VentureBeat

Xerox is announcing today a new flagship digital commercial printing press, the Xerox igen4, a $640,000 machine that can handle millions of high-quality print jobs in a month.

The machine is the successor to the igen3 of 2002 and is 25 percent to 35 percent more productive than the earlier model. Maybe you could call it a valiant last stand for print, or the dawn of a new era in printing. The company is unveiling it at the Drupa 2008 printing show in Dusseldorf, Germany.

The company hopes to extend its 50 percent plus market share of the digital commercial printing market and help take market share away from the $400 billion analog offset printing press market. The igen4 is aimed at commercial printers, photo finishers, book printers, direct-mail houses, and digital printing service providers. It can produce short runs, personalized brochures or long runs as needed. Thanks to these new kinds of publications, printed pages have been growing, even as mass-printed publications such as newspapers are in decline.

The Internet, of course, threatens print businesses of all kinds. But I wouldn’t expect the “paperless office” to rise again, even in this age. But the Xerox move continues a trend where printers combine computer technology with advanced printing techniques to digitize the print process so it’s more efficient, allowing quick switching between small and big print jobs with maximum efficiency.

Xerox is also showing off a new technology for printing in the future. It calls it “cured gel ink,” a form of inkjet printing which it will use for commercial printing presses in the future. Traditional ink uses water, which soaks into a paper and doesn’t adhere well to surfaces like alumninum foil or plastics. The cured gel ink has the consistency of peanut butter as it is spread on a press. It turns rock hard after exposure to an ultraviolet light.

The new inks were developed by scientists at Xerox’s Canadian research unit and were derived from Xerox’s solid-ink printing business. Xerox foresees a wide array of uses for the ink, combined with its new printing heads which can jet 40 million drops of ink in a second. The uses include “transpromo applications” that combine a marketing message with a bill in a single document. It can print on cardboard, plastic, or foils. It’s not clear when the new inks will be available.

Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center showed off 10 fascinating projects this week, everything from eraseable paper to solid-ink printers, but such moments always raise the specter of the past.

Xerox famously failed in the 1970s to commercialize the personal computer, instead letting others, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, lead the way.

I met with Mark Bernstein, the director of PARC this week as Xerox showed off the fruits of its latest research. In our talk (see audio post), he said he’s determined not to fumble the future the way it did in the past. He talked about the spin-out of the research arm PARC from Xerox, and how it is structured to commercialize the best ideas. He says journalists always ask that question about that Steve Jobs visit and its aftermath. I couldn’t let him down.

The famed Palo Alto Research Center opened its doors to journalists today to show off a bunch of research projects from smart documents to cleantech.

Mark Bernstein, head of PARC, told me today that no interviewer ever forgets to ask about how Xerox fumbled the future by failing to commercialize the technologies behind the personal computer that built companies like Apple. But he says the R&D center — the birthplace of the laser printer and Ethernet networking — is determined to commercialize its inventions through its business groups and leverage its 165 researchers in Palo Alto. Now the projects that PARC and other Xerox R&D labs showed off could be licensed by a venture-funded start-up or other big tech companies. Hence, it makes sense for the company to publicize some of the research as widely as it possibly can.

Xerox spun out PARC in 2002. Back then, it funded 100 percent of the research. But today, Xerox funds only about 50 percent of the work. The rest is financed through licenses to other corporations, research partnerships with big companies, and government grants. Chris Morrison recently wrote about it.

Xerox itself has had more than 55,000 patents in its history and still gets 10 a day, said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox’s chief technolog officer. But the research isn’t scattered. It zeroes in on environmental technology, mass customization, and smart documents. Xerox invests $1.5 billion a year in R&D and it has more than 800 researchers. Over the last three decades, PARC’s technology has spawned 40 spin-offs.

Here is a summary of the projects that I saw today:

Eraseable Paper was one of the most interesting demos I saw. Think of the old invisible ink with lemon juice. Researchers Eric Shrader of PARC and Paul Smith of Xerox’s Toronto lab showed how they could save a lot of wasted paper printouts by using the same pieces of paper over and over again. Shrader noted that 44.5 percent of all documents printed are used just one time before they are tossed out. These include directions, emails, calendar pages, and cover sheets. At PARC itself, about a quarter of the time the papers are recycled the same day they are printed. Studies show it takes about 204,000 joules of energy to make a piece of paper. It takes 114,000 joules to make a piece of recycled paper. But it only costs 2,000 joules to print one sheet of paper. Hence, if you can print over and over again on one piece of paper, you can save a lot of energy. Read the rest of this entry »

MySpace nearing deals with music labels — Before long, MySpace may be offering streaming music and ad-supported downloads from Sony BMG and Warner Music Group, according to a report from the NY Post. A deal with the two music giants might challenge the dominance of Imeem, which has so far held the advantage in its deals with the four music majors.

Tudou.com raises another $53M, maybe — The Chinese video portal Tudou.com may have picked up $53 million, raising its lifetime total to $81 million, according to news site SinoCast. That wasn’t quite enough for peHUB, which made some calls and was “peppered” with “no comments” from previous investors. Primack suggests that the company may be nervous about an upcoming government penalty, but is likely just tardy in announcing the funding.

Mixx makes top users even more powerful — While the social news site Digg has moved to limit the power of its top users, newer, smaller competitor Mixx seems to have the opposite idea. The site, which calls its top users “Super Mixxers”, has given them the ability to tag news stories as “Breaking”, effectively forcing those stories to display on the front page. Giving the most devoted users more powers essentially makes them the editors of the site, a risky move that other sites have so far avoided.

Xerox begins offering carbon calculator for business — What kind of environmental footprint does the paper use of your office cause? What about using the printer? Xerox has unveiled a new “Sustainability Calculator” to let you know. Of course, nothing is free in life, and becoming sustainable might involve buying some of Xerox’s newest products or availing yourself of their “document outsourcing” service. In the long run, though, getting rid of that old ice-cream cart-sized printer might both help the environment and save money. Get an earful on why from some Xerox spokespeople, here.

Founder’s Co-op starts seeding Seattle-area companies — The co-founders of ill-fated local site Judy’s Book have learned from their lesson, and decided not to start a new company. Instead, the two have opened the Founder’s Co-op, a $2 million fund for seed-stage companies in the Seattle area. Investments will range from $10,000 to $250,000, no doubt served with a side of hard-earned wisdom. Read more at the Seattle PI.

Celebrities are the sign of the beast bubble — Taking a trip down memory lane, GigaOm recalls massive fundings of sites started by actors, musicians and sports stars in the dotcom era — then compares them with recent investments into IBeatYou (coverage here), which has received investment from sports stars, and Skispace, owned by a ski champion. “There might be more such celebrity social-something-video-whatever efforts lurking … when you read about them, well, you know the end is near,” says Om. Then again, we survived the launch three weeks ago of MC Hammer’s DanceJam, so maybe the internet is more resilient this time around.

Viewdle takes first investment from Dubai fund — Viewdle, a company that’s working on a video search technology based on facial recognition, has raised an undisclosed first funding from Dubai-based investment group KIT Capital, according to VentureWire (subscription required). We covered Viewdle during its TechCrunch40 launch.