Greatest Hits 2012: The Year’s Top 10 Stories on GenesisNews

Yes, it’s that time of year again, and we are more than delighted to present to you, dear reader, the top ten postings for 2012 as created by total visitor numbers! These are the ten individual stories from 2012 that gained the highest viewing figures as recorded by our hosts at WordPress. As a postscript, we will also acknowledge the success and interest in the weekly newsletter Printing Industry News Digest, which has itself set new records regarding reader numbers. As with all of the very best “top ten’s” we feel the need to announce these in reverse order!

10. Our dear friends at CCDotmeter are back in the dotmeter market and back in our top ten! The microDot product is their new high-powered microscope product for checking plate and print detail. New of a Harlequin RIP interface got you interested.

9. Benson Group’s first purchase of a Heidelberg Diana folder gluer for their Bardon plant received a fair few visits just last month.

8. Packaging production is in the spotlight at Benson Group with details of the Copperpot confectionary cartons getting everybody salivating for more. The product was successfully used as a very tasty sampler at the Packaging Innovations event in London.

7. Digital printing is the real growth area in communications hardware, and Stirland Paterson recognised this earlier in the year with the installation of a Xeikon 6000 press.

6. You will of course have noted that 2012 was a Drupa year, and UK post-press equipment manufacturer Morgana Systems used the event to launch a range of short-run PUR binders.

5. Digital was the topic at Drupa 2012, and a clutch of B2-format digital developments were on show, including a partnership between Ryobi and Miyakoshi.

4. Morgana are also featured in the top ten with the release of the AeroCut multi-function finishing device.

3. Litho presses are far from dead, and Ryobi appears at number three in our list with the introduction of its latest B2-format offering the 760E.

2. Drupa has to figure large in the list of course, and the release that highlighted both the start of the event, and pointed folk towards our special Drupa blog got a lot of attention.

1. Top of the listing for this year is a Drupa story that detailed the links between old and new, with Ryobi combining its litho know-how with Kodak’s inkjet knowledge: the hybrid press has received much attention this year!

Printing Industry News Digest

As promised in our opening paragraph, we couldn’t list out top ten without also offering a focus on our weekly news digest release. Editions in the January, February, March timeframe received the most attention from you, our readers, with the re-building of the manroland company and Kodak’s move into Chapter 11 being the obvious headlines around that time. Top scoring editions of the weekly are as follows:

1. PIND No.84: January 21
2. PIND No.87: February 11
3. PIND No.89: February 25
4. PIND No.90: March 3
5. PIND No.92: March 17

ENDS



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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.104, July 14, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 104, 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.

In what might appear to some to be taking a leaf out of the British bankers books, Kodak executives seem, according to reports this week, to be keen to pay themselves nice chunky bonuses for jobs well done (while creditors remain unpaid, of course). Do please read right though to the comments section at the bottom of the page: you will surely find it tremendously entertaining. Thoughts and comment in e-mail form to PIND.Editor@gmail.com by all means.

Following up on last week’s news on printed electronics, PrintWeek has reported on the funding package that has been secured by The Centre for Process Innovation.

It was a great pleasure in early July to be present at a PrintWeek briefing delivered by the legendary Frank Romano, professor emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology. Whilst Drupa focused, Frank also offered his thoughts on the various sectors of print production: where they are right now, and where they were heading. A summary of the event now appears on the PrintWeek web site.

In the same vein as Frank’s industry snapshot, a report that came to our attention this week summarising the current state-of-play in the business-to-business magazine sector. Whilst there are, of course, problems, the report focuses on the changes that have had to be made in order for success. One b-2-b publication in the print world that still manages to hold its head up high is Labels & Labeling, so it was good to see this week that the chairman of publisher Tarsus Group, Neville Buch, has been recognised.

The big number crunchers at Nielsen have provided data this week to support all of that: magazine advertising down 1.4%; internet ads up 12.1% in Q1. Meanwhile Next Issue has delivered a new digital magazine package for readers, providing a great big chunk of publications for your pleasure at an all in price.

The New York Times meanwhile highlights the fact that time really is running out for newspapers to change their game and get on the digital boat before it sails.

At PIND we love positive news, and there can be little more on the plus side than this story from Austria, where a town has effectively created its own library through the use of QR codes. It is suggested that the QR code near the local police station could wiz you off to the text of Arthur Schnitzler's The Killer, but we suspect that this is just journalistic imagination!



In tablet talk you just can’t get away from the Google Nexus 7 as the first orders start to arrive. The Guardian provides this week’s review of the product. We have managed to keep our money in our pocket here at PIND for now.

The big comms story of the week – though we do try to steer clear of phones here at PIND – has to be the serious outage at O2. The reasons are focused on here, but, in a more general sense, this has to be a major concern as we rely more and more on our digital kit. It follows hot on the heels of the serious bank computer problem at Nat West. Reliable and effective back-up solutions, with a tried and tested disaster recovery plan, have to be top priority.

And nearly finally, we feel the need to make mention of Microsoft again. They tell us this week that late October is the likely time-frame for the official release of Windows 8. Can’t wait.

Finally, for an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily – you can even take out a free subscription for this daily update on print, publishing, packaging news and associated technology!

PIND104

Missed Issue 103, including printed electronics developments? Then simply click here!

Issue 102: British banking
Issue 101: Microsoft Surface
Issue 100: newspaper news



Updated daily, get Tech News as it relates to print and publishing.
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Printing Industry News Digest No.103, July 7, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 103, 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.

Printed electronics comes back to the top of the shop this week, with Andy Thomas, editor of Labels & Labeling magazine, taking a look at developments at The Centre for Process Innovation, where more or less standard narrow web kit is being used to achieve exciting results.

With the dust settling on Drupa, our Australian chums at Print21 offer up their detailed Benny Landa interview. Worth a read if you want a deeper understanding of nanographic presses, and their potential to change the market. You can also see the full Landa Drupa presentation here.

Meanwhile, the final financial details of the Manroland GB sheetfed and web operations were announced this week by the administrators. Even with the dramatic reduction in the size of this press manufacturer, there are still too many suppliers chasing too few orders. One almost has to ask, who will be the next to go?

The publishing of e-books is easy right? Well, not quite so. Publishing – in whatever format – still has to cross a number of rivers and climb various mountains. Andrew Zack takes us on a publishing journey.

We made mention of the Google Nexus 7 last week, and you may well have already seen the Google video of things taking shape. You can now also put your pre-order in.

However, such moves from Google have re-ignited rumours that Apple will get going this year with product in the 7-inch space. Could be interesting. PIND has never championed the smaller format tablet: you have a phone for portable work, and you would need an additional data contract if you want almost-anywhere internet. The format is still going to be popular this year though – it is the affordable point of entry into the tablet market that makes the big difference. Can we resist the pre-order page above . . . [big struggle ensues!]

Existing Galaxy tabs, in the meantime, are strongly rumoured to being close to an ICS upgrade. We will confirm when we actually see this in real life! By the way: what is Samsung doing right, as profits surge 79% in its second quarter?

ZDNet has been asking questions regarding Microsoft in the form of: Why Microsoft is Building a Tablet, but Won’t Build Smartphones. Whole different distribution / partner system me thinks. In almost the same breath, we are advised that Amazon is planning a smartphone.

Talking of Microsoft, as we do very occasionally, are they taking yet another leaf from the Apple book? A Windows 8 upgrade for Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 will be available for download for just $39.99. That should help take a lot of people on the new journey (eventually!). Experience may well tell us, don’t jump too soon. Let everybody else iron out the bumps first.

Skype fans should be aware of both PC and Mac updates aimed at further improving stability.

An interesting read for software geeks, and not-so-geeks too: the best Google features that you probably don’t use. And this can be more of an eye opener than you are expecting. My money is on you finding something here that you didn’t already know, and that will prove useful!

Almost finally, one question all parents should be asking: do smart devices make smart kids? The BBC poses the question and attempts some answers.

Finally, for an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and click here for the GenesisNews #Print Daily – you can even take out a free subscription for this daily update on print, publishing, packaging news and associated technology!

PIND103

Missed Issue 102, including thoughts on British banking? Then simply click here!

Issue 101: Microsoft Surface
Issue 100: newspaper news
Issue 99: PIND Drupa wrap-up



Updated daily, get Tech News as it relates to print and publishing.

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