The Little Printer
bergcloud.com
The Little Printer
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: The Little Printer
#2I look at this and I get an itchy feeling in my fingers that the next tech bubble bust is now less than 12 months away.
It's deja vu all over again ... Anyone else remember the CueCat, back in the heady days of 1999?
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html
(I think people with wireless internet connections at home and an iOS/Android device to select stories on are going to read the news on their tablet or smartphone, not some hunk of dead tree. And the stink of flawed business models with high startup costs that nevertheless manage to get enough funding to start shipping hardware is familiar from the last time round on this merry-go-round ...)
Re: The Little Printer
#3I look at this and I get an itchy feeling in my fingers that the next tech bubble bust is now less than 12 months away. It's deja vu all over again ... Anyone else remember the CueCat, back in the heady days of 1999? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html (I think people with wireless internet connections at home and an iOS/Android device to select stories on are going to read the news on their tab…
That's like saying Chumby is going to be a failure because PointCast was a bomb.
Aggregating all this social data into new and interesting forms is going to be a big deal, in my opinion. Look at Flipboard. That's an amazing program. Would some people like to have their Flipboard printed and handed to them over morning coffee? I would. Is it practical, considering the iPad can also sit next to you at breakfast? Not really.
This is just a little novelty item that will probably sell just fine. Like Chumby.
Re: The Little Printer
#4I could see myself using a "daily list/meetings/to-dos" with something like this. Like when I wake up I will have my little note with things to do today / tomorrow.
I have way to many bookmarks/read later/todo-websites,apps etc. In the digital media that is, computers etc.
Then again I don't have a smartphone and I think the iPhones lockinfo solves this problem for me. I just need to have things set in stone where I look 1000 times a day. But I much prefer physical media.
Re: The Little Printer
#5I look at this and I get an itchy feeling in my fingers that the next tech bubble bust is now less than 12 months away. It's deja vu all over again ... Anyone else remember the CueCat, back in the heady days of 1999? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html (I think people with wireless internet connections at home and an iOS/Android device to select stories on are going to read the news on their tab…
That's like saying Chumby is going to be a failure because PointCast was a bomb. Aggregating all this social data into new and interesting forms is going to be a big deal, in my opinion. Look at Flipboard. That's an amazing program. Would some people like to have their Flipboard printed and handed to them over morning coffee? I would. Is it practical, considering the iPad can also sit next to you at breakfast? Not re…
It's a razor model. The handle is free, but you pay for the blades. In this case, the blades are the (non-standard width, thermal) paper.
Meanwhile it doesn't give the user anything useful that they can't already read on their smartphone, does it? So what is it for? It's not a substitute for the existing multifunction printer. It's an inferior substitute to the existing RSS reader or equivalent. There's no value proposition I can see for the consumer, so they must be looking at some other source of income, which means there must be some value proposition for the information suppliers. But what is it?
Re: The Little Printer
#6I think it's a little depressing that they paint a picture where people no longer roll out the newspaper in the morning, but instead print a miniscule dashboard of social media updates to be digested along with the eggs and bangers instead.
I wonder how true the replacement with the "social media breakfast" is, though.
Re: The Little Printer
#7My friend Ian hacked a 'social printer' which is like an alpha version of The Little Printer, blogged about: http://ianozsvald.com/2010/11/06/building-a-social-microprin...
Berg's product looks like a proper, developed version of what Ian made, and does many of the things that were talked about as possibilities when he showed it at at couple of events.
Does it have a massive market? No. Does it have a niche market where Berg can make some money back? I think so. Did Berg see this as a fun internal project to see what's possible and can the ideas it sparked be used by some of their clients? More than possibly.
Berg have a decent following in the crowd of people who might buy something like this. It's not going to make them a fortune, but they're bright people and I'm sure they don't expect it to. It's just as much an advert for what they can do as it is a product in it's own right.
Re: The Little Printer
#8There's a nice writeup here which gives an idea of some of the uses Berg envision for this: sticking things up on the fridge, giving to friends, carrying with you for instant reference without having to wait for an app to load.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1665514/a-newspaper-for-the-twit...
I can also imagine it being useful to carry backup info (appointments, addresses, travel details and codes etc) just in case you find yourself in an area with no phone reception.
Re: The Little Printer
#9I look at this and I get an itchy feeling in my fingers that the next tech bubble bust is now less than 12 months away. It's deja vu all over again ... Anyone else remember the CueCat, back in the heady days of 1999? http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000037.html (I think people with wireless internet connections at home and an iOS/Android device to select stories on are going to read the news on their tab…
Considering BERG is a design consultancy, I'd say this is more of an ad for their services first. It looks cute, and I'm sure there are people who would buy it for the novelty factor.
I'm not sure how you can compare that to CueCat? Which was a full fledged company.
Re: The Little Printer
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's like saying Chumby is going to be a failure because PointCast was a bomb. Aggregating all this social data into new and interesting forms is going to be a big deal, in my opinion. Look at Flipboard. That's an amazing program. Would some people like to have their Flipboard printed and handed to them over morning coffee? I would. Is it practical, considering the iPad can also sit next to you at breakfast? Not re…
It's a razor model. The handle is free, but you pay for the blades. In this case, the blades are the (non-standard width, thermal) paper. Meanwhile it doesn't give the user anything useful that they can't already read on their smartphone, does it? So what is it for ? It's not a substitute for the existing multifunction printer. It's an inferior substitute to the existing RSS reader or equivalent. There's no value pro…
Non-standard? You can buy the paper in any Staples. It's standard width.
They're selling physical products for more money than it costs them to make. That's the business model.