We told you The Daily was about to launch earlier this month; we told you that The Daily launch had been put back; and now we are able to advise that rumour now delivers this next week, February 2, as the new launch date. No Mr Jobs at the Guggenheim Museum, but a suitable Apple substitute alongside Mr Murdoch and, what we are promised will be a great multimedia experience from The Daily. Have to say that we are keen to see it in action. Some 100 journalists have been hired for the project, and costs for subscription are now rumoured to be a quite reasonable $0.99 per week. We will look forward to reviewing the product assuming this new launch date is for real!Meanwhile our friends at Mashable have provided a little more detail on the New York Times paywall. It seems that it will be designed to allow the occasional visitor to still occasionally visit, with the heavy reader being bashed in the pocket for his interest.
In the paper world of newspapers, Daily Express Newspapers have been strongly tipped to be ready to relocate to Luton. There must be a strong belief that the paper product still has some years left to run, as this story comes on the back of the announcement about the company investing in a raft of new KBA presses to produce the product.Maybe the paper product still does have a good useful life in it, it’s just the business model that needs closer examination. That is certainly the message that comes from Metro, the free morning newspaper, where 2010 provided record-breaking profits.
The world of magazines appears less convinced regarding the future of the paper model, and is still contemplating the best way to get into the tablet environment. A good overview on the topic from the New York Times funnily enough!At the other end of the production spectrum, TUK Systems has announced a computer-to-plate package for just £99. This impressive solution converts your existing Epson printer into a platemaking device, and works in conjunction with the software RIP, polyester-based plate, and fount solution provided.
Along with the TUK Systems product, the current PrintWeek.com includes the latest features from the magazine, with the “Me & My” page featuring a Xeikon 3030 solution as installed at The Label Makers, as was featured here on PIND in October of last year. In the printed magazine, the page opposite the Xeikon 3030 story illustrates the more traditional offset production tools of Mitsubishi, with the Diamond 3000 featured in the “Tried & Tested” page.In another shout for the anti-paper brigade, Amazon has announced that sales of digital books overtook the sales for paperback titles in the last quarter of 2010 for the first time ever. In 2009 the company announced a similar feat versus hardback book sales, but paperback is a whole different ball game!
For all of those fans of the business based networking site, LinkedIn, news came to the fore this last week of a public floatation, with revenues continuing to rise. OK, it’s not going to be the same value as Facebook, but it is interesting to see how these businesses are moving mainstream.This weeks iOS app in focus is Splice, an alternative movie editor to Apple’s own iMovie. The big point in Splice’s favour: it’s free. Well, the basic version is free; an ad free version will cost you $1.99, but it’s still considerably less than the $4.99 for iMovie, all according to the Lifehacker team.
Whilst the US might have been wrapped up in the State of the Union address, we have seen a couple of variants this week on the State of the Web. By far the most amusing angle comes from that great web-wit The Oatmeal. For a more staid, fact-based view of things, take a look at these figures published via Mashable.One other important event of the week: Happy Birthday iPad. Apple’s tablet celebrates its first birthday, and the rest of the gadget world still attempts to follow in its wake. From a personal angle, only this morning I happened across another Samsung Galaxy demo unit in another high street store; perhaps it’s just me and my high level of expectations, or maybe it’s just duff demo units, but I can never get these to work properly! Pricing appeared only slightly more realistic at £409 (update: currently just £359.20 from Tesco Direct). There was also an Advent tablet, but it wasn’t even switched on. Now if these “iPad wanabees” are going to have any success whatsoever, punters must be actually able to try them out and see what they are capable of doing.
One new Firefox add-on that caught my eye this week when it appeared on Lifehacker: Home Dash looks as if it could provide a highly useable home screen for the busy user. Only minor issue is that it’s been developed for Firefox 4, so unless you are brave enough to be working with the beta version of this software, you (like me) will have to wait a bit!Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 41. Details of new stories will be added to this text page during the course of the week. We are expecting to move our offices this coming week, so PIND 41 it might take us a little longer than usual to post this next edition.
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