Printing Industry News Digest No.134, February 16, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 134, 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.

Inkling offers an alternative digital publishing environment: competition for Apple and Amazon it would seem. Pearson, DK Publishing and HarperCollins show interest says TechCrunch.

All change at ABC: as digitally published magazines grow in popularity, so reporting stats have to change. Time-honoured ABC circulation figures are now able to point directly to both printed circulation and digital editions. This month marks that change point, and whilst print is still dominant for all leading players, how long will that remain the case we all have to ask.

The Sun to drop its iconic page three? Wouldn’t that be suicide for already dipping circulation figures? Murdoch and suicide don’t go together in our book.
It’s not all plain sailing however. Amazon competitor Barnes & Noble posts further gloomy news re Nook numbers. Publishers too are walking a thin line: Time Warner reportedly looking to sell Time. Hearst meanwhile is going headlong into the digital world.

Ricoh, it is said by the PrintWeek, has launched a digital v. offset calculator. The aim is to help users select the most appropriate printing technology. I wonder where it is weighted? Ricoh makes digital, not offset: a clue?

As a follow up to last weeks heavy metal view, the Australian team at Print 21 publishes its thoughts on Heidelberg’s latest sales figures.

Design for mobile, that a message that was promoted late last year by our friends at ccDotmeter, but it is strongly echoed at Poynter, where the stress is on the disruption for news-based sites. It points out very succinctly that mobile is going to be the dominant platform by next year, meaning that we are already very nearly there!

Want Winston to read you the latest? Great iOS app for reading through the latest news headlines from home, as well as from Twitter and / or Facebook. It’s not perfect yet by any means, but Winston is a great eye opener as to what is possible.

Ways to create multiple Dropbox accounts? We have thought about it, but for now the easier option is surely to create more Google Drive accounts if you want free storage space? Mega has loads too!

Need more than nine browser tabs open at a time? Lifehacker says no need. We are not wholly convinced. OK, you don’t need hundreds, but we tend have to seven pinned tabs in Firefox before we actually start browsing for real (mail, the diary, Twitter, the blog, etc). That leaves room happily for six or seven full sized tab headings as well if needed, which is rarely. Good post to read though!

Android Tips: Not quite so much a pure Android tip this week, more a general tablet talk piece really, and you could say several tips wrapped into one! This week we talk mobile and mobility. Still lugging a heavy, large, and ungainly laptop around with you? Struggling to find a train seat that will accommodate your on-the-go work unit? We just question whether you really need all of that hardware in tow: some will answer an unwavering “yes” to that, others might ponder on an answer and start thinking tablet. Tablets offer various configurations for working on the move. We offer a couple of very useable Android examples for your consideration:

Take Samsung’s 10.1 tablet, add the suppliers own Keyboard Dock station and its USB connector placed into the power slot on the right of the keyboard. Stick in any cordless mouse USB plug and you have a perfect imitation of a DIY laptop. The advantage, of course, is that the tablet separates at any time you like to provide a far more portable unit for swift internet browsing. Type your thoughts into Evernote, connect to your Dropbox account, and create Documents To Go while you travel.

Option 2: Connect just about any Bluetooth driven keyboard to a Google Nexus 7 tablet for a rapid transformation into a mini desktop. A similar USB to mini-USB plug will provide access for your cordless mouse if desired, however, landscape mode would be more successful for this – especially if you are using a cheap and cheerful stand, as shown in our picture. The devices shown really will provide a pocket sized computer for your excursions: the keyboard folds to fit in a jacket pocket, as the Nexus 7 slides into your inside pocket too.

For both of the above, connect to a 3G signal when you need it by tethering your phone’s connection and picking up that network on your tablet device. Mind you, how about doing all of the above on your phone (or should I say "phablet") anyway? Great connectivity focused video via YouTube featuring Samsung's Galaxy Note II phone and a few cables!

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.

PIND134    

Missed Issue 133, with hard times for heavy metal? Then simply click here!

Issue 132: Morgana turns Swedish
Issue 131: Kodak out of IPEX
Issue 130: Start of Android Tip Series



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

Printing Industry News Digest No.133, February 9, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 133, 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.

Two interesting news items from print’s heavy metal brigade this week. Firstly, KBA advised the world that a 2.5% price increase in its presses was going to solve all of its problems: questionable for sure! And then on Friday, Heidelberg posted its “strongest third-quarter operating result since 2007/08.” Sounds impressive until you realise that this still leaves the business some 32 million Euro’s in red ink YTD. Where to next for the big machinery boys?

InPrint came to our attention this week: an exhibition for the world of industrial print. This is a sector that we never fully appreciated in all honesty. However, a glance through the overly wordy definition of the title should be enough to make anybody involved in print sit up and take notice. Such a show spreads a pretty wide net, and certainly includes the wonders of printed electronics and 3D printing – two topics that we have spent time and words on in recent months. The show is set for Hannover, Germany and happens next year from April 8 to 10 2014: plenty of time to get your thoughts together on this massive topic.

Want some Google? Eric Schmidt is going to sell £1.6 billion worth of it during the course of the next year – that’s 42% of his stake. His estimated 7.6 million shares in the company represent 2.3% of Google's outstanding stock. On the subject of popular shares, LinkedIn stock has soared 19.2% on the back of some juicy earnings.

Least surprising news of the week? Following the recently reported chunky hand-out from Google to French publishers, the rest of Europe’s media wants some too. No such concerns in the US, as online subscriptions carry on increasing for the New York Times.

While the Guardian is happy to give out advice on how you might access the internet with your tablet, analysts are telling us that tablets will outsell notebooks in France this year. Mashable meanwhile is keen to offer suggestions on what to do with your old tablet.

On the subject of how to get online, the UK’s 4G network is gradually growing this year, with some 27 more towns coming on-stream, expanding the total to 65 conurbations.

Ready to get in line for Mailbox? Well, its getting nearer to reality, but it seems that if you want to be in a position to test the delights of Mailbox, already being touted as the best Gmail client for iOS, then you will need to join a pretty lengthy queue. We think we will wait until its finished.

Android Tips: Having brought you the delights of Nova Launcher last week, we feel wholly obliged to show you just what you can do with it this week. In doing so we are entirely indebted to Thand and his Holo Cards posting via Lifehacker. This minimalist Android theme really caught our eye. Hopefully it does the same to you. Our use of the theme is not 100% as yet, and most interpretations probably won’t be: we all have out unique needs after all. Firstly, ours has been adapted for a Nexus 7, meaning that six dock names can be used. If you just like the square app boxes, you can pick those up by downloading the Minimal MIUI Go Apex theme. Full instructions for the Holo Cards theme are here.

Those readers enthused to attempt the creation of something similar should note that the use of names rather than icons in the dock is so much more than it looks. The names are actually just links to another screen-page. Rather than launching an app, they just transport the user to a new screen of apps to select from. The nine squares in the main screen are app launchers in traditional sense – they just have no name labels displayed. The whole exercise of changing the theme and way of working Android is very educational in our opinion. Try it – you might enjoy it!

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.

PIND133    

Missed Issue 132, including Morgana turns Swedish? Then simply click here!

Issue 131: Kodak out of IPEX
Issue 130: Start of Android Tip Series
Issue 129: Educational publishing



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

Printing Industry News Digest No.122, November 17, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 122, 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.

Whilst delighted to hear that some 2,000 jobs have been preserved in the reorganisation of the manroland sheetfed business, we are still mystified as to where the approximate £40 million of wages will come from. This sum equates to the profitable sale of several hundred, or more likely thousands, printing presses in a highly competitive market. Even the market leader is struggling to shift enough metal, and is loosing money big time!

Having highlighted that little problem, we must not forget, Print is Big! We were delighted to be reminded this week of the Print is Big infographic-based web site: a US focused salute to one of the largest industries in the world. By $$$ size print eclipses most sectors; it produces 45 trillion pages annually, to emphasise the “big”; and is still growing, despite what you might read on the internet!

With that in mind, it is well worth reading this excellent news article from “The Atlantic”. It focuses on the turbulent times endured by a printer and his 1940’s Heidelberg press in Mogadishu, Somalia. So, Mr Printer in the UK or USA, do you still think you have it tough?!

Is this the next big thing in publishing? A camera integrated with a Sony PlayStation reads code from a printed book and turns it into an animated augmented reality, with the player interacting with the storyline via the game controller. A sprinkling of Harry Potter magic dust could certainly aid its success!

Mac based fans of Evernote will probably already know that version 5 of the free software is now available on the app store. They tell us that it contains some 100-plus new features. It certainly has a sharper, clearer new interface, and an improved search facility. If you are not a convert yet, take a closer look!

Interesting little summary from the guys at Lifehacker about common problems associated with the cloud storage systems. Also in cloud world, Microsoft has released info for SkyDrive SDK’s, allowing programers to integrate the product into apps. SkyDrive is also a welcome addition to IFTTT (If This Then That), the customisable action/trigger cloud based software program that we have spoken of often. Lifehacker also asks, is the cloud good enough for back-up?

UK 4G moving forward in the New Year: bidding to start in January 2013 on 4G spectrum.

Tablet talk begins with an Android update for those working with a Nexus 7: you will have noted I am sure that you can now upload Android 4.2 for your pleasure. Phone users with Android 4.2 will have a number of camera enhancements to enjoy, including a new panoramic picture capability, but with Nexus 7 the two best enhancements that I have come across in this general tidy-up are the stop-watch feature, and, best of all, the gesture typing capability. It really works well and is faster than trying to “type” on a miniature keyboard.

On the subject of Android tablets, the smart Xmas investment might be the new 32Gb Nexus 7 with 3G. Unlocked with a SIM slot and Jelly Bean 4.2 the US price of $299 has to be the bargain of the year!

Tablets are being blamed for Dell’s latest unhealthy figures, with both revenues and profits on the slide at the once great box shifter.

Least surprising news of the week: Microsoft Surface isn’t an instant hit as sales start modestly.
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.

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Missed Issue 121, including useful packaging? Then simply click here!

Issue 120: Random Penguin publishing
Issue 119: iPad Mini and Windows 8
Issue 118: A bad week for print



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Printing Industry News Digest No.109, August 18, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 109, 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.

Late Thursday afternoon, UK time, Heidelberg announced that it was pulling out of the IPEX 2014 print exhibition in London. There will be many reactions to this news from both suppliers and printers. PrintWeek is likely to have regular updates, and comments on the additional article illustrate the range of feelings that this announcement has produced. More next week!

Our original intention for this edition of PIND, until the above, was to dedicate this mid-August newsletter to our own latest thoughts and experiences of the tablet world. Tablets continue to evolve. Another landmark (albeit a late landmark in many people’s eyes) will occur next month when Microsoft enters the fray with Surface. For now, we will focus on the major offering currently available in the market from Apple and products based on the Android operating system.

Let us begin with the latest market share news as published this last week – this was effectively the catalyst for our thinking in producing some rough kind of overview of where we are now, what products we use here at PIND, how we think they have developed, and what value we think they will be to the average print, publishing, or packaging player. CNet has also published its latest guide to tablets, which you should read.

Why tablets? Well certainly for the print and publishing sectors they have already had a major impact. Book, magazine, and newspaper publishers have had to divert their attentions away from the previous distribution bases of print and basic internet. The smartphone, the e-reader, and then the tablet have changed the dynamics of the market considerably.

Apple iPad: we were relatively early adopters of this new wonder (two years ago) from Cupertino. The iPad changed the way we look at computers, the way we look at the internet, and, as things have progressed, the way we do business. The product is a true Apple device in just about every way: well built, well designed, with robust, tested and checked software. The iPad1, as we shall call out model, was quickly been superseded by iPad2, and now iPad3 (although we are not allowed to call it that). It’s a great product, though our opinion is now getting slightly hazy, as the older machine is considerably slower than the new kit (obsolete in just two years? Ouch!). The market leader by a country mile because it is still one great product!

For a larger format Android tablet we will reference our own Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 – a product that has suddenly gone up in our estimation due to the late inclusion for this product of the Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0.4) version of the OS this last week. It now works properly! (Version 2 of this product is out UK this week). It is now a realistic alternative to the iPad. Android in our opinion takes quite a bit more learning than the highly intuitive iOS from Apple, but the overall package is a lot more flexible for the average (or maybe slightly above average – ie, a bit techy) user.

Our most recent hardware addition, as regular readers will have noted, is the Google Nexus 7, a seven-inch tablet. Built and designed around the latest Android OS (Android 4.1.1 or Jelly Bean) and the Chrome browser – both from Google of course – we see the Nexus 7 as ground breaking in both performance and form factor. Google have beaten Apple to the punch in the seven-inch world. Priced at just £159 in UK it has set both Android performance and price levels for the next year. We have added the Nova Prime launcher to both of our Android devices – it just helps to make the home screens and docks just that bit better, and adds screen gestures.

A seven-inch Apple? Well, certainly an iPad Mini is very strongly rumoured. The very latest suggestions of the size don’t make much sense to us. The biggest plus for the Nexus 7 is that it fits in a jacket inside pocket.

Then, as mentioned above, there will be the Microsoft Surface. What market share will that be able to gather, and what will be its market entry price – do mail us your thoughts please . . . PIND.Editor@gmail.com

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!
 
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Missed Issue 108, including Kodak Patents? Then simply click here!

Issue 107: Olympic Print
Issue 106: Mountain Lion Launch
Issue 105: Google Nexus 7



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