newspaper syndications

Transcription

Facts & Reasons
WHY COMYAN
Facts and Reasons
WHY COMYAN
Table of Contents
Major Reasons
Continuous Innovation
High Quality
User Orientation
5
5
5
5
System Integration
Nine Editorial Systems + QuarkXpress + InDesign
Automated processing of newspaper data saves daily cost and increases quality
Workflow Integration
Seamless Record of Use
Single-Sign-On with Active Directory Integration
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6
7
7
10
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Ease of Use
Intuitive work style minimizes training requirements and increases productivity
Browser-based user interface
No Client Software Installation
Images, Agency Text, Articles, Pages,… in a single, integrated system
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High Performance Architecture
Powerful database architecture
Maximum Search Performance through dedicated search engine
Maximum Availability through Server Clustering
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Multiple Digital Editions
Edition for the Blind and Visually Handicapped
Web-Edition
PDA Edition and Mobile Edition
Online ePaper Edition
Download ePaper Edition
Links to Online Editorial (Web Content Management) Systems
Syndication
Other Digital Edtions
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About COMYAN
References
Contact
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25
Major Reasons
“
As newspaper companies are becoming multi-media publishers, the role of the print
editorial/page layout system will become less important. Instead, the content, asset management and workflow system will become the heart of the publishing process.
”
Peter Resele, Comyan
Major Reasons
Continuous Innovation
Over a very long period of time, Comyan has a proven track record of “firsts” and innovation: One of the first digital newspaper editions (1993), one of the first newspaper imageand agency text archives based on web-browser technology (1996), use of a real search
engine (Verity/Autonomy, 1996), PDA/mobile newspapers (1998), one of the first WAP
(mobile phone) newspaper (1999) and ePaper (2002). Out of this, a true integration architecture for print publishing, online publishing and asset management has been developed
and is being developed further every year.
High Quality
Comyan has a proven track record of extremely reliable medium to large-scale installations
(up to 800 users, > 10 million objects). Over a period of more than 10 years, up-time of
systems and stability has always been high, based on a thorough and far-sighted engineering of the underlying databases and structures. Instead of always following the latest technology fashion trend and starting from scratch every couple of years, Comyan created an
architecture that already has been performing for many years without major changes – and
the underlying database structure is more than well-prepared for the next decade.
User Orientation
Comyans most valuable input always came from one source: The users themselves. This is
why most editors feel at home in the system from the first moment of looking at it. Comyan’s
culture of listening to the requirements and ideas from the users has benefited the system
design immensely. Weaving their ideas together with visionary technological thinking really
is the key which ultimately makes the product possible.
Facts and Reasons WHY COMYAN
5
System Integration
“
It took us a long time – and a lot of money – to find out that the “one, single, integrated
system” from one vendor will never work. For requirements so diverse as video editing,
online publishing and newspaper layout, no single vendor can ever fill the bill.
Therefore, an integration approach – integrating the best tools from the best respective
vendors – is really the only way to go.
”
Gunnar Springfeldt, Göteborgs Posten, Sweden (Ifra ICT Group)
System Integration
Advanced System integration has probably been the most striking characteristic of Comyan’s
developments from the beginning. In an environment that hardly ever can be changed completely from one day to the next, high-quality integration with existing systems (such as print
editorial systems and page planning systems) is a premium requirement. Seamless interfaces
make the system work as “one” system to the user, even though it has been integrated from
several vendors. In many cases, Comyan was able to provide even better integration quality
than similar systems from the same vendors (“all from one vendor”). Integration therefore has
become Comyan’s signature feature to its clients.
Ten Editorial Systems + QuarkXpress + InDesign
The central role of the Comyan Media System (NewsBench/MediaExchange)
6
System Integration
Comyan has shown an unprecedented track-record of high-quality integrations with existing
print editorial systems from many major vendors, since 1993: Cosy (Siemens), Alfa, Atex,
Cardo, Harris, News2000/NewsNT, QPS, Hermes (Unisys), Tera, Protec and now also
“naked” QuarkXpress (without QPS) and InDesign. Every year, new integrations are implemented.
Proprietary data from all the vendors is processed automatically and in very high quality. The
result is a “vendor-neutral”, media-neutral format that can be transformed into any required
XML Schema / DTD on the fly. Targets are online editorial systems (receiving the content
automatically), ePapers, other digital editions, syndications and of course the newspaper
archive itself.
Automated processing of newspaper data saves daily cost and
increases quality
All the content processing is fully automatic, based on Comyan’s advanced parsing algorithms and a technology that has been developed and refined over more than a decade.
Manual touch-up editing is possible, but hardly every necessary. This is in strong contrast
to (other) PDF-based systems, which always require daily manual work for segmenting and
processing the content (either by the newspaper itself or by a service provider).
The benefit of this is three-fold:
O
the digital editions (ePapers) are published much earlier, in the night
O
there is no daily labour cost involved in creating digital editions –
this alone translates in huge cost savings every year
O
the quality of the digital output is usually much higher and more stable
Workflow Integration
Comyan has created workflows that integrate asset reception, search, production, manual
pre-press, automatic colour management, transfer to the page layout, archiving and publishing documentation (tracking of the instances when and where an asset has been published).
All workflows are adapted to the requirements of the users rather than the other way round.
A flexible architecture with web-based interfaces gives every participant a maximum view
on the flow of workflow jobs and assets, while giving everybody exactly the privileges and
rights that he or she needs to accomplish his or her task in the flow.
Over the years, a number of proven standards has been established that now also can be
used more or less “out of the box” in new installations, improving productivity and transparency of the editorial office, pre-press and archive department.
Next 2 Pages: The complete workflow and its integration with Print- and Online Editorial systems:
7
the open publishing backbone
Alfa
NewsNT
Tera
Cardo ...
Editorial
System
Images
Agency texts
Workflow
Images and graphics are transmitted in any desired
format via web upload, -mail or FTP/ISDN and are
stored in the media base.
Image, graphic, text
reception
MX: Media Exchange
„Content Engine“
Articles
Pages
COMYAN
MX
MX
media base
MX
SOAP
Syndication
SOAP: „Service Oriented
Architecture“
Online
Portal
Web CMS
Website
MX
Online portals and applications of third-party producers directly access the media base stocks. Via a
modern web service interface (service oriented architecture) they communicate directly with the media
base, even across operating system platforms and
through firewalls.
ePaper and mobile editions
The newspaper on the screen —
just like the printed edition
COMYAN has been developing digital newspaper
editions since 1993 – and has gained more experience
in this area than most other suppliers. Every reader of
the NZZ (www.nzzglobal.ch) can see for himself or
herself how outstandingly user-friendly and pleasant it
is to ready the COMYAN ePaper. Versions for
mobile devices such as PDAs and mobile phones make
the ePaper offering complete.
System Integration
Seamless Record of Use
Whenever an asset is used for publication, the system tracks it. For newspapers, the actual
page and edition are tracked, and hyperlinks are established to jump between the original
asset (image) and the published page.
For editors, this means that they can immediately see that an image, graphics or text has
already been used before (and where, and by whom, as a full history). On the other hand,
if the want to re-run an image, they can equally easy go back from the page of the publication to the original asset. Original assets are never modified or touched, therefore available
for any future production.
Single-Sign-On with Active Directory Integration
Gone are the days where everybody had to remember three user names and passwords for
three different systems: Comyan introduced Active Directory integration as early as 2002,
and since then users can use their existing Windows passwords, or even get logged in fully
automatically in their browsers.
Single-Sign-On is yet another example of the great attention Comyan pays to seamless
system integration within existing infrastructures.
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Ease of Use
“
Probably the best thing about Comyan is that it is so easy to use! We hardly need any
training for our editorial staff. People who are familiar with Internet browsers just sit down
and start working with it.
”
(A user, at one of our recent test installations)
Ease of Use
One of the lucky coincidences in Comyan’s history is that the company was founded at
the time when the Internet and web-browsers were invented. Comyan embraced this technology from the very beginning, creating web-applications as early as 1995. Since then,
all applications have been web-based and Comyan has collected an enormous engineering experience in this area. At the same time, focus on user ideas and feedback has led to
an application design that is extremely intuitive and hardly every requires written manuals
or formal training
.
Intuitive work style minimizes training requirements and increases
productivity
To the users, this is probably Comyan’s best and most loved feature:
People who are familiar with Internet browsing and searching can immediately start using
the system – with minimum training requirements, or even no training at all. The user interface
is so familiar – following web conventions – and extremely intuitive and easy to use. In fact
users just click on the URL and start searching for images, agency texts, articles…
For the publisher, this translates into an immense commercial benefit when introducing the
system to a large editorial team – as training and support costs are minimal and user motivation is high, greatly increasing productivity.
Browser-based user interface
A browser is sufficient – in fact nearly any browser, including Safari, Mozilla and Opera,
can be used to fully access the system (no “secondary interfaces”).
For the end user, the benefit is not only in a much simplified user interface (which always
depends on design, not so much the technology itself) but also the availability of the application – everywhere and on all platforms.
Whether on a PC or on a Mac, whether within the office or in an Internet café on a remote
Thai island – the application is instantly available, without compromises (except inevitable
network delays) and without any installation of software components (which is never possible in public Internet environments).
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Ease of Use
A simple web-browser and a network connection is all that is needed.
No Client Software Installation
Since a web-browser is sufficient, also the management of the production environment (by
IT) becomes a lot easier.
With Windows applications, supplying the latest (Windows or Mac) software releases to
hundreds or even thousands of PCs is a daunting and very costly task, continuously involving
many people from IT. To make it more manageable, it typically also involves either complex
installation and maintenance environments or even more expensive technologies such as
Citrix Metaframe.
With browser-based applications, nothing of this is required.
All installation and maintenance occurs on the central server. Whether 10 or 1000 users
are accessing the server does not matter to the IT staff – because absolutely nothing needs
to be installed, maintained or debugged on the client.
(assuming the web-browser is a standard part of the operating system)
Taditional Client/Server Application (“Thick Client”) requires installation and maintenance on all machines
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Ease of Use
Web-based Application (“Browser Client”) only requires central server
While browser-based applications have many advantages, Comyan never becomes “religious” about a concept. Therefore, browser-based applications can also be combined very
well with traditional powerful desktop applications such as Adobe Photoshop (which is typically used in the image workflow): The desktop application is installed on the user’s PC or
Mac, taking optimum advantage of the available system resources (memory, CPU). Access
to the database (for checkout of assets) is done via the web-browser. As soon as the local
processing is finished, assets are checked back in over the network.
Images, Agency Text, Articles, Pages… in a single, integrated system
All parts of the system work in the same way, as share the same user interface and the same
database. Therefore, for instance, working with articles and pages is as easy as working
with images.
And because the system has been built as a “multi-media” database from the beginning, it
can be used for a wide range of different assets – in principle, any kind of multimedia asset
is either already supported or will be supported in the future.
13
Ease of Use
Content/Media Asset Management becomes the heart of the new publishing process
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High Perfomance Architecture
“
”
The most important thing is: The system must be fast!! .
(Gerlinde Hinterleitner, creator of “derStandard.at“, the first German-language newspaper on the Internet)
High Performance
Architecture
System architecture is like the foundation of a building – everything else depends on it, and
once it is laid, it is nearly impossible to change. System architecture is therefore THE decisive
factor in the long-term success and growth of any IT system. At the same time, it is one of
the most complex areas of engineering – with countless possibilities to make mistakes that
surface only years later.
Many well-known vendors in the area of digital asset management have changed their
system architectures three or four times during the last 10 years. In contrast, Comyan never
changed its architecture – and is still performing better, especially in huge installations. To an
IT expert, this shows more than any other single fact the excellence of Comyan’s engineering
decisions and the visionary thinking behind the system. To the end user, it means seamless
upgrades without production disruption: Comyan is probably the only vendor that always
allowed side-by-side operation of old and new versions during an upgrade process – on
the same database!
Powerful database architecture
Comyan’s “Media Base” is the heart of the system – a powerful database capable of storing and handling tens of millions of digital media assets, huge amounts of storage, and still
being able to search through that mass of data in seconds.
Because of the huge task and the importance to the system, Comyan decided early on not
simply to rely on a standard off-the-shelf database from a single vendor (like Oracle, IBM or
Microsoft, or any of the Open Source databases).
Instead, Comyan created – already in 1999 – the concept of the “best of breed” media
base, integrating one of the leading SQL database systems (Microsoft SQL Server, head-tohead with Oracle in TCP performance benchmarks and much more cost-effective) with the
leading full-text search engine vendor (Verity, now part of Autonomy) and a potentially huge
file system that can make use of cost-effective storage technology such as NAS.
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Three pillars: The high-performance, highly scalable COMYAN Media Base Architecture
This architecture proved to be truly groundbreaking and visionary, as it performs significantly
better than the single-database asset management systems (typically based on Oracle and
Oracles own search engine) and at the same time is more cost effective, through the use of
cost effective mass storage technology. Also today, it simply is the best way to implement
a multi-media database system. (Even one of the world’s largest IT companies followed the
concept recently – five years later.)
Maximum Search Performance through dedicated search engine
Of the three components in Media Base, the search engine itself is probably the most important part. Every time a user presses the “search” button, the dedicated search engine sifts
through millions of documents to find the right ones that the user is looking for. Especially in
huge collections (many million articles) and with large result sets (such as 100.000 hits for
“bush”), enormous differences between different systems become apparent.
On top of the renowned Verity/Autonomy’s search engine, Comyan implemented also a
number of its own search optimizations – which translate into further performance improvements, making the search for large result sets (whole timerange) even faster.
In the end, the users just want to get the results – quickly. And this is exactly what the Comyan
Media Base provides, and already has been providing to all its users for a decade.
Database examples from existing Comyan installations
O
Der Standard, Vienna: 6,5 Mio agency texts, 3,8 Mio images, 100 users
O
Stuttgart Newspaper Group (ZGS): 4,5 Mio articles, 2,5 Mio images, 600 users
O
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ): 2 Mio articles, 2,3 Mio images, 1,2 Mio advertisements,
200 users
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Maximum Availability through Server Clustering
Automatic protection against hardware and software failures always is a premium requirement in the highly critical newspaper production environment. Comyan recognised this very
early and implemented one of the very first server clustering solutions on the Windows platform, as early as 1999 (based on the very first version of Microsoft Cluster Server). Since
then, the solution has been developed in a rock-solid platform that is absolutely proven in
continuous operation in the largest user environments, and over many years.
Examples:
O
Times of India with 800 users, 15 centres, two servers in a Microsoft Cluster
O
Zeitungsgruppe Stuttgart with 600 users, four servers in a Microsoft Cluster
O
NZZ, 200 users, two servers in a Microsoft Cluster, since 2000
Clustering means that the application is divided into logical groups (called “virtual servers”)
that can run on any node in the cluster. Normally, the groups are distributed over the available nodes to achieve a maximum of performance and load balancing. In the case of a
hardware failure (a broken server, or network card) or even in case of maintenance (installation of a service pack), the “healthy” server takes over the groups from the failed server
(or rebooted server) fully automatically, within around 5-10 seconds. To the end user, this
interruption is almost not noticeable.
SAN
Database
Group
Web Group
IO Group
Web Group
Server A (failure)
Server B
Automatic failover in server clusters
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“
”
Nobody really knows where this trip will lead us.
(Oscar Bronner, publisher of the Austrian newspaper “Der Standard”,
as he entered the Internet in February 1995, as the first newspaper in German language)
For a long time, there were no digital newspapers. Comyan actually created one of the
world’s first digital newspaper editions in 1993, when blind and visually handicapped people in Austria could for the first time “read” their newspaper in synthetic speech and Braille.
After Mosaic and Netscape came round a few years later, suddenly everybody wanted to
have a website. Again a couple of years later, everybody wanted to have an ePaper. Recently, everybody wants to have an edition for mobile phones (again, Comyan created one
of the first mobile phone editions in 1999). Every couple of years, new devices, new display
technologies, new document standards are invented. Therefore, the only answer to this is an
architecture which foresaw this development and uncertainty from the very beginning: The
Comyan Media System. It creates (and will create) all these kinds of digital editions fully
automatically, from a single database, based on user-definable templates.
Edition for the Blind and Visually Handicapped
The first digital edition created by Comyan in 1993 already contained the complete content
of the printed newspaper, and it was processed and distributed fully automatically. In contrast to other editions, operation of the reading “device” (a converted PC) only requires four
keys (a Nintendo-style keypad is usually being used for that purpose). Navigation in the
system works similar to today’s mobile phones. Alternatively, a full PC and keyboard can be
used with advanced functionality (search,…).
Output of text is in synthetic speech, enlarged fonts or on a digital Braille display.
Download of the newspaper was done over modem in 1993, as the Internet did not yet
exist in its present form.
Web-Edition
The second edition is targeted towards simple websites that publish the content of the newspaper using static HTML and a simple navigation menu (can be designed in any possible
way). It was the first edition to go to the Internet in 1996. Today, the Web-Edition is still used
to give access to the content for low-speed connection users.
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PDA Edition and Mobile Edition
The PDA edition, originally created in 1998 for the first PalmPilot and PocketPC devices,
reformats the content for the typical “mobile” Internet Browsers which do not support complex
formatting, framesets and must function on a much smaller display size. Similar to the WebEdition, this edition is based on user-editable templates that can be adapted and created for
every newspaper using their own styles and corporate identity.
Online ePaper Edition
The most popular ePaper kind, this edition, created in 2002, already then employed the
latest AJAX Technology to enable an extremely comfortable reading experience to the users
using the then-new DHTML web browsers. The newspaper is displayed exactly as on paper
and the user can click on any article or advertisement on the page. Articles are displayed
as formatted text (HTML) or images (as on paper). Comyan’s first client, Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Switzerland, already singed up more than 10.000 subscribers for the ePaper (print
circulation: around 100.000).
Technically, it is based on dynamic loading of content in the background without full page
updates – a technology that was termed “AJAX” a couple of years later (2005) and is now
commonly seen as a key technology of “Web 2.0”.
Download ePaper Edition
A common format for downloading and offline-reading of print documents is PDF. Easy to
create, it however has substantial drawbacks when it comes to reading a large-format newspaper page with many articles. Zooming and panning is extremely uncomfortable and in
fact prevents reading of the newspaper in a daily routine. Comyan found a technical solution
also for this challenge: A patent-pending process “activates” plain Adobe PDF in such a way
that readers now can click on and enlarge articles like in the Online DHTML edition. Such,
a uniform reading experience across all editions is provided.
Links to Online Editorial (Web Content Management) Systems
For newspapers operating a “full” website, nowadays online editorial systems are a standard way to create content. (Comyan also develops its own online editorial system since
1997. It is now being integrated into the Media System Framework.)
For online editorial systems, it is important to deliver the content in digital, easily re-usable
form. This is typically XML. Using the Comyan Media System, any DTD or Schema can be
created automatically, with one-time set-up taking a couple of hours.
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Syndication
Like online editorial systems, contracts with syndicators (database vendors, other publishers) usually prescribe a special XML DTD or Schema. The Comyan Media System is an
extremely flexible tool to create all these formats automatically, even (if required) including
images, PDF pages or other media types.
Other Digital Edtions
Comyan created even more digital editions in the past, some of which are no longer relevant
because the corresponding hardware devices are no longer available:
In 1999, a WAP-edition for mobile phones (using the initial, now de-funct WAP/WML
standard) was brought to the market. It was one of the first – maybe even the first – newspaper edition for mobile phones. And in 2000, an edition for the first ever eBook reading
device (the Rocket eBook) was made available to the readers.
The creation of new digital editions usually takes not more than a couple of days (in case
of the Online ePaper, a couple of months). Therefore, the Comyan Media System in fact
provides the very best insurance against the “uncertainties” of the trip into the digital age,
where new standards, devices, screen sizes, software systems and distribution platforms will
continue to evolve over the next decade.
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About COMYAN
COMYAN
has specialized in newspaper content management for many years.
Innovation, quality and customer service have always been paramount.
COMYAN
has always been at the cutting edge of newspaper publishing developments.
1993 Digital paper for people with visual impairments.
1996 Fully automatic web-publishing for ‘derStandard’, Vienna
1997 Digital newspaper archive via internet
1998 First German language daily paper for PalmPilot/PDA
1999 Austria’s first WAP daily paper, including WAP archival searches
2000 First complete German language daily paper for eBooks
2001 Live XML interface for archives (XML web service)
2002 Integrated digital Image Workflow with Agfa IntelliTune
2003 online und portable ePaper
2004 Release 2.8 with brand-new framework
2006 Media System Release 2.9
COMYAN
is entirely owned by its founders.
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References
Times of India Mumbai:
COMYAN Image System
Süddeutsche Zeitung Munich:
COMYAN Media Archive
Stuttgarter Zeitung, Stuttgarter Nachrichten Stuttgart:
COMYAN Media Archive, NewsBench
Neue Zürcher Zeitung NZZ Zurich:
COMYAN Media Archive, NewsBench,
ePaper http://nzzglobal.ch
Der Standard Vienna:
COMYAN Media Archive, NewsBench, ePaper
http://www.derstandarddigital.at
derStandard.at Vienna:
COMYAN Editorial System
http://derStandard.at
Kleine Zeitung Graz:
COMYAN Media Archive, NewsBench
Die Presse Vienna:
COMYAN Media Archive, NewsBench, Editorial System
http://www.diepresse.at
Finanz und Wirtschaft Zurich:
COMYAN ePaper
http://www.finanzundwirtschaft.net
Kölner Stadtanzeiger Cologne:
COMYAN NewsBench, ePaper
Mitteldeutsche Zeitung Halle:
COMYAN NewsBench
Kreiszeitung Böblinger Bote Böblingen:
COMYAN Image System
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COMYAN
HEAD OFFICE:
COMYAN GmbH
Karolingerstrasse 34a
D-82205 Gilching (near Munich)
phone: +49 (8105) 77939-0
fax: +49 (8105) 77939-5
email: info @ comyan.com
website: http:// comyan.com
RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT:
COMYAN Austria
Conrad-v. Hötzendorf-Str. 33
A-8010 Graz

newspaper syndications

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