This girl dancing has tons of followers...

A new one from The Viral Factory for Samsung and its new Galaxy 850 phone.

(via Michael Tabtabai & @bastholm)

We have been talking about changing business models for charging for content in print vs. electronic media. Clearly we are going through a trial and error period in which magazines and newspapers are trying different models of charging for content until they find one that works.

The latest news is Sydney newspaper groups to put price on digital content. News Limited and Fairfax Media, are moving ahead with plans to charge customers for access to their digital content.

News Limited is gauging consumer demand for subsidized electronic readers such as Amazon Kindle and the Apple iPad, while Fairfax will launch today the subscriber-only Sydney version of its Good Food Guide website to coincide with the launch of the 2011 print edition.

Its Melbourne site, goodguides.com.au, has been up and running for more than a week. Customers who do not buy the print edition can buy 12-month access to the website for $9.99 – the same price as the Good Food Guide iPhone app. People who buy the book will get access to the website through a redemption code with content not available to the casual browser.

Fairfax group executive editor Philip McLean told The Australian the websites were a very small part of chief executive Brian McCarthy’s strategy to charge customers for premium content.

Mr. McCarthy confirmed at Fairfax’s solid annual results report last month that the publisher of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age would move towards a hybrid online model. Customers will be charged for niche or premium content.

Meanwhile, News Limited, publisher of The Australian, has commenced market research into its plans to erect pay walls around its websites. News Limited asks consumers a series of questions about paid content, including whether they would be interested in obtaining a subsidized e-reader tied to a digital subscription.

The question is the strongest indication yet that Australian newspaper publishers may become e-reader retailers, in an approach similar to the way in which telecommunications companies sell mobile phones tied to customer plans. And Fairfax is believed to be considering a more radical way to combat the migration of readers from its print products to the online outlets.

$50 Million to give away 100,000 e-readers.

Macquarie media analyst Alex Pollak has suggested Fairfax could spend about $50 million to give away 100,000 e-readers as part of a broader strategy aimed at shutting down its printing presses.

Mr. McCarthy said Fairfax remained committed to print, but conceded digital audiences would continue to grow. News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has described the advent of tablet computers as a game-changer for publishers.

Personally, I think we are years away from shutting down presses in exchange for all digital delivery of content. What do you think?

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.

In mid-September, X-Rite will release XRGA, an ISO-compliant metrology standard for the graphic arts industry that is designed to take advantage of advances in color science and new international standards to provide a way to reduce measurement discrepancies between legacy instruments previously developed by X-Rite and GretagMacbeth.

According to Jen Elliott, X-Rite’s director of marketing for graphic arts, X-Rite conducted a detailed study to quantify the systematic differences between measurements obtained using instruments from the former X-Rite and the former GretagMacBeth in the process of developing this standard. She says, “The concept of XRGA is based around inter-model agreement for customers using multiple instruments from the new X-Rite to ensure that there is a certain amount of measurement agreement and repeatability among those instruments. Not everyone will need to implement it. It will primarily be helpful to customers using multiple instruments within a given workflow. But it also provides a single standard for all X-Rite product development going forward.”

Elliott points out that implementation of the standard involves software updates that can be handled in the field, or firmware upgrades that can be taken care of at the annual certification process the instrument already goes through (or should!). A new version of X-Rite’s ColorPort software will be provided to assist in the XRGA implementation process for i1 Solutions.

“ISO Standard 13655 is also driving us to make these changes,” Elliott adds. “It would be our hope that we will see other instrument manufacturers bring their instruments up to the standard so that ultimately, there would be a certain amount of agreement between all instruments. I see this as sort of the JDF for instrumentation.”

X-Rite has written a white paper describing the new XRGA standard. Also, watch for a WhatTheyThink video series beginning September 21st that includes more detail about this new standard.

A new one from Uniqlo, Lucky Counter: You tweet about a product and its price will come down for everybody, loving the social interaction around the whole thing.

(via Kris Crockett)

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