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I have just read an article in Publishing Executive which suggests that web-based media companies are increasingly turning to the printed medium as an extension of their web publishing activities. Now before we all get carried away and say that the days of “print is dead” are over, we need to see what the web based media companies are doing and why they are doing it. The answers could be a good pointer to the way that printed publications can better serve their markets.

By the year 2020, it’s estimated that some 20 to 30 billion “things” could be connected to the Internet. It’s called the “Internet of Things” – or, “IoT,” in tech talk. Hyped widely as the “next megatrend” and the “third wave” of the Internet, IoT is expected to produce an effect similar to the first “fixed” Internet, which ultimately connected one billion users. The second “wave,” the mobile Internet, added two billion more users.

It’s that time of year again, when the large supermarket chains make a play for the householders Christmas spending budget by some very high profile advertising and marketing campaigns. In the UK we are used to seeing television advertisements tugging at our heartstrings with scenes of family joy and celebration, but Sainsbury’s have gone one better this year.

Standing astride a Landa S10 Nanographic Printing^® Press when it is printing is an exhilarating experience. The stream feeder is thundering at one end. At the other end, where I was positioned between the inline coater and the dryer unit, full sized B1 (41 in.) prints were stacking onto the delivery pile, each one full of vibrant colour and each one different from its predecessor in a way that only digital printing can deliver.

Well, it’s December again. Where has the time gone? Hard to believe that another year has passed… and even harder to believe that we now are only 18 months from Drupa! For me, the past two and a half years since Drupa 2012 have zipped past like Road Runner on steroids!

So, is everyone ready for the “driverless” car? Sometime not too far off, Google Car will be the first such vehicle off the assembly line. It’s most notable feature will, ironically, be the lack of features we’ve come to expect from cars, like a steering wheel, or an accelerator, or brakes.

Brands are all around us, just an accepted part of our lives, intertwined with our daily decision making, but it wasn’t always the case. Seventy or eighty years ago if you made a good product, you generally would have a loyal local customer base who would buy it.

I admit that it’s stretching credulity to the limit, but there is a connection between Benny Landa and England’s legendary King Arthur of the Round Table fame and it is sitting in the main reception of Landa Digital Printing in Rehovot, Israel.