News

5 July 2011 – NADAexpress - Interactive PDF preflight results

NADAexpress now has a totally different way of displaying the PDF preflight results. The new version is better structured, easier to work with, and first and foremost much more interactive: Now users may decide for themselves how deep into the results they want to look.

The feedback results are sorted into groups: Colors; Fonts; Quality; Structure; Miscellaneous. In addition there is an Information group, which works much the same way as before. Initially when the results are displayed, there is only one small colored icon per group, and one bigger one for the file as a whole. Green = Everything OK; Yellow implies Warnings; Red is for Errors. Blue is used for the Information group. Yellow, Red, and Blue lines have disclosure triangles, that when clicked open up for the next level, with more detailed information. Using these triangles, the user may open and close separate parts of the feedback at will, and hopefully find out just what she or he needs - and not more. The explanations at the lowest level are displayed using the new NADA Help system (see next item).

Note: The actual NADA PDF rules – stating the requirements for valid PDF ads in Norway - have not been changed at all. The only thing different is how the results are displayed.

5 July 2011 – NADAexpress - new Help system

NADA has developed a Help System connected with each page in NADAexpress. Almost all pages now has a clickable Help icon in the upper right hand corner. Some very comprehensive pages, split into well defined sub-pages, may even have have more than one. When clicked, a Help icon will display a box with relevant information for the page or sub-page in question. One closes the box by clicking outside it.

5 July 2011 – NADAexpress - Unregistered use discontinued

The new NADAexpress release in July 2011 puts an end to working as an "unregistered NADA user".

Long-lived applications like NADAexpress have to develop and change over time. Just as important as adding new required or requested features, is considering if there are parts that should be removed. If one doesn't do this and now and then perform some necessary weeding out, the application will become too complex. NADA now has looked at the functionality for unregistered use, and decided to discontinue it. Factors considered:

• — Not many people used this functionality any more.

• — A general negative view of having to register for something is not as widespread today as it was in 2003 when NADAexpress was started. Registering is now commonplace.

• — Working unregistered had very limited functionality: Not being able to send to more than one receiver, only to newspapers – not magazines, no User log. All in all – a disappointing user experience.

8 December 2010 – NADAexpress ad no 1,000,000

Before noon on Wednesday December 8 2010, NADAexpress sent its ad no 1,000,000. The receiver was Helgeland Arbeiderblad, which is a local newspaper in the city of Mosjøen in northern Norway. 11 other newspapers, all of them also situated in the northern part of the country, also received the same ad file.

The ad was a medium sized Employment ad for the Civil Aviation Authority, in color.

The sender was Mediateam Reklame in the city of Harstad. This company was in fact the heaviest user of NADAexpress in 2010, distributing ads to many of the local newspapers in northern Norway. So it was no coincidence that an ad from Mediateam Reklame ended up being ad no 1,000,000.

It is expected that the next milestone, the sending of ad no 1,100,000, will take place some time in the first half of July 2011.

19 October 2010 – NADAexpress – new "engine"

As of 19 October 2010 NADAexpress changed the software that is used for preflighting of PDF ads in the standard browser based NADAexpress as well as in the program-to-program NADAexpress Web Services.

Previously the pdfInspektor4 software from callas software GmbH was used. Now a newer and much more powerful piece of software, pdfToolboxServer 4, also from callas, is used.

In the short term this will have almost no noticeable effects. However, pdfToolboxServer being a more stable and rugged program, the number of files where NADAexpress says «unable to preflight» is expected to drop significantly below today's 0,05% of throughput. Error reporting for files with incorrect JPEG data is improved. Preflighting will be noticably faster than before.

pdfToolboxServer contains functionality for color conversion and transparency flattening. The change of engine thus enables NADAexpress - in the longer term - to offer such services to its users, thereby allowing even more files to pass through the preflight without serious errors.

18 May 2010 – NADAexpress sent its ad number 900,000

Around noon on Tuesday May 18, NADAexpress sent its ad no 900.000, to Norway's largest newspaper Aftenposten. Four other receivers of the same NADA file were the other members of MediaNorge: Adresseavisen, Bergens Tidende, Fædrelandsvennen, and Stavanger Aftenblad.

The ad was a full tabloid page ad for Stine Sofie's Foundation. The ad is part of a national awareness campaign with the slogan «For the benefit of children, you have to imagine the worst».

The sender was McCann. On the same day, the ad agency sent other ads in the same campaign - in a number of sizes and variants - to several other newspapers all over the country and to at least 7 magazines.

This awareness campaign won last year's «Reklame for Alvor», the ad businesses' collective effort for charity. After serious consideration of all 45 applications, the program comittee of «Reklame for Alvor» decided that Stine Sofie's Foundation was a worthy recipient of large-scale free assistance to teach and inspire children as well as adults to fight and report adult violence and abuse against children.

2 March 2010 - The sending of ads with NADA does not constitute an order

Sometimes NADA Support gets calls or emails from NADAexpress users who complain that "their ad was not printed". Every time, a little bit of research shows that the following happened: The ad was sent, and did arrive at the correct media. But the receiver had no idea what to do with the ad. The sender was unknown, the Job Ticket was far from complete, and time was too short to get to the bottom of things.

To be ensured that an ad is actually printed, normally an ad order of some kind is required in addition to sending the material itself with NADA. You may have an oral or written agreement with the newspaper in question, and refer to this in the Job Ticket. Most ad senders know all this very well, but a perhaps small reminder is in order.

2 March 2010 - NADAexpress Job Ticket

NADA performs extended testing as part of the further development of new NADAstasjon versions (see next item). In order to work with high quality test data, copies of real Job Ticket data from NADAexpress are used. It is a pleasure to see how the utilisation of the NADA Job Ticket format has improved. Almost 100% of the senders now fill in correct insertion date(s), which is of great help to the receivers. Likewise, we see an improvement in the usage in the Job Tickets of

• — Agency order number: The order number issued by the orderer of the ad space, typically an ad agency

• — Media order number: The order number issued and used internally by the media (newspapers/magazines), which they sometimes also use in messages to ad senders

2 March 2010 - NADAstasjon and NADAsentral

The net based ad receiver NADAstasjon has been up and running for almost nine months. Several considerable improvements have been implemented during this period. Lately a number of new newspapers - some quite small plus a few larger ones - have switched to NADAstasjon. All in all ten different titles now routinely receive their ads this way. NADA will shortly start the development of NADAsentral, a large-scale net based ad receiver suited for even the largest newspapers.

7 July 2009 – NADAstasjon is up and running

On Monday July the 6th, NADAs new net based ad receiver – NADAstasjon – was released. Current users are Indre Akershus Blad and Kristiansand Avis. They will now receive and work with their incoming NADA ads over the Internet, making their NADA work flexible and machine independent.

NADAstasjon is the first release of NADAs net based ad receiver concept. The software has been developed by GrafiConn Norge AS. Modulo AS will provide user support.

For newspapers that still receive their NADA ads over dedicated ISDN lines, the time has come for an early switch to NADAstasjon. NADA will contact these newspapers once the summer vacation is over.

7 July 2009 – Kristiansand Avis has started using NADA

Kristiansand Avis has been added to the NADA catalog of newspapers. Kristiansand Avis is a free newspaper with a circulation of 37.000, reaching all households in the city of Kristiansand in southern Norway. Kristiansand Avis has considerable advertising volume and looks forward to receiving ads distributed by NADA.

25 May 2009 – NADAcmyk: Usage today - and in the future?

NADA's net based color conversion service - NADAcmyk - has been up and running for five months. It seems to be a modest success. More than 1200 files have been converted so far.

Today's NADAcmyk is intended for conversion of PDF ads for newspapers. The conversion is controlled by NADA's ICC profile created for linear newspaper production. Nonetheless it seems that other kinds of PDFs are converted as well.

This seems to indicate a greater than expected need for net based color conversion in general. How about expanding NADAcmyk so that users to a greater extent and with better control could color convert PDFs for any number of purposes? There could be conversions for magazine ads, for entire newspaper pages for remote printing, for conversion using the new ISO profile, and so on. And a bit further along there could even be options for a set of operations on PDFs totally unrelated to color conversion.

No decision about further development has been made yet. NADA remains open to user input and welcomes feedback from NADA users and other interested parties with views and opinions in this matter.

22 December 2008 – NADAcmyk - a new service from NADA

NADAcmyk is a completely new service from NADA, aimed at users who want help with getting the colors right in PDF ads to Norwegian newspapers. NADAcmyk color converts PDF ads so that they are fit to be sent by NADAexpress. The color conversion is done according to the Norwegian standard linear ICC profile. Read more about NADAcmyk here. The service is free, and open to everybody.

22 December 2008 – NADA's site has been redesigned

The NADA website has got a new look as well as a new structure. Deeper nesting of pages combined with a better menu system makes for easier navigating. A larger proportion of the site than before has been translated into English.

22 December 2008 – NADAbox more useful

The NADAbox feature was introduced last summer, but becomes even more useful now that NADAcmyk is up and running. As long as one's NADAbox has been turned on, it may be used for saving files from NADAcmyk, thus elimitating an extra round of download and re-upload.

15 October 2008 – Few ISDN-based receivers left

It seems that not too far into the future, all NADA receivers will be based on FTP, with all the inherent advantages. The NADAexpress statistics for September 2008 show that currently there are no more than 10 ISDN-based receivers. These received 1,6% of the number of ads sent that month, and only 1,1% of the amount of data transmitted.

15 October 2008 – A new and better NADA Mac?

As a contribution to getting all NADA receivers onto the new and better NADA Annonsemottak 5 for Mac OS X, NADA Support/Modulo present a special offer for new Macs with NADA Annonsemottak version 5 and an FTP server preinstalled and configured. For many receivers a new 20 inch iMac with a 2,4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor will be ideal. Low-volume receivers will be happy with a solution based around a Mac Mini. You will find this special offer here (in Norwegian only).

15 October 2008 – Increased use of NXWS

NADAexpress Web Services (NXWS) allows remote controlled ("automatic") sending of ads through NADAexpress. NXWS was introduced at a conference in January 2008, and the first actual NXWS sending of an ad to be printed happened in May. In September the NXWS usage increased somewhat. Currently there are two separate environments that routinely use the NXWS interface to send ads.