Today we are delighted to announce the beta release of 3D Issue Professional Mac, the first interactive page flip standalone software for Mac OS X . Since we released the Mac LITE version of our software in June 2009, we have been working around the clock to complete the professional version. 

 We are delighted to be the first to release an interactive digital magazine software solution for the Mac & this latest release marks a turning point in our software design. Those of you who are familiar with the PC version will notice a dramatic change to the interface design. 

Our Professional Mac version offers you the most dynamic and cost effective way of publishing your digital edition online, all done in a matter of seconds!!  3D Issue Professional is able to cater for all your digitizing needs; with a few simple clicks you can have your ready to print PDFs converted and posted online as a searchable interactive digital publication.

Our easy to use, all-in-one interface and floating toolbars make it so simply to add videos, audios, hyperlinks, flash, email links, contents menus, and much much more.

Perhaps one of the most vital features of digital editions is the ability to watch how your readers interact with your digital publications.  While important, one of the greatest challenges for publishers  has been  configuring and maintaining a database on their website to communicate with their digital editions and also to store all actions.  3D Issue is designed to allow you to record each click from your readers and have the details stored in a manner that ensures the stats are market validated, require no maintenance, no training and is completely free of charge. How do we do this ?

In November 2008, Google announced a new feature in Google Analytics (GA)that allows you to (for the first time) record actions from flash applications and have those details stored in your GA account free of charge. 3D Issue has configured our page turning application to be able to communicate with your GA account.  All you have to do is enter your GA user ID one time and 3D Issue will take care of the rest. Not only will it report vital marketing information such as the most popular pages, keyword searches, contents, websites visited etc.. You also receive all the other standard stats from GA such as user demographics, browser capacity, time of site and points of origin.

Click here to download a free trial version of our software and then visit our video tutorial section to watch a full training session of using our software.

As this is a beta release of the software, we are very interested to hear any feedback. Please feel free to contact us at support@3dissue.com

3D Issue today announced the launch of the first ever Mac version of their digital magazine production software. In a market that predominantly offers the digitization of print publications as a service, 3D Issue have, since its inception released their solutions as software packages; allowing you to completely own the digital magazine production process.

Until recently all their software solutions were developed for windows only. As the print publishing industry predominantly uses Macs for all their design work, 3D Issue are delighted to be the first to release a standalone PDF to digital edition software app for Mac users.

 Asking their Director of Business Development, Paul Mc Nulty, about the release he said it was long overdue; “It’s finally here!  After many months work, many cups of tea, and a lot of grey hairs we were absolutely delighted to be able to announce the release of the first Mac based digital publication software”.

 “As 90% of the publishing industry use Macs for their design work & print production, releasing Mac compatible versions of our software has always been a top priority for us. And we are delighted with the results. It’s much faster than the windows version. A 200 page publication can be converted to a digital edition in less than 90 seconds”

 In this tough economic climate, publishers have been looking for more creative ways to reduce marketing & admin costs. 3D Issue allows publishers the ability to do exactly that. Within seconds of final proofing, publishers can have their publications digitized & online.

 “While nothing will replace holding a magazine or newspaper in your hands, digital editions can offer publishers the ability to offer a value added service to their clients and readers and also collect valuable marketing information on the demographics and habits of their readers.

“We have integrated a tracking solution into our applications that allows you to record each action of a reader while they are interacting with your digital magazine. 3D Issue has designed this stats reporter so that it communicates directly with your Google Analytics account. So this means not only are these stat reports free of charge but they are also market validated and completely confidential.”

“Not only do you have all the standard demographic and browser based statistics from Google Analytics but 3D Issue also allows you to determine up to 40 different reader habits such as which articles or pages are receiving the most hits, what the most popular searches are, how many users are clicking on advertising links etc..”

“I worked in publishing for a number of years and companies were spending a small fortune promoting print publications through mail shots in the post. Posting out copies of their publications with other marketing material. Not only were the costs of doing this really high but it was also very time consuming.

Digital edition publications can be digitized and posted online in a matter of minutes. Even before the publication has arrived at the printing press.

“Digital editions offer publishers the ability to provide their clients and readers a value added service. Allow advertisers to see the issue minutes after final proofing. Allow readers outside a publication’s distribution reach to view the publication online within seconds.”

What’s different about 3D Issue is that it’s software and not a service, once you purchase the software that’s it. There is no recurring costs or monthly charges. You wholly own the production process, you create, you host and you own. You can digitize an unlimited number of your companies publications and perhaps more importantly you can host these digital editions yourself, allowing you total control over digital distribution. 

Now for the first time you can use your Mac to create your own digital publication.  You can then upload the e-publication to your own website yourself; you own 100% of the digital publication production process.

No more out-sourcing, no more unnecessary on-going charges. 3D Issue Mac Lite lets you convert your press ready PDFs into live, searchable digital editions in minutes.  Once you buy the license from 3D Issue, you can start digitizing your publications by yourself.  There is minimal effort and time consumption, making it a very efficient, intuitive and cost-effective software solution for your company. Digitize all past and future editions of all your publications!

 Download your free trial version from the following link :

 http://www.3dissue.com/digital_magazine_trial.html

PDF to Flash magazine software for Macs

Digital magazine software is now available on Macs.

It’s here! It’s finally here!  After many months work, many programmers, many cups of coffee, many trials and many, many requests. 3D Issue are delighted to announce the release of the first Mac based PDF to interactive digital edition software.
 

Use your Mac to create your own digital publication.  Then upload it to your own website. You create, you host & you own 100% of your digital publication production process. 

No more out-sourcing, no more unnecessary on-going charges.  3D Issue Mac Lite lets you convert your press ready PDFs into live, searchable digital editions in minutes. A 400 page publication can be converted in under 4 minutes.  

The software is effortless. No programming is required. You simply choose the features you want to include and click convert. There is minimal effort and time consumption, making it a very efficient, intuitive and cost-effective software solution for your company.  3D Issue software is sold as a company license. This means that as long as your company owns the publications you can use it to create digital editions of all past, present and future editions of any publication your company owns.

3D Issue Mac opens doors onto new frontiers. There is no other Mac based software of this kind on the market making 3D Issue the first company to make this software available. 

Click on the link below to download a trial version now.

http://www.3dissue.com/digital_magazine_trial.html

There are a variety of features in 3D Issue Mac Lite that you can choose to enable or disable as you see fit.  You can also alter how the user interacts with the digital edition. Listed below is each feature and its purpose.

Keyword Searching

The reader is allowed to search the entire publication for a word or phrase. 

Stretch to fit browser window

You might like to maximise the impact of your publication by resizing the initial view to the maximum available space.

Zooming options

Zoom to a single page at a time or zoom to double page spread mode. You can also change how the user scrolls around the page when they have zoomed in.  Move around the page via “click and drag” or on “mouse movement”.

Image Quality

This is perhaps one of the most important options as it directly effects the quality and size of your digital edition.   Change the DPI and Image Quality to suit your publication.

Remove Bleed

Normally when a publisher sends files to a printing company for printing, these crop-marks or bleeds are cut out. We feel it’s important to have these cut out of digital publications also.

Enable Printing

This feature allows your ‘Emag’ readers to select a range of pages that they wish to print.

Enable Archiving

This feature enables end-users to jump to previous issues of your company’s online publications.

Read Right to Left

Languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are read from right to left.  To cater for these clients we have added a button that when selected, reverses the entire publication to suit that format.

The converter simply creates a project folder at your desired destination and outputs all files needed to that folder.  So when the conversion is done, just drag the project folder onto your site using your website manager….that’s it!!!!

1)      Open 3D Issue Mac Lite;

2)      Import your PDFs;

3)      click convert;

4)      drag the project folder onto your site…your digital publication is online and your readers have immediate access.

Or if you have any queries or would like further information on 3D Issue Mac Lite please contact us at sales@3dissue.com.

Create eMags from any application

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new software solution, 3D Issue Printer. This tool contains an innovative print driver that will allow you to create digital editions from any windows application that has print functionality.   Print your static files to a digital edition and allow your audience to flip through your dynamic documents in an intuitive manner.

 If you can print it, you can flip it !!

Whether you print from Excel, Access, In Design, Quark, Word, web browsers, photoshop, or any other application it doesnt matter. 3D Issue Printer will easily convert the content into a dynamic interactive page turning digital edition in a matter of seconds.

You can also add and replace pages in your digital edition.  This will allow you to create digital editions from a multitude of different application and at different times.

We currently have a LITE version of the print driver available for downloading and we are looking for creative case studies from users for our site. Those that are selected will receive a free copy of 3D Issue Printer for their company.

Click here to read more on this product.

If you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact us at sales@3dissue.com

The new Google “Event Tracking” option within Google Analytics is currently in beta at the time of writing this article (January 26th 2009). This means not every account will see the new “Event Tracking” section under “Content”. This will be the case until Google decides to take “Event Tracking” out of beta and give access to all accounts. However, there is still a way to see your information even if the tab happens to be missing from your account.

Below are links that you can use to access your “Event Tracking” information and steps on how to access this.

First, login to your Google Analytics account and click on the main “Content” tab. The URL that is now displayed will look something like the link below:

https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/content?id=XXXXXXX&pdr=XXX-XXX-XXX-XXXX&cmp=average#lts=XXXXXXXXXX

( added the X’s to protect the innocent)

Now replace the last three segments to look like the following URL:

https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/events

This will now take you to your main “Event Tracking” page.

Image of the Add to Dashboard Button

Add this to your Dashboard

By now clicking on the icon at the top that says “Add to Dashboard” you can at least add this data to your main Dashboard page. This will make it easier to access this data the next time you visit your Google Analytics page.

Sub Sections Under “Event Tracking”

Image of "Event Tracking" Sub Sections

The same can be done for each sub section currently in the “Event Tracking” section by using the following URL’s as needed.

Categories
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/event_objects

Actions
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/event_actions

Labels
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/event_labels

Trending
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/events_item

Hostnames
https://www.google.com/analytics/reporting/event_domains

*You must be logged into your Google Analytics account in order for the above links to work.

For more information about “Event Tracking” and Google Analytics you can visit the link below:

Google Event Tracking Overview

We get asked regularly to recommend methods to help promote your digital editions. So what we have decided to do is to start recommending methods or products that we think will help you to drive traffic to your online 3D Issues.

They say “It’s easier to keep a customer (reader in your case) than it is to create a new one” & on that note, altering your readers of new digital editions is obviously crucial. So the first thing we will look at is tools that are available to help you stay in contact with your readers.

The first product we recommend is Group Mail (http://www.group-mail.com), We use this regularly to stay in contact with our clients and subscribers.  This email management and marketing solution takes the time and effort out of sending email newsletters.

This tool is perfect for announcing to your readers and subscribers of new editions / issues that have been posted online. or for running any email marketing campaign. With highly personalized messages, GroupMail makes communicating with large lists of recipients easy.

There are free trials available on their website. Check it out at http://www.group-mail.com. They also provide other solutions such as Group Metrics that allows you to track & report open and click through rates on your email campaigns.

The 3D Issue team would like to thank all of our customers who have assisted us in internationalizing our website content.  Our core website content  is now available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.  We will be continuing to grow our international portals over the next couple of months.

free emag stats with 3Dissue & google analytics

3D Issue are delighted to announce the integration of a new feature that will allow our customers to generate FREE market validated statistical reports on their digital magazine readers.

About one month ago, Google and Adobe got together and announced the release “Event Tracking” in Google Analytics.  Before this release it was only possible to record the amount of people that were visiting flash applications on your site but nothing more. There was no way to record exactly what the visitor was doing within the flash application, because there was no way to report actions to Google analytics from within flash.

That was until now. 3D Issue version 3.3 now allows your flash magazines to communicate with your own Google analytics account directly and record all interactions that a user would have with your flash magazine.  All you need to do is enter your Google analytics ID each time you create a digital publication.

 Some of the information that you can now easily record:

• Where your readers are logging in from
• How long they spend reading your magazines
• Total number of readers per issue
• Percentage of new readers per issue
• Percentage of repeat readers per issue
• How many times readers zoom in on each page
• Average number of pages read per visit
• Which pages the reader skipped to
• Which pages the reader zoomed in on
• Which audio files the reader played
• Which video files the reader played
• Which flash movies the reader played
• Which websites the reader visited
• What comments the reader forwarded
• What addresses the reader sent emails to
• What keywords the reader searched for
• How often the reader used thumbnail navigation
• How many readers used the exit button
• How many readers skipped to other editions
• How many readers altered the settings
• What pages the readers printed
• What articles in the contents menu the reader clicked on
• From which page the reader initiated the send to friend feature
• We have a video on the tutorials page that will demonstrate how this works. Click Here to visit our video tutorial page.

While doing a keyword search through multiple issues is not built into the actual interface of 3D Issue, it is possible and very easy to set up.

At the point of each conversion, 3D Issue also generates an HTML page for each page in your PDF document. These pages were built so that your content would be available to search engines. These pages can also be used for your own sites’ search tool. Once a reader clicks on the HTML page it will open your page-flip edition and take the reader to the page containing the keyword they searched for.

The best way to understand how this works is to actually see an example. Follow the link below and search for the word “Survey”. You could use other words but I know the word “survey” will return results.

http://www.crosssection-online.com/search.asp

Screenshot of category section of 3D Issue

3D Issue can detect any bookmarks you have added to your PDF document and automatically convert them into categories.

Adding content categories or sections, to your digital publications can make it easier for your readers to find the content they are looking for.

Creating these sections has never been easier now that 3D Issue can convert any bookmarks into categories or sections automatically.

When converting a PDF into a digital publication you merely need to make sure the box is checked that says “look for bookmarks”.

If no bookmarks have been created in your original PDF document prior to your conversion, categories can easily be added within 3D Issue.

For instructions on how to add sections to your digital publication within 3D Issue click here.

For instructions on how to add bookmarks into your PDF Document continue reading.

Read more…