Monthly Archives: January 2010

Twitter twits, and egg-on-Facebook

By , Friday, 29 January 2010, Be the first to comment

Social networking sites such as Twitter have been making headlines in the wider media over the past week or so. Contrary to some initial reports, it seems that Manchester Utd has not banned its players from using such sites, but it has made it clear that it is unacceptable for players to disclose sensitive club information via such channels – no doubt the unfortunate example set by Liverpool’s Ryan Babel, with his Twitter-based complaints about being dropped from the squad, provided a salutary lesson. And accorrding to the BBC, Councillors in Cornwall are also facing potential disciplinary action for improper Twitter use during council meetings.

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Bold move from Quad

By , Thursday, 28 January 2010, 1 Comment

Major print happening across the big pond, where Quad/Graphics is to acquire World Color Press. World Color, of course, being famous as the remaining business of what was Quebecor World.

Here in Europe there’s no immediate impact. Quebecor World’s European operations were sold off in May 2008 and now trade as CirclePrinters. I’m sure Circle’s owners HHBV will be watching developments closely, though, especially as their plans to create a pan-European behemoth by buying Roto Smeets as well were stymied due to a lack of available funding.

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Me and my Kindle, episode two

By , Wednesday, 27 January 2010, 1 Comment

Today is the big day when Steve Jobs puts on his dog and pony show, and the waiting world gets to see the most eagerly anticipated new Apple gadget since, well, the last one.

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Councils courting controversy

By , Tuesday, 26 January 2010, 1 Comment

This morning I have mostly been ploughing through Audit Commission info and the DirectGov website in an attempt to get my head around the commission’s controversial conclusions about local council newspapers.

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Training schemes hone botching skills

By , Monday, 25 January 2010, 1 Comment

Do you remember that awful TV advert when the Train to Gain scheme was initially launched, where the somewhat peculiar creative involved a lorry made out of disembodied hands? Just in case one was too dim to get the message from the voiceover, the hands then turned bright blue, and at the end spell out the word “skills”. I remember thinking to myself at the time “what a pile of tosh, this looks like a complete what a waste of money”, and unhappily this has proved accurate according to the recent damning report on the programme. I think if the ad had been shown to a roomful of SME owner/managers prior to launch, they would have unanimously said “forget it”.

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Gravure surge still creating a swell

By , Friday, 22 January 2010, 3 Comments

PrintWeek’s review of the major stories of the past
decade gave me pause for fresh thought about some of the amazing happenings in
our sector.

No surprise that the Tenon report was deemed the
biggest story – rarely has something touched a nerve so deeply with the
industry at large. And the fact that it was such a recent pronouncement meant
it was fresh in everyone’s thoughts.

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Overdraft aggravation

By , Thursday, 14 January 2010, 1 Comment

This story about small business loans reminded me
of a conversation I had with a print boss a few weeks ago. He runs a pretty
typical SME print operation, which thanks to careful cash management operated within
a piffling overdraft facility of well under £20,000 – the sort of sum that many
people could run up on a credit card or two without any questions being asked.

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Print’s intrepid entrepreneurs

By , Wednesday, 13 January 2010, 2 Comments

One of PrintWeek’s sister titles, Management Today,
has a feature on Britain’s
Top 100 Entrepreneurs in its January issue.

While the list is headed by someone from an oil
services company, and in fact four of the top ten are oil-related, I was
delighted to spot Moonpig’s Nick Jenkins breaking into the top 20 at number 19.
He was at 40-something last time the survey was published, so it’s quite a
leap, and further recognition of Moonpig’s stellar growth.

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In, out, in, out… shake it all about

By , Tuesday, 12 January 2010, Be the first to comment

A couple of recent events have caused me to consider, once again, the potentially problematic nature of large print contracts.

This week we learned that Asda has canned its 3m run, 400pp-plus Asda Direct catalogue. That’s quite a chunk of print work. Meanwhile, in the world of publishing something of a hokey cokey is going on at BSkyB. Just over a year ago I was contemplating the print production impact when this company – notable as producing the UK’s top three customer magazines by circulation – decided to switch frequency from 12 issues a year to ten, as BSkyB did with four of its titles. In a stroke it culled 32m magazines annually.

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Perfect opening for Paperlinx

By , Monday, 11 January 2010, Be the first to comment

News that Paperlinx is to supply Agfa products is significant on a number of levels. The collapse of Litho Supplies has provided the perfect opening for the merchanting giant to further expand its supply of beyond paper products in the UK. It already does this successfully elsewhere in the world. In Canada, for example, Paperlinx companies also sell printing plates, pressroom consumables, prepress kit including proofing and CTP systems, as well as wide-format inkjet and digital printing equipment.

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