This page contains an archive of all entries with the category news. Oldest entries appear first.
Creo Print-On-Demand Solutions have just announced Darwin for InDesign v2.0*. This is a new version release of their InDesign VDP plug-in. From the line-up of new features, there's little question that Creo POD are chasing XMPie uDirect in an attempt to match its feature set (and market share)...
Continue reading "Darwin for InDesign v2" »
Posted on Monday, 1 October 2007 at 10:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Printable have just announced an updated version of their VDP solution, FusionPro.
For those who aren't familiar with FusionPro (formerly DataLogics DL Formatter), this is a PDF-based VDP solution that uses an Acrobat plug-in to merge variable elements in a PDF. The plug-in enables Acrobat users to assign variable form elements in a PDF file, define an input data file and business rules for VDP jobs.
FusionPro also enables the creation of VDP templates in QuarkXPress or InDesign (using a FusionPro plug-in to tag the variable frames) where the template is then exported as a PDF and opened into Acrobat for merging of variable-data.
FusionPro offers a selection of VI output formats, including PDF, PostScript, PPML, PPML/VDX, JLYT, VIPP, and VPS.
This new version of FusionPro supports two additional features; text on a curve and drop-shadows for variable text elements.
Continue reading "FusionPro v5.0" »
Posted on Tuesday, 23 October 2007 at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
With the continuing boom in personalised direct marketing campaigns, many print providers are taking the opportunity to re-invent themselves and make the transition from being a print provider into a marketing service provider. These providers are now offering a complete marketing service, from concept to design, through to data management, cross-channel deployment and response tracking.
WhatTheyThink are running a free webinar on 'Making the Transition from Print Service Provider to Marketing Service Provider', led by Barb Pellow from InfoTrends. The webinar will be held on Tuesday 6th November from 2-3pm Eastern Time (-4 GMT) and will include success stories of print providers where you can learn from their successes and mistakes.
Posted on Wednesday, 24 October 2007 at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Printing Industries Association of Australia are in a spin after a controversial 'No Junk Mail' sticker was distributed to all residents in the Sydney suburb of Mosman (Print21Online, 14 Nov 2007). Printing Industries claim that this will have significant consequences for local businesses, the paper and printing industry that supplies the material, and for the walkers who deliver it.
While this initiative will impact unaddressed mail print volume, I'm not convinced that it's a bad thing. If a consumer doesn't want to be contacted, then you shouldn't waste your time stuffing their mailboxes. Rather, marketers need put a little more effort into understanding their audience and focus their DM budget on personalised, targeted, relevant direct mail, which has a significantly higher response rate compared with unaddressed mail. I suggest an appropriate response for the Printing Industries is to circulate 'Junk Mail Please' stickers to Mosman residents, so walkers can identify households where unaddressed mail will get cut-through.
Posted on Thursday, 15 November 2007 at 4:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
ISO Technical Committee 130 are currently working on a new standard for 'variable printing data exchange' in PDF; ISO/WD 16612-2. The name is not yet finalised — the working name is VPDF/X-200X, although this will most likely change before the standard is relased, as 'VPDF' is a current product from Verisis. This working draft is based off PDF/X-4 and part of PDF/X-5. It is understood that this standard will be published around Q2, 2008.
It's interesting to see that ISO are still pushing for a standard VDP language. An earlier attempt to create a PDF-based VDP standard through PPML/VDX-2005 failed to gain adoption by RIP vendors (only Xeikon and Kodak support PPML/VDX). However, with the growing success of Adobe PDF Engine, print vendors need to start looking at how they can support a variable-data workflow with Adobe PDF Print Engine. As this engine doesn't use Adobe CPSI (the intepreter used for VIPP, VPS and other PostScript-based VI formats), print vendors will need to ensure that they can run their engines at rated speed using PDF.
Posted on Saturday, 17 November 2007 at 8:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Today, marketing professionals need to be accountable for demand generation through market differentiation and integrated multi-channel, multi-touch campaign management. WhatTheyThink are hosting a webinar titled "Talking to the Marketing Professional — a How To Guide". This webinar will focus on how to engage marketing professionals, addressing their issues and concerns, so you can have the right dialogue with them.
This free webinar will be held Wednesday 5th December from 2-3pm EDT (6th Dec, 6-7am, Sydney time). Click here to register.
Posted on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Business news site MarketWatch published a story this month on how junk mail is spurring printer sales. I'm not sure how helpful the classification 'junk mail' is, I assume the author referring to personalised direct mail, rather than unaddressed mail.
The article identifies that DM is the only offline media today which can reach the consumer effectively. Other channels, including e-mail, TV and telephone, are blocked either through filtering technology or regulations (i.e. Do Not Call register).
The article goes on to provide some interesting figures, stating that DM is the fastest-growing form of advertising off the Internet, and is projected to drive sales growth by 5.3% a year from between now and 2012. By comparison, television ads are seen driving sales growth by 5%, newspapers by 0.9%, magazines by 3% and radio by 3% over the same period of time. Altogether, the U.S. direct mail printing business is a $62.2 billion market that's expected to grow around 6%, or 7 billion pages a year. That's a lot of paper. And rainforests.
Read the full story on MarketWatch »
Posted on Monday, 17 December 2007 at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The CMO Council; a peer network and organisation for Chief Marketing Officers, has made a New Years resolution to focus on VDP. They've announced a Power of Personalization thought-leadership program which will look at "the interaction of customized content, collateral and personalized web interaction on marketing effectiveness, customer acquisition, retention, and business outcomes."
Continue reading "Power of Personalisation" »
Posted on Wednesday, 9 January 2008 at 3:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
It's been interesting observe the market reaction to HP's acquisition of Exstream Software, announced last week. A recent posting on Print CEO Blog speculates that the sale is valued at US$1 billion and suggests that HP are probably working on a high-speed colour inkjet engine for direct-mail and transactional applications.
If there is an element of truth to this, then purchasing Exstream would be a smart move for HP. Exstream's flagship solution, Dialogue, is highly geared to the transactional market. While HP don't currently play in this space, Exstream's strong customer base in data-centres and transactional bureaus will provide HP with a good foot in the door to this market.
It's also interesting to note that HP's acquisition follows a similar acquisition by EMC of Exstream's closest competitor, Document Sciences. As EMC are a leading player in enterprise content management, I presume that this acquisition is to leverage Document Sciences xPression solution as a content publishing engine for EMC's suite of content management systems.
Posted on Monday, 28 January 2008 at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Last week Meadows announced that DesignMerge now supports InDesign CS3. DesignMerge is one of several plug-in based solutions that leverage InDesign as a page layout and composition engine to create print-ready VDP applications.
It's surprising that Meadows have taken so long to release a CS3 version, seeing as Adobe released Creative Suite 3 back in March 2007. In comparison, competing solutions such as XMPie uDirect and Kodak Darwin were relatively swift to release a CS3 version. I assume that this belated release would surely have tested the patience of DesignMerge users wanting to upgrade to CS3...
Posted on Tuesday, 29 January 2008 at 7:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Winterberry Group have just released a white paper titled 'Vertical Market Trends in Direct Mail 2008'. The report highlights that direct mail spending grew by 5 percent in 2007 and continues to outpace that of both "above-the-line" advertising and virtually all other non-interactive marketing media. But that growth slowed dramatically in 2007 from the previous year, when marketers increased their year-over-year investment in direct mail by over 7 percent.
Continue reading "Direct Mail in 2008" »
Posted on Monday, 4 February 2008 at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Greetings from Las Vegas. I've just finished an intensive XMPie Users Group Conference that has been running over the past three days. It's been a brief, but inspiring conference and my head is buzzing with the all the information that I've digested. The conference was tailored for three audiences; designers, marketers and developers, with supporting tracks to cater for each audience. There was a good level of attendance, with approximately 180 delegates from across the globe. While it was impossible to join every session, I managed to attend a good mix and I thought I'd share some key highlights that I took away from the conference.
Continue reading "XMPie Users Group" »
Posted on Sunday, 10 February 2008 at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
This week WhatTheyThink.com announced the availability of a new report titled '1:1 (Personalised) Printing: Boosting Profits Through Relevance'. This 68 page report is a primer filled with case studies, ROI calculations, and analysis designed for marketers, creatives, and others on the buying side of 1:1 print. The report is available for PDF download for US$349 from the WhatTheyThink Store.
Posted on Thursday, 14 February 2008 at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
We've learnt to challenge Internet content for reliability and accuracy, particularly user-generated content such as Wikipedia. A few months ago, I stumbled on a Wikipedia article on VDP that states "The term VDP was first introduced to the printing industry by Frank Romano". I was keen to verify the authenticity of this claim and find out if Frank really did introduce the term to our industry. I had a chance to catch up with Frank last night while he was passing through Sydney on his world cruise and took the opportunity to validate this statement.
Continue reading "VDP Inventor" »
Posted on Sunday, 24 February 2008 at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
This week, Xerox announced the release of VIPP Pro Publisher at OnDemand. Originally announced last September at GraphExpo, VIPP Pro Publisher is now available. This VDP software product plugs-in to Adobe InDesign, but before you roll your eyes and say "oh no, not another VDP InDesign plug-in!", it's important to understand how this plug-in works in comparison to other VDP software products that also use InDesign, such as uDirect, Darwin, DesignMerge, InData and several others.
Continue reading "VIPP Pro Publisher" »
Posted on Friday, 7 March 2008 at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I picked up a story today on the eco-warrior US organisation, ForestEthics, who are running a 'Do Not Mail' campaign to stop so-called junk mail. The campaign is really just a petition, which currently lists "nearly 20,000" petitioners. ForestEthics explain that unwanted mail is making a significant impact on our environment, citing the number of trees used to produce the 100 billion mail pieces across the US and other eco-stats.
Now, I'm certainly no eco-warrior, but I do care for the environment. Having said that, I don't agree with ForestEthics approach to what is, apparently a propaganda-style campaign, intended to pour guilt on un-informed consumers. For example, ForestEthics state that "the Canadian Boreal Forest is logged at a rate of two acres a minute to produce paper products". However, they conveniently fail to mention that Canada is a global leader in sustainable forest management and has a deforestation rate of zero.
Continue reading "Do Not Mail Petition" »
Posted on Wednesday, 12 March 2008 at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Sydney Morning Herald picked up a story today on personalised calendars for parliamentarians. Australian business work hard to lubricate lobbyists in Parliment House with endless gifts, from beer holders, t-shirts and other tasteless presents. However, pharmaceutical firm Pfizer has struck gold by sending personalised image calendars to all new occupants of the Parliament House's ministerial wing.
Continue reading "Political Calendars" »
Posted on Friday, 14 March 2008 at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
ProPrint has just published an article (that I wrote) on the XMPie Users Group Conference, held in Las Vegas last month. This article discusses highlights from the conference, including topics, case studies, XMPie's business direction, new products and more. If you didn't attend the conference and don't receive this Australian publication, then you might want to read on.
Download ProPrint's article on the XMPie Users Group Conference »
Posted on Sunday, 23 March 2008 at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Print On-Demand Solutions has just announced that they will be "gracefully terminating" Darwin for QuarkXPress in Q3 this year. The current release of Darwin for QuarkXPress, version 7.3, is the last developed version. While this version will continue to be available for purchase, there will be no further product development.
Continue reading "Darwin for QuarkXPress" »
Posted on Wednesday, 26 March 2008 at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A report published by Target Marketing this month assessing media usage in 2008, indicates that direct mail is still the media channel of choice for customer acquisition and comes a close second for customer retention.
Continue reading "Media Usage in 2008" »
Posted on Thursday, 27 March 2008 at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
[Note: this entry was posted on April 1, in keeping with the "theme of the day".]
While I realise that XMPie is now a wholly owned business unit of Xerox Corporation, I was still surprised to see that the new Xerox brand identity has been extended to include XMPie, which until now has retained its own branding. Although the new brand has not yet been incorporated on XMPie's Web site and collateral, it is understood that XMPie will start introducing it over the next few months.
Continue reading "New XMPie Brand" »
Posted on Tuesday, 1 April 2008 at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
In case you haven't caught on, my April 1 entry on XMPie's adoption of the Xerox brand was just in keeping with the 'theme of the day'. From the numerous comments and e-mails I've received, it appears that my Adobe Illustrator skills convinced many readers. You can be rest assured that while XMPie is a Xerox business unit, it continues to operate independently from Xerox, retaining it's own branding and reseller channels.
Many thanks to WhatTheyThink and Print CEO Blog for picking up the story and running with my little joke.
Posted on Wednesday, 2 April 2008 at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
It appears that Xeikon has dropped its free PPML Viewer—this free download has now been removed from their Web site. I'm not sure why Xeikon has decided to discontinue this tool, as they still support PPML v2.1 in their X-800 controller.
As many VDP users appreciate, viewer tools are very useful for troubleshooting and catching any issues before VI files are ripped and printed. Xerox offers FreeFlow VI Explorer (for soft-proofing VIPP projects) and Creo POD offers VI Toolbox (which includes a VI Viewer for soft-proofing VPS files). However, while PODi developed the PPML specification, they rely on other vendors to offer PPML related products and services. Let’s hope that another vendor develops such a tool (or acquires the source code from Xeikon) to offer a viewer solution for PPML users.
Posted on Thursday, 3 April 2008 at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Kodak and Printable made a surprising announcement today, when they announced a partnership alliance, integrating Printable's FusionPro Web product with Kodak EMS software. Kodak, who acquired Creo in 2005 along with their VDP solution, Darwin, has since released INSITE Storefront, which integrates with Darwin and Web Composition Solution (WCS) for server-based composition of Darwin documents through their INSITE web-to-print storefront.
This latest announcement integrates Kodak's EMS software (an ERP system) with FusionPro Web, a hosted ecommerce and web-to-print system. It's interesting that Kodak has chosen not to integrate with their existing Darwin or WCS solution, but build a different (and competing) VDP solution, FusionPro Web, into their portfolio mix.
Posted on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
PODi are hosting a webinar titled 'Making money by mailing at the moment when it makes the most sense' on Wednesday 23rd April at 11am and 7pm EDT (Thursday 24th April 1am and 9am, Sydney time). The webinar, presented by Tom McDermott from AmazingMail, is aimed at print providers and provides advice on how to make direct mail both relevant and successful. Its free for PODi members and US$125 for others.
» Sign up for the PODi Webinar
Posted on Friday, 18 April 2008 at 6:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) released a Regulatory Affairs Bulletin this week, which features concerning news regarding potential changes to Australia's privacy laws. The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has indicated that the changes to the Privacy Act 1988 that it is likely to recommend to the Federal Government will include:
Continue reading "Privacy Act Changes" »
Posted on Wednesday, 23 April 2008 at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Venture Beat featured a story on Xerox PARC today, which gives an insight into some projects currently under development. Surprisingly, one of the projects is from XMPie (now a wholly owned Xerox business unit). The article explains:
Continue reading "XMPie and PARC" »
Posted on Wednesday, 30 April 2008 at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
VDP software vendor, GMC Software, made an interesting announcement yesterday with news that they plan to support Adobe PDF Print Engine 2 and the "emerging PDF standard for personalized content; PDF/VT". This announcement comes as a surprise, as neither the PDF Print Engine 2 or PDF/VT are available yet. Adobe has been keeping it's next version of PDF Print Engine under wraps and has not disclosed any news of a new version. Also, PDF/VT is not yet a published standard.
Continue reading "GMC Announcement" »
Posted on Thursday, 1 May 2008 at 4:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
MSNBC published a story last month on how a small college in Pennsylvania targeted seven prospective students through a $120,000 advertising campaign by plastering the students' names on billboards, pizza boxes and gas pumps, and even aired a commercial on MTV, all in hopes of getting the chosen few to enroll.
I don't get this campaign for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it could easily backfire. Very easily. You really have to play the privacy game in the US and this is treading a very thin line. I'd be pretty annoyed if I saw my name plastered everywhere, it's almost like a sort of identity theft.
Continue reading "A Little Too Personal?" »
Posted on Sunday, 11 May 2008 at 7:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
GMC Software has just announced they'll be previewing two new products at drupa this month; GMC PortalBuilder and GMC Open Document Publisher (ODP). Both products are components of a larger 'Integrated Marketing System'.
PortalBuilder creates web-based "marketing centers" and web-enabled automation for integrated, multi-channel personalised campaigns. ODP is used for managing customer communications through an automated process to collect, sort, merge and dispatch VDP documents according to customised business rules.
Continue reading "GMC Marketing System" »
Posted on Wednesday, 14 May 2008 at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I picked up an interesting story today on the impending QuarkXPress version 8, which is scheduled for release in August. AppleInsider has disclosed new product features and screenshots of the updated user interface, which looks extremely similar to Adobe InDesign. In addition to a copy-cat UI, Quark has packed several InDesign features into this new version, including native support for Illustrator and Photoshop files and bézier pen tools.
Continue reading "QuarkXPress 8 Preview" »
Posted on Thursday, 15 May 2008 at 8:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Apologies for being incognito for the past week, but I popped back to blighty (UK) for a brief holiday before flying over to Germany for drupa. For the uninitiated, drupa is the world's largest printing tradeshow held every four years in Düsseldorf, Germany. This year’s exhibition will break all previous records. With some 170,000 square metres of net exhibition space (roughly equivalent to 40 soccer fields) and exhibitor numbers topping 1,800, drupa 2008 will be the biggest ever in its more than 50-year history.
Over the next week I'll be roaming the messe halls in search of VDP-related news. A flood of press releases are already seeping in and it looks like many VDP vendors will be making some significant product announcements at the show, so keep an eye on VeeDeePee over the next week to find out what's new in the world of VDP!
Posted on Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 10:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I spent the first day at drupa wondering aimlessly around Hall 8b. The Xerox stand was pretty large, so I wanted to make sure I got the full Xerox VDP scoop before moving through the other halls. Xerox has some interesting VDP news and applications worthy of a mention at drupa, which I've summarised in this entry.
Continue reading "Xerox at drupa" »
Posted on Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Housed off to one side of the Xerox stand, XMPie has a handful of technologies and products on show in their contained booth.
One new technology making its drupa debut is XMPie's new "gossiping cluster technology", which, despite the unusual name doesn't have much to do with talking. It's a technology used to refer to the ability to split a single print job across multiple uProduce servers (and InDesign Servers), processing each file individually on the server cluster, then stitch it together at the end as a single print-ready file, all transparent to the end user.
Continue reading "XMPie at drupa" »
Posted on Friday, 30 May 2008 at 12:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Hidden in a corner of Kodak's drupa hall is Creo POD's incognito enclosed stand. While they're not opening the doors to the general punters, Creo POD together with Kodak has made some significant announcements at the show which impact Kodak and existing Creo POD distribution channels. In their booth, Creo POD demonstrated Darwin v3 integrated with Kodak InSite v4 together with a new digital-only version of their Prinergy workflow software.
It was immediately apparent that Darwin v3 is a huge leap forward from Darwin today. Current Darwin users will be familar with its functional but clunky workflow, usability issues and lack of cross-platform integration. Darwin v3 is set to change all that and so much more.
Continue reading "Darwin & InSite" »
Posted on Friday, 30 May 2008 at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Bitstream made an announcement last week of their intent to support InDesign and InDesign Server in Pageflex in the future. Their media release is rather vague and doesn't really give away much, so I stopped by Bitstream's stand at drupa to get the scoop on what they're working on.
Continue reading "Pageflex & InDesign" »
Posted on Saturday, 31 May 2008 at 2:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
On HP's drupa stand you'll find SmartStream Designer v2.5. While this product may be unfamilar to many, it was actually one of the first VDP desktop tools on the market. Previously named Yours Truly Designer, the product has been renamed to SmartStream Designer to align it with the HP SmartStream family of workflow solutions. It used to be included as part of QuarkXPress (v6.2 onwards), but Quark stopped bundling this a while ago due to IP-related issues. SmartStream Designer is a VDP plug-in for both QuarkXPress and InDesign, on Mac and Windows.
While SmartStream Designer v.2.5 is still pre-release software, they're distributing free trial versions on the HP stand. This new version offers some interesting new features along with a server edition, adding value to this already mature product. Details of the new product features are discussed below.
Continue reading "SmartStream Designer" »
Posted on Sunday, 1 June 2008 at 4:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
In an earlier post, I commented that XMPie's drupa media announcement included "uImage's ability to leverage the video functionalities of Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended", but I could not see examples of this on the XMPie stand. This is incorrect, I missed this on my first visit.
XMPie has a great example of video personalisation in a cross-media campaign, where vistors who register on the XMPie stand have a complete cross-media experience generated them for a fictious mobile phone campaign. Their personalised Web site includes a personalised video.
Continue reading "XMPie Video" »
Posted on Monday, 2 June 2008 at 1:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
On the Adobe stand at drupa you'll find plenty of information on Adobe PDF Print Engine 2. This new version of Adobe's PDF interpreter has significant implications for the future variable-data printing. But before I explain why, it's important to first understand what the heck Adobe's PDF Print Engine actually is and does.
Continue reading "PDF Print Engine 2" »
Posted on Monday, 2 June 2008 at 4:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Following GMC's recent announcement of an "Integrated Marketing System", I decided to stop by their drupa stand to find out more on their latest offering and get up to speed with their PrintNet solution.
Continue reading "GMC at drupa" »
Posted on Tuesday, 3 June 2008 at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Hidden in drupa hall 3 on stand C14 is Digiskin. This innovative company has developed their own ink and foil for customising and personalising mobile devices, from mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players, bluetooth devices and even laptops.
Digiskin use a standard Epson desktop printer to print the image design (using specially developed inks) onto a foil substrate which is then applied to the mobile device using an adhesive film and vacuum. The design is printed on the reverse-side of the foil, so it doesn't scuff or rub-off.
Posted on Tuesday, 3 June 2008 at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
After one week of trawling the drupa halls, I'm packing my bags and off home on my 30 hour Sydney flight. My feet are sore and I've had as much bratwurst, beer and pork knuckles that I can take for the next four years, until drupa 2012.
On reflection, drupa 2008 has been an interesting show for variable-data publishing. While this year's drupa certainly can't claim to be "the VDP drupa", several key announcements and technology demonstrations have been made from different vendors, which is an indicator that the VDP market continues to emerge and shape to meet changing market demands.
Continue reading "Auf Wiedersehen" »
Posted on Wednesday, 4 June 2008 at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
This week Printable announced that they sold nearly 400 copies of their FusionPro Desktop software last month. They're currently holding a "10k Celebration" to mark 10,000 installations of this entry-level VDP software product.
Printable's successful month must largely be attributed to the product price, which was slashed in half to $299 during June. By the law of demand, you're always going to achieve higher unit sales when you drop your product below the market acceptable price.
It's interesting to watch Printable's volatile pricing strategy for FusionPro Desktop—I've never really understood it. Last year Printable slashed their list price from $3,200 to $299, then pushed it $599 in October last year, then dropped it to $299 last month, before lifting it back up to $599 this month. Quite peculiar.
Posted on Thursday, 17 July 2008 at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Held annually in Las Vegas, the PODi Application Forum is now in it's sixth year. It's quickly grown to be one of the industry's most respected conferences with around 500 delegates attending from around the globe. Last year PODi launched in Australasia and the first local Application Forum was held in Sydney in October 2007. Following the success of this inaugural conference, the local PODi group has just announced its second conference, which will be held in Melbourne on 23-24 September 2008.
Dave Erlandson from PODi will be coming over to join a great line-up of speakers and sessions. If you're in the area then you should definitely consider attending. For more information, visit www.podi.com.au/appforum.html.
Posted on Friday, 25 July 2008 at 6:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
XMPie recently announced a strategic partnership with Roger Gimbel. For those of you who don't know Roger, he runs a US-based consulting firm and is a regular (and somewhat vivacious) speaker at industry events. I was curious to find out more, so I spoke to an XMPie insider to get the inside scoop...
Continue reading "New XMPie Offering" »
Posted on Sunday, 3 August 2008 at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
A PrintSoft ad caught my eye today in this month's edition of ProPrint (an Australian print magazine). PrintSoft offer several VDP solutions including PReS, a scripting-based document design and composition product for VDP. The ad promoted their new 'PReS Certification Program', inviting PReS users to evaluate and test their programming skills.
I applaud this initiative. There are similar certification programs from larger software vendors including Adobe with their Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) program and Microsoft with their Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) program, but this is the first VDP software vendor that I'm aware of to launch an accreditation program.
Continue reading "PReS Certification" »
Posted on Friday, 8 August 2008 at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Following my earlier entry regarding Printable's volatile pricing strategy for FusionPro Desktop, I was surprised to read Printable's latest announcement where they've slashed the price of their VDP server product, FusionPro Direct, to $2,995—a 70% price cut and they're also bundling in a copy of FusionPro Desktop.
Continue reading "FusionPro Direct Pricing" »
Posted on Friday, 8 August 2008 at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
MindFireInc has just announced that they have been ranked #152 on the 2008 Inc.500 Index. The index, published annually by Inc. (a monthly magazine for entrepreneurs and small businesses based in NYC) is based on percentage growth in company net sales over a five-year period and only applies to private companies.
To qualify for this exclusive shortlist, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of the starting calendar year, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales. Additionally, they have to be US based, privately held and independent. Revenue in the initial year must have been at least $200,000 and revenue in the most recent year must have been at least $2 million.
The 35-strong team at MindFireInc met this criteria, by achieving an annual revenue of $3.2 million last year, which is a significant improvement from their $202,809 revenue in 2004. It appears that MindFireInc are on a path to success. It will be interesting to monitor the index next year and see how their growth fares in 2009.
Posted on Sunday, 24 August 2008 at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)