FLAAR Privacy Statement

Your privacy is important to us, after all, we too are netizens.

You do not have to give us personal information to visit our site.

First, we do not obtain, nor seek to wring out of our web servers, any information about your personal name, address, or your e-mail address. Why? Because we are busy doing evaluations of equipment so have other things to occupy our entire staff.

Besides, we figure that most readers are students, just curious, or industry people wanting to know what we say about our products. So there is no incentive to even attempt to figure out who all these people are (besides, there are over a million people a year who read FLAAR web sites. We could not possibly handle keeping track of all them even if we wanted to.

You will note that our Survey Forms never ask for anyone’s Social Security number. We never ask for any credit card number (unless you wish to buy a report; the free reports require no credit card whatsoever).

General

To receive certain services which provide you the benefit of FLAAR research, as well as products (which, being a service institute, are reports) or catalogs it is naturally necessary for us to know to whom and where to send the information. This information is shared with our partners and pertinent third parties in color management, inkjet media, digital photography, scanning, training, and large format digital imaging hardware and software. That is, you may receive information from us and from other companies by e-mail, snail mail or other traditional means. However, if we do not have your Dialog Form we have no way to send that information to anyone. Of course if we don’t know who you are, or how to reach you, we can’t send you the FLAAR reports either.

That is why you have a specific chance to opt in, or opt out:

SEND me the free Reports

YES, I want FLAAR Reports by Nicholas Hellmuth and have filled out the Survey Form in exchange for the reports.

I understand that survey statistics are utilized to better understand markets and applications. In return for the FLAAR reports I allow FLAAR to use my comments to update and improve the coverage in FLAAR material as well as to assist manufacturers understand the flaws of their current products so better products can be offered in the future. Your comments may help design the next generation of new products. In return, first we send you at least three and up to six first level FLAAR report(s) on the topics that you have selected. Next, if your comments relative to digital imaging equipment suggests that a follow-up would be helpful, then we select support staff from a pertinent partner sponsor that can best follow-up directly with you. We forward your form to them so they will contact you with additional counsel based on the questions you have asked or problems you have indicated.

[SEND Form]

NO, I do not wish any follow-up on outside product information, but wish to auto-download the free reports from the links below *

By choosing the NO option you indicate you do not wish any follow-up from third-parties. Although you do not need to send this inquiry form to obtain the free auto-download reports, we have no way to know what additional FLAAR information to send you unless you tell us where you need help in digital imaging. By sending this form, you only receive notification directly from FLAAR, including announcements of new publications or future university courses on printing, scanning, color management, and digital photography or additional survey forms (which bring additional FLAAR reports at no cost). I understand that survey statistics are utilized to better understand markets and applications. In return for the FLAAR reports I allow FLAAR to use my comments to update and improve the coverage in FLAAR material, to serve as statistical data (with my name deleted, my e-mail deleted, my street address and my telephone number deleted) as well as to assist manufacturers recognize the flaws of their current products so better products can be offered in the future. You will receive 3 and potentially up to 6 FLAAR reports in exchange for sending in this survey form. If your range of interests is narrow, please understand there may not be more than 2 or 3 reports that fit.

No means “just say no” which translates that you do not wish to join the FLAAR family and receive the benefits of our several year’s research on digital imaging. YES means that you wish to get help, tips, assistance, information, and follow-up.

Since FLAAR has its offices at Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala (a residue of doing large-format photography of Mayan art and archaeology at the university museum of Mayan antiquities, Museo Popol Vuh) its kind of not realistic for FLAAR staff itself to telephone you international long distance to follow up.

Another of our offices has traditionally been in Germany . Again, rather impractical for us to telephone personally from Cologne to follow up.

Fortunately our main office is in Ohio ( Bowling Green State University ) (a residue of having been born in nearby Detroit ). However our staff at BGSU is working with the printers, scanners, RIPs, laser printers, and all the other hardware and software. Plus, neither FLAAR nor the university has the budget to telephone the thousands of people who reads our reports (www.wide-format-printers.org, in a single month, gets over a million hits from over 15,000 individual readers).

So we go to all the tradeshows to check out which company is the best in RIPs, so they can provide follow-up. We have attended Seybold San Francisco (three years), Photokina (four times), DRUPA, PhotoExpo East, DPI, B.I.G., BigPicture Show, IMI, SGIA, ISA. We got so many readers from India we went to the sign tradeshow in Mumbai to find a capable partner in that part of the world to assist in handling the inquiries only from that part of the world. Same with our other sponsors: whether in Germany or Georgia , we only accept partnership with companies who share our role to serve as a source of information, the class of information you would expect from a university as a public service.

As an example: When you check off that you seek help on laminators: first FLAAR itself personally sends you our own laminator report. But we do not have the staff to explain all the differences between hot and cold lamination, between laminators that can also mount vs those that can’t. So we found a lamination company that has a program of public information (LEDCO, who are neighbors in Cleveland , Ohio ). Thus after we have sent you our own FLAAR report, we forward your e-mail to LEDCO to ask them if they can please follow-up on how a laminator can help you in your own business. If you are located in Oregon instead of Ohio , they may in turn ask a dealer in Oregon to provide local assistance.

Cookies

"Cookies" are small utility software tools that many Web sites employ. A cookie contains information that a site may use to track the pages you've visited. However, the only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie can't read data about you or your company or read cookie files created by other sites; a cookie can only be read by the Web site that served the cookie to you. Our impression is that nowadays all web sites and all web servers work with cookies. We use Web Trends to calculate visitor traffic on most of our sites, the industry standard.

I first freaked out when I initially heard about cookies. Then I found that it was awkward to surf if you turned them off. The use of cookies is an industry standard, and many major web sites use them to provide useful features for their customers. When I do my own surfing on other sites I just ignore them. I realized it would be a sad day when your life is such that internet cookies are a matter of immediate concern. In any event, FLAAR does not have any manner of prying into your intimate life’s secrets. Besides, that’s not our mission in life.

Site Management Web Visit Logs

For site management the webmaster assesses what pages are of most and least interest, determining technical design specifications, and identifying system performance or problem areas. Site management is employed by the server and by FLAAR. This server includes the pages visited on the site, the date and time of the visit, the internet URL of the referring site, the domain name and IP address from which the access occurred, the version of browser used, the capabilities of the browser, and search terms used on our search engines. FLAAR makes no attempt to identify individual visitors from this information. None of this involves seeking your personal information in the sense of your name, your e-mail address, or even your spending habits (another advantage of not selling anything). We make absolutely no effort to identify people’s e-mail nor any personal identifying characteristics of people who visit our site (don’t have the time or funding and would not have enough staff to handle the resulting data anyway). You are welcome on all FLAAR sites even if you never buy anything.

Electronic Newsletters

FLAAR will eventually offer free electronic newsletters that are dispatched by e-mail. FLAAR would send the newsletter based on the e-mail addresses of individuals who voluntarily fill out any inquiry-dialog, download, or survey form.

Surveys

The way you yourself can most improve the features, options, and mechanics of digital imaging hardware is to let FLAAR know your “ideal future equipment,” sort of your wish list. Thus FLAAR conducts user surveys to better target our content to our audience or for the benefit of third parties with whom we have partnerships. Accordingly, the aggregate survey results are shared with our sponsors and partners. We never share any survey information about specific individuals with any third party. Keep in mind that in a survey, the name or e-mail address of an individual is not needed whatsoever. Statistics only seek to understand whether x% percent of anonymous users prefer dye ink or pigmented ink, whether you prefer a 24” printer or a 60” printer, etc. Indeed this is how you can assist the overall educational program of our web sites, by indicating what features of printers cause problems, by identifying what mechanical glitches you want to avoid, and by suggesting what features an end user really needs in a printer, RIP, inkjet paper, ink, or laminator.

Letters to the Editor and Inquiry-Survey Forms

Visitors to FLAAR web sites may send a letter to the editor, an inquiry, or otherwise contact FLAAR staff or editor(s). These communications result in your receiving a benefit, namely the answer and/or the FLAAR Reports. All communications you write to obtain these benefits become the property of FLAAR. In some instances (about 2% of incoming e-mail´s) your observations may be more useful to other readers by being added to our web pages or reports. In such a case, what you say may be edited for length and/or clarity and may be published or republished in any format or medium and/or licensed to others for publication. If we publish your letter or e-mail, so as to maintain your privacy, we will not attribute comments to you by name unless you expressly request that your name be included. If you do not wish to have excepts your letter or e-mail published in an actual-factual review, please notify us by fax, (419) 372 8283 (keeping in mind we rarely publish your e-mail in-toto unless it is part of our “actual-factual” survey). In order to deliver better services, we also perform statistical analysis to establish priorities and allocate resources.

E-mail this Page to a Friend

Many of the pages of our Web site include a feature that permits users to electronically forward that page to someone else by clicking on a link. The sender provides his or her e-mail address, as well as that of the recipient. The sender's information is to let the recipient know who sent the page and as an aid to FLAAR to know who might also wish updates via our upcoming newsletter service.

The friend and the sender may contact FLAAR with an e-mail to FLAARtest@aol.com to request the removal of this information from our database.

Partners

There is no realistic manner that FLAAR can exercise hourly control over partners other than common-sense selection of ethical partners to begin with. We deal only with partners who are recognized and long established in the field of digital imaging. If any company is not treating you properly FLAAR wishes to know. Sometimes it’s just a new employee at that company that needs to learn that the purpose is digital imaging tips, help, and assistance. FLAAR selects its partners by checking them out at trade shows. In most cases we subsequently visit their company headquarters to make sure they have the proper technical experience. Most importantly, we wish to be sure they realize the educational and informational nature of the FLAAR system.

Self-Destruct future information reports

If you wish to be totally expunged from our records at FLAAR, we will do our best to delete you totally. Please send an e-mail to FLAARtest@aol.com asking to be removed and asking that no further information by FLAAR be sent to you.

• Site redesign May, 2004