Steve Dotto here.
Thanks for joining me today.
An interesting topic today, Google Cloud Print.
I think that if we had seen this product ten years ago, it would have been revolutionary.
We would have just been jumping and screaming about how amazing it is because back then
the world was all about printing.
But printing has become less important.
Now we're moving more towards a paperless office but let's not fool ourselves.
We still often have to print documents and some of the same old issues apply.
In order for me if I'm visiting a friend and I want to print off a document on their printer,
I either have to email them the document or I have to install drivers for their printer.
Even in the wireless printing world, it can be bit of a pain in the tuckus to print on
a strange printer and even more important, if I'm in a coffee shop and I need to print
out some documents, it's impossible for me to or very difficult for me to set it up so
that I can print to my office printer or in my home printer wirelessly.
Google Cloud Print is a service that theoretically takes care of all of that for us.
They say it's pretty easy to use.
I think it's probably pretty easy to use.
Let's have a wee goo [phonetic 00:01:14] at it, shall we?
Now they've got a really nice little video here or a nice little demonstration screen
that talks about how it all works.
I think they've done a pretty good job walking us through it.
They've got a nice little video there with a red-shirted Google dude talking us through
it.
As I read through the different features, the one that really kind of jumped out at
me is this one here that says 詮or Friends Too' and it just mentions that ability of
being at a friend's house and being able to be given permission to be able to print on
their printers.
Here's what happens.
You printer has to be attached to your local network.
It has to be on a network that has internet access.
If it does that, chances are you can set it up to be a cloud printer.
Now they've also got documentation that talks about all of the different cloud-ready printers.
So Google will certify certain printers as being cloud-ready.
I don't know what that all entails.
It's probably something in how it communicates with its wireless network but even if you
don't have one of these printers, they also give you instructions on how to set up older
printers as well.
Fortunately, I've just upgraded my printer in my office to a laser printer and it's a
Brother.
It's this one right here so I've got a cloud-ready printer right out of the box.
Lucky me!
So let's set it up.
Let's take a look at what is involved in actually setting it up.
Let's go back to the Home page here.
All you do is you click 禅ry it out.'
That launches kind of a networking utility that looks at your network and finds your
printer.
Now we always have a software printer on our system which will allow us to print to PDF
documents.
That's what that is there, saving it actually to Google Drive.
But here is my hardware printer.
That's mine.
That's the printer that I have sitting right next to me.
There it is there and all I have to do is I can print straight to it right now if I
want to.
I can just choose Print and it's going to print this document.
So I've got it set up automatically right out of the gate.
Now if I want to manage the printer, it will allow me to do some things like share it.
This is where it gets really interesting.
Let's imagine that you're visiting me.
I can set it up for you to share.
I can set it up based on your email address and I can share the printer with you just
like I'm sharing a document, which I find very cool.
Now we're not just able to print from computers but we're also able to print from our mobile
devices.
That's the next thing that I wanted to kind of show you.
I wanted to show you what it might look like if we were to print from a smartphone.
So I've got to open my smartphone here and I'm going to share it with you so that you
can see it as well as me.
There we go.
We'll just mirror the iPhone.
There we go.
I've got an iPhone running here.
It's not even a Google phone.
I've got an iPhone running right there.
Let's have a quick look.
I'm going to go into my Gmail and show you how easy it is now to print.
So I'm loading my Gmail account.
And not all applications are supported.
A lot of applications are supported.
Certainly all Google applications are supported and there's an ad.
It might be a coupon or something.
Let's pretend it's a Groupon coupon, a Groupon coupon that I've purchased.
What I do is I click here into the Sharing menu and there I can click on 善rint.'
What the Print comes up with because I've been given permission or I actually because
I'm the owner it's looking at it as the owner of this, I have the ability to print directly
out of my smartphone wherever I happen to be.
Actually, that's a great example, the Groupon coupon.
That's a great way to use this.
There it is.
I've just printed.
I could be sitting in a Starbucks somewhere, having printed from my iPhone to my home or
my office printer using Google Cloud Print.
Overall, I think it looks to me like they've done a pretty darn good job on Google Cloud
Print.
It seems to do the job quite well and it was really, really easy to set up.
Actually, the most effort you're going to spend, I believe, is setting up that wireless
printer originally.
That probably took me a lot longer than it took me to set up and to figure out Google
Cloud Print.
It's a service that seems to be here.
It seems to be ready and increasingly we're going to find more and more supported apps.
If you're concerned that your app is supported or not, you could have a quick look through
and see exactly which apps are supported.
It's all listed out here on the Google site.
I hope you found this video today to be useful.
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I'm Steve Dotto.
Thanks for tuning in.