Perhaps you’ve heard that the magazine business is struggling? So amateur competition could not come at a better time, and it comes Wednesday in the form of a partnership between Wikia and Hewlett-Packard that will put a magazine printing press in the hands of anyone who wants to create a glossy book from the site’s user-generated content.
“We have no idea how popular this is going to be at first, but I see the potential for a huge future here,” says Wikia and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales on his blog — and then he gets personal.
[Snip]
HP itself says that the new technology could allow anyone “to publish a glossy, full-color magazine for friends, the coffee table or mass distribution” and asserts that there is a demand for “Wikia’s passionate communities of readers … to enjoy information on their favorite bands, hobbies, comic books and more in a tangible print format that is both cost-effective and environmentally friendly.”
Source: Wired
The Sacramento Business Journal Has More.
H-P (NYSE: HPQ) is working with Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, who started Wikipedia, on Mag Cloud, a service that lets people pay about 20 cents a page to create and print magazines from Wales’ for-profit San Francisco-based Wikia Inc. business. Someone can put together content from various Wikia pages and print them out as a magazine.
People can print books if the copyright has expired using another H-P service called BookPrep. To print a 250-page book will cost about $15, for example.
The FreePint Family is a family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success.
'FreePint... provides most of my professional development because it won't come through work and [other resources] just don't cut it.'
FUMSI Forum: Do you have a research question? Post it to the FUMSI Forum, where professionals share Q&A and useful tips on how to Find, Use, Manage and Share Information. It's free.