Printing Industry News Digest No.139, March 24, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 139, 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.

IPEX 2014 grabs the headlines yet again this week with the publication of an open letter to all IPEX stakeholders, as first published via PrintWeek.com on Thursday of last week, aimed at promoting the positives of print. A series of cost saving measures for exhibitors have also been communicated as organisers Informa seek to show their understanding of the price of shows in these harsh economic times.

Prior to all of that excitement, the build up to its stable-mate show, North Print & Pack, is well underway. The Harrogate-based exhibition is the only major print focused show in the country this year, and the last event of any significant size in the run up to next years IPEX exhibition.

“Why Newspapers Still Matter” lecture occurs in the same week as debate continues in UK re Leverson, while newsrooms continue to cut back on journalists, and contract print revenues continue to struggle.

Shareholder unrest in the digital world as HP sees big protest vote against re-election of directors.

The Google Reader issue won’t go away. TechCrunch asks what of those users just stop using a news feed system. It also takes a look at the history of the feed reader. Feedly is tipped as the likely successor for many users, but who pays for all of that server power that this will require?

Google has, however, this week introduced a new package: Google Keep is a note-taking tool. Nothing sensational, but it might be another handy solution to those of us with failing memories! [still recommend Evernote though!]

Meanwhile, a realtime API interface with Google Drive is now something that developers can get excited about.

Android Tips: Regular readers just knew it wouldn’t take us long to start fiddling with the screen display of the Note II phone – the arrival of which was posted just last week. Our first screen creation on this device offers a decidedly monochrome theme, inspired by a glorious wallpaper image, coupled with some of the basic thoughts of the Holo Cards theme recently shown on this site, and a semi-transparent icon set entitled Glasklart. Our favourite Nova launcher provides the base, which allows us to employ a 5 x 9 grid and six dock buttons: phone, email, settings, text message, Opera browser, and Spotify. A basic nine app buttons reside in the lower / centre of the screen. We find this “simple” structure easier on the eye. The straightforward analogue clock face follows this same principle.

The four additional buttons along the top of the screen are in fact page-links. They connect to four additional screens offering further apps grouped by topic. The four buttons shown lead to: a tech settings page; a files page, including links to our favourite cloud storage sites; a “play” set of apps, including music, TV, films, and books; and a “links” page, including bookmarks to regularly visited news, print, and sports sites. Each of these pages includes a similar set of icons at the top of the screen, with the addition of a home button to return to the “home” screen.

Additionally, a swipe down the screen will take the user to a digital clock screen combined with weather info, along with an open Google-based diary for today with the next four appointments on show. A swipe up the screen offers a quick route to the browser with news headlines. For more technical details email 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! For details on Genesis Marketing – publishers of PIND – click here.

PIND139    

Missed Issue 138, with inkjet and newspapers? Then simply click here!

Issue 137: SRA1 format
Issue 136: offset installs
Issue 135: PUR binding



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Printing Industry News Digest No.135, February 23, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 135, 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.

PUR perfect binding is in focus with Morgana Systems. Links to three short videos on the products are well worth a look as PUR moves to short-run digital work. The affordable DigiBook 150 is an entry-level hand-fed machine suited to very small quantities.

Meanwhile many companies expressed joy and delight at the recent Hunkeler Innovation days staged in Switzerland. Many are asking if this is this the new way forward for exhibitions. One voice against might come from Packaging Innovations at the NEC, Birmingham, this coming week.

Publishing, meanwhile, takes centre stage in London where the Publishing & Media Expo happens on Tuesday and Wednesday, at Earls Court.

Such a show is more than likely to have a focus somewhere within on self-publishing. The Guardian offers some sharp thoughts on this revolution for writers. Meanwhile, in the US, a David v. Goliath case is launching with three bookstores taking on the might of Amazon and six of the biggest publishers in America. Where’s your $5 on the outcome?! Restraint of trade is the basic point of focus.

What is next for books, asks the Guardian. A good question to go to the above show with perhaps. How about a talking book alongside the readable version? Gigaom imagines this to be a working product via your Kindle.

The 4G mobile network has been much in the news this last week, with the UK government and its wildly optimistic valuation taking centre stage. The guys quickest out of the 4G blocks in UK, now known as EE, do not appear to have taken the country by storm with their offering, which may well have influenced the bidding process. 4G should succeed in the long-run, but try giving us a decent network first and then asking for a hike in monthly subs – otherwise its very much like the kings new clothes!

For those at the techie sharp end it will surely come as no surprise to hear talk of double digit growth in the tablet computer market during this last year. Expectations from Forrester are for that to continue in the coming years with a figure of 55% online adult ownership in Western Europe by 2017. That equates to a whopping 147 million units in case you were wondering!

Some of those should certainly be Google Nexus products by our reckoning. With Google retail stores widely tipped to be on the way in the US, it would be good to see a better promotional push of these most excellent tablets. If a seven-inch form factor (or thereabouts) is on your shopping list, why would you buy anything else? Well, HP is now posing an option that might be worth looking at if you can wait until April . . . a $169 price tag (straight UK conversion: £111.44) is a very reasoned argument for the spec.

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.

PIND135    

Missed Issue 134, with latest on digital publishing? Then simply click here!

Issue 133: Hard times for heavy metal
Issue 132: Morgana turns Swedish
Issue 131: Kodak out of IPEX



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Printing Industry News Digest No.129, January 12, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 129, 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.

Publishing has grabbed our attention this week: educational publishing has been put into focus by McGraw-Hill and its digital partner Kno: the future of textbooks is all about being dynamic – a flexible learning tool that develops with the student. Sounds good – unless you are a printer maybe!

The publishing focus continues with the news that printed book sales fell in 2012, but some suggest that they fell more slowly than in previous years. One in twenty printed books sold was by E L James! Is this good? We guess so.

Newspaper and internet publishing has also been in the news in Ireland, with ownership and rights issues being in focus. Should a newspaper charge a site for linking to it? Doesn't sound like good business to us!

Interesting development on the Kodak front as they license the name to JK Imaging for camera and projector production, following on from last years decision to quit the digital camera market.

CES news: Nice little wifi drive from HP – 32Gb and able to send video or audio files to multiple recipients. Also great USB device to turn your old laptop into a touchscreen device with Windows 8. The Nexus 7 dock snuck in the back door too!

Deserving of a mention for sure is this really cool Android Mini PC product. With a reported price tag of just $45 (less than £30) is has to be well worth a play. OK, it needs everything plugged in (monitor, keyboard, mouse), but you probably have a few of these about, especially as Bluetooth is now included on the latest version. Android with a mouse is just fine in our experience!

One thing that has intrigued us for a while is the not so humble watch. Latest variants have popped their heads above the parapet at CES. There is Pebble, which has had plenty of coverage; but also Toshiba; the latest update to I’m Watch doing an iPod Nano impression; and the Martian Passport Watch (?!) now in the fray. Interesting times!

It’s a new year – of course there will be tech predictions . . . ! More focused predictions re Microsoft and 2013 too [do read this one! it really is worth it!]. Mashable adds in five Chinese brands that we will hear more of in 2013. Of course, if you want to know the next big thing, the Guardian says ask a teenager!

On the general software front, Fetchnotes happened our way, and certainly appears to be a good multi-platform, well designed note-taking tool. We will give it a run out and see how it performs, but the question as always with such apps is can they do the job any better than the more general approach of Evernote. We do like the use of hash-tags in Fetchnotes and the nice and simple attach facility: worth a look we think!

Some 1 million Raspberry Pi sales have now been chalked up!

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.

PIND129    

Missed Issue 128, a focus on RSS news readers? Then simply click here!

Issue 127: manroland to close Plauen
Issue 126: Fuji’s JetPress
Issue 125: Death of The Daily



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

Printing Industry News Digest No.123, November 24, 2012

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 123, 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.

We mentioned manroland sheetfed at the top of last weeks news, but manroland web systems (now an entirely separate company) is selling hardware, and continues to develop new and imaginative solutions for both newspaper and commercial web press users. The latest news features the integration of tablet-based controllers with web press hardware.

Press installations are few these days, and Japanese manufactured press installations even fewer due to the exchange rate at this time, but packaging specialist Glossop Cartons found the need to install a second Mitsubishi press at its Derbyshire HQ due to the knowledge and expertise of the supplier M Partners. Litho press experts at the UK distributor for Mitsubishi products provided a solution to a problem posed by the packaging company.

Cloud hosting heads for consolidation in Europe as Claranet absorbs competitor Star, but TechCrunch suggests that SaaS could be on its way out.

AutoTrader, meanwhile, is talking of record viewing numbers at its web site, where 11 million unique visitors popped by in October.

The Hewlett-Packard / Autonomy gig is has been getting plenty of web space this last week. The Guardian provides a summary of where we are now.

Further suggestions, this time from the Guardian, that Windows 8 is taking off fairly slowly. Perhaps no surprises given people’s experiences with previous operating systems, which have often required significant updates just a few months down the line.

Nice posting from the guys at Lifehacker detailing what calls 50 free apps we’re most thankful for. Can’t disagree with the majority: if you are not making the most of some of these excellent offerings, have a quick read through!

In response to a question re keeping notes in sync, Lifehacker offers in interesting post with a wide range of solutions, many of which we have tried, and most of which we have liked. To us, however, it takes too long to reach the obvious answer: Evernote.

In Tablet-Talk, it will come as no surprise following the recent rash of affordable product introductions, that this festive period is already being tagged as the Tablet Christmas. Future Publishing is suggesting that this will result in growth of e-editions of magazines.
Our friends at Mashable suggest that the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is good but no iPad killer.

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.

PIND123    

Missed Issue 122, including manroland sheetfed update? Then simply click here!

Issue 121: Useful packaging
Issue 120: Random Penguin publishing
Issue 119: iPad Mini and Windows 8



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