Exciting news this week from the DAM front: Xinet released their much awaited upgrade, WebNative Suite 17. It seems every nook and cranny of the product has something new and luscious in it. Details here, but I gotta give an overview:

• Massively reworked search engine, producing both faster results and more flexible criteria
• Text content searching across a wide variety of document types
• Richer Asset Timer, with even more built in functionality
• Fine grained administration delegation, allowing security and delegation (all within the familiar Xinet GUI)--
• 3D CAD file support 
• Versioning from within the Adobe Suite

Thanksgiving Dinner

'Tis a prayer and a poem
that I have for you all,
make yourself a great life
get out and have a ball

Don't ask for permission
when you stretch for the sky,
just believe in yourself
you really will fly

Triple "L" is my wish for you
Live Life Loud
be bold in your choices
stand out from the crowd

Live your life so very fully
give all you ever thought you could,
trust your instincts and your heart
more than you ever thought you should

Find your inner drum
and BANG that thing long,
believe in love forever and ever
and forever you'll always be strong

The final thought I have for you
and you decide where it ranks,
is always remember within your life
pause a moment... and give Thanks

-Sully

Congrats to Jim Rabkin of DDB, the winner of our monthly iTunes gift card drawing. No purchase necessary, natch -- just arrange for an upgrade to Xinet's award winning, best of breed product WebNative Suite 16 and you're entered.

If we haven't been beating down your door over the last few months, please call or email us and we'll get you on the short list to be upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Xinet's DAM solution.

I travel enough that if I forget to make a car reservation I don't sweat it too much. I know I'm going to get there. Well I went to Chicago last week to a client within four miles of MidWay Airport. I realized Sunday night I didn't have a hotel reservation yet, but went to bed anyway having to get up at 3:30 AM for a 6:00 AM flight. It's a big city right, no worries. Well there was a hugh end of season convention going on and the city was booked solid.

Sitting in the lobby of one of the hotels at the MidWay Hotel cluster, online trying to find a hotel with a room, I finally found one 15 miles south of the city and called for a cab.

He took me for a ride to the tune of 60 bucks. So when I saw the Enterprise Car Rental office next to my new hotel as I pulled in I was psyched. I'm not paying 60 bucks each way for the week.

I asked at the hotel and they told me it was still open. She said it was open until 7:00 PM and it was close to that now. So I dropped my bags in my room and blasted across the parking lot and walked right in. The sign said they close at 6 but the door was open. Figuring maybe someone was out back working late and maybe I could still get a car, I was standing at the counter waiting. After a couple of minutes I started yelling, "Hello!"  Then I was whistling ( I can whistle pretty loud ) and then I head it...

Beep, beep, beep... gave way to the alarm system blaring from every corner in the place. There was nobody home. I walked outside and around the corner to look out back. Nothing. Now I'm looking for the Enterprise number to call.

1-800-we'll-pick-U-up, whatever it was. I found the number on the sign and called.

"Yes you can help me." My phone call progressed up the ladder to the third person when I saw the local police car pulling in.

I told the officer my story and he asked for a picture ID. He took my drivers license and told me to stay right there as he went into the office. I presume looking for any bodies to explain why the door was left open.

When he came out he was still waiting for a warrant check he had run on me and when that came back clean, (whew!) he said I was free to go and thanked me for hanging out to wait for him after I had set of the alarm. Had he seen me walking away across the parking lot he said, our conversation would not have been as friendly. I asked if I could take his picture and he said NO. Absolutely no pictures. I had taken a picture of his car and the office while he was inside.

The following morning at 7:32 AM I could see three women in the office but my door was locked when I tried to go in. One woman got up and came to unlock the door for me. I asked, "So who left the door open last night?" Another woman piped up that it was her. I told her I hoped I didn't get her in trouble because I was the hapless break-in. She said, "Oh no, that wasn't the first time I've done it."

I found out later that it's apparently against the law in Chicago to photograph an officer in the performance of his duty. Who knew? If you're in the greater Chicago area please look for my name in the Orland Park police blotter next week. I could be famous. Or infamous maybe.

-Sully

You may have seen some of the videos we have about importing custom meta data panels from Adobe, into the Venture database. In Adobe CS-3 a custom panel was fairly easy to create because it was a single text file. That got a little more complicated with CS-4 when Adobe changed to a Flex file format that requires several files in combination to correctly create a custom data panel.

Now CS-5 is slightly different again and the panels from CS-4 do not just show up in CS-5. More modification is required to stay current.

Flathead-U has a few videos showing how to import these customized panels into Venture and that's great, but it's been pointed out to me in a not so subtle way, that a lot of people don't understand how it all works.

Here is a brief explanation of how it works, in my own layman's terms. I'm sure you'll all let me know what I have right and what I have wrong, ( as if..! )

So lets take a piece of one sample data field.

<xmp_property name="SulTextHack" category="external" label="Sul Text:" type="text"/>

The "xmp_property name" must be xmp compatible, meaning there are no spaces in the field name and no special characters. In the example, "SulTextHack" is the xmp name of the field, and this must match (case sensitive) between Adobe Apps and the Venture database. If they don't match, they will NOT map to one another. Meaning they will be two different fields from one program to the other.

Only when the XMP name of the field is mapped correctly will you have the bidirectional edit ability. Meaning you can make changes to the data field value from either program and have it show that change in the other program. The trick here is that both programs are writing 'into' the XMP space of the file. The data is pushed into the file it's-self. So the data value is in the Venture database but it's also imbedded in the file. It's like the old Spaghetti TV commercial where they say:

"Eh, it's in there"

The category= determines if it's editable, "external" or read only, "display" from within the Adobe programs. So you can configure a custom field from the Venture database and have it show up in Adobe, as read only. Imagine that.

In Adobe, we can display the name of this field in a more human readable way with the label, where label="Sul Text"  is the display name that I'll see in the custom panel from within Photoshop. In Venture this is the equivalent of the local.js variable.

In fact, Venture will automatically transfer the 'label' from the Adobe panel into the 'local.js' file when we load this custom info panel. Oh, wait...you have to actually select the button that you want to 'automatically' create and use the local.js file.

The last bit of this line is the type=. In my example it's a text field. We can just as easily create a boolean field, an integer or a multi value pull-down field. Date fields can be tricky because of the differences in the display of the date year range between Adobe and Venture.

Think about the ramifications here... This little bit of understanding can make a huge impact on you workflow and become a big time saver. Adding metadata in CS Suite that you can see in Venture. Add instructions in Venture and read them in Photoshop! You can writeinto the XMP space of the file from either program.

"Eh, it's in there"

-Sully

It's 2010, the worst is over (or so they say). So now it's time to get focused and see how to leverage what you have and maximize revenue. Make a list of your team's expertise and the technology you own and see what new services you can offer or what processes you can improve. Your clients are looking for what's next, so make your offering what's next! Too often companies get stuck in what they know and aren't willing to put in the extra efforts. 

If you're confused – NAPC offers refresher training, online video how-to's (flatheadu.com) and free 1 hour training webinars every other Friday. 

I have leveraged the Xinet WebNative Suite in a couple of large advertising agencies, saved thousands in freelance and created six figure new revenue streams.  Now it's your turn - we at NAPC want to hear about your success stories; not read about the client you lost.

I've spent the last couple weeks upgrading 2 of the largest Venture database in existence. One took 6 days, the other 7 to convert everything, but baby was it worth it!

One of the biggest pain points of large Xinet installs databases is performance- to increase  performance when you have Millions (or tens of Millions) of records, you need to 'index' things you search on. In the old version large sites could take a week to drop, repair and recreate the database should something corrupt (and things do corrupt- if someone kicks out a power cable, you're gonna break MySQL tables).

Last week I put an index on the file table of one of these GINORMOUS sites in under 4 hours. Under 4 hours compared to 3 or 4 days! Oh, and during that time? Venture was usable.

That's just awesome.