THE NEWS IN PRINT

The king of instant photographs, Polaroid, has found an able and trustable partner in Zink. The tie up between the giants is bound on job nature rather than strategy. The outcome is Digital Mobile Photo Printer which is based on Zink's inkless printing technology and Polaroid's expertise in producing instant photographs.

The aforesaid printer is capable of producing 2"� X 3"� borderless photographs. It can connect to cell phones through Bluetooth and digital cameras through PictBridge and USB port. Users can instantly print photographs by syncing the camera devices with the printer. The printer takes a minute for each print.

The printing is inkless and hence no cartridge hassles. Special Zink photo paper needs to be used. Here's a brief about the technology:

Without ink, ribbons, or even toners, the ZINK printer utilizes a patented paper that changes its color when heat is applied. This is made possible with the dye crystals that were put inside the photo paper. At room temperature, the photo paper looks like any other paper. It's colorless. But when inserted in the printer, the heat that was activated when you start printing releases the shades in the embedded crystals to create a plethora of colors that take the shape of your image.

The Digital Mobile Photo Printer should be made available in the US sometime during August/September this year. The estimated pricing of this product is around £75. The cost per print is around 15p per print.

The video below shows the printer in action. It was shot at CES 2008.

JK Rowling is in the right state of mind by opting for greener form of paper. She had earlier published her English version of Harry Potter 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on environmental friendly Forest Steward Council (FSC) approved paper. The estimated savings was around 197,685 trees and 7.9 million kilograms of greenhouse gases. While other publishers worry about the money saved on printing, the Harry Potter creator is on a different plane altogether.

FSC is a non-profit organisation which has taken responsibility for managing the world's forests. The organisation identifies forest products that come from responsible sources which helps consumers make the right choice.

She recently made news by stopping all printing activities of her final book in the series in the Finnish version. Non availability of FSC paper in Finland seems to be the reason for the non-production. Finland is one of the largest nations for paper production and they have labels similar to FSC but JK was unwilling to budge.

"The availability of FSC products in Finland is still very poor. We use mainly the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes, but we do promote sustainable forestry. We also try to promote FSC," Antti Otsamo of the Finnish Federation of Forest Industries said.

Things are getting simpler and easier these days. It has been amazingly simple to reproduce anything and everything under the sun. When it comes to printers, the ultra mobility has its cons and could very well work against the system.

Three teenagers have been using two inkjet printers for the past two years to print currencies of $10, $20 and $50 denominations in the back of a pickup truck. The printer was powered by an inverter connected to the cigarette lighter.

Police confirmed that the counterfeit bills were of good quality, thanks to the printing technology, and it definitely took a closer look to identify them.

It's appalling that the emergence of technology is used in a wrong way. The need for sharper and brighter prints along with its compactness has been and will be exploited by the criminal minds. There will be no solution available now or never to avert the usage of printers for counterfeiting... Via NewsDay

Watch the video report for more info.

For all of us who are interested in shows involving secret services, CIA, KGB and other government organisations taking different routes of spying is no stranger. Probably a lot of spying happens in the US, but we may never know if our government is spying on us or not. A few months back, news broke out that the US government had intentions of obtaining detailed information on all the laser printing that takes place. It was reported that Electronic Frontier Foundation had cracked a code that contained detailed information on the printing time and the serial number of the printer.

Spieker blog reports that they have identified one of these codes and more importantly decrypted it. Yellow saturation was increased all the way and the image was zoomed at 600% before printing to identify the secret code.

Here's the observation from the code: In my example the code can be read by adding the sums of the dots per column, combined with the values on the left (the bottom line shows the results per column): printed on the 22nd day of the 11th month at 14:38. The blogger was unable to decrypt the serial number of the printer though.

These yellow dots might act as an information source to the government but indirectly helps people protect their work by watermarking them unknowingly. Or maybe, it helps organisations track employees' printing patterns for personal use.

Japanese printer giant, Oki has decided to recall four hundred digital colour printers. There have been plenty of complaints of electrical shocks forcing the recall. The company is offering inspection and repair if necessary.

The printer in focus is the C9600 series colour printers. Only a few printers with particular serial numbers are under the scanner. Here are the serial numbers:

AA56002655A0 through AA56002804A0
AA58001468A0 through AA58001617A0
AA58002702A0 through AA58002801A0

These printers were sold between August 2005 and September 2007.

Contact Oki office in your city/country to report the Oki printer to be recalled. As a safety measure, unplug the printer from their electrical outlets.

via Press Release