Friday, June 13, 2008

CloudPrint

A few years ago, I suggested that if you have a store, then I would allow folks to print to the printers at the store from your network users. Kind of like what Kinko's does with its upload service. The idea was that you could add value to your service; get more traffic in your store; interface with your customers more; and Cliff @ CSSLA could sell a Xerox or three.

Of course, many people told me why it wouldn't work with out even trying it. (Oooh, it's change. I don't like that!) People asked what to do about people that did not pick stuff up? (Mail it to them. you know what IP address it came from). Wasted paper. (People are printing anyway, why not make $$).

I have stayed at hotels that offer this kind of printing. And there is even a Web 2.0 app called CloudPrint that allows people to print to any internet-enabled printer.

I'll go one better for the Green Machine: let people "print" their documents to your Document Management system to be converted to a PDF and sent back to them. It's like efax only without the faxing, although you could accept it faxes as well. But it is like having a full copy of Acrobat and using the PDFWriter. Just an idea. Comments welcome.

Fax doc mgmt

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