We have seen the ROI and value preflighting adds to the design-to-print workflow in chart form, now let’s hear from a real user. In this case, it is from Randy Jamerson, Prepress systems administrator for EBSCO Media.

Located in Birmingham, Alabama EBSCO Media is one of the largest full-service sheetfed printers in the country. More info on their operation at the end, now onto how they use FlightCheck:

“FlightCheck has evolved into a very robust and customizable product.  For example, if your workflow automatically converts RGB to CMYK and honors tagged profiles, you can customize FlightCheck so that it does not flag these as error conditions.“

Randy Jamerson, EBSCO Media

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From: Randy Jamerson
Date: February 19, 2010 4:57:23 PM GMT+01:00
To: Mary Gay <pr A_T markzware.com>
Subject: Re: Markzware/Congratulations/Questions for blog

Here are some thoughts that maybe you can use in your blog.

I was hired at EBSCO Media to be the first “Preflight” person in 1994. We
didn’t have FlightCheck and desktop publishing programs ( Quark and
Pagemaker) at that time had non-existent or very rudimentary tools for
preflight.  Every image and graphic file associated with a job had to be
individually scrutinized. When FlightCheck arrived, it was one of those
“greater than sliced bread” events.  Read more... (586 words, 1 image, estimated 2:21 mins reading time)

I read an interesting article on MarketWatch.com some time back (Digital business cards move networking off paper) proposing that traditional business cards may be under threat from some new kids on the block – digital business cards and their associated networking services. Check out mine from BusinessCard2.com:

Yes, my BusinessCard2 card would look nice on my email attachment and handy for social networking, Tweets and the likes. But… yes, the but word; how about at a trade show? What about in the elevator? Or at my boys football (yes, soccer) matches?

There is work being done where these can be zapped from one cell phone to the next. But till all cell phones can communicate equally, the printer need not worry about printed business cards with fancy color graphics, maybe even made with Publisher software (!), going anywhere, anytime, soon.

This said, Stephen Beals gave us some stark warnings in this recent post, titled, “Don’t be too Certain About Print’s Future“…  Read more... (256 words, 1 image, estimated 1:01 mins reading time)

“Electronic books may transform publishing industry” read the title on MarketWatch.com and the tag-line was, “Executives discuss impact of e-books at Frankfurt Books Fair.”

By Polya Lesova, MarketWatch

FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — Electronic books may transform not only the publishing industry, but the very definition of what constitutes a book. E-books — whether read on an iPhone, a Kindle or a laptop — are a hot topic at this week’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

“Books are just devices. Wikipedia is the new Britannica,” said Ronald Schild, managing director of Germany-based MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH.

“Digital content is superior in many ways,” Schild said Thursday at a panel discussion on electronic books at the fair. “Reading today is solitary process, but there are many other ways of reading. [In the future,] it may become more of a conversation.”

While electronic books still account for only a small part of global publishing, their popularity is growing. Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN ) , which sells the electronic-book reader Kindle, is facing growing competition from other e-reader producers. In addition, many users are reading electronic content on their laptops, PCs and multi-functional mobile devices such as Apple Inc.’s (AAPL 189.91, -1.39, -0.72%) iPhone.  Read more... (692 words, estimated 2:46 mins reading time)