Software - Web-to-print

Increasingly, printers are using e-commerce to streamline their businesses. BY CAROLINE MILLER Efficiency is the newest buzzword in the Internet realm. In the world of commercial printing, everybody needs it yesterday. And with deadlines shrinking by the minute, efficiency can be a printer's best friend or worst enemy. So where does a printer turn when he wants to improve his business efficiency and distinguish himself from his competitors? The World Wide Web. "The Internet is just an even more powerful tool that will provide cleaner data and better data mining capabilities. People have always wanted to manage things in one bucket; I think that

Execs from Dome Printing, Lake County Press, PlanetPrint.com, Graphic Enterprises and R.R. Donnelley & Sons sit down with Printing Impressions to map out the state of color management, PDF, remote proofing, thermal plates and digital asset management. BY CAROLINE MILLER The curtain has closed on DRUPA 2000 and the fairground lights have faded, returning Dusseldorf, Germany, to normal. The grand dame of international shows is over for another four years. But while the steady hum of new presses that once filled the air in Dusseldorf has gone silent, the buzz surrounding much of the technology has increased. That DRUPA buzz will turn

The role of printer is today the role of content manager. Print buyers are turning to printers for more than one-stop services of an ink-and-paper nature. How do your services measure up? BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Do your customers have instant access to their files over the Web? As soon as you have scanned or copied their images onto your server, are they available through a secure Website for your clients? Do your clients come to you for scanning, image distribution—and printing? What's more, do you want to do all of this stuff? Unfortunately, you may not have a choice. Today's truly progressive commercial

Streamlining prepress production with PDF optimizes cross-platform functionality and consistent, predictable output. While some commercial printers are content to watch PDF's development, others are embracing the still-emerging technology full force. Which approach is yours? BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO This is the second installment in Printing Impressions' ongoing look at PDF workflows in practice at a variety of commercial printing and digital prepress operations. Part I appeared in the June issue. PDF FILES are independent of platform or operating system. PDF files are small and self-contained, with fonts, images and graphics embedded within each PDF document, streamlining electronic transmission and preflighting. PDF files offer

It is increasingly difficult to find major vendors that have not jumped onto the XML bandwagon. Adobe, Agfa, Heidelberg and MAN Roland have teamed up to develop the Job Definition Format (JDF) using XML, while CreoScitex and Quark are both building XML-based applications to drive their own systems. In the e-commerce space, printCafe, PrintTalk—a nascent group of firms—and others are building transaction and supply chain management systems based on eXtensible Markup Language. Not to be left out, the on-demand group PODI has published a specification called PPML—Personalized Print Markup Language—based on this spec, and still another industry initiative, called the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP),

RESTON, VA—Addressing a growing issue as computer management systems and e-solutions tailored for the commercial printing market become standard operating procedure at printing companies, more than 16 of the most prominent print management system and e-commerce companies in the industry have announced plans to form a community to define a "best practice" common and open communications interface between their products. The project has been named PrintTalk. Current participating companies include Avanti Computer Systems, Cirqit.com, Collabria, Graphic Arts IT, GraphiTech Computer Systems, httprint, Impresse, MediaFlex.com, Noosh Inc., Parsec Corp., Press-Tige Software, Printable.com, PrintChannel.com, Profit Control Systems, Streamline Solutions and WAM!NET. "The

Homespun color-managed workflows can save production time and consumables costs. The trick is finding the right set of technologies and practices that work best to meet the needs of your production schedule—and your clients. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Controlling the intricacies of color management and ICC profiling in any print production workflow is the equivalent of trying to control the weather and the tides—then reach a standard agreement on the color hues and tonal properties of both. Each printing operation has its own approach to managing color—its own method of predicting the tides, calculating varying weather patterns and pinpointing the color gamuts of each.

A Fortune 100 company was conducting an assessment of how it uses digital assets. Management discovered that a single stock photograph had been purchased by some 50 departments at a cost of $500 per purchase. With just this one image, the company could have saved approximately $24,000 if technicians had placed the image into a company-wide digital asset management (DAM) system! Now think about the cost savings if the company had done the same with 100 or more images. The cost is staggering, not to mention the time and employee productivity lost finding, purchasing, receiving, then finally using the image in each project.

CHICAGO—In what could be the beginning of a serious struggle for control of their customers' access, four of the top commercial printing conglomerates in the U.S. have joined forces in an effort that could leave the new crop of dotcom print facilitators on the outside looking in. R.R. Donnelley & Sons, based here, along with Banta Corp., Quad/Graphics and Quebecor World, have announced that they are "working together to create supply-chain efficiencies for industry participants worldwide by establishing standards and leveraging enabling technologies." According to a joint statement, "by building a foundation for industry standards, the four companies will enable customers who frequently work

PALO ALTO, CA—Noosh Inc. has signed a three-year agreement with Moore Corp. The agreement will allow Moore to process its print-related projects through noosh.com, and for the two companies to conduct joint sales and marketing activities, as well as set the stage for potential technology integration. "The Noosh Live Jobs collaborative technology complements Moore's digital product offerings and will enhance our ability to create a more robust environment to handle digital information,'' explains Denise Miano, vice president of emerging technologies at Moore. "The agreement allows Moore commercial print customers who are subscribers to the Noosh service to manage the design, production and management of