HP’s New Web-Connected Printer & FeedJournal

How can you use HP’s new computer-less printer to get your FeedJournal newspaper?

That was the first question I asked myself when I read the press release for HP’s innovative new web-enabled printer, with the outlandish name “HP Photosmart Premium with TouchSmart Web”. I still don’t have a definite answer to the question, but I am eager to make it as easy as possible for FeedJournal users to get the latest version of their personalized newspaper.

HP’s strategy of launching Tabbloid suddenly becomes a little bit more clear, even though they have a long way to go until they will have something similar to FeedJournal’s offering.

HP says in their press release that developers can distribute applications for the printer using HP Apps Studio, but it will not be available until the end of 2009. Attempts to contact HP have been fruitless so far. Hopefully they will offer an early access or beta program soon.

Too bad for HP, since it will give the competing printer companies a chance to catch up with their own web printers and newspaper generating software.

Site Update: Member Services (2009-06-13)

We have rolled out an update to FeedJournal Publisher, adding two new settings in the Member Services configuration interface for Gold members (Thanks, Matthew!):

• Option to hide feed source name in article header
• Option to hide submission date in article header

The Real Estate Market

When real-estate agent Ryan Shaughnessy posted an article about FeedJournal on The Lafayette Report I was very pleased. But I didn’t expect a torrent of 80(!) comments on that blog post from other real- estate agents who were enthusiastic about how FeedJournal could help them.

The article is Customers with No Internet Access? Convert Blog Content to Printed Newspaper with FeedJournal. It gives a great overview of the FeedJournal service from the perspective of the real-estate professional.

Now, the question is: How can I cater for this looming market apparently full of opportunities? I will put on my thinking-hat and see what I come up with. If you have any suggestions, please share them!

In the meantime I have rolled out some small bug fixes for FeedJournal. The most important one is a bug fix for the image caching algorithm, which caused some images to not appear, if they were too small for another user’s paper format.

FeedJournal API Enters Private Beta

A FeedJournal API is now available for private early beta testing. With the API, it will be possible to quickly build a white-label web site using the FeedJournal engine to generate newspaper PDF files from any RSS feeds. The API also gives you access to an engine and database for user management.

The beta release of the API is available from today to a limited number of strategic partners. If you would be interested in using or reselling such a solution, you are welcome to contact me.

E-Book Reader Optimized Newspapers

One of many interesting user comments and feature requests accumulating at FeedJournal’s UserVoice page is to better cater for e-book readers, such as the Amazon Kindle, iRex iLiad and Sony Reader Digital Book devices. With today’s update to FeedJournal Reader it is even easier.

Those among us who read our FeedJournal newspaper on an e-book reader are prime examples that FeedJournal does not have to be consumed as a “dead-tree” newspaper.

Today’s update provides optimized page sizes for the most popular devices. Just log in to the Reader service (or create a free account if you are not yet registered) and set the newspaper page size to be optimized for your e-reader model in the Edit Profile page.

I plan to soon roll out many more features targeting e-book readers, so make sure you vote for the features that are most important to you!

If your device of choice is not listed, please let me know and I will add it ASAP.

For your reference, I am including a table of the optimal full-screen reading pixel resolutions for the most popular e-book reader devices. I never managed to dig up a similar table myself in my research, so I hope it will be of use to someone.

Gadget	Optimal Width (pixel)	Optimal Height (pixel)
Amazon Kindle	525	640
iRex iLiad	768	940
Sony Reader	584	754

Site Update: Basic Publisher (2009-02-08)

I have rolled out a new update for FeedJournal Publisher, fixing a bug in the free basic level service:

• Relaxed the URL validation, where feed addresses with non-standard characters produced errors (Thanks, Nico!)

Site Update (2009-02-06)

I have rolled out a new update for FeedJournal Reader, improving the GUI and layout. These are the major changes:

• Improved parsing of non-standard feed URLs (Thanks, Robert!)
• Added web and feed URL to the web interface (Thanks, Tony!)
• Repositioned the delete button so that new users won’t have to hunt it down.

In addition, I also updated the blog post links on the feedjournal.com to post to this blog.