly, Widen worked with a 3rd-party market research company in the first half of 2009 for an analysis of digital asset management programs and social media. One of the questions asked was “What consumer electronic devices do you own and use?” Just for fun, here are the results…

Digital Camera, Laptop/Notebook Computer, Portable Media Device (iPod) and Cell Phone with Camera are the most common electronic devices owned and used (n=94).

Top Digital Asset Management Market Drivers according to ABI Research

Increase in the need to collaborate workflows across divisions in an enterprise
DAM systems no longer operate in a silo environment
Move to nonlinear digital workflows will drive demand
Improved operational efficiencies maximizes the ROI on a DAM system
Increase in bandwidth, fall in the storage cost will boost the demand of DAM
Continued effort in marketing initiatives will increase the demand for DAM
Creative professionals adopt DAM tools
New and emerging markets will drive the demand for DAM systems
Adoption of digital media technology enhances the growth of the market
Multiple channels of content delivery will increase the demand for DAM solutions
Content is king: Premium content, HD and video services will drive the growth

Apple's rumored tablet and the future of Print

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 by Mark Pajari

Will Apple's long-rumored tablet device be another nail in the coffin of print?

It appears that the latest rumors swirling around Apple's yet-to-be-announced hardware is that the device will be primarily positioned to move people away from traditional printed media and towards next-generation media. Instead of a device to watch a movie or play a game, it will be more of an e-reader. Essentially a Kindle on steroids with a beautiful touch screen and links to dynamic media in the form of videos, audio and websites that support the content of the publication.

In a recent post on AppleInsider, Gizmodo reported that Apple has been reaching out to publishers of newspapers, books and magazines in order to get their content on iTunes (If that's true, I suspect Apple will have to rename iTunes at some point. Maybe they already should with podcasts, iPhone apps, movies, etc. all currently available). If the Apple tablet takes off like most products from Apple do, it can only serve to confirm an eventual end to certain forms of printed media. As I pointed out in a blog post from last June called, Pulp Fiction: Is print dead? the day of a digital device delivering dynamic media to your palms is coming soon. Certainly one could argue that it is already here with devices like the iPhone. But many people find the display too small to do any serious reading, That is where the tablet will come in.

With that said, I'm thinking about my previous post on Print 09. Attendance was down. In order to boost attendance and breathe some new life into a graying trade show, The Graphic Arts Show Company (the group that produces the show every four years along with Graph Expo), needs to rebrand the Print show. Certainly many of the exhibitors have already embraced new media with technology like Web to Print and other emerging sectors such as thin film printed electronics and RFID. It can still maintain a print focus, but needs to expand into other areas of electronic publishing in order to remain relevant in the years to come. Or at least as long as trade shows in general are still relevant.

Back to Apple... They reportedly plan a January 2010 announcement of their tablet device with an availability sometime in June or July. Indeed they recently hired back Michael Tchao, one of the developers of their initial touchscreen tablet - the Newton. He figures to help develop the marketing strategy for the new device.

In the mean time, I will continue to bask in the smell of the CMYK inks on the paper pages of my Wired magazine.