Tizra Blog

Now that it's public , we're excited to show the new Tizra Publisher web control panel in a bit more detail. To provide a real-world example, we'll show it in use building the eat.shop guides site for Cabazon Books, which went live a few weeks ago. While in practice the process is quick—with initial online selling capability available in a matter of minutes—there's a lot to the software, so we'll break it up over a few posts. 1. Upload a Document When you open your Tizra Publisher account, you're presented with the control panel homepage in your web browser. The cog dropdown provides quick access to key tasks from anywhere in the system. Start by using it to upload a PDF. In this case, it's the full 132 illustrated spreads for eat.shop nyc. Note how the progress bar informs you as the system imports the file, extracts metadata, breaks the PDF into individual pages, and indexes it for full-text searchability. Apart from the upload, which of cours...

You may have noticed we were pretty excited about O'Reilly's Tools of Change conference, which is still going on through the end of today in New York. This is really the place for people who love books, digital technology and the things they can do for each other. Apparently the ranks of people like this are growing. Eight hundred attended this year's conference, compared with 200 last year, when our CEO David Durand gave his Tutorial on Digitizing your Backlist. Overall, the show was all we could have hoped for. Underlying the rapid attendance growth is a general feeling that 2008 is the breakout year…the year books start to move online in the way other media have over the past dozen years. David Rothman, an influential blogger at Publishers Weekly had just written us up , and interest in our proposition was high. We were especially excited because this year we were on the program to give a Lightning Demo of Agile PDF, including the first showing of a new control p...

When the first Agile PDF sites launched recently, we promised we'd be saying more soon about how the sites were built. Well, the first public demo is coming up at the O'Reilly Tools of Change Conference in NYC: The Five-minute Publication Site —Part of the TOC Lightning Demos Series, February 11, 7:30-8:30pm, Broadway Ballroom As the name suggests, we'll be showing just how quickly a publisher can move from PDF files to a flexible, customizable website selling digital content. And of course, if you've got a bit more than five minutes, we'd be happy to answer any questions. We'll be exhibiting immediately after the demos at the TOC Faire , and happy to talk at any point during the rest of the conference. Drop us a note at info@tizra.com .

We’ll be in Washington DC next week, attending the Professional and Scholarly Publishers annual trade show and meeting with local D.C Publishers. So come find me in the hallways, or I'll come to you in D.C. Better still, contact me (anne.orens@tizra.com) and bring a PDF with you to the meeting. I can provide an interactive showing of how Agile PDF manages your PDF and delivers online content.

This personal blog  post  by Tizra CTO Francisco Rosa gives the hardcore technologist's view of why Agile PDF is different. He may not be in the marketing department, but it's safe to say he knows our software. He also knows how it matches up against expensive custom systems now in use elsewhere (he built a few for clients like Oxford University Press, McGraw-Hill and the World Bank before coming to Tizra).

Congratulations to two publishing organizations that over the past couple of days became the first to go live with sites built using Tizra's Agile PDF : eat.shop guides Green Building 101 from Rate It Green The first is a fast-growing publisher of printed city guides with an emphasis on creative design and local flavor. The second is a web startup aiming to facilitate information sharing and growth in the burgeoning business of green construction. As one look at the sites will tell you, they're two very different organizations. But both have taken an exciting first step toward new online publishing revenue. Better yet, both are doing it their way, with complete control over their own products, brands and strategies. And they are doing it with none of the technology investment or lead time that traditional custom information commerce projects have required. How? We'll begin taking the wraps off of that part in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, drop a note to info@tizra.com i...

David Durand and Anne Orens will be at the Online Information 2007 conference in London next week, giving demos and answering questions about Agile PDF, which is on track for its first public release in a matter of weeks. Drop a note to info@tizra.com to schedule an appointment.