Print/Ready

Windows 8 on Tablets: What We Know So Far

2012-02-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

Microsoft is ready to lift the lid on Windows 8 at a preview event at the end of the month. The new OS will be available later this year, not only for PCs, but also for tablets, as Microsoft prepares to take on the iPad. Here’s what we know so far about Windows 8 tablets.

http://wtr.mn/xLSJKj

A Two-Pronged Approach: Kodak’s Inkjet Substrate Strategy: free download from @infotrends

2012-02-10T11:29:00.000-08:00

The success of the new class of high-speed production color inkjet printers is closely tied to the substrates that can be used on those devices. It is of utmost importance to have a wide range of available papers upon which users can achieve top-level quality. At the same time, the prices of those stocks have to fit the business model of high-volume printers. With Kodak’s top-of-the-line Prosper series, the company has created high-volume products capable of excellent quality levels. To succeed, cost-effective substrates had to be in place. To achieve this goal, Kodak has taken a two-pronged approach. This strategy includes working with paper mills to create affordable inkjet-treated stocks while, at the same time, developing an in-line inkjet treatment solution that allows users to have the greater flexibility to use a stock of their own choice.

In this white paper, we look at the benefits of this strategy and how Kodak has gone about implementing it by building on a foundation of knowledge in substrates, inks, color, and image quality. This white paper is the first of a two-part series. The second white paper will explore substrate strategies for achieving high-quality output on inkjet systems, and particularly how substrates can be leveraged in ways that may go against conventional wisdom.

http://wtr.mn/zaLKCz

Apple to disrupt notebook space with radically redesigned MacBook Pros

2012-02-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

While most of its rivals are struggling to match innovations Apple pioneered with its first MacBook Airs over three years ago, the Mac maker this year is hoping to further distance itself from the competition with a pair of radically redesigned professional offerings that will set the tone for the next wave of notebook computing.

http://wtr.mn/xTRXgf

Where e-Books Fall Short, Print Delivers

2012-02-10T08:22:00.000-08:00

As with the discovery that vinyl record sales have risen in the past six years in a market dominated by MP3 downloads, it's useful to put considerable thought in where each platform, digital or analogue, excel for each medium -- and publishers are going back to the drawing board to see where they can innovate with printed books to keep readers interested.

wtr.mn/AEaUxd

Inside Lytro: the light field camera gets an FCC tear down

2012-02-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

Lytro continues to delight and intrigue the photography world, despite the fact that it hasn’t even shipped yet.

http://wtr.mn/xZPmeZ

Ordered your new @FujiXSeries X-Pro 1? Take a look at some unboxing eye candy

2012-02-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

Brandon Remler with Fujifilm USA just received his X-Pro1 and lenses today and posted some short unboxing videos. Nothing too exciting, but it's nice to see a production camera in the wild!

http://wtr.mn/wXGEK7

It's time for a unified ebook format and the end of DRM | from @jwikert TOC

2012-02-09T11:31:00.000-08:00

Proprietary ebook formats and rights restrictions are holding consumers back.

http://wtr.mn/xmst1G

A Single Loyal App User Costs $1.81

2012-02-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

At the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco yesterday, Fiksu founder Micah Adler revealed that it now costs it now costs app publishers $1.81 to gain a single loyal user (“people who open an app three times or more”) for a mobile app.

http://wtr.mn/yLd6B7

California Budget Cuts State Funding for Libraries

2012-02-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

At the same time that eBooks are threatening to de-democratize reading, California is cutting funding to libraries. Is this the new culture war of rich vs poor?

http://wtr.mn/yuPt7c

Kodak Ceases Camera Production Amid Bankruptcy from @pdnonline

2012-02-09T08:35:00.000-08:00

In a statement posted on the Kodak Web Site under the title “Update on Kodak’s Transformation,” the company announced that it will cease producing digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames “to focus its Consumer Business on desktop inkjet, online and retail-based printing—areas that offer the most significant opportunities for profitable growth. Kodak will continue to offer camera accessories and batteries, which are universally compatible with other brands,” the statement said.

http://wtr.mn/y9EwEk

Apple iPad 3 event first week of March tip insiders

2012-02-09T08:29:00.001-08:00

Apple is readying an iPad 3 launch event in the first week of March, according to new leaks, with the third-gen iOS tablet being shown for the first time at a high-profile San Francisco event. The new iPad is likely to debut at traditional Apple launch venue the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, AllThingsD‘s sources whisper to them, though commercial availability is unknown.

http://wtr.mn/zrm15p

Snapjoy’s Flickraft Promised To “Rescue” Flickr Photos — Until It Was Blocked

2012-02-07T16:27:00.000-08:00

Photo startup Snapjoy launched a clever promotional scheme this afternoon to lure users over from Flickr. And it succeeded — perhaps too well.

http://wtr.mn/yWcQaY

Yahoo board shakeup: Bostock, Joshi, Kern, Wilson out

2012-02-07T14:59:00.001-08:00

Four longtime Yahoo board members, including the chairman and HP's VJ, are leaving the company.

http://wtr.mn/wSUIYf

High ISO Performance of DSLRs From the 2001 Super Bowl Versus Now

2012-02-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

Want to see how far DSLRs have come in the past decade? Lee Morris of Fstoppers published these two photos taken at Super Bowl halftime shows.

http://wtr.mn/y4JmVP

Details Of Adobe Creative Cloud Revealed: $49.99 Per Month, Includes CS6, Lightroom 4 & 20 GB Cloud Storage

2012-02-07T11:20:00.000-08:00

Adobe today announced details of its new Creative Cloud service that will launch in a few months time alongside the Creative Suite 6 release. Priced at $49.99 per month, when signed up for a year’s subscription, the service offers users the full Creative Suite 6 bundle of applications along with 20 GB of cloud storage for device and desktop syncing of documents. The price may seem high, but for those who use Adobe’s Creative Suite and like to be on the latest version, $600 per year may be a good price. Particularly when the alternative is the $2000 up-front cost of each major version, which typically hit every second year.
http://wtr.mn/ydTgzp

TYPO San Francisco 2012 Connect Europe’s premier design conference comes to the Bay Are

2012-02-07T10:31:00.001-08:00

Join the delegates at the inaugural TYPO San Francisco, when Europe’s premier design conference opens in the Bay Area this April. TYPO San Francisco will take place at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA), April 5-6, 2012 centering around the theme Connect.

http://wtr.mn/A1dcRc

Lagardere Reports eBooks Are 20% of US Adult Trade Sales

2012-02-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Lagardere Publishing, the corporate parent of Hachette, reported that eBooks composed 20 percent of US adult sales in the final quarter of 2011.

http://wtr.mn/y4278A

Kleiner Perkins Debuts First Engineering Fellows Class

2012-02-07T09:05:00.001-08:00

Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm’s portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume) and startups get access to young engineering talent. Today, Kleiner is debuting the first inaugural class of the fellow program.

http://wtr.mn/z36OMo

Nine truths about e-book publishing from @TheFutureBook

2012-02-07T08:13:00.000-08:00

Since the traditional publishing industry has been forced to go digital, it has found that the Internet Age has changed consumers’ expectations of digital products for good and it is no longer enough for the e-book just to be the electronic manifestation of the printed book. E-books and websites exist in the same world, competing for the top spot on Amazon or Google respectively and drawing similar expectations from the consumers, about their appearance, functionality and interactivity.

http://wtr.mn/zYSZD4

Must-See Digital Photography Websites from @pcworld

2012-02-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

We all have our favorite websites for those subjects that are near and dear to our hearts. There are sites I visit for tips on playing drums, for example, as well as improving my fiction writing. But what of digital photography? Obviously, you already read Digital Focus. And while you're here at PCWorld, you might also check out the monthly Hot Pic photo contest slideshow and check in on the latest camera reviews. But what's going on elsewhere on the Internet, you ask? Great question. Follow along while I take you on a tour of some of my favorite online resources.

http://wtr.mn/wAJ92L

Nikon D800 1080p sample leaves videographers giddy

2012-02-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

Nikon has partnered with photographer Sandro Miller to whet would-be D800 buyers’ appetites, putting the 36-megapixel camera through its Full HD 1080p paces. The five minute short film, titled Joy Ride, joins Nikon’s existing sample photos from the D800 and its low-pass filter free sibling the D800E, which you can find here (D800) and here (D800E).

http://wtr.mn/A0NS4R

Books May Be Better Objects, but E-Books Are Better Tools http://wtr.mn/wNtYUZ

2012-02-06T14:55:00.000-08:00

“How to Write a Book and Get It Published” with Chris Brogan http://wtr.mn/xmhVi1

2012-02-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Webinar tonight at 7:30 EST.

Amazon Reportedly Plans To Open Retail Store In Seattle

2012-02-06T07:27:00.001-08:00

http://wtr.mn/y28Ofi

Edwards Brothers, Inc. and Malloy Incorporated form a new company called Edwards Brothers Malloy, the largest book manufacturing firm in the United States

2012-02-06T06:38:00.000-08:00

The First Step | Calibrate and Profile Your Monitor | from @XritePhoto

2012-02-05T13:18:00.000-08:00

Color management is a must for the digital photographer. It is the only way to get an image from camera to paper or even camera to website with any degree of confidence that what we intended is what others will actually see. Today we’re going to talk about the first step…. your monitor. If you only calibrate and profile your monitor, you’ll be well on your way to a color managed workflow that will save you time, frustration, and money.

http://wtr.mn/wqgg2E

What I Want From The Next iPad

2012-02-04T10:12:00.000-08:00

The third addition to Apple’s market-leading tablet series is, according to speculation, not too far away, with Chinese manufacturers Foxconn and Pegatron said to be working around the clock to produce the numbers in time for a purported March release.

@_benreid put together a list of the key features he would personally like brought forth with the iPad 3.

http://wtr.mn/wpmB6w

Author pockets over $150,000 in 6 weeks from the sale of his eBooks on Amazon.com

2012-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

Author Joe Konrath feels he has tallied up the clues and, with a bank account like his, it is hard to argue.
Over a six week period surrounding the Christmas holidays and through January, Mr Konrath pocketed over $150,000 from the sale of his eBooks on Amazon.com, and is now trumpeting the ease of the web behemoth’s Kindle platform for less0established authors.

http://wtr.mn/wkhuzX

Zuckerberg's IPO Letter Is a Data Miner's Delight | from @forbes

2012-02-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

An expert data-miner offers word-by-word insights about Zuckerberg’s aloofness, his need for achievement and his gift for slipping nuanced ideas inside simple formats.

Zuckerberg’s word use “suggests someone who is driven by very high rates of need for achievement” but low rates for building wealth or social affiliation, Pennebaker concludes. “Most of the Zuckerberg letter is emotionally distant,” the researcher adds. “There are very few personal pronouns (which typically signal an emotional cognition to other humans) and virtually no I-words except for a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the letter.” Emotive words such as “happy” or “sad” are rare, too.

http://wtr.mn/yE25Y0

Academic E-Books: Innovation and Transition | from @PublishersWkly

2012-02-03T12:32:00.000-08:00

It should be no surprise that a book publishing market that has developed over decades finds it mind-numbingly difficult to extricate itself from a tangle of dependencies and networked relations that no longer serve any functional need. With hope, the next confluence of market arrangements among libraries, publishers, authors, and distributors will be looser and more flexible.

http://wtr.mn/x9QLYp

College launches course devoted to iPhone photography

2012-02-03T10:43:00.000-08:00

The course, in 'iPhoneography' at London's Kensington and Chelsea College, is thought to be a UK first.

http://wtr.mn/AeXoFC

Rumors Resurface About Amazon Opening Physical Stores

2012-02-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

Jason Calacanis reported rumors this week that the online giant may launch brick-and-mortar stores. Even the New York Times speculated about the resurfacing rumors:

The idea seems farfetched, but before 2001 so was the idea of Apple operating its own stores. “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” a consultant told BusinessWeek about Apple’s plans in what has become one of the most celebrated bad guesses of the era.

http://wtr.mn/xeltAB

Why Desktop Apps Would Be Bad News for Windows 8 Tablets

2012-02-03T08:17:00.000-08:00

Windows 8 represents a huge departure for Microsoft. But there’s still a nagging question: How will legacy desktop applications run on ARM-based tablets, if they run on ARM at all?

http://wtr.mn/yX9HD0

From @xeroxproduction Taking the Mystery Out of G7®

2012-02-02T15:40:00.000-08:00

Many print professionals have heard of G7 but are not exactly sure what it is. So, what exactly isG7? G7 is an IDEAlliance registered trademark – “G” for its focus on the color gray and the “7” ink solids specified in ISO 12647-2. It is a gray scale specification AND a calibration method that has roots in offset. The main goal of a production G7 press run is to match an accurate G7 proof. It’s a specification that provides formal colorimetric definitions for neutrality (gray balance) and tonality (darkness, lightness, and contrast of an image). Plus, it is also a calibration method that adjusts gray balance and tonality to meet the G7 specification.

http://wtr.mn/AqyTlA

Start a Company; It's Your Only Hope of Living the Life You Want. From @inc

2012-02-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

You might be making decent money you're not living the life that you envisioned. The great job that you worked so hard for years and years to put yourself in the position to get is now your jail. What you didn't realize then you realize now. You shouldn't have done what you were supposed to do. You should have done what you wanted to do, what made you happy, and what would have provided you the freedom to live the life you wanted.

http://wtr.mn/xilFlE

Google Privacy Creeping You Out? Microsoft Says it Has Alternatives

2012-02-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been thinking Google’s privacy changes have gone too far, you’re not alone — Microsoft is with you.

http://wtr.mn/ys7RMQ

Crowdfunding platform Emphas.is launches publishing arm

2012-02-01T08:15:00.000-08:00

A year after photographer Karim Ben Khelifa and editor Tina Ahrens launched the Emphas.is platform, they are now partnering with Walter Tjantelé to bring crowdfunding to the photobook industry.

Funders will be able to purchase a limited-edition copy of the book at $100 to $150. "The books will come signed, numbered and with a print." Then, an extra 1000 copies are also made to be sold via the Emphas.is platform.

http://wtr.mn/AaH6bD

Friends of Blurb @overheardatmoo and @mohawkpaper partner to Create Custom Paper for Luxe Business Cards

2012-02-01T06:48:00.000-08:00

Mohawk Fine Papers has partnered with MOO.com to create a custom paper line for MOO’s new Luxe Business Cards, launching today. This is the first super thick, letterpress-quality paper line created specifically for use in the on-demand, digital print space.

http://wtr.mn/zEZY06

Barnes & Noble to Amazon: Drop Dead!

2012-01-31T16:16:00.000-08:00

First, it was Jonathan Franzen hating on ebooks. Now, it's Barnes & Noble telling Amazon to get lost.

http://wtr.mn/yEUoWm

Apple Now Top PC Maker, Report Says

2012-01-31T14:45:00.000-08:00

iPad sales pushed Apple well ahead of Wintel giants like Hewlett-Packard and Dell in Q4, according to research.

http://wtr.mn/wRNbUt

Another iconic photo brand takes a hit

2012-01-31T07:05:00.000-08:00

For many years, Olan Mills was the name in volume portrait work as well as a staunch protector of photographer's rights. But things are changing. Minnesota-based Lifetouch, which bought Olan Mills in November, plans to shut down the two Olan Mills production facilities in the Chattanooga and cut 383 jobs, an official said Monday.

http://wtr.mn/ztVusX

Should you feel guilty for buying your iPhone?

2012-01-31T06:40:00.000-08:00

(CNN) -- Last week, The New York Times gave us an inside look at what it's like to work at Foxconn, the manufacturing company that owns several China-based factories that crank out Apple's iPads, iPhones and iPods by the millions.

The story is full of examples of horrifying working conditions in Foxconn's factories that would never fly here in the United States.

http://wtr.mn/zF6Ru3

Apple’s iBooks Push Raises 6 Big Questions About The Future Of E-Publishing

2012-01-30T17:28:00.000-08:00

Startup Tribes: Tips on Roles and Recruiting

2012-01-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

From onstartups.com

http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/77018/Startup-Tribes-Tips-on-Roles-and-Recruiting.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+onstartups+%28OnStartups%29

Sci-fi and technothriller writer Cory Doctorow says his special edition hardcovers have consistently been his biggest earner

2012-01-30T10:58:00.000-08:00

From Forbes, Ebooks encourage authors to stare at their shoes instead of shoot for the stars.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/01/30/ebooks-encourage-authors-to-stare-at-their-shoes-instead-of-shoot-for-the-stars/

Facebook’s Timeline has some vocal dissenters

2012-01-30T10:48:00.001-08:00

A nonscientific poll of more than 4,000 Facebook users found that about half of those surveyed say that they are “worried” by Facebook’s new Timeline format. More than 30 percent said that they didn’t “know why I’m still on Facebook.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/facebooks-timeline-has-some-vocal-dissenters/2012/01/30/gIQAYNTkcQ_story.html

Are we in a self-epublishing bubble? The 7 stages from Hyman Minsky

2012-01-30T08:30:00.001-08:00

In August 2011, Ewan Morrison published an article entitled Are Books Dead and Can Authors Survive?. Here, he tracks the self-epublishing euphoria of the last five months and argues that we are at the start of an epublishing bubble.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/30/self-e-publishing-bubble-ewan-morrison?newsfeed=true

Jonathan Franzen Thinks Ebooks Are Not for "Serious Readers"

2012-01-30T08:20:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Franzen, the author of The Corrections and Freedom, has no patience for e-readers, he tells the Telegraph:

I think, for serious readers, a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience. Everything else in your life is fluid, but here is this text that doesn’t change. …

Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it’s just not permanent enough.

More here.

Google offers businesses “Trusted Photographers”

2012-01-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

Last year Google officered “Street Views” of indoor businesses: click in a web browser to see inside a stores or restaurant. Now the company is connecting businesses with pro shooters who can make the 360-degree images for them.

http://pmanewsline.com/2012/01/29/google-offers-businesses-trusted-photographers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+pmanewsline+%28PMA+Newsline%29

A new chapter for Indian publishing

2012-01-29T15:18:00.001-08:00

If you have a problem with your weight, relationship or business in India, you rarely see an expert to solve it. Instead, you read a book.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/retail/new-chapter-for-indian-publishing

9 Quick Tips For Better iPhoneongraphy

2012-01-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

Here are nine quick tips from Stephanie Roberts to maximize your shooting style, efficiency, and effectiveness.

http://www.geeksugar.com/9-iPhone-Photography-Tips-From-Macworld-2012-21515220

The Bookstore’s Last Stand: Barnes & Noble finds itself in the fight of its life

2012-01-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

Inside the great publishing houses — grand names like Macmillan, Penguin and Random House — there is a sense of unease about the long-term fate of Barnes & Noble, the last major bookstore chain standing. First, the megastores squeezed out the small players. (Think of Tom Hanks’s Fox & Sons Books to Meg Ryan’s Shop Around the Corner in the 1998 comedy, “You’ve Got Mail”.) Then the chains themselves were gobbled up or driven under, as consumers turned to the Web. B. Dalton Bookseller and Crown Books are long gone. Borders collapsed last year.

No one expects Barnes & Noble to disappear overnight. The worry is that it might slowly wither as more readers embrace e-books. What if all those store shelves vanished, and Barnes & Noble became little more than a cafe and a digital connection point? Such fears came to the fore in early January, when the company projected that it would lose even more money this year than Wall Street had expected. Its share price promptly tumbled 17 percent that day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/business/barnes-noble-taking-on-amazon-in-the-fight-of-its-life.html?_r=1&hp

MacBook alternative from Dell-Event today in San Francisco

2012-01-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dell and Intel are kicking off the Ultrabook revolution with an all day photography event at the Carte Blanche Gallery in the Mission District of San Francisco.

The festivities kicked off last night with plenty of Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook demo units in the crowd and an evening hosted by Hooman Khalili, who shot a feature length film on a Nokia N8 smartphone.

Today Dell has invited a number of well known photographers including French photographer Gwen Lafage, to come down to the gallery and talk photos.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2012/01/28/dell-ultrabook-gallery-liveblog-day-2/

Why the fuss about iBooks Author?

2012-01-28T10:16:00.001-08:00

Just like Amazon and any other ebook vendor, Apple's goal is to capture share of this rapidly growing segment.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/01/apple-ibooks-author-publishing.html

If Stonehenge had been designed by IKEA. Very clever.

2012-01-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/8/view/13358/ikea-stonehenge-infographic.html

Palms Down: Mobile Hardware Guru Jon Rubenstein Leaves HP

2012-01-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

HP’s mobile era is over.

Jon Rubenstein, the HP executive to lead the charge against Apple’s iPad devices, has left the company as of Friday morning.

An company spokesman confirmed to Wired in an interview that the mobile hardware guru, once a star at Palm when that company was still a contender, was no longer with Hewlett-Packard.
To put things into even clearer perspective: The final nail in Palm’s coffin comes to two years to the day that Steve Jobs announced the iPad.

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/01/hp-rubenstein-out/

Who Would Pay $5,000 to Use Google? (You)

2012-01-26T16:56:00.000-08:00

New research finds people fork over $5,000 worth of personal information a year to Google in exchange for access to its “free services” such as Gmail and search. While many view this as a fair trade, privacy experts say the Internet giant’s latest plan to pool user data from its various sites make it less so.

http://blogs.smartmoney.com/advice/2012/01/25/who-would-pay-5000-to-use-google-you/

Yes! I want one! Fujifilm X-Pro1 Available for Preorder in Japan, Costs a Pretty Penny

2012-01-26T15:59:00.000-08:00

A clearer picture is emerging of what the Fujifilm X-Pro1 will cost when it’s finally on store shelves. The camera is now available for preorder over on Amazon Japan for the price of ¥135,000 (~$1,743). This suggests that the US price will be in the range of $1,600-$1,700. The lenses will likely be in the range of $600-$700 each. A PDF version of the owner’s manual has also been released, and should be interesting to anyone who wants a closer look at how the camera works.

http://www.petapixel.com/2012/01/26/fujifilm-x-pro1-available-for-preorder-in-japan-costs-a-pretty-penny/

Amazon's Hit Man | Larry Kirshbaum was the ultimate book industry insider—until Amazon called

2012-01-26T12:28:00.000-08:00

By pursuing authors directly, Amazon can cut out the middleman and pass on the savings to authors in the form of higher advances and royalties, and to readers in the form of lower book prices. Executives at the major publishing houses see all of this and conclude that Amazon aims to put them out of business.

In the middle of this stew of rancor and mistrust sits Kirshbaum. He was once the ultimate book industry insider, widely known and almost universally liked. He has a well-honed instinct for big, mass-culture books and was thinking about e-books—and losing money on them—long before almost anyone else in the industry. Many of his former peers now consider Kirshbaum a turncoat. In interviews, more than a dozen publishing executives said he had gone over to the dark side; some said they’d conveyed that sentiment to Kirshbaum directly. (None of the executives would speak on the record because Amazon is still a vitally important retail partner.) “I have a message I really believe in,” Kirshbaum says. “Which is that we’re trying to innovate in ways that can help everybody. We are trying to create a tide that will lift all boats.”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/amazons-hit-man-01252012.html

Jobs’s Last Photography Wish: iPhone With Lytro, the Focus-Free Camera?

2012-01-26T10:29:00.000-08:00

A new book by a top Fortune reporter reveals that Steve Jobs sought out the up-and-coming Lytro camera CEO — and putting Lytro in the iPhone was discussed.

This Mashable article details Lytro, a light-field capture technology that lets you shoot first and focus the shot later, is about to lauch its first consumer models in the US in the first half of 2012. It was developed by Stanford Ph.D and light field expert Dr. Ren Ng. And it has a nice video to boot.

http://mashable.com/2012/01/26/jobs-last-photography-wish-iphone-with-lytro-the-focus-free-camera-video/

Seattle named 2nd most literate city in America

2012-01-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm a homey but very proud of Seattle's continued status in the ranks of the well read. Also congrats to my hometown of St. Louis for making the list as well.

Top Ten Most Literate Cities in America

1. Washington, DC

2. Seattle, WA

3. Minneapolis, MN

4. Atlanta, GA

5. Boston, MA

6. Pittsburgh, PA

7. Cincinnati, OH

8. St. Louis, MO

9. San Francisco, CA

10. Denver, CO

Pick 'em: Fielder or Pujols' contract?

2012-01-25T15:56:00.000-08:00

Pujols has traded a ballpark with marching Clydesdales for a ballpark with a Big A in the parking lot. Fielder has traded a ballpark with a sausage race for a ballpark with a Ferris wheel.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/lopresti/story/2012-01-25/prince-albert-contracts/52793554/1

The Highest Resolution Image of Earth Ever

2012-01-25T13:30:00.001-08:00

http://theatlantic.tumblr.com/post/16473907131/smithsonian-magazine-high-resolution-earth-photo

More Books Published This Week Than In 1950

2012-01-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

Author/futurist David Houle said in a presentation at the Digital Book World conference in New York “There were more books published this week than there were in all of 1950,”. Houle told the room full of publishers that the physical book had a great run as an artifact, but encouraged them to embrace the current era of digital publishing to pave the way for future generations.

DBW: publishers 'should learn from self-publishers on pricing'

2012-01-25T10:00:00.000-08:00

Publishers need to look to how self-published authors price their e-books, improve the quality of their digital texts, and can no longer avoid selling direct to the consumer, according to discussions held on the first day of Digital Book World.

Conference chair Mike Shatzkin said “constant monitoring [of pricing] is called for and publishers need to be at least as adventurous in pricing as authors are on their own". One of the biggest challenges, everybody knows, will be to keep display and sales alive in bricks and mortar, yet ironically, publishers are “shrinking their sales forces just when they need to be on the ground finding new accounts"—in the widest bricks and mortar sense—“to replace the ones that are disappearing".

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/DBW%3A-%27publishers-should-learn-from-self-publishers-on-pricing%27.html

More on Benny Landa | Benny Landa's invisible ink

2012-01-24T07:17:00.000-08:00

The print technology that Landa plans to unveil in May is expected to do for printers what HD did for TV screens: Landa developed an ink made of particles which are smaller than a germ and a printhead that can use the micro-droplets to print on virtually any material, producing sharp and rich images unparalleled by any manmade machine.

Landa believes that his printing technology will be far more economical than any other technology and far more durable thanks to the ink's color pigments the size of which is several nano-meters to several dozen nano-meters, or in other words – between one tenth and one thousandth the size of the ink droplets in today's printers.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4179777,00.html

Will Benny Landa's new ink be the one thing that you’ll remember when you look back on drupa 2012 many years from now?

2012-01-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months rumors have been swirling around in regard to Benny Landa’s plans for drupa. Most of it has been talk, but more details are now coming to light. The Landa Labs web site, which has been on line for quite some time, added a note recently that Landa Digital Printing, developer of next-generation digital printing technology targeted at commercial, packaging, and publishing markets, would show a lineup of ‘digital nanographic printing presses’ at drupa 2012. The drupa 2012 web site shows a sizeable booth in Hall 9 for Landa Digital Nanographic Printing.

http://blog.infotrends.com/?p=6139

Graphicly debuts new self-publishing service for multiple platforms

2012-01-23T13:23:00.000-08:00

Graphicly is expanding its digital distribution solution for automated self-publishing. The new set-up
enables authors and publishers to upload, publish, sell and promote content of all types and sizes.
It will be supported across platforms: the web, Facebook, iOS (through Apple Newsstand) and Android (Barnes and Noble’s Nook Color and Amazon’s Kindle Fire). The publishers don’t need to repeatedly upload it to different sources, but rather the creator just picks the platform destinations through a customizable widget.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/graphicly-debuts-new-self-publishing-service-for-multiple-platforms/67788

How iBooks Author Stacks Up to the Competition

2012-01-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

With the announcement of iBooks Author last week, the world of self-publishing seemed to open up a little wider, especially for authors looking for an easy way to format and distribute their own content. If you are a writer who wants to take try the self-publishing route, Mashable has assembled a comprehensive chart of all the potential tools available to you, as well as their prices and anything else you may need to know.

http://mashable.com/2012/01/23/ibooks-author-self-publishing-comparison/

Venture Capital, Private Equity, Buy-out and Hedge Funds: Fact vs. Rhetoric.

2012-01-23T07:54:00.000-08:00

(hint: VC's create jobs)
http://tdagres.tumblr.com/post/16177627657/venture-capital-fact-vs-rhetoric

Kodak: Zombie brand?

2012-01-22T18:43:00.000-08:00

When companies die, the underlying brands often live on. Here's a look at those that have stayed alive and how they've fared after their parent liquidates. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2012/markets/1201/gallery.zombie-brands/?source=cnn_bin

Twitter To Launch in Germany

2012-01-22T11:54:00.001-08:00

Twitter is spreading its wings further across Europe its over-worked CEO announced Sunday at the DLD Conference here. Jack Dorsey, who doubles up as the CEO of Square as well, said the company was looking to build a German team.

http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2012/01/22/twitter-to-launch-in-germany/

The Power of Mentoring

2012-01-22T10:24:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/jobs/gerald-chertavian-of-year-up-on-the-power-of-mentoring.html?_r=1&ref=business

ALA To Meet With Top Executives of Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin on Ebook Lending

2012-01-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2012/01/publishing/ala-to-meet-with-top-executives-of-macmillan-simon-schuster-and-penguin-on-ebook-lending/

Huge week at Blurb

2011-10-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

I try not to be too much of a Blurb fanboy here on the print/ready blog, but there's a lot of pride about what our little company accomplished this week. So please allow the shameless plug if you would as I wax about our latest releases.

Today we announced four new languages to add to our stable. After this week's launch of Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Spanish, we are now localized in seven tongues including French, German, and English. You can see the new sites at http://es.blurb.com/, http://it.blurb.com/, http://nl.blurb.com/, and http://br.blurb.com/.

We've also made a huge plunge into eBooks with our new iOS offering. Anyone that has previously created a book using BookSmart or Bookify can now purchase and sell eBook versions that can be viewed on any Apple mobile device (iTouch, iPad, iPhone). You can see more about this cool offering at http://www.blurb.com/ebook/

Not to be outdone, our tried-and-true backbone authoring tool, BookSmart, has an upgrade as well. Now you can create weekly planners, import seamlessly from Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3, along with a slew of little updates like improved spell-check, font management, UI enhancements, and new spreads. Plus, you can now make books of 240 pages using our Premium or ProLine paper options, up from the previous 160.

Our upstart mobile group has an update as well, Blurb Mobile 1.4. With it you can now export to video, take advantage of a new layout editor, as well as improved sharing. You can get it now at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blurb-mobile/id430933688?mt=8

So, yeah, we're pretty proud. And we hope all of our customers will like what we've done and keep coming back for more.

iPhone 4S first thoughts

2011-10-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Right on time, my friendly FedEx delivery guy dropped off a little brown box at my front door last Friday. I have to admit, I was a bit more excited to get my iPhone4 last year, but the day a new Apple product arrives is always a pretty good day.

As with the iPhone 4, the 4S migration was painless and fairly quick for me, unlike some others that I've heard from. I upgraded my 4 to iOS 5 earlier in the week so I was already familiar with most of the new features and the fact that the sync process how happens somewhat in the background once you get the phone's initial set up complete.

So, yeah, I played with Seri a bit and it's as billed. I used the Voice Command feature on my 4 quite a bit when I'm in my car so I had a good comparison. Bottom line, there is no comparison. For someone who works from their car quite a bit this should be a must have, both for efficiency and safety.

While the news was mainly about Seri, the speed of the 4S is the real story. It's noticeably quicker, smoother, more responsive...all of the things you would expect from a major Apple phone upgrade. And, gee, all of my iPhone accessories still work so that's another bonus.

The camera was my main reason for upgrading and it does not disappoint. While a lot of the cool new features are in iOS 5 and available for the 4, the speed of the 4S makes the camera work even more like a standalone device. Add a very nice lens and sensor upgrade and the 4S looks to me like another nail in the coffin of point-and-shoot cameras.

Bottom line? Well worth the upgrade if you use your iPhone a lot and you can qualify. If you don't qualify yet, I suggest you don't play around with a 4S because it will make you want to replace your 4 even more. But the advances with iOS 5 on the 4 makes it almost like a new phone so if you haven't stepped up and updated your software yet I strongly encourage it.

My Humble Steve Jobs Blog Post

2011-10-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

Like just about everyone I know, I have strong emotions about Steve Jobs. There will be plenty of epitaphs that will be much more interesting, or well written, or relevant than mine. But here goes nonetheless.

My first practical Apple experience was, as many of us in the 80's, via graphic arts. I was running production for a Pacific Color, Inc., a professional photo lab in Seattle. In the days before large screens and digital projectors if you needed to do a presentation you used view graphs or slides, all optically created on movable-stage cameras. That changed when the original Macintosh gave graphic power to to masses. At PCI we invested in a system that would allow folks to make their own slides. The Autographix and Dicomed imaging systems we installed were the first of their kind, but everything was still monotone, including the authoring tools in software like Aldus Persuasion. If you were around in those days, you'll remember that with Persuasion you received a sleeve of 20 slides with colors and ID's to choose your for your text. At PCI we created and imaged all of these inserts for Aldus (Seattle-based and early Apple supporter before being purchased by Adobe)and produced most all of the final customer output for the Pacific Northwest.

I soon moved on and joined Bill Gates' little start-up, Continuum Productions, later renamed Corbis. I quickly had a five million dollar global budget to expand the footprint of the scanning operations, much of it spent on totally tricked out Apple Quadra 950's, the ultimate state of the art at the time for graphic applications, partially due to ColorSync 1.0. Keep in mind, in the early and mid 90's Microsoft and Apple were not friendly and one of my favorite "Bill stories" is when, soon after the release of Windows 95, Bill was touring my Bellevue WA lab and said "I guess we'll be changing all of these Macs to PC's now that Windows is color managed." I got to inform him that W95 had faux color management at best and we had no plans to replace our Apple hardware. I would have hated to be the W95 product manager when Bill made it back to Redmond.

Fast forward to September 1997 and the Seybold Conference in San Francisco, then the largest of its kind in the world and a must-go event for those associated with publishing and graphic arts. Steve was still interim CEO of Apple at this point, returning to try and save them after some disastrous months. When Bill Gates appeared on the big screen behind Steve at the keynote the crowd booed lustily, the beginning of the real fan boy mentality for Apple in my opinion. But Steve knew he needed Microsoft to survive and Bill could have snuffed Apple out if he would have decided to stop producing software for the Mac. Microsoft invested in Apple and the rest is history.

During this time I got my first dose of what it was like being close to Steve (or, at least, close to those close to him) as Corbis became the flavor of the month around Apple as we tried to find ways to work more closely together. The pull of his personality was palpable, even second hand.

My next experience with Apple was in 2002. I began working for the company that produced the photo books for iPhoto and I was constantly amazed that Steve himself was so involved in even the smallest details of the product, down to the paper weight and color profiles. I have to say having Apple as a customer was not much fun and intense is an understatement of what it was like. But being part of the Apple extended network is something I'm very proud of.

Being a Seattle guy, I was always a bit conflicted in the Apple vs Microsoft wars. Over the years I moved pretty freely between platforms, finally settling for good on the Apple ecosystem when I joined Blurb. As a mobile professional, iPhone, iPad and MacBookPro has changed the way I do business so completely that I can't imagine how I could succeed without these tools. So this becomes Steve's legacy for me. The freedom to live where I like, do a job I absolutely love with an extended family of graphic arts pros and operations folks, making strikingly beautiful artifacts.

Can you imagine how many disparate stories like mine that are being written today?

Best phone toys so far this year

2011-09-30T12:44:00.000-07:00

I've worked remote or had remote direct reports since 1994 so communication devices are something that are not an option but critical to my job. Plus I love new technology so the new stuff I tend to gravitate toward are things the meet both of these needs. So far this year I've gotten a couple of new toys that I thought I would share.

A few months ago a bought the new Jabra Freeway in-car Bluetooth speakerphone system. I have a car that didn't come with an integrated phone system and I've been using a Jawbone headset since they were first released years ago. But that all has changed. The Freeway is an excellent unit, with dual microphones allowing for ambient noise cancellation and a three-speaker listening device with plenty of pop. Plus you can route the sound to your FM radio if you want to share the call via your audio system. At around $115 it's not the cheapest, but it's a great investment if you spend a lot of time in your car taking calls.

The home office needed a new phone system so we did the normal churn of walking though all of the options. We ended up with the Panasonic KX-TG4644. Granted, it's been quite a few years since I've bought an office or home phone, but I've been just blown away by the performance and features of this unit. It seamlessly integrates with my CenturyLink voicemail system, has great sound clarity and range, and also allows for use of up to two cell phones via Bluetooth connection. Plus, this little gem will work during a power outage, drawing power from the phone unit in the base while you can use any of the other three extensions. At around $120 it's on the higher end, but I've been extremely happy with it and expect it to meet my needs for years to come.

Very excited about the potential I'm hearing about the iPhone5. While speed increases are always welcome, the potential of expanded voice recognition is something I'm really looking forward to. With the increase in the use of text messaging for business, the ability to speak a text is a pretty cool feature and will keep your eyes on the road. Don't know if that feature will be backward compatible with my iPhone4, but I see a 5 in my future.

Just when you thought print was dead....

2011-09-19T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last week was a great one for me. I started out in Chicago at Graph Expo and got a chance to catch up with a lot of vendor friends as well as representatives from all of the Blurb Global Print network, including our newest member from Australia (yep, OZ folks, you will soon be getting books printed in-country!). Walking the show floor and talking with folks from throughout the industry, there is still a real buzz about what is possible. If you weren't in the industry you would likely think that a print show in 2011 would be like a death march. And don't get me wrong, it's a tough world out there. But to see the pace at which enlightened printers are looking to expand their horizons via social media, just-in-time manufacturing, and direct-to-consumer fulfillment is very encouraging. A new generation of print service providers have learned that they can compete against the big guys by being agile, creative, and customer oriented. Anyone who thinks there is not a major move in progress hasn't paid attention to the grassroots groundswell that is happening around industry groups like Dscoop, who threw a great party on Monday night by the way.

Then I was off to New York City for the Photography Book Now awards party. Held this year in the center of creative photo expression at the Aperture Foundation, this year's entrants were stunning. And making the hard decisions on winners is a task I'm glad is not mine. The winner, Gomorrah Girl by Italian photographer Valerio Spada, was an offset printed book not published by Blurb, a proud reminder of the independence our judges bring to the competition. But Valerio's book was just the tip of the iceberg. Seeing the attendees handling, inspecting, and, yes, smelling the volumes of ink-on-paper proves something that a digital display will never give--a physical, personal relationship with the author's vision. It was a great night not just for the winners, many of whom made the trek to New York from around the world, but for all the lovers of art objects that attended as well.

I finished the week feeling refreshed about the print business. From seeing new, excited participants entering the print industry at Graph Expo, to rubbing shoulders with emerging artist/authors less than half my age at PBN, I know that print is alive and well. Like any changing industry, print must adapt to the times and I'm happy to say that the great people engaged in just that bode for a very exciting future.

Why I don't use an eReader--and hopefully never will

2011-08-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

There are several technologies that have changed my life. The move to CCDs and digital photography revolutionized the photo business and enabled companies like Corbis, where I spent 8 years scanning film and building the huge digital collection. Electrophotographic print devices like HP Indigo, Xerox iGen, and Canon CLC proved that you didn't have to use silver halide materials to create one-off image-intensive prints and paved the way for the mass personalization that is so prevalent today. The Internet changed forever how we do business, and the smartphone changed the style in which that business is done.

If I had tried to imagine what my work life today would be like back when I was running a professional photo lab in the 80's I don't think I would have come close. Keeping an eye on Blurb's global print network means that I'm at various parts of the country and the world at any given time, and the sun never sets on places where we do business. Questions and issues don't wait for regular business hours and have to be managed in real time. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the business I'm in could not exist in it's current form without the free-flowing communication that mobile devices bring.

But there is a downside of course. Since I am remote from Blurb's headquarters I'm on the phone a lot. Always. Every day. And because of this I've lost my ability to have a non-business phone conversation without trying to figure out how to end it quickly. Talking on the phone has become synonymous with work.

It's very much the same with things I read. During the week I take all of my news on-line, but on the weekends I crave my paper New York Times. I even save some parts of the Sunday times to read during the week so I can savor it a bit.

Reading anything on a screen puts me into "work mode". It's a sickness that I can't kick, the bit of OCD that serves me well when dealing with business but puts me in exactly the wrong space if I want to read for pleasure. That's why I don't have a Kindle or a Nook. I do have an iPad but I use it for "consumable" reading and to keep the weight of what I carry from town to town at a minimum.

I know that eBooks are what most folks talk about and I'm excited to see the possibilities that exist to new authors that did not in the past when publishers held all of the cards. But to me a "transmissive" experience equals work or research and a "reflective" one equates to reading on my own terms.

Technology has indeed changed my life quite a bit. But I'm determined to not allow it to completely run my life. And reading books with ink on paper is my small rejection of a completely digital world.

Uncoated paper options at Blurb

2011-08-15T10:39:00.000-07:00

At Blurb we've been in the final stages of judging for the fourth annual Photography Book Now international juried book competition. It's always an exciting time as we wait to find out who the winners are and have one more chance to review the thousands of fabulous entries. The competition is great for the artists that have the opportunity to have their work reviewed by a top-notch group of judges. But it's really good for us as well as we get lots of valuable feedback on what our highly creative customers need.

This year the big deal is the addition of Blurb ProLine, offering those submitting work to stand out from the crowd with options on book papers, end sheets, and cover linens. While all of these options have been widely used by PBN entrants, the judges were most struck by the addition of our ProLine Uncoated Paper. Which leads to the question, "what exactly is the difference between coated and uncoated papers"?

In general, uncoated papers have a bit more of a "natural" feel to them. A bit toothy. Like what you would expect stationary paper to feel like. Coated papers basically fill in the gaps in the natural fibers with a coating that enhances it's ability to hold ink with less dot gain, or spreading of the ink beyond where it is laid down on the paper.

When we were looking for a more natural look for artsy books, we knew we wanted an uncoated option. But we wanted to limit the downside from a quality standpoint. The obvious choice for us was the Mohawk Superfine Eggshell Ultrawhite with i-Tone surface treatment. Developed for digital presses, this paper has the feel we wanted but with excellent ink adhesion and durability.

ProLine Uncoated is a substantial 100# text/148 gsm sheet, perfect for high-end, photo intensive books. But there are times that you want to add a bit of color to a more text-heavy option as well. To that end we have recently released our new Color Trade and Pocket choices. These are the same sizes and bindings as our one-color product line, but with the addition of 4-color printing. The paper is complementary to our off-white, one-color paper, and is white with a vellum finish. It's a lighter-weight sheet at 60# text/89 gsm, and you will see a bit more dot gain in this product. But it's great for lower-fi applications like notebooks, memoirs, travel books, mini portfolios, and novels. And we've kept the price low so you can buy a lot or sell for some bucks.

Whatever paper you choose, we want you to be able to find one that will enhance your vision. ProLine and Color Trade and Pocket are just a couple of new ways to make your book your own.

Guest blog post at the Blurberati Blog

2011-08-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

I have a guest post up at the Blurbarati Blog "An insider's guide to Blurb's Global Print Network". Take a look!

What's on your wish list for Drupa 2012?

2011-07-18T05:21:00.000-07:00

It's less than a year until the mother of all trade shows, Drupa, reappears to once again shape the future of all things print. While the rhythm of print shows swings to Chicago and Graph Expo this year, most eyes are on May of 2012 when we'll get a chance to see the mavens of print manufacturing unveil what has been in process for much of the past years since Drupa 2008.

I see the printing industry at yet another tipping point. It was big news when HP had the largest footprint at Ipex last year, overtaking the traditional offset manufacturers. And in a year where the biggest photo trade show in the US, PMA, is co-locating with CES in January, it will be interesting to see how the move to more electronic publishing is going to influence the folks whose main business is ink on paper.

When Blurb launched, we repurposed presses, DFEs, and binding equipement that was really made for other uses. At Ipex there was a growth in new machinery that was more dedicated toward the POD book marketplace. I'd like to see more of this, allowing larger digital printers like those in our global print network to continue to improve productivity, quality and price which will allow the self-publishing marketplace to continue to thrive. I'd like to see the advances made in PUR binding continue beyond the few options currently available. I hope to see high-speed ink jet keep improving print quality to the point that it rivals that of the best offset printing. And I'd like to see lower priced entry-level presses to help to expand the global reach of companies like ours. Oh, yeah, and larger sheet sizes. And faster.

What advances would you like to see at Drupa next year?

PUR-fect book binding?

2011-07-11T09:57:00.000-07:00

When Blurb looks to add printers to the Blurb Global Print Network we look for companies that excel in four areas: printing, binding, IT, and fulfillment. These core competencies bring together the art, craft, technology, and logistics that it takes to deliver one single copy of one unique book to one thrilled customer. But it's not always easy. When we delivered the first Blurb book to a paying customer in 2006, the state of the art for preparing files for printing, color management for digital presses, and one-off binding were all processes taken from other sectors, like direct mail, library binding, and traditional offset printing.

Book binding is where craft meets technology in a way that is not seen anywhere else in our process. Our early books were all side sewn. We then moved some of our larger books to double-fan adhesive cold glue and wire stitching. These were all alternatives to the way that longer run hardcover books are usually bound, Smyth sewing. The issue is that POD is by nature run on small sheets, usually around 12x18 inches. To Smyth sew, you need to print in signatures, which are multiple pages printed on a single, large sheet and then folded. Not really possible with cut sheets, so the POD marketplace required alternative methods.

Enter PUR, or polyurethane reactive glues. This process, which has been around for a while but it was not really usable for short run book binding, is similar to hot glue binding which has traditionally been used for soft cover paperback books. The issue with hot glue is that it does not "give" when there is pressure but on the spine, which is required for hardcover books due to the lever effect of the case on the book block. PUR is much more elastic than hot glue allowing for a more "stay flat" binding that is closer to what you can get with Smyth sewing.

Working with the manufacturers of binding equipment and our network printers, Blurb pushed new products and processes to the market in our quest to keep improving on our promise of "bookstore quality" products. And we have been very pleased with the process. A large portion of our books are now bound using PUR technology and we are continuing to expand the usage throughout our network.

There are other benefits of this move, some more obvious than others. PUR bindings will hold even in extreme temperatures, has better adherence to coated papers, and can withstand a page pull of nearly double that of hot glue. It also allows for some aesthetic changes that we are working on for futre product releases.

The advances made in PUR binding for print-on-demand books is an example of how Blurb is constantly looking to improve our products. We are excited about the new and improved offerings on track for release in the coming months so keep an eye out for what is next.

iPhone home screen land grab

2011-06-30T09:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I so jealously select what apps will be on my iPhone4 home screen, but I do. Some of the apps are legacy from when I got my original iPhone but most have evolved to the ones I either use most often or want to have quick access to.

Out of my 16 flexible home screen apps, three are photo related, three are social, one news, one sports, one retail, with the remaining basic reference apps.

I definitely use my iPhone as my primary camera and image capture device. I seldom remove my old Canon Digital ELPH from my backpack unless I really want to have more flexibility, which is rare. The Blurb Mobile app has been great for capturing short stories, including video and audio.

On the social side, Facebook's place of status is legacy--I seldom use Facebook. Twitter is my primary method of communication to my business contacts and my feed is connected to my LinkedIn status, so I don't use the LI app either. When I'm on the road I use the AIM app to keep the folks in the office close at hand.

When I have a few minutes to browse, I usually start with the NYTimes app, then on to ESPN, and finally to Google News via Safari.

I've gotten quite used to the all-Apple ecosystem, and our corporate Zimbra server is always synced with my apple Contacts, Calendar, Maps, and Mail. Switching settings is something I do quite a bit, I use the world clock to make sure I'm aligned with my partners worldwide, and in Seattle or San Francisco keeping an eye on weather is always important.

I have tons of other apps that I use often that are relegated to back pages. Moving something to my home page is a big deal, so when Blurb Mobile was released I had to move Alaska Airlines to a new "airlines" folder. I'm still thinking what to move up once I dispatch Facebook to the nether regions.

I'm interested in what apps you have on your iPhone home screen. Send a screen grab and I'll do a follow up post later with some of the responses.

A commitment, not a license

2011-05-31T07:34:00.000-07:00

I spent an hour or so at the Washington State Department of Licensing last week getting my driver's license renewed. It's a task we all sort of dread, but I have to give my State credit--even while cutting back the number of staffed licensing offices due to budget they have increased the things we can do on-line, even renewing some licenses. Mine was not one that could be done from the comfort of my computer however.

After taking a required vision test and getting a new mug shot, the agent gave me my temporary license and told me if should receive my permanent license in about two weeks. That was fine--I don't have any travel scheduled until later in June, which was why I wanted to get my renewal done. But in Saturday's mail my shiny new license was delivered.

Now I should be happy about that, and I am. But it really made me think about where we've gone with customer service. "Under-promise and over-deliver" has been a tactic that has served me well over the years, but I'm afraid it has been abused to become a license for inefficiency.

Good customer experience is a commitment by the giver to the receiver. "Did I solve your problem today?" "Is there anything else I can help you with while you are on the line?" It's a promise to value your time and your business. But the laziness that has been created by companies and agencies purposely padding times to assure meeting a service goal has taken my old mantra to a place it was never meant to be.

I'm sure you hear about it all of the time. In Washington State it often shows up in government. A new bridge construction project is awarded to a contractor, who pads the time it will take to complete and then negotiates a bonus for finishing early. A weekend road closure turns into a one-day project and the State announces "we've finished early!".

If you work in an e-commerce company you may see it in bloated engineering man hours for the project you are sponsoring. Or in inflated heads needed for Customer Support to meet the response commitment SLA. This concept not only costs you money, but it limits how much can get on your product roadmap and allows your competitors who work efficiently to out-perform you.

The fear of failure often drives the padding of delivery times, whether it be for software or services. And the permission to fail that can offset this downward spiral has to come from the top. I'm not blaming the folks on the front lines as the main culprits here. As is often in what separates good companies from mediocre, it's the culture that is created by senior management.

"Under-promise and over-deliver" is a commitment to excellence. It's saying that I will work hard to exceed your expectations. But it's not a license to become a society where everyone gets a trophy and there are no real winners. And it's not an excuse for inefficiency.

Loyalty matters

2011-05-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

"Loyalty is what we call it when someone refuses a momentarily better option." Seth Godin

Barry Salzberg, CEO of Deloitte LLP, was asked in last Sunday's NY Times if he could ask interviewees only a few questions what would they be? Barry said he would ask "what are the values that are most important to you?" and "How have you demonstrated those values in the past two years?". Both great questions I think. Reading this, I thought not only how I would hope those that I interviewed to join the Blurb team would answer but how would I answer this myself.

There are a multitude of values that are positive, but in my mind the one that encapsulates them all is loyalty. A loyal person is honest. They are compassionate to those they are loyal to. They are faithful and fair. They speak with candor and truth.

We hear a lot about loyal customers, and that is the loyalty that Seth Godin discusses in his blog post quoted above. But there is also loyalty to each other in business, with your co-workers, bosses, or vendor/partners.

Especially in a rough economy, folks will almost always take a loss to get new business away from others. They know that the hard work has already been done and the cost of goods and services likely includes some re-coup of sunk discovery and development costs. But taking those "momentarily better options" may very well be the worst thing you can do for your company.

Good business is about a mutual benefit. And unless you are a huge company with vast resources you need trusted and loyal connections throughout your supply chain to keep you successful.

Staying loyal may not always make you the most popular person with the Finance folks, but in the long run I've found it pays dividends. Make loyalty part of your personal brand and you'll be amazed with how it will continue to pay you back.

Update on Indigo ink permanence

2011-05-20T10:17:00.000-07:00

I have a guest post at the Blurberati Blog that is an update of my post last year on the permanence of pages printed on HP Indigo presses. Might want to take a look!

How I learned to love ink on paper (and the people who print)

2011-05-16T13:12:00.000-07:00

From my earliest memories I really loved photography. My mother worked in the local photo lab after WWII so we always had lots of photos and I clearly remember those first color snaps that revolutionized consumer photography at the time. After high school I first majored in Fine Art with a photography emphasis, but I quickly realized that my mentor, the late Wayne Brannock, had already taught me more about photography then I would ever learn from the artsy folks at Missouri State. So I changed my major and packed my camera bags for the University of Missouri. My relationship and love for silver halide lasted through the 80's and 90's, through the advent of digital photography and the fall of Kodak.

My photography always had a commercial bent, be it my time shooting for Columbia Records or working my way though school shooting weddings and portraits on weekends. But during my time at Corbis, I realized the real action was not in the commercial or professional realm at all, but on the consumer side.

It's still amazing to me the transformation that happened in the late 90's. Digital color printing had already made it's mark, primarily with "good enough" color on devices like the Canon CLC500. But digital photography was getting ready to further blur the lines between photographs and offset-style printing.

In 2000 it became clear to me that this transition was the future of how consumers will purchase physical media. I joined a company that was using wide format ink jet to print maps and historical documents from the Library of Congress but soon became a consultant to the originator of the consumer hard-bound photo book.

Now, thinking about what I really love about what Blurb is doing, I'm really happy that I've been able to maintain relationships with the folks that actually get things done in our business--the print service providers, or PSPs. Much like my days working in professional photo laboratories, most of these are closely held, often family-owned businesses. And like photography in the 90's, they are dealing with changes at often lightning speeds, not knowing where the next threat to their existence might come from. These are the people that write the checks to buy the heavy iron that makes the product you see everyday in an economy that is often less than friendly.

Blurb has indeed helped to democratize publishing. But without the people on the front lines what we built would have been but another business presentation for a start-up that couldn't get going. I'm personally grateful for all of the friends I've made along the way as I transitioned from photo to print, and I see a very bright future for all of us.

Of space and film...memories of a trip to NASA

2011-04-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

I was watching a NASA documentary this week and it reminded me of a very fun time 15 years ago when Corbis had the opportunity to access to the original film from the space program up to that time. The collection, which included film that was taken on the moon, had ever been digitized. Much of it is very fragile, and to that point any publication was done via color dupes. In fact, due to weight restrictions on the Apollo flights, film was manufactured without any base coating. This can give you an idea of how conscious NASA was about every single ounce of payload and it left them with film rolls that are more like cellophane than cellulose.

NASA photos are by definition public domain--we as a people own them. So the deal we made with NASA was that we would use our expertise in scanning, color correction, and archiving as a service and Corbis would be allowed to include the images in our digital collection. In return we would provide NASA with full-resolution imagery of everything we captured. Those images are available today at the NASA GRIN site, including the high-res versions.

One of the first steps taken on the Moon, this is an image of Buzz Aldrin's bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon on July 20, 1969. AS11-40-5877

At that time, most all film scanning was done on a drum or flatbed scanner. In this case neither would work as the 70mm film from the Hasselblad backs was in long rolls and couldn't be cut, and maintaining the integrity of the archive was of utmost importance.

A reel of 70mm original flight film from the first five Apollo missions, Apollo 8 through 13, is prepared for scanning at the Corbis scanning laboratory at the NASA Space Center in Houston, Texas. © Roger Resssmeyer/Corbis

Working with world-renowned space and science photographer, Corbis colleague Roger Ressmeyer, Charlie Sliwoski, Corbis Imaging Lab manager at our Seattle headquarters, and the NASA photo team, a roll-to-roll process using the Leica DSW200 was developed to handle the job. Astronaut Jay Apt worked with Roger and Charlie to tweak the color from these frames that had already begun to shift in some cases. The result was public access to images that had not seen the light of day for nearly 30 years, first viewed in the book Orbit.

Non-NASA employees were not authorized to handle the film directly, and given the sensitive nature of these priceless assets, we built a close bond with the Johnson Space Center team. The project was considered secret, and in one of the funniest stories from the trip there was a rumor that "Bill Gates' company was funding a project to look for extraterrestrials in the NASA film archives". And this was from NASA employees.

During the time I was in Houston, The Columbia Space Shuttle mission STS-75 was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was really a privilege to be at Mission Control during the launch and for a few days during the mission. Surely the days of capturing imagery on film is past and worrying about the weight of anything photographic besides the capture device is a memory but we all do owe a debt of gratitude to the folks that manned the photo lab in Houston and protected a great piece of our history for generations to come.

Want to see more NASA shots? Take a look at this book in the Blurb Bookstore.

Images from NASA by Axel Puhrer, PuhrerDigital | Make Your Own Book

Steidl and POD in the same post? Outrageous!?!

2011-04-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

If you work at a company like Blurb you really need to love books. Not just reading them but knowing about them, about the authors, and, if you are like many of us, understanding how they are built. Because of that last point I really enjoyed the NY Times piece in this Sunday's Style Magazine on Gerhard Steidl. The world of fine art bookmaking is fabulous and Steidl is at the pinnacle of his art.

But is there any real comparison to the painstaking hand work that represents what comes out of Göttingen and what can be expected from a print on demand publisher like Blurb? A lot more than you think.

First off, when we started Blurb our goal was to find a sweet spot with high-end, "bookstore quality" books and a price point that allowed our customers to sell their books for a profit. Early on that meant getting our first printing partners to buy into a whole new model of how 4-color books should be priced. Since then the technology has advanced a bit, allowing us to build more and more process automation into our workflow which allows us to continually improve quality while keeping our prices among the most economical in the marketplace.

Some of the improvements since we first went to market in 2007 are an ever-expanding line of products that include hardcover with dust jacket or custom-printed "ImageWrap" as well as soft cover books; an all-HP Indigo global network tuned to GRACol standards, assuring consistant quality worldwide wherever books are printed; a broadening line of standard and premium papers; and, very soon, new pro-directed options. Add to that our new standard end sheet that will be moving from white to a thicker medium-grey paper and, in our world, POD does not mean low-grade.

We are constantly looking for ways to improve our products. Over the past month we have held sessions with design movers and shakers in Berlin, hobnobbed with some of the best photographers in the world at the Palm Springs Photo Festival, and ran various focus groups as we plan our next options. Our new BookSmart software just released has many upgrades that come directly from the requests of our customers. And we've got some new, native digital products on their way that will reinvent the genre. We're pretty excited.

As I get ready to head off to New York for the Publishing Business Conference, I'm reminded of how the book business has changed. But reading the story about how Steidl goes about his craft, it's nice to see some things--like quality--are constant in the minds of those who love books.

High-speed ink jet and why it matters

2011-03-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

This post was done for the Blurberati Blog....

I’ve spent the past few days reviewing the newly updated digital press portfolio from Hewlett-Packard (HP). Blurb has a long-standing relationship with the technology giant and all of our digital color book pages have been printed exclusively on HP Indigo presses since 2008. But we – and HP – are never ready to rest on our laurels and together we’re always pushing the envelope to help our customers get the best quality books. So we were interested when HP announced that they are expanding their high-speed ink jet line with faster and wider presses.

So why is this important to Blurb? Because I’ve seen the future and it is ink jet. We’re always looking for new, more efficient ways to print our customer’s work and bringing the efficiencies of offset printing to the flexibility of small-run digital printing is where we live.

But these technologies are also changing the printing business from the inside out. During my two days at O’Neil Data Systems in Los Angeles, a hybrid shop that merges traditional offset with the newest digital printing technologies, the biggest thing you notice are the folks who are running the ink jet web presses at ODS. They look like they would be more comfortable in a server room rather than a press room. With these new technologies, information technology (IT) is king and this represents a sea change in the commercial printing business.

Blurb believes that when you, our customer, choose to print, you’ve raised the value put on your content. So, we consider it our primary role to make sure you receive the highest level of craft and quality in the product level you choose. And when I meet with equipment manufacturers my role is to act as your surrogate to make sure you’re always getting the best product for your money. I’ll continue to do that and to update you with the latest in all things print and technology. As always, your feedback and suggestions are great so feel free to chime in with your comments.

Beware the first dropper

2011-03-09T10:12:00.000-08:00

At the recent Dscoop6 conference there was a ton of buzz over social media. You've got to be on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube...you know the drill. I've been there and almost certainly you have too. But I'm gradually pulling away from a lot of the social interaction I've done in the past. This is due to security and privacy issues surely, but it's also that I'm one of those dreaded "first droppers".

There was a great article on details.com last fall on this phenomena that you might want to consider reading. But the bottom line to me is that once I feel that my identity has been compromised in any way, or if I just reach that tipping point that participation just isn't fun anymore and feels more like work, I bail. And I don't think I'm alone.

To me the biggest culprit in the social media sphere is Facebook. I really don't have a spot for these guys in my day or personal brand any longer. Sure, I have a FB page but it's really a bit of a placeholder and I use it to repost stuff that my company is putting out there. I have a very small circle of friends that I allow full access to my account and the rest just see the generic front page.

I like Twitter and use it daily, but it's really just about business. And if I don't keep up with it on a very regular basis the tweets from the folks I follow get so backed up that I miss a lot. So if you really want to share something with me that you'll know I'll see it's dangerous to just post it--you've got to DM me.

I've really rediscovered LinkedIn as my primary social media conduit. It was the first place I started to network on line and I've discovered that for me it is the best. If you connect your Twitter feed to your LinkedIn page and we are connected then I'll very likely see your tweets there. Plus I get a feeling of security there and it's a good place to try and contact me if we don't know each other.

Also, I'm no spring chicken and this may not sit well with a lot of my contemporaries, but I don't really take advice on social media from anyone over 35. I'm sure the amount of first droppers increases quickly as age increases so if you are putting a lot of effort into updates and links then you need to concentrate on younger folks and be sure you understand what it is that motivates them to buy your product. And it changes all of the time. By the time you realize it you are likely already too late and your audience has abandoned you.

Big disclaimer here...I'm no social media expert. I'm not even a marketing person. But I am often an early adopter of technology and as a first dropper I know what works for me. And being in a company whose average age is around 30, I think I have some pretty good insights on what's going on in that world too. Bottom line is that you do need to consider what social media can do for your business but it's got to be vital, it's got to be valuable, it's got to be cool. If not it can be a very consuming waste of time.

Dscoop 6 preview: On-demand production for publishing and photo products in multi-press environments

2011-01-10T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've blogged here in the past about the value of Dscoop (Digital Solutions Cooperative, a community of HP Graphic Arts press owners and those associated with them) and I'm pleased to say that for 2011 I have the opportunity to be part of the program. I'll be moderating what is sure to be a fascinating panel on the subject of "On-demand production for publishing and photo products in multi-press environments". We'll be diving into how some of the biggest Indigo users in the world are using lean manufacturing, process automation and other scalable technologies to create press farms--sometimes with multiple locations--to efficiently produce POD products for the book publishing and the photo marketplace.

I've recruited a stellar planel to share their expertise on the subject. Rick Bellamy, CEO of RPI, whose partners represent more than 40% of the total photo products market. Bob Friend, EVP and GM of District Photo, the largest direct-to-consumer photo fulfillment operation in the world. Steve Brown, EVP International Operations at Consolidated Graphics, who with five digital supercenters in the US and Europe are the world's largest owners of Indigo presses. And Jan-Paul Vandenhurk, CEO of Paro in The Netherlands, a digital printing powerhouse supporting all of Europe, with forward-thinking process automation engineering a core competence.

This is just one session that is part of an impressive two days of presentations that will touch on issues vital to anyone that makes a buck on putting ink on paper with Indigo presses. Take a look at the full agenda here and I hope to see you in Orlando!

Unintended victims of the digital photo revolution

2010-12-20T17:19:00.000-08:00

I spent a bit of time last week with Blurb's newest employee, photographer extraordinaire and proponent of all things AgX, Dan Milnor. While the digital revolution has been game changing for companies like Blurb, there are downsides as in all industrial progressions.

To Dan, it's the loss of some of the magic and art that make photography his passion. To traditional photo labs it was really the end of business as they know it. The latter is what I'd like to blog about today.

Between high school and college I spent some time in Dallas working for a high-volume photo lab, Snap Shots, Inc. Snap Shots was a wholesale photo processing company, doing business with drug and grocery stores as well as camera shops. My first job in the photo business was as a film splicer.

As the new kid, I got the hardest, most undesirable job--110 film splicer. Back in the 70's the definition of a "compact" camera was one that used 110 film. This was tiny stuff and was difficult to manage once you got it out of the container. Oh, did I mention that when you spliced film you had to work in total, complete darkness? No darkroom red lights like you see in the movies or from your college fine art photography program. We're talking dark here.

So a splicers job was to batch up hundreds of rolls of 110 film into one big reel so it could be processed on a continuous-feed "cine" film processor. The name came from a repurposing of the machines used to process motion picture films. Your roll of Christmas shots was heat-spliced with a bunch of other irreplaceable memories by way of a less-than-one-inch piece of tape. So if any of these splices failed...well...so long Grandma's house pictures from 1975.

It was stressful, sure. But I developed skills that I still use today. When you are in total darkness, just like if you are sight-impaired, your other senses take over, primarily your hearing. I quickly got to the point that if I dropped a small, rolled-up, unprocessed 110 film on the floor among the menagerie of backing papers (yep, you had to remove the backing paper for each roll before you spliced and many missed the garbage can), I could hear where it dropped and reach directly for it. That prowess comes in handy in daily life believe it or not. I'm still really good about finding my way around in the dark.

The folks that were the best at this process were blind or semi-blind. Any photo processing house worth it's salt had a few sight-impaired people that excelled in these kinds of jobs. When I moved to Seattle and worked on the pro side, I had a film splicer, Juan, that was great at his task. And with weddings and other one-chance events, the level of stress was ratcheted up a few notches. Juan was not only great for the company, he was great for the community. Film processing gave him a job that made his lack of sight an asset and the opportunity to work in a creative environment. I'm afraid that these types of jobs have all but gone by the wayside.

I don't always agree with Dan on the virtues of film. I actually prefer digital from a pure imaging science standpoint. But I do mourn a bit for the days of analog photography and the businesses associated with it. And I do feel sorry for the Juans of this world who have lost an opportunity to participate in a visual medium.

Conflicted on the Horn-ics

2010-12-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

A small aside from the craziness that reigns this time of year in the self-publishing/personal book industry. I've avoided railing here on the absurd decision and lack of loyalty that was the move of the Seattle Supersonics to somewhere in the Southwest under a name that I won't mention. It was the final nail in the coffin in my mind for a league that has really lost it's way under David Stern.

I moved to Seattle in January, 1979. That year the Sonics won their first and only world championship in five games over the Washington Bullets (now the Wizards). I was hooked. Lenny Wilkins was our coach and he was a Hall of Fame player while with the St Louis Hawks of my childhood. Gus Williams was our star and he didn't look any taller than me among the giants that he had to play against every night. Paul Silas was the enforcer along with young Lonnie Shelton. It was a wonderful team. I bought into season tickets for many years until the cost just got too high to continue, which was the beginning of the end for the Sonics as we knew them.

So the word on the street is that New Orleans, who lost their first NBA team to Salt Lake City (Utah Jazz? Really? Got to be the strangest name connection since the Lakers left Minneapolis), are not supporting the team and it likely will move. This is the team that the City that won't be named should have waited for, as they helped to bridge the time after Katrina by giving the Hornets a place to play. But, no, carpetbaggers with lots of dollars and nothing else to do had to come steal our team, with Stern as a willing accomplice.

Word is that Steve Ballmer remains interested in an NBA team in Seattle, as he was to try to keep the Sonics from leaving only to see the complete lack of support from Seattle's Mayor, who lost reelection to an unknown in large part due to his stupidity in the matter, and our wise State Legislature, who also managed to run the corporate offices of Boeing out of state. Members of the Seattle City Council even publicly stated that the NBA had no value to the community. Zero.

In an urban area the NBA is more than just another sport. It was a major part of our identity. It's not an accident that Seattle has become a hotbed for basketball. Ask any of our young stars and they will call out guys like Gary Payton, or Shawn Kemp as a prime motivating factor.

I feel bad for the fans in New Orleans. I can't imagine doing to them what the losers in Oil-ville did to us. But New Orleans is not an NBA town for what ever reason and the Hornets are going to move. And as much as I thought I would never say it, I hope they come here.

Make no doubt about it, those impostors that play in the state between Texas and Kansas are not the Sonics the way the Hornets in New Orleans were the Hornets in Charlotte. They have no legacy. That legacy lives, legally and rightfully, here in Seattle. That team is simply a very good expansion team with no real history. If the Hornets move to Seattle they will be the reincarnation of the Sonics. We still have our championship trophy. The names like Sikma, Payton, McDaniel. MacMillan, Brown and Chambers will be part of the rebirth. The people who stole our team could have done things the right way and had an untarnished legacy of having saved the Hornets. In the end, they killed the Hornets. I feel bad for the players that have worn that uniform in the past.

So I'm gradually getting used to the idea that Seattle may once again have an NBA team. For some reason the Horn-ics seem like a good fit and may be the salve that heals the open wounds brought to bear by Stern and friends. We'll see how it all works out.

For those interested, Sonicsgate is a great, award winning indie film about the whole move debacle and Steve Kelly has a nice piece on the recent events.

That ultimate marketing moment

2010-12-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

I've been really blessed to be involved with a company from it's earliest stages where we had to sell the whole "vision thing" to the present, where we have become a global self-publishing leader. In our early days we talked a lot about democratizing publishing. It is the thing that separated us from the others in the nacent POD book marketplace in 2006 and it is still our passion today.

Self publishing can mean a lot of things. It can be the opportunity to share your interests to an affinity group. It can mean taking control of your brand as you market yourself in print. It can be an opportunity to support a cause and raise money. It can be the entryway to the best-seller list.

But this time of year it is very much about that ultimate marketing moment that built Blurb to what we are today. It is the moment that your mother opens the package and sees her life laid out in a beautifully bound book. Or when your spouse sees your first year in pictures, captured for perpetuity. Or the memories you share with your friends of the trip you took to Vegas that somehow didn't manage to stay there.

We can spend a lot of money on marketing, buying Google keywords, or going to conferences. But nothing we do in the year compares with what happens when bits turn to atoms on the pages of a real book that will live on the coffee table for a while before snuggling into a nice spot on the bookshelf. And when someone sees what is possible, their creative mind begins to slowly consider what can be--what can come from within them. That is the ultimate Blurb marketing moment.

We hear from a lot of old and new fans this time of year. It never gets old. It is our passion. And we've got some very cool things up our sleeves for 2011 to continue to enable everyday folks as well as creative professionals to find that inspiration and tell that story.

Traveling light update

2010-09-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the States after a week in the EU. Verdict on my "travelling light" experiment? Big thumbs up. I'm off to NYC for the Blurb Photography Book Now Awards event and I'll be sticking to the iPad and iPhone for the foreseeable future.

My first days of traveling light

2010-09-21T10:38:00.000-07:00

Those of you who follow me on ye olde Twitter know that I'm in an experiment of sorts during my current business trip to The Netherlands, Germany, and France. Today is the first day of Photokina, the biggest photo-products trade show in the world, but that's for another post. This post if about how a frequent traveller like me is managing in an all-mobile-device scenario.

My trusty MacBookPro is idling happily in my Seattle office. In my bag of tricks are: iPhone 4 with iOS 4.1, iPad (desperately waiting for sw upgrade to get to par with iPhone) with LogMeIn sw, small charging devices (no heavy converter, something I didn't think about when shedding pounds), Apple bluetooth keyboard (a very happy discovery, easily packable and creates a whole new level of experience with pared wtih my non-apple case/easel), and Kensington power pack.

The first thing I noticed when packing is that I have a whole bunch of room in my backpack. A good thing because I'll be in four cities in five days so I'm a carry-on-bag road warrior. My unofficial professor of historical fiction novels has given me an assignment of a 600-page book, which fits nicely next to my Bose noise-reduction headphones in the space a power converter usually lives. On the plane from Seattle to Amsterdam, I really realized just how much better my iPad screen is over anything an airline can offer. So I got caught up on Meet The Press before my obligatory Ambien nap.

Once in Europe I was happy to find that more and more town centers now have free wifi. So I found a great outdoor cafe in Eindhoven, ordered up some food and coffee (these Dutch folks put Seattlites to shame with how much caffeine they consume) and was able to get caught up on my Instapaper reading along with making progress on my book. Another shout out to Europeans who know now to spend a Sunday. I had a prime spot in the Square and I was never rushed to move along. Along with train travel, Europeans are so much more civilized than Americans in this manner.

Later my first evening the first mini-crisis occurred. I had made a video (with my iPhone 4 of course, extraordinary) of a piece of printing equipment that I wanted to share with my collegues on Monday morning. For some reason it did not sync with my iPad so I was sunk. But not so! A quick fire up of LogMeIn and within seconds I'm controlling my desktop in Seattle. A simple drop into Dropbox and I had my movie. My first feeling that "hey, this could work!"

Train from Eindhoven to Cologne. Many trains in Europe have WiFi but not the case with ICE. So I'm back to managing my meager 50MB data allotment on my iPhone for the 3-hour trip. I had dumped all of my email onto my iPad so non-critical emails easily managed with my trusty B/T keyboard. By the way, the Europeans really like my iPad but they LOVE my keyboard.

Check into hotel and next probem occurs, the first failure on my part. The wireless coverage in my room is non-existent. They of course have ethernet but, alas, I have only an iPhone and iPad. Note to self--get a mini hot spot to add to my bag. Has to be light though or it doesn't pass the test. It will fit right in the space along with a reasonably-sized book (got that, LZ?). Fortunately the hotel has screaming fast wireless in the lobby, which is where I am now happily typing away and readying for the opening of Photokina. Time for the real work to begin! More on my traveling light series at a later date.

Late summer update

2010-08-25T15:22:00.000-07:00

Summer on the West Coast is winding down and that means that trade show/conference season can't be too far behind. There has been a lot of churn about eBooks of late and I'm sure that will be a major point of discussion as we move into the fall. At Blurb we've been busy with a new web-based creation tool that is in beta as well as a few new wrinkles that are upcoming. Planning for capacity in the fourth quarter is always paramount to the Print Operations team and we're in great shape as we move into autumn. Customers in France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have personalized services, pricing and shipping options. All that and we're trying to get a bit of R&R in before the deluge hits.

Personally I'll be on the road in September and October at the Photography Book Now events in NYC and Seattle, Photokina in Cologne, PhotoPlus Expo in NYC and at the Interquest Forum 2010 de l’impression numérique de livres in Paris. I love to get out and meet with suppliers and customers and it really gets me fired up for the end of the year.

Here's hoping your year has gone well and that I'll see many of you during my travels.