Printing Industry News Digest No.58, June 25, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 58, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

QR codes are back in the headlines this week – not least because in the Netherlands (and across Euro-land therefore!) you will soon find a QR code on the back of the five Euro coin! It’s readable in the illustration, but I do just wonder how good it will be on the actual coin? We will, of course, let you know just as soon as we can! When officially released the site that the code links to will also change to be something a bit more meaningful (so we are led to believe, at least!).

Tesco in South Korea and QR codes: sound like an unlikely mix? Take a look at this thought provoking video. You will see QR codes in a completely different light afterwards. The Tesco on-line grocery shopping business has risen to number one in South Korea through the innovative use of QR technology. What might it do for your business?

Regular readers already know that they need a QR reader in their smartphone in order to decipher QR codes. We have talked before about my own personal favourite, i-nigma for the iPhone, but we do appreciate that there are certainly more Android phone users out there in the real world, so here are Mashable’s selection of seven free QR code readers for Android phones.

If you are new to PIND, we should really recap on why we think that QR codes are important to communications, and especially important to the future of printed media. This link from StickerScan actually sums up most of our thoughts on QR codes pretty well: have a read. It might just change your business! Printed information needs to carry QR codes because they provide a beautifully simple way of connecting static print to live, exciting and up-to-the-minute web pages. Another page offering five ways that small businesses can use QR codes is provided by ReadWrite biz, whilst a further four ways to integrate QR into your marketing programme are offered here.

Our own favourite example of the QR code in action is, of course, the Genesis Marketing business card. We have a QR code printed on the reverse of the card – just like the one to the left of this text. That simple code links to our GenesisNews blog site, and specifically to the “Further Information on Genesis Marketing” page. Scan the code that is shown here to see what happens. The landing page that it delivers includes connections to our LinkedIn page, our Twitter page, our Daily “newspaper”, and even our customers own home pages. It helps to tell a real great story about our business. Are your business cards doing something similar for you and your business?

There are, of course, as many ways not to use QR codes and there are positive steps that you can take. This blog piece stabs at a few; there are plenty of others don’t worry!

One feature that we should have incorporated in last week’s edition came to our attention only early in this week. We apologise for missing it first time round! Certainly America’s leading writer on the subject of print, Frank Romano, has been busy sketching his thoughts out on how the industry will look in 2020. This short summary of an original article is a great read. Are you a printer? You should read it!

Back in the world of print as it currently exists newspapers and their production staff are taking another hit at Trinity Mirror, as further confirmation is published regarding Guardian News and Media’s troubles.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 59. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 57? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest No.57, June 18, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 57, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

The Google Chromebook has landed as of Wednesday of this week. Who should worry? Who should get excited? The Guardian does an excellent job of defining the corporate market that the Chromebook thin client is squarely targeted at and outlining what it is about the product that will already be worrying the big-wigs at Microsoft, and possibly the providers of anti-virus software too.

The team at Mashable then take a close look at some of the hardware that is required for Chromebook to be a winner, making a detailed examination of the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 3G.

For a more detailed look at the thinking behind Google Chromebook, we return to The Guardian to advise why we might need hassle free computing. Maybe it can also answer the question of whether we are talking about a product that competes with the tablet or the PC or both!

OK, this is bound to be a bit biased, but it never hurts when seeking a full rounded debate on a new product or concept to let the originator have a word. Here is the Chromebook world according to Google.

Most current PC users won’t consider buying Chromebook, or so says some back-of-a-cigarette-pack research from US-based Betanews; are they right to think that way? Most PC users don’t actually back-up their work, and most don’t want to have to run their own computer department, but they do! Chromebook could eliminate both of those problems to start with . . .

Convinced that this could be a good step? PC World asks which Chromebook is right for you, comparing the hardware platforms.

June 17, Friday night, 21:00 UK time: an hour’s worth of the delightful and clever Lady Gaga on the ITV channel. Nothing for PIND to report on here you might think, apart from advert break number 1 which went immediately into this Google Chrome / Chromebooks advert featuring the said Lady and her fans in action. Great ad placement and a great ad really. Like her or not, you surely have to admit that she is one smart mother monster! On the subject of video, and to close this Chromebooks sub-feature, take a look at Google’s specific short film on the benefits of this new venture.

Meanwhile, back in newspaper world, The Guardian, much quoted above, is now suggesting via Press Gazette that staff are to prioritise digital over print. The numbers currently tell a different story, with Press Gazette telling us that just £40 million digital contribution is included in a total turnover of £221 million. Sharp declines in paper sales, however, do point to digital being critical. My iPhone Guardian app, which cost something like £2.60 for a lifetime’s news, and still only costs £3.99 for a one year subscription, would seem to be unlikely to make too much cash compared to the £1 per day cost of the paper version.

Something of a saviour for printers in this week’s news is a story from PrintWeek detailing an opportunity for printers to get involved in printing electronics. Go take a look; this could be one of your best bets for the future!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 58. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 56? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest No.56, June 11, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 56, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Lists of smartphone apps are not unusual, but those appearing now do appear to have a few consistent entries; some apps that appear to appeal to just about everybody. We thought that it was high time that PIND jumped on this bandwagon and put a few thoughts down for readers about iPhone apps that are either essential for all, or something that we find particularly useful . . .

All for One and One for All
Perhaps heading the list for iPhone users is one that seems to appear on most lists: Dropbox. Why? It's a simple way of creating a storage space (2Gb free for starters!) for the iPhone, and of sharing documents between your phone and your desktop device, whether that's a PC or Mac.

Another that comes high on the list of "super syncing" is Evernote. Generally promoted as a note-taking solution, this has a variety of software downloads for all platforms. Syncing your shopping list has never been easier!

The Calendar app is a standard item on iPhone, of course, but it took me some little time to work out that I could sync it with my Google calendar (not Outlook - that is pretty straightforward, but we are not Outlook fans at all!). Google apps in general are an essential for many people, including Google Tasks, Blogger, Notebook, etc.

One further standard item is the Safari browser, but for those that get busy with their browsing or just prefer the tabbed approach with full screen working (and are not too keen to wait until iOS5 becomes common currency), we recommend taking a look at Atomic Web.

Another piece of current software that will be replaced within iOS5 is Instapaper. If you haven't already got this package loaded [it used to be free of charge], it will now cost you real money, so you might want to wait until iOS5 does come along - it will be a standard feature in that version of the software. What does Instapaper do? It allows you to store web site pages as plain words and spaces for future reading. So far so good, but it also does that by actually keeping this info on board, meaning that you can still read the saved texts when you are out of wi-fi or 3G range (travelling on the tube for example).

Still just about in the "general" section, we would offer a couple of our favourite news sites. OK, everybody has their own preferences; these are just good all-rounders. Both of our suggestions are small and neat at first view, but easily expanded on if you want more detail, or have time for an extended read. Suggestions number 1: BBC News. Suggestion number 2: The Guardian. BBC gives you a good news overview with the opportunity to drill down to the BBC web site story, or you can simply click to go to a live News 24 television feed. The Guardian will now cost you £3.99 for a year, but that is still good value when you consider the physical newspaper cover price of £1 per copy.

For those that Write
Those apps that we specifically use for writing based tasks are headed by our favourite: Simplenote. Most of this version of PIND was written in Simplenote on the iPhone 4 with a Bluetooth keyboard in our local branch of Costa. Sometimes its good to write something away from the noise of the office! Simplenote interfaces with ResophNotes on the PC, so that our coffee shop scribbles are transferred immediately back to our desktop machine. Text can then be simply copied and pasted into Word or straight into WordPress.

We could, alternatively, be seeking to update an existing document. Our office kit is backed up in a cloud environment via SugarSync. Installing the SugarSync app on the iPhone means that we can access any file that we have backed-up. By bringing that Word or Excel file into the iPhone app Office² we can effectively adjust, correct or update the file we have stored. To transfer it back to the PC at the office, save the new file to Dropbox or the equally handy browser based Box.Net. This will allow fast updating of the file on the PC, which will then be backed up to SugarSync again from the desktop machine, completing the cycle.

Other on the move favourites? Mashable for tech news; Currency for instant ££ to $$ conversions; iBooks for reading our favourite novels on the train; GoodReader, probably the best PDF reader; and of course GenesisNews, not really an "app" as such, but a bookmark stored on the iPhone home-screen.

You undoubtedly have your own specific favourites - why not mail us at PINDeditor@gmail.com and we will run some details in a future edition.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 57. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 55? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest June 4, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 55, the summary of this week's major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. This latest edition of PIND incorporates brief summaries and links to the key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication for more regular updates; you can take out a free subscription for daily delivery to your desktop.

We stick our techie hat on firmly this week as we take a look at what Computex had to say for itself. Why? Tablets are king right now, and possibly for ever more, and this show was bound to see a whole load of new introductions in that market sector. Some 50 of the latest slates turned up for the show. Publishers, printers and techies should all know the score.

As per last week’s rumours, ASUS announced the Padfone – an integrated smartphone and tablet. An interesting idea that seemed to have some fans, namely TransPhone who claimed to have produced their variant before ASUS. To complete a hat-trick of phone burying tablet cases, Taiwan-based ICE Computer are working on the same idea too, claiming to have been working on the project for some time. All three had one thing in common: no real working prototype, just mock-ups. We look forward to seeing something more concrete one day!

For Viewsonic though it was about how many operating systems they could cram into one tablet device. The ViewPad 10Pro offers both Windows 7 Pro and Android 2.2 in a supposed dual-boot situation with 32Gb of on board storage. The 4.5 hours of battery life is not staggering however.

Shuttle were keen to show their trio of Android-based tablets: a 10 inch, 9 inch, and an 8 inch “ruggedized” for the education sector. Meanwhile Gigabyte offered up a Windows 7 tablet with USB 3.0 and an optical drive dock.

Toshiba have made their entry into the US tablet market with the Thrive, something that would appear to be very well speced and very competitively priced. A 10.1 inch product running Android 3.1, with two camera’s, USB and HDMI ports, an SD slot, Bluetooth, and wi-fi, shipping mid-July, priced from just $429. We reckon that equates to less than £265 at current exchange rates, which would have to be a pretty good buy. If those prices stay it could be v.popular!

On the subject of bargain buys, MSI showed off some inexpensive tablets, including a 10 inch product for just $299 (£182). No Android Market right now though.

Although not new-new the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer has been getting a few real life UK reviews recently, and it does sound as if this is going to become something of a true iPad competitor, once the latest Android software is smoothed out.

ASUS were also in the frame at Computex with something in the ultramobile sector – the UX21 went down well. The LG P220 also stirred interest in this category; and  Compal too added something good in this sector. Tough competition in a shrinking market?

No surprises to hear plenty of 3D talk at Computex. LG showcased an all-in-one PC with both 3D and multi-touch capabilities in the monitor.

One final Computex offering: Windows 8 was previewed. Take a look at how the world's most populous OS is transforming to adapt to tablet formats.

Away from the wonders of Computex, publisher Bloomsbury says that its sales of e-books has soared. Pre-tax profits for 14 months to the end of February hit £4.2 million, with e-book sales taking a sizeable £1.5 million of that, up from just £79,000 the previous year. That’s one heck of a jump! We also saw details of a start-up publisher giving readers the control over what should be printed: what a radical idea!

The number of publications that have now jumped on board the iPad Subscription train continues to increase, but the idea of shared demographic info is still causing many to shy away. The Daily, the Murdoch funded e-mewspaper for the iPad, is currently losing some $10 million a month. Ouch!

Any readers of The Daily reading PIND? It is only you guys over in the US of course – we can’t buy it over this side of the pond even if we wanted too. If you do read it, tell us all: PINDeditor@gmail.com 

One more link for QR code fans: this Ohio newspaper has really got the hang of using the QR concept, adding a code to main stories and features so that smartphone users can get an update throughout they day. We feel sure that all newspapers need to adopt something like this in order to compete with TV and web based news sites. No reason why the QR code couldn't link to a video of the story to marry all media together.


Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 56. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reader; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 54? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest May 28, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 54, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Plenty of post-Northprint, spring/early summer mini-shows going on in print-land in the UK over the coming weeks: it’s just that time of year! Our focus is on the forthcoming Morgana “evolution” event taking place at the company’s Milton Keynes showroom and HQ. The UK’s leading manufacturer for finishing equipment focused on the digital print sector will be showing off a comprehensive range of product, including four new devices, and featuring the new DocuFold Pro, which will be exhibited for the first time. The event will also showcase product from DI press specialist Presstek and digital MIS company, TimeHarvest. It takes place next week on June 8 and 9.

Following on from our focus on QR code extravaganza last week, the Morgana invite happens to include one on the front cover! It takes you to the relevant page of the company’s web site where you can register for the above “evolution” event. In a more general QR sense, we are offered from other sources 12 steps to create your own successful QR code campaign.

We also made mention of the Starbucks/Gaga promotion last week (but got the link wrong - apologies; this one is good!): this week QR codes come to cans of Coca-Cola, with a music promotion in Germany. Perhaps they are beginning to catch on?!

Whilst we have mentioned this concept before, Blippar is a new name on the block as far as we are concerned. The company expects to move on from QR codes by making a specific object recognisable to your phone.

Talking of technology, the next time you think that things are moving a bit quick for you, refer back to this link: it details the creation of the originals for The Musalman newspaper, which are handwritten! It is the job of four urdu calligraphers to create this publication in India on a daily basis. As the link says, don’t go asking for an iPad app just yet.

Referencing our recent thoughts on cloud storage, you might remember that we are keen on Dropbox. So are quite a few others by the look of things: Dropbox users now save 1 million files every five seconds! Mind you, there are some 25 million users now, which helps to explain the big numbers. Users have saved a total in excess of 100 billion files. If you need an enhanced user interface for Dropbox on your Mac, by the way, Dropin is just such a tool available from the Mac app store. Looks well worth checking out.

In tablet talk, HP is certainly not shy in making big claims for its forthcoming TouchPad. News from this week says that they are suggesting that it will be “better than number one. We call it number one plus.” Plus what we are not sure. One wag recently suggested that this might mean number one plus five, equating to the TouchPad actually sitting in 6^th position in the tablet world (roughly where it sits right now!). With Computex imminent, the guys at Asus are telling us that they plan to break the rules with a new tablet. We will watch this introduction with interest, and report just as soon as we work out what they mean!

If you fancy a bit of a refresher course on where we have been in recent decades, why not check out this great infographic on the History of the Internet. It’s a great story with a huge cast!

It must be time for a new miracle material. How about giving graphene a go and see if it fits the bill. Certainly sounds interesting enough: a mobile phone the size of a credit card? Worth investigating!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 55. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 53? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest May 21, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 53, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Publishing news from Wired advises us that Conde Nast is moving ahead swiftly with four more titles taking advantage of Apple’s digital subscription solution: Vanity Fair, Glamour, Golf Digest, and Allure. These follow the recent debut of The New Yorker. Self, GQ and Wired are to follow with their June editions.

Whilst cloud computing might be the flavour of the year, Seagate is seeking to prove that the personal hard drive is far from dead with this latest introduction: a portable drive with wi-fi. That means that your portable computing device (iPad, iPhone, netbook, etc) can access any file from the device without cables.

On the subject of cloud computing, however, this great infographic illustrates that it is far from new. It also suggests that it is far from being the ultimate answer too, in that indications are that we are already overcapacity with info for the amount of storage space available.

QR codes continue to make the news with an ever increasing number of posts detailing how they are being used for new and exciting marketing promotions. There is a bit of misinformation about, however. This post offering 8 ideas for using QR codes was a bit off the mark in my opinion. You need to be seeking areas of print where QR codes can be inserted to provide an opportunity for readers to go and gather further information, or get further product views, or offers. QR codes can enhance a printed product; take a static media and bring it to life. The great thing for marketing folk is that you can also keep tabs on how your project is performing. SmartyTags has been posting this week about its QR code monitoring tool.

Evidence of just how big QR codes are getting can be seen in this great story detailing a promotion for Starbucks where the company has teamed up with the promotional power of Lady Gaga to create a two-week scavenger hunt with QR codes in store as a starting point.

For those still learning, here is one very simple example of QR codes in action: this code is printed on the back of the new batch of my own business cards. Add a QR code reader app to your smartphone (use i-nigma if you are running an iPhone 4). Point your smartphone camera at the code, the software will read it and bring up more in-depth detail about Genesis Marketing, including a whole bunch of online links, allowing you to connect with news from many sectors of the print industry. Just have a play with the links offered: you will soon get a clear understanding of the potential power of the QR code. Remember too that as the creator of that “About Genesis Marketing” web page, I can change its contents at any time, hopefully keeping it up to date and relevant to people scanning the code tomorrow, or next week (ie, same code, different information if I desire).

Tablet talk has to start with some troubles with RIM’s PlayBook device. News from Reuters is that 1,000 tablets have been recalled due to a flawed operating system build. We are also advised that reading news on iPad’s is inferior to a real newspaper, on the grounds that we actually do retain more of the information that we read from the hard copy. We also find out this week that Dell’s Streak Pro tablet should be with us by June.

On the subject of consuming news, as mentioned above, Mashable offers us 13 alternative ways to get your news input. It is actually focusing on the various apps available really, rather than different ways. From those mentioned PIND can recommend Zite. How do you get your news? Tell us more by e-mailing PINDeditor@gmail.com with your method (TV, PC, iPad, phone, newpaper, etc) or favourite software.

Adding to a number of recent stories detailing the rise and rise of e-books, Amazon themselves tell us this week that Kindle books sales have now overtaken their own printed book sales. It even puts some kind of numbers down for this: for every 100 printed books sold by Amazon (hardback and paperback combined) it now sells 105 Kindle books, and that excludes the download of free titles.

Print points: more great business cards for you to enjoy; clever logo's; 40 creative resume (or CV) designs; explorations in typography: mastering the art of fine typesetting; free handwriting fonts.

A little something for all you networkers out there: I saw this great post that suggests seven essential skills for networking. There is nothing especially new, or "thunder and lightening" about any of them, but it does just remind you how important these skills are. The key point mentioned here I think is that the reception of any event (especially a sit down dinner) IS the event! That's where you network and get true benefit of attendance from. Sat at table you probably have just the people on either side of you.

Almost finally, something to bring us all down to earth with a bump: five tech products that will be dead in five years (just to prove that technology never stands still!). Or, on a more positive note, 70 bits of gadget info you might enjoy; or, on an even brighter note, possibly the best job application ever!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 54. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 52? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest May 14, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 52, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

Google’s announcement regarding the imminent availability of Chromebooks running Chrome OS hoists a further flag for the future of computing: it’s in the cloud. The two newly detailed bits of hardware are designed basically as web based platforms – they are not there to store files or programs, but to interface with cloud based services and storage. Effectively this is what tablet computing has also been based on, so it really should come as no surprise, but it certainly does help to point the way forward. If you don’t want to buy another netbook, by the way, Chromium OS is available as freeware, and can be downloaded to a memory stick and installed on an existing machine (in theory – we haven’t tested it!).

If you are all going to be working in the cloud then you will need some storage space to put your files in. A new one came to our attention this week in MiMedia. You get 7Gb free, which is a pretty reasonable starting point, and is probably sufficient for many to use as a back-up facility. For general cloud space for current projects check out Dropbox, with 2Gb free, and Boxnet, providing you with 5Gb of easily synced space. Actually add them all together and you will probably have enough space for most of your needs! Just for the record, much of this publication has been keyed remotely via an iPhone, Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and cloud space from Dropbox, swiftly synced on return to base using QuickSync. If you need more free space than these services offer, you can always buy more from each of them, or those dear chaps at Microsoft can provide you with SkyDrive to give you a whopping 25Gb online for free!

Regular computing might require the very best of browsers to take advantage of cloud services, and this latest test of the best offers some interesting results. Google’s Chrome browser takes the top two positions, and Opera then bounds into 3rd and 4th slots, before a Beta version of the next Firefox. Note the lowly position of various versions of Internet Explorer. If you are using these, then maybe you urgently need to get something from higher up the listing! Just for the record, this week Google Chrome celebrated hitting 160 million users.
 
In tablet talk, as Google was giving a shed load of these devices away this week at its I/O conference, we had to take a closer look at the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Running Google’s latest Android variant – Honeycomb, specifically devised for tablets – this unit has been given some very positive comments. Perhaps here Samsung has its first serious contender in the tablet market.

In the UK a new campaign has been launched to help get more people onto the net. Some 100,000 volunteers will help Race Online 2012 to get millions more people online – it is suggested that over 9 million people in the UK have never used the internet. Strangely the number is roughly similar to those people in the over 65 (men) and over 60 (women) age group. Good luck to the volunteers – sorry, but I think it could be hard going!

Getting back to the more mundane subject of books, one potentially huge sector of the e-book market is in student text arena. The guys at Mashable tell us this week about six companies aiming to digitize the textbook industry.

Meanwhile, in newspaper world: The Sun has decided against a paywall for its web based offering; whilst Metro has produced an A5 “pocket sized” guide to summer entertainment – the first such publication that it has produced as a giveaway with its free paper. Some 300,000 guides were produced with distribution taking place on Friday May 13.

QR codes continue to grow at an astonishing rate, and continue to find new applications - 101 are on offer in that little link! One digital guru forecasts a QR explosion over the next two years.

Meanwhile, some interesting numbers from Business Insider suggest, in their words, that the iPad is becoming the only PC that matters. Forbes seems to agree with its take on why publishers are finally saying “yes” to Apple.

In the world of digital print equipment, the team at Morgana are celebrating a record quarter at the beginning of 2011. With worldwide sales reaching a record high, it would certainly appear that recent product introductions have had the desired effect.

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 53. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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Want to read issue 51? Click Here!

Printing Industry News Digest May 7, 2011

Welcome to Printing Industry News Digest (PIND) issue 51, the summary of major news stories from the printing, packaging, digital and communication sectors. Welcome to the latest edition of PIND incorporating brief summaries and links to the week's key news stories so that you can look up that all important detail. Do also take a look at our automated GenesisNews Print Daily publication; why not take out a free subscription for a daily delivery!

First on the agenda this week (for a change!) is print. A few great design ideas have come to our attention this week, so we thought we would group them together, starting with “How to make your business cards look great!”; to help with this and other projects, eight best free fonts can be found here; thoughts on meaningful typography; and 30 stunning and creative uses of typography in print might also provide plenty of inspiration (something that is always useful!).

This coming week, printers in the UK will be descending on Harrogate in Yorkshire to enjoy the wonders of the Northprint exhibition. A couple of late additions to the show were announced this week. Firstly, the French digital kit of MGI will be given a platform at the show, enabling it to illustrate its significant points of differentiation; staff from M Partners will be on hand to explain. Even more recently, the chaps from Centurfax and Ripware have announced that they will use Northprint as a platform to unveil their new combined Centurfax Customised Dotmeters Ltd business.

Also this coming week, Split-it, the new environmentally friendly packaging solution, makes a worldwide debut at Interpack in Dusseldorf, Germany. Sadly, we won’t be able to make it to the event, but we hope to be able to Tweet details of a successful launch as the show unfolds. Certainly Split-it is all over the web like a rash at the moment, which will hopefully help!

We are advised that the recently withdrawn Sunday Sport is back in full colour this very weekend. After a five week absence former owner David Sullivan has bought back the title.

In the world of publishing, it was revealed that iOS publication The Daily has racked up a $10 million loss in its first quarter. The US-only "magazine" (or newspaper?) is a Murdoch owned title that is exclusively available on Apple’s iPad.

Far more accessible is The GenesisNews Print Daily publication (as mentioned in the header!). Distribution started this week, and interest is steadily growing. As many of you will already know, the paper.li product is assembled automatically from Tweets in the GenesisNews feed. Why not subscribe to the daily? Whilst content is slightly different from this weekly digest, it’s still focused on the same basic topics, and makes for a good read!

In the less print friendly news this week we can report that e-book sales have taken another leap forward in the UK. We are also advised, however, that this is just the tip of the iceberg in relation to the volume of books currently being sold, so print has some life left in it yet, thankfully!

In tablet talk, we are pleased to be able to confirm our thoughts re the Asus Eee Pad Transformer product, as mentioned in last week PIND. It is so popular, you can’t get one! 100,000 for May and 200,000 for June are the production targets. Meanwhile, we are told that Android apps are working just fine on RIM’s PlayBook, which gives it a reasonable suite of software from the off, though there is debate as to whether this is the right product now that it has finally seen the light of day.

In other tablet news, we learn that we will buy nearly $3 billion worth of apps this year, $425 million of that on Android apps; the Guardian tells us about the increasingly more tactile nature of book apps on the iPad; and Amazon looks likely to move into the tablet market before the end of the year.

In the world of syncing software, it is good to see Syncdocs, a great little product that provides for the easy syncing of GoogleDocs. We like the idea. Also you might like to check out Pogoplug: a software solution for personal cloud computing.

Firefox has not been on our radar for a little while: we did mention the eagerly awaited arrival on Firefox 4.0, of course, and we have been busy getting used to it here at PIND. You may have also found that far less add-ons were required to really make the new version sing, but the chaps at Tripwire magazine have managed to come up with 25 that they think are useful. We quite liked Tab Scope, which shows a thumbnail of the tab content. Perhaps more meaty is “What's That Preference”, an add-on that links to the MozillaZine Knowledge Base and provides the user with details of an item within the about:config menu. Takes the guesswork out of making changes or tweaks to the basic browser!

Great news for QR code fans: a neat little bit of software to help you to create your own product labels with QR code incorporated! You might even surprise yourself at how much you use this!

Finally, do keep checking back to see what will be featured in our next edition, PIND 52. Details of our next edition will be added to this link during the course of the week. For an RSS feed of PIND, copy this link into your feed reeder; and for the GenesisNews Print Daily, take a look at the link and take out a free subscription!

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