Printing Industry News Digest No.137, March 9, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 137, 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.

Further to last weeks stories of new litho installations, there is one more new press to focus on: Geerings Print has become the latest print business to do its calculations and realise that its not, in the main, a B1 printer but an SRA1 printer! Check out the massive savings that the directors calculated prior to placing an order for a Ryobi 925 with coater. In the digital world The Langham Press has unveiled its MGI Meteor device.

IPEX 2014 continues to make the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with Canon becoming the latest heavyweight to pull out. One digital supplier is going to open their eyes soon and realise that they could make serious mileage out of being the star of this show.

Want a brighter printed future? The team at Duo Media has detailed the results of a survey of industry consultants who were asked for their predictions of the future. One aspect of future print, 3D printing, has taken some interesting turns this last week: 3D print production of a piece of human skull, for example, or a vending solution for small sized 3D printed parts.

I wonder if it includes newspaper publishers getting into education? That’s exactly what News Corp. appears to be doing: tablets for education from Mr Murdoch. Interesting! And if you’re one of us in the over 50 bracket, you might want to know what teenagers get about the internet that us grown up don’t.

Are you a cloud storage fan as yet, or does it still give you an uneasy feeling. Dan Gillmor gives voice to his concerns in an article from the Guardian.

By the way, if you have a tablet that let’s you choose your own favourite browser, you might want to take a look at the latest Opera (available in the Play store). It’s much neater then previous versions and extremely swift in our experience.

Android Tips: Nexus 7 fans have been anticipating the arrived of a dedicated, purpose built docking station for several months from Messrs Google & Co. The good news? It has this week been posted as available for order on Google Play. The even better news [for us at PIND, at least!] is that our order has already arrived - just two days after being placed. Most impressive - especially when the site said to allow at least two weeks from time of order. The less than good news? Word is that stock has already run out!

OK, so now we have your attention at least. A brief hands on review, with as little gloating as is possible, is the least we can do for other Nexus 7 fans. The summary: it's just fine. It does what it says on the tin. It supports the Nexus 7 in landscape mode, charging as it goes if you plug in your standard charging lead into the rear of the base. This does actually leave the original USB-mini socket free and available. Plug an OTG link in there to accommodate a standard USB stick, a keyboard with a wire, or (as in our picture) the business end of a cordless mouse. Presumably it would be possible to connect up a USB hub and plug in all three at one: we don’t have one right now, so we can’t try it.

Enough said I suspect. It is fine, appears to be just as well built as the Nexus 7 itself, and helps to extend the ability of the tablet, giving a pretty reasonable impersonation of a laptop when coupled with said cordless mouse and our favourite Apple Bluetooth keyboard (other keyboards are available!). Any questions?

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.

PIND136    

Missed Issue 136, with news of offset installs? Then simply click here!

Issue 135: PUR binding
Issue 134: Digital publishing
Issue 133: Hard times for heavy metal



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

Printing Industry News Digest No.136, March 2, 2013

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 136, 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.

I guess the best news of the week for many associated with the printing industry is that presses are still being installed, and they are coming in a wide variety of shapes and sizes! A compact B2 machine from Ryobi, right the way through to a 17-unit B1 Heidelberg for Chesapeake.

With all of that press on their minds perhaps it was less surprising not to see them at this weeks Packaging Innovations event at the NEC, Birmingham. They might have been the only one’s not there! A busy show is a statement we are not using often in this day and age: this event was very hectic! Benson Group officially launched its new web site at the show.

Augmented reality has been a topic of discussion for some time now, and has proved a great novelty for many. It is suggested, however, that we are only just scratching the surface of AR, and that there is still much more to come: the glasses might change all of that! It is certainly one ideal bridge between print and the internet: an ideal tool for those in the printing world therefore!
 
AR is one way, perhaps, of helping print to create further smart anti-counterfeit devices for packaging, tickets, legal documentation, and other pieces of critical print. According to the guys at TechCrunch counterfeit is the new real!

We have been a fan of Bluetooth keyboard’s for various bits of phone and tablet kit for ages, but this Logitech product has a nice twist to it: a button to switch between two or three different products, meaning that you don’t need to re-configure your Bluetooth for each bit of kit every time you work with a new platform. Neat but a bit pricey right now.

Handy kit, however, if you are working from home and using a variety of platforms to get your tasks completed. Working from home is the future, suggests this article from the Guardian. If you are one of those home workers, you might well want to note the latest stats re tablet purchases, pointing to the popularity of the smaller format units. You might also be keen to read this article from Lifehacker on those small things that matter when buying a PC [the info is in the answers!].

On the subject of tablets, what do you use yours for? Some interesting answers here! Couch surfing is a major use, but then having a second internet screen whilst at a main workstation is a great plus too. We also find the seven-inch form great for traveling with in order to read (replacing the Kindle), whilst still being handy for typing notes into [see previous PIND discussion!]

Want to de-Apple your iPhone or iPad? No, not jailbreaking – just replacing some of those annoying iOS only apps. The Guardian offers a great little article with some interesting alternatives. Interesting if you are thinking Android in the near future! How about this e-ink based Android that will run for a week on one charge?!

One of our favourite bits of software, Evernote, got itself hacked yesterday. If you are a user, you will need to comply with a mandatory password change. Your data, it would appear, is all fine though, so don’t panic! NB: any IFTTT recipes that you use with Evernote in the mix will need adjusting with your new pass too. If you are not an Evernote user, why not?

Oh and by the way typeface lovers: it would appear that David Bowie inspired plenty of exciting letter forms, as well as some good tunes! I never did realise that you know.

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.

PIND136    

Missed Issue 135, with news on PUR binding? Then simply click here!

Issue 134: Digital publishing
Issue 133: Hard times for heavy metal
Issue 132: Morgana turns Swedish


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

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



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.