Hi, this is Frank Romano for WhatTheyThink.com.  Places where you need print.  I went through the Panama Canal on the Queen Victoria.  They gave me a certificate that said I went through the Panama Canal.  “Frank Romano has traversed the Panama Canal 21, January, 2008.”  

I went across the line that separates the Southern Hemisphere from the Northern Hemisphere and they gave me a certificate.  Now, tell me.  Were they going to give me a thumb drive with the picture of this on it?  No, they gave me something on paper.  It has an advantage.  I’m going to save this.  Maybe I’ll frame it some day.  

I was up in Canada and I met the good people from Hemlock Printers.  And they did a fake version of the iPad.  Here’s their version, the hPad.  It actually should be the pPad, because it’s really paper, if you will.  

By the way, it doesn't look anything like the real iPad, but you get an idea of it.  But it was very nice that they did something like this.  So you can keep notes on it, but if you want to see video, you want to see animation, you have to do something like flip the pages in some way.

I was in a church in Indonesia and they had printed in different languages various religious sayings.  I said how would you replay - what would you do instead of this?  I mean, they gave these out, I guess, to inspire you. 

One of the things I got from a wide format at the printing company was a panorama of London.  I’m not going to open the whole thing, but you get the idea.  You want to frame this, great.  Put it on your wall, great.  By the way, if it was in digital form, what would you do with it, project it? 

We went to a little event and they had little flags made up.  Instead of being on cloth, they were on paper.  So you can print different flags and different things for people to wave or different sayings for them to say. 

You know, we keep thinking about print going away.  We don't realize there are a gazillion little places where you need print.  Now, is it enough to keep the printing industry going?  Well, that's a different question.  But the fact is that there are all these little nooks and crannies of print that are out there, and I keep trying to find them.

And trying to find out if there are small markets or big markets for various versions of them.  In any case, that's my opinion.  

So this is hybrid printing and this is what I think we’re going to see a lot of as we move into the future.