Adobe Systems Incorporated: Bill McCoy, General Manager, ePublishing Business
Bill gave the keynote at the idpf "Connected & Mobile 2006" conference in NYC yesterday. He had some interesting news and gave a nice presentation. He started off by talking about how there's much talk about hardware, and he's sure there will be a device that catches the masses. But he made it known that there is progress on the software side. The idea that open source, easily transmitted reading software is on the horizon. And OEBPS specification is the place to start, and the form to champion for getting publishers excited again about all things electronic, all things web. Let's not say "eBook."
So what's Adobe doing? Well, Acrobat works, but it is not a product that was designed for the reader, or even for the general consumer, for that matter. Hardly anyone, except the design professional working in the publishing industry needs markup, layers, etc that Acrobat provides. What the consumer needs is something that is "Optimized for reading."
So, Adobe will be launching a new product this summer, code named "Twist."
TWIST is a consumer optimized reading centric application. It downloads in less than two seconds (which he did off of Adobe's VPN). It will refit content to the size of the open window (he showed this, it works!) - this means it can look good, read well, and function great on any size device , no matter what size its screen! And for publishers, the best news is it does all that right from the OEBPS.
Oh, and during his keynote, he mentioned Flickr. Good man!