Tuesday, September 01, 2009
One of America's Great Newspapers Launches Paid Online Service
An interesting item from the front lines of the newspaper profitability battle.
Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette launched a new online service called PG+. The service, priced reasonably at $36 a year, is different than anything I have seen so far in the newspaper space.
Really, it's premium content, a social networking platform, and a discount shopping card all rolled into one. The premium content comes from a number of the paper's most popular writers and includes a healthy dose of video content. The social media platform contains many familiar features such as walls, commenting, picture sharing, blogs, be-friending, and Twitter integration. Finally, the membership card that all subscribers receive will be good for discounts and special offers from a number of local merchants.
Check out the story on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for more information.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Personalized Games and Web-to-Print
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Web-based personalization continues to transform the printing industry, and is doing so in some very creative ways. The Game Crafter website by Plain Black Corporation, is a terrific example of a very innovative concept. It is what it sounds like, and if you love card and board games like I do, you’ll love this site! The Game Crafter Website allows you to design, create, and sell board and card games using a very powerful web-to-print interface. The user uploads artwork and design elements for the games, adds instructions and text, and selects various parts (such as dice, pawns, poker chips, etc.) required for game play. Finally, The Game Crafter will print, assemble, and provide the ability to publish and sell your game via their online store
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Monday, July 06, 2009
Print Market Mondays: Pharmaceuticals
For today's Print Market Monday, here's a quick look at the pharmaceuticals market.
Industry Classifications:
SIC Code: 2834—Pharmaceutical Preparations
NAICS Code: 325412—Pharmaceutical Preparation Manufacturing
Industry Organizations and Websites/Blogs:
PhARMA.org: http://www.phrma.org
The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives.
Pharma Marketing Blog: http://pharmamkting.blogspot.com/
Pharma Marketing Blog is part of the Pharma Marketing Network, owned by VirSci Corporation, a pharmaceutical marketing best practices consultancy and communications company established in 1995 by John Mack.
Thinking Pharma: http://www.thinkingpharma.com/
Info from Marketing4Digital: Pharmaceutical (2007):
Over $8.1 billion in print is purchased by the pharmaceutical industry annually. Approximately $2.4 billion is spent on packaging labels and around $1.4 billion is spent on ad collateral. Additionally, close to $1.2 billion is spent on direct mail.
Potential applications for digital print in the pharmaceutical vertical market include labels, patient instructions, brochures/pamphlets, packages, corporate collateral, and direct mail.
Prominent issues in printing for the pharmaceutical industry are secure printing technologies and brand integrity.
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So, is anyone out there doing any printing—specifically digital printing—for the pharmaceutical industry? Is anyone planning on breaking into this market? We’d love to hear your feedback.
Also, we’re continuing our contest for free DPC publications. As we mentioned last week, we’re planning on updating our popular Marketing4Digital reports and we need your help.
Please send us a list of eight vertical markets for digital print that you think will grow in the next five years. If you do, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to win free DPC publications!
You can send us your list of eight vertical markets as a comment on here on our blog, as an email (sshea@printing.org), or as a message to our Twitter account (@digitalprinting).
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
You Know Web-to-Print…How About Phone-to-Print?
PicCard is a slick little application for your iPhone ($.99) that allows you to take a photo with your iPhone camera or select a photo from your Photo Library, and create a printed postcard that is sent though traditional mail.
The process is quite simple: Select a photo from your iPhone’s Photo Library, select a recipient from your contacts list, and add a simple message to the back-side of the postcard. A PayPal account is required to complete the transaction of $.0.99 which includes the cost of postage.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
Marketing4Digital Updates, Prizes, and Print Market Mondays
We believe that vertical market intelligence can be vital for growing your business. That’s why we’re about to begin updating our Marketing4Digital series, a five-volume study conducted in 2005 that thoroughly analyzed 40 different vertical markets for digital print.
Before we do, though, we’d like to hear from you.
We invite you to send us a list of eight vertical markets that you think represent the best growth opportunities for digital print in the next five years.
If you respond, we’ll automatically enter you into a weekly drawing to win free DPC publications. You can submit your list of eight verticals that you think will be important to digital print as a comment on our blog, via email (sshea@printing.org), or to our Twitter account (@digitalprinting). Beginning this week, we’ll be taking submissions and selecting one winner at random from all respondents. Winners will be announced each Monday here on the blog and on our Twitter account. Not only is this a chance for you to help us decide which vertical market reports to update first, it’s also a chance for you to win free prizes!
In conjunction with our M4D updates and contest, we’re adding a new weekly feature to our blog tentatively titled “Print Market Mondays.” These posts will feature quick snippets of information about potential vertical markets for print.
For today’s inaugural Print Market Monday post, we’ll give you some quick stats on grocery stores and supermarkets.
As of 2005, there were 191,598 grocery locations:
- 67,252 supermarkets and grocery stores
- 3,137 warehouse clubs and superstores
- 121,209 convenience stores
In 2006, supermarkets and grocery stores posted sales of $499.5 billion.
In 2007, 75% of consumers split their business between five or more grocery locations (which includes supermarkets and grocery stores, warehouse clubs and superstores, and convenience stores).
Many supermarkets and grocery stores have decreased the amount of in-store displays they use. In-store displays dipped 9.1% from 2005–2006 and 4.4% from 2006–2007.
Across the country, many supermarkets and grocery stores have introduced customer rewards and customer loyalty programs. These programs strengthen customer relations and often allow stores to capture more data about customer preferences and shopping habits.
Recent years have seen a shift in the grocery market, as large discount stores, particularly Wal-Mart, have increased their share. In 2007, Wal-Mart alone captured 17.5% of the grocery market.
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
Online Advertising Not Immune to Recession
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While much had been said about how the recession has affected print-related advertising, online advertising has also taken a similar hit. According to an Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, online advertising revenue dropped 5% in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the same period last year. The IAB report shows that online ad sales in the first quarter of 2008 was $5.76 billion compared to $5.48 billion in the first quarter of 2009. For what it’s worth, all forms of advertising—print, online, television, and radio––have felt the effects of the economic downturn.
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Thursday, June 04, 2009
Printer Thinks Outside the Box…and in the Shower
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I knew it would happen at some point…personalization has now entered the bathroom (the shower to be more specific). If you have a picture that you’d like to incorporate into your shower, then PhotoShowerCurtain has a product for you! Choose between a custom tub curtain ($199) or a custom stall curtain ($149), upload your image, and two-to-four weeks later, you’ll receive a shower curtain with a photo-quality image printed bigger than life. This is just another great example of a printer finding a very (very) specific market for a custom product.
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Thursday, May 21, 2009
The New Wave of Book Publishing
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As publishers struggle to reinvent themselves and figure out what will sell, a new coffee table book is being released titled The Obama Time Capsule, where no two printed copies will be alike. The idea, according to photographer Rick Smolan, is to “weave together the lives of every single individual book buyer with this incredible story of Obama’s journey to the White House.” The book includes half-a-dozen personal touches which includes your own photographs and a personal dedication. The book can be ordered, one at a time, on Amazon.com.
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Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Chewing Gum, Frescoes, and POD
Here’s another example of an innovative use of personalization and web2print technology, this time in the packaging realm.
MyChewingGum.com, by Personal Media Solutions of the Netherlands, recently won the Packaging and Manufactured Goods category at HP’s 2009 FESPA Awards.
Like many products in this space, simplicity is a key selling point. Enter text, select colors, upload a photo, and order.
What is unique about these products, in my opinion, is their convenient size. As the MyChewingGum.com website states, these would be ideal promotional items if emblazoned with a company logo and contact info.
Saving the World...One Fresco at a Time
Some words are just plain fun to say. Occasionally, these fun-to-say words also relate to digital printing.
Without further ado…frescography!
According to the website of the Institute of Frescography, this phonetically fulfilling field of study involves “the procedure of digitally reproducing mural artwork, by either reassembling image elements or recreating existing murals.”
Founded by artist and professor Rainer Maria Latzke, the IOF researches and engages in the process of reproducing culturally significant murals by printing them on wide-format inkjet devices.
The IOF has affiliations with Utah State University and Deutsches Frescografie-Institut in Germany.
A small gallery on their website features some of the work they've done.
On-Demand Book Publishing Reaches a Milestone
Finally, an interesting bit of news hit the book publishing market this week.
For the first time, the publication of new print-on-demand titles surpassed the publication of new traditional titles in the United States. While the production of traditional titles fell by 3.2% last year, print-on-demand publication skyrocketed by 132% with 284,370 new titles.
Check out the full story on Bookseller.com.
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Monday, May 18, 2009
Google Rankings Important, Don’t Forget About Facebook and Twitter
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The power of social media for finding information (and being found) is undeniable. Yes, Google rankings, keywords, and ads are still very important, but don’t forget about the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter. Mark Cuban, billionaire and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, writes that more people are now finding him on his blog via Facebook and Twitter than by using Google searches. This, surely, will have marketers rethinking how and where they will be focusing their advertising dollars and efforts.
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Michael Josefowicz on the "Printernet"
On PBS.org’s MediaShift blog, Michael Josefowicz writes about an instance of the “printernet” in Spain and Portugal, where a number of notable foreign newspapers are employing a distribute-and-print model to reach their geographically dispersed audiences. PressTera, a provider of global press services, acts as the facilitating agent in this model, connecting the newspaper publishers to a network of local printers and distributors.
Josefowicz has written about the “printernet” before, such as in this March 24 article examining Océ’s Digital Newspaper Network and Mine Magazine, the recent Lexus/American Express Publishing/Time Inc. venture.
In the U.S., the The Printed Blog has been operating a similar “printernet” distribution model in a few major cities since January of this year, with the added wrinkle of drawing their content from popular blogs. Check out their website for PDFs of the versioned issues that have gone out to different locations. (Caution: Some of the content in The Printed Blog is a little edgy.)
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Thursday, May 07, 2009
New Kindle DX: Will it save the newspaper industry?
Backed by Amazon.com, the new Kindle DX boasts a larger viewing area than the Kindle 2.0. The full 8.5 x 11 viewing area contains an orientation sensor that switches to widescreen mode when the user turns the device horizontally. Three newspapers plan to pilot with the Kindle DX (the New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe) by offering subscription pricing (prices are not currently published). The new Kindle DX will retail for $489.
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Thursday, April 30, 2009
A New Spin on Photo Albums
Web startup Memolio (based in the Netherlands) offers a new web-to-print service that produces photo albums. These aren't just any old photo albums, though. Referred to as “Memolio albums”, users upload 24 images to create a customized photo “swatchbook”. The photos are printed on water- and tear-resistant paper. You can try out the application and build a virtual album with no obligation to buy.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Around the Web 4/28/09
Cornell University Grad Student Mixes Digital Printing and Handmade Paper in Art Installation
It’s always exciting to hear about people using digital print in
innovative ways.
Cornell M.F.A. candidate Elliott Hess’ recent art exhibition at the
Hartell Gallery in Ithaca combined handmade papers and digital
printing. The review of the installation in The Cornell Daily Sun
highlights the effect created by combining the “ye olde” art of
papermaking with the emerging medium of digital print.
Check out the full story at The Cornell Daily Sun.
Coming Soon (to Print): Popular Webcomic xkcd
At the other end of the art spectrum, the New York Times ran a story
last week announcing that Randall Munroe’s popular stick-figure and sarcasm-laden webcomic xkcd will soon make the transition from pixel to
page. The 10,000 books planned for the initial press run in June will
only be available for sale on the xkcd webpage and will contain 150 to
200 strips from the comic’s 500-plus archive.
The Times article opens with a tone of surprise that the comic, which
it describes as “wildly popular with techies the world over,” will be
turned into a print anthology. Then, as a way of addressing this
surprise, the article quotes Munroe, described as an avid Kindle fan,
speaking about his undeniable desire to see his work in print: “I have this urge.
You want to print them out and put them up on places. There is
something good about collecting them together.”
Here's the NYT article.
And here's the xkcd homepage.
The Fallacy of the “Print is Dead” Meme
Finally, Michael Josefowicz posted an interesting article on PBS.org’s
MediaShift blog yesterday pointing out the logical fallacies that
underlie much of the “death of print” rhetoric found online. Whether or
not you agree, Josefowicz makes a number of salient points, and the
article is definitely worth a read.
You can check it out for yourself here.
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Your Magazine. Your Way.
Lexus and Time, Inc. have partnered on a project that creates an entirely new business model for magazine publications: A personalized magazine called Mine. The free magazine can be ordered by readers online at www.timecmg.com/mine, simply be entering basic registration information. Subscribers can choose from 8 different magazines, including Sports Illustrated and InStyle.
The Lexus ads that are printed in the magazine are customized based on the responses the reader gave during the subscription process. An article or two is printed from the selected magazine, which is sent every two weeks.
The most intriguing statistic: Through the website, Time, Inc. made 200,000 digital versions and 31,000 print versions available. To date, almost all of the print editions have been spoken for, while fewer than 30,000 digital versions have been ordered.
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Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Join the DPC in Vegas on May 5 for Go Beyond with Digital
Join the Digital Printing Council on May 5th at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada for a fast paced, one-day event featuring six engaging sessions on a variety of digital printing topics.
With a special registration rate of only $59 for DPC Premier-level members, Go Beyond with Digital is the closest thing you'll find in Vegas to a sure bet...and we'll even comp your lunch!
When:
Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M.
Where:
Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, Nevada
Price:
- DPC Premier-level Members—$59
- Printing Industries of America Affiliate Members—$225 (includes a one-year Premier-level membership to the DPC—a $495 value!)
- Non-members—$459
Registration:
Register online at the Printing Industries of America website. Or, contact Sam Shea at 800-910-4283, extension 747, to register by phone.
The Sessions:
The Big Picture: A Macro View of Digital Printing
Digital = opportunity. Hear all about the latest tools, technologies, and opportunities for anyone interested in the business of digital printing. Attendees will learn how digital fits into an offset environment and how digital printing and web services will augment your business and boost your profits.
Making the Transformation from Printer to Marketing Communications Provider
Savvy printing companies are moving up the marketing services value chain, repositioning their businesses to meet the evolving needs of the integrated communications environment. Hear the reasons this move to marketing communication’s company is succeeding, learn success factors and best practices from leaders who are making this transition, and discover proven strategies and necessary tactical resources to be successful.
Is Intelligent Mail Bar-coding Really Intelligent?
This new “intelligence” technology affords mailers the opportunity to access USPS tracking and address change services, improve delivery of mail, increase operational efficiencies, and provide greater visibility into the mail stream. Sounds good on paper, but ask a printer who is currently in the throes of implementing Intelligent Mail Bar-coding and they’ll tell you…not so fast!
Beyond…The Zappos Story
Quite simply, Zappos.com has done everything right—and the end result is one of the fastest-growing companies in America. The company’s culture has been cultivated to support and maintain customer service, which ensures that consumers will remember the brand. Get the details on how all of the functions of the company—the Web interface, warehouse staff, and customer support personnel—collectively work to create “wow moments” to ensure that consumers remember Zappos.com.
Business Blueprint for Digital Sales Mastery™
Peter Winters will share proven secrets marketing service providers use to successfully sell to senior marketing officers. Learn how to develop messaging and the right marketing mix to attract the attention of senior-level marketers. Plus get proven methods to position yourself in exclusive selling opportunities.
Panel Discussion: Transitioning from Offset to Digital
This panel discussion will feature printers who have reached “beyond” offset by successfully expanding into digital printing and web services. Hear first-hand about digital’s pain points and profit potential and learn how to handle the challenges a “digital transition” places on production, management, and sales.
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sixth Sense Blurs the Line
Two weeks ago, I linked to Microsoft’s Vision of the Future videos. Well, today I found out about a technology being developed at MIT that is already paving the way to the kind of "computing everywhere" experience that Microsoft envisions.
At the recent TED Conference, Pattie Maes of MIT’s Media Lab demonstrated Sixth Sense, a wearable projection device developed by MIT student Pranav Mistry. In the parlance of Neuromancer author and science fiction idol William Gibson, MIT's Sixth Sense truly blurs the line between meatspace and cyberspace.
At 5:56, 6:33, and 7:11 we glimpse how this new technology could allow users to interact with printed material (a book, newspaper, and airline ticket respectively). Also, the video hints at some of the applications this technology will present for retail and point of purchase displays (around the 5:20 mark).
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Tuesday, March 10, 2009
3D Printing and Magic File Transmission
I Print the Body Electric!
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a few links about 3D printing. Apparently the process has existed for a few years, but I hadn’t heard about it until recently.
Well, in the past few weeks I’ve come across two stories about 3D printing that really blew my mind.
Seriously, I'm talking Twilight Zone weirdness here. Submitted for your approval, two articles about printing body parts:
Scientists at University College London devise method for "printing" line-based structures of embryonic stem cells.
Researchers in Switzerland "print" thumb bone.
And, in non-Frankenstein-related 3D printing news, a recent posting on the Wired blog "Geek Dad" alerted me to a company called Shapeways that offers online creation and ordering of personalized products that (I assume) are produced with a 3D printer.
What clever name can we give this business model? Web3DPrint? 3D VDP? Oooh, I know, 3DVDPW2P!.
Ahem...anyways...the most interesting Shapeways’ product, in my opinion, is the Lightsculpture, a picture-frame sized relief model generated from users’ photos. I’m not sure how it works, but they're designed to be lit from behind, and they look really cool.
A Shapeways Lightsculpture lit by candle.
The same Ligthsculpture in front of a window.
Users simply upload their picture, add text (optional), and order.
The video on the Shapeways website gives a better demonstration of how these look. You can check it out here.
Finally, if you’re a designer and you want to create 3D images the old fashioned way (on your computer dagnabit!) you can check out this post on Six Revisions that contains links to “40 Useful Adobe Illustrator 3D Tutorials and Techniques.”
In Wi-Fi Web 2.0 World, Pictures Upload You!
Last week, I commented on the ease of file transmission in Microsoft’s vision of the future videos. If you had a chance to see any of the videos, you might recall that a few shots showed people transferring files, almost as if by magic, by simply waving one portable device in front of another.
Well, this week I came across something fairly close to Microsoft's magic file transmission: the Eye-Fi memory card for digital cameras. It’s a wi-fi enabled memory card that allows users to wirelessly transmit photos to their computers and favorite social sites.
One model of the card, the Eye-Fi Explore, even allows users who are away from home to upload photos from Wayport hotspots (for a list of Wayport hotspots, check here.)
The existence of these wi-fi memory cards set my mind a-scheming, and, as I’m prone to do, I began connecting the dots of social media, web2print, and VDP.
I came up with just one scenario, but I’m sure a ton of other possibilities exist for printers to take advantage of this technology.
First, let’s say a bride and groom create a profile on a social networking site for their upcoming wedding, and that all invitees can link their personal profiles to this event (wedding) profile. Then, imagine that the social site contains an app that generates basic photo book layouts from uploaded photos.
Invitees to the wedding who have digital cameras equipped with a wi-fi memory card could have their photos instantly uploaded—I mean immediately, mid-Chicken Dance or garter toss—to the photo book layout on their individual social site profiles. Then, a web2print engine built into the social site could transmit all the invitee-generated photo books to a nearby tech savvy print service provider, whose lights out, automated digital workflow would allow for delivery of the personalized photo books to the wedding hotel the next morning, before anyone has even gotten rid of their hangover!
Ok, maybe the overnight delivery is a bit of a stretch, but I think the rest is very believable. Your thoughts?
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Wednesday, March 04, 2009
[Your Name Here] Book Publishing Company
There are many publishing sites around the web that give users the ability to design, proof, publish, and sell their very own books. Some of these sites offer tools that integrate with other media sites such as Flickr, SmugMug, and Picasa where you can pull imagery and design your book online. Others integrate with online retailers such as Barnes and Noble and Amazon where potential customers can purchase your best-selling novel. Here is a sampling of a few online self-publishing sites:
Lightning Source will print and sell titles on your behalf, sending your books to their distribution channel, and paying you the wholesale price (less printing). Using your very own ISBNs as identifiers, Lighting Source will print as orders are received from wholesalers, retailers or consumers so you’re never out of stock of a desired book.
Lulu is a market place for digital content on the Internet which includes music, ringtones, videos, e-books, and yes, printed books. Lulu enables authors to publish work themselves with complete editorial and copyright control and empowers them to sell directly to their customers and the rest of the Lulu.com global marketplace. Offering a variety of paper types, binding options, and sizes, Lulu allows you publish your very own book (with an ISBN), set your price, and build your very own storefront to sell your publication.
Acquired by Amazon in 2005, CreateSpace allows you to create, publish, and sell your books directly through Amazon.com. All book covers laminated and printed in full color. Book interiors can be printed in black-and-white or full color in various sizes and on a variety of paper stocks. Since CreateSpace is a subsidiary of Amazon, you get all of the benefits of selling your book on Amazon, including the Search Inside!® feature.
For additional online publishing options, visit CafePress, WeBook, and Xlibris. For an online publisher targeting the Spanish-speaking world, check out Bubok.
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Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Around the Web 3/3/09
Taste the Rainbow (of Skittles Marketing Buzz)
If you’re a social media junkie, you’ve probably tasted the rainbow of Skittles’ marketing buzz in the past few days.
This buzz, the result of Skittles’ new “website,” has many observers questioning what actually constitutes a website in the Web 2.0 world.
Skittles' revamped website, created by Agency.com, actually just consists of a hovering graphic that allows users to navigate to Skittles’ profiles on a number of popular social media sites —Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Flickr.
Prior to using Skittles’ new website, though, users have to register their birthday and agree to terms of service. This is because the various social media sites to which the Skittles' website links contain unfiltered user-generated content.
Even the stodgy old unsocial media has picked up on the buzz. A recent Wall Street Journal article highlights potential drawbacks of the multi-colored confectioner’s innovative online approach, while a more positive article in AdvertisingAge heaps praise on Skittles and AdAgency.com for their gusto.
So far, it remains unclear if the chatter surrounding Skittles’ website is just a case of marketers gushing about marketing, or if the risky strategy will actually help Skittles to better connect with its target audience.
The growing influence of social media in the business world IS clear, however, and no matter how you define yourself—printer, print service provider, marketing service provider—you and your business will sooner or later need a social media strategy.
Can Citizen Kane Compete with the Kindle?
Hearst Media, publisher of a number of popular magazines like Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Popular
Mechanics along with as a slew of major newspapers across the United
States, revealed plans last week to produce a hand-held e-reader that will compete in the same market as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.
According to a story on Wired, the Hearst e-reader will likely boast a larger screen than the Amazon or Sony product (due to the fact that it will be geared toward newspaper and magazine content) but will still employ the same basic display technology as the two major players currently on the market:
“Hearst Interactive's [Kenneth] Bronfin already sits on the board of directors for E Ink, the company whose screens power both the Kindle and Sony Reader. That means an E Ink screen is a near certainty for the Hearst e-reader.”
Wired also questions (rightfully, I think) whether readers of Hearst’s full-color, glossy magazines will readily adopt a black and white, text-heavy format for their favorite publications.
In related news, Hearst Media recently announced plans to create more premium, for-pay content on its newspapers’ websites. This strategy, reported on in the Wall Street Journal, comes as part of Hearst’s “100 Days of Change” program.
Along with this article, WSJ reprinted a memo to Hearst employees from Steven Swartz, president of Hearst’s newspapers division, in which he outlines the reasoning and strategy behind “100 Days of Change.” While it’s probably worthwhile to read the whole memo, most interesting for our purposes is what Swartz had to say about third-party printers:
“One final overarching thought emerges from our look at advertising sales: we must use third-party printers in all of our markets in order to significantly add more color to our products, not so much for our readers’ needs, but to be more competitive in the battle for advertising dollars in a high-definition world.”
So, as newspapers begin to tighten their budgets by eliminating internal printing operations, third-party commercial printers should stay poised to take advantage of potential new business.
Microsoft Imagines a Well-lit, Touchscreen Future
Finally, I’ll leave you with a video from GeekBrief.TV titled Microsoft Imagines the Future.
In the Microsoft future, information abounds, touchscreens adorn every possible surface, and a soft ambient glow illuminates all spaces. It's very reminiscent of Minority Report, actually.
Of course, as digital printers, I’m sure you’ll appreciate how simple and intuitive file transfer will be in the future—two quick glimpses of this show up at 0:35 and 0:57. You might also enjoy the “future newspaper” that pops up at 0:27.
The video embedded below actually consists of a montage of scenes from a number of individual “future” videos. On GeekBrief.TV you can find the individual videos showcasing Microsoft's visions of the future of manufacturing, retail, banking, and health care.
Special thanks to Joe Kearn, marketing and training coordinator for a leading web2print provider (and one of the most prolific “Twitterers” in the printing industry), for tweeting the link to this video this morning!
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