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You have arrived at the web home of Noah Brier. This is mostly an archive of over a decade of blogging and other writing. You can read more about me or get in touch. If you want more recent writing of mine, most of that is at my BrXnd marketing x AI newsletter and Why Is This Interesting?, a daily email for the intellectually omnivorous.

November, 2011

Little Printer

The announcement of Little Printer and the move of social media to the physical world.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about digital versus electronic and Monday's on Twine comes this announcement from BERG on a new product called Little Printer. As the announcement puts it, "Little Printer lives in your front room and scours the Web on your behalf, assembling the content you care about into designed deliveries a couple of times a day." What's more interesting, though, are some of the reasons they chose paper instead of a screen:
We love physical stuff. Connecting products to the Web lets them become smarter and friendlier – they can sit on a shelf and do a job well, for the whole family or office – without all the attendant complexities of computers, like updates or having to tell them what to do. Little Printer is more like a family member or a colleague than a tool. Plus paper is like a screen that never turns off. You can stick to the fridge or tuck it in your wallet. You can scribble on it or tear it and give it to a friend.
Now this is obviously not a new trend or anything, but what's neat to me is that it feels like social media is now moving to the physical world. I suspect over the next few years we'll see more and more devices that let us take the graphs we've built and interact with them in some physical way. In the meantime, I'm excited about getting my hands on a printer and while you can't buy one yet, I did sign up for the mailing list.
November 29, 2011
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Noah Brier | Thanks for reading. | Don't fake the funk on a nasty dunk.