Giving up now.

Disappointing to say the least. There should be something later if only slides.

I may have not done something I should have done. Refreshed a few times and logged on again once. My information at the moment is that nothing happened after the welcome screen.

My basic take remains the same. It is interesting that Printweek are prepared to try this. The Web is part of the mix, according to UK print journalists. That is a development.

So this is about half an hour into the advertised time. I can ask a question and provide feedback. But there is no record of either I can access. I have no idea who else is in the audience or what they might be thinking.

Would you like to talk to each other?

I think we should have the option.

no posts because nothing is happening

Twitter, what is that about?

Surely people have more to do than a moment by moment update on things that don't matter much for other people?

Still no change on the Printweek webcast but the opening slide is interesting.

Liveblogging from the Printweek webcast.

I think it should have started about five minutes ago. If nothing is posted here for the next hour, that could mean something is happening.

Scope for websites. The blogs started to take over around or after 2002 when they got so much easier to update. The websites became stuck as claims of some possibility or other. Forget the homepage said Jeff Jarvis at some point but I kept updating it to hang on to credibility. There should have been a database of stories, not just a constant rewrite. Still, they all exist somewhere so an archive should be possible. Stuff comes around. Next month Personal Computer World is promising a guide to databases.

The Total Print event has confirmed in my mind that print is now part of a digital scene. I tried to make litho interesting as news but this only worked to an extent. The editors of OhmyNews have switched the headlines on my story so that the e-book aspect is the priority. Seems reasonable for their audience.

So let us assume that WWWatford has arrived. It was intended as a destination for the UK print industry, like Cairo for Windows. The Heidelberg presentation was as good as this could get. Prinect and computer to plate. Litho could not be much more available. Web-to-print was all over the show. What the speed is for the UK industry to implement this sort of thing, that is another question. There may be more consolidation before there is much investment. Recent Printweek editorials have been frank about the level of investment that would make much sense, for example in capacity for magazines. The WWWatford site will continue to look at UK print with the global context getting easier to link in as attention turns to IPEX. Assume next year's Total Print much the same as this. The LCC conference was mostly about games and the Web so there is a discussion possible about how this fits with the display area.

The Acrobat Services sites are complicated by the Adobe introduction to Acrobat of all things Flash. It is no longer just about PDF. On balance I think most people are still mostly interested in PDF when they think about Acrobat but this is not the marketing view from Adobe. They seem to be giving up on Adobe Classic as if it is getting too easy for others to supply Postscript clones or PDF creation. Adobe Max is expected to be much more future proof. I think the UK is not really ready for much of this, partly because of bandwidth. So I intend to keep the UK site pretty much to Adobe Classic in themes, - flat pages, hard copy, documents as organisations are used to them. Also the Digital Editions Reader and ePUB. The PDFXML approach will be included but there is almost no support from Adobe in promoting this. At least with ePUB there is a group of people with an interest in reaching a wider audience.

The dotcom site is best thought of "in a cloud". That is where Adobe seem to be heading. It already includes some news about Google. Docs can save PDF and I also like Scribd. Their design makes good use of Flash but they seem to be interested in text as well. there may even be mention of Microsoft. The cloud beckons.

Remaining aspects of Flash will turn up as part of animX, a site about digital animation. I am interested in such content, just slow to believe it is a priority for people who are used to PDF.

"Earls Court in Outer Space", possible title for a future episode of Dr Who. I have been thinking about forms of fiction as a way to make more sense of things. Also time travel is unavoidable. This blog is about 2002 after all and the issues for UK print and publishing seem not to have changed very much. Also travel in actual space would be interesting as the Frankfurt bookfair is the same week as Total Print! So my first plot premise is that in the future there will be an integrated kind of show in London, "total communication" perhaps when the LCC gets used to not being LCP. This is some way off of course.




Diagrams show Earl's Court with a print and publishing event at the same time. Ground floor for anything heavy, print kit in Earl's Court 2 but connected to the books in Earl's Court 1. Upstairs for the agents near the Conference Centre, and pre-media, software any equipment that is fairly light. The LCC Futures Conference is in some other space at the back. Yes, there had to be a point to all this. the escalator will go straight to the LCC conference with a direct walking route from Earl's Court 2. Think about it. Next week you may find yourself walking all the way round Earl's Court to go up a level and walk back almost as far as where you started.

Anyway, back to the fiction. UK authors have started to vanish, but then reappear. Terry Pratchett is back again but still no sign of Doris Lessing. Then new texts appear on the Web in similar styles such as they may have written. The website is traced to Canada and there appears to be a connection with a Toronto agent played by Dan Ackroyd. Believe me, he will take the part. All he has to do is to explain that he is in contact with aliens and they have a method of producing books. Terry Pratchett was easy to clone but Doris Lessing is a bit more difficult.

Enter Doctor Who, played by Christopher Eccleston. He manages to negotiate a deal with Dan Ackroyd so that Doris Lessing returns to the UK and several authors agree to let the aliens have all digital rights while they keep hard copy rights for the UK. Also the entire building of Earl's Court and anyone in it during the show gets a trip round the planet earth. Only Christopher Eccleston can manage the confident grin as he hurries off to the next adventure. There could be a sequel depending on how the deal turns out.

Link to Doctor Who show and gif (animated)

Not sure about Adobe having reached a new stage with the release of AIR. It could be a significant date but this can only be clear later. I have found some evidence that Postscript is not promoted that often. The webpage still refers to Acrobat 6 so may not have been changed that often. The industry quotes about the PDF Print Engine are from 2006, maybe around the time of IPEX. There could well be an update during drupa but my impression is that most of the time this phase is more or less over.

I am just restarting to post to the PDF and print blogs. Yesterday I found out that Adobe have issued AIR as version 1 so it is not just an idea. My impression is that Adobe has actually turned into Macromedia. Adobe Classic is hard to find. Maybe Max is a better word than Macromedia, still used for an event. Acrobat is not just PDF, not even PDF in terms of what they will tell you about.

This blog from 2002 is probably going to be speculative and open to revision, based on guesswork and memory. The drupa2008 blog will appear to be more considered and based on reliable information. Not that Adobe explain much till the products are released. Digital Editions Reader? A complete mystery. That is why Scribd makes a lot of sense. I have done a test page.

The Scribd design gives the impression that they actually like documents. The Adobe site currently has so much animated production numbers that on low bandwidth such as we have in most of the UK everything grinds to a halt. All I want to do is get off the home page to somewhere with some information in a text format I can copy out. The medium is so much the message and always about how engaging Flash is. Enough already.