Asides

  • Fun and games

    Fun and games So, England has thumbed its nose at Europe yet again, wilfully exiting the Euro2016 tournament this week in much the same style that we flounced out of the EU last week. It’s too early to say which we’ll regret the most; so far both have led to recriminations and the resignations of…

  • Leap in the dark

    Leap in the dark This week Britons are being asked to vote on whether or not the country should stay part of the EU. Other countries have been giving referendum votes to determine whether or not the EU should adopt major treaty changes. But instead we are being asked to make a decision that will…

  • Storm clouds:

    Storm clouds: One of the themes that emerged from the recent round of pre-Drupa press briefings was for greater use of cloud computing. It’s not a new concept – we’ve all been making greater use of web services and cloud storage but many vendors are now proposing a much closer integration between their production and…

  • Last of the Independent

    Last of the Independent The Independent, together with its Sunday sibling, has ceased print production and is henceforth only to be available through its website. This could simply be the way of modern media, given that many of us now read our news through smartphones and tablets – thus saving on the cover price of…

  • It’s elementary…

    It’s elementary… Scientists working for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry have officially added four new man-made elements to the periodic table, filling in its seventh row, and simultaneously rendering a great many school text books obsolete. This follows two elements that were added to the table in 2011, with a Japanese team…

  • Burning the midnight LEDs

    Burning the midnight LEDs Much late night wrangling by various political mandarins has finally led to a draft proposal on curbing greenhouse gases. This has been much celebrated even though it’s still to be agreed by the world leaders, let alone actually implemented. But no matter – this issue is too important to leave to…

  • Out of the fire

    Out of the fire Several European companies have released their Q3 figures in the last few days, all showing a general improvement in their fortunes. In every case this has followed a radical restructuring and heavy cost cutting together with investment in inkjet print technology and a renewed focus on packaging printing. However, some of…

  • Industrial Printing

    Industrial Printing This week sees the second outing of the InPrint show, this time in Munich, starting on Tuesday. It’s hard to define industrial printing. It includes conventional print technologies such as screen and wide format, but also more niche elements like 3D printing and some novel approaches to inkjet. It covers a wide market,…

  • In the bag

    In the bag Now that the 5p levy on plastic bags has been running in England for a couple of weeks, we can safely say that reports of high street chaos were greatly overstated. Consumers may not be happy about the levy, and quite a few seem to have been surprised that it affects plastic…

  • The art of brevity

    The art of brevity Twitter has made some 336 people redundant, mainly in the product and engineering teams. There’s little doubt that Twitter has played an important part in helping media organisations push news stories to readers, but the company has struggled to turn its mass appeal into real income. It’s difficult to see an…

  • International Print Day

    International Print Day Today, Wednesday 14th October, is International Print Day, so expect a lot of stories all over the press and social media about how wonderful print is, and try to forget that you’re reading this on a screen. Ironically, the success of last year’s event was measured in the number of tweets –…

  • Big trouble in China

    Big trouble in China Recent weeks have seen some shocking falls on the Chinese stock exchange, which has mostly hit smaller investors, and taken the shine off the West’s love affair with the Chinese economy. So far, the various Western stock markets have survived, albeit with a few wobbles. But just how much of our…