http://www.linst.ac.uk/news/2003/lcp_lcc.html

London College of Printing is now the London College of Communication.

This seems a key event for the week of the Digital Print World. Other digital issues creep in, like film studies and web design. There is another show called Digital Solutions where the word print is not featured. Both shows could develop towards 'communication' as something wider than print. The gossip in the Guardian has been that the London Institute will have the word Arts in the new university title.

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Some links for the ready4print service. It is a joint venture between a graphics firm Q|Solutions, and a software firm - Class Act
www.qsolutions.nl
www.class-act.nl

The Amsterdam Exchange has an impressive set of photos. This seem to be the spot where the service is hosted.

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There was no new information from Adobe about Transit. Possibly one reason is that the forms server software is still fairly expensive. It is sold with other systems through companies such as IBM Global Services. Maybe the price levels that would make sense for printers are not appropriate at this time. The Courier approach includes Jaws software to create the PDF. The licence allows a charge per job sent rather that an upfront cost for each site. A PDF form might be better in many ways, but it is expensive at the moment. Similarly the collaboration tools in Acrobat are still very useful for discussing changes to artwork but the costs are limiting the extent to which this is used. Pelagon seem to have stopped promoting the support of WebDAV for collaboration. They are working with Heidelberg though on another application based on Jaws Courier.

http://www.pelagon.com/portalsolutions/digitalprint.htm

Smartech website

http://www.smartechuk.plc.uk/about.htm

They are supporting the "office" including this web access...

Just discovered 'The Office' with web access. one terminal only but not many people are using it. PrintMe is part of this but there are few actual places in the UK where PrintMe is available. Maybe five Hiltons. So not much has moved on since IPEX. There could be a wider launch early next year.

Ready 4 Print have a nice Flash website now in English to explain how their web services take on Courier works. It should be on their website sometime next week. Currently only on their stand as part of Positive Focus. It is now unlikley there will be a UK server as the Amsterdam one is connected very close to the Amsterdam internet hub and is quite quick throughout Europe.

www.ready4print.com

Jaws PDF Courier seems to be getting further. Pelagon are using it as a basis for Web 2 Print, presented here as part of the Heidelberg approach. Positive Focus continue to offer ready4print. Apparently Global Graphics offer Courier as a software development kit so there are various ways that the job ticket information could be sent that relates to each PDF for copy. Some form of XML could be used so it should be possible to relate this to JDF. Maybe some requests from printers would encourage this.

Pelagon
www.pelagon.com