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Wednesday, January 22, 2003

Now Living at a Printer Near You

Wow, this really is Future of Print stuff...

Inkjets "print" living tissue. Inkjet printer technology doesn't get enough credit. From vendors who fill the reservoirs with edible inks and lay down photorealistic images on sheet-cakes to "Napster fabbers" who lay down successive layers of goop to make three-dimensional images, and let's not forget the doomed odorama startup that mixed perfumes in inkjet carts and vaporized them to create aroma-on-demand tech for PCs. Now, though, we have "tubes of living tissue" coming out of inkjets.

Many labs can now print arrays of DNA, proteins or even cells. But for tissue engineers, the big challenge is creating three-dimensional structures. Mironov became interested when Thomas Boland of Clemson University, also in South Carolina, told Mironov how he could print biomaterials using modified ink-jet printers.
[Boing Boing Blog]
Posted by: Send an e-mail to Terry Frazier Terry Frazier at 10:48 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print

JDF Development Tools

JDF is the emerging XML standard for open workflow and connectivity in the print industry. OAI's JDF Development Platform is the first third-party toolkit to become available, and it simplifies the complex JDF architecture through the use of visual programming tools.

Objective Advantage Releases Initial Version of the JDF Development Platform

Objective Advantage, Inc. has released the first version of its JDF Development Platform (JDP), a programming toolkit designed to help print industry software and equipment providers integrate Job Definition Format (JDF) and Job Messaging Format (JMF) capabilities into print workflow products. A demo version is available from Objective Advantage. [...] [WhatTheyThink]

Posted by: Send an e-mail to Terry Frazier Terry Frazier at 8:42 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print


Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Print-on-Demand Guide

I'm not familiar with this guide, but the press release makes me think it's targeted to authors/small publishers seeking digital print services for books. I think it is a collection of pay-for-inclusion profiles of digital print service providers.

NOTE: The term "print-on-demand" is broad, generic, and used to denote almost any form of digital print. By itself, the term has become almost useless as a descriptor of any particular service. I prefer the term digital print for describing the print technology, and demand-driven to describe a zero-inventory, post-sale manufacturing service.

Print-on-Demand Guide updated for the new year!. The premiere reference guide "A Basic Guide to Fee Based Print on Demand Publishing Services" has just been revised for the New Year. [PRWEB Jan 21, 2003]

[...] Featuring detailed information on over forty-five different print-on-demand companies, special inclusions from a spectrum of diverse POD companies, and an informative FAQ section, "A Basic Guide to Fee Based Print on Demand Publishing Services" is the one-stop shop for both new and experienced authors.

Over four hundred copies of the original version have been distributed since its July 2002 release, and this e-book, as well as the site on which it is based, "The Original POD Database", have been recommended by Writers Digest.com, Dan Poynter, and Danny Snow. Reviews by readers include comments such as; "An objective source for comparison", "What a great resource for the author", and "There is so much information in this book!". [...]

To learn more, contact the author at dehannabailee@hotmail.com, or visit her website at http://www.geocities.com/dehannabailee/ [PR Web]

Posted by: Send an e-mail to Terry Frazier Terry Frazier at 7:42 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print


Sunday, January 19, 2003

Demand-driven Print

CafePress announces entry into demand-driven publishing arena; if you publish, print, distribute, or sell books you better pay attention. This will affect you. Not that CafePress will be a major book publishing player, but it represents another step toward general acceptance of the demand-driven model, and another opportunity to hone the process.

What separates CafePress from all the other Internet-based demand-driven publishers (Xlibris, iUniverse, 1stBooks, BookSurge, etc.) is their focus on the general promotional market. They sell promotional items. And books, CDs, DVDs, etc. are great promo items in media- and knowledge-based markets.

I'm curious to learn just who will manage the production for CafePress, as there are only a handful of companies in the US who can actually manufacture on demand (as opposed to short-run or micro-inventory) for a reasonable price. And none of them are on the west coast. (But given CafePress is in San Leandro, I can hazard a guess...)

CafePress to do books. CafePress is branching out into print-on-demand books, CDs and DVDs.

He does, however, tell me CafePress has exciting plans to expand into publishing in early 2003: The company's media-services division will offer print-on-demand books, audio CDs and DVDs. Using the same general principle, it'll produce, to order, your novel, album or film with glossy covers and jewel-box inserts, a move that has revolutionary possibilities. And though self-publishing already exists on the Web, CafePress has honed the production-and-fulfillment process to make it far more viable.
(Thanks, Derryl) [Boing Boing Blog]
Posted by: Send an e-mail to Terry Frazier Terry Frazier at 7:43 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print

Printing the Web

"Consider how extraordinary paper is: lightweight and flexible, it supports thousands of typefaces, as well as black-and-white and color illustrations, and its high-resolution and high contrast facilitates reading." -- and so begins an excellent Boxes and Arrows article on one of the most important topics in publishing.

Print isn't going away -- not in our lifetime, if ever. But we are only beginning to grasp the importance of integrating the physical and digital forms of information, or understand how to do so. This article opens with some good background and references supporting this concept, then moves on to more practical aspects of the problems and current solutions for integrating the web and print -- in particular, the use of CSS and XSL-FO to avoid maintaining separate versions of data. Well-written and with excellent resources, this article is well worth reading.

Thanks to James Robertson at Column Two:

Printing the web. James Kalbach talks about designing websites that can be printed, either by making the one page work on paper, or by providing an alternate "printable version". Sounds pretty mundane, but there's a lot of good tips in this article. [Column Two]
Posted by: Send an e-mail to Terry Frazier Terry Frazier at 12:09 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print
Terry W. Frazier
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