Software - Web-to-print

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Any claims of being "first" practically beg to be disputed. That inherent risk didn't scare off Great Lakes Integrated (GLI) from adopting the one-word declaration—FIRST—as a brand identity for its mix of marketing communication services. The Cleveland-based organization is comprised of three divisions. GLPrint provides offset and digital printing services. GLDirect is a mailing and fulfillment operation. AKSESS provides a suite of Web-based marketing communication solutions based on an ASP (Application Service Provider) model. Those latter database-driven tools are central to the company's marketing claim and provide a backbone for its integrated service. They are designed to be used by customers and also

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor In terms of the production process, proofing often is the last remaining physical tie between the print buyer and printer—except for the finished product, of course. Both parties have resisted changes to the status quo. Soft, or monitor-based, proofing is a logical step toward a truly all-digital workflow. The notion of evaluating and approving work on-screen probably was suggested the first time work was produced digitally. Yet, the various solutions that have been introduced are still working to gain acceptance, especially for approval of color. Issues related to monitor technology can still be sticking points, but the biggest

I look at my 2000 Toyota Rav 4 with admiration. And, yes, I now drive and have owned the exotic cars that make men behave like little boys. But when you cut to the chase, an automobile's job is to efficiently take you where you want to go without you having to take it where it needs to go. More than five years after I drove my Rav 4 out of the dealer's showroom, other than the usual oil changes, it has never needed a single repair. So my Boxter may be more fun and far more appealing, but it's my dependable Rav 4

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Since the earliest days of the digital revolution in prepress, choosing a data format has brought trade-offs in file flexibility, portability and processing consistency. For almost as long, the unique requirements of the print advertising workflow have driven a quest to achieve a universal workflow. Now, more than 10 years after its introduction, Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format) is finally providing a foundation for realizing that goal in advertising applications and beyond. The effort to establish an open, yet predictable, workflow started with DDES (Digital Data Exchange Standard). It took a sustained effort by the DDAP (Digital Distribution

At CIP4, Good Things Come In Threes RESTON, VA—CIP4 (The International Cooperation for the Integration of Processes in Prepress, Press and Postpress) has gotten off to a fast start in the new year, with a deal to expand its scope, further testing and take on a new initiative. The organization entered into an agreement with NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies that transfers the PrintTalk specification and schema to CIP4 for its long-term maintenance and distribution. PrintTalk is the specification for exchange of business data between print providers and their customers. It defines a "best practice" common and

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor There were no mysterious bulges, but maybe the occasional exacerbated expression and a testy moment or two during "The Great Debate: JDF—Reality or Hype?" session at Executive Outlook 2004 in Chicago. This "debate" between Frank Romano, industry consultant and Professor Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, and James Harvey, executive director of CIP4, actually started with an exchange of opinion pieces published by OnDemandJournal.com. As entertaining as these exchanges have been, Harvey says he's not interested in repeating the debate since the questions have been asked and answered. He sees more value in the industry moving on to discussing

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor For better or for worse, and maybe a little of both, self-service has become the model of business efficiency in the modern world. Vending machines aside, the trend first took hold at the gas pump, then led to ATMs popping up like weeds and now is spreading to the grocery store checkout line. Online interfaces to customers are the printing industry's latest take on the self-service trend. The basic concept is not new, but the way printers are now executing it differs from the wave of eProduction/eCommerce ASP ventures that enveloped the graphic arts during the dotcom bubble.

MORTSEL, BELGIUM--Agfa-Gevaert announced it has signed an agreement to divest Agfa Monotype Corp. to a Boston-based private equity investor, TA Associates. The transaction reportedly is valued at $169 million. The typography business now will operate under the name Monotype Imaging, Inc. It will continue to be headquartered in Wilmington, MA and currently mploys 144 people. For its part, Agfa says it is focusing on further strengthening its position in the prepress market and on building a new growth platform in industrial ink-jet printing. About TA Associates Founded in 1968, TA Associates has offices in Boston, Menlo Park, Pittsburgh and London.

by chris bauer Managing Editor If you still think of the bindery as a labor-intensive segment of the print shop where manual operations are the norm, then you obviously were not paying close enough attention at Graph Expo and Converting Expo 2004. Exhibitors touting the next generation of finishing equipment proved that bindery gear is now just as automated and digitized as equipment in prepress departments and pressrooms. Muller Martini, for example, showed printers and finishing professionals how to make the most of computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) in their binderies and pressrooms. Under the theme "Integration—Solutions from A to Z," the company introduced a

BY MARK SMITH Technology Editor Not to get philosophical, but if a word comes to mean everything, there's a danger of it ending up to mean nothing. The digital revolution was already on its way to making "workflow" a catch-all term in prepress, when the rise of CIM (computer-integrated manufacturing) extended its use to the entire print production process. As a result, an ever wider array of products now can be called digital workflow solutions. For the purposes of this article, the definition is being limited to the evolution of what used to be called prepress systems. Vendors have responded to this trend with