Heidelberg

Labor shortages, advancing technology and customer demands are issues driving web printers toward streamlined operations. BY ALLISON ECKEL "I.N.S. is Looking the Other Way as Illegal Immigrants Fill Jobs: Enforcement Changes in Face of Labor Shortage." This headline sang out from the front page of an early March edition of The New York Times. The article reports that the current pool of labor in this country is so small that the Immigration and Naturalization Service is turning its back on any illegal immigrants who are contributing to the U.S. workforce. Where did everyone go to create such a crisis? Well, the Baby Boomers are retiring—some earlier

Lieber Vater! In many ways, CIP3 can give thanks to the DRUPA exhibition in Germany. DRUPA 1995 was the event that really brought attention to the CIP3 initiative. DRUPA 2000 will see several conceptual aspects of the initiative realized. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO In late 1993, Heidelberger Druckmaschinen initiated discussions in Germany with the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics. The two organizations, later joined by bindery innovator Polar-Mohr, formed the foundation for the CIP3 cooperative—a study group known as CIP3, the International Cooperation for Integration of Prepress, Press and Postpress. By DRUPA 1995, the CIP3 movement took official form. Its objective: Facilitate data exchange

The DRUPA exhibition, scheduled for May 18-31, in Dusseldorf, Germany, is now just one month away. Digital prepress technology trends targeting the international show include new PDF-based workflows, new color management tools and a variety of solutions to further automate front-end functionality. To map out the digital prepress direction of DRUPA 2000, Printing Impressions went direct to the sources . . . Vector VersatilityDennis Aubrey, CEO of the Altamira Group, on the limitless nature of images at DRUPA 2000 and into the next year—when digital images are no longer restricted in size or resolution. The year 2000 will see a production world in which

Celebrating its 25th (silver) anniversary, Graphics of the Americas 2000—held February 4th to 6th in Miami Beach—was the first international printing and converting trade show of the new millennium. But, unlike the Y2K fears that generated false media headlines as the new millennium approached, this event lived up to all of its advanced billing. Catering to both the U.S. and Latin American graphic arts industries, Graphics of the Americas 2000 featured more than 23,000 attendees and 1,500+ exhibit booths encompassed within more than 500,000 square feet of exhibit space. For the first time, the show occupied all four halls of the Miami Beach Convention

Tucked away in Upstate New York, 40-year-old Brodock Press has gone from a reclamation project to one of the leading commercial printers in the Northeast. BY ERIK CAGLE Lost in all the hype surrounding Broadway, the Statue of Liberty and even Jerry Seinfeld, lies a New York that is largely unheralded, dwarfed by the image of the Big Apple. Upstate New York, with its rolling hills, mountains and more than a few lakes, is as majestic and breathtaking as any site in the city of concrete and steel. Perhaps Utica, NY-based printer Brodock Press was also a victim of its environment—tucked far, far away

The sea of e-commerce companies is expanding; Seybold Boston was wired, so to speak, to the Internet. printCafe, a new Internet endeavor, captured the most attention at the Boston show last month, but so did new digital workflows, color management tools and Adobe's latest—a bridge for PDF. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Walking into Seybold Boston last month it seemed almost unbelievable that the words Internet and startup are still synonymous. Everywhere you looked, it was dotcom this, dotcom that—if you stood still too long, you were at serious risk of finding a dotcom appearing after your last name on your Seybold badge. Then

You gotta love America. Only here could Bill Gates be watching almost idly as the Justice Department prepares to dismantle his empire just as changes in information technology were about to do it for him. Ironically, while Microsoft is about to be broken up into two or three pieces, just about every other industry seems to be moving toward larger and larger conglomerates in search of so-called synergies. That the payoffs are few and far between doesn't seem to dampen anyone's enthusiasm—and certainly not that of the investment bankers and corporate lawyers that put these deals together. Of course, this has been going on for some

Dozens of strategic meetings, several industry-wide rumors and (give or take) $537 million later, Vancouver-based Creo buys the worldwide digital prepress business of Scitex. How will this change the computer-to-plate market? What does this mean for Scitex digital prepress devices? Creo Vice President David Brown is the answer man. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO There are times in the commercial printing industry, specifically in the area of digital prepress, when breaking news tends to be slow. Manufacturers are quiet; there is nothing notable to report...business as usual. Then, Creo buys Scitex. Not completely out of left field but, still, in its own right, a

DRUPA 1995 was the beginning of the thermal computer-to-plate frenzy. Leading the charge: Creo and Kodak. Five years later, new platesetting initiatives are poised for DRUPA 2000. What digital platesetters will be announced at DRUPA 2000? Dusseldorf, Germany, holds the answers. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO At DRUPA 1995, a tiny Creo Products—tiny compared with the CTP giants Linotype-Hell, Gerber and Scitex— touted the production and workflow merits of thermal CTP for commercial printing. Creo's message was all thermal. Kodak consumables were Creo's enabling technology, bridging Creo's thermal output engines with the digital plate production demands of the average commercial printer. Who didn't take

Paper cutters do not advance as quickly as press and prepress systems, but competition for the cutting-edge is heating up. BY ERIK CAGLE In an age when high-tech gizmos have proliferated the commercial printing landscape, the paper cutter stands as a testament to meat-and-potatoes machinery, joining such luminaries as the internal combustion engine, the hammer and the light bulb. Monitors and computer automation have managed to sneak their way onto the old school tool, but in the end the cutter remains what it was 25 years ago—a cutter. John Porter, division manager of LDR International, the distributor for Itoh in the United States,