Starting with IPEX 2002, this blog covers events relevant for UK print, including Seybold and DRUPA. See also website at www.atford.co.uk

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Now back in Exeter sorting stuff out.

I am working on two stories for Ohmynews so there will be links later.

Probably over the weekend.

I am still curious as to how Adobe is structured. There was not much sign of the 'classic publishing' business unit as such. Apparently the new PDF Print Engine is developed in San Jose. Maybe it will be an office product eventually.

Checking out through Google News there is some perceptive reporting coming from India. Like this from The Hindu.

"There is an amber sign along this route: go digital — or die."

That just about sums it up.

Monday, April 10, 2006

The Printweek Panel was mostly about innovation but part of this was an answer to the question 'what is "integrated communications vehicles" all about?'

Nicholas Green from Tangent Communications explained a recently launched service to add email and mobile messaging to direct mail. "Tangent is in the messaging business. Print will continue to be a huge part of that. Just not the only area."

This was in response to a question about "print's illustrious future".

Lawrence Wallis closed the meeting with regret that there was not enough time to discuss the timescale of future changes though he stated that in outline, "we are in a declining market".

Plenty to discuss here. The IPEX Daily records that Haymarket have now undertaken to publish Printing World as a monthly. Barney Cox will be the editor as well as group online editor. There may be some form of discussion board, I guess.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Yes it was my imagination, or else comments has been turned back on again at the 'Comment is Free' site.

I have added this in

------------------

This is significant article, with the statement that the online bit of the Guardian is now in profit.

My impression is that the Guardian has larger plans for the web than comes over in the prionted version. Jeff Jarvis on Buzzmachine sometimes repeats views from Alan Rusbridger that may be surprising. Recently there was a speech claiming the Guardian has a larger American web audience than the LA Times. Last year there was a suggestion that the Man Roland kit bought for the Berliner format would be the 'last presses' ever purchased.

I spoke about this with some people at IPEX ( still on till Tuesday ). One suggestion was that the next Guardian print purchase might be a DICOweb, good for variable print in low volumes for newspapers such as 20,000, ideal for a regional version of the Saturday guide.

Blogging is only one aspect of what is happening. Jeff Jarvis talks about 'news organisations', a business model with online and print aspects. Maybe this sort of thing will find more space in the Guardian on a Monday.

-----------

another recap of the story so far. One day soon the Guardian will explain in print for the UK paying audience what Jeff Jarvis is leaking to the blogosphere...
There are some files created at Life Bytes on Friday and Saturday where we installed a copy of Open Office 2 and Scribus for Windows.

Questions for IPEX stories
PDF
Open Document

Test Scribus sheet
PDF

So far seems to be working ok. Open source could be very strong in print. The JDF approach is based on XML. Next step is to check out the level of support for open source in other areas.
It strikes me that the case for e-paper is probably stronger than has come across in the discussion so far.

There is a fairly expensive series of reports from AFAICS.

An extract has been leaked by 'The Hunky Mouse'.

Not all information from the Hunky Mouse turns out to be reliable. There was a suggestion of meeting readers in a pub after a wifi trade show and then managing to name a pub that was closed.