“Content is free. Formats are not” is the article’s title from cnet. Now, this strays away from purely printing, although content in the digital printing world and certainly the publishing sector faces a similar fate:

“Content may be free, but the format in which we buy it certainly is not. As Apple, Google, Red Hat, and others increasingly demonstrate, consumers and enterprises are happy to pay for “free” when packaged in convenient formats that add value to digital goods.
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All of these (re)purchases strike me that the media world may have problems, but they are mostly of discovering convenient formats in which to deliver content. Formats that suggest, and sometimes demand, payment.”
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Good content is a necessary precondition to getting paid, but it’s not going to be reason we pay anymore. That reason for payment is the format in which the content is delivered.
Perhaps it’s always been that way, but the physicality of the delivery mechanisms confused us: we were buying the paper but thought we were buying the news.”
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10369471-16.html  Read more... (348 words, estimated 1:24 mins reading time)

Zevrix is known for their Adobe Plugin to preflight InDesign files called InPreflight, similar to the built-in function within the CS4 only version itself (Live Preflighting) which Adobe offers. We call that process more a midflight check, as opposed to a preflight on your native files or artwork. And certainly not a postflight on a PDF or processed document. So it was with interest that we read this about a new automated solution from this software developer for that postflight process:

PDF Checkpoint 1.0 Public Beta ******************************* Zevrix Solutions introduces PDF Checkpoint – a new quality control and automation solution for PDF files. PDF Checkpoint 1.0 is currently in Public Beta stage and offers the following features: - Quickly preflight multiple PDF files – Create preflight profiles to detect common problems – List all PDF fonts, color spaces, images and document properties – Preview  and list resolution of PDF images More features are planned to be added – and It’s your chance to request features required for your PDF workflow: - Routing of PDF files depending on preflight results – Split PDF – Extract PDF images PDF Checkpoint 1.0 Public Beta can be downloaded here: http://zevrix.com/download.php  Read more... (280 words, estimated 1:07 mins reading time)

Here was a post that showed up on my “preflight” watch-list this weekend, which I found interesting:

It also would be nice if it was possible to preflight InDesign documents if there were any untagged RGB images used. My intension is to create an InDesign script to preform a preflight.

Source: http://graphicstart.com/item.php?&itemid=1060906

It is important to note that FlightCheck Professional would be the *perfect* candidate for this task, as it can preflight both the PDF as well as the InDesign Adobe file and many other file types besides Adobe InDesign files. FCPro can also specifically let you know if the Adobe PDF has RGB images which do not have ICC Profiles attached and ignore the CMYK images.