The Little Printer from BERG

A new product from BERG hopes to revolutionize personal publishing.The new product is a printer, and BERG CEO Matt Webb thinks it’ll integrate perfectly with social media. It’s being called a “Little Printer” and BERG is betting on the success of it.

The Little Printer is exactly what its name indicates: a printer that can fit in the palm of your hand. It’s in the shape of a cube and powered by the cloud. It prints thin strips of paper with news from The Guardian, and social media content from places like Facebook and Foursquare; the paper actually looks like a shopping receipt once printed. Webb comments, “Each information source we think of as a personalized ‘publication’ that you subscribe to from a kind of ‘app store for paper’ collated into a delivery that arrives at a chosen time”.

You select Little Printer’s content via a smartphone app, and then get your printed news around twice a day.

For Sharing

It seems like paper is a bit outdated to be in style, but Webb thinks differently. In a social media world where our content just comes and goes, Little Printer aims to give a more realistic feel. And the device doesn’t just spit out a bunch of information. It’s powered by the BERG Cloud and tries to print out only information that it sees as important. Webb says that they concentrate on “density of information or delight”.

Little Printer will be available for purchase some time in 2012, but Webb notes that it’s just the first in a long line of screenless, web-based products that BERG will be introducing.

Will It Stick?

The concept is interesting, but only time will tell if the product truly catches on. Who knows? Social media in paper form may actually be a relief to those that stare at their computers all day in a zombie-like state. Paper certainly isn’t a new phenomenon, but maybe that’s what makes it so cool. Combining products from the now – social media syndication, with products from the past – paper is a recipe that just might work. (Sure, people still use paper but it’s not the revolution it once was).

Interestingly enough, BERG isn’t the only company working on something like this. Jack Dorsey recently announced that his company, Square, will focus on publishing and using paper receipts to print on.

CO.DESIGN Photo by : BERG Cloud