Digital deal sealed

As exclusively reported by PJ last October, the deal has finally been done that will equip west London digital newspaper printer Stroma with a full colour inkjet press.

Océ announces today that Stroma, the long-term partner in its Digital Newspaper Network, will produce colour copies of international newspaper editions for the first time. No official timescale has been given, but PJ believes that the colour press is being installed this month and will be running live in March.

Stroma, which has been at the forefront of digital printing since its launch a decade ago, will be upgraded from a toner-based web-fed press to the Jetstream 1000. Océ says the press will provide a quality level comparable to offset, and enable Stroma to expand to longer runs of digitally produced newspapers as well as expand further into book publication.

Océ says that advances based on its Jetstream technology inkjet presses in terms of speed and quality, plus huge flexibility. means that digital newspapers will become an even more acceptable product for the newspaper industry.

The Jetstream 1000 system is capable of printing up to 1,000 36-page tabloid newspapers per hour or 9,000 copies per eight-hour shift. Each copy is potentially an individual product., printed digitally with no loss of speed or quality compared to more traditional printing methods.

See January printed PJ, out today, for more information on the deal.

Supplying digital printing services across London and the Home Counties, in terms of newspapers, Stroma prints and distributes international newspaper titles from across the globe to readers in London. These titles include the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Moscow Times and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Steve Brown, managing director of Stroma, said: “In these testing times for newspapers, digital colour is a real expansion opportunity for the industry. This is something the publishers have been wanting for a long time, and will now be realised. With the Océ JetStream 1000 production press, we have the solution for the future growth of Stroma. I know Océ extremely well and trust totally. This is a true partnership on a long but mutually beneficial journey.”

Océ pioneered the digital newspaper market a decade ago with its Digital Newspaper Network. More than 25 million newspaper copies have been produced globally through this network since 2001, making Océ the world market leader in digital newspaper production. The introduction of the JetStream series of digital full colour inkjet presses extended Océ production capabilities into higher run lengths, unprecedented productivity and full colour quality on par with traditional newspapers produced on offset presses. Now digital production speeds are within the scope of those required for smaller metropolitan, suburban and country newspapers.

A new era in digital newspaper production

Sebastian Landesberger, Océ executive vice president for production printing, said: “Ensuring immediate delivery in international markets of newspapers printed digitally in colour with a print quality comparable to litho provides a steady revenue stream and potential growth opportunity for newspaper publishers. We are fully committed to the digital newspaper market, and with the Océ JetStream at Stroma, we move into a new era of digital newspaper production with the Océ Digital Newspaper Network.”

In the UK, Océ has established a solid Océ JetStream customer base. “Stroma is one more reference point for our customers who are recognising the positive benefits to their business of using our inkjet technology,” said Craig Nethercott, Océ UK’s Director of Production Printing.

AOL to buy Huffington Post in £222m deal

US internet firm AOL has agreed to a buyout of the Huffington Post online newspaper. The $315m (£222m) deal will create an internet media group with 270 million users, including 117 million in the US.

The purchase price - $300m of which will be in cash - will be paid to co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer and a few minority shareholders.

Ms Huffington - currently editor of her namesake news service - will head the combined firm's content division. This means she will take on responsibility for AOL sites such as Engadget and Techcrunch, as well as retaining her current role at the intellectual centre-left website she helped set up in 2005.

"The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years - though now at light speed - by combining with AOL," said Ms Huffington in a joint statement.

AOL expects the purchase to help boost its flagging advertising revenues in a year that chief executive Tim Armstrong maintains will mark a turnaround for the company that divorced from Time Warner in 2009.

The Huffington Post is expected to contribute an additional 25 million users to the internet giant.

"The combination of AOL's infrastructure and scale with the Huffington Post's pioneering approach to news and innovative community-building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement," said the two companies in their statement.

The transaction is expected to be completed in March or April and will need regulatory approval in the US.

gets your online deal now

Kenji Onozawa went to Best Buy at 4 a.m. on Black Friday last year searching for discounts on a Blu-ray player and a netbook.

Supplies of those hot items ran out before he reached the front of the line, however, and he left the store, sleepy and disappointed, with only a "Lion King" DVD in hand. All told, he said, it was "possibly one of the most miserable experiences" he'd ever had.

This year, Onozawa has given up real-world shopping. He plans to do all his gadget buying online.

"I can shop from my bed instead of waking up at 3 a.m. to wait out in the cold for three hours to fight everybody for 20 percent off more than that," the 29-year-old said by phone from Seattle, Washington, where he lives. "All I need is ... my pillow and my iPad and I'm good. I can do all the shopping wherever I am."

Share your pictures of Black Friday

While Black Friday -- the day after Thanksgiving in the United States -- is one of the biggest retail shopping days of the year, tech-smart consumers are increasingly turning to the internet for the best gadget deals. Last year, 84 million people in the United States went online from mid-November to mid-December to shop for gift items, which was up 12 percent over the year before, according to comScore, a company that tracks online traffic.

Furthermore, the growth in online purchases is expected to outpace that in brick-and-mortar stores this holiday season. Analysts are predicting 9 to 16 percent increases in online sales, compared to a 2.3 percent increase in real-world spending, as calculated by the National Retail Federation.
Attribute part of the trend to practicality, since people like Onozawa can stay in their PJs to shop instead of throwing elbows in madhouse crowds.

But penny-pinchers may also be driving the phenomenon. Many of the best discounts on electronics -- especially big-ticket items like TVs, laptops and gaming systems -- are found on the internet, not at retail stores.

Online discounts "are as juicy or even more appealing than what some of the retailers are promising on Black Friday," said Mike Gikas, a senior editor for electronics and technology at Consumer Reports, the nonprofit group.

Gikas advised people to stay away from the Black Friday mania "unless you like rubbing against people you don't know -- or getting trampled."

On the internet, particular days seem to have less importance than at retail stores. Wal-Mart, Amazon, Target and Best Buy are already offering online discounts on electronics that may match or beat Black Friday prices. Target.com, for example, is selling a Samsung HDTV for $50 less than Wal-Mart's advertised Black Friday discount price of $500, said Dan de Grandpre, editor-in-chief at DealNews, a website that tracks product discounts.

Other online deals may not surface until mid-December.

Because retail stores have overstocked their supplies of TVs, merchandise shouldn't run out and "the deals will get better, guaranteed, as you get closer to Christmas," said Gikas.

Some discounts may pop up online on Friday, in tandem with in-store deals. Apple, which isn't known for discounting its high-end products, says it will have a one-day online sale at Apple.com on Friday. The ad on its website makes no mention of a companion sale in Apple retail stores.

In recent years, a phenomenon marketers call "Cyber Monday" has emerged as a sort of online holiday shopping event. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, legend has it, consumers rush to the internet -- presumably from their workplace computers -- to shop for the rest of their lists.

But experts say that shopping holiday is largely bunk. The internet tracker comScore said Cyber Monday never has been the biggest online shopping day of the year. That day typically comes on a Monday in December, said comScore's senior director of industry analysis, Andrew Lipsman.

Still, the Monday after Thanksgiving is a bigger day for online shopping than either Thanksgiving day -- which has been talked about as the hot new day to shop online -- and Black Friday. Last year, Americans spent almost $900 million at online retail stores on the Monday after Thanksgiving -- compared with $595 million on Black Friday and $300 million on Thanksgiving Day, comScore said.

For people shopping for technology gifts both online and at real stores, there are a number of apps and websites to help the search.

Several websites, like DealNews, RetailMeNot and DealDump, aggregate online shopping deals in one place so consumers can find them.

But a simple internet search for a specific product may be all you need to come up with a good price comparison, said Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst at IDC, who recommends tech consumers avoid Black Friday entirely.

Smartphone apps and social shopping sites also are empowering consumers in new ways. The apps RedLaser and ScanLife, for example, let users scan product barcodes in brick-and-mortar stores and then see a list of websites that are selling that exact item, often for less money or without sales tax, as Slate's Farhad Manjoo points out.

Llamas said the smartphone is one of the consumer's "most valuable weapons."

"The best thing is you have your handy dandy barcode scanner app," he said. "Let that be your guide. Go to one store, look up the product and say [to a store employee], 'What can you do for me?'"

Consumers should also look for free shipping deals online. More than 40 percent of online transactions in April through June included free shipping, said Lipsman of comScore.

Sites that don't offer free shipping are also likely to lose consumers, he said.

"It's something consumers have come to expect," he said.

Onozawa, the Seattle shopper, is on the lookout for Microsoft's Kinect gaming add-on, an HDTV and maybe an MP3 player this holiday shopping season.

Instead of hunting around stores, he's watching Twitter feeds and browsing websites in hopes that he'll get the best deal.

"I'm already shopping online," he said, adding that it's easier -- and less terrifying -- for him than bumping shoulders with the retail mob.