Text and video modes for web, continued

I have found some more about the text and video phases of the web.

Robert Young writes on NewTV about how MySpace could compete with YouTube because Murdoch owns video and video is harder to search on than text where Google has an advantage. I don't think the argument is compelling because often text is used to find the video. But the description of the web so far as mostly based on text makes a lot of sense.

Adobe seems to have gone video though. You may still be able to import text into InDesign but this has yet to be promoted in Creative Suite 3.

"text web" : "video web"

I have found a couple of links following an article in yesterday's Guardian. Michael Rosenblum has a copy of most of an article by Ian Reeves, who has some video on his own site.

Rosenblum is quoted as distinguishing web 1 as based on text and web 2 as based on video. Personally I find the use of webs 1- n confusing but the idea of a text web and a video web is interesting. The video on Ian Reeves site shows several examplesof newspappers moving to the web. Jeff Jarvis believes that video is suitable for conversation but I don't really expect US candidates to respond in detail to every post on YouTube. Text still has some scope, even if email exchange started in web zero.

Today Adobe announced a new Creative Suite ans I am struck by the low priority for print. My guess is that most people still relate to hard copy. But 'design' seems to be one of three words, the others being web and video. Within 'design' print is hanging on with mobile devices. The most recent figures show sales of Flash to device OEM as about 2% of Adobe revenue. Postscript sales are included with 'other', totalling about 10%. So somebody expects the mobile video aspect to grow fairly rapidly.

"text web" relates back to hard copy. "video web" may not. Except that if flying type is included in the animation I hope knowledge about typography survives somewhere.

I am posting this in learn9, about learning and quality, and in drupa2008, about whatever pre-press is supposed to be doing, and in a Guardian Education Talk comment about QR. I still don't understand the UK academic approach to quality but when a new set of students arrive one day expecting to borrow cameras from the library there must be some way to manage the transition.

Conference in May on XPS, Mars, XML etc.

A bit of Googling after the previous post finds a Stephan Jaeggi page on underwater photography. Fantastic stuff but I must somehow get back on topic. There is a link to his pre-press site and the news is he is speaking in May. The Google translation link seems to make sense.

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.publisher.ch%2Fevents%2Findex.php%3Ft%3D8.%2520Mai%25202007%3A%2520XPS%2FPDF-Forum%2520in%2520Winterthur%26read_article%3D221&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

It may be a bit wrong but the gist is that all this XML stuff is still under discussion. Why do I still think that pre-press has some connection with XML and concern with open standards? It seems ok as a working assumption.

Will there be some instant blogging from this event? Some of us may get lost on the technology front but some guidelines would be handy.

Jim King presentation from PDF University now online

Jim King has agreed that the Acrobat User Forum can host his presentation from the PDF University on the future of PDF and Flash.

The PDF is about 5 meg.

Other Jim King presentations

The PDF University existed in Miami recently as part of XPLOR so at least some of the audience are interested in hard copy.

My take is that Adobe are now moving way beyond the print industry. Maybe I am just realising something that happened long ago. It has been suggested that PDF was always intended for the enterprise and only connected with litho through the technology vision of the pre-press community. Maybe this is to exaggerate a bit but it is clear enough now that the new Photoshop includes print service providers with the people who do not need the advanced version.

I seem to be off topic already. Somehow I get the impression that Flash is moving us towards online and mobile video when actually many people are still using flat documents on paper. So MARS could be of a lot wider interest than appears. It seems to be a version of PDF that is easier to connect with XML and Open Source approaches.

So my confusion may be in assuming that XML and Open Source are already part of the pre-press discussion. I don't see why not given some interest in JDF.

For some reason Open Source is sometimes mentioned on Adobe sites when discussing FLEX as an option for developers. I find less about open source on Acrobat sites. Maybe this is just my impression.

JDF? What's that? I am absolutely certain this is the worst promoted feature of Acrobat 8. Just as it was for Acrobat 7.

A more considered version of this will follow later.

The Jim King presentation gives a balanced view on Adobe directions so is well worth a look. I may come round to looking more at Connect etc. later. But I think a good look at MARS is the place to start. There are some issues raised around PDF that have become boring and obvious but they are not yet sorted everywhere.

Guardian video link found

A bit of Googling reveals that video is seen as the future for the Guardian, as reported by Journalism UK.

Maybe Bruce Chizen is right to look at Photoshop as part of the moving image scene.

I hope page design is still studied somewhere.

Guardian web is "pre-eminent" : source Jeff Jarvis

Today's Guardian Media once again has tucked Jeff Jarvis towards the back in the print edition but he manages to write about video enough to convince that this has potential. Checking Buzzmachine I find there is more about the Guardian. Apparently there has been an announcement that the web platform is now the priority. Strangely the print version allows someone from the Independent to claim that the case for the web has been overdone without any probing question.

Will the Guardian be doing more on video? I think we should be told. In print and directly, not just leaked through Jeff Jarvis to an assumed US online audience when some of us in the UK are paying for the print as well and getting less than a full picture.

OEM Postscript loses out in Bruce Chizen mindshare

Bruce Chizen has covered most of the products that interest him in a recent interview with ZD Net . The link is to the last page where there is a mention for LiveCycle, the server software for PDF.

Most enthusiasm is for Apollo, moving everything towards Flash. There is no mention of Postscript at all that I can find. This might explain why JDF remains an under promoted aspect of Acrobat. In the Adobe future there appears to be no hard copy at all. Maybe this view is partly based on acceptance that PDF creation is now widely available. PDF is to be an ISO standard following the acceptance for PDF-X etc. The only downside is that Adobe will no longer do that much promotion except for Flash on mobile phones etc. That's an impression only but this will studied for future posts.

There is reference to Microsoft and the XML Paper Spec. My guess is that this will have some effect in the limited world of office hard copy. Global Graphics still has a focus on print, however long that lasts.

Jim King site found

Found a site but not much news yet from Miami.