Saturday, August 29, 2009

Does Riso Kagaku Corporation trade in the States? They should be in my printernet portfolio.

The thing is that after looking around a bit, it seems they only trade in Japan. Since I'm just an amateur I don't trade in Japan. It's hard enough separating the signal from the noise in the States. So, if anyone has some advice, please let me know. ADR perhaps?

Why am I interested?
First because it seems a "printernet portfolio" is not a terrible idea. Check out the sidebar. Since the first of the year, my picks have delivered over 75%. And second, David Murphy from RISO took the time to point me to their YouTube channel, on a Saturday afternoon, no less.

Plus I love the Teacher Tools that No Teacher Should be Without. All you have to do is add the right content and some smart QR, and poof! A school can buy Professional Development for the price of a MFP.

Meanwhile, the video is much better than anything I've seen at Xerox, HP or anyone else as of today. Should be an interesting Print '09.

My not so humble advice is
that they get in touch with CGX and print a gezillion clickable postcards to take every prospect on the planet to this video. Then get CodeZ QRs to get all the data about who took the time to click on the video. Then give those names to the field force within a day of when they clicked.

Or if someone has the brain space, customize each mailing for each rep. Then save all the postage and print them on RISO boxes in the first place. It's show, not tell kind of thing.

What I think I learned this morning at Twitter about Printernet Publishing and getting to zero cost Professional Development.

I'm trying to figure out how to create a zero cost Professional Development product for High School Ed, first in the States, and then be able to scale world wide.

I hate the high cost of PD that is widely regarded as less than useless. While there are some offerings that make sense, most of them are ways to look like something is happening, without anything really happening.

It's a "busy, being busy" situation that gives the appearance of something useful. Meanwhile, our school systems are under sever strain.

My hypothesis is the #clickableprint( print + Smart #QR) that is #printernet published could solve the Professional Development problem while giving our Print industry a large previously un addressed market. It could add defensible value to MPS offerings and create a steady stream of work for PSPs.

At any rate, I'm starting to use twitter to do my research and think through how this might work.

An edited selection of this morning's tweets from ToughLoveforX, follow:
@kokh Unfortunately, I never learned to read Russian. But , consider #printernet published #clickableprint. Xerox in Russia would love it.


RT @VOQS great nwslter system ! http://bit.ly/28Zmrr Me: RSS to Email nwslter to Print nwslter to #Clickableprint newsletter. ya think?

Sustainable Communications at The Hannover Consultancy (UK) http://bit.ly/1L67g Me: sustainable ed? zero cost Profl. Dev? education = HR.

Newspaper Archives http://bit.ly/4bQ79x in #clickableprint #printernet published=1 part of free Professional Development for HS #education.


Newspaper Archives has the right tools for teachers. http://bit.ly/3WdBcD But teachers don't want PDF. They want paper to hand out.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Doctors, health care groups use Twitter to reach public. Twitterstreams in #clickableprint?

The problem with tweets is that they have a half life of minutes. If printer streams are published at the MFP or the CRD or the PSP, Twitter-streams-in-print solves that problem.

Doctors, health care groups use Twitter to reach public:
"Dr. Rahul Parikh, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente in Walnut Creek, decided Twitter would enable him to point his patients to reliable information so ``they wouldn't get worried unnecessarily.''

He used Twitter to send links to Web-based articles about swine flu that he found enlightening. He also informed patients of Kaiser flu clinics and let the patients know when he would be out of the office.

His 59 followers did not learn about his personal life. ``I don't think people would find it that interesting that I'm working out,'' he said.

Parikh has told his patients not to tweet him with person medical questions because of privacy concerns. Such questions are best handled through private e-mails, he said.

Parikh, though, does believe Twitter can be an important tool to help empower patients to make better decisions about their health care. He recently posted links to information about sunscreen, bathtub accidents that injure 43,000 children a year, and surprising medical myths."

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation could use printernet published #clickableprint.

Email newsletters are the low hanging fruit.

Imagine the following copy on an A4 with Smart QR. Delivered by the USPS in "If it fits, it ships" boxes to community health centers around the country. Then imagine doing it every week. A couple of million A4's delivered in two days, with a minimal carbon footprint.

RWJF News Digest: Childhood Obesity

This frequently updated news digest on the subject of Childhood Obesity highlights key articles from major journals and news publications. The digest is a free service of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, by The Advisory Board Company.

Report Suggests Unsafe Neighborhood Increases Likelihood of Overweight Among Urban Teens
A study published in the online journal Public Health suggests that adolescents who live in an urban neighborhood that feels unsafe may be more likely to be overweight, Reuters reports.

Report Suggests Most Parents Dissatisfied with Availability of Healthy Food Choices at Child's School
In a recent survey by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, only one-third of parents gave their children’s public schools an “A” grade for offering healthy food choices, according to AnnArbor.com.

Wisconsin Coalition Launches Walk-to-School Program for Local Schools
The Coulee Region Childhood Obesity Coalition in Wisconsin has announced plans to launch a week-long effort designed to encourage more children to walk or bike to school, WKBT La Crosse reports.

Nevada School District to Participate in HHS Childhood Obesity Study
Nevada’s Lyon County School District is one of a number of school districts nationwide to elect to participate in a new childhood obesity study being led by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Dayton Courier reports.

Florida State University Receives $75,000 RWJF Grant to Study Obesity in Latino Children
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded a two-year, $75,000 grant to Florida State University (FSU) College of Medicine, which will enable a researcher to study how rural clinics and school health programs inform Latino parents about their children’s weight, the American Chronicle reports.

Pennsylvania Department of Education Awards Funding to Support Childhood Obesity Prevention Efforts
The Pennsylvania Department of Education has awarded $5,000 grants to 40 middle schools statewide to support their efforts to address childhood obesity, the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader reports.

© 2009 The Advisory Board Company. All rights reserved.

Oops! for the hometeam: HP Takes Top Spot from Xerox in Global MPS Market Share -

Might be time for X to consider education printernets and Google-apps for MPS and a bunch of other stuff.

Photizo: HP Takes Top Spot from Xerox in Global MPS Market Share -
HP’s Enterprise Printing Blog -:

>Photizo Group an industry analyst firm focused on the Managed Print Services market, announced,

What’s more, Photizo Group’s 2009 MPS Market Forecast Report revealed that the MPS market is expanding dramatically. No surprise to us at HP.

The Photizo Stats:
The MPS market will be more than $50B by 2013, and more than 50 percent of all devices will be under MPS contract.
HP has overtaken Xerox as leader in the global MPS sector in 2008, with a 34 percent share of global market.

Do customers care about vendor market share? Yes. Market share figures are an important piece of the puzzle as companies busy sketching out their MPS strategy begin to arm themselves with all the data they can find about the space.

Twitter to Blog to . . .Printernet Published #clickablePRINT?

After 35 years in the game, I no longer have to "get to work." Since my day job is managing my IRA and it's hard to stay asleep after about 5:30 am EDT and there is no one is around to talk to, I dip into the twitter stream.

I thought it might be interesting-to-you what I found interesting-to-me. I edited down the list to Education and Printernet related tweets.

Education:
. requirement for “certification” . the prospects accept mentoring by the best teachers in the school." Patrick Welsh http://bit.ly/2KdAOy
"The Ed.D. and Other Certification Charades". by Patrick Welsh at NYT blog about #education. http://bit.ly/2KdAOy
“Taxonomies are dead. Long live metadata!" http://ow.ly/lEwB Nice example of a vigorous debate. Too bad it's not available in Print.

Noel Ward: So Miyakoshi builds the press and Océ does the controller. http://bit.ly/1609al
ME: Is there a difference btwn CrystalPoint solid toner and Color Cube? see Noel Ward, pt 3 interview with #Oce http://bit.ly/1609al
Watching Bloomberg..7:11 EDT. good talk about media biz.
RT@BSURVEILLANCE This morning on #SURV: Moffett, Wolff, Gregory, Boockvar, Biggs, Stephanopoulos, Loeb, Wittmann, and Bloomberg's Al HuntCraig Moffet said " anywhere TV" seems reasonable" biz model. Me: anywhere/time TV means anywhere/anytime Print. Go printernet!Moffet: twitter is the domain of old folks like me. 50 somethings are not all that different from 18 to 24'sFox "Cable TV is the juggernaut of the next couple of years?" Moffet, "yes."Michael Wolfe: Poltico v WaPo Head count : 75 vs 500 reporters. "Can a news organization be all things to all people as they once were?"Wolfe:TV. Cable is not a media biz. Wolfe: "problem is when you become a utility biz". Me: that's a feature, not a bug.Moffet: "The Death of Long Form" Me: reading was always a niche market, The good news is that it's growing. Print is for long form reading.via @Greg Walters "Now IS The Time for Managed Print Services - Hardware Sales Down as Much as 30% by Year End" http://bit.ly/40ENca #MPS

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Anyone else notice that Kodak is 5.10 this morning?

Go Printernet! 'Nuff said.

Full Disclosure: Long EK.

The Economist does an article on 2d Codes! It ain't just QR.

The still haven't gotten the story about smart QR that delivers clickstreams, but it's only a matter of time. I still like clickable print better than "snapable print." Easier to say. But whatever you call it, the chances got a lot better that printernet published clickable print is the next big thing for print.
Reading bar codes with mobile phones: Snap it, click it, use it
Aug 20th 2009 | SEATTLE
From The Economist print edition

Bar codes, then, could be on the point of breaking out of their native environment. It has been a long and curious journey from the supermarket checkout.
. . .
The codes made by JAGTAG, of Princeton, New Jersey, for example, can be photographed using a camera phone and then sent to a messaging service that analyses the code and sends back appropriate information. Sports Illustrated used the JAGTAG system when it sent its readers those extra images of swimsuit models, and the system has also been used to advertise Nike, Sony and a restaurant chain called Qdoba.

. . . "In America and Europe, three types of bar code, called QR Code, Data Matrix and Ezcode, are likely to become common. The first two are free, open standards. Ezcode is owned by a New York-based firm called Scanbuy, but it, too, is available free, for general purposes. The firm behind it makes its money by charging advertisers and publishers when people use it.

In July three mobile-phone operators in Spain—Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone—agreed to load software that recognises Ezcode. Scanbuy has also signed a deal with two Danish operators and two in South America. In the United States, a Samsung mobile phone, the Exclaim, has become the first to be sold with Scanbuy’s program already loaded.

Meanwhile a Swiss software firm called Kaywa has been collaborating with Welt Kompakt, a condensed version of Die Welt, one of Germany’s leading newspapers, to run QR Codes next to articles. It has also developed software for SBB, the Swiss Federal Railway, so that passengers can scan 2-D bar codes on trains and at stations to call up timetables.

read the full story at | The Economist:

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Clickable A4 for Flat World Knowledge. E- newsletters are a low hanging fruit.

All you have to do is ad the TinyPurls and Smart QR. Then use USPS to send 350 each to 200 Flat World Knowledge users. Reward them with credits for the print stuff. 70,000 leaflets on the street in a day or two, with a minimal carbon footprint with a $960 distribution cost. Plus all that data from the click streams.


Wednesday, August 26, 2009


Students are Saving $3 Million!

Thank you for all of your support over the past year. We've gone from 30 schools and 1,000 students this past spring, to 430 schools and 40,000 students this fall, using Flat World textbooks!

This means students and their families will save nearly $3 million on textbooks this semester
. This makes us proud, and BUSY.

Read all about it in Read Write Web, Wired, BNET, VentureBeat, Information Week, and ZD Net.

New Authors and Textbooks!

We're still expanding our textbook offerings. Last newsletter we told you about a new Genetics text, Sociology text, and Geographic Information Systems text. We haven't stopped...by Summer 2010 we project having 50 titles in development. Check out our newest signings below:

Introduction to Psychology
by Charles Stangor
College Success
by Bruce Biederwell, Thomas J. Lochhaas, Linda Tse, and Nicholas B. deKanter
Career Success
by Sheila Curran, Thomas J. Lochhaas, and Nicholas B. deKanter
Business Ethics
by James Brusseau

Want to author a textbook? Know someone who should? Learn more about what we look for in a Flat World author on our new author page.

(Shiny) New Website!

We updated the website. Take a look around. It's cool, but what's super cool are all of the ways to stay on top of what we're doing at Flat World.

Check out the Blog (Scott McLean welcomes everyone back this week). Subscribe to our RSS feed. Follow us on Twitter. Become our Fan on Facebook.

Pick your favorite social media outlet, and bring us along.

More on Why I'm long on CGX

Gail Nickel-Kailing at WhatTheyThink started a new series today. Based on the first in the series, it's going to save me a fortune of time. Maybe some of the Wall Street Analysts will start following Print, since Gail is doing all the hard work.
"August 26th, 2009 we’re launching a series of profiles to look at some of the public companies in the graphic arts industry. Based on SEC filings, including quarterly and annual reports and proxy filings, we’ll track on the vicissitudes of commerce, the ups and downs, that challenge these companies."
Some snippets that caught my eye.
CGX prints a lot of election materials.

Gross profit for 2009 was actually 5 percentage points better than in 2008, reaching 80.2% of sales in 2009,

Joe Davis, President and CEO, and the Board of Directors took a voluntary 15% pay cut and the executive management team took a 10% cut.

Selling expenses dropped 5 percentage points.

Consolidated’s companies maintain their own sales, customer service, estimating and planning, prepress, production and accounting departments,

Consolidated’s corporate staff provides support for human resources, purchasing, internal financial controls design and management information systems to it’s network. All risk management, tax, internal audit and consolidated financial reporting activities take place within CGX headquarters.
I think I may be right about putting together a Printernet Portfolio in my IRA see sidebar. On average it's up 36% since the beginning of 2009. I made a couple of lucky picks, so my Printernet Portfolio is up around 75% as of yesterday. If there is a trick, it is ignoring blablabla Print is Dead blablabla.

Anyway, if I am right, CGX is well ahead of the pack as the production backbone of the printernet.

Full disclosure: The title of this post is for real: Long on CGX.