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.

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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



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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!

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

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



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