Adobe Systems Inc.

Slate, which launches today on iPad, is a follow-up to last year's Adobe Voice app, which made animated videos on iPad. Slate is structurally similar to Voice. It allows users to pull in photos from different cloud services and offers predesigned "themes" to choose from.

But rather than making animated videos, Slate uses a combination of your still photos and original text to create things like photo essays, newsletters, educational projects and digital invitations.

Blurb, the creative publishing and marketing platform, today announced that its collaboration with Adobe Systems to enable streamlined bookmaking within Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom® 4, is now available to all. The integration offers a seamless experience by providing the tools directly within Lightroom 4 "Book module" to create professional-quality photography books, coupled with a direct link to Blurb.com for printing, marketing and distribution. During the public beta period, which kicked off on January 9, Lightroom customers made more than 1000 unique Blurb books using the integrated Lightroom workflow.

In a landmark case being eyed by printers and manufacturers for the last several years, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a St. Louis District Court judgement from more than a year ago in which the lower court had ruled against Lightning Source Inc. and Amazon.com for patent infringement. The court’s opinion was unanimous in finding that “no reasonable jury could find infringement on the correct claim construction.” The plaintiff, On Demand Machine Corporation (ODMC), won the initial verdict in March 2004, and was awarded $15 million in damages by the jury. The latest ruling, in favor of Lightning Source,

New York, N.Y. (February 28, 2005) -- Will digital textbooks replace print? Do Books offer improvements in learning? These questions and presentations on the advantages of using digital media to deliver educational content will be center stage at the Books in Education Conference, Thursday, April 14th, 2005 at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in midtown Manhattan. The Open book Forum (of) is sponsoring this one-day event to present the latest developments in digital reading technologies, case studies on Books in the classroom, new business models for online curriculum, and legislative initiatives for digital textbooks. Presenters include educators, and representatives from textbook publishers, software companies, and online

Intellectual property drives the software industry, fueling technology and innovation investments. Yet the same advances that drove the computing revolution of the past decade—the Internet, the Web, e-mail, faster processors, cheap memory—have made the protection of intellectual property more difficult than ever. While technology companies tried many techniques to protect their products, virtually all these past techniques were rejected by consumers as unreliable and unfriendly. Today, software companies are turning to 'product activation' as a workable extension of the end-user license agreement. With growing consumer acceptance of activation, it's increasingly clear that activation strikes the elusive, yet necessary balance between user experience and software protection. But all activation

Many factors keep leading companies at the top of their game. But consider this little-known fact: top companies spend twice as much on training than their competitors. These organizations have insight that others don't. A study from the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), titled Profiting from Learning: Do Firms' Investments in Education and Training Pay Off?, reveals that training directly improves business. Companies that spent more on training per employee had a 45% higher total shareholder return (TSR) than the weighted average of the S&P 500, and an astonishing 86% higher TSR than firms in the bottom half of the ranking. With the rapid pace

Public libraries are embracing e-books, thanks to technological advances that solve rights management issues, and soothe publisher fears. In March, the Cleveland Public Library, in Ohio, became the first public library to offer an e-book system. About 1,000 books, ranging from new releases like Michael Crichton's Prey to classic literature, are available as e-books. They can be checked out exactly like non-electronic titles. The service is available inside a library branch, or over the Internet. It lets readers download publications onto personal computers and digital assistants. New digital rights management (DRM) software is managing the downloads. After two weeks, the downloaded e-books expire, and

Last year, nearly 3,700 book publishing professionals from across North America convened in New York City for BookTech, the only event focused on the latest technologies and techniques in the book and e-book publishing industry. The total attendance surpassed the previous year by 21 percent, and was demonstrated by a packed exhibit hall, crowded keynote address, and standing room only conference rooms. The event featured industry experts from leading companies such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems, ContentGuard, The Lehigh Press, The Mazor Corp., Simon & Schuster and World Book, among others. Leading publishers spoke of hot topics like ASP's, e-book formatting, marketing and distribution,

A Review of New E-Publishing Products From Adobe and Microsoft By Danny O. Snow New technologies may make publishers want to echo Robert Frost's classic lament, that a traveller can follow only one fork in the road at a time. Major new products specifically designed for delivery of online content have set the publishing industry abuzz, amid a flurry of controversy over earlier efforts to bring e-books more squarely into mainstream markets. Software industry leaders now offer e-publishers new strategies for the presentation of online content to readers -- but both systems must face the challenge of protecting intellectual property for the author and publisher. WebBuy and PDF

ONLINE BOOKSELLERS Since it was impossible to include everyone, we offer this listing below as a mere snapshot of the emerging business models in this exploding field. Browse this list to get an idea of how today's book publishers sell their wares--both printed and electronic--online. By spending just a few minutes on the Internet yourself, you will probably find even more companies . . . WHO: www.agoodbook.com, "Your basic $4.95 download" WHAT THEY SELL: e-books downloadable for $4.95; the site has an association with www.amazon.com WHAT FORMAT: PDF, HTML. WHO: www.amazon.com, "Earth's biggest selection" WHAT THEY SELL: printed books, CDs, gifts, DVD and video,