The Grand Visions for 'Little Printer'

A web-connected compact printer for the home is soon to be launched by the London design consultancy Berg, which believes there's room in the market for products that extend the internet beyond screens.

Published

6 months ago

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Technology

Companies

Berg

Transcript

Just around the corner from the east London traffic junction known as Silicon Roundabout, the design consultancy Berg is about to launch its newest creation. Its name says it all: Little Printer. SOUNDBITE: Matt Webb, Berg Founder and CEO saying (English): "Little Printer is a web-connected printer for the home. It's not like a regular printer where you tell it what to print out. Instead what you do is you subscribe to different content, things which are handy, delightful." Matt Webb is the co-founder and CEO of Berg, which was named the 50 most innovative companies by Fast Company magazine. Its sees a big future in hardware devices that extend the connectedness of the internet beyond the world of screens. SOUNDBITE:Reuters Technology Correspondent Matt Cowan asking: "So take me through how this actually works." SOUNDBITE: Matt Webb, Berg Founder and CEO saying (English): "So I've taken Little Printer home. I've set it up and I've used this. This is Remote, the website I've used to configure Little Printer. On here I can see I've subscribed to different publications. Publications are a bit like our apps. Instead of installing them, you subscribe.And you can see I've asked to rece3ive Guardian News Headlines, Sunrise - that's my daily agenda taken from Google Calendar and a few more." SOUNDBITE: Matt Webb, Berg Founder and CEO saying (English): "At the appropriate time, Little Printer goes out and gathers all that infornation and delivers it to LIttle Printer itself. At which point the white light comes on. I can push the black button to print it out." Presto - a personal printout ready for the cork board. Webb says he uses Little Printer as a productivity tool, but some applications are a little more quirky, such as Pixel Presidents - short humourous blurbs about American leaders, or How Many People In Space Right Now, which only prints out when the number changes. SOUNDBITE: Matt Webb, Berg Founder and CEO saying (English): "You have tablets. You have phones. You have TVs. You have computers. I think Little Printer is part of that...for us, the future of technology is going to be devices like this in the home. For too long the internet has been trapped behind glass and this way we can put it back on paper, back in the physical world where it belongs." Little Printer - which costs 199 pounds in the UK and 259 dollars in the U.S. - begins shipping on Monday. The first foray in a grander mission to deliver a new vision of digital media.