Computers

Little Printer now available for pre-order

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Little Printer, a smartphone-operated wireless printer designed by BERG, is ready to ship
BERG has taken inspiration from classics such as traditional halftone lithography as well as pixel art
Users can subscribe to specific sections for updates on personally curated news feeds
Little Printer, a smartphone-operated wireless printer designed by BERG, is ready to ship
Using their iPhone, Android smartphone or Windows Phone, users can browse, select and manage publications
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BERG's Little Printer, a box-sized device announced last November, is ready to ship. The pint-sized printer, which connects wirelessly to the Internet, takes inspiration from traditional halftone lithography as well as pixel art. It gathers its user-defined content via a cloud-based system to deliver a personalized mini newspaper with puzzles, friend’s birthday reminders, weather info and messages from friends appearing alongside the daily news.

Since the November announcement, BERG says it has spent time putting the final touches on the product, such as a mirror finish on the high-gloss injection molded plastic that contains the printer, creating packaging, refining the API for developers, and setting up credit card payment systems.

In addition to the original Lego man-like character face that is framed by the unit's brushed steel faceplate revealed in November, Berg has also introduced three more characters that users can choose from to personalize their unit.

Little Printer comes with a Cloud Bridge device that connects to a router so it can be used without a computer and users can schedule their shopping docket-sized publications via smartphone to arrive at any time of the day or send a message to a friend's printer.

Initial launch content partners include Arup, social network foursquare, The Guardian newspaper and Google, with integration with Google Tasks for printing out your daily schedule.

The first manufacturing run is a fixed size but BERG said it will soon move to a regular production cycle. Developers, publishers and website owners have 60 days to produce bespoke publications for Little Printer and the company has published a handbook (PDF) to help them with that.

Little Printer can now be pre-ordered from the BERG Cloud shop for £199 (US$259) plus shipping.

The original video that got the LIttle Printer so much attention can be viewed below.

Source: BERG

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4 comments
Fahrenheit 451
Helluva lot for a thermal printer! I have two HP thermal printers that were available as their Business Consultant calculators (made eons ago). Surely, they are better built than this and were available with a spiffy high-grade leather case as were the calculators. Amazing how people start jumping around as if this is newfound technology! At best this device is worth no more than $50 USD, plus the cost of the software driver. A manufacturer, like Dymo, can easily step-in here and provide a likely better unit at a better price too.
agulesin
What a waste of paper, printing that face on each sheet, all of which could be read on an iPhone etc. much easier than thermal paper... are we going to see the streets littered with mini-newspapers in a few years? I don't think so...
reefingbuddha
Yeah so its expensive and it wastes paper blah blah blah
But besides all that I kinda like it! Cool little way to personalize all that digital crap we have floating around into a neat little real world script perfectly tailored to your individual needs.
I'm never going to buy one but I think the concept is cute and well executed.
Mr T
It's a ridiculous waste of paper, and thermal paper is pretty toxic stuff (look it up). This is just another "let's make another pointless piece of crap for the trendy set, who will buy anything if we make it sound cool" device that will add to the endless stream of ewaste that the western world produces. I really wish people were smart enough to override their "I've gotta have that new gadget because it's new and cool" impulses but I guess human evolution still has a way to go yet.