TechPulse 360

HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web: an all-in-one printer glued to an iPod touch, with a capacitive touchscreen and an App Store!

It’s been a very very long time since I was exciting about using a printer. A bit like using an uninterruptible power supply or a backup system!

But with it’s latest all-in one printer/scanner/fax, H-P makes printing cool again.

The Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web (with the money H-P spends in marketing, it could have easily found a more shorter and sexier name!) uses the same printing engine than the currently shipping Photosmart Premium C8180 – a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth multi-function printer which it will be replacing – but with an iPod touch-like capacitive touchscreen instead of the current smaller screen and series of buttons, and combined with H-P’s Apps Studio; yet another applications store.

H-P takes a page from the iPhone playbook and starts an Apps Store for printers

And just as with the iPhone, Palm Pre, etc., it will soon be possible to download apps for your printer!

At the launch event earlier today hosted at Al Gore’s Current TV studios in San Francisco, H-P showed apps from USA Today, Google, Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku, Weathernews as well as the company’s online site Snapfish.

With these apps, you’ll be able to customize, choose, print… daily news, maps, coupons, coloring pages, movie tickets, recipes, personal calendars and more – all at the touch of a finger.

Under the hood, the Web printer is running Linux with Nokia’s Qt application and graphical-user interface framework.

The Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web will be available in the U.S. in September for $399 (the current Photosmart Premium, model C8180, is being discounted at less than $250 on Amazon.com) and next year for the rest of the world.

Here’s an excerpt of our exclusive interview with product marketing manager Ravikiran Adusumilli, going into more details on the printer capabilities (Wi-Fi setup, touchscreen, micro-transactions, auto-duplex printing…) that took 1.5 years to get to market:

Here are more details about the printer from H-P’s fact sheet

Current partners include:

1. Google Maps for printing maps
2. Fandango for movie tickets
3. Snapfish for accessing and printing photo albums
4. Google Calendar for viewing and printing personal calendars
5. USA TODAY for the latest news
6. DreamWorks Animation for movie trailers and family printables such as
7. coloring pages
8. Coupons.com for printing coupons and recipes
9. Nickelodeon for activities kids can enjoy based on the network’s
10. characters
11. Weathernews Inc. for up-to-date weather information
12. Web Sudoku for printing puzzles

And a few more interesting caracteristics:

1. Download new apps as they become available on the HP Apps Studio, to suit a variety of interests and needs.
2. Create and share apps to customize the printing experience starting in late 2009.
3. Quickly print fun and useful templates such as fax cover sheets, calendars, notebook paper and games such as Sudoku, with the convenient Quick Forms button.
4. Use the HP TouchSmart Web control panel to edit and print photos, send faxes, scan documents and make copies, in addition to printing from the Web.
5. Easily drag and drop photos to a desktop icon from virtually anywhere – folders, applications, e-mail and websites – for printing with the HP Photo Print Gadget.
6. Simply touch one button for wireless set-up—making adding the printer to a home network easier than ever.
7. Directly print from a PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) – capture and print screens to show off as proof of achievements.
8. Easily print web pages with HP Smart Web Printing and save both ink and paper by combining multiple web pages onto one printed page.
9. Replace each cartridge separately when it’s needed with individual inks.