How the American Dental Association Moved Beyond DRM

The American Dental Association has been publishing books, brochures and other materials to help members stay current and manage their practices for more than a century, and now generates about $10 million in sales and licensing revenue from these products.

The ADA migrated to Tizra this year after a rigorous RFP process, driven primarily by frustration with their previous digital publication solution, which relied on proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. Under the previous digital publication solution, users were required to download special software to view the publications, which caused user complaints, and the DRM solution was unable to handle video and other supplements that went along with the publications, meaning ADA had to rely on cumbersome delivery mechanisms like CD-ROMs and flash drives.

Working with Tizra, ADA has not only eliminated these issues, they have gained the flexibility to pursue complex business models like group sales to large practices and institutions. ADA and Tizra are now actively exploring follow-on projects to add more kinds of content, and further develop publications as a key source of non-dues revenue to support ADA’s mission.

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Online Publishing for Tough Times

"I didn't invent the rainy day, man. I just own the best umbrella" Almost Famous In an economic climate that led Publishers Weekly to predict 2009 would be "the worst year for publishing in decades," eBook sales are growing at more than 100% a year, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). We think it's time more content owners—both inside and outside the traditional publishing industry—had access to serious online publishing tools that will open up this kind of opportunity. That's why we're rolling out free, self-service signups to Tizra Publisher. This is the same software that MIT Press is using to sell a collection of more than 170 computer science books on its CISnet site , and you can get your hands on it right now… FREE 60 SECOND SIGNUP If you'd like to learn a bit more, here's quick overview of what Tizra Publisher can do ( click the little TV icon at the bottom to see it big! ).

Technical Podcasts

If there is something the web as surely changed, it was the way that software engineers need to work. It is now a crucial aspect of our work to be able draw from the huge internet knowledge base out there in an efficient way to get to the right answers. Part of that information extraction is related to the keeping-up-to-date effort that every developer is required to accomplish to continue to be productive. While previous a software engineer could rely mostly on print material, nowadays we need to rely as well on content available on the net. Podcasts are such a source that can bring an amazing amount of information to the mix of knowledge one needs these days. If you are a software engineer and have not jumped into the podcast wagon yet, I suggest you do so. Here is a list some technical podcasts that we hear at Tizra: The Java Posse : a fantastic podcast on Java development. Containing news info update, analysis of tools, overall software development discussions. Software as She Dev...

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