Apollo Lift-off the Nxt Big Thing for Adobe?

We’ve made mention of late about the Window .wpf presentation format coming from Vista. At the same time, you can bet we’re keeping an even closer watch on the product, code-named "Apollo" coming from Adobe:

At the heart of Adobe’s new strategy is a project code-named "Apollo,” which will be something of a technological mash-up that the company says will blend key strengths from Adobe and Macromedia of the .pdf, Flash Player and HTML Internet language. It will allow developers to create programs for people to access and work on, such as a mortgage loan agreement or online travel service, online and off, with changes seamlessly syncing with the Internet version once they are connected again.

Rago Arts Introduces Nxtbook Media Technology to Auction World

Rago Arts and Auction Center is proud to be the first Auction House in the world to utilize the extraordinary technology of Nxtbook Media.

The digital catalog created by Nxtbook replicates the information in Rago’s printed catalog, but offers readers benefits unavailable in the printed format. Readers can zoom in to view products at high resolution and instantly create a list of every lot in their area of interest. Other features allow bookmarked catalogs to be e-mailed to friends or printed. Absentee bid forms or requests for condition reports can be filled in online and sent to Rago with a click of the mouse.

Miriam Tucker, CEO of Rago Arts and Auction Center said, “Nxtbook is easy to read, to access, to use, to enjoy. It allows us to provide our complete catalog to anyone with interest in the sale — that’s not just great for buyers. It’s a huge advantage for our client consignors. We are thrilled with the response.”

“We’re thrilled that Rago chose Nxtbook Media for their digital catalog,” says Eric Gervase, director of sales for Nxtbook Media. “The high quality of their auctions and the need for their customers to be able to easily seek and bookmark specific items of interest are both perfect applications for the Nxtbook and we look forward to doing further digital editions for them," said Gervase.

Readers can view the Rago Arts and Auction Center catalog in Nxtbook format here.

It’s All About Feedback

So how’s a publisher to know how readers will react to their digital edition? In a word: Feedback. Digital editions are inherently tracked, so you’ll learn everything you want to know from a statistical standpoint from looking at you tracking reports. But aside from that, you can include a survey link inside your publication, just as this publisher did. Taken together, those two data points will help you make a good prediction of reader response. And since we’ve done hundreds of these surveys, we’ll be glad to tell you if your own statistics are better or worse than the average.

CMP Chooses Nxtbook Media

We’re thrilled to announce CMP Media has chosen us to produce digital editions of six of their most popular titles. In the coming weeks, readers of InformationWeek, EE Times, Embedded Systems Design, Electronics Supply Manufacturing, Dr. Dobb’s Journal and Call Center will have the option of chosing their content in NXTbook format.

A special nod to those technology-lovers at InformationWeek – they’ve just started with NXTbook and still squeaked into our "Top 10 Most Read" books this week.

Time, Inc. Digital Guru Speaks on Digital Magazines

There was an absolute "can’t miss" presentation by Time, Inc. Peter Meirs at last Tuesday’s "Meet the Innovators" event in New York, part of a luncheon series from the Magazine Publishers of America. Most of the industry’s big names (Nxtbook included!) were mentioned in Meirs’ speech.

You can view the video highlights of the event by going here.

Working Our Way to Critical Mass in RSS

A common question among our clients is if they can generate RSS feeds from Nxtbook content. The short answer is, "They can."

The longer answer is that even though the technology allows for this, the publisher still has to think through an RSS Strategy, much as they had to figure out a Web Strategy a few years back. It’s not an easy question, to be sure, but we’re excited about the few publishers that are interested in finding out the answers.

Here’s a great article about a company that’s looking to make RSS simpler while making it rich, complete with audio, video and what-not.

Check it out:

"The challenge is how to make RSS work for the masses that suits the way they normally look at content," he said. "There are lots of RSS readers out there. The difference is all of them require some basic understanding of RSS. But a lot of people see that button and say, ‘What do I do with that button?’ No one has made it simple yet."

Got World-Cup Fever on the Brain?

We’ve been pretty good about keeping this Blog focused on Nxtbook Media news only. Well, until now.

Net Neutrality is Important for Everyone

I had been planning to write about the net neutrality debate, but than I saw a great article at washingtonpost.com that gives a clear explanation of the debate and why net neutrality is incredibly important to anyone that uses the internet. As the article states, "Congress is deciding on the fate of the Internet."

Please tell your members of Congress to save the Internet.

Update:
On June 8, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated the net neutrality amendment in a 269-152 vote that was close to party lines.  This amendment (and the bill it is attached to) will now move to the Senate. 

Please contact your senator to let them know how important net neutrality is for the future of the Internet.

Why is this Man Cheering?

Probably because he works for one of our best selling publishers. Periodically, we’d like to give some recognition to Nxtbooks which have had particularly stellar weeks, both in terms of issues opened and length of average time readers spend with the publication.

This week, we’re thrilled to point out Graduate Prospects, BE Magazine and Travel Agent Magazine – all of which had great "open" numbers for the week. A nod also goes out to America’s Network, which did a particularly great job of keeping readers engaged in their content with a high "average open time" rating.

Congrats to all of you and thanks for choosing Nxtbook Media.

WARNING: Geek Post

As much as possible, we try to keep the high-tech conversation behind the curtain of the Nxtbook blog because we believe that our publishers care about delivering cool content, not necessarily how we do it.

That being said, we’ve been paying a lot of attention to some of the cutting-edge designers who’ve been playing with the new .wpf tools from Windows, which are designed to work with the new version of Windows which may (or may not) debut in early ’07.

Most people know that Nxtbooks are designed using Flash technology and as Flash continues to get even better, we expect to keep using it. However, the .wpf technology is worth keeping our eyes on, because there are some potentially cool features that publishers might want to use, and if so, we’ll plan on incorporating them into our technology.

At any rate, an experienced Flash designer has been working with .wpf for almost a month now and has posted his thoughts about what rocks (and what doesn’t) about the technology. If you’re interested in Flash or .wpf click here for a really great comparison on the technologies.

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