$5 billion Arizona chip

Intel Corp (INTC.O) plans to build a $5 billion, cutting-edge microchip factory in Arizona by 2013, sharply ramping up its U.S. manufacturing capacity as part of a major global expansion.

Construction should kick off in the middle of this year, it said in a statement. When completed, the plant will churn out next-generation 14-nanometer line-width transistors and microchip wafers of 300 millimeters.

Intel said in October it plans to spend $6 billion to $8 billion on high-tech manufacturing facilities in Arizona and Oregon, creating as many as 8,000 construction jobs.

In January, the world's largest chip maker unveiled its next-generation microchip, code-named Sandy Bridge, which it said will yield about a third of its corporate revenue in 2011.

About three-quarters of Intel's manufacturing takes place in the United States. But it is expanding capacity around the world, including in Israel and China.

Intel shares rose 0.5 percent to $22.07 on Nasdaq late Friday afternoon.

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.

At security confab, Clinton urges risk, investment

SAN FRANCISCO--Like any great endeavor, information technology does not come without its risks, former President Bill Clinton said this afternoon during a speech at the RSA security conference here.

Clinton stressed that this was especially true given recent events in Egypt, efforts to secure free Internet access around the world, investigations into WikiLeaks, and the fallout from the Stuxnet virus.

"There are no totally risk-free endeavors and advances," Clinton said. "At every step along the way we have to ask ourselves, 'what is it we're really trying to do here?'"

Clinton closed out the weeklong security conference with a talk entitled "Embracing Our Common Humanity," in which he focused on the importance of making sure there is good political policy to back up new technologies, so as not to repeat mistakes made in the past. Part of such an effort also involves looking for evidence to make the right decisions, Clinton said.

"You can have all the technology you want, but if you don't have good information, you're going to make the wrong choices," he said.

Even so, Clinton knocked an organization that had plenty of information--WikiLeaks (or as he mistakenly called it during the speech "Wikipedia leaks")--for not giving up its own Internet records once under investigation. Clinton referred to the situation as ironic.

As was the case with a past RSA keynote speech by Al Gore, who served as vice president to Clinton, those with press badges were barred from attending the talk by Clinton because of a "contract restriction." But RSA attendees with different sorts of credentials (including, in this case, CNET News staffers) were allowed to snap photos and blog during Clinton's presentation.

During the nearly hour-long talk, Clinton ran through a brief history of economics and policy changes, emphasizing how the focus of the U.S. economy following his administration had led to a set of industries that didn't encourage IT jobs.

"We went through a long eight-year period when there was no source of new jobs. When all of America's economic growth were in housing, consumer spending, and finance," Clinton said. "And if you think about it, they're all inherantly self-limiting, and when you go beyond the limits they're all fraught with opportunities for disaster."

Of course hindsight is 20-20, which is why Clinton talked up the importance of risk in regard to projects like the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The Hadron Collider was not just about subatomic particles, Clinton said, it was also about the computers, and the IT that made the setup possible.

Clinton also compared the security industry to a modern day police force.

"Throughout history, everything that has value is subject to being stolen, or altered," Clinton said. "So at one level, everybody in cybersecurity is sort of like the most modern cop on the beat. And you're dealing with human nature's inevitable tendency to try to take advantage of whatever the latest object of value is. But it is profoundly important."

Clinton said he believed his administration to be the first to deal with both the opportunity and challenge of the information technology era, with, among other things, its establishment of the Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, an effort to guard against technological threats that could disrupt critical parts of the economy.

"It seems ludicrous now, but every third person was convinced that the world would come to an end when computers failed to actually make the conversion when 2000 occurred," he joked. "Nothing bad happened, but the work we did provided sort of a template for the efforts that the executive branch made when I was there in the cybersecurity era."

Following his speech, Clinton briefly mentioned yesterday's Silicon Valley visit by President Obama during a question and answer session. Clinton said he hoped Obama was going through a similar process to the one he himself went through in 1991-92, in which his administration tried to determine where jobs were likely to come from, as well as what public policies and private incentives were likely to bring the biggest gains.

"I think you have to understand where we are, where we're going, and what we need to do," Clinton said.