The survey results are actually quite revealing, and if you’re considering implementing a solution soon, worth exploring. Leading the pack at this time is “Taxonomy/Metadata development.”

If you’re not familiar with metadata, it’s all of the information that can describe your digital asset. As an example, for a photograph, you have the EXIF data such as shutter speed, aperture, flash metadata that is automatically embedded by digital cameras. Yet in addition there are quite a few other pieces of data that you might want to capture that describe the image’s content, use in projects and so forth. When you have thousands of images to catalog, the process of tracking this type of metadata can become overwhelming if you don’t have established procedures.

To help you determine your own internal procedures, we’ve developed a list of 5 Tips for Advanced Metadata Management. Hopefully they’ll help you establish procedures that make your DAM workflow smooth and efficient.

Font Aid IV raises funds for the organization Doctors Without Borders through the creation and sale of a custom collaborative font created entirely of ampersands. You can participate by submitting your own ampersand, as well as by purchasing the finished typeface through a variety of typeface distributors.

Submit your black and white “ampersand” icon for the benefit font. It should be a vector image file, not a bitmap. Keep it simple, not too crazy. Send it in EPS format to fontaid@typesociety.org by January 29th, 2010.

When the font is available I’ll also post a link to the foundries that have it for sale.

Thomas has collected a number of real-life examples of companies who didn’t comply with font licensing, and the consequences that they faced. Thomas will guide you through options available to help you control your own font licensing and avoid similar situations.

Choose from two different webcast times.

North American webcast details

• January 26th, 2010
• 11:00 AM (Pacific) / 2:00 PM (Eastern)
• Register for this FREE Webcast

European webcast details

• January 28th, 2010
• 3:00 PM GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)/ 4:00 PM CET (Central European Time)
• Register for this FREE Webcast

If you register but can not attend we will email you a link to the webcast recording.

The folks over at CMS Wire have been publishing some very fine content lately on their blog. Recently, they posted a guide of Six Things to Consider When Selecting a DAM solution. If you’re in the market for a digital asset manager for your office, the article mentions a number of concerns that we’ve been sharing with customers over the years. These include:

• Setting project goals, expectations and responsibility
• Evaluating the digital asset management solution on site, before purchase
• Establishing an effective workflow

In addition to reading this post, I highly recommend checking out our Digital Asset Management Best Practices Guide. This guide covers all of these concerns and more in detail.

If you’ve already thought through what you need, and are ready to bring a proposal to your boss, a while back we published a handy list of Top 10 Ways to Sell Digital Asset Management to your Boss. Hopefully this will help arm you with good arguments for your DAM solution (we hope that it’s Portfolio Server!).

On January 20th and 21st, we’ll be demonstrating how NetMediaMAX can assist in image processing workflows.

NetMediaMAX allows users to:

• Create composite PDF proofs from various files without opening multiple applications.
• Batch resize your images, convert to a different file format and resize for Web usage and save your preferences.
• Deliver digital files via self-service web portals and allow others to export low-res files of the originals on-the-fly.
• Automatically create multiple derivatives of your originals and even apply destructive watermarks for protection.

Register for one of our two webcasts. Choose the appropriate event based on language:

• French Portfolio NetMediaMAX webcast on Jan 20th
• German Portfolio NetMediaMAX webcast on Jan 21st

Extensis products are localized so that they run in many different languages. For most of our products, we support English, French, German and Japanese languages. In addition, we are working to expand the language support for many of our products to include Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

Because fonts are so small, and many fonts come pre-installed with your operating system, people have a tendency to look at fonts as a “free” item.

In reality, the designers who create typefaces, and the fonts that we use on our computers, take a great deal of time to perfect the font faces that we use. Some designers have generously place some fonts for free out on the internet, but mostly, designers ask (and deserve) to be compensated for the months of work required to create a typeface.

So yesterday when it was revealed that Hadopi, the French anti-piracy group, had used an inappropriately licensed font in the creation of their logo, they had more than a little egg on their face.

Font piracy, and even inadvertent inappropriate usage is more common than many of us would like. Our Universal Type Server product line gives users the opportunity to track license usage. This allows you to run periodic compliance reports to be sure that all of the fonts in your workflow are licensed. And even catch those hard-to-identify instances when you may need to purchase just one more license… perhaps for your logo designer.

This award recognizes our entire range of font management products, including our Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server product lines.

This award recognizes the leaps and bounds in software development that has been made to the entire font management product line over the past decade. The many improvements over the past decade include:

• Merging the two dominant font management product lines (Suitcase and Font Reserve) into a new, powerful font managers, Suitcase Fusion and Universal Type Server.
• The integration of Font Sense technology to accurately match fonts used in documents.
• Quick, reliable side-by-side previews of multiple fonts using custom text with QuickType.
• The ability to tear-off previews from the application and allow them to float above all other windows.
• Organizational features, such as Smart Sets, that allow users to quickly identify and activate fonts required for their projects.
• Solid client-server font management with a focus on licensing compliance and consistency for font users as well as system administrators.

Thanks to IT Enquirer for recognizing the hard work that it takes to bring quality products to the creative community.

So if you’re looking to improve your digital asset management workflow, investigate font management best practices, or just see what’s new in our products, we’ve got a webcast for you.

Use the links below to launch our most popular webcasts:

• Complete list of recorded Extensis webcasts
• Digital asset management best practices
• Font management in Mac OS X best practices
• What’s new in Suitcase Fusion 2 for Windows
• Yale University digital asset management success story
• National Gallery of London’s DAM best practices

This upcoming Tuesday we have two webcasts that will provide you with a complete overview of all of the new features, and how they can make your font management experience better and more fun. There will be a Q & A period following the demo, so be sure to stick around so that we can answer any of your font management questions.

Please register for one of these upcoming webcasts. We look forward to it!

North American Webcast

• December 15, 2009
• 11:00 AM (Pacific) / 2:00 PM (Eastern)
• Register Here

European Webcast

• December 15, 2009
• 10am GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) / 11am CET (Central European Time)
• Register Here

I will continue to answer all of your questions from the English Twitter account. So, fire away!

For reference, here are all of the social media avenues for communication with us:

• Extensis Twitter accounts
  • English – @extensis
  • French – @Extensis_France
• Extensis Blog
• Extensis Forums
• Extensis Facebook Fan page

Of course, if you have any technical support or customer service needs, please contact those teams directly using this link:
http://www.extensis.com/support

Qualifying Products (Mac or Windows®)

• Suitcase Fusion® 2
• Portfolio™ 8.5
• Universal Type Server® 2 Lite

Use the Promo Code TUNEUP when you purchase any of the products listed above by December 24th and receive a $15 Apple® iTunes® gift card in the mail.

Get started on your way to a iTunes gift card here.

The fine print: Offer applies to English electronic full and upgrade products in the US via the Extensis online store from 12/7/09 – 12/24/09 only. Offer does not apply to our professional server products or volume license purchases and cannot be combined with any other sale or special offer. You will receive a $15 iTunes® gift card for every qualifying Extensis product you purchase during the length of this offer, which ends December 24, 2009. Please allow 4-6 weeks for shipping. Reimbursement for any returned Extensis product purchased through this promotion will be reduced by the value of the gift card and shipping. Gift card use is subject to Apple gift card terms and conditions. iTunes is a registered trademark of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Love it!

NetMediaMAX allows users to:

• Create composite PDF proofs from various files without opening multiple applications.
• Batch resize your images, convert to a different file format and resize for Web usage and save your preferences.
• Deliver digital files via self-service web portals and allow others to export low-res files of the originals on-the-fly.
• Automatically create multiple derivatives of your originals and even apply destructive watermarks for protection.

Register for one of our two webcasts. Choose the appropriate event based on your location.

European Webcast

• Thursday, December 3, 2009
• 10 a.m. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), 11 a.m. CET (Central European Time)
• Register Here

North American Webcast

• Thursday, December 3, 2009
• 11:00 a.m. PST (Pacific Standard Time) / 2:00 p.m. (Eastern Standard Time)
• Register Here

Today we released Portfolio NetMediaMAX, an entirely new add-on for the our digital asset management solution, Portfolio Server 9. This media-processing add-on allows digital imaging professionals to automate their media workflows for increased productivity and workflow efficiency in high-output creative and image-intensive environments.

Designers and marketers spend significant time performing repetitive production tasks as part of their imaging workflow. The NetMediaMAX add-on can automate these repetitive tasks for faster production. Complex export operations no longer require users to locate, download and process files in multiple applications. With NetMediaMAX these tasks are offloaded to Portfolio Server so that users can spend more time on their core tasks, translating into faster output and profits for organizations.

“We have heard from many of our customers that their creative teams spend too much time doing repetitive, non-value added activities,” says Martin Stein, VP of Products and Services at Extensis. “NetMediaMAX is designed to automate manual processes, eliminate routine tasks, create consistency and standardize processes, resulting in individuals focusing back on their creative tasks.”

Converting batches of images into derivatives for use on the Web and in print can take many hours. With NetMediaMAX, which offers graphical tools to simplify processing tasks, file conversions are created on the fly for faster output. Presets can be utilized to accomplish common batch-processing operations—such as file resizing and format conversion—to ensure standardization and eliminate errors.

NetMediaMAX Highlights:

• Automates repetitive image production tasks
• Increases efficiency, quality and output
• On-demand generation of digital assets
• Download files and ‘save as’ many file types you choose- on the fly
• Batch-convert images and other files into any standard format
• Utilizes MediaScript™, an open, standards-based scripting language to automate and customize for many different workflow needs
• Publish web portals that allow users to download files in a variety of file types
• Distributed processing for high-volume environments with multiple media engines

NetMediaMAX is built on the Portfolio Server platform that provides support for Windows® and Macintosh® environments and utilizes server-side processing, freeing up desktops from media-processing tasks. The MediaRich® technology inside NetMediaMAX provides organizations with heavy workloads the ability to process media-related tasks dynamically and automatically, saving significant time and manual effort. Organizations can distribute media-processing tasks to one or more external servers for even faster performance.

NetMediaMAX provides support for a wide range of image file formats. Users can convert to the most popular file types such as TIFF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, PSD, TGA, BMP, PDF and EPS.

For enhanced capabilities, IT professionals can create limitless customizations by enabling custom scripts to automate steps such as transferring multiple digital assets, updating metadata, building composite logos, colorizing, resizing and more. NetMediaMAX comes with sample scripts to get you started. Scripts can be easily customized using MediaScript, Equilibrium’s easy-to-learn ECMAScript-based scripting language (like JavaScript) that is uniquely designed for media-processing environments.

For more information, see www.netmediamax.com.

If you are based in the Manchester or Belfast areas and are interested in learning more about font management, we’ll be hosting a font management best practices session at the Adobe^® Creative Suite^® 4 Roadshows, taking place in both cities over the next couple of weeks:

• 25th November, University of Ulster, Belfast

• 2nd December, Band on the Wall, Manchester

We hope to see you there.

We’ve got a great community here at Extensis, and every so often we like to celebrate that community. Today, the Extensis Customer Service department got up early to cook everyone in the Portland office breakfast – with a little bit of flair. Jennifer, Jason and Daryl cooked us some letter-shaped French toast, brontosaurus shaped pancakes, along with all of the eggs and sausage of a typical American breakfast. So, in addition to providing great customer service, these guys also cook up a great meal!

Thanks Customer Service!

Today we released an updated version of our single-user font manager, Suitcase Fusion 2 for Windows, version 13.2.

This release adds compatibility with Windows 7, enhanced plug-ins for Adobe® Illustrator® CS4, CS3 and CS2 and Adobe® InDesign® CS4 and CS3, as well as an updated migration process for Suitcase for Windows version 11 users.

If you are a current Suitcase Fusion 2 for Windows user, you can download this maintenance update at no cost. If you have Suitcase for Windows versions 9 and 11, or standalone Font Reserve 2.6, you are eligible for upgrade pricing.

Download Suitcase Fusion 2 version 13.2 here.

Suitcase Fusion 2 is available in English, French and German. For more information on Suitcase Fusion 2, visit www.extensis.com/SuitcaseFusion2.

Later this week, we will be exhibiting and presenting at Media Pro, the unique event for those involved in the creation, production, procurement and distribution of media and marketing communications.

We’ll be presenting a digital asset management case study and best practices session. You’ll see how BB Printing, a UK-based commercial printer uses Portfolio Server, to create an easily accessible and searchable catalog with thousands of digital files.

Presentation Agenda:
• 4th November: 10:45 – 11:15, Apple Solution Expert Theatre
• 5th November: 11:00 – 11:45, Apple Solution Expert Theatre

Also, be sure to drop by the Extensis stand (24), where we will be demonstrating both Portfolio Server and Universal Type Server. We’ll also be on hand to answer any font or digital asset management questions.

Media Pro:

UPDATED: By request, more entries are now included after the jump.

A happy litte caveman.

A colorful kitty.

One devilish dog.

Time to visit the luau.

One snazzy rockstar with pearls.