WoodWing Software, supplier of innovative workflow solutions for efficient multi-channel publishing, today announced that the Japanese daily newspaper Mainichi Newspaper is creating TAP-i, its daily edition for tablets and smartphones, using WoodWing´s multi-channel publishing system Enterprise, its content management application Content Station and WoodWing´s Digital Publishing Tools. The apps for the iPhone and the iPad are available in Apple´s AppStore, while TAP-i for Android devices can be downloaded from Google Play. 

Combining content from Mainichi Newspaper and its daily affiliate Sports Nippon, TAP-i provides news on politics, economics, society, sports and entertainment optimized for the different screen sizes and ratios of tablets and smartphones. The new editions are ready for download every morning, and readers can also get them pushed to their newsstand.

The daily content is imported from Mainichi´s legacy editorial system for print to WoodWing Enterprise via WoodWing´s Smart Mover module. Smart Mover allows for the integration of WoodWing with other systems and enables publishers to easily automate workflow tasks. The digital editions are then enhanced with video, audio, hotspots and other interactive features using WoodWing´s Digital Publishing Tools for InDesign. Content Station enables the team to easily manage and preview the digital editions, to set the page order, add metadata and more. The TAP-i app offers integrated social media features, allowing readers to share the editorial content via Facebook and Twitter.

Virtual anchorwoman offers new approach to presenting news
The virtual news presenter “i-chan” – which is accompanied by an animated 3D avatar – is a completely new approach to presenting news in the app, leveraging the features of tablets and smartphones. i-chan utilizes a remarkably high-quality text-to-speech engine from Hitachi to create videos presenting the news from a virtual set and to embed recordings of the spoken text within many articles.

“Mainichi has partnered with VPJ and WoodWing to produce market-leading news apps since photoJ was launched the day the original iPad shipped in Japan on May 28, 2010,” said Masaaki Kasuya, Group Manager, New Media Division, Mainichi Newspapers. “The theme of TAP-i is “Touch the News,” and we look forward to continuing leading this revolution.”

The team at Mainichi´s New Media Division was supported by Tokyo-based Visual Processing Japan (VPJ), WoodWing´s Gold Authorized Solution Partner in Japan. “Integrating the WoodWing multi-channel publishing solution into the existing workflow at the major Japanese daily Mainichi Newspaper has been a stimulating challenge,” said Hiroaki Mimura, President at Visual Processing Japan. “Witnessing the tremendous success of TAP-i over the past week has been very gratifying for our entire team of engineers and our support team.”

“We are very pleased that we were able to contribute with our solutions to create such an extraordinary app,” said Remco Koster, General Manager of WoodWing Asia Pacific. “TAP-i is an impressive example of the openness, flexibility and versatility that our editorial system Enterprise as well as our Digital Publishing Tools offer for efficient multi-channel and digital publishing.”