Printing Industry News Digest No.119, October 27, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 119, providing a summary of major news items from the printing, publishing, packaging, digital, and communications technology 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.

There simply had to be a tablet focus this week with both the iPad Mini and the Microsoft Surface hitting the headlines in the last few days. Early verdicts seem to vote in favour of the Mini, whilst many questions remain re the Windows 8 gang.

Early thoughts on Windows 8, Surface, and iPad Mini are certainly worth reading; are you backing Windows 8 early, and are you sticking your hard-earned in the Surface direction?: let us know at PIND.editor@gmail.com

Early leaks also point to a new Nexus 10 product on the horizon, whilst the Nexus 7 with 8Gb looks as if it could be disappearing from the shelves far too quickly (IOHO).

Interesting numbers on tablet shipments for Q3 2012 illustrate that the latest crop of Android product really did make a difference in real numbers. A direct comparison with last year shows some 10.2 million worldwide shipments compared to just 5 million for the same quarter last year. Apple continues to dominate of course.

Well worth noting in the how-big-is-your-business stakes: Apple now has $121.3 million in cash, which, by comparison, is more than Amazon’s current market capitalisation ($100.77 billion).

Further to last week’s worrying headlines re publications that are migrating from print to digital, The Big Issue in the North is now launching a digital edition! Your street vendor will be able to sell you a QR code and one-time access code in order for readers to be able to download the edition to their smartphone or tablet.

Pocket is now available as an app for the Mac. Fans of the product once-known-as “Read It Later” might find the dedicated product a little more convenient than the browser based version.

Just one of those really handy postings: 10 things you didn’t know Dropbox could do. As can often be the case, Mashable’s claim is excessive, but there could certainly be three or four things to excite you.

And finally, Just for us older print lovers that remember the term letterpress: it now appears as a word game! Letterpress is a free multi-player game for iPhone and iPad via the Game Center: a perfect blend of fun and strategy (says its inventor!).

Keep your finger on the pulse: grab an RSS feed of PIND (copy this link into your feed reader); click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily to get the latest daily stories; or click here for regular Tech & Comms updates in blog or RSS form. You can also connect to a free subscription of the Print Daily for an update on print, publishing, packaging and associated technology delivered straight to your in-box every day! For details on Genesis Marketing – publishers of PIND – click here.

PIND119    

Missed Issue 118, including a bad week for print? Then simply click here!

Issue 117: Seven-inch tablets
Issue 116: August shows
Issue 115: newspaper turmoil



Get your Tech & Comms updates direct from the blog, use the RSS feed, or keep updated via Twitter.

Printing Industry News Digest No.118, October 20, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 118, providing a summary of major news items from the printing, publishing, packaging, digital, and communications technology 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.

A bad week for print? Certainly it had an unpleasant shape to it with Newsweek, the US weekly news magazine, confirming that it would be switching to an all-digital output from the very start of 2013. The last piece of print will be published December 31: a collectors’ edition? TechCrunch questions the paywall ambitions of any magazine, including those of Newsweek.
In newspaper world, the Telegraph broke news re the possibility that the Guardian was seriously contemplating an all-digital approach. With reported losses in excess of £40 million a year, a digital only version would certainly reduce the outgoings considerably.

Those with sufficient spare cash might even want to follow up on these two stories with a visit to Mashable’s forthcoming Media Summit taking place in New York, November 2. We will report back on the details.

The big show debate has started to take shape, with Drupa announcing a proposal to move to a three-year schedule from 2015, changing the Düsseldorf events current four-year, which currently links with a similar gap for Ipex. The suggestion, in our opinion, cannot be good for the industry, and, according to reports and private discussions, is not winning many friends. Final decision expected November 2.

Moving slightly sideways, and possibly upwards, just how big is cloud storage? Latest reports suggest that 375 million users of paid-for and free products are sticking their precious files up there somewhere! Swift and continual expansion expected to take that number up to 500 million before year-end (over 60 million new users a month!).

In Tablet Talk: further to our in-depth review of two leading 7-inchers last week, more have jumped on that mini bandwagon. Acer reported this week that its Android 4.1 was to arrive in US and Canada before month end, and at $230 or £145 or so, it is in the same ballpark as those units reviewed. Sharp also has entered this sector in Japan, whilst, as rumoured last week, a 32Gb version of Google Nexus 7 has indeed arrived according to Engadget.

Meanwhile, Microsoft, whilst suffering a 24% drop in profits, marches on towards the tablet market fight with Windows 8 and Surface. Pricing for the Microsoft tablet surfaced this week, with a basic 32Gb entry point of £310 / $499. Adding a cover / keyboard / more memory moves the pricing up through the ranks to £435 / $699 for the full 64Gb with keyboard / cover included. Shipment dates have apparently moved to early November for now. Check back for first real user reports.

For an even picture of things, the latest iPad Mini rumours are also here, including a pricing suggestion!

Keep your finger on the pulse: grab an RSS feed of PIND (copy this link into your feed reader); click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily to get the latest daily stories; or click here for regular Tech & Comms updates in blog or RSS form. You can also connect to a free subscription of the Print Daily for an update on print, publishing, packaging and associated technology delivered straight to your in-box every day!

For details on Genesis Marketing – publishers of PIND – click here.

PIND118    

Missed Issue 117, including seven-inch tablets? Then simply click here!

Issue 116: August shows
Issue 115: newspaper turmoil
Issue 114: Digital packaging printing



Get your Tech & Comms updates direct from the blog, use the RSS feed, or keep updated via Twitter.

Printing Industry News Digest No.117, October 13, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 117, providing a summary of major news items from the printing, publishing, packaging, digital, and communications technology 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.

This week we break away from the normal format of PIND and offer an extended version of Tablet Talk which has been created to offer  a comparison of two leading seven-inch tablets: the Google Nexus 7 (right in picture) and the Ainol Novo 7 Fire (left of shot). The low-cost Chinese product from Ainol arrived during this last couple of weeks and, with an £8.45 export tax bill paid, we were able to slice open the box to see what had arrived for our £100 investment (plus £7.50 for extra-fast postage).

The stats: The Ainol impressed us with its numbers. Running Android 4.0.4 (or Ice Cream Sandwich / ICS, as its more commonly referred to), the machine runs a nippy dual core 1.5GHz processor backed by 1Gb of DDR3 RAM and a spacious 16Gb flash memory as standard. The 1280 x 800 resolution screen is the same as the Nexus, and is considerably better than Amazon’s similarly named Fire unit. The Ainol is well equipped camera-wise, sporting a 2.0 mega pixel front and 5.0 mega pixel rear camera. The Chinese unit really whacks the opposition though when it comes to ports: an HDMI port; a mini USB port, which is both useable as an interface port and a charging socket; and a slot for a micro SD card, which therefore means a ready made memory expansion slot giving an extra 64Gb of space. Both products are equipped with Bluetooth allowing for the addition of a wireless keyboard, wireless headphones, or any other Bluetooth enabled kit. Both, of course, have the standard wired headphone hole.

Google’s Nexus 7 currently comes in two flavours, as has previously been mentioned here: 8Gb and 16Gb. The processor is a quad core 1.4GHz engine with 1Gb of RAM to get things moving. It runs Android 4.1.2 software (or Jelly Bean), which does give some added smoothness above and beyond ICS. Camera kit is limited to a 1.2 mega pixel front snapper, adequate for Skype. A little jiggery-pokery is needed, but the mini-USB port can be tweaked to become a useable port, as well as a charging point: this means that it can therefore interface, via an adaptor, to any USB stick for an effective memory expansion. No other specific ports are provided, though a special dock facility is incorporated in the build to facilitate connection with hardware specifically made to interface with the Nexus. Battery life on the Nexus is supposed to extend to some 8 hours v. only 4 to 5 hours for the Ainol. In reality, I have found little difference in actual usable time, which I am estimating at about 6 to 6.5 for both units [very dependant on what you use it for of course!].

Real world usability: If I had to choose between these two machines for real world use, the Nexus would win every time. Build quality and Android interface just seem better quality and more professional. Don’t get me wrong, the Ainol is good, but despite both units having the same screen resolution, everything on the Chinese unit is just that bit smaller on screen, making it just that bit more fiddly to operate. Whilst both units interface very successfully with the Google Play store, both also exhibit strange problems. The Nexus had issues with the BBC iPlayer for some reason (which can be overcome), whilst the Ainol refused point blank to work with Google’s Chrome browser (quite simply the best browser for Android IMHO). Both issues can be overcome by downloading the APK file for the software, but that is not the sort of task for every would-be user.

Set-up: for the purposes of comparison we have aimed to set up the two units in a similar way. Both sport the Nova Launcher, as we believe that this provides a beneficial extension to standard ICS functionality, including better icon layout and screen management. Our home screen set-up incorporates 8 icons in the dock bar, which will stay the same for every screen, and our choice of 12 regularly used apps in the lower two rows of screen real-estate. A clock widget provides a clear time indication and, working up the screen, we include a set of 6 browser short-cuts for Chrome that will take us immediately to our chosen web page with one touch of the screen. At the top of the page we use an easy to navigate interface to Evernote, our preferred notes, to-do-list, reminder, do-anything app (for those unfamiliar with this software, it syncs with every other bit of hardware that we use: iMac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Galaxy tab, etc, etc). To the right of the Evernote widget is a battery charge indicatory to clearly show the amount of power left.

Additional screens on each machine offer a number of apps, including Dropbox, Box, Google Drive and SkyDrive, all of which offer a wealth of access to files from other areas of the Genesis system. Then there are the usual personal preferences, which in my case include Skype, Twitter, sports results services, OfficeSuite, TV, books and radio apps. On the subject of books, we must make mention of the Kindle app, providing the Amazon reading resource on all platforms. Other important syncing apps for us include both Pocket and Instapaper for referencing web pages for future reading.

Value for money: Both the 8Gb Nexus, at £159 (including £15 of Play store vouchers when we bought the machine), and the 16Gb Ainol at what totalled up to be £116, have to represent excellent value for money. Both are very slick, very useable, and very stable seven-inch tablet products running very recent and high-quality versions of the Android operating system. Both, out of the box, are limited to wi-fi. Using BT’s wi-fi product and associated app enables this to be extended beyond the normal office environment, but it certainly is not as flexible as a 3G connection. The use of a 3G dongle would aid less inhibited use of the product perhaps. To compare apples with apples, the Nexus 16Gb typically retails at £199 – almost twice the price of the Ainol. But wait: Nexus pricing will shift again shortly (before Christmas probably), a 32Gb version is coming, and then there is the Apple iPad Mini . . . oh it all gets horribly complicated again!

Keeping it simple: one simple but very real winner for us comes down to physical size. The Nexus measures 120mm. It will slip comfortably into a standard inside chest pocket of a standard British suit jacket. The Ainol, at 126mm, will squeeze into the space as well with a jiggle. The Apple is likely to ship with a 7.85 inch screen, meaning that it cannot possibly fit in a standard jacket pocket. We think that makes a big difference . . . do you?

Keep your finger on the pulse: grab an RSS feed of PIND (copy this link into your feed reader); click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily to get the latest daily stories; or click here for regular Tech & Comms updates in blog or RSS form. You can also connect to a free subscription of the Print Daily for an update on print, publishing, packaging and associated technology delivered straight to your in-box every day! For details on Genesis Marketing – publishers of PIND – click here.

PIND117    

Missed Issue 116, including August shows? Then simply click here!

Issue 115: newspaper turmoil
Issue 114: Digital packaging printing
Issue 113: Alderson Brothers admin



Get your Tech & Comms updates direct from the blog, use the RSS feed, or keep updated via Twitter.

Click for more detail on Print Efficiently 2012 and the floor plan for the event. Keep in touch via Twitter.

Printing Industry News Digest No.116, October 6, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 116, providing a summary of major news items from the printing, publishing, packaging, digital, and communications technology 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.

The UK Autumn show collection has kicked off in fine style with an excellent attendance at Packaging Innovations in London, and moves forward this coming week with the first three days of Print Efficiently, the collective of 11 suppliers demonstrating latest technologies in action throughout the print production process. In the US, of course, Graph Expo kicks off too (or has finished, depending on what day of the week you are reading this!).

With shows still in focus, Kodak’s Antonio Perez has been speaking to PrintWeek magazine on the eve of Graph Expo 2012. He details the company’s attempts to move from a B2C to a B2B operation.

Talking of the big boys, HP laid out a five-year recovery plan this week. Shares dropped 10% on the day. I guess Wall Street doesn’t like long-term plans too much.
Kindle Paperwhite appears to have been well received – so well in fact that the Sold Out signs have been posted. News from Kobo this week suggests that it doesn’t want to be left behind either. In the meantime, book printer Clays says that the paper version is not dead yet, but margins are not great.

Meanwhile, the Guardian looks at how electronic publishing steals a march on its printed competitor. In the US, Google has struck a deal with the Association of American Publishers.

Moving off into the world of tablet talk, iPad Mini (a still unconfirmed name) would appear to be getting ever closer: what should we expect and when asks TechCrunch.

UK is now claiming to have overtaken much of the global competition with its most recent moves to push forward a 4G network. Time will tell if this is a successful agreement! EE to start rollout very soon: the end of October to be precise! The Guardian, meanwhile, looks at how 4G will change the digital horizon.

Lifehacker has released data on its latest browser speed tests: always worth keeping an eye on to see the latest developments in your window on the web.

Keep your finger on the pulse: grab an RSS feed of PIND (copy this link into your feed reader); click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily to get the latest daily stories; or click here for regular Tech & Comms updates in blog or RSS form. You can also connect to a free subscription of the Print Daily for an update on print, publishing, packaging and associated technology delivered straight to your in-box every day!

For details on Genesis Marketing – publishers of PIND – click here.

PIND116   

Missed Issue 115, including newspaper turmoil? Then simply click here!

Issue 114: Digital packaging printing
Issue 113: Alderson Brothers admin
Issue 112: New Amazon Kindle product



Get your Tech & Comms updates direct from the blog, use the RSS feed, or keep updated via Twitter.

Click for more detail on Print Efficiently 2012, the Hybrid Printing discussion to be chaired by Gareth Ward, and the floor plan for the event. Keep in touch via Twitter.