It’s not pareidolia. You’re actually looking at the face of the Little Printer, a tiny output device coming in 2012 that curates your online subscriptions and spits them out as a snackable newspaper.
The Little Printer occupies as much room on your shelf as an alarm clock, but the wireless server inside the molded plastic and brushed steel faceplate connects to an accompanying smartphone app with which you choose the services you want in your morning or evening report; multiple feeds are available, including your daily agenda, news headlines, personal messages, games and puzzles, and birthday reminders extracted from Facebook.
The guts of the Little Printer are simple; a roll of paper sits on a spool and a thermal printer heats up chemicals that change color when exposed to heat (the same inkless printing technology is used on sales receipts, giving you an idea of the output quality limitations)–maybe that’s why every message starts and ends with a happy face.
Judging from the marketing video, the purpose of the Little Printer is to frame the Internet in its simplest form for folks who miss the tactility of paper-based information consumption. The Little Printer is the result of a partnership between London-based design team Berg and names like Foursquare, The Guardian, Nike, Arup, and Google, but it’s really a cute packaging tool for kicking off Berg’s nervous system for controlling physical objects with your phone: It’s called the Berg Cloud, and we’re told other home electronics will soon join the ecosystem.
It probably won’t save the print industry, nor will it replace your favorite newsreader app, but it’s a cute proof of concept and we’re anxious to see how much it will cost when it hits the line next year.
More pictures of the Little Printer after the jump.
