Moneys too tight to mention? Perhaps one story that will have caused much concern within the print world this week focuses on the availability of loans, with banking chiefs warning of the end of the era of “cheap money”. Printing doesn’t have a good profile in banking circles at the moment, and this news looks as if it’s just going to make it that little bit harder to get finance in place to expand a business.It seemed quite strange to me that the same day also saw details posted of a very splendid ultra-large format perfecting press from manroland. Undoubtedly a fine example of technology, but I suspect this might be one of those Rolls Royce type products: if you have to ask the price you probably can’t afford it. I wonder where the finance for such a beast might come from?
On a more cost effective topic, Inks and Printing Technologies (IPT) has announced the UK availability of Metalstar 06 7500 Pantone Premium Silver inks from Eckart. The new ink offers a bright silver with optimised blended colour effects. The new product gives offset printers the ability to print cleaner and more vibrant metallic colours that are much more consistent and stable throughout the press run.
It was also good last week to see the same supplier, IPT, featured in PrintWeek with its Van Son Quickson Perfect range of offset litho inks. It is claimed that the inks offer printers the best match to ISO12647-2 colour standards yet. The company featured in this Me & My feature certainly agree.The world of packaging still keeps throwing up problems, with the news this week that Clowes Printers (Manchester) has gone into administration. The company was only bought out of admin some nine months ago. Our friends at Packaging News tell us that the Stockport-based business is currently still trading.
Sony has been highlighting the wonders of digital paper this week with a new product. The sheet employs a plastic substrate, and it is claimed that the prototype is capable of being rolled up like a regular old newspaper! Our thanks to Engadget for the latest news on this one.Internet Explorer 9 beta has arrived with promises of speed. IE9 claims to harness a PC’s hardware to accelerate graphics, videos and text. The result, they tell us, is that IE9 is able to render heavy graphic interfaces far better than competitive browsers. At PIND we have long since migrated to a mix of Firefox and Chrome, but we are easily tempted by such talk of speed and might go have a look at IE9 if time allows. What about you? What’s your browser of choice: tell us more at PIND.editor@gmail.com
Talking of beta releases, Apple has a iOS 4.2 beta build for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch developers. Particularly interested in this from an iPad perspective, with the hope that multi-tasking will be included for the product. Current talk is more about printing, which I find a very unexciting option for iPad; why do I need to commit things to paper all of the time?
For those that like to view their Apple work big and bold, the company has finally got its latest 27 inch display onto the online store. The IPS-based glossy Cinema Display monitor utilised LED backlighting, a 1000:1 contract ratio, and a 178 degree viewing angle.For something a bit more oddball, how about wearing your new iPod Nano on your wrist? Great little conversion product that turns the music machine into a wrist watch. Just a great idea! Should the strap makers have called their product iOn-the-Time?
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