Bitstream Inc.

The flood gates are open—digital presses for commercial printers are no longer one size fits all. There are enough devices to tempt the commercial printing community. From the zealous prepress provider to the comprehensive of one-stop printing operations: Specialization is the new mandate for the digital press in on-demand printing, variable or not. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Quick. What is a prime directive of the best of the best commercial printers when it comes to exploring new digital technologies for print? Be receptive to embrace emerging digital printing technologies? Be proactive with contemporary and unique marketing initiatives to promote new digital

When Seybold closed the doors to its 1999 San Francisco expo last month, three technology trends stood dominant: the Internet, PDF and the quest for the all-digital workflow. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO If one potent word could sum up the energy, enthusiasm and very direction of Seybold San Francisco, held for the final time this century at the Moscone Center last month, it could easily be: Internet. The Internet, the World Wide Web. Seybold San Francisco was a virtual debutante's ball for the global gateway that is the Internet. New companies emerged as major players for the commercial printing market—all gearing to harness the

Developments in variable data are pushing on-demand print production to new levels of customization. What are the hot new technologies to see at the On-Demand Show? The answer, pun intended, varies. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Talk about getting a little too up close and personal: Bitstream's PageFlex, Agfa's Personalizer-X and BARCO Graphics' VIPLine variable data software solutions, VariScript from Varis and Indigo's Yours Truly, Scitex's Darwin and Xeikon's PrintStreamer, EFI's FreeForm and Xerox's DigiPath—all are striking, almost surreal, examples of the power of variable data in printing. Talk about Big Brother. Imagine getting a customized postcard from a travel agency. A picture

GRAPH EXPO 98 and CONVERTING EXPO 98 was a hot ticket—sales were robust, booth traffic was brisk, technology advancements fierce and cooperative announcements healthy. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Question pondered: Could GRAPH EXPO 98 be a "Show of Shows," when the international spectacles that were IPEX 98 and PRINT 97 captured the printing industry's collective practically within the same 12-month span, with IPEX in September and PRINT 97 the previous September? Does $108 million answer that? That's the figure Heidelberg reported it registered during the show's four-day tour of Chicago's McCormick Place recently. Heidelberg's success was not singular. Scores of the show's more than

The teeming class of digital color presses seems to be on the verge of a graduation of sorts. Xeikon celebrated the shipment of its 1,000th digital color press earlier this year, a DCP/32D. Indigo reports well over 1,000 E-Print shipments globally. Xerox boasts more than 4,000 DocuColor 40 units installed worldwide. Heidelberg's Quickmaster DI continues to flood the market. All this is happening just as Agfa's variable printing Chromapress and the Scitex/KBA-Planeta Karat continue to push the technology forward. But that doesn't mean new classmates, like Screen's recently launched TruePress and the Quickmaster's big brother, the new Speedmaster 74 DI, aren't ready to

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Asset management is a field which, in a few years time, the industry might refer to as one that virtually exploded onto the scene and introduced a surplus of young technology providers and tools to a marketplace that was, in many ways, still figuring out exactly what it wanted to do with its digital assets. There are easily more than 75 asset managers currently positioned firmly in the graphic arts. Some cater specifically to digital assets in a variety of commercial prepress departments, some focus strictly on catalog production, some on manipulation of content in large-scale newspapers and others offer

If repurposing digital content from a catalog or brochure to a dynamic Internet site is part of your average day at the office, you better get your fill on Java! BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Java junkies say the appeal of Java applications is that they are easy to distribute across networks and can run on any computer platform. Some proponents believe the adoption of Java will jog a move to the network computer. Others predict Java will play a bigger role than originally anticipated in the management and delivery of content over the World Wide Web. Why does Java matter? Since its introduction three-plus

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Seybold San Francisco may not have the same prepress hardware punch as its East Coast counterpart, but digital file delivery, digital content manipulation, color management and Internet design tools are enough to get the industry pointed in a Golden Gate direction. What to expect? Count on the show emphasizing content manipulation and color management—from creation through output. Be ready to see a variety of software tools to handle everything from creation of files to data storage, archival and retrieval—not to mention unique enhancements to the movement of repurposing digital content for the World Wide Web. Get ready for a hearty serving of alphabet soup—as

SAN FRANCISCO—Seybold San Francisco was just what the industry expected: A hearty serving of alphabet soup with discussions on PDF, XML and ICC proliferating the conference halls as well as the trade show floor. Seybold also delivered new launches of color management and digital asset manipulation software, digital file delivery alternatives and Internet design tools, and—what else?—an entertaining keynote from Apple's very own Steve Jobs, jeans and all. Technological wizardry from Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, Bitstream, Creo, Epson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Markzware, Microsoft, Quark (yes, Quark; just Quark, not Adobe's new parent), Pantone, Silicon Graphics, WAM!NET, Xerox, X-Rite and more cast the spotlight

Be honest. Did you expect WAM!NET and 4-Sight to merge their telecommunication powers under the same banner at Seybold? WAM!NET's bold and beautiful acquisition of the UK-domestic-turned-global ISDN provider was the big news at Seybold New York. Wasn't it the most logical, likely, and yet somehow unlikely, pairing of corporate intentions, philosophies and technologies? Wasn't it just what the commercial printer has been virtually demanding of these two facilitators of digital file delivery? On perhaps a more important note, wasn't it simply surreal to see all those WAM!NET employees in their funky T-shirts standing peacefully, shoulder to shoulder, with the small army of