Happy Halloween!

New HP Wide Format Printing App

The Latex Mobile app allows mobile printing for the HP’s Latex 300 wide format printers.

The app, showcased at the SGIA Expo by HP, introduces "smart printing capabilities" to the Latex 300 range of wide-format printers, and allows users to "remotely monitor their printers, track job status and receive printer alerts", offering an "innovative user experience" for the Latex 310, 330 and 360 devices in the range.

Xavier Garcia, Vice President and General Manager of HP's Large-Format Sign and Display Division, commented: "Print service providers (PSPs) are under increasing pressure from customers to deliver on-time, urgent jobs while providing guaranteed, industry-leading work. The HP Latex Mobile app marks the beginning of a new era of smart printing, giving customers peace of mind while they are at and away from the print shop, as well as helping them to better address time-sensitive requests and gain customer loyalty."

Jose María Miñarro, Manager at HP customer Miñarro Impresión, got to try the app, and added: "The HP Latex Mobile application has not only simplified my working processes, its remote monitoring capabilities also give me the confidence to know what’s happening while I’m out of the office."

The Latex Mobile app will be available for download in January next year for smartphones, and mid-2015 for tablets, with both releases for iOS and Android.

Source: The Recycler

Recently we at Priceless Ink & Toner announced our relationship with ColorMatch™ wide format printer inks. For more information click here

Printer Apps Are More Popular Than Smartwatch Apps

A new report from app analytics company App Annie focuses on "connected apps," or apps that require separate hardware to run — which includes everything from printers with Wi-Fi to the latest Android Wear smartwatches. Although wearable technology has received a lot of attention recently, the report suggests downloads for their usually required companion apps are still low.

App Annie's report looked at 30 apps that require an external piece of hardware to work and inferred the number of downloads on both the Apple App Store and Google Play they received this past August.

The most downloaded app in the batch was Chromecast, which is a strong sign of the $35 streaming stick is success over the past year. The second most downloaded connected app was Fitbit after that come a bunch of apps that suggest that a lot more people have cable set-top boxes and printers than pieces of wearable technology. It also implies that people like to download apps for something like a printer or a satellite TV box, even though those apps are not required.

App Annie divided the 30 selected apps into six categories, and the top two categories, Media and Productivity, accounted for roughly 70% of downloads among these apps over the time period. Apps categorized as media include Chromecast, DirecTV, DISH and GoPro. Productivity apps include a bunch of printer apps from companies like HP and Kodak, as well as Square's Register software.

Apps that connect to newer technologies related to smart homes, smartwatches, and wearable technology accounted for only 15% of downloads, and that is combining four loosely related categories together. While app downloads are not a perfect proxy for device sales, you would expect the two to correlate fairly closely. Apps in these categories include Fitbit, Jawbone UP, Pebble, Misfit Shine, Nest Mobile, Dropcam and Android Wear.

The App Annie report doesn’t provide estimates for the number of downloads over the period. For that, you’ll have to subscribe to App Annie’s premium services. You can take a look at the full report here.

Source: Gogaom

New Branding Effort from Canon

Canon Unveils New Branding Effort, Invites Customers to "See Impossible"

On October 7, Canon announced the launch of a new branding effort, combined with a new logo and tagline. The logo incorporates the traditional Canon logo text along with a 3D visual of an expanding box and the tagline "See Impossible."

The box, according to Canon, symbolizes the company's desire to "break the boundaries of what is possible and shift the focus from Canon as being solely a manufacturer of quality digital imaging products to a company that empowers the creative spirit within its people and customers."

The associated website, seimpossible.usa.canon.com, is, according to Canon, a "digital hub housing consumer, professional, and commercial stories of inspiration, imagination, and innovative end-user applications of Canon imaging technology." Two sides of the box depicted on the site feature links: "See self-publishing" shows on-demand printing solutions, with a menu link to Canon's production print solutions, while "See smarter business" offers information on Canon office solutions and workflow automation. There are also links to Canon eye care technology and radiography systems.

"As a technology-based brand, Canon is constantly challenged to empower its customers in today's high-tech and fast-paced world in which new apps and innovations are launching every single day," said Joe Adachi, chairman and CEO for Canon U.S.A. "With imagination and customer focus at the core of the Canon business model, 'Canon See Impossible' will highlight the combined technological innovation and human ingenuity that makes the impossible possible. Our new rallying cry will extract creative thinking from a place of isolation, encourage exploration of the unknown, and showcase our creativity as it impacts the real world with limitless possibilities."

Source: Actionalble Intelligence

Reckless US Agency Expense on Printer Cartridges

The purchase by the Department of Agriculture was just one of a series of overspends by US government departments in the last year.

The Fiscal Times reported on what it calls a reckless federal shopping spree in the US, which saw government departments spend around $50 billion during the financial year, with September 30 being the final day of the year on which agencies "use it or lose it", spending the remainder of the cash given to them before the Treasury takes the rest back.

The agencies are said to spend all of their allocated funds because "Congress may not allocate as much the following year", which the sites notes "creates panic for federal workers scrambling to spend millions of dollars before they run out of time", as well as creating a "huge payday for contractors scoring big awards".

The large amount of money spent in the financial year included "impulse buys" on the final day, specifically the Department of Agriculture's outlay of $144,000 on toner cartridges, and the site noted that the Pentagon spent $5.5 billion alone on the final day of the year, with Department of Defense (DOD) officials "even sending an email encouraging employees to spend as much as they could".

This email, which the Washington Post obtained, saw Budget Officer Sannadean Sims and Procurement Officer Kathleen Miller state that "it is critical in our efforts to 100% of our available resources this fiscal year. It is also imperative that your organisation meets its projected spending goal for June".

Analysis of data from 2004 to 2009 by Harvard and Chicago universities saw that 8.7% of total federal spending in the USA occurs in the last week of the fiscal year, and the site notes that since the government spends so much money in such a short amount of time, some people have concerns that hasty purchases could result in problems down the road – like poor product selection.

The research also studied contract performances from 700 IT projects, worth a total of $130 billion, and found that projects awarded in the last week of the fiscal year were 2.2 to 5.6 times more likely to be of lower quality, with this issue able to be resolved if agencies were allowed to roll over their unused funds to the next fiscal year, a proposal similar to one made by President Obama's administration four years ago, though Congress never took it up.

Source: The Recycler