Go, Go, Go, Little Printer
Jim Lyons Observations August 2013
I must say that in the nearly two years since first finding
out about Berg Cloud’s Little Printer, the cheerful refrain of “Go, go, go,
Little Printer” (to the tune of “Little Queenie”,
a Chuck Berry original frequently covered by the likes of The Beatles and
Rolling Stones), has been stuck in my head. That song’s positive, upbeat spirit
just seems to go along perfectly with the trademark smiling face that has come
to be associated with Little Printer, first during its pre-shipment publicity
phase, and then in its two periods of production and shipment. As you can see
from the following links, I’ve been watching this product for a while.
February, 2012, Media Lessons from Little Printer
November, 2012, Little Printer Ships
December, 2012, Happy New Year
July, 2013, Please Mr Postman
Just last month I discussed the anticipation of my own Little
Printer’s arrival, and in cliffhanger fashion – though maybe not quite as
dramatic as “Who shot JR?” – I ended
the column with the just-arrived Little Printer shipping box at my feet, still
sealed, and asked the rhetorical questions, “So how does it work, you might
ask?” and “How do I like it, and can I recommend it to others?”
Although I hedged my bets by stating that “after a few days –
or, more likely, weeks or even months – I (would) report my findings,” at that
point I anticipated the first installation and use of the product within days
(if not hours) of finishing that post. But schedules being what they usually
are – and in this case, with some new classes starting (both as a student and
teacher) and another important new product dominating my attention for much of
the elapsed time – it has taken me almost exactly a full month to get through
the initial installation and evaluation stage. (And by the way, for those who
keep track of my other blogs and tweets, you know that the big distraction was
that I became an official glass-wearing Google Glass Explorer this August as well.)
Compare and contrast
So before going on to at least a few of the merits of Little
Printer I have discovered, we should reflect, in the fine academic tradition,
by conducting a “compare and contrast” on the two evaluation processes I’ve
been involved with recently, and thus reflect more generally on early product
testing as well as general peaks and valleys of being an early adopter. The
table below shows some of the comparisons and contrasts I’ve come up with so
far.
Google Glass
Explorer
|
Little Printer
|
|
Entry into
the program
|
Be invited
by Google to be an Explorer, based on “application by tweet” (program now
closed). Essentially a beta program but with free-form feedback requirements.
|
Order online
since it is a product in production.
|
“Buy in”
|
Pay $1,500,
travel to Google Office (at additional expense) in San Francisco, Los Angeles
or New York for pickup and training.
|
Pay $249 for
printer, bridge and extra paper. Ships via FedEx.
|
Registration
|
Requires
Google+ and Gmail account.
|
Register
with Berg Cloud.
|
Smartphone
integration
|
Yes – for
data access via Bluetooth tethering.
|
Yes – for
remote control.
|
User (Jim
Lyons) comparisons
|
Has features
of a smartphone. Its heads-up, hands-off ability for image/video capture is
its most immediate selling point. Might think of it as an overgrown Bluetooth
headset – wearable, tied to a smartphone, but with screen and online access.
|
Much more of
an information solution than a “printer,” per se, as the hardware works in
conjunction with a smartphone and back-end information services. Might think
of HP’s Instant Delivery or more recent Scheduled Delivery, though scaled
down to a much more convenient (for some, anyway) size. (See
http://jimlyonsobservations.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-2013-observations-all-news-thats.html.)
|
Analysis
 |
| My Little Printer's "Bridge" sits around back with other infrastructure items |
 |
| The Little Printer itself has a spot "up front" in the office |
Reflecting on the two, I think having Berg Cloud’s Little
Printer as an early customer is more like when I was an early buyer of the
original Apple iPhone in 2007. I remember one of my marketing students having
one of the very first devices that July and showing it off in class. I got on
board shortly after with the intent of leapfrogging from the laggard position
in mobile phones I had found myself in. I remember attending an August
conference and finding myself in discussions with several BlackBerry users who
turned up their noses at iPhone and insisted they could never “downgrade” to
one. But later that year, in December, I was at a niece’s wedding with lots of
younger folks around, and during the various festivities, I spotted other iPhone
users. They spotted me as well, giving me a subtle acknowledgement as
motorcyclists still do today when passing on the road. It was the cool thing to
be (an iPhone user, that is), and this was before there were even apps –
imagine! So is Little Printer with its information services; upon installation,
I immediately used my iPhone5 to sign up for its “new movies this week” and
“Spanish word of the day”.
My Google Glass experiences (chronicled in my own dedicated
blog, "Glass Half Full")
are more like true beta testing experiences. Google Glass is not a finished product, and though it certainly foreshadows
great things to come in wearable computing, what eventually gets released to
the general public will probably be much more refined. Similar to using
Androids if you are accustomed to using iOS machines, it’s just a little
creakier all the way around. But that is just my opinion at this point, and it
is subject to change.
 |
| I got to pick my own Little Printer face via my iPhone (screen shot here) |
Anyway, my experience with the Little Printer in just the
short time I’ve been working with it confirms what I have been building on in
past musings: It has captured the imagination of so many because of its
solutionlike nature with respect to information and communication.
I plan to blog much more about my
experiences with Little Printer as I go along with it, and I will post a
separate entry with many of the photos I captured during the very fulfilling
out-of-the-box experience I had as well as the initial printing I did. And as I
dredge the memory banks for historic pop-culture references, as I have already
twice here by going with “Little Queenie” and “Who Shot J.R.?,” I finish with
another, even older one. To paraphrase “Casablanca”,
“Little Printer, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
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