

Little Printer prints you a beautiful mini-newspaper. - steren
http://bergcloud.com/littleprinter/

======
justin_vanw
It's a receipt printer in a box. Receipts (the thermal kind this uses) can't
be written on with a normal pen without it getting all gunked up, so the
'puzzle' idea is more or less not going to work.

The quality of the printing will be receipt quality, and will degrade and
become completely unreadable over time.

We went through this entire 'push media' bullshit in 1999, but I guess knowing
that makes me an old timer these days. The punchline is, people will not want
this.

Edit: Now, take away all the cloud magic and foursquare bullcrap, and I would
actually like to have this just as a little printer. I'm often trying to print
lists and so on, because I hate unlocking my phone over and over to check a
shopping list at the store. So I would buy this if it were possible to print
out lists of things, driving directions, and that sort of thing.

~~~
dchest
Some kinds of thermal paper don't work with pens, some do (e.g. the kind used
by credit card terminals, or fax machines). What made you think that they use
the first kind of paper?

~~~
justin_vanw
They all clog pens. It just takes a few uses. Anyone who has ever worked a
cash register can tell you that between customers you often have to scribble
on some regular paper to unclog the pen.

------
blorenz
I'm having an extremely hard time wrapping my head around the usefulness of
this product. The Little Printer is generating hardcopy of snippets of
temporal events. These snippets are reduced to headlines without content to
put them into context. It is using thermal paper, which HN has identified does
not have longevity for scrapbooks or archival purposes. I can't find the value
of this. Why consume resources when my phone can provide me all this? I was
very surprised to see it as a trending topic on Twitter. Why does everyone
want one so terribly so?

~~~
Groxx
It's like having an infinite supply of smartphone displays that are set up to
show one thing at a time. Limited use, and temporal, but far more long-lasting
than the notifications you get that disappear a second later.

------
afterburner
Cute, and nice music choice. But wasteful, and most of the things they print
out on the video left me thinking "wait, why would I print that? I can read
that off my smartphone in 2 seconds!" It would take longer to print than just
read. The Sudoku puzzle makes more sense, and a todo list might, but still...

~~~
tiles
Depending on the content, I think a scrapbook of daily updates would be a
fascinating collection for my kids to one day look through. Making interesting
collections of news would outweigh the wastefulness of the experience (it's
far more conservative than a daily paper).

~~~
DanBC
It's thermal paper, which tends not to last very well. This is especially a
problem for medical information.
(<http://www.mdsr.ecri.org/summary/detail.aspx?doc_id=8155>)

------
ethank
I have absolutely no need for this and yet I want it anyhow. It's nice because
it makes something ordinary precious through anachronism and size. If it had
an API I could see using this as a fun tool for people visiting an office.
Another note: I love thermal paper.

------
thomasfl
Cute, but all in all it's a machine that generates trash.

~~~
swah
At least its not A4 sized trash!

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daralthus
We can talk about that how wastefull or how anachronistic it is. I totally
agree, but what I find more interesting is, why so many people (including me)
like this useless thing? Did we somehow, reached a point where we get too much
of our experiences through a computer or a mobile display? More and more
information through a narrowing medium. Or just because to have more kind of
medias? Does somebody have a better hipotesis?

~~~
hsshah
Yeah. My first thought was exactly the same. Why do I find this interesting (I
always have my phone with me)? My hypothesis is that with everything getting
displayed through LCD screens these days, after a while people will crave for
the old sensory experience - working with physical paper.

Not sure about the current generation which is growing up with iPads and may
have never used a physical newspaper. I will be curious to see their reaction.

~~~
swah
Funny how you writing "physical paper" proves your own point.

------
helipad
Minimal and fantastic.

I could absolutely imagine getting one of these for my grandparents, for
example.

Or a parent with young children.

Or a local shop owner that doesn't use a smartphone.

~~~
philnash
But you set it up with your smartphone. Will you be the one with the
smartphone that sets up each of those people's printer?

------
Ryanmf
A Google Calendar/Tasks-polling, Arduino-driven thermal printer with one press
printouts has been somewhere on my "eventual weekend projects" list for a
while.

I really like this idea. I think the services it supports will make or break
it.

As someone who has a smartphone permanently embedded in his pocket, an iPad
never more than an arm's length away, and is strongly considering buying a
second tablet, I definitely still see a great deal of utility in small,
printed infoclusters.

(And for everyone saying "this just generates trash," every moment you've ever
spent reading vapid nonsense on backlit screens has been a utter waste of
precious energy. What's your point?)

~~~
morsch
The point is that it takes a hell of a lot less energy to display something on
a screen for a couple of minutes versus printing it out; and it leaves a lot
less paper trash lying around, specifically none.

You don't have to agree, but it's obviously something to consider. I still get
a daily newspaper, and I'm always on the verge of cancelling it both because
it's such a waste of resources and it's a chore to have to throw out a pile of
paper every few weeks.

~~~
Ryanmf
I suspect you're right that the amount of energy used to download the
information and run the mechanism to print it is greater than the energy
required to download and display it temporarily. Also, thermal paper is
apparently non-recyclable, so that sucks.

I suppose what I was getting at is that we're all great wasters of energy and
resources, and a product like this represents a fraction of a drop in the
bucket, so all the commentary on how wasteful it is may miss the forest for
the trees.

The primary reason I like the idea is that I waste less psychic energy with a
piece of paper sitting on my desk which I glance at occasionally, versus my
iPad or Android phone sitting in the same spot, capable of displaying the same
information plus an entire universe of distraction.

------
shortformblog
CUTE. But man, this feels like a product that would've made more sense a
decade ago.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yeah; next we'll see it print Opera tickets and phone books.

------
rytis
The concept and implementation is nice. But for the sake of the planet I would
not get one, nor would I recommend it either.

~~~
5l
Or potentially for the sake of your health, especially if you spend half an
hour on the train every morning handling the printouts:

\- [http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-bpa-thermal-paper-
receip...](http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-bpa-thermal-paper-receipts-
skin.html)

\-
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_paper#Health_and_enviro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_paper#Health_and_environmental_concerns)

~~~
mapleoin
the Wikipedia link you gave says: _exposure of a person repeatedly touching
thermal printer paper for 10 h/day, such as at a cash register, could reach 71
microg/day, which is 42 times less than the present tolerable daily intake
(TDI)._

~~~
5l
Present being the operative word. Plus cashiers don't rub the receipts against
their hand for long periods of time building up sweat, as you might if you
were filling out a puzzle.

Anyway I did say potential, but as the researcher suggests _pregnant women
working as cashiers should be careful and err on the side of caution._

~~~
petsos
Cashiers have to deal with thermal printer paper that is being printed all the
time. You will be dealing with just one or two printouts per day.

You are being overly dramatic.

~~~
divtxt
Hopefully they use a standard size of paper so you can just buy BPA-free
paper.

------
marknutter
My wife is a die-hard paper/pen person. I could see printing stuff out for
her, articles, grocery lists, funny quotes, etc, and putting it in her lunch
for the day. It'd be a nice little pick-me-up.

------
mapleoin
I can imagine the picture with the boy face getting old very fast if it's
printed on each and every note.

------
iamgoat
Make it hackable and it'll have longer legs.

A daily to-do or grocery list is a good use-case, but for social updates it's
quite wasteful.

~~~
blhack
Oh come on!

You could make it print out @replies on twitter or something. How freaking
cool would that be?

~~~
bockris
you mean like this? [http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/06/22/prototype-
thermal-...](http://dangerousprototypes.com/2011/06/22/prototype-thermal-
tweeter-networked-twitter-printer-dangerousproto/)

------
smackfu
Anyone notice this bit?: "In your front room, Little Printer wirelessly
connects (with no configuration) to a small box that plugs into your broadband
router."

So it's not actually using your wifi setup, but some other parallel network.
Seems like an odd choice... yes initial configuration would be hard with a box
with no inputs, but since it seems to require an iPhone anyways, you could do
it through Bluetooth.

~~~
iclelland
Nope. That quote's not on the page that I received (updated content? A/B
testing? geographical segmentation? who knows)

I did notice this bit, though:

"Little Printer sits in your home, but it’s BERG Cloud that does the heavy
lifting. Because publications are created in our cloud on the Web, not in your
front room, we can offer more services for your Little Printer without the
need for updates or a replacement product.

"BERG Cloud Bridge sits by your broadband router and wirelessly connects
Little Printer to the Internet, which makes it easy for you to place Little
Printer where you can see it."

And then I noticed the domain that this page is hosted at; the people who
built the little bridge box are the same people who make the printer. So, it
makes perfect sense to me that they would build devices that work together, on
their own little network, if each promotes sales of the other. Not an odd
choice at all.

~~~
smackfu
Ah yes, it's on the blog post: <http://bergcloud.com/blog/>

I still think it's odd to use your own wifi protocol just to support future
products.

~~~
jerrell
Seems like the modularity would help on the marketing side: people will be
much more receptive to BERG Cloud product #2 if it connects to a device
already in their living room. I think this is probably true whether or not
there's a technological reason why it needs to.

------
foobarbazetc
Wow. These guys wasted a crapload of time on this.

Why would I want to print ANY of the things they've shown, when I could just
open the app on my phone instead -- at least that way I can actually interact
with the data?

Why are you killing trees for no reason?

------
miniatureape
Neat. This design team has been thinking about this for five years.[1]

Personally, I think if the printing doesn't smudge, prints at the speed it
shows in the video and isn't cancerous[2] I'd love to have one.

Aside from functional difference and advantages, physical things still hold a
special power in the world, at least to me.

[1] [http://berglondon.com/blog/2006/10/06/my-printer-my-
social-l...](http://berglondon.com/blog/2006/10/06/my-printer-my-social-
letterbox/) [2]
[http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20011903-10391704.htm...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20011903-10391704.html)

------
quinndupont
What's the pricing going to be for this? At $30 it's a slam dunk, at $50 I
would consider it. Anything more and it's a non-starter. They could try to
increase profit on the razor blade model, selling ink and service upgrades.

~~~
biot
They could likely make decent additional revenue through paid placement for
front-page subscriptions via their app which is then monetized by advertiser
via micro ads ("Today's crossword courtesy of Toyota"). However, as the
printer is thermal they can't sell ink but it does have one significant
consumable: the paper. If the paper is a custom size or with an incompatible
spool mount they'll hopefully get some refills before the novelty wears off
and/or it breaks down.

------
mkinsella
Thank you for not calling it "Printr"

------
jamesbritt
Dupe. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290017>

Posted an hour earlier than this one.

------
dugmartin
It reminds me of the Tandy TP-10 thermal printer I had in the early eighties
for my CoCo I.

<http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/360/mc10tp10wz7.jpg/>

I honestly wouldn't mind a little wireless printer that I could dump lists to
these days. Bonus if it printed on Post It Notes.

~~~
akeck
3M has printable post-its, but they are frightfully expensive and a bit
clunky. <http://goo.gl/yVlB0> At least one industrial designer has taken on
the challenge of a printer for normal post-its. <http://goo.gl/Hicpr>

------
nacs
Looks like a nice device if it has some kind of API. However I'm wondering if
they can make this at any decent cost.

The cheapest thermal printers, even off eBay cost around $65. Most thermal
printers start at $150 and go to around $300.

At ~$50-60 with an API, this would be an instant buy for me. However, I doubt
they can hit that price point.

------
Corrado
Oh god! It's a stock ticker machine for the modern age!

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. :/

------
icki
Although new mobile commerce solutions avoid paper receipts for emailed
digital statements, I oould see this being used by many vendors in combination
with payment technologies like Square to provide clients with paper
statements.

------
something
shouldn't it print out the top? i read from the top down, anyone else?

------
Fluxx
I can't remember where I read it, but successful web properties often share
the same theme of bringing the offline world online, or vice versa. This seems
to do that quite nicely :)

------
jpwagner
i like the machine. have you thought about pitching it to businesses for
receipts, movie stubs, raffles, parking tickets, checks, contact info...etc

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tmcw
Dupe. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy_Printer>

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jwr
Reinventing the fax machine in 2011?

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Elepsis
Perhaps this is too obvious, but this would be killer if it could get
integration with Square.

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swah
My father would finally read his email if it just came out of this magically.

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alexyoung
This is the closest thing to a fax machine made by Steve Jobs.

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Yaggo
I hope it will be able to print flipbooks from Youtube/Vimeo!

------
marknutter
TIL the english call their living rooms "front rooms".

~~~
msisk6
I never thought about it before, but I grew up in Missouri and we all called
it the "front room", too. I still do.

------
D_Drake
If you actually wanted this, you could just spend five dollars on a gameboy
printer off ebay and make the exact same printouts.

------
jlao
Seems more like a novelty item.

