1st Annual "Excellence in Innovation" Awards
September 17, 2002

PlanetDjVu is celebrating its first anniversary as a primary portal site for the DjVu user community and as a champion of the practical applications of  the DjVu technology, by recognizing distinguished works of innovation using the DjVu file format that were implemented or made available in the previous year.


1. LizardTech, for DjVu Solo 3.1

Until last June, LizardTech made available a free non-commercial version of DjVu Solo 3.1, a Windows destkop application.  More than any other DjVu product, this afforded users who were new to the DjVu format a way to try out DjVu file creation and to get involved with the format.  Unfortunately, this product was withdrawn by LizardTech in June.  See the review at: http://www.internet-magazine.com/reviews/utilities/lizardtech.asp


2. The "original format authors", for the Any2DjVu On-Line Conversion Server.  

This brilliant web server application, which can be accessed at: http://any2djvu.djvuzone.org/, allows anyone to upload scanned images or PDF files and to convert them to DjVu "while you wait".  This is the indispensible tool for introducing new users to DjVu, now that Solo 3.1 is no longer available.


3. Arkiver Ltd and JRA, for DjVu Search Term Highlighting in JRASearch.

JRASearch is the ONLY full-text search and retrival product to feature search-term-highlighting and hit-page-navigation of DjVu files.  Multiple demonstrations from the Search menu item of this website.


4. Realview Technologies, for implementing DjVu Plugin Preferences and advanced interface designs for hosting DjVu collections.



5. Graphic Imaging Technology, for perfecting a Paper to Color Film to DjVu conversion process for color magazines.

Color magazines are "photographed" to high-quality digital film lasting 500 years for archival purposes, then DjVu files are created from the film.  The brilliant results can be seen at: http://195.217.156.6/50050/rp/


6. Newspaperarchive.com, for converting more than one million newspaper pages to the DjVu file format and hosting them online in a searchable collection.



7. Innews SA, the largest newsclippings company in Greece, for adopting the DjVu format as the presentation format for newsclippings.  

Made possible by the innovative work of Anadelta Software.  Customers include: Coca Cola , BP, IBM, and the Greek Parliament.


8. Arkiver Ltd and JRA, for adding embedded metadata to the DjVu format and producing an online metadata entry tool, JRAMetamaker.

An embedded metadata definition was created for both document-level and page-level metadata, then a browser-based metadata entry tool was created.  Read the embedded metadata definition at: http://www.planetdjvu.com/metadata_storage_for_djvu_files.htm.  See the live demonstration of JRAMetamaker at: http://195.217.156.6/metamaker/


9. The "original format authors", for developing and maintaining the DjVu open-source reference library, called DjVuLibre.

A brilliant implementation of the DjVu Reference Library which is more advanced than the unpublished reference library from LizardTech.  Great for the academic, Linux-based community.  Unfortunately, it cannot be licensed for commercial applications (neither can the unpublished version from LizardTech).  Check out DjVuLibre at: http://djvu.sourceforge.net/


10. JRA, for innovations in the JRAPublish DjVu encoding and metadata creation product.

Among the many innovations introduced in the JRAPublish application are: "Sepia-toning" of bitonal scanned documents in DjVu, automatic URL and E-Mail hyperlink generation, dynamic encoder profile assignment, an interactive Segmentation Profile Editor, and OCR in any of 176 languages.  See the help file at: http://www.planetdjvu.com/store/JRAPublish_Help.pdf


11. LizardTech, for the ActiveX control for MS Office.

The ActiveX control, previously available from LizardTech, allows you to embed DjVu images in MS Office documents.  Unfortunately, this product was withdrawn by LizardTech in June of this year.


12. PlanetDjVu, for maintaining the only up-to-date portal site for DjVu and for running the only online DjVu Forum for the DjVu user community.

If you are reading this, you are at "The Planet" right now!  What more can we say?



AND NOW, THE ALL-TIME ACHIVEMENT IN EXCELLENCE AWARD GOES TO...

Yann, Leon and others, for building and maintaining the DjVuZone website as a portal for information about DjVu.  This website has served as the home of technical information about DjVu as well as a launch-site for abundant practical examples of DjVu at work.  We only wish it were kept current (but we understand why it is not): http://www.djvuzone.org





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