f freedom of the press does indeed belong to those who own one, today was a good day for democracy. Minolta and Adobe announced a strategic partnership that will put Adobe's smartest printing software inside Minolta's copiers and printers to create smart, fast, cheap, super color printers at home office costs.
Two hours, five speakers, and many uses of the words "creativity," "quality," "easier" and "affordable" later, it strikes me that tools like this, no matter that they are aimed logically at the small business market, are enabling everyone to acquire the tools to publish sophisticated materials. Minolta talks about how it's not just a camera company anymore, with 70 percent of its revenues coming in from business machines, and Minolta's German president Ryusho Kutani vows to make his company a major player in the documents business with Adobe's help.
Adobe chairman Charles Geschke talks about how his company's software is used in publishing 70 percent of all commercial publications now ("We help publish TIME Magazine every week"), and how PrintGear software will deliver professional quality to the small business and home office crowd.
But it is Everyman I'm thinking about, the human spirit liberated and given the tools to rock. Geschke says Adobe's mission is "to provide world-leading technology that enables people to create, distribute and print content electronically" at high quality and low cost. It gets better: he tells me later that Adobe will soon introduce new authoring software that enables the average Joe to make free use of Java tricks like roll-overs and slide shows without learning a line of code. "So you're going to solve the programmer shortage?" He laughs. What he's going to do is make Everyman a publisher.
-- Janice Castro
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