futuramb's crumbs

A Newspaper For The Twitter Age: The Size of a Sales Receipt, And Edited By You

When Webb gave Co.Design an exclusive preview of Little Printer last week (“You’re, like, the thirteenth person on earth to see this,” he said in Skype conversation from London), he was visibly giddy. “We’re sick of not telling everyone about this, so we’ve just decided to tell everyone,” he explained, grinning. Little Printer is exactly that: a palm-sized, cube-shaped, cloud-powered thermal printer with an adorable pair of feet and a cute face. And what does it print? A personalized mini-newspaper — with content curated from partners like The Guardian, social media like Foursquare and Facebook, as well as stuff created by BERG itself—and output on a receipt-like paper strip no longer than ten inches. “Each information source we think of as a personalised ‘publication’ that you subscribe to from a kind of ‘app store for paper’, collated into a delivery that arrives at a chosen time,” Webb tells Co.Design. You “feed” Little Printer by selecting content via a remote-control-esque smartphone app, and then get your mini-newspaper delivered “once or twice a day.” Think of it like Flipboard, but without the screen.

» via Co. Design

Interesting idea! And it also starts another train of thought in my head: If we ignore the environmental issues for a second, I think printing personalized twitter style news on ordinary shopping receipts also have a market. Who really wants you to have more receipts? The tax authorities, of course! Receipts is not first and foremost a receipt for you as a customer, but a proof that a legal transaction have been taken place. And what would be better than to enforce that with positive feedback?

Source: fastcodesign.com