This is inspired by the Grow Traffic post Sexy, Fun and Addictive which is thinking about the world of online marketing.

Online retail and online marketing are very much of the same ilk, the only thing about online retail is you tend to get the headache of problems with customers and problems with sales and orders going missing.

Online Retails is Sexy, Fun and Addictive

OK it can be – there are time when it really isn’t very sexy either, a bit like every business opportunity there are fun times to be had and there are times when you have to really dig deep and see the fun times when it’s not feeling that way. Either way there is no doubting that online retail is one of the most addictive activities out there and if you’re going to be involved with the internet you can rest assured it can be very satisfying to be an online retailer.

Many individuals and businesses do not take recycling seriously, however following the implementation of the EU’s Waste and Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive in 2003 businesses including schools and other educational institutions are forced to think about how they are going to dispose of their old electrical products in order to abide by the guidelines introduced.  Computers are classed as hazardous waste because if they are burned toxins that are poisonous to people are put in to the air, or if computers are sent to landfill the internal parts within the systems that use substances such as lead and mercury can cause problems to plants, animals and humans in the form of water contamination when these substances are leaked in to the soil.

A great way to carry out computer recycling is to get in touch with a professional hardware buy it back company who can take the stress out of knowing what to do with your old equipment.  They will buy back your old hardware products and ensure that all data is deleted from computers, they test them and recycle them by selling them to other companies if possible.  As a last resort complete computer disposal will be taken care of from the company providing you with the correct certification for your records.

In summary ensuring that your business or school is on top of computer recycling is not only a cost effective way to enhance your IT budget it also ensures that corporate social responsibilities are met.  I urge everyone to take computer recycling seriously in order to protect our environment now and help to sustain our natural resources by reusing products instead of constantly buying new.

Re manufactured cartridge are those that have been cleaned and checked for damage before being recycled and refilled with a new batch of ink.  The main benefits of these types of ink cartridges is that they work out cheaper, but also they are environmentally friendly as recycling cartridges prevents them being sent to landfill after one use.  Re manufactured products entered the market a few years ago and are perfectly fine to use in most types of printers providing that the cartridges have been cleaned, checked and refilled properly.  However problems can arise when companies do not take much care in cleaning and refilling cartridges which can result in unreliable cartridges that may break and at the same time damage your printer.

Cloned cartridges usually manufactured in Asia are copies of original manufacturers ink cartridges and have become attractive to ink consumers because of their cheap price tags.  Even though the ink cartridges are made from scratch compared to re-manufactured cartridges they are still the cheapest type of cartridges on the market.  However the low price tags has got to make you question their reliability – you will find with these types of cartridges that they do not print consistently well and the print quality is nowhere near as good as original ink cartridges.  It is also believed that these cheap cartridges can damage your printer thus the cost of having to replace your printer will outweigh the benefits of purchasing these clone cartridges.

To ensure the longevity of your printer the best option is to purchase original or re manufactured ink cartridges.  Both types will ensure you get the most from your printer model in terms of  good, quality prints.  As the ink found in both original and re manufactured cartridges is perfectly compatible the risk of damage to your printer is minimal ensuring that you will get the most out of it and it remains reliable for a long period of time.

To find suitable ink cartridges for your printer visit iClick Ink where we stock thousands of ink products.

3D printing, also widely known as additive manufacturing is the term given to making 3D objects from digital files.  The whole concept is achieved by layering materials on top of each other by using additive processes.  3D printing is usually done by using a materials printer, in the last 10 years sales for these printers has increased dramatically, especially in the last couple of years proving the popularity of the concept.  In simple terms the process of 3D printing works like this:

1. CAD (computer aided design) is used to create a 3D model design

2. IT software then cuts/slices this CAD model into many thin layers

3. Lasers found within the 3D printer then paints a layer of material about 1mm thick which is then hardened

4. The process of printing each material layer, allowing  them to harden and then building them on top of each other basically continues until the model is complete.  As each layer is extremely thin the process can take hours or even days.

The printers work similarly to inkjet printers but obviously use different materials to create the 3D models, materials such as molten plastic, waxes, powders and other materials.  The process is very clever and 3D printers are now becoming more and more popular with manufacturers, engineers, designers and many other industries due to the development in recent years of different technologies that greatly aids 3D printing.  There are many different methods used in 3D printing however they all use the same process of building objects layer by layer which is why 3D printing is in professional terms referred to as additive manufacturing.

As the concept is becoming more well known and popular it is not just businesses that can benefit from 3D printing technology, individuals can use it in creating models owing to their hobbies or to test out a new idea allowing for a small model to be produced quickly without the need to wait for design agencies to produce.

If you would like anymore information on 3D printing and how it can turn your ideas into reality take a look at iClick 3D Printing.

• To reduce costs by improving efficiency throughout the company
• To reduce your environmental impact

Printing is seen to be a key area within business practices that can involve unnecessary costs and result in environmental waste.  Printing is an expensive business considering the cost of ink, toner cartridges and replacement drums, so it’s necessary for all businesses to keep a track on this and look at ways to reduce these costs by printing effectively.  Interestingly in the past, there was talk about ‘the paperless office’ where it was thought the onset of PC’s would reduce printing levels enormously.  However, this has not seen to be the case with employees being able to access more information than ever before on the internet and then printing this off to read as well as the printing of emails, printing levels have in fact increased by 36% over the past three years..

Considering the above here are 13 tips to cut the costs of printing in your business.

1.  The most obvious tip is to just NOT PRINT documents unless you really need to.

2.  Communicate this message to employees and try and get everyone to print in an environmentally friendly manner, by letting everyone know the costs involved in printing unnecessarily.

3.  Duplexing is a major way to reduce the amount of paper being printed, this means printing on the front and back of each piece of paper and this could reduce annual printing costs by 30%.

4.  Using the Print Preview function can give you a clear idea of what is about to be printed and so can prevent printed documents being put in the bin due to errors.

5.  GreenPrint software technology has been developed to manage printing waste – it shows users exactly what they are about to print, it detects pages that will probably be classed as waste and shows these on the print preview and it also guides employees to the most cost efficient printer in the office.  This can be downloaded for free and can display actual cost savings from more efficient printing.

6.  Researching the printer market before purchasing can be a great way to cut costs, look for printers that work out cost effective in the long run taking into account the price of ink cartridges for different models.

7.  Set the default setting on your printers to ‘Fast Draft’ for internal printing, so that employees save ink every time they print but can change the settings if better quality is needed.

8.  Use Microsoft Word’s shrink one page option which will try to shorten a document by one page by altering the text size and spacing.  Internet explorer also has a shrink to fit option on its print preview page which will shrink the content of a document down to fit on less pages.

9.  Only print the selection you need; a useful tool when you just need to print a paragraph from a webpage or a small section of a large document, do this clicking by the selection button in the print box.

10. Printing to PDF instead of paper is a good way of getting documents in a user friendly format that can be shared around via email.

11. When printing Powerpoint slides, make sure at least 3 slides are printed to each page to save paper, this can be done by selecting handouts in the print box.

12. Only print in colour where needed, for example when printing a webpage change the print settings to greyscale.  Printing in black and white will greatly save the amounts of ink being used.

13. Use old printouts as scrap paper, i.e. use the back of sheets to make notes on – don’t waste paper!

For all your printer ink and toner requirements check out iClickink.

It turns out there are a lot of things that make human metabolism different to that of other animals, it’s due to this that a number of drugs that have perviously seemed to have a positive impact on animals have no effect or a negative effect with it comes to testing on human tissue.

Organovo are hoping that 3D printing will enable them to create tissue that is almost indiscernible to that of human skin and bone, however they’re hoping this new technology will allow them to produce the tissue at a fraction of the cost is costs to grow human tissue in the lab. verall this should lead to a big reduction in the costs associated with medical research and pharmaceutiacl research.

Normally, 3D printing involves laying one layer of resin, plastic or metal being laid down at a time stored in cartridges (much in the same way a normal laser printer uses a printer toner cartridges), Organovo have developed cartridges that contain cells prepared especially for this task.

The technicians at Organovo have developed a number of different tissues that are very similar to human tissue samples using this technique. These human-like samples include skin, lung, cardiac muscle, blood vessels etc.

How to make a printer run faster

Below you will find 8 handy tips that will show you how to make a printer run faster.

1. Break up large print jobs – the bigger your print jobs the more memory used between the computer and the printer and also between each sheet of paper – just chop down the number of pages, or the size of the files you’re printing out and you’ll find everything nicely speeds up.
2. Reduce the print quality – do you really need to print out that email thread in super fine quality? NO!! Print it out using draft quality instead, you’ll save on ink and your printer will run faster!
3. Don’t print out in colour – by printing in black and white you’re only going to have to use part of the mechanism in the printer which should give you that bit of a speedier print out, better still you’ll use let inkjet cartridges or printer toner cartridges.
4. Connect your wireless printer with a USB – wireless printers are all the rage, they’re cool and they can be positioned anywhere – but are they really necessary? We managed before? Plus having a printer directly connected to your computer will mean you get to print out faster as the connection is faster.
5. Add more memory – by adding memory to either you computer or your printer (oer both) you’ll be able to get a quickly print job output.
6. Convert to PDF files – PDFs are print ready files – they print out much faster that other types of files, so don’t waste your time with big images, just get them printed.
7. Remove unnessary applications from your computer – it takes memory for your computer to send a file to the printer, if you are running other memory intensive applications on your computer this will slow down the speed in which your computer and printer can communicate with each other. Just get rid of the rubbish you don’t need!
8. Keep printed documents – use your printers in built memory to keep printed documents and instead of resending a document to be printed just select it from your printers past jobs list.

Remember the thing that makes your printer run slowest of all (kind of) is running out of ink! Don’t forget to visit iClickInk for all your printer ink and toner cartridge requirements.

Are we a step closer to home 3D printing?

Earlier this year saw the launch of a very cool new 3D printer from Additive Manufacturing pioneers Freedom Of Creation and stereolithography gurus 3D systems. The company’s synonymous with all things additive have launched their new desktop 3D printer, the Cube. Along with a Cloud Printing bureaux service, a Hubs network of Cube owners, Cubify online products to browse download and print, and some new Apps. Impressive stuff!!

Costing less than $2000, the printer extrudes a polymer filament and can make objects up to 5 square inches. Could this be the start of the home ‘maker’ revolution?

Read more about this printer and other cool 3D print stuff at Artefact cafe.

FOC Cube 3D printer

One of the most recent developments in this sphere is the D-shape printer. The D-Shape building process is very similar to the printing process by straining a binder onto a base layer (which is very similar to what an ink jet printer does on top of a sheet of paper).

Although it’s not very likely that any time soon we’ll be selling 3D printer (we’ll be sticking to ink cartridges, printer toner cartridges and printer ribbons).

In the same way that 3D printing could be the future of the manufacturing process, it’s not so far removed to think that3D printing (so something that develops from this technology) could also be the future of construction as well.

The D-Shape uses a funky mix of bonding agent as well as a load of sand. If you can stand to watch this and just listen to the untranslated Italian you’ll have a good idea for how it works.

The guys behind this development believe that one day it will be possible to essentially print a house, using this or a similar technology, they also reckon that this is the kind of technology that would be used to produce structures on the moon all you’ve have to take with you in the bonding agent that gets printed out whilst the sand would be sourced from the locality.

The Martin Yale price increase will come into force from the 1st March 2012 and the increase will be around 5% through to 10% (however Intimus brand will increase by 15% to 20%).

If we have any further updates on this we’ll let you know on the blog, otherwise as of the 1st March 2012 the Martin Yale Shredders in question will be automatically updated.

If you want to beat the increase in the Martin Yale Shredder range check out iClickShredders.co.uk today!