Print 2.0 Blog

Opportunity Knocks

psipgcto — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:09:00 GMT

As previously done in my blog, I've invited Antonio Rodriguez, Chief Technologist for HP's IPG Inkjet and Web Solutions Group, to share his thoughts in this blog.

Here it is:

I am really excited about the recent organizational move inside HP's Imaging and Printing Group, and my new role in it, for two reasons, both of which have to do with the tech environment we find ourselves living in today:

Coming of the cloud

1. Clouds, clouds as far as the eye can see— but the good kind, of course. The shift to cloud architectures is now officially inevitable, and over the next 5-7 years this redistribution of compute cycles and storage is going to ripple through everything; from today's current web services to desktop printers. We need to get ahead of it by understanding exactly what it means to each of our key customer segments.

For instance, what does it mean for me as a user if my image collection can exist in a "bottomless" hard drive on my PC, where the entire repository can be synchronized, replicated, and backed up quietly behind the scenes? Does this change the notion of upload?

Sharing? What I might want in terms of output?

Another example: what does a driver born of the cloud mean for me as a printer customer? Smaller install footprint? An Internet-addressable printer? All of these questions, and many more, are key to what we are going to have to start answering for the consumer use cases inside of HP's Inkjet and Web Solutions Group. And we won't be able to do it without starting from the pooled engineering talent we've got in this new group.

2. The blinking VCR clock syndrome hits the Internet big time

If Apple has taught us anything with the iPod/iPhone ecosystem, it is that customers will reward solutions as opposed to point products. I don't want a music player any more than I want a set of engine pistons — I want a way to consume music whenever, wherever. Ditto for the smart phone: what I want is a set of experiences around the my media, web, email, and my contacts. Users are no longer willing to play the role of plumber, hand-assembling solutions out of disparate pieces. For our part, this means we're going to have to start to retool our printers, web services, retail touchpoints— in short all of the elements of the ecosystem that IPG has worked so hard to put together over the last two decades. We're going to need to rip all of assumptions apart (and some of our offerings) and begin from a set of consumer experiences we are looking to make delightful (and I don't choose this word lightly). This one will not come without pain, but the alternative— becoming irrelevant— is far, far worse.

The science fiction writer William Gibson wrote "the future is here; it's just not widely distributed." As I've sat inside IPG over the last year, I've seen bits and pieces of it all over the place. Now it's time to take it to market, in a big way.

Interesting Products of 2007

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:25:00 GMT

It’s January 2008, a good time to look back at 2007! What did catch my eye?

This is my list: OLPC’s XO, Apple iPhone, Amazon’s Kindle and HP’s Kitchen Kiosk (A826). I have some personal experience using each of them. Yes, this is my hand next to the Kindle, to give you a sense of size. I found most people have some pre-conceived idea about how big or small it must be. Much has been written about these since their introduction, my intent isn’t to give you yet another review. Instead, I want to share why I find them “interesting”: they all have one thing in common: they redefined our expectations.

XO has redefined what a “cheap” computer can do: a laptop/tablet personal computer with camera, excellent audio, WIFI, mesh network, brand new user interface (no overlapping windows, a thing it has in common with the other products in my list), full web access, for less than $200.

The iPod has redefined the notion of a computer on the go.

The Kindle has redefined where computing innovation might emerge (a book retailer designing computers, who would have imagined).

The A826 has redefined the photo kiosk to also encompass the home and illustrates a year of change for the “consumer photo” and the links between online services, retail photo and home print.

Each of these products redefine prior and probably well entrenched notion about laptops, phones and print. What a laptop gives you for the given price, what a smart phone is, which companies create computing products. How you get access to bookstores (on the go through a data phone network).

The iPhone isn’t really a phone, it’s what a computer we always carry with us should look like. The Wall Street journal reported in December that iPhone owners surf the Web about as much as the typical PC owner. May be the main contribution of the iPhone is to be a tipping point. Now I can seriously think about not carrying my laptop with me on some short business trips. It also gives new life to the notion of being always connected to the web (one of the key tenet of Print 2.0). I found this interesting analysis on the WSJ Blog: “on December 25, visits to the search-engine Google from iPhones spiked dramatically. The lesson isn’t just that the iPhone was a popular Christmas gift: It’s that mobile devices need to be built with surfing the Web in mind”.

It’s more than hardware. I think we are starting to see what sort of services and web interface work. Once you look at the web through an iPhone you get a few surprises: UTube videos look actually better on the iPhone screen and are more usable. Some online information is closer because there is never a “boot time” or much navigation (not surprisingly, it’s the information or service you go to more often). It is a fascinating example of the notion of “simple applications that just work”.

The XO demonstrated much can be reinvented in the “PC” category: displays, user interface, connectivity and communication (the social mesh of the XO is really cool) and that it does not take a hundred million dollars (or 5 years).

The biggest surprise about the Kindle is that it came from a brand (Amazon) we would not have associated with computer products just a couple years ago. A book retailer designing computers, who would have thought?

They have common technology innovations, at least directionally: All have new displays. Touch screen for the iPhone , sunlight readable and color backlit for the XO, eInk for the Kindle (OK, it’s hardly new, but it hasn’t been widely used yet). It also shows it is possible now to innovate in vertical markets without loosing economy of scale. It isn’t an accident that the XO display is 7”. It’s the size of most portable DVD players, yet it is unlike most LCDs, it’s a modified LCD.

And of course, they are all small enough to be moved around.

So you can browse the web with these devices, download books wherever you are. Can you print from these?

We are working on printing for the XO, you can print from iPhone with cloudprint.net . For Kindle, well, what would be the point…but you might decide to buy what you are reading, or a customized version of it. Stay tuned . . .

The computing landscape is becoming a much richer landscape. Innovation is alive.

My friend Eric (who, like me emerged from a “blog winter”) wrote this interesting Predictions 2008. A nice complement to this post.

Do you agree with this view of the world?

Patrick

Innovation at HP

warren.sander@hp.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 20:05:00 GMT

In case you might have missed it, I want to point to an excellent Business Week article on HP’s cultural revolution. I was interviewed, along with others, by Jana Reena, the Innovation Editor for Business Week for this article. Jana did a remarkably thorough job of discovering how innovation at HP was working now. Jana interviewed a lot of HPers and spent a lot of time with us. One of the themes she develops in the article: “innovation by absorption” (referring to the acquisition of small or early stage companies) is certainly becoming a tool for many companies. From my point of view, it is a critical tool: Innovation in the Web Age is a tight coupling between business model innovation and technology innovation. This means you have to learn to think differently about how you do business and which technology to invent. It is definitely a cultural transformation. To learn it, you have to see it happen by living next to someone doing it every day. Incorporating a team with that experience is a way to achieve that learning. We have seen some early success with this in the deployment of our Print 2.0 strategy. But of course, it is a long road…. may be all the way to the North Pole…

Happy Holidays!

John Battelle’s conversation with HP's Vyomesh Joshi

warren.sander@hp.com — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 15:29:00 GMT

John posted the interviews from last week’s Web 2.0 story. I love John’s introduction of VJ: “I had never seen a guy so excited about printing!”. As John pointed out, printing is one of the edges of the web. VJ covers a lot of ground in this chat. But predictably, he never answered John’s question about what Yahoo should do.

One of his insightful comments was that on the web, you need to have a very solid business model as a foundation.

John noted that Snapfish is now approximately the size of Facebook (45 million user), something to think about. As VJ commented “we don’t talk about it”. John also noted VJ was talking as a media company: is there an advertising opportunity?

I want to come back to some of the points in a follow up blog. In the meanwhile, it’s worth watching. Here is VJ’s interview . Remember to select the conversation on the right side navigation bar. It does not point to the right conversation by default.

Print 2.0, a non Executive view

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:56:00 GMT

I have shared my excitement about Print 2.0 in this blog. But what about other HP employees, how do they see Print 2.0? I thought you might want to hear directly from some of them. These short interviews were recorded on various HP sites. I find these stories very compelling.

Enjoy!

Kachayu.com

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:41:00 GMT

You may wonder, what’s this about?

Here is a hint: Kacha is the sound a camera shutter makes, in Chinese. Yu is the word for fish.

With kachayu.com, HP has expanded the Snapfish network to China. It’s also available in 19 other countries.

I have a great deal of curiosity about this one. The market for digital photo in China is largely driven by camera phones. There are 220 million children in primary and secondary schools.

It’s exciting !

Snapshot-less photography

warren.sander@hp.com — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 04:26:00 GMT

Snapshot-less photography

Another invited post. This post is from Phil McCoog, Chief Technologist for HP’s Digital Photography business. There are a lot of touch points for HP in Digital Photography: online services, retail photo solutions, home and professional printers, cameras. Phil’s role is to understand the integration of these assets. In my job, I do meet a lot of interesting people. When I get an insightful answer to a simple question it makes me think. The simple question I asked Phil was “what does Digital Photography mean to you now?” Phil’s answer was that the explosive growth and future of photography is in the combination of personal, community, and professional content that is professionally fulfilled. For Phil, the photography part of “digital photography” is where change is happening now. It’s a new creative medium, not just a way to capture a snapshot. I can see that. After all, YouTube did not end up being the place we store traditional home videos. Instead, it became a new publishing and expression medium. Could the same happen to photography?

I said, interesting, but this answer needs more explanation. I decided to share it with you here.

Phil McCoog on Snapshot-less photography

Prior to digital, photography was about capturing your memories by preserving pictures you took. These pictures were almost always professionally developed. Sometimes, but not as often as we would like, those photos were put into an album. All artistry was at the time of the photo - i.e. getting the right framing and composition. Film came in rolls of 12, 24, and 36. When we took pictures we were always aware of how many pictures we had left in the roll. Pictures were not to be "wasted".

Then came digital. It was a revolution. We are free to take all the pictures we want - there is no cost to capturing the image and most memory cards are virtually unlimited for any single event. We can fix zooming and cropping later. There is also a freedom of how to experience these photos. We can print them via mail order, at home, or at retail. We can share them electronically. But at the end of the day, the digital photography revolution, so far, has made it cheaper and easier for us to share snapshots. The medium of exchange is still a series of pictures. The main revolution was the introduction of digital. The only real casualty of this revolution, besides a company or two, was the viewfinder and it has virtually disappeared without us noticing and without much fanfare.

The explosive growth that is brewing in digital photography is more in the photography part than the digital part. Of course I believe the output and medium will continue to be digital, but users will have new ways of using their photos. Users can now combine their personal images and professional content into a whole new output medium. I am using the term "professional" very loosely here. As any web 2.0 guru will tell you, the line between professional and everyday web contributor are blurring. A more accurate term might be web available content. This content might "stock" photos, Flickr photos, maps, or other web images. It might be prose grabbed from the web - maybe even from a blog. It might be creative artwork. It might be a creative project template for output such as photobooks or holiday cards. The revolution is how do we take this wealth of content and make it into a new artifact. Forward looking mail order and retail photo centers are already installing a whole new breadth of equipment that allow us to explode out of the snapshot paradigm. Sometime in the not so distant future I expect to be writing a blog about how the snapshot went out "not with a bang, but with a whimper". However much like the "paper-less office" revolution didn't result in the end of printing and in fact caused an explosion in printing, the "snapshot-less photography" revolution won't mean the end of printing photos, but should result in the explosive growth of producing photography treasures to be part of our everyday life. What web content do you see as the important content for enhancing your digital pictures into amazing output? What form do you imagine that output taking? What have seen that really wows you?

Antonio Rodriguez: "My impressions of Print 2.0"

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:04:00 GMT

I am trying something new (for me): hosting other writers I believe have something to say and that you might want to meet. Today it’s Antonio Rodriguez. I first met Antonio when he was the CEO (and founder) of Tabblo.com. Now Tabblo is part of HP and the Print 2.0 strategy. Antonio is a proven web entrepreneur who understands publishing really well. That makes a fascinating combination. You can discover more about Antonio on The Onda.

In the piece below, Antonio is asking a really good question: what should a print 2.0 platform look like. We have learned from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others what a successful web advertisement platform should look like, but we are very early in the process of inventing the print 2.0 platform. There is as much business in print as in advertisement.

Here it is:

My impressions of Print 2.0 in the age of the Unwitting Blogger (invited blog by Antonio Rodriguez)

There are a variety of threads floating around our new Print 2.0 strategy that are worth thinking about in the age of the unwitting blogger. I first wrote about this back at the beginning of Tabblo, arguing that regular people were becoming authors of content online without even knowing they were— in some cases doing the kinds of things that bloggers were, steadily producing content for small but interested audiences. And if anything, since then the explosion of social networking sites like Facebook, and microblogging apps like Twitter have but accelerated this process.

The line between communication and publishing continues to blur for the simple reason that the tools for creating, distributing, and consuming content have become so cheap and ubiquitous. Combined with the almost insatiable appetite we have to connect with each other, and the way in which Internet time accelerates these types of trends, we're really seeing the beginning of some incredible stuff (if you want to see just how far the Internet has brought us along this spectrum of communications/publishing, check out these two presentations).

The last time we had such a revolution in publishing, the "Desktop Publishing" revolution, the group that I now work for, IPG (Imaging and Printing), rode a wave that combined the PC with cheap printing to enable a whole new group of people publish content in a way that looked as good as was as well-finished as that of professional publishers. These folks put out content that was as varied as restaurant menus and poetry books and billions of dollars of industry value were created. Ten years later, millions of people felt empowered to "author content," even if this meant sending Christmas letters that looked like ransom notes from all of the different typefaces used.

But that was a more deliberate process for two key reasons: first, the devices for generating the output cost money (even if the prices have dropped like a rock over the last two decades). Second, the physical nature of the distribution of the content was limited to moving atoms around from printer to consumer. Today, the Internet obviates the need for the publisher to worry about the mechanics of distribution even when the final product is meant to be consumed on paper. In fact thanks to the huge success that HP (and others) experienced during the PC/Desktop boom, there are now more than 400M deployed personal fabricators (printers) ready to turn all of those bits right back to atoms right in people's homes.

So when Patrick writes about Cloudprint, or about the importance of web applications, it is not just because they are cool technologies. It is because each of them enables today's casual publisher to take yet another step into creating and moving content in a digital world. Cloudprint to me is Twitter for documents and printers (leveraging a lot of the same casual publisher characteristics), and the eventual rise of webapps as content authoring environments is much less about the death of the desktop app than it is about portable interfaces for dealing with specific types of experiences around publishing that can be collaborative while living very close to the communities that benefit the most from them.

The trick that all of us involved in the Print 2.0 implementation are trying to figure out is how to inject key pieces of functionality into the content creation, selection, distribution, and consumption process that help to accelerate the process by which we make everyone into an unwitting blogger. We've all got stories to tell across a range of mediums and to audiences of all sizes, and as IPG has learned, opening up these possibilities are the way that billion dollar industries are made.

Web applications, are they for real?

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:32:00 GMT

I have written about the key underlying assumption behind Print 2.0: content is created, shared and distributed on the web. Print 1.0 was about riding the wave of the desktop applications. Print 2.0 is about riding the wave of the Web. Sometimes, when I say this, there is some controversy in the audience. While most would agree Web applications are a reality for each of us as consumers, the controversy tends to be centered on professional or business use.

SAP announced a few days ago their new suite of On Demand Services. While it is hardly unexpected, I find it significant, perhaps as significant as the launch of Live by Microsoft. These are the giants of the software industry. You know a shift happens when it is embraced by the giants. Henning Kagermann, SAP’s CEO described it as “the most important announcement I have made in my career here [at SAP]”. May be Henning thinks the same way I do. Granted, both SAP and Microsoft have so far targeted the mid- market (smaller enterprises and small business) rather than the larger enterprises. But you would expect this, for practical reasons (volume and speed of adoption). It’s also the way technology is developed and adopted currently: first consumers and small business, followed by mid-size enterprises and larger enterprises.

I found these two videos on Google video. They are sales pitches, I guess, but they bring an interesting perspective on the new way of thinking. Too often we tend to look at technology shifts in the context of the old model. A rich and complete feature set was key to desktop applications: they had to handle an extremely wide range of use. Yes, the equivalent web application isn’t nearly as rich. But does it matter? Instead, it is important to think in terms of the new use models or the new priorities. Marc Benioff makes the point in his video: for his enterprise, how fast you can deploy business applications to new employees matters enormously. Having an employee base all on the same release of software, all the time (because it is delivered on line) matters. We work in large, widely distributed teams these days, real time collaboration built into the tools matters.

In our Print 2.0 context, we see the same thing. I was asked recently whether our photo book editing web application that we used for the Gwen Stefani book was competing with some of Adobe’s well known applications. Maybe, if you think of Gwen as a photo editor application, but in reality not, it has a different priority: a targeted instantiation that is well tuned for the group of users that might be interested by Gwen. It does not come close to the power of an Adobe application but for the 14 year-old girl putting her concert picture into the Gwen book, it just works perfect.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff Speaks about Google Apps

Eric Schmidt and Douglas Merrill talk about Google Apps

I wouldn’t be complete without the contrarian view, so here it is, Don Reisinger news blog on CNET : Will free office suites supplant Microsoft as the industry leader? . Don says: may be not after all.

Enjoy!

On iPhone

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 15:16:00 GMT

I have been called an optimist. I guess it’s true. In mid-July, Jim Lyons wrote about iPhone printing and argued that hoping it would drive new prints was an optimistic view. A few hours later Jim posted a comment titled “Finally the optimists are going on record” referencing the New York Times article on HP’s Cloudprint service (I was quoted in this article).

Cloudprint was indeed motivated by a belief that if we were to make mobile print so simple, some more prints would happen. There is also another belief in Cloudprint: how innovation works in a web world. We could have debated endlessly about the value of mobile print. Instead we created a first (may be primitive) service in six weeks and put it out there for all to use. Try in the real world, learn, update quickly and often, sometimes three times a week. This is the new innovation model.

There is a new Cloudprint version this week. You can now print directly to your home printer from your iPhone, anywhere you might be away from home (we support North America, Europe and Asia right now; we won’t forget the other regions). Or you can designate any other printer you might like, could be the home or office printer of a friend or colleague. It also works with Windows Mobile phone.

Or you can try this other path: uploading your Pictures to Flickr and printing from there. Soon we’ll be helping you create photo books and posters from your Flickr account. You can already do this on Snapfish.

You have the choice. This is print 2.0 in action.

If you are motivated by innovation, read Phil McKinney’s Innovation blog. Phil is passionate about innovation and loves to share his insight and the lessons he learned. Phil is also a friend and colleague as CTO of HP’s Personal Systems Group.

VJ's "Uncut" Video

warren.sander@hp.com — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 19:59:00 GMT

Here is an interesting video from VJ, the executive vice president for HP’s Imaging and Printing Group. I think it’s cool. VJ’s passion for the Print 2.0 journey does come across. I also can’t remember a precedent for an HP Executive VP.

Enjoy!

When 2% Leads to a Major Industry Shift

warren.sander@hp.com — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 21:24:00 GMT

I was just about to write my last report on our Print 2.0 event in New York, on my way home. I was looking at clouds outside the plane, the real ones, not the Internet cloud when an interesting quote from Vyomesh Joshi’s keynote on Tuesday came back to the surface: “we [HP’s Imaging and Printing Group] only have 2% of worldwide pages, if I could add another lousy 2%, I could double the business”. We are talking about the potential to double a $30 billion business. Of course it was also meant to get a smile from the audience but the data is accurate. HP has a massive footprint in the digital print market (expressed in printer units or business volume), but very few pages are printed with digital printers (less than 9% of the 45 trillion pages printed in 2005). As a result we do represent only 2% of worldwide printed pages. Digital print technology is improving rapidly to compete with traditional print technology. We will be ready with digital production means. But what does it take to get pages to go digital in the first place?

We have proposed an answer: Print 2.0, the combination of digital content, the web and digital print. It’s one of the platforms that support the “conversation economy” and allows us to express “what we have to say”. We are expanding HP’s web service platform: HP’s Snapfish is powering our consumer services, but also others such as Wal-Mart’s photo service, and now Microsoft Live Spaces (available in the fall). This week we announced our partnership with Meiers, connecting online and retail with kiosks and microlabs. Small business can get branding and identity needs served by HP’s Logoworks online or with our partnership with Office Depot. In addition to video download of movies, you can now purchase a DVD at retail with your favorite TV show thanks to HP’s NextDayTV.

We are also enabling the larger web to offer users a rich experience to create prints, posters, books and other products. It is worth it! There are more than 100 million web sites in the world.

Creating for the web does not have a good model for repurposing content for print products. A typical well formatted blog will simply look ugly and hard to read once committed to paper (and a lot of paper will have been wasted). The Tabblo print toolkit provides a service that web site can mash up to: the “HP Print it” button will be found in the Yahoo toolbar for example or allow Boing Boing readers to print individual posts.

For a blog, it can work like this:

get 4 choices for a print output:

one of the outputs is an itinerary, the other is travel log, or it could be a photo album, you get the idea: same web content, very different outputs.

Print is one thing, what about publishing?

Anyone can be their own publisher. The Tabblo platform can help users create their way, from the site of their choice: a poster with their personal photo, a coffee table photo book or a simple pocket book. We live in a world of mashed media. A book might be created by a community. Before the Holiday season, Tabblo will be powering Flickr to offer a rich array of print products to the Flickr user community. Disney.com will be offering Hanna Montana “my concert album” thanks to Tabblo. It will be available at the start of the concert tour on October 18^th.

Maybe you would like your site to use the power of Tabblo. What would you want to say with it?

Print is Exciting Again !

warren.sander@hp.com — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:03:00 GMT

This is how I feel, along with many of the attendees here in New York, on day 2 of HP’s “What do You have to say?” campaign launch. My fellow HP blogger Eric Kintz wrote an excellent summary of the event: HP Ignites the Print 2.0 Revolution . A lot of facts, links to the launch sites and videos can also be found on the press release.

Printing is exciting again because… it’s not about print! Instead, it’s about what each of us has to say. The combination of digital content, the web and digital print is remarkably powerful. I like the way John Batelle in the panel session spoke about the “conversation economy”. John described the 3 bumps of IT:

- bump 1: digitized the back office. The interface was the command line: C:\
- bump 2: digitized the front office. A PC on everyone desk, Windows and GUI were the new interface
- bump 3: today. Every interaction with customers is digital. Search is how we ask questions of technology now. Search is the beginning of a new interface. It is the transition from packaged good to a conversation economy. Everyone is in the media business now and that media is conversation.

This is how I see the role of print: it is a powerful tool for this conversation. I saw many examples in the last 2 days. I’ll highlight one that I think demonstrates the power of including the physical output of print in this digital conversation: Letters From Katrina by Mark Hoog, a United Airlines pilot and executive director of the Children's Leadership Institute. This book is a set of letters from children in Colorado and California to children of the Gulf Coast touched by the Katrina tragedy. This is user generated content that touches your heart, and it is not YouTube. Self publishing and the capability to digitally produce (through Lightning Source) made this book a reality. It is available on Amazon. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of this book is placed in an endowment that will create a lifetime of scholarships and opportunity for children throughout Mississippi and the Gulf Coast.

Customers are now in control in this conversation economy. In this spirit, as part of the marketing campaign, HP is offering experiences inspired by personalities, in the form of web sites where customers can mash their content with professional content from these personalities. Gwen Stefani ‘s experience is going beyond the web site. In New York, you can watch the Reuters sign in Times Square ands start interacting with it, using your mobile phone. You create your personalized doll, with 60 seconds to do it. Once done, a text message will lead you to the web site, from which you can print (once you get home) the paper doll you just designed. I saw people playing with this sign yesterday night. They seemed to have a great time, took pictures, it was very cool.

It’s also symbolic of a trend. I had written in a previous post on the increasing role of the mobile phone as our interface to digital content and print. At the time I wrote about a simple print service from the cloud. John Markoff wrote this NYT article on Cloudprint that you might enjoy. Melissa Perenson in her blog also gave her perspective on this experimental service.

In the conversation economy, print is increasingly “un-hooked”!

Riding a New Wave

warren.sander@hp.com — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 14:31:00 GMT

I am a technologist so I like to connect long term financial success with technology shifts. When I reflect on the success of the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) over the past 22 years, I can connect it to one major technology shift: the desktop PC. The inkjet and laserjet printers had a market because of the explosion of applications developed for the PC platform. It started with desktop publishing and spreadsheet, and then came digital photos and other graphic intensive applications. Content was being created on the PC, it needed a digital output. We provided low cost high quality color print with a steady improvement in quality and speed that matched the increasing complexity and quality of digital content. Like the PC, it was affordable and to date IPG has shipped more than 400 million printers across the world.

This is the wave we rode and it created an entire digital print industry.

Today 48% of printed content come from the Web. Content is created, stored and distributed on the Web. The new application platform is the Internet. This is the new wave we are riding. It is not “if” or “when”. It’s now and it’s happening fast!

What’s the meaning of print on the web?

Remarkably, the explosion of content on the web is in a large part due to you, me and the billion plus internet users. We are the content creators. Now that we have all this digital content, we not only like to look at it, read it, share it, but we increasingly like to make “things” out of it. We may want to convert the pile of photos from this vacation into a nicely bound book, or get a few unique T-shirts for this birthday party. Why shouldn’t the stamp on the letter have your picture? What about the cool buttons you could give. Could you put a unique skin on your car?

That is the way I see it: “print” on the web is about making products from digital content. Cool products. It is the connection between the virtual and the physical world. Digital production makes the ultimate long tail (our creation) practical and economical. The same digital infrastructure that allows Amazon to sell you a book can allow you to produce your own personal book too.

If you have never tried, have a look at the products that can be created on HP’s Snapfish photo service where 40 million users create products, on line, from simple prints to Shrek the Third themed products where user generated content is mixed with content from DreamWorks Animation. These products are manufactured by a network of print service providers and shipped to you, or you can pick them up at a retailer of choice.

You might also want to sell the content or products you create. Cafepress is a great example of a user driven trading community. This too is the meaning of print on the web..

The web coupled with digital production can also bring to Small Business design and marketing capabilities that were only accessible to large enterprises not long ago. Logoworks is HP’s service for small and medium business. It brings together business users and a network of professional designers to create the marketing identity of those businesses and the associated products, from brochures to web sites.

Content takes many forms, increasingly, its video. Earlier this year IPG launched a new video service with Wal-Mart that brings movies to consumers.

Early success with Snapfish, Logoworks, and Video Download services taught us that we can build compelling internet interfaces and we need to build more. But could we enable the larger web? How can we bring print and product creation to the 100 million web sites on the World Wide Web?

That’s a story for my next blog!

Welcome to my Print 2.0 blog !

warren.sander@hp.com — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 17:39:00 GMT

It’s an interesting name. Do I mean “2.0” like in… “Web 2.0”? But what does print have to do with the Web you might ask?

As the CTO of the Imaging & Printing Group of HP (IPG), I have had first hand experience with this question, both asking it and trying to answer it. We started this journey a couple years ago, experimented, invested, debated and here we are, furthering our “Print 2.0” vision in New York City on August 28.

The impact of the web on print media is clearly worth discussing. It’s an integral part of our lives, and it’s a very large industry (approximately 50 trillion “pages” are printed every year, worldwide and it continues to grow). It’s also one of the longest lasting technologies on earth (paper and print).

It’s not just about books and newspapers, it’s about my photos, the toy I offer to a child or the gift I bring to a friend. It’s also about the advertisement wrapping a bus, the new storefront of the nearby bakery, the mailing of the local real estate agent, the wristband a newborn receives at the hospital, the label on the box of medication, the contract you sign for a business transaction. The art you created and might want to share with the world. It’s also about the video you just created, the movie you just downloaded or the blog you just posted. Yes, digital content can take many forms.

In other words, it matters.

That’s why I am starting this blog. The future of content and print is a question for which we all have ideas and we need to build the future together. I hope we can share and build right here. Check out my vodcast where I talk about the launch of this blog.

We’ll talk about digital content, creation, sharing and distribution, the web as a platform, the social web, long tail, business models on the web, digital print, print services, technology, innovation and probably any random thought I or you feel should be shared.

Defining print 2.0 is certainly a challenge. The definition of web 2.0 is still being debated, let alone web 3.0. I would propose the way Eric Schmidt defines web 2.0. It’s pragmatic and resonates with me.

I hope to meet you on this blog and encourage you to comment and converse, dialog and discuss these exciting topics and times with me. We have a lot to talk about.