LizardTech Revolutionizes The Way Newspapers And Magazines Are Delivered By Introducing The Publishing Industry To Efficient Digital Replicas
LizardTech, Inc., a leader in software solutions that make it significantly easier to manage, distribute and access digital content such as aerial photography, satellite imagery, and scanned color documents, today announced the company's presence, showcasing Document Express with DjVu, a revolutionary solution enabling publishers to instantly deliver digital replicas of print editions directly to a subscribers inbox computer screen.
DjVu is a revolutionary open file format that has long been preferred by universities and leading corporations like Northwest Airlines, Sears, Komatsu, Samsung, LG, IDG and Marvel because it enables dramatically smaller electronic and scanned document files while preserving the visual quality of the original publication. Unlike HTML and online content, sales of most digital editions can be counted as audited circulation, increasing the publication's ability to expand its reach nationally or internationally, thereby, boosting advertising revenue. Digital editions of newspapers and magazines allow publications to be delivered around the globe immediately with costs much lower than the print edition.
Some of the top publishers in the nation, like IDG, are already taking advantage of the DjVu format by converting the print edition of magazines to digital replicas, saving time and money. In Australia, IDG publishes a digital edition of Computerworld Magazine, which is an exact replica of the weekly print edition, in a digitally compressed DjVu file, that is almost always under 2MB in size. The digital replica is then emailed directly to their readers' inbox, which can then be viewed instantly on screen. The free DjVu document viewer plug-in installation is seamlessly integrated into the magazines sign-up process and can also be downloaded for free on LizardTech's Web site. IDG also offers a PDF version of Computerworld, however, the PDF file is around 8MB to 10MB, significantly larger than the size of a DjVu file. Since many e-mail gateways decline attachments this large, DjVu is clearly the document format of choice.
Marvel, Inc. also takes advantage of DjVu by publishing a CD with digital replicas of comic books from its 10 most famous characters like Spiderman and Hulk. Each CD contains a high quality version of the first 10 issues of each character, including its debut issue, each in DjVu format. Without DjVu, 100 color-rich comic books at such high resolution would not have fit in a single CD resulting in a significant increase in both production cost and end-user pricing.
The benefits of using LizardTech's Document Express with DjVu software are significant. Publishers are able to convert their current issues to DjVu format from pre-press PDFs as well as by scanning past print issues, resulting in dramatically small file sizes-- anywhere from 10 to 100 times smaller than alternative formats like PDF or JPEG. DjVu digital replicas preserve the stunning visual quality of the print edition and are enhanced with multimedia features like ability to search by keyword within the pages (even within scanned documents thanks to OCR support for over a 100 languages), hyperlinks, e-mail addresses, page spills and more. In addition, publishers are able to easily integrate Document Express with DjVu into an existing workflow for scanning past issues into digital replicas to preserve the quality of the original print publication and eliminate the yellowing affects associated with print editions.
"Why wait for the print edition to arrive in your mailbox when you can get instant access to your DjVu digital replica?" said Carlos Domingo, LizardTech's President and CEO. "We are excited to introduce Document Express with DjVu to the publishing industry this year at Folio Show and demonstrate how DjVu digital replicas are the evolution of print editions."
About LizardTech, a Celartem Company
LizardTech was founded in 1992 to build valuable business solutions from technologies created by the world's leading research organizations including Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and AT&T Labs. LizardTech is a leader in applying state-of-the-art technologies to the real-world challenges of managing, distributing, and accessing large complex digital content such as aerial photographs, satellite imagery, and color scanned documents. LizardTech's software is installed on millions of desktops and integrated into a wide variety of platforms and applications. LizardTech has offices in Seattle, London and Tokyo, and is part of Celartem Technology Inc. (Osaka Securities Exchange, Hercules:4330), a Japan-based technology company focused on storage and distribution technologies for digital images. For more information about LizardTech, visit www.lizardtech.com.