HP has just announced that it has teamed up with Wikia on an on-demand printing service for Wikia online contents. The new service will be made available HP’s cloud service MagCloud. This puts Wikia’s high-quality content and images created by its more than 50,000 communites available for anyone to print in glossy magazine format. According to the official PR, this service will enable users to enjoy any Wikia content in a cost-effective, environmentally friendly format? Really? Since when did anything printed become environment-friendly?
It is also said that the new on-demand publishing service would eliminate the carrying costs, waste and inventory issues associated with magazine publishing. But that is true only for soon-to-be-published magazines which have never been printed either on paper or digitally.
But to print an already available digital content negates everything that is said about how the new service is environment-friendly. Why should anybody print an online digital content in the first place? If we really want to be environment-friendly, maybe it’s time to stop the habit of printing digital information and content. Digital content should be consumed digitally and not on paper.
Anyway, if you want to know more about this on-demand Wikia printing service, go check out the official site.