I spend a lot of time thinking about new ways to print as the Mimeo Connect Cloud Print API Evangelist. During this time I see a common pattern; that print can create more meaningful, physical aspects of our online lives.
We create volumes of data through our social streams, online files, emails and other forms data in our daily online lives. Often times the photos and discussions become less valuable because they are so easy to create, so we lose interest in creating organizing photos, emails or other files.
kinlane-productions2
This is where I see print being able to be reborn in creating physical, tangible, and more valuable snapshots of our online lives.
I talked about
fotobooks which allows you to
print out photo books created from your Facebook profile. I came across another tool that allows you to print a book from your Facebook profile.
Ninuku Archivist is a Facebook application that automatically downloads stuff from your wall on a monthly basis, then saves it into a PDF doc. It will pull your profile, streams, and photos from your Facebook profile and create a stored version of these.
This social PDF book could easily be send to the Mimeo REST Cloud Print API and arrive on your doorstep as a printed book the next day. This would be a way to take our online lives and create a physical archive that we can put on the bookshelf for the future.
Ninuku Archivist is a little buggy, and the UI difficult to use. I never quite got my book created. I see potential though. With an optimized user interface, and opening up with an API there would be huge potential to create different types of social books and create more meaningful, physical versions of your Facebook life.
