Adobe Tool Eases iPhone Content, Social Sharing

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Adobe has updated its Digital Publishing Suite to make it easier for publishers and brand managers to distribute their content on Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch devices.

The tool, if it works as promised, will be welcome by designers using Adobe's Creative Suite. Previously, designers could not easily take materials designed in CS and convert them for use on the iPhone or iPod touch. Condé Nast has tested The New Yorker using the application, according to Adobe.

At Adobe's annual Digital Publishing Summit today, the software maker also introduced social sharing features that permit readers and customers to easily share articles on Facebook, Twitter, and via email. The tool gives publishers or brand content managers the ability to configure articles available for sharing, choose social media channels in which they can be shared, and set a limit on the amount of content that can be shared free of charge.

The tool also gives publishers control over whether an advertisement can be shared. "Publishers could choose to make an advertisement 'unprotected' (most likely as part of a shared article) if they had an agreement with the brand advertisers. Within the Folio Producer Service, production staff can protect/unprotect articles and advertisements. Unprotected means the advertisement can be shared through Facebook, Twitter, and email," a spokeswoman said in an email interview. 

Wenner Media's Us Weekly has tested the social sharing applications for the iPad, according to Adobe. The application will be available for download May 17 in the Apple Newsstand.

An Adobe spokesman said publishers can create interactive overlays that support video, audio, pan and zoom, web content (access a website without launching browser and leaving the app environment), hyperlinks, slideshows, image sequences (360 rotations) scrollable frames, and panorama. File formats supported are JPG, PNG, HTML 5, and PDF.

An earlier version of Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite is optimized to work with iPad, Kindle Fire, and Android tablets. The Digital Publishing Suite is comprised of hosted services and technologies that work with Adobe InDesign, software used by publishers and content marketers.

Adobe also said its publishing suite is now integrated with Adobe Edge preview software, which enables designers to create animated HTML 5 content. Its Indesign CS6 permits alternate layouts, which allow content to be resized for publication on different devices.