Adobe is the standard solution when it comes to organizing, presenting and publishing content. In the autumn of 2010, Adobe launched its Digital Publishing Suite, now enabling media companies to make use of extensive services for the creation, provision, hosting, utilization and optimization of content as well as for generating CI-compliant viewers. In September 2011 Adobe presented its Suite for iOS 5 Newsstand Subscriptions. Since then, publishers such as National Geographic, Reader’s Digest and Condé Nast have started using the suite to offer magazine and newspaper apps via the iOS Newsstand. These are now to be followed by more apps created using the Digital Publishing Suite by Bonnier, Dennis Publishing, Newsweek, Rodale Inc., Smithsonian and Wenner Media.
As long ago as 2004 (censhare 2.0), censhare integrated the layout applications Adobe InDesign and Adobe InCopy, and this was followed in version 3.0 (2007) by the link to Adobe InDesign-Server and FrameMaker. At the same time, a Content Editor was developed. And the Digital Publishing Suite will be fully supported from Version 4.4 (to be released at the end of February 2012).
There are numerous reference models for the successful combination of Adobe with censhare technology. And among the references listed by Adobe there are publishers who use censhare as a publishing system and for media asset management.
However, this is not to say that censhare mobile publishing only works in combination with the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite. Many censhare customers have been using alternative and supplementary solutions for a number of reasons:
The first question is: where is the content coming from? With Adobe, all formats are compatible which the Creative Suite is capable of importing. This also applies to censhare: all relevant formats supplied by Adobe can be imported or else created and administered by the system. But in this case there are more options: the same applies to Microsoft Office files, QuarkXpress data, and even XML. And finally, content can be directly integrated and processed in censhare using the Content Editor or Layout Editor. A much more crucial question than "what?" and "where?" is "how?": in addition to offering numerous interfaces with external systems (including CRM, PIM and ERP), censhare allows data to be imported and exported by drag and drop or created automatically using an extensive range of hotfolder routines. It is also possible to integrate user-generated content (e.g. from blogs, social networks, microblogging services).
Adobe manages content in layouts (as placements in articles or objects). No provision is made for separating content, structure and objects (layout) - and neither is this desired. The Digital Publishing Suite can host data. But this data must be correctly configured for the various output formats. By contrast, censhare manages information as an asset in a media-neutral format (XML). A text can be an asset - as can a person, a template, an item of product information or a task. Assets have properties and attributes and can be related to each other in any number of ways. Media asset management (MAM) is the very basis of censhare. As a system-supported solution, it manages complex information and integrates all products, publications, departments, customers and departments in a transparent workflow, thereby centralizing communication content and automating processes.
The Content Editor and Layout Editor were developed so as to be able to integrate and process content within censhare, too. The advantage here: no specific knowledge of graphics and layout programs is required, nor do programs have to be locally installed. So content management can be handled via web browser, independently of any system or location. These tools also permit existing layouts to be enriched with content. A salient and attractive example of this is the production environment of the ZEIT app, whose content can be imported on a fully automated basis from a publishing workflow and then processed in censhare by Editors, and finally organized and managed by means of page planning.
In addition to the creation, correction and output of individual layouts and content, companies make considerable demands in terms of the organization of complex publications (including those covering a range of different media). Here, articles for a magazine, a supplement, a website and an app have to be arranged, weighted and enriched in different ways and prepared for channel-specific output as appropriate. Page planning is especially important when it comes to integrating external advertising systems or managing individual regional issues or language versions, for example.
A complex publishing process does not just extend from the creation to the output of content but also has to manage and organize the numerous individuals involved in media publishing. Many Workflow steps can be automated and carried out sequentially, while others are linked to deadlines and tasks. Here it is also possible to define complex interdependencies between assets and specific activities or sequences. A graphic designer has to work on a layout, a photo editor has to create a gallery, a translator has to localize a text and an advertising manager has to keep to submission deadlines. Publishing may start with content, but an efficient process requires quality standards, punctuality and process stability across the board in equal measure.
iPad, smartphones, Blackberry, Kindle Fire (Amazon), tablets, Sony Reader, television or multifunction devices in vehicles - the number of devices is constantly increasing. In addition there are the "classic" output formats of print and web. The Digital Publishing Suite is now also compatible with IOS, Android and Blackberry. And support for the Kindle Fire is said to be in the pipeline. However, a major drawback here is that content has to be individually configured for each end device. With Creative Suite 6, functions might follow which allow automatic adaptation to the various formats. As an XML-based system with the HTML5 standard for mobile publishing, censhare has long met the basic requirements for cross-media publishing.
One particular new feature of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite is that Adobe offers publishers an all-inclusive solution, including the hosting of data on servers so as to be able to publish and utilize this data in the app store or an individual viewer. censhare will also support these functions. What is more, publishers and companies involved in publishing can also issue the apps or host the data themselves.
There is a key distinction here: while Adobe charges for every app download (there are fixed rates from 5,000 downloads), with censhare you acquire a license and pay a one-off fee per published app. censhare does not earn anything from app distribution and sales. And Webserver allows companies to host data themselves.
Launched in mid-September 2011, the new ZEIT app is a salient and attractive illustrative example of mobile publishing. The process naturally starts with InDesign documents which the ZEIT print editorial team prepare using an editing system. All content of the ZEIT newspaper and ZEIT magazine are converted into XML on a highly automated basis and then enriched, processed and managed in the censhare app production environment before being supplied to users and readers in the app store. censhare gives the company complete freedom in the design of its app: it can combine InDesign layouts and dynamic HTML5 content in a single app.
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