Look ma, no hands Digitally enable print to reach an online audience

Posted by tom klein June 15, 2007

Think print media will die because you can’t click it? Think again.

Olive Software’s Active Paper can recreate a publication so that it has the look and feel of the original, but is accessible online. Print publications like Red Herring and The Denver Post show that all of the investment in beautiful fonts and graphics hasn’t been wasted, but now the links are alive and functional – and pointing readers to advertisers. Move over PDF, the moment you web enable your publication this way, you’re in the online advertising business.

If you market a publication or even if you’re just looking to bring a print document to a web audience, don’t let your old notions fool you. Print’s being redefined and can offer a direct line of sight to an online business … and a global online audience.

To enable this transformation from print to online, Olive software takes print documents and translates them into XML (extensible markup language). Think of this language as a way of defining different parts and pieces of a print document so that a computer program can understand. Once a program knows the difference between a title and a byline, the magic can happen.

Even if you’re not a publisher, you may be printing documents that are good candidates for transformation and not even know it. Boeing decided that its Delta IV Payload Planners Guide (it’s a rocket) for the spacecraft user community needed to be electronically enabled. What used to be a printed doorstop now lives online. Your user guides could be candidates as well.

Demo webinars and materials Scotsman case study (PDF) Digital magazines and social networking

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