YES! FINALLY! I was waiting over a year for this project to become a reality and today is the big day: my Little Printer from BERGCloud finally arrived! I’m excited! This is NOT a device to print out the Internet. But it actually IS connected to the internet. You can set it up to print out interesting, useful, not-so-useful and just funny stuff for you every day. Some stuff comes weekly or monthly. Some things are connected with your Google calendar or Foursquare friends so that you can never miss any birthdays, appointments, to dos or friends‘ check-ins any more. Take a daily sudoku with you or learn about chinese letters, american presidents, butterflies, science facts, events of the day in history and much much more.
I was eager to get my hands on one of those cute little machines. But I had to wait a long time. So, without any further ado: here are the first pictures (there are much more over at BERGCloud’s official Little Printer page):
The LP comes with its own WiFi bridge that needs its own power outlet. Power adapter and WiFi cable come within the box so you just plug everything in (the WiFi cable into your internet router or any free switch port that has a connection to the internet) and wait two minutes until all the while LEDs are lit or flickering. There’s an excellent, easy description in the package.
Then you plug the LP into a power outlet and wait until the LED at the top changes from blinking to pulsating. Then you press the black button and out comes your first print: your very own serial number. After entering this into your BergCloud account at http://bergcloud.com/go you have full control over what this little box can do. In a little setup procedure you chose a face, a name, a location and a time zone and that’s it. Now you can chose from many possible subscriptions to add and invite friends to let them send messages to your little printer.
Granted, it’s a little bit like a modern fax machine. But it’s so intelligently connected to cool web services. I can’t wait until tommorow morning when my Little Printer prints out all the staff for the day! Plus, I can’t wait to dive into any kind of API or how to hack it, how to set up my own subscription services! Most of the subscription services available via BERGCloud are in English, one is in Hebrew. None is in German as far as I can see right now.
There’s no native iOS or Android or Windows Phone 8 app to control the LP. It’s all done via your web browser. That’s cool!
Sure, the Little Printer is a bit expensive (£199, which is like €247 and app. $319) but it was the first of its kind and the over all look and feel is very good. It’s solidly made and works out of the box. No hassles. Just plug & play. And I’m sure there is a lot of content to come!
One thing, however, I don’t get: it can print at a given hour of the day where my FourSquare friends are. But: my LP is at home. So I’ll print it in the morning when I leave the house for work. But what use is it to know where my friends *were*? I’d like to know where my friends *will be* that day! So I already suggested BERGCloud to integrate with social services like UpTo or Plancast but they never answered me. 🙁
Here are a few more articles about the Little Printer — from back when it was presented to the public a year ago:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/14/3238974/little-printer-berg-matt-webb
http://neuerdings.com/2011/12/02/berg-cloud-little-printer-personalisierte-mini-zeitungen-drucken/
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1670509/its-finally-out-a-little-printer-that-delivers-a-tiny-custom-newspaper#1
http://www.designboom.com/technology/little-printer-by-berg/
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-11/29/berg-little-printer-bergcloud
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