Samsung and Mobile Printing

I must say that Samsung is not the first name I think of when it comes to printing. From my point of view, they have a pretty generic line of relatively low cost monochrome and color laser printers, for individual and workgroup applications. Nothing to get too worked up about in general. I do love their LCD screens, though, owning several of them.

And recently, they've made quite a splash with their Android phones and the Galaxy Tab. These have been well received, albeit not to the same degree as the iPhone and iPad, but that's at least partially because they don't have Steve Jobs whipping up the fan boys into a frenzy.

At CES (the Consumer Electronics Show), held in Las Vegas last week, Samsung introduced wireless mobile printing for Android, ala Apple's AirPrint. Apparently, this is not the first announcement of this kind for Android, with Motorola pre-announcing something called "Motoprint" at the CTIA (the cell phone industry's big confab) last October. This does not seem to be available yet, so we will stay tuned for that.

Samsung's MobilePrint app, as they call it, is available for both Android and iOS mobile devices to connect and print to Samsung wireless printers.

The press release, dated January 5th, 2011, claims that the apps will be free, and will be "built-in" to the Galaxy Tab beginning in 2011. The company claims the application will be compatible with all existing and new Samsung wireless and network printers.

I don't have much in the way of technical details, but the two things that set this announcement apart are the claimed backward compatibility (which is interesting but may also mean the actual printing functionality could be limited) and the availability of the app on both the Google and Apple platforms. Read the press release here.

iPad is... Printing (via AirPrint)

I must say I was pretty blown away when I first saw the Apple "iPad is Amazing" commercial, although since I've seen it about 1,000 times now, I find the music a little annoying. What impressed me about it initially is the fact that it starts out with an "iPad is..." premise, and the first thing it proclaims the iPad to be is, printing! I never doubted that Apple knew the lack of printing was a big gap at launch, but it's still nice to see them promoting it in a big way in a major TV commercial that has now been seen by millions and millions of people. And putting it before the other "amazing" things about the iPad, in fact, is kind of amazing. If you haven't seen the commercial, check it out on YouTube, here.

So let's talk for a moment about what makes this possible on the iPad, which is the technology called AirPrint, requiring Apple IOS 4.2 or later, and an HP ePrint-compatible printer. Today, AirPrint itself only works with HP printers that support ePrint (more on this later.)

According to HP, ePrint evolved from CloudPrint, an innovative technology created by HP Labs, the company's central research and development group. Apple AirPrint on an IOS 4.2 and later device (like an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) finds printers on WiFi networks and then allows printing text, photos and graphics to them without the need to install drivers or special software.

iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users running IOS 4.2 and later will find a new print function within apps on their device. They can simply tap the "action" icon, then tap the "Print" button, configure printing options, then tap "Print".

A printer must be specifically ePrint enabled. Printing to a device attached to another computer is not possible with AirPrint. There are now several HP printers that support ePrint, and HP maintains a growing list of such devices. The latest one to catch my eye at this writing is the Laserjet Pro CM1415FNW, which is an amazing color laser desktop MFP, at a very attractive price, with an incredible feature set. I believe this is the first Laserjet to support ePrint, the other printers being inkjets. Get the datasheet here.

Printing in the Post PC Era

Over the holidays I did a lot of thinking about this blog, and my only New Year's resolution for 2011 is to post here more regularly. Not because I like hearing myself talk, but because the subject matter has never been more relevant, and is in fact going to heat up this year. That should make it a relatively easy resolution to keep!

Last summer, at the D8 conference, Steve Jobs made some waves when he introduced the idea of the "post PC era." Jobs said the day is coming when only one out of every few people will need a traditional computer. "When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms."

"PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." However, he said, only "one out of x people will need them."

Jobs said that this idea makes many PC veterans uneasy, "because the PC has taken us a long ways." And he went on to say, "We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it's uncomfortable," he said.

It's an apt description, and is so much more than another excellent Apple branding campaign. The iPad was met with a lot of excitement, and some skepticism. There is still some skepticism around how publishing, ebooks, magazines, newspapers and other media-related businesses will fare on the new platform. But one thing has become crystal clear since Steve's D8 appearance: the iPad is a major hit, and it is in fact only the beginning of a new computing paradigm.

That paradigm is the fourth major computing shift: the Cloud/Mobile paradigm, which I think is aptly referred to as the "Post PC" era (the first three shifts arguably being the mainframe to minicomputer, minicomputer/workstation to networked PC, and the Internet.)

I realized that this is exactly what we are talking about here. The Rich Internet Printing concept is very much "printing in the post PC era".

Apple's AirPrint, HP ePrint, Google Cloud Printing; whatever Microsoft creates (presumably in the near future) to enable their tablet and cloud printing strategy. Service providers like EFI with PrintMe. Software from a variety of third-party vendors who enable printing from non-PC devices.

David and I are co-authoring a paper for the 2011 TAGA Advanced Technology Conference in Pittsburgh this coming March (visit TAGA's website for more information.) I'm going to use some posts here to vet the topics we are working on for that highly esoteric academic paper, but in a more accessible format.

We will do a deep dive into the applications, and report on the opportunities, challenges and limitations, and success stories. Stay tuned.

Cloud Printing Service Provider. Is it a term we should embrace?

I think the Cloud is here to stay, and I think Cloud is a term that has been embraced far and wide, but it must be used correctly.

The test I would put forth for whether your service or platform is truly "Cloud" is if I can contract for the services you offer without speaking to a human being, and activate/deactivate them when I want to stand them up or tear them down.

There is no "overhead" or startup costs for me to become engaged with you-- I literally can take advantage of the services when I need them, and only pay for them as I am using them.

That's what differentiates Cloud from "ASP" or "SaaS" or just the "plain old Internet". This is a nuance that I think a lot of non-technical people miss and it's driven by a combination of technology and business model.

Companies that use the term Cloud without fulfilling this promise could easily be seen as jumping on the hype bandwagon, and further confuse the market. Mimeo has been called a Cloud Printing Service Provider by Gartner, and we do fit the definition I've provided here. However, we are still very careful to only use this term with audiences we are sure will "get it."

HP Web Print Roadshow Hits Hong Kong

Reuters and several other news agencies are covering the arrival of the HP Cloud Printing/Web Print roadshow in Hong Kong. I found a good interview with VJ by Yun-Hee Kim on the Wall Street Journal Blogs (read it here)and Reuters reported that HP plans an App Store focused on printing apps. The only thing I would take issue with is the characterization in the WSJ piece about this initiative being a "gamble" for HP, maybe it's just a language thing but I would say that these printers and even more important the ecosystem HP is creating, are a sure thing.

HP APP STORE (Clip from Reuters, their whole Reuters piece can be found here).

Like peers Nokia and Apple, Palo Alto- headquartered HP will launch its own version of an app store designed to work with its printers, enabling customers to print directly from the app.

The company will take 30 percent of the revenue gained from the store, with 70 percent going to the software developer.

"If we try to develop all the software from the U.S., it's going to take years," said Joshi, who has been with HP since 1980. "Because we are making it open, there'll be some smart young kid in college who'll figure out what is the best thing for printers."

PRINT IS GREEN!

Joshi also rubbished talk that the printer was on its way out as more people begin depending on computers for their communication and learning needs, and amid concern that increased use of paper was causing deforestation.

"Do you think this computer is more green than that?" he said, as he waved a piece of paper. "It is not. People are missing the whole point. This (paper) is more green than anything else."

-- End Reuters clip

I can tell you that my company, Mimeo, is very likely to put some exciting applications into that HP App Store over the next year.

Internet Week NYC- HP Web-Print and Google Cloud Print

Great video on the Chromium Blog from an HP event streamed live during Internet Week in NY on June 7th, click here to watch, featuring Vyomesh Joshi (VJ) from HP, his team and Google product managers responsible for Google Cloud Print. HP called their new stuff "Web-Print". They talked about their new printers, and guys from Google did a demo of Cloud Printing. Super cool. The actual presentation starts a few minutes in, so be patient or advance the video.

This Week in Internet Printing - HP and Apple

HP continued to march forward with more announcements (and a press conference scheduled today), regarding their ePrint initiative. You can read coverage by Adam Ostrow from Mashable at Forbes blogs. It's awesome to see so much coverage emerging on this topic, especially from traditional media outlets like Forbes. There's also a great article from last week by Louella Fernandez, a Principal Analyst at Quocirca Research, here.



In a nutshell, the Forbes article says HP is enabling printing from devices like iPad via email to new web enabled printers (picture above), and can connect directly to Google's nascent Cloud Print. Ostrow describes several connection initiatives HP has created, including Google apps like Docs and Picasa. He sort of cynically suggests that HP is doing this to sell Ink. But then adds that emailing files to printers opens doors to new applications-- honestly, I don't think email is going to be the vehicle by which printed news is going to be delivered. Email is OK, and it is fairly robust, but it isn't super reliable as a delivery mechanism for content, nor is it particularly secure. But it is interesting!

Both articles touch on the fact that Cloud Printing removes the need for drivers and updates, which is sort of the least of its advantages-- drivers haven't really been a big issue for users for about the last five years. That is, at least for individual users. Drivers have continued to be a problem for enterprise users with many different vendor's printers, dispersed geographically at many locations. The HP printers featured in this announcement aren't really targeted at the enterprise, and Google's Cloud Print isn't ready for enterprise prime time, though.

The timing of the Quocirca article couldn't be better with this week's Apple World Wide Developer Conference. The article mentions that in the iPad support documents, it refers to printing as "not currently supported", leaving the door open to future development.

I have wondered since the iPad launch if the reason printing support is absent on the iPad today is intentional, due to the fact that the device is completely focused on delivering media to users via the screen -- or if the iPad tech team just did not have enough time to get the printing working the way they wanted to before the launch.

I'm kind of hoping at the moment that as coverage continues this week of WWDC 10 in San Francisco, we'll see some announcements from Apple about how they plan to directly support printing. Apple has some amazing printing technology built into MacOS X and it would be a little shocking if they didn't leverage at least some of that to support printing from the iPad.

Since Google and Apple have been at odds lately, it seems unlikely that Google Cloud Print will be the mechanism via which iPad and other Apple mobile device users print. Although HP ePrint could be a contender (at least until HP comes out with their competitive tablet computer), it seems that we're likely to have several competing Internet printing initiatives emerge. Let's hope they all land at least close to a standard way of doing this, or at the very least, an interoperable one. That isn't email, that is.