:: Mobile Printing ::
Whilst writing my new book on next-generation mobile services I was going over ways of looking for value in a plain old wireless email service. Well, I say plain old, as there aren't that many old wireless email services around, but certainly plenty of plain ones.
The problem is that ordinary desktop applications are plonked into the mobile world without an iota of thought about the mobile context and its unique challenges. For example, in my recent trial run with O2's xmail, it is not possible to filter the view of the inbox just to list important people, such as clients. This would come under the "Me" attribute in Ahonen's 5 M's of finding value in mobile services, a pattern I find useful and hence I refer to it often in my book.
Under the 5-M attribute of Money, I was wondering how a wireless email service might require micropayment for value added services. Then I recalled an old idea we had in Magic E back when we had launched a product to interface with Exchange using 2-way text-messaging (pre-WAP era). One of the features was the ability to remotely forward files stored in a public folder. Using a fax server, the remote forwarding could be to a fax machine, thus offering a basic remote printing service for crucial documents. Perhaps caught out in a crucial sales meeting, one text message later and a key sales document could be arriving at the nearby fax machine in the hotel office-services bureau.
In my book, I have updated this example to include all manner of variants, one being the ability to find a locally networked printer on a WiFi hotspot. It’s a simple matter to upload a document, or email forward it, to a printer with a server to carry out the print job by proxy.
Upon enquiring from a friend in the US who is very much involved in the hotspot business, he pointed out to me a service that turns out to look quite interesting. It’s called PrintMe (from EFI). It enables any wireless device to print documents to a local printer. All that is required is an account with PrintMe and the ability to forward the attachment, or upload it. Collection of the document is protected by a unique document receipt ID that the sender has to key in to the PrintMe station. The even better news is that if there is no PrintMe station nearby, then – yes, you’ve probably guessed it – you can forward to a fax.
The service is subscription based, but I confess to not checking the details. The real future for stuff like this is micropayment so that users can benefit from the service without having to sign up. In fact, not having to sign-up for things is, in my opinion, one of the key design requirements for next-generation services, but I’ll save that point for a future observation on my blog.
1:17:32 AM 
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