Printing Industry News Digest May 14, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 52, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Google’s announcement regarding the imminent availability of Chromebooks running Chrome OS hoists a further flag for the future of computing: it’s in the cloud. The two newly detailed bits of hardware are designed basically as web based platforms – they are not there to store files or programs, but to interface with cloud based services and storage. Effectively this is what tablet computing has also been based on, so it really should come as no surprise, but it certainly does help to point the way forward. If you don’t want to buy another netbook, by the way, Chromium OS is available as freeware, and can be downloaded to a memory stick and installed on an existing machine (in theory – we haven’t tested it!).

If you are all going to be working in the cloud then you will need some storage space to put your files in. A new one came to our attention this week in MiMedia. You get 7Gb free, which is a pretty reasonable starting point, and is probably sufficient for many to use as a back-up facility. For general cloud space for current projects check out Dropbox, with 2Gb free, and Boxnet, providing you with 5Gb of easily synced space. Actually add them all together and you will probably have enough space for most of your needs! Just for the record, much of this publication has been keyed remotely via an iPhone, Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and cloud space from Dropbox, swiftly synced on return to base using QuickSync. If you need more free space than these services offer, you can always buy more from each of them, or those dear chaps at Microsoft can provide you with SkyDrive to give you a whopping 25Gb online for free!

Regular computing might require the very best of browsers to take advantage of cloud services, and this latest test of the best offers some interesting results. Google’s Chrome browser takes the top two positions, and Opera then bounds into 3rd and 4th slots, before a Beta version of the next Firefox. Note the lowly position of various versions of Internet Explorer. If you are using these, then maybe you urgently need to get something from higher up the listing! Just for the record, this week Google Chrome celebrated hitting 160 million users.
 
In tablet talk, as Google was giving a shed load of these devices away this week at its I/O conference, we had to take a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Running Google’s latest Android variant – Honeycomb, specifically devised for tablets – this unit has been given some very positive comments. Perhaps here Samsung has its first serious contender in the tablet market.

In the UK a new campaign has been launched to help get more people onto the net. Some 100,000 volunteers will help Race Online 2012 to get millions more people online – it is suggested that over 9 million people in the UK have never used the internet. Strangely the number is roughly similar to those people in the over 65 (men) and over 60 (women) age group. Good luck to the volunteers – sorry, but I think it could be hard going!

Getting back to the more mundane subject of books, one potentially huge sector of the e-book market is in student text arena. The guys at Mashable tell us this week about six companies aiming to digitize the textbook industry.

Meanwhile, in newspaper world: The Sun has decided against a paywall for its web based offering; whilst Metro has produced an A5 “pocket sized” guide to summer entertainment – the first such publication that it has produced as a giveaway with its free paper. Some 300,000 guides were produced with distribution taking place on Friday May 13.

QR codes continue to grow at an astonishing rate, and continue to find new applications - 101 are on offer in that little link! One digital guru forecasts a QR explosion over the next two years.

Meanwhile, some interesting numbers from Business Insider suggest, in their words, that the iPad is becoming the only PC that matters. Forbes seems to agree with its take on why publishers are finally saying “yes” to Apple.

In the world of digital print equipment, the team at Morgana are celebrating a record quarter at the beginning of 2011. With worldwide sales reaching a record high, it would certainly appear that recent product introductions have had the desired effect.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 53. 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 reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Printing Industry News Digest May 7, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 51, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

First on the agenda this week (for a change!) is print. A few great design ideas have come to our attention this week, so we thought we would group them together, starting with “How to make your business cards look great!”; to help with this and other projects, eight best free fonts can be found here; thoughts on meaningful typography; and 30 stunning and creative uses of typography in print might also provide plenty of inspiration (something that is always useful!).

This coming week, printers in the UK will be descending on Harrogate in Yorkshire to enjoy the wonders of the Northprint exhibition. A couple of late additions to the show were announced this week. Firstly, the French digital kit of MGI will be given a platform at the show, enabling it to illustrate its significant points of differentiation; staff from M Partners will be on hand to explain. Even more recently, the chaps from Centurfax and Ripware have announced that they will use Northprint as a platform to unveil their new combined Centurfax Customised Dotmeters Ltd business.

Also this coming week, Split-it, the new environmentally friendly packaging solution, makes a worldwide debut at Interpack in Dusseldorf, Germany. Sadly, we won’t be able to make it to the event, but we hope to be able to Tweet details of a successful launch as the show unfolds. Certainly Split-it is all over the web like a rash at the moment, which will hopefully help!

We are advised that the recently withdrawn Sunday Sport is back in full colour this very weekend. After a five week absence former owner David Sullivan has bought back the title.

In the world of publishing, it was revealed that iOS publication The Daily has racked up a $10 million loss in its first quarter. The US-only "magazine" (or newspaper?) is a Murdoch owned title that is exclusively available on Apple’s iPad.

Far more accessible is The GenesisNews Print Daily publication (as mentioned in the header!). Distribution started this week, and interest is steadily growing. As many of you will already know, the paper.li product is assembled automatically from Tweets in the GenesisNews feed. Why not subscribe to the daily? Whilst content is slightly different from this weekly digest, it’s still focused on the same basic topics, and makes for a good read!

In the less print friendly news this week we can report that e-book sales have taken another leap forward in the UK. We are also advised, however, that this is just the tip of the iceberg in relation to the volume of books currently being sold, so print has some life left in it yet, thankfully!

In tablet talk, we are pleased to be able to confirm our thoughts re the Asus Eee Pad Transformer product, as mentioned in last week PIND. It is so popular, you can’t get one! 100,000 for May and 200,000 for June are the production targets. Meanwhile, we are told that Android apps are working just fine on RIM’s PlayBook, which gives it a reasonable suite of software from the off, though there is debate as to whether this is the right product now that it has finally seen the light of day.

In other tablet news, we learn that we will buy nearly $3 billion worth of apps this year, $425 million of that on Android apps; the Guardian tells us about the increasingly more tactile nature of book apps on the iPad; and Amazon looks likely to move into the tablet market before the end of the year.

In the world of syncing software, it is good to see Syncdocs, a great little product that provides for the easy syncing of GoogleDocs. We like the idea. Also you might like to check out Pogoplug: a software solution for personal cloud computing.

Firefox has not been on our radar for a little while: we did mention the eagerly awaited arrival on Firefox 4.0, of course, and we have been busy getting used to it here at PIND. You may have also found that far less add-ons were required to really make the new version sing, but the chaps at Tripwire magazine have managed to come up with 25 that they think are useful. We quite liked Tab Scope, which shows a thumbnail of the tab content. Perhaps more meaty is “What's That Preference”, an add-on that links to the MozillaZine Knowledge Base and provides the user with details of an item within the about:config menu. Takes the guesswork out of making changes or tweaks to the basic browser!

Great news for QR code fans: a neat little bit of software to help you to create your own product labels with QR code incorporated! You might even surprise yourself at how much you use this!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 52. 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 reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 50? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest April 30, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 50, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail.

Having put hardware in focus last week, there are still a fair few platform issues to clear up at the start of this, our 50^th edition. First of all, the ultra-slinky Asus Epad Transformer – the first real all-in-one cross between a tablet and a notebook. The screen detaches from the base keyboard unit to provide the 10.1 inch screen tablet form, and all of this could arrive at your finger-tips for just £380? That is very competitive in our view, especially for such a flexible format. This unit will impress.

Acer has also been busy on the tablet front with the introduction of the Iconia running Adroid 3.0, Honeycomb, but at £450 a throw, you will already be asking yourself how good a deal is on offer compared to the above Transformer product.

Perhaps something that Apple will be more wary of is news that Sony are set to enter the tablet market in a big way, aiming to be second to Apple in terms of sales volume within the first year of its entry to the market. Ambitious, but then this is Sony – mass market is their thing!

Tablet talk, however, might all be in vein according to a market review from the team at CrunchGear, as they ask the question “Why Can’t Anyone Make a Popular Tablet?” [apart from Apple, we assume they mean!]. John Biggs offers some interesting thoughts. One other interesting post offer some suggestions on how to beat Apple. Interesting! The opposing view says that people don't want to buy prototypes. Harsh, but a good arguement.

Interestingly, one writer takes us back to 1994 when a newspaper think-tank is believed to have forecast the development of the tablet computer. This is quite an eerie view into the future: they seem to have thought through many of the features of such a device. The size is certainly tablet like, and the team viewed such a device as something for consuming rather than creating.

In the desktop PC arena, Acer has also been busy here with the creation of the Asprire Z5763 all-in-one unit. This one has some interesting innovations on offer, with 3D images and Kinect-like gesture recognition.

Bringing us right up to date in the hardware market, Microsoft’s quarterly profits and revenues were eclipsed for the first time in 20 years by Apple as a slowdown in the PC business and continuing huge losses in its search division held it back. This led to the suggestion that Apple has more money than God!

Whilst we are going all Apple-y we ought to mention the recent buy of the iCloud name – it certainly would appear to be a pointer re what’s to come, if anyone still had any doubts!

Moving on from platform, we now examine the latest in publishing, beginning with some more useful input on making your own iPad magazine. In slightly sharper focus, the Guardian asks if trade magazines have come to the end of their useful life: we certainly hope not, but it’s worth a read. On a more general iPad publishing issue: how to create an app in minutes [as usual, the title is a little optimistic!]
Apps, however, should most certainly be on the publishers agenda. The team at TechCrunch tell us that 44 billion apps will be downloaded in the next five years. App stores will spread, consumption will rise: get publishing!

Best we link some printing into all of this if we can! How about an excellent infographic for starters. This one charts life from the origins of the printing press through to the iPad.

One reference – but an excellent one – for QR codes before we finish. This post is an excellent use of the QR code, and might just switch a few more folk onto the benefits. Very creative!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 51. 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 reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and subscribe!

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Want to read issue 49? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest April 23, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 49, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail.

Hardware is very much in focus this week as we try to summarise the state of user platforms. Our first pit-stop has to incorporate a feature from the Guardian of this week that states that desktop PC sales might well have hit their peak, citing a fall in sales in PC’s when compared to the first quarter of 2010 by 1.1% overall, but a more significant 6.1% in the United States.

Meanwhile, are you a liberal, vegetarian, city based computer user? You must be an Apple hardware fan, according to this infogram from Gigacom. The chart looks to compare Mac v. PC people (for whatever reason!), and amid some very odd areas of comparison, PC users are more likely to fall into the older age group (that’s PIND then!).

The netbook, it would seem, has had its short life as its window of opportunity appears to be closing pretty quickly. Born out of a need for smaller format, lower cost, more portable computing, the netbooks arrival was especially well received by the young, but with the creation of tablet computing, the netbook is undoubtedly already in decline. Even Google’s Chrome OS is now having tablet functionality added, and is also being described as a notebook product, rather than the original netbook OS.


What to do if your PC or Mac develops a fault? This often pondered question has become the latest topic for The Oatmeal to muse on. As regular readers will know, we do hold a torch here for the works of The Oatmeal, so do spend a moment enjoying this latest (far too brief) offering: How to Fix any Computer.

In the world of the e-book reader, we find out this week that first quarter sales of digital publications have outsold the paper format. ReadWriteWeb asks if this is good or bad for publishers; we say good for publishers, but bad for printers. Publishers will have to learn to deal with the piracy issue, but then if they chat with the good folk of the music industry they might find out a thing or two! Also worth noting: audiobooks have continued to grow their share of the market, up 37% v. February 2010.

Amazon, king of the e-book reader suppliers, has made further announcements this week regarding e-book library facilities. The story, mentioned this week by various stories, is that over 11,000 American lending libraries will incorporate the facility to lend out digital versions of books to Kindle or Kindle app users. From a marketing perspective, one has to salute the move as an effort to get establishment approval of the format.

As we speed along into tablet talk, the Telegraph tells us that tablets such as the iPad will need to fall to a price point below £250 before they can become mainstream. Interesting point, but then maybe we need to just stand back a bit: we are just one year into the popular form of tablet computing; only just past the first wave of buyers, the innovators. Undoubtedly prices will fall, and most likely they will eventually dip down below £250. Apple is unlikely to lead the way in this move; they will lead by technological development, not by price. The mass manufacturing power of Sumsung is more likely to focus, eventually, on pile it high and sell it cheap marketing.

Not that this will happen any time soon, according to numbers released this week by Goldman Sachs. They are predicting a continued Apple dominance for the next two years. Further number crunching from Digits offers some further evidence, if any were needed, that Apple is still dominant in the areas of the market that it wants to be in (ie, the bits with the money!).

RIM has finally made it, however, so maybe Apple should keep looking over its shoulder to see how the Blackberry PlayBook is selling (450,000 in the first week, according to industry figures). We can only see it succeeding in firm Blackberry intrenched markets, and even then the name might let it down (business markets having a PlayBook? Doesn't sound right does it!). Perhaps one to keep an even keener eye on: Amazon is rumoured to be looking seriously at the tablet market. Utilising Samsung hardware, the company already has so many good things in place from its Kindle efforts in the e-book market. This one would be worth watching!

And the Polestar Story:
Having reviewed all of that hardware, we do also need to give a quick mention to the news of the week from the printing industry, with the purchase of Polestar. We first saw it announed in the Telegraph, and PrintWeek have added some more detail. PrintWeek provided some great informed detail on the pension fund issue, which has been a long standing area of conflict for the company.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 50. Details of our “half-century” edition will be added to this link during the course of the week.

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Want to read issue 48? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest April 16, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 48, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail.

Paywalls and publishing: we take a look at the latest news and views. It would certainly seem too early to make too many assumptions about the New York Times and its paywall activity, though the guys at Mashable seem keen to make some early comment – a 99 cents offer is not going to give totally accurate numbers, but visitor figures are certainly down already.

Paywalls should certainly have an effect on a publications social media strategy. Mashable again makes some comment on this topic. Taking a wider view, the team at Gigacom present some interesting numbers on how the market is changing for newspapers with the growing adoption of the smartphone and the tablet computer.

Scarily, however, the Guardian offers us some numbers detailing what tablets are being used for and games top the list, following by browser searching and emailing. Another similar offering tells us 29 statistics of how iPad is changing our lives.

Our printing slant this week focuses on a very neat little write-up that offers a good guide to typography, including definitions of many of those bits of terminology that designers and pre-press folk use on a regular basis. It’s a handy guide to have to hand if you are new the world of ligatures, ampersands and letter spacing.

We’ve written quite a bit about the wonders of QR codes and how they might help to link the worlds of print and the internet. Well, already the world is moving forward. This latest offering from Aurasma details a forthcoming app that will be able to link any regularly printed item to a web site. OK, as is pointed out in the some of the comments re this story, the idea is embryonic t this point, but you can see where it is going.

Mashable offers something for computer users looking for productive PC solutions. A selection of desktop apps are offered here to speed up your day-to-day working life.

If you are a home-based worker, TNW offers seven top tips to help you be more productive, including goal setting. It also offers a focus on that wonderful saying about being busy not equating to being effective: basically, any fool can be busy; you have to use the time effectively to be productive!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 49. Details of new stories will be added to this link during the course of the week.

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Want to read issue 47? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest April 9, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 47, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. We’ve shifted to a Saturday publication date: due to the general workload here at PIND-towers most of it is now written on a Saturday!

Firstly, blowing our own trumpet briefly, we are now one year old! A rousing chorus of Happy Birthday will do nicely, thank you. It would seem a reasonable time to ask what has happened during the last 12 months within the various sectors that we regularly examine, and where are we right now, so that is what we intend to do:

Print: We read with great interest earlier this week that the US print industry is beginning something of a fight back. OK, it’s starting from a pretty low point, according to the information provided by What They Think?, but the sequence of positively profitable quarters has to be seen as a step in the right direction. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a continuing upward slant?! In the UK business is improving; finance is still something of a stumbling block, unless you are presenting a good business plan – actually that’s what most businesses have to do! The Ryobi SRA1 format 920 Series presses are tipped for great things – 8pp to view with a B2 press footprint.

Packaging: Where print meets packaging in carton production, the leaders of the pack, such as Benson Group, appear to be going from strength to strength. For others who have been focused on sweating existing assets rather than investing in the latest and greatest kit, times have proven just as tough as the regular commercial print sector, with businesses falling by the wayside on a regular basis. May’s interpack show in Dusseldorf will be a highlight for this year.

Publishing: How many people have actually subscribed to The Daily: they are not saying apparently. I was very enthused by the whole marketing activity for this publication initially, and half of me thought that this might actually work. The other half of me thought “hold on – this can’t be right”. How can you charge for something that is generally available for free! The Times is still trying, the FT is refusing to pass subscriber detail to Apple, and the New York Times is trying – they can’t all make money from something that this easily available for nothing . . . can they?

Tablets: some interesting recent comments on the tablet market have suggested that Microsoft is trying to suggest that the iPad represents a passing fad. We do not believe that for one minute. More akin to our way of thinking is a summary of a recent talk from Steve Wozniak, who is saying that tablets are the ultimate computing machine that was just waiting to be developed. This market is going to go from strength to strength in our opinion. It is convenience computing: easy to move around with, easy to use. The Telegraph also offers us five alternative tablets to the iPad. Mind you, Apple is buying up all the remaining touch screen stock by the look of it!

Tablet/smartphone: OK, this is both bits together! The question is, which has impacted your life more: iPad or smartphone? Overall, I would have to go with the smartphone. It has moved an existing product into a whole new market, and is accessible by many millions of people. The tablet is still that bit more of a luxury item that doesn’t really do anything significantly different from a computer – it just does it in a more portable and convenient way. You might also argue that the iPad does nothing more than a smartphone, it just does it with a larger screen, making regular use more comfortable on the eye. The combined use of iOS is still outpacing Android when it comes to overall web use.

Smartphones: It is no great surprise to us here at PIND, but several recent reviews of the smartphone market have indicated that Android has, or very soon will, overtake the iPhone in terms of numbers. It’s bound to happen. We still don’t believe that any Android phone provides a superior product experience, but it all comes down to price generally. More people can afford an Android solution. Apple meanwhile continues to develop and continue to file patents.

The web: Speed, speed and more speed. Speed is still everything with the web. Mozilla this week published a list of the 50 slowest to load add-ons; Mashable offered us an infographic on why web sites are slow; and BT announced a 20mbps copper cable for the UK – well, for 80% of UK homes anyway. They are currently upgrading some 30,000 line per week (just not ours as yet!).

Social media: Google continues to refine its YouTube offering with Channels. Check out the new GenesisNews channel while you are at it! A report from this week also tells us that 90% of marketers believe that social media is important. What are the other 10% doing? We told you recently about the 100 millionth LinkedIn member; well this week there is a great infographic that tries very hard to put that into perspective.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 48. Details of new stories will be added to this text page during the course of the week.

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Want to read issue 46? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest April 2, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 46, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. We’ve shifted to Saturday publication now, partly because Friday was April 1, and you wouldn’t believe a word that we had written, and secondly because, due to the workload at PIND-towers, most of it is now written on a Saturday anyway!

Phones are not actually something that we generally major on in PIND, with the exception of the occastional iPhone comment perhaps. Maybe this week we should address that shortfall, particularly in the light of there now being some 4 billion mobile users worldwide, over a quarter of which are now believed to be smartphone users. Three-quarters of the total are SMS enabled, which in itself opens the marketing mind more than a little. This splendid infographic gives you a great overview of where we are right now, and a few insights into the future too.

We are generally led to believe that iOS 5 is just around the corner. The chaps at MobileCrunch have offered there list of ten items that “simply need to be in iOS 5” (in their opinion). There are a couple that we are especially keen to see happen: proper Gmail support and something to make the lockscreen work a bit harder.

Fast Company have offered us a posting on iPhone hardware, highlighting a crop of patents recently filed. These included ideas for 3D photos and battery back-up packs. The chaps at Mashable have also provided a summary of iPhone 5 rumours, via a most impressive infographic which is certainly worth a peek a the very least.

In the meantime, RIM is talking about OS6.1 for BlackBerry, and promising a spring release.

Taking a neat side step into tablet talk one new device from Acer really took our eye, though you may want to bracket it into laptop rather than slate: the Iconia offers a dual-screen laptop running Windows 7. The screens are multi-touch and 14-inches. Whatever you call it, it’s a nice looking item.

One especially interesting piece of tablet talk:  Microsoft says that tablets are just a passing fad. This blog post draws parallels with IBM when it was simply known as Big Blue.

On a simple and more straightforward printing note, we liked this posting detailing 100 awesome and original business card designs. Whilst we have highlighted here in the past some excellent ideas surrounding electronic business cards, there really is nothing like a piece of printed work to carry in your pocket. It’s just so easy to hand somebody a card with all of your contact details. Some of these designs will knock your socks off too!

Print buying is the focus of Matthew Parker, and you will certainly enjoy his thoughts from PrintWeek regarding five strategies for print buyers to survive in a changing world. These are well worth reading and digesting.

Print will certainly be the focus of attendees and exhibitors at this week’s Apex Open House taking place in Hemel Hempstead, UK. Products from ECRM, Ryobi, Screen, Morgana, Tharstern, Kocher + Beck, MGI, Friedheim International, Horizon and others, with be on show on both Tuesday and Wednesday, April 5 and 6. Of special interest will be the ECRM DPP1200 digital printing device. Whilst some observers have suggested that this is purely a re-badged OKI printer, PIND information suggests that there is more to this device than that. Come see and check it out for yourself.

Also of great interest on the UK equipment front is the news that M Partners have taken on the agency for Mabeg offline inspection systems. The company see these products as yet another niche solution for print businesses in both the UK and Ireland.

Whilst you might have read some of our recent reports regarding publishers divesting themselves of titles, and moving many others to iPad, it was exciting this week to see Hearst finalising the purchase of titles such as the international rights to Elle magazine.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 47. Details of new stories will be added to this text page during the course of the week, and it will also be our FIRST ANNIVERSARY edition! Yes, one whole year since we decided to commit some of these thoughts to a blog site!

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Want to read issue 45? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest March 25, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 45, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND, incorporating brief summaries and links to the week’s key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail.

GenesisNews goes iPad! Those clever chaps at WordPress have delivered unto us a theme especially designed to display your blog on the iPad in a similar form to popular tablet software such as Flipboard. The enhanced theme is simple to use and delivers a great iPad look! Unfortunately whilst we can show you a picture (see left; click to enlarge!) you can't really see the output otherwise unless you are viewing on an iPad!

3D printing hits the news-stands with Wired magazine, whilst for a more historic look at print, this rather interesting infographic charts the life of print from China in 618 through to the wonders of the iPad in 2010!

In the current world of print, it was interesting to see how Mitsubishi in the UK is having to follow a number of other suppliers in removing its dedicated demonstration facilities. In a market where sales have reduced by some 75% since the year 2000, costs do have to be trimmed, it’s as simple as that.

Google has been busy putting together a data based publication, Think Quarterly. The newsletter is sent to Google partner companies in printed form, but is now available in digital form for those that are interested in having a read.

Last weekend the BBC’s Click came up with an interesting topic: libraries in the digital age. How is the library going to survive the onslaught of the e-book. Some interesting comment here for all parties: publisher; library; printer; and reader!

However, on the subject of digital books, the Guardian offered us a printed alternative with the new “flipback” book. Is this going to be the next big thing in publishing? It’s compact, lightweight, and doesn’t need charging. Printers might like the idea too!

Samsung’s 9 Series laptop is getting a lot of coverage this week. The 11.6 inch version has been announced with a list price of some $1199 (less than £750 as a direct conversion), which is pretty reasonable for something that is reported to be as thin as the MacBook Air, and almost as pretty! The 64Gb solid state drive is seen as below spec by many, but then that does depend on what you want to carry around on your laptop I guess; it’s a price v. weight v. availability thing that the individual needs to calculate.

Samsung has also been doing some good and competitive things with its Galaxy tablets and their pricing, with details of the 8.9 and 10.1 inch models. A 16Gb version of the 10 inch product is coming in at just $499. A direct conversion of that equates to £311. That has to make it a serious option for the new tablet investor.

Mind you, the market leader has not given up by any means! The iPad2 went on sale in the UK on Friday, and prices are reported to be £399 and up – certainly making them less expensive than the original iPad.

As promised last week, we wanted to revisit QR codes to catch up on some of the latest coverage of this impactful marketing tool, which has the potential to connect the worlds of print and the internet. US site AdAge Digital recently told us about some big names now using QR such as Macy’s, Target and Best Buy. There is also a new Top 10 (in US) link for QR activity, and,  very importantly, some links to tracking solutions for QR codes; this is one of the most important benefits of the codes for marketing folk – you can check the numbers! Kodak has also started to use the QR code on a worldwide basis: not a bad endorsement I guess!

Another follow up on recent weeks’ postings: Firefox 4 is not just out and about, its being downloaded in huge numbers (bigger numbers than the latest Internet Explorer, you might have noted). For all that, there are a few changes in FF4 that have been deemed “annoying” by some, so the chaps at Lifehacker have come up with some fixes.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 46. Details of new stories will be added to this text page during the course of the week.

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Want to read issue 44? Click Here!