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 By Kevin Keane, IAPHC CEO On St. Paddy's Day, another note to Neo-Luddites They call us aliens, we are told, Because our wayward visions stray From that dim banner they unfold, The dreams of worn-out yesterday. The sum of all the past is theirs, The creeds, the deeds, the fame, the name, Whose death-created glory flares, And dims the spark of living flame. The opening lines to AE (George Russell's) poem: On Behalf of Some Irishmen Not Followers of Tradition Today's Notable Quotable Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems testifying before the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Microsoft last Tuesday, suggested that Microsoft was trying to control "the written and spoken language of the digital age," and further, "the only thing that I'd rather own than Windows is English, because then I could charge you two hundred and forty nine dollars for the right to speak it, and I could charge you an upgrade fee when I add new letters." Mahoney to Davis to ----- Hey, it's Spring Training time! And with apologies to the double play troika of Tinkers to Evers to Chance, we'd like to offer the musings of one of our far flung reporters just back from the NAPL Top Management Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida. Who attracted SRO audiences at the conference? None other than the intrepid consolidator's Gerald Mahoney of Mail-Well and Joe Davis of Consolidated Graphics, who have been oft quoted in the recent e-pages of Tuesday Morning News. Our man in the resort reports that quite a few printing business owners were casting coquettish glances in the direction of Mr. Davis, and it was equally clear that his trolling net was at the ready. Translation: The rapid onslaught of the digital age has encouraged more than a few owners to consider selling out NOW. And this development is not limited to commercial printing, as the recent survey of the Quick Printing industry by the Quick Printing Industry Affairs council found that 25% of the survey respondent's want to sell in the next three years. The Quick Get Quicker, which sounds better than the Dense get Denser The March 16th, 1998 issue of Fortune magazine compares the Iomega Zip drive ( we covered an absurd lawsuit against Iomega in the 2-17-98 issue of Tuesday Morning News) against the Sparq drive from Syquest. The article notes that at a price point of approximately $199, the two are similar in cost yet the Sparq holds an entire gigabyte on one disk, which equates to ten times the equivalent of the Zip disk. Iomega does have a high capacity disk called Jazz, but it isn't in the same price range as the Sparq. "The Sparq is the fastest gadget I've ever plugged into a parallel port. It copied a 133-megabyte folder of graphics from my hard drive in shade over three minutes. That's flying." "Overall, Syquest's Sparq beats Iomega's Zip in price and performance." From an article by Michael J. Himowitz. And by the way, the stock price of Iomega has dimmed considerably in recent months, closing last Friday in the 8 dollar range, which is exactly half of its 52 week high. On Monday, Iomega warned of an earnings disappointment in the $10 to 25 million dollar range in the first quarter and the stock dipped to $71/8. Another high flying technology stock, Electronics for Imaging (EFI) took a 50% stock price tumble earlier this year and also saw activity on the litigation front from Class Action lawyer groupies. As of Monday however, it had recovered all of its losses and seems poised to move higher yet again. More from McNealy The March 16th issue of The New Yorker magazine carries a fascinating article about Mr. McNealy, 'The Sun King,' by John Heileman. Among the tidbits: Sun is an acronym for Stanford University Network. Sun Microsystem's corporate slogan: "The network is the computer." McNealy: "Sun is not in charge; the Web is in charge." And finally, from the body of the article: "What changed everything for McNealy was Java. When the language was introduced in 1995, the initial excitement was over its ability to bring motion to static web pages --to make animated figures dance and stock tickers flash. But Java's larger potential soon became clear. In the past, programs had always been written for particular machines and had resided on a computer's desktop. By enabling code cutters to develop software that could run on any machine (to 'write once, run anywhere,' as Sun puts it), Java could allow programs to reside anyplace on the Web, flowing out across the wires and working equally well wherever they might land thus rendering Windows obsolete, if not irrelevant." Of course some will remember that Microsoft signed a pact to license Java from Sun in March of 1996. As St. Matthew counseled "Love your enemies." Other Industry Blurbs - Printing World, in its 16 February issue notes that Kinko's has opened its first United Kingdom location in the High Holborn business district of London in tandem with the redoubtable British entrepreneur/balloonist Richard Branson. Thanks to Len Petitti for forwarding this item. - The NPES sent out another press release regarding its study "The Future Markets for Films, Plates and Proofing Products in the US: 1996 - 2004". One paragraph is worth rumination in this definitely digital day and age. "The study notes that the conversion from analog to digital communications is affecting every communications media, as well as the consumption of photographic consumables used by the analog technologies. The printing industry is continuing to grow, but at a slower rate than other forms of communication. These alternative communications tools are not just competing with print, but are combining with it to provide broader and more robust forms of communication, as in the case of 'distribute and print.'" - GretagMacbeth was written up in the Winter issue of Image Printing Digest. "In 1915, Norman Macbeth began his business by marketing a simple light source as a standard illuminant for color evaluation. Macbeth understood that different light sources affected color appearance, so by offering a standard, acceptable illuminant, a key variable of color perception could be standardized." A good thing too, because the article goes further to state: "The perceived colors of the average human being are estimated at 7 to 10 million hues. A high quality printing system, therefore, is challenged to reproduce all the millions of hues." Dave Albrecht president of the MidHudson Club works for GretagMacbeth if you'd like to learn more.
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