Heading ‘a little further north each year’, trying to put a price on content, underwhelmed by 3D, and groped by a motivator (or was it the other way around?) Peter Coleman wraps it up With this issue, GXpress is moving closer to Asia, both in spirit and physically. Responding to a growing audience for our www.gxpress.net website, we've progressively beefed up our print distribution in South East Asia over recent issues, and have appointed Bangkok-based Stephan Peters as regional manager. This issue is our first of a ‘slip edition’ format with dedicated regional pages. We welcome new readers to our blend of technology-orientated newspaper news, and look forward to your input. The GXpress office is also on the road north in June, relocating to Cooran in Queensland, not far from the Noosa hinterland locality where GX was founded in 1998. For those who know it, that’s also close to the APN Yandina print site which was host to Australian SWUG in 2002... and direct flights to Asia from Brisbane! Our new contact details – snail mail to PO Box 40, Cooran, Qld 4569, phones to +61 7 5485 0079 – are in the front of this issue; others are unchanged. We hope you’ll keep in touch. A report from a ‘Wall Street Journal’ digital technology fair – an auspicious event at which Apple’s Steve Jobs was introduced by Rupert Murdoch – brought the information that News Corporation newspapers had sold 20,000 iPad apps. About half of them for the US business title which was first into the market when iPads went on sale there in April. By that standard, 4500 for the ‘Australian’ and 5000 for the UK ‘Times’ – in markets where the iPad didn't go on sale until the end of May – doesn’t seem sluggardly. Costs vary, from US$18 a month for the ‘WSJ’ to £9.99 and A$4.99 for the ‘Times’ and the Oz respectively. At the same time, I read a comment piece by a Bloomberg correspondent suggesting that Murdoch has it wrong this time... that it’s too late to start charging for something people have been accustomed to get free. But has he? The secret is in the pricing, the content and the marketing. Importantly, these thought-leading titles are relied upon for the opinions of their key columnists, of which Rupert is uniquely able to control the availability. These realities emphasise the challenge facing newspaper publishers: To create content which is unique and valuable, and not merely a commodity. And elsewhere, oh, wow... 3D pictures! Except some of the samples don’t exactly live up to the hype, appearing more like the cutouts in children’s books than the concept most of us (marketers excepted) understand as three-dimensional. It made me wonder how far we’ve really come since the stereoscopic picture viewers which were around when I was a child. The 3D technology currently stimulating TV sales is of a slightly different genre and may excite couch-potatoes watching State of Origin league between a can or more. But in print? I know images take a while to process but with samples (as I write) coming from 2008 and 2009 matches, I’m unimpressed. And while we’re on the subject of technology, how good it is to see society waking up to the intrusion of social networking sites such as Facebook. Personal space? Bring it on ;) As a passionate supporter of the best of Australian country music, I must admit I approached the Australian SWUG conference in the ‘country music capital’ of Tamworth with some apprehension. The metro dailies love making yee-haa jokes at the expense of the genre and I feared SWUG might go the same way with a stereotypical entertainment during the two-day conference. Thanks in part to Cheryl Byrnes, who runs the Fairfax Media unit which organises the annual StarMaker talent quest and publishes the monthly industry magazine, the choice of entertainers was, to say the least, sound. Former Australian Idol star Aaron Bolton took time out from serving cocktails at the Good Companion pub to croon to welcome-party guests on Friday, singer songwriter Katrina Burgoyne trilled from atop a couple of newsprint reels at the Northern Daily Leader Print Centre on Saturday, and Darren Coggan and supporters presented a cut-down version of his two-hour Cat Stevens tribute show, ‘Peace Train’, for presentation dinner guests. The dinner includes SWUG’s annual technical awards, in which what I presumed in our online coverage to call ‘the president’s men’ – the team from Bob Lockley’s home print site of North Richmond – scored well. That touched a nerve, and anxious not to be barred from next year’s SWUG – the only event (happily) for which we are asked to pay registration – we obliged on a request for recasting... though these comments will no doubt place us in danger. Jousting between Lockley and vice-president Anthony Payne – now both on the same side at Fairfax – is a regular feature of the conference, but Payne failed to get the Penrith Museum of Printing’s Stephen Brique to accept his sparring partner for their collection. He accepted a $2000 donation instead but added, “Bob’s welcome any time!” More light relief had come that afternoon, with the closing presentation from motivational speaker Malcolm McLeod. There were conclusions to be drawn from the handwriting of delegates – from the “hard working” Sarah Weldon and “loopy” Angus Scott, to John Ostler’s “powerful” signature, and the semi-released “volcano” indicated by Bob Lockley’s capital letters. And lessons from Cliff Young, the 61-year-old potato farmer who won a Sydney-Melbourne marathon in 1983 by running when others were sleeping: “Sometimes it’s what you think you know that stops you from learning,” McLeod says. And he urged, “Building trust will impact the bottom line.” And the opportunity to find a soulmate by shaking hands: Weldon and I could have come close, and it would certainly have been a better experience than that of being jumped on and having my backside groped by an exuberant McLeod when I tried to take his photograph earlier!