Berg have developed a “Little Printer” that bridges the physical and digital world. Printer management is handled through a mobile app enabling users to curate todo lists, blog feeds, 4square checkins, tweets and status updates. A wireless bridge called Berg Cloud helps the device to effortlessly print you a daily mini-newspaper. Added bouns the printer is inkless – it prints in black on white thermochromic paper.
From the little printer site:
Little Printer lives in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely, beautiful miniature newspaper.
Fortune Magazine has an interesting article that details how the internet is cabled around the world – much of which travels underwater. The massive fiber-optic cabling forms the backbone of the internet.
From Fortune Magazine
If the Internet is a global phenomenon, it’s because there are fiber-optic cables underneath the ocean. Light goes in on one shore and comes out the other, making these tubes the fundamental conduit of information throughout the global village. To make the light travel enormous distances, thousands of volts of electricity are sent through the cable’s copper sleeve to power repeaters, each the size and roughly the shape of a 600-pound bluefin tuna. One rests on the ocean floor every 50 miles or so. Inside its pressurized case is a miniature racetrack of the element erbium, which, when energized, gooses the particles of light along like a waterwheel.
Hats off to BBH New York and Google Creative Lab for crafting an excellent way to demonstrate the speed of chrome while at the same time providing visual candy.
Equipment used:
– Computer: MacBook Pro laptop with Windows installed
– Monitor – 24″ Asus: We had to replace the standard fluorescent backlight with very large tungsten fixtures to funnel in more light to capture the screen. In addition, we flipped the monitor 180 degrees to eliminate a shadow from the driver board and set the system preferences on the computer to rotate 180 degrees. No special software was used in this process.
– Camera: Phantom v640 High Speed Camera at 1920 x 1080, films up to 2700 fps
With the excitement building around Apple’s announcement of a tablet device rumored to be called the iSlate – I hope in 2010 we’ll see digital magazines and books step into the transmedia fold. The integration between apps, APIs, and a strong movement towards standardizing “activity streams” across social services present fertile ground for transmedia storytelling. Character extensions, augmented reality, supporting materials, back stories, experience hyperlinking that ties into online / offline events not to mention real-time interactions between readers all are fuel for rich transmedia experiences. A re-design of what a book and / or magazine experience can be, have the potential to shake some of the issues that the publishing industry has been struggling with lately. Could Apple’s announcement and new tablet usher in a next gen of a print experience? Hardware has the potential to change consumption behavior. It also has the opportunity to establish new revenue streams something that the publishing industry desperately needs. But the content needs to be something that readers will seek out and most importantly something that creates a quality experience while containing a strong value proposition. Only time will tell if readers are ready and if the publishing industry is up for the challenge of innovating a print experience that defies convention.
The following vid shows some nice design concepts around a tablet and the rethinking of a magazine. What I’d like to see is a rethink on the content, interactions and transmedia extensions – it seems like this could be the prefect time to rethink the digital print experience. To me the real excitement is how a tablet can become a storyworld gateway and in many cases it won’t be what the editor places on screen – it will be the connections between.
