The latest PubWright podcast has been posted to the web and iTunes.

In this podcast, Liz Fraley interviews Regina Roman. Liz first met Regina over 10 years ago, when Liz first brought Arbortext & XML to Juniper Networks. With XML, Regina says she feels freed from the formatting handcuffs and extra burdens required by constant manual tasks required by traditional desktop publishing tools. She can be a writer again.  After completing her first project, she asked Liz, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” — how much easier it was, how much better it was than DTP. Now, when offered her choice of positions, Regina chooses the XML projects rather than the FrameMaker ones and she encourages her other clients to choose XML as well.

Listen to the podcast to find out more.

Content is quickly becoming a strategic asset. As enterprises rush towards Web 3.0 and social networking, the amount of time required to produce and coordinate content across all those outlets is growing dramatically every day.  Experts say that it takes approximately 32 hours per month–per site. That’s nearly a week’s time per social networking target.

Are you one of the lucky ones who has an integrated platform to coordinate cross-functional teams so you can reuse content? Do you have a bunch of teams that coordinate with each other? Are you gaining visibility at the executive level or simply working overtime? Maybe you’re all on your own.

Maintaining an effective social media presence leverages customers, prospects, colleagues and contacts, and puts you in touch with fast-changing tides of industry trends, but it also steals productive hours from you and your workforce to maintain properly

Is your organization thinking about the content it produces strategically?

Go ahead and let us know in the poll below, and then vent away in the comments.

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The M170 release of Arbortext Advanced Print Publisher Version 9.1 is now available for download from the support site. If you want to know all the details about this release, please check out the release notes.

The release notes have this to say:

• Fixed issue with keep-with-previous where it wouldn’t work within a section itself was being balanced (SPR 1971370)
• Fixed rotated footnotes surround frame size issue. (SPR 1919326)
• Fixed issue that prevented frame shift (tfshift) from working when using copyfit with ‘update real values’ enabled. (SPR 1936426)
• Fixed problem with space at end of line containing leaders. (SPR 1970802)
• Fixed problem with OpenType font containing an empty index table. (SPR 1972664)
• Fixed pointer error in Line Style menu. (SPR 1993501)

by Eric Flynn

From attending the recent PTC User Conference, it appears we are in the midst of a paradigm shift and it will be every bit as significant as the move from desktop publishing to structured content management.  This shift will be from book publishing to dynamic content delivery.  Think about where we have come in the last decade: we use electronic tools to create, publish and maintain our publications, but we still interact with these publications in exactly the same way as their printed counterparts: page-by-page, through an index or glossary or a rudimentary keyword search.

Also, the creative process is the same: anticipate what the customer is going to need and put it in a book.  This pattern of “predictive publishing” breaks down in the face of highly customizable products, since it is impractical to cover every option or configuration that might occur in a single manual.  Also, this publishing model breaks down for products that present a complicated set of features to the user; it is difficult and time-consuming to sift through a large amount of documentation to find help with the task at hand.

PTC’s answer to this problem is the next phase in electronic publishing: Service Information Systems.  Take for example the problem of navigation.  For years, we have hassled with paper maps or Thomas Guides, trying to flip pages and drive to our destination.  This rather haphazard and indeed hazardous process has now been supplanted by GPS-driven navigation systems.  The two key properties of such systems is that they are contextual and interactive.  That is, they are specialized to the task to be performed and they provide an interface that is appropriate to the context.

So, how do you leverage the new generation of tools that are forth-coming from PTC?  First, it almost goes without saying that you will need to be doing structured content management.  Second, if you have not done so already, adopt a Content Management System.  Service Information Systems will be driven from their content databases, so this step is vital.  Finally, be sure that your rendering tools can produce content viewable in ProductView, as this will be the first supported platform for viewing dynamic content.  Stay tuned!