“Hoping to alleviate a frustration of mobile computing, Hewlett-Packard has quietly introduced a free service designed to make it possible to print documents on any printer almost anywhere in the world. Cloudprint, which was developed over a period of several months by a small group of H.P. Labs researchers, makes it possible to share, store and print documents using a mobile phone,” John Markoff reports for The New York Times.

“The service emerged as the result of a conversation begun at the laboratory this year over how the computer and printing company might benefit from the introduction of the Apple iPhone, according to Patrick Scaglia, H.P.’s director for Internet and computing platforms technologies at the research lab,” Markoff reports.

“The service requires users to first ‘print’ their documents to H.P. servers connected to the Internet. The system then assigns them a document code, and transmits that code to a cellphone, making it possible to retrieve and print the documents from any location,” Markoff reports.

“The service will include a directory service that will show the location of publicly available printers on Google Maps. The system currently works with any Windows-connected printer. A Macintosh version is also planned,” Markoff reports.

Full article here.

Alex Zaharov-Reutt reports for iTWire, “At no stage does your cell phone directly interact with a printer, a document stored on an HP Cloudprint server must be downloaded as a PDF, opened in Adobe Acrobat (or compatible PDF reader) and then printed in the usual manner.”

“Quite how my cell phone helps me to share, store and print my documents beyond being the receptacle for a document code number is beyond me – the same effect could be used by saving the document in question to a USB memory stick, or simply emailed to a web mail service, such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL Mail or any other webmail software you can name,” Zaharov-Reutt reports.

“So, while HP Labs mobile printing system at first sounds like some kind of magical document teleportation service, it’s really no different to a regular online storage service, except that it seems to require special software on my Windows PC (and soon Mac), it seems to automatically convert documents to PDF, and it seems that it will be totally useless if I accidentally delete the SMS text message that contains the document code that lets me retrieve the document from an actual computer,” Zaharov-Reutt reports.

Full article here.