Adobe Digital Publishing Event

Joe Zeff Design was part of Adobe's Digital Publishing Event in New York City this morning, where the software company announced several enhancements to its Digital Publishing Suite intended to make tablet publications more robust than ever. The June issue of Fast Company, which became available for sale yesterday in the iTunes App Store, is the first DPS publication to use Adobe Edge, a new HTML authoring tool that has not yet been released to the public. Joe Zeff shared the stage with Fast Company Executive Editor Noah Robischon and Adobe fellow Mark Anders to demonstrate Edge and how it integrates with Digital Publishing Suite.

We see Edge as a way to make passive content more active than ever, going beyond the existing DPS toolset. Other benefits: sharper type, smaller filesizes and greater extensibility of HTML content beyond the tablet. The Edge animation we designed for Fast Company was repurposed for the magazine's website in less than five minutes. We look forward to using Edge and other DPS enhancements to benefit our publishing clients, which include Fast Company, PC Magazine, Everyday Health and UCLA Anderson School of Management.

A live blog of today's event appears here. Among the other highlights:

• Adobe DPS now contains iPhone compatibility, adding yet another output format for digital publications. It will be interesting to see how quickly publishers leverage the ability to create mobile apps.

• Social sharing has been expanded to include e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, with links to DPS content presented in a browser with the same functionality as what appears on the tablet. Consumers can view a predetermined number of free articles before confronting a paywall and an invitation to purchase an issue or subscription.

• Adobe has made its font library open to DPS customers, making it possible to embed fonts within PDF-based folios without running afoul of licensing requirements.

And in other Joe Zeff Design news:

• Joe Zeff Design won two Gold Awards at the Society of Publication Designers annual competition last week at Cipriani Wall Street for its design and development of Time magazine's "Beyond 9/11" app.

• Joe Zeff will be presenting the keynote speech at a Society of Publication Designers event Thursday night at Smashbox in Los Angeles. Details here. Then on Monday, Joe will appear at the City and Regional Magazines Association annual conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Details here.

WoodWing Xperience

We're excited to be part of the WoodWing Xperience this week in Amsterdam, where hundreds of publishing executives from throughout the world have gathered to learn about digital publishing from experts at Adobe, WoodWing and other companies. Joe Zeff Design is well-represented at the conference, with three people attending workshops and presentations. President Joe Zeff delivered a keynote address during the morning session about ways to apply lessons learned from digital magazine publishing to other fields, in particular the education and retail markets.

Time Inc. Chief Information Officer Mitch Klaif spoke about his company's ambitious efforts to digitize all of its properties, singling out the Time magazine "Beyond 9/11" app that was designed by Joe Zeff Design. (Thanks Mitch!) And Betty Wong, editor in chief of Fitness magazine, talked about her magazine's transition to tablets and what her company, Meredith, has learned along the way.

WoodWing made news by announcing a new product called SmartDPS Tools, a set of enhancements to Adobe Digital Publishing Suite that make the software more capable and easier to use. The package, to be released later this year at a pricepoint to be determined, provides InDesign plugins that simplify the process of deploying hotspots and scrollable elements; an HTML5 widget library; and a streamlined way to turn PDFs into Adobe DPS folios.

The conference continues tomorrow with presentations from Zeke Koch, who oversees Adobe's DPS efforts, and others. Stay tuned for more updates.