Vertis, Quincy: The Clickable Sunday Circular is a killer app

At least that's what I think, in my not so humble opinion.

MediaPost The Return of the Sunday Circular:
"There are few sure things about the future of mobile marketing. The long-term effectiveness of micro-banners, 2D scan codes, branded apps, SMS interactivity, near-field communication technologies and the like are all open and interesting questions. If there is one model I would put my money on, however, it is mobile couponing. Few traditional marketing formats map so well to the phone. Instead of clipping, storing and remembering to carry these paper savings certificates, a mobile device makes it so much easier to locate the right discount and use it on the spot."

Malcolm Gladwell has it right. And the going forward value of Print.

Gladwell's review of Andreson's new book is a must read . A follow up post by Seth Godin is also useful. It's about the Information is FREE economy. Gladwell disagrees with Anderson. Godin disagrees with Gladwell. I agree with mostly Gladwell but also with some of Anderson and some of Godin.

Anderson's point is :

Rather, he seems to think of it as an iron law: “In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win.”

Gladwell's counter point is:

The only iron law here is the one too obvious to write a book about, which is that the digital age has so transformed the ways in which things are made and sold that there are no iron laws.

My agreement with Anderson and what it means for Print

To musicians who believe that their music is being pirated, Anderson is blunt. They should stop complaining, and capitalize on the added exposure that piracy provides by making money through touring, merchandise sales, and “yes, the sale of some of [their] music to people who still want CDs or prefer to buy their music online.” To the Dallas Morning News, he would say the same thing. Newspapers need to accept that content is never again going to be worth what they want it to be worth, and reinvent their business"

There are a couple of reasons people paid for Print in the past. The most obvious reason was the oligopoly of information delivery between Print and TV. To communicate with masses of people it was broadcast TV and national periodicals. Before TV went mass market, Print had the field to itself and newspapers and periodicals could earn the predictable profits of a monopoly business. After TV went mass market, there was still enough to go around.

But that was then. This is now. The logistics of information delivery while still significant on the internet are radically cheaper and faster than TV or mass market Print. Going forward competition in the information delivery business means low margins. If a business can thrive with low margins it's just another business problem.

The going forward value of Print
Consider the margins in t shirts and memorabilia. Why are people willing to pay $50 for a concert t-shirt? The easy explanation is that people are nuts. I have to agree that in general people are nuts, but that's beside the point. The point is that people make voluntary decisions to exhange hard earned money to buy t-shirts, collect art, and buy photo books.

The often under appreciated value of physical stuff - that includes Print - is that it signifies membership in a tribe. It meets a deep human need to see oneself and to see others as "people like us." To paraphrase, and change a bit "People who need people," are not, in fact, the luckiest people in the world. Needing people is a cause of great stress. Relieving that stress by owning objects that demonstrate to oneself and to others that one is part of a tribe is one of the drving forces behind collecting X, where x can equal books, Lladro, Van Goghs and action figures.

The value of the New York Times is partly the content. But mostly it is the nice warm feeling knowing that "people like us" read the New York Times.

The other values of Print are as platforms for search in physical space and as the platform for compare and contrast. But that's for another post.

Bookboon.com just keeps coming and coming

I got this in an email this morning. The point is

Download all our books directly from your Facebook profile. Download without formula, save you favorites and share them with your friends. You find our Facebook application here!

Anyway, here's the email:

15+ new books from Bookboon.com

The accounting Cycle and Current assets within Accounting

Java: Classes in Java Applications and C programming in Linux within IT

Project Management and Managing the Human Resource in the 21st century within Management

Computational Fluid Dynamics and Basic Concepts in Turbomachinery within Energy and the environment

Bookboon.com on Facebook
Download all our books directly from your Facebook profile. Download without formula, save you favorites and share them with your friends. You find our Facebook application here!

A Living Book: QR Codes connected to twitter

the living book was created as a part of a strategy of communication of the editoras online bookstore. strategy that envolves twitter, QRcodes, stickers and at the end a living book



More at http://tinyurl.com/2twb69

MPS: Xippa is in the game..PR release below.

I've been following Wade for a bit. My sense is that he has it just right. If I were an Indpendent, I would get a prospect to hire Wade. Let him get paid for doing the analysis. Then you have the evidence to craft just the right proposal to get the business. No muss, no fuss. Just value given, value received. If you are a global, or part of a global's channel, trying to use the Brand instead of the evidence to make the sale it's not a pretty prospect.

Xippa is a fresh-faced new startup from Seattle, Washington, created by Wade Cascini, a long term veteran of the document technology industry, to balance the scale on the customers side. The Managed Print Services industry has formed a speculative reputation at times for painful contracts and few remedies, in addition to the erosion of initial cost savings over the term of the contract. Due to his legal background and leadership experience at Global Imaging - Xerox, IKON, Pitney Bowes and a variety of other large document technology firms, Wade brings knowledge, expertise, and the enthusiasm to get the job done to the customer's corner.

Through his experience in the copy/printer industry, Wade saw a true need that he thought he could solve. Xippa.net sprang up from that need and has blossomed into a vibrant business that has provided consultation to everything from a small boutique law firm, to a multi-million dollar World-wide company. Wade genuinely believes in helping people, so much so that there is absolutely no fee unless he can help you. Xippa's revolutionary business model takes its fees directly from cost-savings.

How do you know if Xippa can help you? Here's a few simple questions: Does your copier lease end within the next 18 months? Are you currently looking for Managed Print Services? Are you looking to change copier vendors or renew your printer contract? If any of these are true, Xippa can help.

If you're happy with your current vendor but want to ensure you are getting “what you bargained for” or are one of the many end users who feel taken advantage of by Copier, Printer or Managed Print Service vendors, don't put up with it another minute. Call Xippa “that’s Zippa … with an X” today! (425) 898-1012.

Science textbooks? Not for much longer. But that's the good news for publishers who get it.

What might happen if the web has a two way connection to print delivered in the classroom?

Last things first:

Conclusion: I’ve presented a pessimistic view of the future of current scientific publishers. Yet I hope it’s also clear that there are enormous opportunities to innovate, for those willing to master new techonologies, and to experiment boldly with new ways of doing things. The result will be a great wave of innovation that changes not just how scientific discoveries are communicated, but also accelerates the way scientific discoveries are made.

Michael Nielsen
Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?:
What I will do instead is draw your attention to a striking difference between today’s scientific publishing landscape, and the landscape of ten years ago. What’s new today is the flourishing of an ecosystem of startups that are experimenting with new ways of communicating research, some radically different to conventional journals. Consider Chemspider, the excellent online database of more than 20 million molecules, recently acquired by the Royal Society of Chemistry. Consider Mendeley, a platform for managing, filtering and searching scientific papers, with backing from some of the people involved in Last.fm and Skype.

Or consider startups like SciVee (YouTube for scientists), the Public Library of Science, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, vibrant community sites like OpenWetWare and the Alzheimer Research Forum, and dozens more. And then there are companies like Wordpress, Friendfeed, and Wikimedia, that weren’t started with science in mind, but which are increasingly helping scientists communicate their research. This flourishing ecosystem is not too dissimilar from the sudden flourishing of online news services we saw over the period 2000 to 2005.

A Twitter Experiment

I just posted the following at Twitter: about 8:16 EDT.

Help! What's the bs quotient on my post at Digital Nirvana? 1 is total bullshit. 10 is Darwin. I gave it a 6. http://tinyurl.com/n4cakh 8 minutes ago from web

Score for EFI: VutekQS3220 In Czechoslovakia

from Twitter:
BoneswaCzech firm Conkline eyes export opportunities with Europe's first ...: ... through to installation, and also.. http://tinyurl.com/munzls
31 minutes ago

Czech firm Conkline eyes export opportunities with Europe's first Vutek QS3220
| printweek.com
"Conkline has ordered Europe's first Vutek QS 3220, the upgraded version of the UV-cured machine that was launched in May at Fespa Digital 2009.

'We decided to invest in our first UV machine to widen the range of applications we could produce, and because of the improved resolution and environmental benefits,' said international sales manager Marie Jezkova."

Globals: re: Twitter In Communication, Less is More and More is More, more or less.

Less is more in a push media. More is more in a pull media. Print and TV are push media. The web is a pull media. The web works best when you can pull more and more and more. The 140 characters of twitter, breaks the web into digestible bits. It's like sending postcards. With the tiny url it's like sending a clickable postcard.

from the FT.com

- A categorical imperative to twitter:
"The power of extreme brevity was brought home to me in another context when I told a friend that I was thinking of writing a book. He said: “It won’t work unless you can summarise the argument in a single sentence that can fit on Twitter.” Initially, I found this a repulsive idea. How stupid, I thought – name me a great book that can be summarised in 140 characters? But when I considered the matter further, I realised that most great works of political philosophy could be summarised on Twitter. Indeed, their very greatness lies in the fact that they can be boiled down to a sentence."

There's been a lot of confusion among the globals as to "HOW TO USE TWITTER?" To give you an idea, here's how the Whitehouse uses it. If it works for them it should work for you. By the way, can you see how easy it would be to do a clickable postcard. The 140 characters on the front, the QR + tinyurl on the back.

Watch, engage, discuss: Health Reform Office Director Nancy-Ann DeParle Facebook live-stream chat at 5:00 http://bit.ly/tCHXt

Brian Bond of OPE : from being "a gay kid growing up in rural Missouri" to hosting WH LGBT Pride reception http://bit.ly/YUpmM

On Tap: 2:15 President of Colombia; 4:25 President & First Lady LGBT Pride Event; 5:00 Live-stream chat w/ Health Reform Director DeParle

President Obama wants to hear your health reform questions: http://bit.ly/Zm1RD #WHHCQ4:11 PM Jun 27th from web

Can you say what you want in 140 characters?
If not, keep trying until you can. Here are some of my latest attempts. I'm not there yet, but it is good practice. And it's a good way to see what one has been thinking about. If I knew how to make a video, I could let you see and listen to my blablabla in addition to having to read it.

@guyglover Mobile = pull media. Print and TV = push media. Clickable Print is the killer ap (Pr+ #QR = P2P TV) http://tinyurl.com/kkdf6c

IBM is missing the boat on smart schools. Talk to Ricoh/Infoprint. They get print piece. Clearly you don't. http://tinyurl.com/q2zfz7

@skariann The reality for journalists to face: http://bit.ly/12oIG2, consider the value of journo as moderator..Oprah? or Charlie Rose

Tally Suggests Ad Age Is Over -- or, at Least, It's Evolved. . . http://tinyurl.com/n9mx8o If Q = social media A= #QR codes

Score one for EFI! Monarch (Hagen) out. EFI in.

RFID inventory is the cool part. The rest is nice.

Foster City, CA -- June 29, 2009 -- . . . UNIMAC Graphics, a complete pre-media, print and digital solutions company, has chosen EFI MIS solutions to streamline workflow, improve productivity and place the company on a stable platform. UNIMAC Graphics replaced their previous MIS system with Monarch Foundation (formally Hagen™ OA) and was able to successfully implement order processing, RFID inventory management and accounts receivable in a record six weeks.