Adobe Acrobat and pdf, the portable document format, have become a de facto standard for the distribution of documents. Adobe Acrobat is software that enables the exchange, management and printing of formatted documents regardless of computer platform. It is not a layout program like Quark Xpress or InDesign. The Adobe Acrobat file format was created to manage and distribute documents across different computer platforms (Mac, PC, UNIX) using the internet, disks or other means.

How does Acrobat work?

PDF files are generated from layout (Quark Xpress, InDesign, Word etc.) files. These applications can either save files as pdf or they can use a print driver to generate the pdf. PDF files can be high quality, all pictures and fonts can be embedded making sure that the file will display and print on a variety of computers. They can also be compressed, saving space and bandwidth.

The benefits of using Acrobat PDF files are

• files are complete
• files are compressed
• files can be viewed and printed on almost any computer with a similar result
• files can be used for high resolution printing; digital printing; online publishing

At SOS we have been using pdf files for many years to transfer artwork reliably. Showing customers how to prepare pdf files sucessfully has helped us to achieve incredible turnaround times, for example when producing the nightly research documents that have to be distributed within a couple of hours from receipt of the files.

Further information about Acrobat and pdf can be found at the Adobe website.

The Xeikon is a high speed, high quality digital colour press. It prints on paper fed from a reel, that's why it can print very long banners, posters and other oversize documents.

We have a range of stocks on hand, they include

• 100 gsm uncoated
• 100; 190 & 250 gsm digital paper (these are EMAS and FSC certified)
• 130 & 250 gsm coated matt art
• 130 & 250 gsm coated gloss art
• 350 gsm IVO laser
• 150 gsm Translucent

Other stocks can be ordered, a sample book is available from your SOS representative.

Like most presses the Xeikon prints in CMYK. When preparing files remember the image width should be no more than 475 mm, the length is virtually unlimited.
We prefer pdfs in cmyk, all transparency flattened. Solid black areas should be made up as rich black (eg. C40;M40;K100).
You can find our recommended Distiller settings for the Xeikon in our Acrobat settings section.

In February 2010 we celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of our website. Time for a look back:

Our first webpage in 1995 was green and very long. There were some pictures and even some blinking text. SOS was the first and for a while the only Australian printing company to come up in a yahoo search (this was PG, pre-Google).

The website was mostly informational, describing services and offering tips and tricks on how to best deal with the complicated art of printing.

 We hosted our own web server and our own mail services. We encouraged customers to send us files, until one customer sent us a 700 page training manual as a postscript file with a size of over 50 MB. Our service provider Magnadata was down for half a day and we bought a Jaz Drive for that customer.

Our next page had icons that grew on rollover, thanks to some Java Script snippets. The page was fairly dynamic, yet organised. It got us our first web design contract, a web page for a computer training company, which we produced within two months including training them in setting up and updating their course schedules in html.

In 1996 Netscape Navigator had the lion's share of the browser market (90%) and Microsoft's Internet Explorer was in version 2.

In 1997 we used 3D look bevelled buttons, at that time a complex, multi-step Photoshop action and the very latest in information design. Sadly we totally overdid it.  

Our logo also did not really benefit from the white halo around it, but the black background was v-cool and survived a few variations. One of them was the word page, extremely fast loading as the front page was just made up of text in bright colours.

 

Our Morse page was fun and simplistic, but neither recognised nor appreciated by anyone, so its online days were numbered. The LED news line was also not popular and hardly anybody made it past the front page.

In 1998 we went back to a standard menu on the left, which seemed to be where everybody was expecting it.

File Transfers was the most important section, our in house FTP server got busier the more companies acquired high speed internet (high speed at that time was often ISDN, 128 k).

Our pre-millenium end of the world page showed our versatility, central to the image was a floppy disk, symbolising digital data. A Floppy Disk was a flexible, magnetic plastic disk that could hold up to 1.44 megabytes of data. We also had Syquest disks, ZIP and Jaz disks and a DAT tape recorder.

We also had four different versions of Microsoft's Word on our computers, as they all displayed and printed documents differently.

 

 

From 2000 on we spent most of our web development time on client sites, with ordering and job tracking systems, reporting, and other database driven functionality that linked in to our internal systems. Our own website was less important and updates were rare.

Our 2003 site was based on a fully in house written content management system, completely database driven and very flexible. The design was fresh, linked to the new logo and this site stayed online for many years.

Functionality was extended, forms, calculators and other useful things added. This front page was our longest lasting.

  

 

Kodak Prosper Environmental Impact Information

There are endless benefits in digital, just in time production for the environment including reduced obsolescence and waste.

The Kodak Prosper press offers a number of additional features: 

Responsible recycling, reduced waste and reduced natural resource consumption

• Kodak Prosper Press jetting modules are recyclable and are refurbished after each usage cycle.

• Printed sheets can be deinked and recycled.

• Digital printing enables short, targeted print runs and reduced paper waste.

• The substrate flexibility of the press allows recycled and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) approved papers.

Clean Operation 

• Kodak Prosper Press Inks contain minimal VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds).

• Kodak Prosper Press Inks are toy safe, making them a safe and desirable solution for children's and juvenile's books.

• Kodak Prosper Press Inks do not require a hazardous waste removal process.

CPSIA General Conformtiy

• In accordance with section 102 of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2008, Lead and its compounds are not used in the manufacture of Kodak Prosper Inks or Kodak Prosper Press Storage Solution and Replenisher Fluid.

• In addition, these products are not manufactured with the following phthalate materials: DEHP, DBP, BBP, DINP, DIDP, or DnOP

A quick note on password security:

Recently there have been a number of attacks on online systems in the news. Citibank, Google and Sony  are only some of the examples of high profile companies whose systems were broken into and sensitive information was stolen. But on almost any server on the internet, large or small, automated programs are regularly trying to hack into the system, guess passwords or find holes in firewalls.  

It is therefore very important to make sure that sites are secured and passwords are not easy to guess for bots and spiders crawling the web.  

We have implemented a number of security measures to protect our systems, including minimum requirements for passwords used on our systems. This is not intended to make it difficult to log in but to protect our and our customers’ data.  

We also ask our users to remember the following rules regarding passwords:

• If passwords must be written down on a piece of paper, store the paper in a secure place and destroy it when it is no longer needed.
• Never share passwords with anyone.
• Use different passwords for all user accounts.
• Change passwords immediately if they may have been compromised.
• Be careful about where passwords are saved on computers. Some dialog boxes, such as those for remote access and other telephone connections, present an option to save or remember a password. Selecting this option poses a potential security threat. 

Our minimum complexity requirements are:

• The password cannot be equivalent to your login name
• The password is at least six characters long
• The password contains characters from at least three of the following five categories:

1. 1. 1. English uppercase characters (A - Z)
      2. English lowercase characters (a - z)
      3. Base 10 digits (0 - 9)
      4. Non-alphanumeric (For example: !, $, #, or %)
      5. Unicode characters

(source: Microsoft Technet, passwords best practice,)

For your information, the most frequently used passwords on the internet are:

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

 according to Imperva

Another – very entertaining - list of 500 most frequently used passwords can be found at

http://www.whatsmypass.com/the-top-500-worst-passwords-of-all-time