Hi.  This is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.

Well Dov Isaacs found another cartoon for us.  It shows this guy in a book store and he finds some interesting book and then he asks them if they have a WiFi and the next thing he does is download it to his eBook.  So bookstores will become just downloading centers like gas stations; you go over there, fill up on books and then go away.  May not need a bookstore to do that.

Several things on the docket.  They're small things but I thought they were interesting.

This was from U.S. News and World Report.  It says that Congress spends $97 million a year to print documents.  They don't do anything and they spend $97 million to print stuff about what they're not doing.  Very interesting.

One of them is the Congressional Record.  I was on the committee that helped create the electronic version of the Congressional Record and I remember we interviewed Senators and Representatives and some of them said well I might want to take it home with me, I may not use the electronic version and I wanted to say, "If you take it home, what are you going to do with it?  Start a fire?  You're not going to read it."  Most of what people do is define stuff in it because it's very illogical in the way it's set up and in fact they publish a document equal in size to the Congressional Record which is the index so that you can find things whereas in an electronic system you can search for anything you want.

So $97 million down the drain; another example of what Congress does or doesn't do.

You all get those calendars at Christmas time or holidays or birthdays that have little interesting facts on it or words to pronounce per day or whatever it may be.  Well the one that I have it's called Forgotten English for some strange reason.  It was the birthday of Henry Ford.  Evidently he had so much money that a group of art dealers wanted to sell him some paintings.  So they put together a multi-volume set of the most beautiful paintings ever done in the history of paintings, if you will.  And they gave it to him as a gift in order to stimulate his desire to actually buy the paintings, which they would then get commissions on.  He said, "Why should I buy the paintings?"  He said, "But gentleman," Ford asked, "why would I want to buy the originals when the pictures in these books are so beautiful?"  Well that says a lot about books.  That says a lot about printing.  I don't know what it says about Henry Ford

This is from the Wall Street Journal.  Reporter is Bill Buckley who has interviewed me in the past, by the way.  Print outsourcing gives boost to Xerox and Hewlett Packard.  This is interesting how they fight back and forth, along with other organizations, to manage the print within an organization.  This article talked about how Xerox had gotten the Proctor and Gamble account and then Proctor and Gamble they had replaced 45,000 devices, mostly HP desktop printers with 10,000 shared multifunction printers.  A lot of organizations wind up with a lot of these little desktop machines and spend a fortune in ink for them, like most of us do.

So, Xerox and other companies come in and offer to replace that and create a more coordinated and controlled environment; they've done this for many other companies as well.  The Canon Oce deal probably will succeed because of the fact that imagistics is part of Oce and they do things that are somewhat similar.  And many other companies do as well; many companies in the printer business do it.

So it's been the outsourcing, print outsource management that has really helped Xerox and other companies get over the hump in the last year or so.  It's going to be very interesting to see what happens in the year following because many of these ideas don't have to be managed by a separate company.  They can be managed by the organization itself once they understand the principles.  So big consultants come in and help them do all of that.

The article was Weary Book Publishers Out Fighting The Future.  You've probably read recently what happened with MacMillan and the Kindle and Amazon.  Amazon sells books mostly at $1.99 for the eBook.  MacMillan said they want $9.99.  Amazon took their books off the server then they capitulated and put them back on. Now Harper Collins wants $9.99, so now it looks like they're trying to move up the scale in terms of higher prices for eBooks.

The thing that made the whole eBook world palatable to most users was the fact that I could get the books at a reasonable price given they're electronic files.  Well now the publishers want more money for it.  So what they're going to probably do is kill the eBook market before it actually starts.

Last item is something I read in newspapers and technology.  It was newspapers vs. television and it says if you want to reach adults, newspapers reach 62 percent of adults whereas primetime is 45 percent.  Educated customers: newspapers, 61 percent; primetime television viewership, 49 percent.  In terms of professionals, 70 percent on the newspaper side; 42 percent on the television side.  Upscale consumers more on the print side.  And it goes into a long list of different kinds of products.

So what it says, in effect, is if you want to sell something you do it through a newspaper, if you want to brand you do it through television or something like that.

There's only one problem with all this guys.  Newspapers are losing circulation, so those percentages are meaningless; you don't have the numbers.  And television is losing because television has become inane.  I really don't need any more reality shows; I am a reality show

So the time has come to realize that the world has moved to the digital side; it's moved to the Internet.  It's moved to my little portable handheld device.  These guys just don't get it.  It's going to be a blend of those two things: the newspaper and television.  You're going to see animations and video are on the newspaper sites.  You won't see much text but you have to have text on the TV sites, but in all, the problem is that both of you are losing market share and there's nothing you can do about it at this stage in the game.

And that's my opinion.  Take care.

[Next time...]

More fliers.  More ****.  More brochures.  You know, the market's out there!