Printing Industry News Digest August 27, 2010

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 19, the weekly summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging and communication sectors. Published every Friday, PIND incorporates links to the week’s key news stories: every piece of bold, maroon text below can be clicked on to take you to more detail on that particular topic, which will open in a new window.

Following a week full of rumour and conjecture about CPC Packaging, a move into administration was finally announced on Thursday. The packaging supplier with facilities in Bristol and Kings Lynn employed some 162 personnel and the two facilities had a joint turnover in excess of £23 million. Industry talk suggests a management buyout might still be on the cards, reality might be less positive! Competitors are already helping customers to jump ship, as might be expected in this highly competitive sector.

Whilst I have no idea of the full reality, this US company offering what would appear to be cardboard self-assembly smart-phone stands came to my attention earlier this week, and it just suggested to me a printer with a good designer coming up with a great use for cardboard. The stand is offered as a “flat pack” and is available in a number of eye-catching designs. This is just the sort of thing that smart printing is all about!

Talking about cutting edge: it was good to recently an announcement from TimeHarvest regarding a release of its digital MIS software for both the iPad and iPhone. The app is now in use at Purely Digital in Derby.

Details of the Single Source company’s new pre-press installation courtesy of Marlowe Graphic Services makes the headlines at PrintWeek.com today. The used Stingray imagesetter has been combined with the flexo-friendly StudioRIP product to provide an affordable film creation system for flexo platemaking.

UK Bad Weather Antidote: I am sure that we have featured the great artwork of The Oatmeal here before – probably in quite an early PIND edition. This one is my favourite so far, and will have a strong appeal both for those involved in some way with a customer service department, and as one of the many millions that suffer at the hands of same every single day! Take a look if you haven’t seen it before: I defy you not to laugh! I bring you this entertainment with some apologies for the rather punchy title!

We have all been there: you hit the send button and, on a good day, you have forgotten to mention one more vital piece of info; on a bad day, you have included the one person you were moaning about in the CC list! Well Google Labs have created an undo send facility for Gmail that you might want to include in your set-up!

On the subject of Google, big news this week from the Google Voice camp, with the announcement that it is now possible to make phone calls via Gmail. It’s already proven popular with some 1 million calls being made in the first 24 hours. Have you tried it yet? Any good? Tell PIND.editor@gmail.com your views and experiences.

More fonts on the web: a partnership between Typekit and Adobe should help to provide a more font-tastic web with the availability of a wide range of popular high-quality typefaces now available to web designers.

To-do-list lovers with an iPhone can, as of this week, get hold of the popular to-do list application Remember The Milk for free. The iPhone app had previously only been available to premium account users (££$$). This latest version of the app is available free but will only sync once per 24-hours. Well, that’s enough for me!

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Printing Industry News Digest August 20, 2010

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 18, the weekly summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging and communication sectors. Published every Friday, PIND incorporates links to the week’s key news stories: every piece of bold, maroon text below can be clicked on to take you to more detail on that particular topic, which will open in a new window.

Further to details last week of Centurfax’s EasyDot dotmeter product as a PrintWeek “Product of the Week”, this week you can see the product in action with a PrintSpeak.co.uk video. The film features Ripware MD Paul Foster and a guide through the capabilities of the product.
The Centurfax/Ripware combination has also been having success with its low cost dotmeter, the microDot, as the story regarding Brown Brothers confirms.

It was good also to see news this week of the appointment of Martyn Elmy to the position of Director of Sales and Marketing with Baco Chemical Services. Commenting on the new product range in his charge, Elmy said: “"Having discussed the Baco range of printing chemicals, surfactants and additives with leading experts I am confident that Baco products are unsurpassed in this industry.”
Broader comms news from BBC Business news yesterday highlighted the takeover of McAfee, the security tools guys, by Intel for a mere $7.68 billion; some deal!

We recently ran a top 12 tips piece for learning the basics of Adobe Photoshop. Well our friends at Mashable have done it again with a top 12 tips for learning Adobe Illustrator. We thought you might like to know!

On the subject of tips, the same team at Mashable have just given us 10 top tips for using the iPhone keyboard. You might like to know about these too! It can be handy just to learn a few workrounds for the times that you do need to you the integral keyboard, rather than your Bluetooth Apple keyboard!!

A neat little iPhone app that came to my attention earlier in the week following an article from Lifehacker is Pastefire – see pastfire.com for the full details – it’s a slick and simple way to get info out of your desktop and onto your iPhone. Typically this is going to be something pretty small – like say a phone number that you have found on a web site, or a URL. The new phone number is a good example: highlight the number you have found on a web page; control C; then click Pastfire [have it on your bookmarks toolbar for ease of use]; the number is now in the Pastefire app on your phone; the software offers you plenty of options (see pic) of what to do with the number; call the number, or send an SMS, and then save it in your phone book. That description might sound longwinded; it really isn’t, and it saves any errors creeping in! It’s a small app, but a really handy one.

One PC operating “feature” that I came across this week, and had never heard of before, was the “Spike”. Like and extended copy and paste, the “Spike” allows you to collect bits of data and then paste them all in one go. Take a look at the link and see if it might be a help to you!

The big tablet news of the week has been focused on Google, with claims that a Chrome OS based product will be launched jointly with Verizon in the US on November 26. The good fellows at the Download Squad were the first to break the news, and others have just leapt on their lead [as have we I guess!]. A lot of the story is just speculation and rumour at this point in time, but I do like the bit of gossip that suggests that with a Verizon data contract you can get this new hardware for free; a bit cheaper than an iPad in other words, or about £400 and something pounds cheaper in fact!

Whilst magazine are clamouring to get an iPad app launched, photographers are seeking to hold back the tide, Canute style! It would appear that the launch of an app for People magazine in the US is being held back due to a dispute with a raft of photo agencies. Online photo fees are significantly less than print fees, with publishers taking the stance that an online publication is just an extension of the printed magazine. This one could roll on, but you can guess who the winner might be, can’t you?

On the subject of iPad, I did like this blog that came to my attention earlier in the week via the pages of Digg: “Why you shouldn’t buy an iPad (yet)” sums up a lot of the question marks that we have posed about this fledging, but excellent, technology. Have a read; let us know your thoughts via PIND.editor@gmail.com

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Printing Industry News Digest August 13, 2010

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 17, the weekly summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging and communication sectors. Published every Friday, PIND incorporates links to the week’s key news stories: every piece of bold, maroon text below can be clicked on to take you to more detail on that particular topic, which will open in a new window.

We did miss last weeks edition due to annual holidays, but are now back fully refreshed and ready to go, and include some iPhone travel tips so that readers can also enjoy a break from work, but take the right tech with them!

The print highlights first: while we were away the good folk at PrintWeek filled the Product of the Week slot with the Centurfax EasyDot dotmeter product. The review points out that if you are adopting the ISO12647-2 standard you do need to check your plate quality on a regular basis. To do that effectively you need a dotmeter, and there are none better than those provided by Centurfax.

In the ink world, Ink & Printing Technologies, the UK Van Son distributor, announced the availability of inkWise, a software that can significantly reduce the amount of ink used on press.

Also in the news during our hols was that Apex has installed its first Ryobi 920 SRA1 format press in the UK at Pardy & Sons in Dorset. The catalogue producer has purchased a five-colour version of the machine, which will allow the company to bring back a significant amount of work that it had been placing with other print shops.

One really interesting link that came to our attention just this morning is from our friends at Mashable, and it offers 12 beginner tutorials for Photoshop. If you have new guys that need to get a start in the world’s number one photo tweaking app take a look.

A Holiday for your iPhone? When taking any phone abroad you need to be very aware of the potential costs involved through both calling and through data acquisition. Recent legislation has helped to limit the costs involved, but do study the detail before you leave the UK, especially if you are heading for distant shores outside of Europe. We had a week in Sharm el Sheikh in Egypt (abbreviated to SeS further down!).

Following PIND’s recent excursions, we thought it would be good to include few iPhone app tips for you happy travellers. Firstly, the simple need for file sharing. You have some files that you would like to take with you to read on the beach, or just because you think you could need them: example, the PDF that your travel insurance company sent you (like mine). For this iFiles is certainly the best in my opinion. Apps like DropBox [this is quite a funny link by the way!] and Office² need internet connection to access the files from a server, whereas iFiles has a copy of the file on-board, so you can read it on the plane or on the beach!

For reading those all-so-important web pages that you just didn’t have time to read before you left, you copied them to your “read later” Instapaper widget didn’t you. You then synced this with your phone before you left the office, and if you did this will work just find and great when you are out of network.

Another great reading app of course is iBooks, which we are certainly pleased to report works well with already downloaded material. A tip for those that don’t want to spend a fortune on downloading new reading material: take a look at the samples. You get a good chunk of text to give you a great idea of how the book will shape up. Check it out before you buy, or just read loads of samples! You may also prefer to buy a real book of course. They are still so much more flexible than an e-book! Also free books are arriving and leaving the bookstore all the time. Keep checking what is available. I will confess that my library is mainly free books and samples.

For your music requirements you have iPod already "built in", but many readers may be Spotify converts like me! I can report that all was fine in offline mode, though it did keep asking me to switch aeroplane mode off and connect to a network whilst in flight (a bug?). Beach use was just fine. For those not familiar with the wonders of Spotify, you must pay a monthly subscription for offline mode, which allows you to download your favourite playlists for offline use. You need to download the lists you want to listen to before you leave these fine shores, which has to be done in network and with power too; you are limited to 3,000 tunes I think. You then need to switch to offline mode when you go out of network coverage.

If you need a musical change, you can play your radio recordings that you made with TuneIn Radio. As an example, I had an hour long recording of Planet Rock, my favourite DAB station, which was great to listen to lounging on the beach at SeS.

It probably goes without saying, but Notes was also just fine; I typed some of these bits of text! But then I didn't expect anything less from good old Notes! I was able to add some of these thoughts on the plane and others on the beach at SeS.

More importantly for iPhone 4 users, the video camera was very useful when looking at the wildlife in the Red Sea [from the confines of a glass bottom boat]! The camera quality also comes into its own (click on the image for more detail and some nice stripy fishes).

Something completely out of “left field”, and not actually tried: home security system for your iPhone! Yes, one little problem that holiday’s can introduce is security back at the ranch. Well, as Apple might say, there’s an app for that! Take a look at Dropcam as featured by our good chums at Mashable for full details.
Your further thoughts on which apps are essential holiday material can be sent through to PIND.editor@gmail.com

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