This page contains an archive of all entries with the category software. 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)
Did you know that you can start creating VDP applications right now without purchasing any additional software? It's true, you probably already have the software to create personalised documents, images and even webpages and you don't need to spend another cent!
Not many Adobe software users realise that InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver all include personalisation features. Personalisation in these products is nothing new, they've all supported it for several versions. So you can take your copy of CS (any version) and start creating personalised applications today!
I can already hear alarm bells ringing from VDP software vendors as they read through this blog; this is definitely the one Adobe product feature that they don't want people to find. But you can't hide it, personalisation support exists in Adobe products, so let's look at how (and if) it works...
Continue reading "Free VDP!" »
Posted on Wednesday, 10 October 2007 at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
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)
Protecting sensitive documents from counterfeiting is a growing concern. To help combat document fraud, scientists in the Xerox Innovation Group have developed a set of speciality imaging effects to add an extra level of security to documents. This technology, known as 'Speciality Imaging' is supported through embedded commands in Xerox's VIPP variable information language.
As these imaging effects are part of VIPP, they can be completely variable which provide signficant security benefits to documents such as documents such as coupons, tickets, identity cards, and other security-related applications.
Not surprisingly, Xerox has limited use of this technology to Xerox production printers and controllers, but this in turn provides a unique selling point for Xerox.
Currently there are two VDP software solutions which support these speciality imaging features; Xerox VI Designer and Lytrod Designer.
Continue reading "Speciality Imaging" »
Posted on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Print on-Demand Solutions recently published a performance benchmark comparison on Darwin versus uDirect. This comparison study indicated that Darwin was consistently faster than uDirect across different application types and output formats; with results varying from twice as fast to over 22 times as fast, depending on the output format. I was quite surprised to learn that the performance gap between these two products was so signficant, so I decided to verify the results for myself.
Continue reading "Darwin vs. uDirect" »
Posted on Thursday, 8 November 2007 at 8:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tim Perrett has figured out how to get XMPie uProduce working with PostGRE SQL, which is just about the only database that XMPie doesn't support out-of-the-box. If you're an XMPie hero and you really know what you're doing, you can follow Tim's solution on his blog.
Posted on Wednesday, 5 December 2007 at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
A new 'google group' has popped up for XMPie users. This forum is for "anyone who in any way shape or form uses XMPie technology; from uCreate in InDesign, to uProduce API integration for workflows". It was only launched in the last 24 hours, so there's not much acivity just yet, but I'm sure conversations will start bubbling away soon... Sign up now and join this community.
I should point out that there's already an active XMPie user forum running for members of the XMPie Users Group, but there's nothing wrong with building a larger XMPie community, so why not sign up to both groups?
Posted on Thursday, 6 December 2007 at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
There is an unfortunate myth circulating the Australian printing industry that XMPie software only works with Xerox printers — I've had several conversations with different organisations over the past couple of months, who are surprised to learn that XMPie works with non-Xerox printers!
This rumour was probably spurred by Malcolm Auld's recent article in Print21 Direct, which states, "Since it [XMPie software] is a Fuji Xerox software, it is optimised to work with the company's base of printing companies. While that is the largest digital printing base in the country, it still leaves out a number of opportunities."
While Xerox may own XMPie, their technology is definitely not limited to printing on Xerox devices. In fact, there are a number of local XMPie users here in Australia who only have non-Xerox printers, including HP Indigo, Xeikon and NexPress.
Continue reading "Misinformation" »
Posted on Thursday, 6 December 2007 at 8:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
The term 'PURL' has definitely gained attention over recent years, establishing itself alongside industry acronyms including CTP, JDF, VDP and others. Today, it seems that everyone is talking about PURLs — from print providers through to vendors. Despite all this talk about PURLs, not many people really understand what the heck a 'PURL' actually is.
Outside the realm of direct marketing, 'PURL' is an acronym for Persistent Uniform Resource Locator; a URL redirection technique where an intermediate resolution service serves client requests for a defined URL and associates the request with the 'actual' URL on the web server, returning it to the client.
The use of the term 'PURL' within direct marketing refers to 'personalised URLs'. the acronym 'PURL' was first coined (and trademarked) by marketing solution provider Nimblefish. While the term 'PURL' may have been snatched, it hasn't stopped other vendors and providers from adopting variations of the term. Pageflex, MindFire and Indros Group use the term 'Personalised URLs', while XMPie coined the mouthful 'Response URLs'. Despite these various naming conventions, there's little ambiguity in what we're referring to.
While the concept of a personalised URL maybe clear, there's definitely an industry misconception about how they actually work. Many believe that creating PURLs is not for the faint hearted — you either need to fork out mega-bucks for an all dancing cross-media software package or hand your campaign and dollars over to a 'PURL' ASP provider, who have the magical know-how to whip together some personalised web pages for your next marketing campaign. The reality is that creating personalised URLs is far from magic, it's actually surprisingly easy. In fact, you probably have some or all of the tools to create your own personalised landing pages right now, and you don't even know it.
Continue reading "Magical PURLs" »
Posted on Thursday, 10 January 2008 at 1:38 PM | 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)
It's been a few years since I've seen DesignMerge in action and haven't had an opportunity, or reason, to use it myself, so I thought it was time I took a closer look.
Before you read on, I would like to throw in the following disclaimer; my evaluation is intended to be an independent, subjective analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of this software. It is not intended to be an exhaustive analysis, but identifies the key functional areas of the software and assesses them against similar VDP products. If you are looking at making a purchasing decision for VDP software, then I would encourage you to try this software for yourself, rather than basing your decision on my evaluation.
Continue reading "DesignMerge Evaluation" »
Posted on Wednesday, 6 February 2008 at 7:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
I've just received feedback from Meadows regarding my previous entry on DesignMerge. They have kindly clarified specific areas on my original evaluation, which may have misrepresented the capabilities of some product features. I have edited my original entry to remove any misunderstanding. In addition they raised some additional points, which I've commented respectively.
Continue reading "More on DesignMerge" »
Posted on Saturday, 9 February 2008 at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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)
Intrigued by the recent video personalisation demonstration using Photoshop CS3 and XMPie uImage at the recent XMPie Users Group Conference, I decided to try this for myself. I purchased a suitable video from iStockphoto and gave it a whirl!
Continue reading "Personalised Videos" »
Posted on Sunday, 10 February 2008 at 10:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Further to my last entry, I had some time during my 15 hour flight home to try some more video personalisation in Photoshop and XMPie uImage. I've simplified my original approach so that it's easier customise and have added in additional personalised text and a logo.
Continue reading "Try It Yourself" »
Posted on Wednesday, 13 February 2008 at 1:29 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)
We've just finished exhibiting at ad:tech, an interactive marketing conference held in Sydney (and other cities worldwide). We went along to demonstrate to delegates how XMPie can be leveraged as an interactive content publishing platform, shifting it far outside the boundaries of cross-channel direct marketing.
We created a demo application of a fictional music online store, named 'earfull', where users can check out new releases for their favourite genre, shop for music and gifts, and essentially have a complete 'Amazon-style' tailored shopping experience—completely driven by XMPie's Interactive Content Port (ICP) technology.
Continue reading "Listen to This!" »
Posted on Friday, 14 March 2008 at 6:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Just to prove that we didn't create our Earfull demo with the aid of some smoke and few mirrors, Tim's put together a rough-n-ready screencast illustrating how he used ActionScript to post variables directly from the Flash form to XMPie uProduce through an Interactive Content Port (ICP). In his 17 minute screencast, Tim also explains how he also triggers an API request from Flash to generate a PDF proof on uProduce, then polls the server at intervals to report back the job status and displays an appropriate message on the Flash page.
Disclaimer: this screencast is not for the faint-hearted. If you're not familiar with Flash and ActionScript, then please don't try this at home, or bombard me or Tim with endless questions. Yes, it can be done, without any need for sticky tape, but does require an intermediate knowledge of ActionScript and Flash in the first place.
Posted on Wednesday, 19 March 2008 at 9:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
As I shared in an earlier entry, last month at the Users Group Conference, XMPie demonstrated how it's possible to create personalised videos with uImage using the animation feature in Photoshop CS3 Extended. I've spent the past few weeks thinking about applications for video personalisation and looking for a new project.
I was so impressed by the use of image personalisation in the Bar da Boa beer campaign that I wanted to see how easy it would be to create a similar effect in Photoshop. I found a suitable image of a dancer on iStockphoto and thought I'd give it a try.
Continue reading "Let's Dance!" »
Posted on Saturday, 22 March 2008 at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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)
I'm always upset whenever I see bad use of image personalisation. It's great that this technology exists, but just because you can buy the software, doesn't necessarily qualify you to use it. I believe many print providers get excited when they see the type of effects can be achieved with image personalisation software, but it's comparable to looking at the back of an Adobe Photoshop box and saying "wow, I can create effects that look like this!" Sure you can, but you need to have half a creative brain in the first place. Just because you have a design tool doesn't make you a designer.
I picked an article in a local print magazine today that features a story on a well-known pharmaceutical company. The company worked with their print provider to incorporate a personalised image in an eight-page direct mail brochure targeting Doctors. While the story didn't share any results on the campaign effectiveness and ROI, I'm sure it caught the attention of the recipients, but probably for all the wrong reasons. The print provider used image personalisation software to create an effect similar to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame sidewalk, but it really misses the mark.
Continue reading "Don't Try This At Home" »
Posted on Tuesday, 15 April 2008 at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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)
I had a chance to catch up with Erik Charles from MindFireInc this week. For those who aren't familar with MindFireInc, they specialise in offering a personalised URL service for direct marketing. There appears to be some misconception across the industry regarding MindFireInc's business model—their Web site doesn't give too much away. MindFireInc provide an ASP model, commonly referred today as Software as a Service, or 'SaaS'. Their product, LookWho'sClicking, or LWC, enables users to create and deploy personalised micro sites through a wizard-based interface and track responses. I thought I'd share what I learnt from my call with Erik and explain what their product actually does.
Continue reading "LookWho'sClicking" »
Posted on Thursday, 24 April 2008 at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Application Architect Tim Perrett has moved the VDP boundary once again, this time by building a demo application integrating into XMPie, purely written in Flex (his first Flex project). He's even writing to the database dircectly from Flex through XMPie ICP. Another testimony to the open, flexible architecture of XMPie PersonalEffect.
Continue reading "XMPie and Flex" »
Posted on Wednesday, 30 April 2008 at 8:02 AM | 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)
I used to wonder why major advertising agencies haven't embraced VDP. If personalisation can add so much more relevance to a target audience and increase ROI, then why haven't agencies snatched it up? Surely they should be leading the pack, dishing out personalised cross-media campaigns like they're going out of fashion. Shouldn't these the award winning creative gurus have XMPie, PageFlex, LookWhosClicking and a handful other VDP solutions coming out of their wazoo?
Surprisingly they don't. Many VDP vendors have tried selling into ad agencies but failed. I understand none of the top ranking ad agencies including the big guys like DDB, JWT, Y&R, Saatchi and Saatchi, Wunderman, or Leo Burnett have invested in VDP software, let alone use it for everyday direct marketing campaigns. But why?
Continue reading "VDP in Agencies" »
Posted on Monday, 12 May 2008 at 9:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
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)
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)
Today, we're seeing an increasing number of Web-to-Print (W2P) solutions on the market. This was particularly evident at drupa this year, where everyone seemed to have their own W2P solution. Some industry analysts have have even dubbed drupa 2008 as the "Web-to-Print drupa". OK, let's not get too carried away now...
I've done some homework of my own and put together a list of over 30 different W2P solutions available today. That's a lot of products! Many of these products claim to offer VDP capabilities—it's almost like a feature checkbox for W2P suppliers; "tick, yes, we do VDP". It surprised me when talking to many of these suppliers at drupa that when asked about their VDP support, many exclaimed "yes of course, we do that!" But it's important to understand to what level these W2P solutions offer support for VDP, as I've found that many only offer a mail-merge approach which often isn't sufficient for most VDP campaigns.
Continue reading "Web-to-Print and VDP" »
Posted on Tuesday, 24 June 2008 at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
I spent some time looking at Scriptura yesterday. Scriptura is a VDP solution from Inventive Designers, a Belgium-based company. If you haven't heard of Scriptura before, you'll be forgiven. They've kept a fairly low profile to-date, in fact I've only recently come across them. Despite their quiet presence, they have a growing number of distributors across Europe, US, Canada and Australia. Their Scriptura solution comprises of two core products; Scriptura Designer and Scriptura Server. Both products are Java-based which means they can run in a cross-platform environment through the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). To my knowledge, this is the only VDP solution that runs exclusively in a Java environment. In this entry, I'll take a close look at Scriptura and explain some key differences between this solution and other VDP products.
Continue reading "Scriptura" »
Posted on Friday, 27 June 2008 at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
We're starting to see video personalisation popping up regularly in direct marketing campaigns. There are now several good examples of effective video personalisation campaigns, including supporterscheerup, Dexter, Bar da Boa and Ave a Word, to name just a few. These are all online viral campaigns which use a FGF (friend-get-friend) model, where a visitor provides information about a friend, which in turn triggers an email notification to the friend calling them to the Web site where they can view their personalised video.
Continue reading "Magicomm Video" »
Posted on Friday, 11 July 2008 at 7:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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)
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)
QR (Quick Response) Codes are gaining a lot of interest in Australia. For those who aren't familar with these little marks, a QR Code is a two-dimensional bar code that can be used in convenience-oriented applications for mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging). Using an encoded URL, a QR Code can incorporated in outdoor and print media advertising, including signs, buses, newspapers. A mobile phone user can use the integrated camera in their phone to capture the QR Code, then use reader software on the phone to decode the barcode into the URL and view the Web page in a browser.
Posted on Wednesday, 13 August 2008 at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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)