ReadWriteWeb

Big computing company HP was promoting a strange concept at the Web 2.0 Summit in October: Print 2.0. At first I couldn't figure out what this meant. Web-based printers? Some new form of inkless paper? Curious to know more, while I was at the Summit I met up with HP's Antonio Rodriguez - formerly of startup Tabblo, now Director of Research and Development for HP’s embedded web-to-print group.

Some background: Tabblo is a custom printing site that HP acquired in March 2007. In our meeting, Antonio described Tabblo to me as "Flickr meets blogger on steroids". Using Tabblo, you can mashup photos and add text, to create a kind of collage - which you then have the option to print out as a poster, book, card, etc. The collage is also available online, where other Tabblo users can comment on it. There are a lot of other features too, such as advertising options and widget-like tools. At the heart of Tabblo is its template engine, which allows users to output their creative photo collages both online and as printed materials. Here's a good example of a Tabblo collage, from someone's birthday party. Here's another example, via Flickr: