To give you a glimpse of the role imaging will play, let me describe what we're doing with Liz Claiborne, the very popular designer of women's clothing. We're working together to create a "virtual showroom" that will show the latest fashions. It will allow early viewing and on-line purchasing. This approach will provide Liz Claiborne with a new channel to reach potential buyers, especially those in medium and small-sized firms that are reluctant to incur the expense of a trip to the designer's showrooms in New York City. With the movement of almost all information to digital form and the universal connectivity provided by the Internet, information can be distributed in electronic form, to be printed locally when needed. This has tremendous appeal. For example, Boeing keeps the 100,000 pages of its repair manual on a corporate web site. Repair technicians print only the pages they need to do a particular procedure. That way Boeing can be sure that the procedures are always up-to-date. And the technicians save a lot of time finding the relevant information, because they can do an on-line search for the information they need. Here's a fascinating example of distributed printing. It suggests an interesting future for the publishing industry. The Inter-City Express is a major European commuter line for business travelers. The trains receive the news twice daily via satellite. They take that satellite feed and use it to produce their own newspaper, targeted for their particular customers. The news is printed on an HP LaserJet printer.
為了讓諸位對成象技術有所了解,這里,我給大家介紹一下我們是如何與著名的女裝設計師麗資·克萊本合作的。我們一起創立了一個“虛擬陳列室”,以展示最新的時裝。通過它可以先睹為快,并可以在線購物。這一方式可使麗資·克萊本通過新的渠道獲得潛在的客戶,特別是那些中小型的公司,因為它們不愿花錢去位于紐約的陳列室參觀。隨著信息的數碼化,通過互聯網提供通用的連接,信息均可以電子的形式分布,有需要時可在當地打印。這一發展趨勢影響極大。例如,波音在公司網址上載有多達10萬頁的維修手冊,而維修人員只需打印所需的某程序所在的頁碼。這是波音確保維修人員使用最新的程序的方法。這樣,維修人員在查找有關信息時就節省了大量的時間,因為他們可以在線查詢所需的信息。這里有一個關于分布式打印的有趣的例子。 我想它可使人們看到出版業未來的情形。城際快車公司(ICE ) 是歐洲一家主要為商業旅行者提供服務的市郊列車公司。列車每天兩次通過衛星收聽新聞。他們利用衛星發來的消息出版自己的報紙,其讀者定位為特殊的客戶——乘客。順便提一下,新聞是用惠普的LaserJet 激光打印機印制的。