Google have a patent called “Customization of Content and Advertisements in Publications” which if invoked, will see Google going into the Magazine business.
The patent paves the way for users to select which web based content they would like to subscribe to and then Google prints off the articles and posts the subscriptions as a magazine to your doorstep! The patent also mentions special ‘kiosks’ from which a user can print off their subscriptions if they stumble across one in a supermarket or wherever…
It seems a bit mad to me.
It’s a nice enough idea for those who don’t like reading a mass amount of text from a monitor but it isn’t exactly environmentally friendly to print out all this content. I’m sure most of us read blogs? What happens if you’re reading blog X and it links off to blog y, z and k in an article? Well TS because you can’t read them in print!
It’s a step backwards from this new digital media age as well. Google should be focusing on getting holographic anchorman to read us our RSS subscriptions instead of going back to the old school of bounded pages.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thank you for visiting! Cormac
3 responses so far ↓
1 Gamma Goblin // Nov 22, 2007 at 1:02 am
Isn’t this a bit too like the Aprils Fools “gmail hard-copy” joke Google went with recently?
2 Cormac Moylan // Nov 22, 2007 at 9:47 am
Yeah, it’s fairly similar alright. I wonder if there is an April Fools type thing in the Chinese calendar or something?
3 scoby // Nov 29, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Seems a bit wasteful to print and send stuff that’s already digital alright.
Surely amazon will be doing something similar with their ebook reader kindle?
They’ll have your amazon search history and your current reading preferences to base their ad suggestions on…
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