Cloudprint likely to enhance HP's footprint

"Cloudprint" was developed at the famous HP Labs and is a remarkable innovation in that it makes it possible to share, store and print documents by means of a mobile phone.

It seems Cloudprint came about as the result of a geeky chat about how HP might be able to capitalise on and benefit from the introduction of the Apple iPhone. Patrick Scaglia, HP's director for the Internet and computing platforms says the idea was to take the selected documents on a users computer, load them up securely onto a mesh of HP servers around the world that are connected to the Internet and then make them available for print-out anywhere else and at any via a mobile phone and a local printer of any sort.

Mr. Scaglia says, “The world is going to flip. We want to ride the wave of the Web.”

The system works like this. Users first “print” their documents up to an Internet-connected HP server. Those 'documents' then get a secure code number and this is sent to a mobile handset. The user, wherever he or she may be, then uses that mobile phone to retrieve print the documents from any location.

The system relies on SMS to recall the documents by entering the user’s phone number and a document code on the Cloudprint Web site. The documents can then be retrieved as a PDF.