About Microformats and the Internet
By Pankaj Maru
Mumbai, May 13, 2008

The rich internet content on web pages is embedded and wrapped in various semantic structured codes of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), XML (Extensible Markup Language), and XHTML (Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language).

While, the web rich content remains tagged and intact in semantic structured codes, now an attempt is being made to free and reuse the content. Using microformats the content will offer greater accessibility and benefits to users.

Microformats are simple open data formats developed over the existing standards. However, microformats are promoted and advocated by a group of volunteers who have formed a community which is involved in the development and research of microformats. However, microformats are still at a very nascent stage.

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Kas Thomas of CMS Watch sat in on the Henry Stewart Digital Asset Management & Marketing Operations Symposium in New York, and noted this timely advice.

DAM isn’t a system; it’s a workflow.” Don’t think statically about a DAM system. It’s not some cryogenic tank that you dump bits into for longterm storage. There are processes associated with every asset in the system.

“Allow six months for initial research.” Don’t even think you’re going to initiate any kind of discussion with a DAM vendor within the first six months. You need to spend that time doing basic DAM research; identifying and talking to stakeholders; getting buy-in from sponsors; assessing your current situation with regard to assets, metadata, and IT resources; and so on. (”Take whatever time you’ve budgeted for initial research,” said a panel member in an earlier session, “and just triple it.”)

“Identify all of the different types of users you’ll have.” You need a taxonomy of users. Why? Because you can’t begin to know your requirements until you understand who all the actors are that might use your system, and in what capacity they are going to use it. (Note that more than one speaker emphasized the need to write “user narratives” instead of, or in addition to, formal system requirements.)

“Interview users of all the different types you’ve identified.” Develop personas. Capture them as user narratives.

“Metadata should contain information about the asset’s chain of custody back to the beginning.” For every asset, you want to be able to find out: Who created it? Who has owned it? Who owns it now?

“Granulate your metadata.” Most metadata isn’t fine-grained enough. You want to be able to run reports quickly and easily, without spending a lot of time parsing the metadata just to get at certain bits.

“Allow for the idea that you may need to restrict edit rights on metadata at the field level.” This is difficult to do with most systems. But the key intuition is, you don’t want someone who rightfully needs “write access” to one or two fields of the metadata to be able to overwrite all fields.

“Insist on owning any code produced by anybody who helped implement your system.” Ditto for any documentation associated with the project.

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celum IMAGINE IV “barracuda” now is a true revolution in DAM. It brings user expereince onto a completely new level. A number of major and more than 100 smmaller improvements mark the difference to its already extremely advanced predecessor celum IMAGINE 35.4.

celum IMAGINE IV barracuda offers:

• NEW! - Revolutionary, 100% browser based user interface with “ActiveMenu” smart menu

• Content logistics - unique PIN distribution and content intake features
• NEW! PIN based review & approval workflows with versioning and tracking
• Content access control
• NEW! Managing text objects and reusage
• NEW! Adobe CS3 Integration & multi location support with near[store
• Seamless MS Office & Outlook Integration
• NEW! Unrivalled bidirectional MS SharePoint integration
• Unique PowerPoint slide-by-slide management
• Multi language metadata and user interfaceManage more than 200+ file types, including video, InDesign, Flash and RAW formats

SeaChange International (NASDAQ: SEAC) today announced Axiom On Demand 5.0, the only open VOD content delivery platform to bring social networking, time-shifting, advanced advertising and gaming to television.  Shaped by billions of on-demand streams delivered for cable and IPTV television operators, Axiom 5.0 will be demonstrated for the first time at the Cable Show in New Orleans.  Breakthroughs including Affinity, ReStart TV, and Game Now Lite are just three of the new add-on applications that best embody Axiom On Demand’s innovation, and its ability to ensure viewer loyalty and new revenue streams.

“Enabling far more than rock-solid on-demand performance, Axiom On Demand 5.0 will impact the market with a brand new generation content delivery platform comprising even more comprehensive management and advertising capabilities, one-of-a-kind subscriber applications and a jumpstart on television’s inevitable future in Content Delivery Networks and IP networking,” said Yvette Kanouff, SeaChange’s Chief Strategy Officer.  “Our customers tell us they want to grow the on-demand tier simply and quickly, and Axiom will pay big dividends to them yet again.”

New share for VOD
The company today separately announced SeaChange Affinity™, a social networking application that uses the Internet to bring personalization to television’s on-demand navigation at long last.  The Affinity web interface, branded either by SeaChange or by TV operators, lets subscribers use their mobile phone or PC to find content among thousands of on-demand titles and organize their on-demand TV experience per their unique preferences.

Just like the best of Web 2.0, Affinity offers automated recommendations and also allows subscribers to share their own recommendations, searches, ratings and commentaries with friends and family through social networks such as Facebook and others.

Introducing ReStart TV
Viewers are now only one electronic program guide click away from controlling scheduled broadcast television with SeaChange ReStart TV.  This new Axiom application lets viewers rewind, pause and re-start programs from the beginning – less than 10 seconds into a broadcast airing – to catch all their favorite shows without planning ahead to program a DVR.

Viewers take full control with ReStart TV, time-shifting their way through any live broadcast TV show with simple and intuitive on-screen navigation.

ReStart TV runs on Axiom On Demand’s infrastructure and integrates with major electronic program guides and most any digital set-top box, even giving new returns to operators with low-end set-top models.  Each operator determines time-shifting business rules per their unique requirements and content contracts.  ReStart TV’s adaptable distribution management scheme can control multiple VOD operation sites from one centralized location, or it can be deployed in a standalone configuration for smaller systems.

SeaChange rounds out its support for stream-intensive time-shifting by pushing resources to the network edge with its Flash Memory Streamers, which are already being widely deployed by SeaChange customers to meet the growing “long tail” of content demand.  Like the open Axiom On Demand platform, the ReStart TV application also supports third-party video pumps.

VOD’s new game
Operators can also use Axiom On Demand to offer churn-busting, revenue-generating gaming experiences to subscribers with SeaChange’s new Game Now Lite, a game management and distribution system that operates on virtually any set-top box.  SeaChange’s bundled content service spares operators any acquisition and licensing challenges, and includes game packs of ready-to-run favorites such as Sudoku, Texas Hold ‘Em and Chess among others.  Flexible business models mean operators can create a games business based upon pay-per-play, pay-per-day, subscription and ad-supported strategies.

On target with VOD advertising
Axiom On Demand 5.0 is also the launching pad for SeaChange’s AdPulse VOD advertising software, giving operators the ability to monetize all of their VOD offerings – even on-demand games – through dynamic and targeted insertion.  AdPulse helps deliver new revenues with on-the-fly insertion of interior, pre- and post-roll ads into on-demand program streams in real time.  Making ads independent of the programs in which they run allows each to be trafficked separately, dramatically reducing lead times for ad copy and enabling ad rotation, targeting and message refresh throughout a campaign.

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The global market for Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions – the use of software and hardware to store, organize, retrieve and distribute the world’s exploding volume of digital media files – exceeded $330 million in 2007. A new study from ABI Research forecasts that figure to top $1 billion in 2013. What is behind this robust growth?

“There are a number of factors acting together to drive the Digital Asset Management market,” says industry analyst Zippy Aima. “Apart from the sheer dramatic increase in the amount of digital media assets, one important driver is the need for different departments of an organization to have a seamless workflow in handling the same library of digital content.”

“Many vendors are talking about how their solutions address the need for smooth workflow collaboration,” Aima adds. “DAM systems no longer operate in a ‘silo’ environment, and the solutions available in the market today can tightly integrate with third-party applications and systems already existing in an organization.”

While DAM is now found across a range of enterprises including government, finance, education, retail, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors, it got its start in print production, moved on to marketing departments and ad agencies and is now – spurred on by the extremely rapid growth in video content available online – being adopted in the media and entertainment industries.

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TeleScope OnDemand

TeleScope™ OnDemand is a hosted digital asset management solution built on the TeleScope platform. The solution provides a convenient and cost-effective alternative for organizations that require a fully functional digital asset management solution without the requirement to host and manage their own system.

With its 24 x 7 access, customizable metadata model, and add-on workflow modules, TeleScope OnDemand offers a best-of-both worlds approach to managing rich media.

FEATURES

TeleScope OnDemand empowers small and midsized businesses, Fortune 1000 marketing departments, global brand leaders, and creative agencies with a hosted enterprise-class DAM solution that’s accessible anytime from anywhere. This secure, robust solution features:

• Web-based management of digital media assets
• Secure, state-of-the-art data center and full hosting support by Navisite
• Full integration with creative authoring & digital editing suites.
• Complete project management, workflow support, and version control.
• Built on the latest Sun Microsystems platforms and quad-core servers
• A low cost, convenient alternative to the traditional model of installed DAM systems.
• An easy upgrade path to a full licensed TeleScope deployment.

We made the decision to shift to a hosted model to concentrate on our core competencies, but we still needed a DAM solution that provided enterprise-class functionality. TeleScope OnDemand provided

everything we were looking for, including powerful workflow and collaboration features, a flexible interface, choices of additional modules that suit our unique needs, a smooth migration path to a full installed version if we choose, and North Plains’ strong reputation in the marketplace. We look forward to leveraging real, tangible benefits from our new DAM solution.

Joseph Tensuan,
Project Manager
National Semiconductor

To request more information, please contact us »

Flow is a revolutionary approach to digital content management that dramatically simplifies the design process for creative professionals working on graphic design, web and video projects. Flow automatically tracks your work from idea to end result and manages your assets and applications for your most complex projects- all without changing the way you work.

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Using Extensis Portfolio Project Sync with Adobe Bridge

In this video Extensis Systems Engineer Max shows how to use Extensis Portfolio Project Sync in conjunction with Adobe Bridge to manage your creative assets.

A high-resolution version of this video is available on the Extensis website:
http://www.extensis.com/en/products/a…

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