publishing industry

Truth in Content: Codifying Publishing Workflows in the Digital Age

As a member of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG)‘s Workflow Committee, OBS’s Laura Fillmore contributed to the recent White Paper on standardizing publishing workflows: “Fixing the Flux: Challenges and Opportunities in Publishing Workflows.” Where medical doctors have “Grey’s Anatomy” to refer to as a core reference resource for human anatomy, publishing professionals have no one

BEA Retrospective : Bounteous to Unbound

BEA has always been the book industry’s main show of the year in the US, when publishers release their Fall lists to the bookstores and libraries, offering advanced peeks at exciting new books in the form of readings, advance galleys, and author breakfasts. Vendors to the trade used to enjoy a major presence at the

One World-Wide Webification

The big news to come out of BookExpo America (BEA) in Chicago this month is the early sounds of a merger of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), managers of the publishing industry’s EPUB standard, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) and CEO

< SIGH > There Goes My Job… Or Not

OBS once built a zesty Web interface for a school that enabled students to drop, click, aggregate, and otherwise customize and combine web-based content with their own. The system automated workflow which up till that point had existed on legal pads, hard drives, and in paper files. When we demo’ed the program to the school’s

Yesterday’s Business: Managed Hosting

In the early days of the Internet, OBS used to not only design and develop internet solutions for publishers, but we also served as a managed host for the custom applications we built – keeping the system software environment and the applications updated, secure, and otherwise supported (customer and client support included!), all running behind

The Art of Programming: The Coder as Rock Star

A recent article in The New Yorker, “The Programmer’s Price,” described a new business model in the tech world: programmers are working with agents to find business opportunities and negotiate contracts.  This demonstrates a shift in how the tech world and other industries view programmers – no longer are they hired to sit in a