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 By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO This is the 64th edition of Tuesday Morning News. Thank you for reading it! Nuthin' But 'Net ? - On April 15th the US Commerce Department released a study indicating that traffic on the Internet is doubling every 100 days. The most compelling vignette: The Internet is growing faster than all other technologies that preceded it. Radio existed for 38 years before it had 50 million listeners, and television took 13 years to reach that threshold of viewers. The Internet hit the 50 million user mark in only 4 years. - On March 10, John Lubans, deputy university librarian at Duke University published an informal survey about using the library versus using the Internet for studying. (His survey was published on the web, by the by!) Lubans says that while 85% of the students use the web several times a week for study purposes, some 75% of them also use the library. They told Lubans that they use the library's print resources and special online resources as well as just savoring time in the stacks. - Or as was written by Pamela Groff, senior technical writer for the GATF in that group's 1998 Technology Forecast: "From the earliest days of this Forecast, someone, somewhere was always predicting the demise of print as the primary communications medium. While we have seen the rise of digital information tools in the form of Internet documents designed in HTML or actually mimicking a physically printed counterpart through the use of portable document format files, the tangible qualities of the printed word continue to ensure its endurance if not its dominance." The Market Basket We applaud the facilitators of the just released 1998 Quick Printing Industry Pricing Study. They created 'Market Basket' comparisons of commonly sold items or services in different regions of North America. For example, the average desktop publishing hourly rate from all the market baskets was $55.62. We wonder how many printers of whatever size stick to a $60 hourly rate in the prepress department. And if you are an independent graphic designer, it gives you another benchmark for your hourly rate. For more info on the study and purchase cost, contact QP Consulting at 407-727-2444. CTP Seminars Scitex and Seybold are collaborating in offering a FREE seminar dedicated to explaining all there is to know about Computer to Plate technologies. The seminar features Mr. Andrew Tribute, International Editor Seybold Publications. The schedule is: May 12 in San Francisco May 14 in Chicago May 19 in New York May 21 in Toronto If interested, send an e-mail to: stan_najmr@sta.scitex.com CAP Ventures Says Indigo's Blues are Behind Speaking about Indigo's E-Print 1000 TurboStream Digital Color Offset press, CAP Ventures said : "TurboStream will leverage Indigo's accomplishments with the E-Print 1000 print engine and bring their product line to a higher level." A cynic might suggest that CAP wants to support Indigo since the latter needs to be a heavy player in the On Demand Print Show run by CAP Ventures. Nonetheless, after languishing in the $5.00 per share range for a long time, Indigo finally moved up a bit late last week, and finished trading on Monday 20 April at $6.50, still far behind the gains made by Xeikon which finished trading in the $25 range, but a nice gain for the digital pioneer. An interesting viewpoint on all the hype about digital presses was penned by Dr. Joseph Webb and published in the 1998 GATF Technology Forecast: "The effect of digital presses like the Indigo E-Print and the numerous incarnations of the Xeikon engine ... prompts frequent questions. The problem with this market has been the erroneous assumption that the industry has no viable or dynamic short run production capability. All our surveys about run length, both on the demand and the production side, show a very active market -- with many, many jobs in the run lengths that process color offset is 'not supposed to do.' The short-run color market already exists. The real question is whether other technologies will do it better. We believe the digital color market will be 5% of the commercial market by 2005, or about $3 billion in today's market size. We have trouble coming up with a total market potential of more than $10 billion, about 15% or so of the market. For at least the next five to seven years watch for steady but slow growth from digital printing -- but no revolution." Atapi Zip On 20 April Iomega announced the $99 internal ATAPI Zip drive. "Sub-$1,000 PCs are no longer a transitory phenomenon; these systems, which have already caught the attention of the US consumer market, are expected to become a force in the commercial and global markets and it is important for Iomega to offer an inexpensive Zip drive that will appeal to buyers of these systems." Fara Yale, principal analyst of the computers and peripherals group at Dataquest. More PlateStreams On Stream "Strong sales of the new PlateStream platesetter allowed us to largely overcome a $669,000 decline in sales to an affiliate compared to last year which was primarily supplies for older systems" noted Printware, Inc., President and CEO, Dr. Daniel Baker. "New PlateStream customers in the first quarter included Dayton Hudson Corporation, Short Run Companies and several Business Cards Tomorrow locations.... We're delighted with the PlateStream's appeal among mainstream printers." Although the news release didn't specify, we wouldn't be surprised if the affiliate was Deluxe Check. And thus this item in Dr. Joseph Webb's 1998 GATF Technology Forecast caught our eye: "We feel strange predicting that checks will be a growing market, but many financial institutions have found that check processing actually costs less than an electronic transaction."
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