I read this morning in the NY Times about HP's new offering - Cloudprint and I go this is a candidate for my New Florence innovation blog. It promises "to share, store and print documents using a mobile phone." Many a times, I have gone into Kinkos on the road and spent a fortune printing stuff. So, I am excited - hey, maybe HP has dreamed up a nano printer to go with my PDA.
But the HP site has no details (I searched for Cloudprint on their site), and the article says HP has been quiet about it. It appears to go as follows - you send HP a document, and they convert it to PDF format, and SMS you a document identifier code to your cell phone. Then you use the code to retrieve the document wherever you travel to.
But then I think Adobe has offered an on-line version for a long time now to convert documents to PDF and then store them on its servers. I could produce a PDF at home and store it on any online storage or email system. I could put files on a nano zip drive and carry them around. Heck I can even store and view PDF files on my PDA. How does Cloudprint really let me get away from Kinko's?
Then I get it. They want to make it easy for me to keep using Kinko's. Through use of Google Maps they make it a bit easier for me to find Kinko's. So it reminds me HP's printers at home are cheaper. Just marginally cheaper.
Update: My ex Gartner colleague Carter Lusher left a URL for Cloudprint in the comments below. So I tried to use its directory to find print shop locations - I found none in the 50 mile radius of Manhattan or Tampa. I did find 2 in Palo Alto, near HP's HQ. But they are restricted to HP employees. In fairness the Cloudprint site says "beta", but without even the Kinko's locations, not sure how helpful it can be. One future feature mentioned on the site which would be nice - Print CloudPrint documents to your home or office printer, no matter where you are and when you get back, your printed documents will be waiting for you...I can see using Cloudprint to store and print brochures or static documents you often need on the road, but for most other one-time use documents, the other options I mentioned above like a zip drive seem so much easier.
