My good friend Paulo and his Doubleleft team sent me this beautiful link, a site called "How many friends do you know", where you are tested to show how many of your Facebook "friends" you ACTUALLY know. Although i like art direction and animations, what i really love is the smart questioning of our "virtual" life. Enjoy!

Subservient chicken + Warioland // The Expendables + John West Salmon = The Tippexperience

As the Graph Expo show approaches, I’ve had people ask if they should go and if they go what they should see. First, the answer is yes – you should go. Even if it’s just for one day – you should go. There is no better way to research equipment and learn about money saving and money making strategies than by seeing the equipment and hearing from the industry experts at the show.

The most important reason to go to any show is to see all the products in a category that you are about to invest in. So if you wanted to buy a digital thingamabob then you could see all the new digital thingamabobs all at once.

But there are other reasons to go including the educational seminars. It’s probably the best place to catch up on something you may have put on the back burner or something new that you need to learn more about. In fact, this is the first year that I can remember that the entire seminar track was “clean sheeted” or started fresh with a clean sheet of paper, thanks to our friends at CalPoly.

I suspect one hot subject will be opportunities to sell more marketing services.  Although discussions about shifting from a PSP (print service provider) to a MSP (marketing service provider) have been around for a while, the technology and success stories will be more accessible than ever.

Another hot subject will be inkjet printing. Considering the size and cost of these machines not all the manufacturers will bring them, but many will bring samples. This show may be the best showcase for inkjet printed samples.

In addition to seeing the inkjet printed samples, another important thing to consider is learning more about the new markets and applications for inkjet printing. The traditional markets are transactional printing (bills and statements) and direct mail, but different manufacturers are discussing other markets.

A few years ago Oce started to talk about newspaper applications. Today they point to Madrid-based publisher Imcodavila that prints 6,000, 80-page broadsheet papers each day, a pilot project with personalized editions of The Washington Times Weekly Edition and most recently “niiu,” the world’s first custom newspaper in Germany.

Last year HP made it clear that they are focusing on the book market. In an open house at O’Neil Data Systems they talked about how they were targeting books with installations at CPI, Europe’s leading book manufacturer, and Courier Corporation, North America’s third-largest book manufacturer.

Some companies are targeting a more broad appeal. It’s not easy to find lower cost inkjet devices that are fast but Riso and Xerox (Phaser) have products which are pioneering use in the office market.

Companies such as Agfa and HP are using inkjet for industrial applications and label printing. In fact, the tag and label market may be the emerging market for all types of digital printing. Based on announcements made at Labelexpo we may be seeing toner-based devices from Xerox and Xeikon targeted for label and packaging applications.

There are many more companies offering inkjet products including EFI, Kodak, FujiFilm, Impika, MGI, Miyakoshi, Olympus, Ricoh/InfoPrint, and Screen. So when you go to Graph Expo plan on hitting a few seminars, make a list of the products you are researching or considering buying and learn more about emerging markets and applications. Lets face it – it does not matter which technology you use as the demand for traditional products and services declines success will come from new markets, applications, and opportunities.

Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering... this Chrome Experiment has them all. "The Wilderness Downtown" is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait" and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

As many know, WhatTheyThink will present our 2nd Print CEO Forum on October 1st and 2nd. This is an exclusive event for printing executives only. The Print CEO Forum will be held at the prestigious University Club in Chicago.

Since the announcement I have been contacted again by many of our sponsors and suppliers in the industry asking how they could sponsor or attend the conference. I have explained that this conference will be unlike any other since we will not have vendor/supplier sponsors in attendance. In conjunction with the CEO Forum, we will present the CEO of the Year award at a dinner ceremony. This program is sponsored by manroland but is not part of the conference.

Our mission with this conference is to present objective content to attendees without any perception of an agenda from industry suppliers or sponsors. I wanted to just provide clarification again that this content will be presented without input from suppliers and we think this provides a unique venue for printing executives.

We want our attendees (printing executives) to know that they will be mingling only with their peers with no pressure from their suppliers. This is not to say that events that have sponsors are tainted. We just believe an event without sponsors presents an opportunity to deliver a different experience for attendees. Last year’s event was great and this year will be even better.

If you are a printing executive, this event will detail what you should know about economics, resources, Internet, technologies, products, strategies, and trends that will shape the future of print. Structuring your printing business for success is the bottom line and our mission with the Print CEO Forum is to help you do that.

For more information, visit www.PrintCEOForum.com

Randy Davidson,
President
WhatTheyThink

The picture above was taken not in a printing museum but in the letterpress department of Taylor Corporation’s Tatex subsidiary in Waco, TX. Somewhere in the room is what’s believed to be the oldest Heidelberg press still in operation in the U.S.

Here’s a closeup of the veteran piece of printing iron: a 10″ x 15″ Heidelberg Windmill platen letterpress, Serial No. 35345E, built in 1951, acquired by Taylor Corp. in 1996, and running to this day.

It’s just one of many Windmills currently owned and operated by Taylor Corp., a global print network with 70 subsidiaries and 9,000 employees. Heidelberg recently located the press through a contest in myHeidelbergONLINE, its web newsletter. It reported that the press, equipped for foil stamping, stays busy imprinting napkins, Christmas cards, wedding invitations, and related products. Taylor Corp. now has about 220 Windmill presses in its plants across the U.S., down from a peak of 500 Windmills in the late 1980s.

The Windmill press, so called because of the revolving blades that feed, position, and deliver the paper, is based on a platen press design introduced by Heidelberg in 1913. By 1967, according to this article, Heidelberg had built over 175,000 platen presses—one press every 14 minutes. “Still the most versatile presses on the market, they can print, imprint, number, perforate, punch, slit, emboss, die-cut, score and hot foil stamp,” the article says of the Windmills.

This video shows No. 35345E in action, and this one explains the Windmill printing method in detail.

Heidelberg thinks that there may be even older Windmills still hard at it out there. If you believe you have a Windmill that predates No. 35345E, you’re invited to send its serial number to (email hidden address not shown).

“On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia.” It’s what W.C. Fields was rumored (falsely) to have chosen as the inscription on his gravestone. For present-day bloggers in the City of Brotherly Love who remember it, the line carries as much irony as any of the late comedian’s celebrated wisecracks.

That’s because the city of Philadelphia wants them to pay what has been incorrectly labeled a “blog tax”—a development reported by Philadelphia Citypaper last week. The tax would apply, said this story and many subsequent reports, to any blog published by a Philadelphian that makes money from advertising, even if the income is minuscule. Tales of people being hounded for earning as little as $11 for their blogging pains soon abounded.

Written by an intern, the Philadelphia Citypaper story got a viral kick when it was picked up by major news media including The Washington Post, the New York Daily News, and local Fox television. Many in the blogosphere, predictably, were outraged, as a Google search for “Philadelphia blog tax” instantly reveals.

But, here’s the hitch: although the tax in question is real, it isn’t a new levy, and it isn’t specific to blogging. It’s Philadelphia’s existing Business Privilege Tax (BPT), a fee that applies both to businesses and to individuals who earn freelance or consulting income. Those subject to it must pay $50 annually or purchase a lifetime license for $300.

The controversy arose when the Philadelphia Department of Revenue began notifying bloggers of their obligation to pay the BPT. It found them, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer, by using Internal Revenue Service information that identifies everyone in Philadelphia who has reported income from blogging and other taxable pursuits to the IRS.

Bottom line: there is no “blog tax” per se in the city that Benjamin Franklin made famous, although its tax authority now foists the BPT on bloggers as it does on anyone else meeting the description of “individual, partnership, association and corporation engaged in a business, profession or other activity for profit within the City of Philadelphia.”

Although responsibility for the “blog tax” misnomer could be said to lie with Philadelphia Citypaper, accusing the paper of “churnalism,” as this second-guessing commentary does, isn’t fair. Semantic confusion aside, the article deserves some credit for reminding all who read it of the difficulties that cities routinely heap on their small businesses.

Philadelphia media consultant Sean Blanda takes Philadelphia Citypaper to task for careless reporting. But, he also blasts the BPT as one facet of a tax structure that “can be crippling to entrepreneurial activity and innovation.”

“Any business located in the city boundaries of Philadelphia is here despite the city government and not because of it,” he writes. “The ridiculous city business privilege tax and the wage tax…are just a few examples of the hurdles many businesses face by choosing to do work in Philadelphia.”

The situation also turns a spotlight on the value of blogging as a promotional activity for small businesses. Gene Marks, an accountant and a small-business author, thinks that in most cases, it’s an exercise in futility.

“The City of Philadelphia is providing a service,” he writes in a critique of blogging for Bloomberg BusinessWeek. “They’re making us face the fact that most small business owners shouldn’t waste their time on a blog. Instead of writing about the state of society…they should be reviewing their overhead, meeting with potential customers, and helping their employees do a better job. Not blogging.”

Most small-business blogs are “terrible,” according to Marks, and few succeed as marketing tools. But that doesn’t matter to the city of Philadelphia, which wants its cut from the brilliant and the blithering alike. Will it be only a matter of time before other cash-strapped municipalities put similar tax hooks into their bloggers in the unlikely event that they manage to make a buck? Will they decide, as Fields used to say, that “It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money”?

For weeks we have had some very heated conversations about the iPads and e-readers, which included the possible threat they pose to printing but possible salvation for publications (i.e. paid subscriptions for newspapers and magazines). For me, a frequent flyer, I love buying my books, newspapers and magazines for my Kindle. However, free delivery for electronic reading devices threatens this business model.

After months of delays, People magazine last week announced they will offer their publications free on the iPad to magazine subscribers. Up until now, the iPad versions of People, Time, Sports Illustrated and Fortune have cost the same as the newsstand price. But if you talk to people who are Kindle fans you learn that they are outraged when publishers charge the same or a slightly lower price for the digital editions. Most people are willing to pay for digital content on their e-readers but they want it for less than their printed counterparts.

This may be what has motivated People magazine’s parent company, Time Inc., to offering its brands on iPad, including Fortune and Sports Illustrated, for free. But who will make money if it’s free?

A new survey by Oliver Wyman, sponsored by several publishers including Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation, and Time provides some answers. The report finds that by offering a robust product clearly differentiated from print, can result in publishers earning more than $1.3 billion of incremental industry revenues. The study concludes that print and interactive bundles justify a price premium.

“Unlike analog and digital versions of other media, the two formats of print and interactive are perceived as complementary by many periodical subscribers – 30% of renewing subscribers chose a bundle of both the print edition and interactive edition, at a 33% premium to the stand-alone price of either. The interactive format enables effective marketing of additional subscription sales via recommendation engines and browsing features.” This opportunity to expand subscription relationships turned into additional sales for 17% of current subscribers, the report found.

But there is a hitch. Over a dozen photo agencies that supply celebrity pictures from the paparazzi are teaming up to withhold their product unless they get an additional cut from People magazine. As a result, the launch of People’s iPad app has been delayed. As the situation develops, other publications are waiting anxiously for a solution since whatever deal they come up with could set the standard for the industry.  Photo agencies are taking an interest in the iPad because while they get a fraction of their print fee for the online usage of their snapshots, they recognize the potential for the tablet market to be another form of revenue.

What makes more sense: free publications for e-readers or discounted publications?

Howard Fenton is a Senior Consultant at NAPL. Howie advises commercial printers, in-plants, and manufacturers on workflow management, operations, digital services, and customer research.