Let’s face it – Twitter is the digital fortune cookie. You have 140 characters to say something interesting and informative, but typical tweets are more along the lines of “Dance like no one is watching” or “Just saw Twilight – OMG Edward is sooo hot!” That said, maybe you are the Confucius of Twitter, or maybe you have a talent for saying a lot in a limited format. If so, you may want to try out PrintYourTwitter.com, where you can print your tweets for free.

I tried it out for myself, and the basic features work well. You log into your Twitter account through the website, and you can choose to retrieve your own tweets, or tweets from people you follow. You can also filter tweets via keyword, date, and whether or not the tweet has an image attached to it. Once you have the set of tweets you want, you click the print button for neat, easy-to-read output that looks like a chat transcript.

Overall, PrintYourTwitter.com looks like an easy way for people to print from a website that they use all the time. While customization isn’t as flexible or elaborate as something like Blog2Print, I could see the site being used for business purposes. For example, a corporate marketing department can quickly catalog and analyze a Twitter ad campaign, and companies and individuals can filter and track what people are saying about certain brands and products without being tied to a PC.

One word of warning – to fully log out of PrintYourTwitter.com, you have to close the whole browser, which might be a little unsettling for multi-tab users. Regardless, I’m all for anything that makes it easy for modern computer users to print from the web, and PrintYourTwitter.com is a site worth bookmarking.

If you can build houses out of recycled ink cartridges, why not make an eco-friendly bike path? According to Inhabitat.com, that’s exactly what developers have done at the West MacDonnell National Park in Australia, where a new bike path has been made with recycled printer ink cartridges. The material is called Replas, and it’s produced by Repeat Plastics Australia.

Replas is made from plastic waste materials “diverted from landfill,” and the company asserts that the eco benefits from the waste it saves outweigh the energy costs of recycling. In any case, you often see old ink cartridges being used to make new ink cartridges with mixed results. I think it’s cool that with a bike path, people can see and feel the benefits of eco-friendly manufacturing up close. And maybe more importantly, while an ink cartridge needs to be recycled (or re-filled) every time it goes empty, you figure a bike path will last longer and require less energy to maintain over time.

(Photo via Morguefile)

Like a lot of pre-teen kids, I used to play with Legos, but they weren’t my favorite toy. I didn’t have the patience to sit down for more than 10 minutes and build something interesting, and I didn’t like having to clean up afterwards. So it’s safe to say there’s no way I would’ve been able to make the elaborate Lego printer that a dedicated hobbyist recently posted on the web. Besides the impressive construction, the notable twist is that instead of a traditional ink cartridge, the printer uses a felt tip pen, which seems to rule out multi-color output.

One word of warning from a former Lego builder – if you’re ever able to make a printer like this one on your own, keep it away from small children and curious pets. It looks pretty difficult to build, and seems equally easy to break down. Regardless, I have to say this is one of the coolest working devices I’ve seen since the Candyfab 3D Candy Printer. Hopefully one day, the designer releases the blueprint and enables Lego fans around the world to make this unique and functional contraption.

(Photo via Morguefile)

Remember when we told you that Memjet printers were more hype than substance? It took a couple of years, but the widely publicized technology with the pagewide printhead is finally ready to be released. There’s a catch though – if you were anticipating home and office inkjet printers that churn out documents and images at up to 60 pages per minute, you’ll have to wait a little longer. The first Memjet printers will actually be geared toward the “on-demand labels, trans-promotional and mailing and addressing markets.” According to PCMag’s M. David Stone, who has contacts at Memjet, the company is releasing this first set of products “with the goal of maximizing feedback on how the printers work in the real world.” Apparently label printers just so happen to be the first kind of Memjet device that’s market-ready, so it seems like a move driven more by circumstance than strategy.

Stone implies that it’s easier to get customer feedback from smaller, more specialized markets like the one for label printers, so it makes sense for Memjet to bide its time before making its big splash into the mainstream market, where “contact with the customer is a little looser.” That said, I wonder how much of the info you learn from label printers can actually translate to the development of general consumer printers, considering the potential differences in terms of functionality, applications and the needs of their target markets. In any case, you can learn more about the technology behind Memjet label printers at Memjetlabels.com. I watched a video of a prototype model in action, and the print speed puts the ticket machine at your local Chuck E Cheese to shame. In any case, at this point, Memjet is like a highly hyped band that just released a 5 song EP. It’s better than nothing, and it’s a tangible preview of the full-length album to come.

(Image via Astromachine.com)

When it comes to printer ink and toner, high prices for OEM cartridges are like taxes – we complain, but we pay them anyway. So it’s interesting to read the Wall Street Journal blog post about HP’s Thom Brown giving a media presentation to explain why HP OEM ink costs so much. According to Brown, the main factor is the high cost of R&D.

Using a “bag of props including a trio of shot glasses, squares of foam and some disassembled print heads,” he explains that the print mechanism is complex, and therefore expensive to develop. Apparently HP also puts a lot of money into examining broken ink cartridges to find out what went wrong. The “challenges in shooting drops of ink at moving pages of paper” can add to costs, and the “perils of refilling ink cartridges” are cited as a reason to buy new HP cartridges despite the higher prices.

So should we believe the reasoning? It’s interesting to note that when consumer advocates recently protested that ink cartridge packaging fails to report the amount of ink in each cartridge, Lexmark gave a similar “it’s complicated” explanation, referring to ink cartridges as “micro-machines.” Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s a copout. Either way, as a consumer, I don’t really care how much it costs for OEMs to develop their ink and toner cartridges. All I know is that compatible and refilled ink cartridges are more affordable than OEM cartridges, and they work just fine for what I print. So in this case, I’ll go with the free market over a bag of props.

(Photo via Morguefile)

A few years ago, I had to use the men’s room at a bar in lower Manhattan. As I was about to wash my hands at the faucet, I turned my head up to look into the mirror, only to find there wasn’t one. Instead, there was a brown bulletin board surface on which someone had written in black permanent marker, “You look good.” And when you’re checking yourself out, that’s all you really need to know. On a similar note, there’s an interesting article on PCWorld.com about how inkjet printers automatically enhance the color and richness of your photos to make you subconsciously print more of them. In fact, HP marketing manager Thom Brown has admitted that, “We tune for what the customer wants, not for accuracy.”

So what is it in particular that makes HP photos more appealing to users? Robert L. Mitchell, the author of the PC World article, recalls that in comparing photos from the HP Photosmart C5180 and the Kodak EasyShare 5300, he found that while the “Kodak photos appeared a bit washed out, the HP photos were noticeably oversaturated.” And he confirms that he naturally “gravitated toward the brighter images.”

From a publicity standpoint, this revelation may not go over too well with consumers who already feel like they’re getting the wool pulled over their eyes by overpaying for OEM ink, and getting less than full disclosure on cartridge yields and ink volumes. And compared to Xerox’s user-driven Natural Language Color interface, it seems like HP’s automatic photo enhancement is almost telling the consumer, “if we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you.” That said, users like you and me aren’t exactly powerless in the process. OEMs and third party developers give us plenty of ways to edit photos on our own with software and online photo editing apps. And in our quest to create our own reality, we may not mind our printers doing some of the work for us.

(Photo via Morguefile)

With the advent of mobile phone printing apps from HP, Canon and Kodak, it’s no surprise to see that Ricoh has recently released a HotSpot app for BlackBerry Smartphones. HotSpot enables mobile businesspeople to access emails and webpages on their phone or web-connected laptop, and print them from HotSpot printers in designated locations like hotels and print shops. So even if you’re outside the office or in transit, you can still get the printouts you need as long as you have web access.

The printing process looks simple and secure based on the description on the HotSpot website. And from a business standpoint, HotSpot accessibility seems mutually beneficial for both the OEM and local establishments. On one hand, Ricoh sells some printers and plants the seeds for continual toner sales with businesses looking to become Ricoh “HotSpots.” In exchange, these establishments get more foot traffic, exposure, and potential revenue from consumers who stop by to pick up their printouts. In the bigger picture, OEMs are quickly realizing that consumers aren’t tied down to their desktop PCs anymore, and HotSpot is another example of a peripheral literally following its content source to the ends of the Earth.

(Image via Ricoh-usa.com)

Fresh off its recent acquisition of Palm, HP has announced that it will be integrating Palm’s webOS operating system into its touchscreen web printers. It’s unclear whether you’ll be able to install webOS onto HP’s existing web-connected touchscreen printers, or if HP will come out with a new line of printers that have webOS built in. Either way, no timetable has been set for the introduction of webOS-enabled models.

I think the announcement is interesting on two levels. First off, back when we first talked about the HP Photosmart Premium with Touchsmart Web, I openly wondered whether the introduction of a touchscreen and PC-free web connectivity was a step towards bridging the gap between a computer and a printer. And now that HP is talking about integrating an actual operating system into a printer, it feels like we’re getting even closer to a true computer-printer all-in-one.

Secondly, we’ve seen more and more printer companies offer apps for mobile phones to help you print on the go. The fact that webOS would be the operating system for both your Palm mobile device and your HP Photosmart touchscreen printer may make the two products easier to sync, and therefore easier to use. Plus, using the same OS for both the main device and the peripheral could improve print quality.

Of course, it’s tough to come to conclusions before we see these webOS printers in action. Until then, consider this story to be one small step for HP, and one potentially giant leap for mobile printing.

(Photo via Palm.com)

To use a certain printer on a computer with a traditional OS like Windows, you need to install printer-specific drivers. And that’s not a big deal, because they’re either pre-installed on your OS, or you can get them online or through the OEM. But what if you’re running a new or lesser-known OS on your computer or mobile device, and you can’t find the drivers you need? Are you stuck? In concert with its soon-to-be-released cloud-based Chrome OS, Google is working on a driverless and OS-independent service called Google Cloud Print, which would enable you to print on “cloud-aware” printers from any web-connected device.

One problem – “cloud aware” printers don’t exist yet. To be cloud aware, they would need to have a built-in proxy to communicate with the cloud. Google hopes to eventually collaborate with OEMs and developers to build cloud awareness into future printers. Until that happens, current printers (aka “legacy printers”) will have to connect to the cloud through a proxy in a PC that’s turned on and connected to the web. Google is developing a stopgap computer proxy that will work with Mac, Windows and Linux, and will be included with downloads of its Chrome browser. Once you open the browser and turn on the proxy, it will read and process print jobs from Google Cloud Print. You can learn more by reading the Google Cloud Print documentation.

To me, one big question is whether or not OEMs and developers will make cloud aware printers a reality in the near future. Because without cloud awareness, it seems that the convenience of driverless printing is offset by the inconvenience of tying your legacy printer to a web-connected computer that has to be turned on all the time. As we’ve seen with the recent influx of printer web apps, OEMs are willing to adapt to changing consumer habits if development costs are low enough and demand seems high enough. And if computing continues to rapidly ascend into the cloud, peripherals will have to follow.

(Story via ZDNet.com.au; Image via Blog.chromium.org) ]]> http://www.cartridgenews.com/could-google-cloud-print-replace-printer-drivers/?p=01609/feed 0 http://www.cartridgenews.com/braille-printer-design-helps-the-blind/?p=01619 http://www.cartridgenews.com/braille-printer-design-helps-the-blind/?p=01619#comments Fri, 21 May 2010 13:46:49 +0000 Taeho Lim http://www.cartridgenews.com/?p=1619