Techno-Babble
I recently broke down and bought an iPad. Since then, I have rediscovered reading – with a whole new world of “printed” words in my hands. We’re living in a brave new world we could never have dreamed of a few years ago. With these new technologies means new things to print and new ways to print them.
I recently broke down and bought an iPad (and when I say “I broke down,” I really mean “my husband got sick of me whining that I wanted an iPad.” Semantics.). Since then, I have rediscovered reading. Not that I’d stopped reading; I’ve always been an avid reader for pleasure. But when it came to news consumption, I have to admit that I’d turned away from print and got my news mainly from TV and online sources. The iPad, however, put a whole new world of “printed” words in my hand. Suddenly I was reading The New York Times, the Orlando Sentinel, Wired, and yes, The Imaging Channel (our website looks great on mobile devices, by the way). I also discovered that our Twitter feed, @imagingchannel, is a really cool read in Flipboard, one of several digital digest apps that aggregates stories from around the Web, creating magazine-style layouts of Web pages, social media feeds and more. It just became available for the iPhone as well as the iPad, so if you’re on an Apple platform, I highly recommend checking it out. As I write this, Google has just introduced its competitor to Flipboard, called Currents. Google Currents has a leg up on Flipboard in that it’s also available on the Android platform, so it will be interesting to see how the competition shakes out.
What all this techno-babble really boils down to is that we’re living in a brave new world of mobile technology. Consumers have content packaged and available for them in ways we could never have dreamed of a few years ago. Does this mean we’re finally headed toward the paperless office? Not likely. It does mean consumers have new things to print and new ways to print them. Read this month’s article on mobile printing, as well as the rest of the great content we’ve packaged for you in this issue, and see if you agree.
This article originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of The Imaging Channel.