HP cosies up to web 2.0 firms

HP is using web 2.0 technologies developed by Tabblo to improve web printing

HP has cosied up to Disney.com, Windows Live Spaces, Facebook and Flickr at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week to make it easy for people to print relevant customised content.

The four sites enjoyed more than 267 million visits in September alone, each visit representing an opportunity to provide printing and to merchandise digital content, according to HP.

To exploit this, HP is using web 2.0 technologies such as those developed by Tabblo, which it acquired in March.

More than 7.75 million Facebook members are registered Graffiti users, and could print their masterpieces with HP's Tabblo technology.

Tabblo also powers a blog-printing feature in the latest release of Windows Live Spaces.

Meanwhile, HP is working with Disney to enable fans of Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus to create a personalised 'MyConcert Memory Book'.

Flickr members will be able to turn their photo collections into a variety of creative projects and to order photo-journals, mini-books, posters and postcards through Tabblo.

"People are frustrated with printing from the web," said Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president at HP's Imaging and Printing Group. "It is often wasteful and the pages rarely print with the information laid out in the way that users want."