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cloudprint.hpl.hp.com
HP's new service: Print-on-demand, from your cell phone -- but where are the printers? |
Last April I
wrote about Hewlett-Packard as they were acquiring the Web 2.0 photo site
Tabblo.
Vyomesh I. Joshi, senior vice president of HP's printing division, recounted his experience of one of the cruelest of teen-to-parent interactions -- hearing that one's life work is irrelevant. His daughter informed him she didn't need a printer because her life was all online.
Joshi didn't get mad or hurt or ignore his kid's comment. Realizing that her words reflected the experience of many people today, he allowed that HP might not be in the printing business at all. "We are in the content consumption business," he told reporter Damon Darlin in this April 9 New York Times article.
That line came to my mind as the buzz about HP's announcement of its new service Cloudprint spread from John Markoff's Aug 20 New York Times storythrough the blogosphere.
Cutting through technical jargon, here is what Cloudprint does:
- You send a document to Cloudprint (an HP server somewhere in cyberspace) using your cell phone number as your ID.
- Cloudprint sends you a confirmation that includes a six-digit document code.
- To print your document, go to the Cloudprint site and enter your phone number and document code. Up pops your document and a print command.
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cloudprint.hpl.hp.com
Cloudprint's interface. (Click to enlarge.) |
Cloudprint is free. So far, it only downloads to PCs. (A Mac version is promised soon.) However, you can upload documents to Cloudprint from any computer with Web access.
Now, all I had to do was locate remote Cloudprint printing spots.
I live just north of Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S. I entered my zip code expecting to be able to ride my bike to a Cloudprint spot, whip out my cell phone, and print my doc.
Not so fast! There wasn't a remote printing place within 50 miles -- which includes O'Hare Airport and downtown Chicago.
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cloudprint.hpl.hp.com
Looking for Cloudprint locations near me... (Click to enlarge.) |
Cloudprint is not vaporware. It was easy and fast to use. You can use it to transmit documents to devices that are connected to printers. Unfortunately, the promise of being able to travel with just a handheld device and accessing printed material from "anywhere" is still a way off.
What does this have to do with journalism?
The implications for e-versions of news media publications are intriguing. If I was on the road, could my local news organization send my "paper" to me via cell and Cloudprint so I could print it from wherever I was? Or, once e-paper becomes affordable, will Cloudprint (or something like it) become part of how the e-words get to the e-papers everywhere?
Perhaps some mainstream media types need to act more like Joshi. He didn't get mad when he realized his business model was becoming obsolete -- he got creative.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: Barb Iverson's point about the news print-on-demand implications of Cloudprint might fit into a revamped cutomized newspaper distribution strategy like this one.)
