Chronos is in for a busy Expo week. At its booth on the show floor (Booth 707, for those of you at Expo), the company is showing off two recently released products— StickyBrain 4, the note manager that just added support for Spotlight (among other changes), and SOHO Organizer, a personal business productivity suite. On top of that, Chronos is showing off a product it just announced Monday, SOHO Signs.
Aimed at small offices, home users, and schools, SOHO Signs lets you assemble large-sized posters, ground stakes, banners, and other types of signage you’d normally have to order from a print shop. You create the design using the included software, print out your project using an ordinary ink-jet or laser printer and 8.5-by-11-inch repositionable adhesive sheets. Just attach the sheets to the backing—pre-marked grid lines help you straighten things up—and you’ve got a sign on your hands.
This isn’t the sort of thing graphics professionals will turn to, but for small mom-and-pop operations, classroom projects, and parents who just want to make a banner celebrating their kid’s birthday, spending $17 to $34 on a sign kit sure beats a much more expensive trip down to the local print shop.
What’s interesting about SOHO Signs is that Chronos is producing it with Avery Dennison Office Products, which makes its Mac debut with this product. “They didn’t have a Mac solution until we talked to them,” said Robert McCullough, vice president of marketing for Chronos.
And that’s a positive sign for the overall health of the Mac market, not because a product like SOHO Signs will convince a lot of people they need to switch to the OS, but because a company like Avery Dennison took a look at the Mac and decided it was worth the time and effort to make a product for that platform. Any time something like that happens, it’s worth noting—perhaps with a SOHO Signs-created banner marking the occasion.