Hi.  This is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  Welcome to RIT.

Dov Isaacs found this interesting cartoon.  It's the Acme Stationery Supply Company and they're having a board meeting and the chairman is saying he's going to text his secretary to get some pens and pencils.  Well that's the ironic part of it, but the funny part of it is that they misspelled stationery with -- it should be with an "e" of course.  Dov says that's because their sales are probably stationary, but that could be.

A few things that I found in the mail -- well, first of all, the mail.  There wasn't that much when I came back; it's only been a few weeks since I've been here.  But one of the things I noticed that the preponderance of mail today is mostly postcards.  All different sizes of course; some very large.  That's the smallest of all of them at this stage.  Very interesting.  There were few self-mailers.  There were three of them.  One, two, three.  These two are for the OnDemand Conference.  By the time you see this video it probably will have already run, but there's a big push on to get people to go there.  It's probably, in terms of digital printing, the main event at this stage.  Xerox is introducing their new 1000.  I think there'll be some new stuff from HP.

Some exhibitors -- some companies won't be there at all.  So it will be very interesting to see what happens at OnDemand this year.  Or what happened at OnDemand.  It will probably be past tense by the time you see this.

I see all kinds of articles appearing where people make these comments that really to get me.  Like this one is from a guy named Craig Mod.  He's a self-titled computer programmer, book designer, and book publisher and he's waxing eloquent about the iPad from Apple and this whole is summarized as print is dying, digital is surging.  Mr. Mod, I don't think it's surging.  It's going to be another medium.  We've always had multiple media, we will always have multiple media.

One of the other articles in this theme that appeared recently, by the way, had to do with the cost.  It said the math of publishing with eBooks and they're trying to go through a $26 book and how much it cost to print it.  By the way, $3.25 or so.  They talk about the royalties, the 15 percent royalties that are paid.  So that they go to eBooks theoretically the publisher doesn't have the cost they could make more money but the price of eBooks is lower than the price of hardcover books.  So there's a big argument going on as to which method makes the most money for the publisher.  The publishers are trying to make the price of the eBook almost equal to the price of the hardcover book.  It's a mess and it will stay a mess for some period of time.

Internet changes news consumption landscape.  The Pew Institute does these wonderful studies and what they've now discovered is that the Internet is now the third most popular news medium trailing behind local and national television but ahead of newspapers and radio broadcasts.  And most people are now getting their information from the Internet.

Digital coupon redemption beats newspapers.  Study by Coupons.com and another organization, TNS Media Intelligence.  I always -- when companies have the name intelligence in their name I wonder if they charge more money for that.  Are there companies that are non-intelligent?

But if you're interested, digital coupons, where you essentially can show your iPhone or your cell phone to the person at the checkout counter and it may be scannable, are now starting to grow and the major categories are cereal, yogurt, sweet snacks, refrigerated dough, salty snacks, casual dining -- I love this -- condiments, and of course the ever popular pizza.

This one -- just it was interesting to me.  This kid got arrested for forging currency and it goes on to say that they put him in jail and the whole bit but at the end of the thing it says, "The police found nearly $200 in counterfeit cash and the HP Photosmart All-in-one printer he allegedly used to create it."  I think it's very nice that they gave us the entire name of the printer: the HP Photosmart All-in-one printer.  Because he needed to scan and then print and that's why he used that particular machine.

There's a restaurant in Manhattan; it's on 11th Avenue and 48th Street.  It's called Ink48 and it's in the Kimpton Hotel, off the lobby.  And it was an all printing plant at one time.  I have no idea how old it was but the way its designed is that you sit on old wooden font cases.  So I guess adults sit on the upper case and kids sit on the lower case, or is it the other way around?  The tables are wrapped in recycled iron, et cetera.  But I thought the line in here, you know, it says that they all these references to printing and era gone by.  I hate to tell them that they probably give people menus that are printed, they probably have things that are probably printed on the table.  I don't know if the era has gone by; maybe they're talking about the fact that that plant at one time did hot metal type settings or hot metal print or letter press printing, that's entirely possible.

I got the brochure on Offset & Beyond.  First of all, I thought it was a magazine and then you open it up and they say this is not a magazine.  So, that's okay.  I can deal with that.  The history of this is rather interesting.  You had the Web Offset Conference, which was the major event in the United States.  It was so big and had so much money coming in to it that the speakers were ex-Presidents like George Bush and Generals and famous politicians.  Are politicians famous?  Maybe some are infamous.  The interesting thing was that they had the money to afford these unbelievable keynote speakers and I was always amazed going there and listening to them.

Then, of course, they fell into hard times, then there was the Start Up the Sheet Fed Conference that ran for 10 years or 15 years.  I remember speaking at the first one and I don't think I was at the last one but I was at a good number of them over the years.  So you had the Web Offset Conference, you had the Sheet Fed Conference and then as they both fell into disrepair, they got merged together and now it's called Offset & Beyond.  I need one of those sound things: Offset & Beyond.

What's beyond?  There are sessions by the way on digital printing.  So it's web offset, it's sheet-fed offset and it's digital to some extent.  And in fact they break out in the front where the digital sessions are.  It says, "Digital related content."  And there are the list of the pages where they have that.  These are the companies that are sponsoring it.  In the old days, the press companies would have gone first and the pre-press companies would have gone later.  So the premier sponsors are now Kodak, Sun Chemical, and Fuji Film and then after that you get all the press manufacturers and other people like ink and paper.  I get one paper: New Page.  You would think then that more of the paper companies would want to go to an event like this.

The other interesting thing is they put all the logos for the PIA affiliates and there are 26 listed here, including Canada, and all the logos.  Now there are three of them: Arizona, which includes New Mexico, Utah and Virginia that use the Quasi Islamic backward crescent in their logo, but all the others they're all different.  There is no consistency in promoting the printing industry in the United States.  Every local, every affiliate of PIA has a different logo.  All right.  That's fine because they are local so they can do that.  It's interesting that some don't even the word printing in their name.  GAA; The Graphics Arts Association, which I think is in Philadelphia.

So PGAMA, although the name is there, the acronym doesn't really tell you.  Although, the acronym doesn't tell you a lot in most cases anyway unless you really know what it's all about.  Pine doesn't even mention the word printing anymore.  It's Pine, enhancing member profitability.  By the way, they could be in any industry; they could be CPAs for all we know.  So it's very interesting that all the affiliates have these very interesting logos.

In any case, greetings from RIT.  That's my opinion.  Take care.

Next time...

This is a phenomenal first issue for any organization and it has to rank up there as one of the great collectibles in the printing industry.