THE IRISH NEWS - PAGE FLIPPER WITH ZOOM

A newspaper is using eRez and FSI Pages to decrease the printing cycle time while increasing their overall sales and improving advertising sales.

Background

lrish News is a regional morning newspaper based in Belfast, Northern lreland. lt has a circulation of 50,000 copies per day and a lively and popular website with 40,000 online subscribers. The lrish News enjoys a unique reputation for the high quality delivery of news to loyal readers both in Northern lreland and the UK, US and Australia. lrish News's 120 person staff is responsible for the quality level which has won the paper awards for both journalism and overall print quality.

While most other newspapers have experienced a drop in circulation, circulation figures have held up for the lrish News. This is due to both the quality of the content and the continuous enods to make the paper appealing.

The Challenge

Part of the lrish News success comes from targeting readers through a wide variety of full colour sections, each appealing to specific reader groups. Special sections include full colour inserts such as lnStyle, HomeStyle, lnsporrt and ’lnvest overseas' section.

lrish News needed a solution for their website irishnews.com, which created a ’page turning' effect giving users the feeling of paging through an actual news publication online. lrish News also wanted a solution allowing users to zoom into a picture or text area in the publication. Finally the lrish News wanted to display editions as animated presentations on a large wall mounted screen using auto flipping through a publication.

The Solution

lrish News chose the eRez imaging server and FSl pages Viewer ”because it provided the very best solution to what we wanted - to be able to look at a publication online, and of course the page turning'' says Systems and Resources manager Liam McMullen
from lrish News. ”eRez was also the only product that offered these features as well as allowing users to zoom in to a publication. As soon as we saw it, we knew it was perfect for us!''

lrish News uses eRez mainly for three purposes:

. Publishing their special sections as online publications on the internet.
. Proof reading and approval by advertisers.
. Animated presentation of customer publications.

The lrish News FLlPPER section on irishnews.com is a portal to sections empowered by eRez and FSl pages. lt provides an overview of available publications put online with page flipping functionality.

A particularly useful feature of eRez is it's ability to zoom into pages easily. Advertisers can easily approve advertisement; see their placements on the page and proof read. They also get a feeling for how their advertisements will work in conjuncture with surrounding text and adicles.

For its customers the lrish News provides a page flipping functionality. The flipping functionality with automatic page turning is used to display an animated presentation to the public on a large wall mounted screen.

For now eRez works as an independent system, without integration to other systems. It is run under Microsoft Windows on a Dell Server. lrish News has plans to publish the online version of the daily paper using eRez and FSl. This however will also mean upgrading to a bigger server as storage needs and traffic will increase.

The Results

The whole lrish News organisation has access to eRez, but it is especially used by the advertising staff. ”They will ask for a html file or a link with the catalogue so they can show it to people, and they can close the deal quickly.'' says Liam McMullen. ”lt has increased our business and it helps us to sell advertising. lt also cuts down on the printing cycle of test prints as people [advertising clients] can see it online, they can zoom into it they see problems much faster, and so it gives better decisions''.

Presently the lrish News stores only a limited number of publications online. lf they are not used for a while they are taken away so at the moment the eRez/FSl Flipper is a day to day thing. Liam McMullen however, expects to also show old newspapers online some time in the future.