State of Print and the Cloud

Looking forward in 2012, there will be exciting developments in Cloud printing. We will assuredly see advances in all the topic areas and from all the technology companies we've covered here, including Apple, Google, HP, and the graphic arts industry suppliers.

Beyond the constantly forward-looking technology components, the business of print in general continues its transition. Business models are blurring. Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and commercial Print Service Providers (PSPs) are competing for the same work in many cases. MSPs want to gain share at the expense of PSPs, and vice versa. In speaking to many document owners in large corporations, even at companies that own their own production operations, I hear people looking for additional, better options.

I've said for some time that customers impatience is growing. This is manifested by their restlessness with the status quo of how printing operations do business. Digital media, and Web2.0 applications, have hurt how print is perceived. People expect the same sort of experience working with print manufacturing operations online that they get from everything else in their digital sphere. Instead, in many cases, doing business with printing companies is like going back to the 1970s, not in a fun and nostalgic way, but instead in a complicated, frustrated, primitive and time consuming way.

Another thing that has happened lately is that some what were "hottest" technologies for print have become obsolete without ever achieving critical mass. One big example that is becoming more apparent every day is 1:1 personalization in print, a technology and application that has struggled along for many years, now appears to be all but dead. Many things led to this death, for example, people realized that the worst time to sell something to someone is when they are reading a bill (causing the death of TransPromo). But the main things killing off 1:1 VDP are Google and Facebook. Print personalization never had access to platforms like these, rich with the data necessary to effectively target users with personalization-- and now never will. And even if we somehow obtain access now, the speed at which we can deliver the message is so slow, it's likely to be at worst completely irrelevant when it gets to its recipient, and at best, old news. Another example in "big iron" is the direct, on press imaging, or "DI" presses. There are just few applications for these niche technologies, you've got to ask yourself, is it worth it?

An example of how fast things are changing in the hardcopy world can be found in the everyday lives of those of who spend a lot of time on airplanes. One of the main drivers behind development of early Cloud Printing platforms, like EFI PrintMe was airline boarding passes. How ironic is it that at virtually the exact moment in time when most hotels now have free access to workstations and printers for you to print your boarding pass, you no longer need a physical boarding pass because you can use your smartphone.

We have a big year ahead of us. A series of upcoming events will shed great light on what our industry is going to look like in our near future. First, PODi, in January-- what will they talk about, now that 1:1 is dead? We shall see. I'm guessing "becoming a Marketing Service Provider (MSP)" will be a key topic. The Automated Solutions Network of the Printing Industries of America will feature a tour of Mimeo's Automated Document Factory in Memphis and a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Fedex global hub, on January 31st. Automation needs to be a mantra in this industry, especially at a time when communicators in corporate America can go online and get their message out almost for free, in a split second. Vision 3 Summit, in February, where there is bound to much hand wringing regarding the number of business closures and "unforeseen" mergers going on in the business. I bet some deals will be done there! V3 will also no doubt see pundits telling the audience members to become Marketing Service Providers (MSPs)-- all you printers out there, let's cheer them on and while they are busy trying to compete with Facebook, Google and Groupon, we'll print all the stuff their customers used to print with them!

Moving on to more positive territory, the 64th Annual TAGA Conference will be held in Jacksonville in the middle of March, showcasing the industry's future through it's student competition, along with the industry's best and brightest scientists and academics. Immediately following that same week, DSCOOP7 will be held in Washington, DC, and is certain to be one of the most exciting events of the year. Drupa, the international trade fair in Germany, begins on May 3rd, and I think this year the most interesting stuff will be everything that is NOT a printing press(which is not to say there won't be exciting printing presses there.)

Then it's time to come home and execute on everything we've all learned. Stay tuned for more developments as these trends unfold.

BERG Cloud revitalizes the whole idea of printing with Little Printer

BERG, a design studio in London, UK, is focused on product invention. For the last year or so, they've been working on a new concept they call Berg Cloud. BERG Cloud is their technology to "move the smarts" of (apparently physical) products onto the internet. On their website, you'll read a bunch of grandiose statements about their plans for BERG Cloud, but meanwhile, the exciting announcement they shared is about a product called Little Printer, which is just that-- and they say is the first of a family of connected products for the home.

Little Printer is an adorable inkless thermal printer in a tiny box that "lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf". The software in the BERG Cloud apparently assembling content you've told it to care about into pre-designated deliveries/outputs.

On BERG Cloud's site, you'll see plenty of mobile phone screens showing how you configure Little Printer from your phone. The company has built a network of content partners for their launch, including companies like Arup, foursquare, Google, the Guardian, and Nike.



My favorite part of the whole announcement is this statement:

"Paper is like a screen that never turns off. You can stick to the fridge or tuck it in your wallet. You can scribble on it or tear it and give it to a friend."

Excitement about print. That's not something we hear much these days, is it? In several years of trying, the Print Council hasn't come up with a statement that cool. Making a favorable comparison of Print to a screen, in an awesomely positive way.

There are a lot of applications for this, which is actually somewhat surprising since this the printed form factor is pretty much a cash register tape! Some of the applications shown by BERG are a tiny bit unlikely-- like a "to do" being put into a wallet. Why would you need a printed to-do list when you have a smart phone? (Which, presumably you have, since you used it to configure the Little Printer.)



Others are great, though, like the idea of printing out a slip for a workout or run, and taking that with you-- I, for one, never take a wallet or a phone with me when I'm working out. I know too many people who have dropped their iPhone while exercising, nightmare. Grocery list is another example. I have used an App for it, but it's cumbersome. Right now, I write down my list and give it to one of my kids who reads it to me while we shop. A little printed reminder is extremely useful sometimes.

Much bigger companies like HP have been trying to print news on personal printers for years now, including with the recent HP ePrint initiative. The jury is still out on whether anyone wants to do this (at all), let alone whether someone will want to do it on a cash register tape! In any case, though, I am a big fan of a Little Printer.

Little Printer is a "small thing", but it is a big idea. And it is super cool. I'm going to buy one just to support their energy, and I hope 2012 brings much more exciting innovation to print in a variety of shapes and sizes!

Printfriendly.com Makes Web Pages "Print Friendly"

I’m always on the lookout for interesting applications that combine print and the internet in unique ways. There are many unique web 2.0 applications emerging, adding value to both the web and print. I recently stumbled upon a cool site, called Printfriendly.com, and I tried it out.

With Printfriendly, you can create a nicely print-formatted version of a web page, and instantly print it or turn it into a PDF. Making PDF files isn’t all that hard these days, but formatting Webpages for print has significant challenges. You generally cannot just file-print web pages and have them output without garbage. Printfriendly solves this problem by analyzing the page, and removing "junk".

You simply hit the website, and type or paste the URL of the page you want to print into the browser. You can then print to an attached printer, or generate a PDF.



Printfriendly even lets you do simple editing of its generated version of the page, by allowing you to delete things—this can help you format the page better, and also remove unwanted content.

I actually had a nice use for Printfriendly. I had found some javascript tutorials that I wanted to print and share with colleagues. I used the site to generate printable PDF pages, then uploaded them to Mimeo and printed them with bindings and tabs. They came out beautiful. Converting the web pages into PDF was more than friendly: it was really completely automatic.



This made me a fan pretty quickly, so I contacted one of the principals of the company, Taylor Norrish, to get some background on what they are doing. Taylor has been building sites “since web 1.0”! He told me he was frustrated with the waste and quality when he would print webpages. It's expensive and bad for the environment. So he spent six months building PrintFriendly.com.

Says Taylor, “Our number focus is to just make something that works. So the most important features are: the algorithm that finds and removes junk, speed, and reliability.“ I can vouch for the fact that it is very fast, removes the junk “smartly”, and is very reliable. Printfriendly generates good PDF pages. They loaded into Mimeo and printed in color with no issues whatsoever.

Adds Taylor, “If you looked at the site/service two years ago, it wouldn't appear that different visually (features). However, it's faster, more reliable, and works on many more pages. We've completely rewritten the application 3 times and making constant iterations. For example, we just launched localized/ international versions. If you speak French, you'll see "Imprimer" instead of "Print" in the controls.

Printfriendly runs on Ruby On Rails (a popular language for Web2.0 applications), MySQL (the venerable open source database), and is hosted on a CDN (Content Delivery Network) for performance and availability. And, Taylor tells me Printfriendly is actually a nice business. He says printing and PDF generation has tripled since last year, and they are generating over a million prints/PDFs every month. The button is featured on thousands of sites like hubpages.com, socialmediaexaminer.com, skinnytaste.com, and makeuseof.com. They also have a Browser Tool/Bookmarklet.

Some great articles have been written about PrintFriendly on Mashable, LifeHacker, and the Sunday Times (print edition). Further evidence there is life after web for print media!

Breakthrough Open Source JDF Toolkit

Recently, On Point On Demand, a small company in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, did something none of the larger industry vendors have yet done. They took source code from currently relevant commercial software, and made it available as Open Source.

The company has several popular commercial products and is led by Tom Cabanski, who was previously a partner in the well regarded and pioneering JDF automation firm Objective Advantage. The products make for logical partnerships with Web2Print vendors whose print service provider (PSP) customers require back-end automation for an increased volume of work coming in from the web.

Commercial products available from the company include On Point Connect Shipping, which automates shipping via UPS, FedEx, DHL, USPS, company truck and local courier, is integrated with WebToPrint solutions from Aleyant Pressero, PageDNA, Printable nee PTI, and PagePath solutions; as well as On Point Symbio, which is a POD production automation system for commercial printers that automates many of the steps in the prepress, production, finishing and shipping process for POD jobs.

On August 5, 2011, Onpoint On Demand announced that it released its Fluent JDF for .NET toolkit as open source, "making it quick and easy for PSPs and ISVs to create valid JDF for client applications."

According to the company's press release, Fluent JDF is an "expert in-a-box, providing all the rules, syntax, packaging and structure to make JDF creation and delivery very easy for software engineers."

"We've released Fluent JDF under a commercial-friendly, open source license to make it easy for our customers and partners to create JDF client applications", stated Tom Cabanski, VP of Technology. "This is another way Onpoint On Demand is helping the industry take advantage of the power of JDF to build fully integrated supply chains that enhance productivity and profitability."

Fluent JDF is delivered as a .NET Library and is available for download at Microsoft's online open source repository CodePlex. There is some very "getting started" documentation, with good suggestions for new developers, and there is a discussion group (albeit, with not much activity since at this writing Fluent JDF has not been available very long.)

This announcement didn't get a lot of press coverage, most likely because many industry journalists don't understand what it is! Alas, in addition to this particular software being targeted at techies exclusively, this lack of real understanding has been JDF's problem in the PSP community for a long time now. Early on, it could be said that JDF wasn't actually useful; those days are long past (i.e., like 8 years ago at this point) -- JDF is SUPREMELY useful today. But it is hard to implement and still has a lack of understanding among printers as to the benefits and how to deploy (this, despite much work done on education by the CIP4 Organization.)

It's very much worth noting that a lot of the work and code samples that are available (such as JDF examples CIP4's own toolkit) are not coded for the .NET framework and since MSFT is the dominant player in the desktop and networks of most printing companies, this in itself creates a barrier to use.

Bottom line, this is a breakthrough development by little On Point On Demand. We haven't used the Fluent JDF software at Mimeo, but we are becoming a major JDF developer across our platform, and we are a .NET shop. A couple of our engineers took a quick look at Fluent JDF recently and told me that it looks like it could be very valuable. Stay tuned for future updates on this important development!

While we're on the subject of JDF, I should mention that Mimeo is hosting the Printing Industries of America's Automated Solutions Network meeting at our facility in Memphis, TN, next January. We're also in the process of arranging a tour of the amazing FedEX Memphis global hub for the same event.

From the Printing Industries - "The Automation Solutions Network has established itself as the premiere event to exchange ideas and solutions for JDF workflows. The Automation Solutions Network focuses on the development and practical implementation of JDF-enabled systems and cross-vendor implementations. The group welcomes a wide range of users of JDF-enabled systems as well as the suppliers of those systems. The steering committee of the Automation Solutions Network is made up entirely of printers who have either implemented systems or are in the process of doing so."

Facebook is a Publisher

There has been a lot of press around the recent acquisition by Facebook of Push Pop Press, an iPad book creator founded by two former Apple employees, Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris. They are best known for publishing Al Gore's recent Our Choice, a book about climate change. I was actually surprised to hear about this particular acquisition. The company is very young, and while the technology looks cool, I wasn't totally blown away by it when I first looked.

But I haven't looked at the book that closely, and the fact that they won the prestigious Apple 2011 Design Award at the WWDC in June says something very significant about what they have accomplished.

Facebook is characterizing the acquisition as a talent and technology play, which does make a lot of sense. So now they are known in the tech world as people who are smart enough for Mark Zuckerberg to hire them!

From the statement:

"We're thrilled to confirm that we've acquired Push Pop Press, a startup whose groundbreaking software challenges the way people publish and consume digital content," Facebook said in a statement.

"We can't wait for co-founders Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris to get started and for some of the technology, ideas and inspiration behind Push Pop Press to become part of how millions of people connect and share with each other on Facebook."

The statement goes on to say that "Facebook isn’t planning to get into the digital book business..."

The fact is, Facebook is already significant publisher, with a huge audience. The way I read this acquisition, Push Pop is a different kind of book and Facebook is a different kind of publisher. Facebook has a global audience of 700+ million people (at this writing) to which it can push content of many forms. Facebook is, as an example, the defacto "publisher" of Zynga's games, if you look at the way their agreement is structured and where the game company's revenue comes from (this is now all over the web due to Zynga's planned IPO).

There are many moving parts in the publishing supply chain. I've been reading numerous analysis pieces lately about the changing role of the publisher, and how their ability to move books has been diminished by a variety of forces in the marketplace and technology. Clearly, "traditional" publishers are working very hard to re-invent themselves. One example that makes it quite clear here in New York is to look at what software developers are working on. Two years ago, developers in New York media engagements were working on the web. Today, they are working on iPad and mobile.

Back in early 2009 when David and I started this blog, one of the big trends we saw emerging was the idea that content increasingly originates on the web, then may or may not be printed. This acquisition is very much an example of that trend, and it's starting to accelerate. This kind of paradigm shift is a big reason why traditional publishers are freaking -- their employees mindsets, their workflows and their technology all target print intrinsically and first. I will look for some additional examples of this and do another post in the near future.

Facebook is clearly a lot more than a publisher porting their content to new technology platforms. Do they need to make "ebooks"? Why should they, when they can re-invent "publishing" by pushing rich content to a gigantic audience in a new, exciting and interactive way? This acquisition of Push Pop Press is only the beginning.

EFI Acquires Entrac - Money at the Edge of the Print Cloud

It's so great to see EFI on the move and their stock price strong! But I better find some other companies and technology to write about here soon, or this will start looking like an EFI-centric Blog!

EFI wasted no time in putting their brand on Entrac's minimalist www site, but it looks like a very complementary story coming out of this low-key Toronto company.

According to Toby Weiss, EFI Fiery business unit GM and senior vice president, "...the Entrac payment technology offers new possibilities for future EFI products in both our traditional print-for-pay markets as well as the enterprise markets. For example, adding EFI's PrintMe cloud printing to existing Entrac products will make it even easier for customers to begin offering self-service printing to mobile workers, students, guests, and patrons."

The company's products consist of attractive hardware that connect to output devices like copiers and fax machines. The devices come in a variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from small color screen "terminals" (my description) that sit next to a copier, to a full Kiosk.

In a print for pay situation, the terminals decrease the amount of "babysitting" that staffers need to do to support self-service customers. In enterprise and institutional environments, these types of devices would enable cost control, allow enhanced services to be provided to users, and provide the ability to capture payments in a variety of ways that weren't possible before.

I'm looking forward to seeing how EFI expands the market and technology of these products. At some point, I would think they would integrate this with FieryVue and the functionality of their SendMe products. Exciting Stuff!

EFI Direct Mobile Printing

Today, EFI is in the news announcing that Canon is now supporting EFI's direct mobile print technology in their imageRUNNER ADVANCE lineup of color and black & white office systems utilizing Fiery-based imagePASS and ColorPASS controllers.

EFI's direct mobile print technology enables printing directly from Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod touch devices. Read the entire release regarding the Canon partnership on Whattheythink.

Apparently, software has also been available for a few months to support this with some Xerox devices, including the Color 550/560.

I didn't see an official announcement of this, but when I searched the web for this technology, I also found it referenced in an EFI datasheet about a product called EFI PrintMe Server, which apparently is a privately accessible version of PrintMe, or some kind of end-point for output of PrintMe-submitted jobs. The datasheet is a little unclear as to who the target market is-- it talks about "Your Customers", almost making it sound like "you" are a print for pay establishment, and your customers are going to mobile print to your "company". But the photo is of a MFP, so maybe you are a hotel (one of the core markets for the PrintMe service), and your customers are actually "guests." I guess I'm going to have to get someone at EFI to explain it to me!

Back to the point, though, this PrintMe Server apparently also includes Direct Mobile Printing to Xerox EIP-enabled MFPs without a mobile device application and without using the PrintMe Cloud. Xerox EIP MFPs are automatically discovered by the PrintMe Server software and presented as an available printer from within the user’s mobile application. See prior RichInternetPrinting blog posts for more discussion of mobile printing and Xerox EIP.