Printing Industry News Digest No.63, July 30, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 63, providing a summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. PIND incorporates brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail, digging deeper behind the headline. Do also take a look at our automated Twitter-based GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Though PIND No.61 offering our overview of the tablet market was just a couple of weeks ago, this sector has again been to the fore this week in the tech news, so we begin this week with a look at “The State of the Tablet and Ereader Market” from our chums at Mashable. It offers a very readable summary of where we are right now and where we might be going. From a printers perspective, the good news is that the report maintains that some 93% of what we read is still in “low-tech” printed form, with just 7% the preserve of the electronic reading device.

Taking a less than enthusiastic focus on all things tablet, this amusing article from the Guardian may please the luddite in our reader, whilst publishers will have been delighted to read through this feature from Wired detailing how a number of media companies are working their way around Apple’s 30 per cent.

Our downward spiral continues with the news that RIM, the Blackberry business, has announced that it is shrinking by some 2,000 jobs in an effort to half its decline, while the eagerly awaited Galaxy 10.1 tablet hasn’t quite lived up to expectations.

Want some positive tablet talk? Well, the Guardian tells us that iPad is now deemed responsible for a near 1% of web traffic – well, 0.92% to be exact. Now that might not sound huge, but if you compare it to other tablet products it is actually massive! What it means in more manageable numbers, just for tablet products, is that for every thousand page views actually performed on a tablet, 965 would come from an iPad, 19 from a Galaxy Tab, 12 from a Xoom and 3 from a PlayBook. Want to make yet another Android tablet? Maybe not!

Having said that, they still keep coming: Andy Pad is one of this week’s new offerings, bringing us two products hitting the £130 and £180 price points and running Android 2.3. Archos pops along in the middle of those two with a 10-inch product at £150, but it still is criticised by our friends at CNet UK for the usual Android machine problems: poor battery life, poor resistive screen response, and a sluggish processor.

On a slightly difference tack those great guys at Mozilla – the people that bring you the Firefoxbrowser – are apparently gearing up to create an Android competitor. Both Mozilla and you, our reader, might benefit from understanding where Android has come from: this infographic on the topic is offered with that in mind!

Enough tablet talk you might say! What has all of this got to do with printing? Well, we firmly believe that the printer that fully understands and appreciates all of the latest technological advances that are affecting the print market will be the printer that can turn such kit to his advantage.

On which topic, you now deserve the latest links from the world of QR codes: here is one great summary on how QR codes are working in many different businesses in and around the American city of Oklahoma; whilst with a marketing focus, the Unbounce blog offers us information on how QR codes can benefit conversion rates.

One final offering this week: one of our favourite social media sites, LinkedIn, has added a new plug-in in the shape of a job seeker solution – perhaps this is networking in the 21^st Century? It might also be an extension to the story told in the UK this week that some 70% of job vacancies are filled without being advertised.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 64. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

PIND063

Want to read issue 62, including reviews of Apple's Lion OS? Click Here!



Get Your Print News Every Day!

Got friends that might like GenesisNews? Tweet them now: click here!

Printing Industry News Digest No.62, July 23, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 62, providing a summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. PIND incorporates brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail, digging deeper behind the headline. Do also take a look at our automated Twitter-based GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Apple took all of the tech headlines this week following release of its third quarter financials, the release of Lion, and an update to its kit line-up, including some deletions as well as additions. Just for the record, the headline numbers include $7.31 billion profit, 20 million iPhone’s and 9.25 iPad’s sold this last quarter!

As for the introduction of the Lion OS, you can find an in-depth review here. Further detail on Lion Versions is is offered by CNET UK; the same guys tell us all about Lion Gestures; and the ability to create floating desktop web apps is highlighted here by Lifehacker.

And then there is the hardware news: LimeRain offers some thoughts, and our friends at TÚAW provide a good summary of the topics that you need to know about, including saying goodbye to the MacBook. On that subject CNET UK offers some suggestions on what PC products you might buy instead. From the Apple perspective, CNET UK road tests the new MacBook Air 13-inch.

The Guardian, meantime, examines the whole PC / tablet issue in the light of Apple’s latest figures, and offers some crystal ball gazing thoughts on the future of the personal computer. Backing up all of the tablet talk, we also see that Apple now claims to have now caught up with iPad2 demand, and for iPad fans, 30 of the best app interfaces.

Publishers may well already have had a read of the latest subscription details offered by the New York Times. Whilst 281,000 digital subscribers might not be their ultimate goal, I guess it’s a reasonable starting point at least!

Our friends in the e-book club might well like to take a look at this interesting link for details of free publications (check right down through the posting for the best detail!); while Amazon have rolled out a text book rental system, promising some 80% discount on buying a text.

QR code info this week incorporates how to include an image or logo within your code, and this level of flexibility is wonderfully illustrated in a Mashable post detailing 15 highly creative QR codes. Going back to basics, this link offers 26 “must have” facts on these clever black-and-white-squares.

An interesting little snippet for Firefox fans: an add-on called gui:config which allows the easy adjustment of preferences within the about:config file.

Almost finally: for those in a position where money is not a sensitive subject, why not splash out $18,000 for the Ideum MT55 Platform multi-touch table: great for parties and exhibitions!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 63. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

PIND062

Want to read issue 61, including a review of budget priced tablets? Click Here!



Get Your Print News Every Day!

Got friends that might like GenesisNews? Tweet them now: click here!

Printing Industry News Digest No.61, July 16, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 61, providing a summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. PIND incorporates brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail, digging deeper behind the headline. Do also take a look at our automated Twitter-based GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

How much do you really need to pay to get a foot in the door of the tablet computing world? This week we take a look at some of the budget slate options. We haven’t tested any of these; our only experience at the low price end has been a 7-inch Android 1.6 OS ChiPad model, which frankly wasn’t too exciting and was very slow. However, in these cash strapped times we are sure that, for the money being charged, some of these machines will be of value to somebody; more recent versions of Android will certainly help, and we would suggest the newer the better. It is appreciated that the price of an iPad2 or HP TouchPad is not within easy reach for everybody, so let us look at some of the options.

In addition to the above linked budget report, the guys at TechRadar also offered up this review of 14 of the best Android products. A further budget focused collection available wholesale comes from PandaWill, showing off a huge range of machines with OS’s based on Android 1.6 through to 3.0. This collection of Chinese manufactured product is quite mind boggling so do look very carefully at the specifications, which are generally listed in quite a detailed way.

Just for the record, our own recommendations would start with Android 2.2 at the very least – preferably higher. Don’t forget that it wasn’t until version 3.0, Honeycomb, that Google were actually prepared to call it a tablet OS. We believe that something larger than a 7-inch screen is important for easy of navigation – whilst 7-inch certainly offers ultra-portability, so does a phone! Ideally you will also want Bluetooth for better connectivity and if you are using your machine whilst out and about you will definitely want, or be able to add, 3G reception capability (if it doesn’t come as standard check if you can add this via a 3G dongle, which means that you will need a USB port for starters!). You will want WiFi for sure, you may want a USB port or two, you may also want HDMI for connection to a larger TV screen, and you should certainly look for the ability to link with the Android Market in order to obtain the best range of apps (this isn’t as standard as you might think).

Whilst this post isn’t intended to be an exhaustive guide, the one other key area that separates the “men from the boys” in terms of tablets is the screen. It’s not all about size, as they say, but quality is important! Ideally, in our opinion, you want to aim for a capacitive screen rather than resistive. Capacitive, without wanting to go into all the physics of things, is operated by the heat generated from your finger, and is best illustrated by the screens used on Apple's iPhone or iPad products – smooth, highly responsive, and easy to operate. The lower priced alternative is resistive technology which, as its name implies, requires more pressure to work. Working on small screen areas can often be more successful with a stylus - fine for typing out a word or two, but not for extensive text entry. A standard stylus will not work on a capacitive screen.

A word of caution: some sites do try to shy away from the fact that they are using resistive screens by shifting the goal posts to talk about the LCD display technology. TFT (Thin Film Transistor) and IPS (In-Plane Switching) are both LCD technologies, but do not tell you whether resistive or capacitive technologies are being employed, even though, as an example, LG’s low-power IPS LCD technology can be found in both the iPhone 4 and the iPad. Try not to get blinded by tech-speak!

Do detail to yourself at least what you want this machine to do for you. Tablets are great “couch surfers”, and to be fair most of the machines here will do that. However, you may expect your purchase to do much more, such as be a replacement for your laptop or notebook. If that is the case you will certainly need to add a keyboard and maybe even a mouse. These will require Bluetooth and/or USB connectivity.

Bearing all of the above in mind, there has been a plethora of tablet announcements this last week, beginning with Lenovo and its IdeaPad K1; another well-known name in electronics, Panasonic, also came to the fore with an altogether more rugged looking tablet; Viewsonic offers us another 7-inch tablet – this Viewbook sticks with Android 2.2 and comes in at $230 (a moderately competitive £142.50).

On the “very budget” front, Play.com offers us the Disgo Tablet 6000 for £70; you could chance your arm on a Romanian offering from Evolio; or this very basic looking 7-inch slate for just £56 called simply M002; last and almost certainly least from a price point perspective, you might want to throw your hard-earned at this Android 2.2 7-incher for less than £50!

It would be great to hear your feedback for non-Apple tablets: what’s good and what’s not – why not mail us at PIND.editor@gmail.com

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 62. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

PIND061

Want to read issue 60, which focused on “big” stories such as NotW? Click Here!



Get Your Print News Every Day!

Got friends that might like GenesisNews? Tweet them now: click here!

Printing Industry News Digest No.60, July 9, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 60, providing a summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. PIND incorporates brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail, digging deeper behind the headline. Do also take a look at our automated Twitter-based GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

So, plenty of big news from the world of print this week – but then “big” is always a relative term. For starters, the team at JR Press have been making news with the installation of a Ryobi 524GE press – the company’s first four-colour machine. GenesisNews offered up the story; PrintWeek.com provided its version of the news; and then PackagingNews.co.uk added some more detail on the packaging focus that owner Geoff Fone is targeting for his new kit.

In terms of independently owned print businesses Pindar certainly comes under the “big” banner, and we learnt this week that it was up for sale. The £55.3 million turnover business employs some 480 people. Whilst the business is active in sheetfed and digital it is the web operation likely to be the main area of trouble, as the web printing sector across Europe has been in turmoil in recent years, with players cutting prices to ludicrous levels in order to win business.

When it comes to UK newspapers, they don’t come any bigger than the News of the World. As everyone surely now knows, the 168-year-old publication is to close as of tomorrow, Sunday July 10, following the unbelievably “big” phone hacking scandal that has dominated every news channel throughout the week. The cynical side of me says that this was quite possibly on the cards for some time. The Sunday Sun will effectively takes the place of the paper, whilst the business as a whole will be able to lose two hundred or so employees – scaling back a publication that has seen real circulation, ie number of copies, slip from over 4 million to some 2.7 million.

It might have been “big” until some of the above came along, but PackagingNews.co.uk told us earlier in the week about how Paragon is planning to relocate label printing business Sessions of York to Lincolnshire.

Least surprising news of the week might be that owners of tablets are also the most frequent readers of printed newspapers. Take a read of the story and let us know if you think this is news or not!

Other “big-ish” news can kick-off with browser info: OK we simply haven't had the time yet this week to put this one to the test, but 360 Web Browser for iOS claims to have the old flash thing sorted, offer tabbed browing, and is friendly with Firefox syncing and Dropbox. Sounds great. We will test and get back to you, but you might want to give it a go too - you can tell us how you get on with it by emailing PIND.editor@gmail.com

Wired has only this week championed Zite, and iPad application that we featured here on PIND sometime in the recent past. Nice to see that we are ahead of some of the leading names in the techie sector! Zite is a personalised magazine for the iPad and one that we believe works really well. Take at look at Wired's comments and take a look at the app if you have an iPad - it makes for a good read, as you can constantly update the software with feedback on the stories that it delivers to you.

Still on the subject of tablets, Sony waved its hand again with the S1 and S2 coming out for photos. The Engadget team managed to get some video of Sony in action interfacing with PlayStation – take a look if you’re the gaming type!

It's nice to be able to feature a bit of news that has both print and technology angles in the same pair of trousers. This is one such beast, with some great technology being able to track down a stolen laptop computer. The print element comes into the equation when it transpires that the thief was one of a group handling counterfeit dollars: some $1 million worth!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 61. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

PIND060

Want to read issue 59, which focused on the HP TouchPad launch? Click Here!



Get Your Print News Every Day!

Got friends that might like GenesisNews? Tweet them now: click here!