When I first blogged on open source digital asset management three years ago, it was a fairly new concept. The digital asset management product landscape was dominated by a few Enterprise-class vendors and a number of middle-tier workgroup solutions. Most case studies on open source digital asset management were for large non-profit university or library collections.

Hot on the heels of their new HTML5 motion graphics application, Edge, Adobe has released a public beta version of a new product code named Muse.

"People don't hand-edit PDF or PostScript files for print file or PDF document, and in 5-10 years I don't think very many people will be coding in order to design a website." Adobe's Muse Quality Engineer - Jason Prozora-Plein.

Responsive web design is a concept pioneered by Ethan Marcotte that offers an adaptive solution to rendering sites on various mobile and tablet devices. It allows designers to deliver the same content to multiple devices exactly as intended. The technique was borne out of the fluid approach to web design, but leverages the capabilities of CSS3 media queries.  

The technologies incorporated into the recently W3C-approved HTML5 specification offer designers and developers a landscape of new opportunities for semantically enriching content and building interactivity. The canvas API, along with native audio and video support, has the capacity for making cross-browser compatible interactive graphics that nip at the heels of Flash. 

E-books may seem like a relatively new gadget/format, but the history of the e-book dates back much longer.

1945
One of the first e-book prototypes was the Memex a reading device concept by Vannevar Bush. The Memex was was a combination of microfilm reader and screen. Rather than storing your books as digital files, all books were photographed to microfilm and was stored on reels within a large desk. The Memex didn't quite have the same portability of today's ebook readers.

If you are interested in implementing or customizing an open source Digital Asset Management system such as Entermedia, it is essential to first have an understanding of the open source tools that form the foundation on which many of these systems are built.