Sticky note printer

Originally published at: Sticky note printer | Boing Boing

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At least it won’t ever need ink refills.

But it does require its own special paper. Also it’s only compatible with the latest Echo.

I think there’s room in the market for a good, cheap, sticker-printer. I recently bought a small Zebra one for our office, and I have Regrets: it’s insanely expensive (~$700) for what’s effectively a thermal printer (think fax machine) and doesn’t support PostScript (so only works with their drivers).

Small form-factor effectively requires thermal printing. You can’t fit a moving inkjet head or scanner+fuser for a toner printer in something so small.

This seemed pretty close, pity it’s Alexa-only.

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Previous BoingBoing discussions of the toxicity of thermal printer paper.

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I have spent quite a lot of time carefully pasting sticky noted onto printer paper so I could run them through my laser printer to make marketing stickies (BUY NOW!, etc.)

Being able to print them quickly would be nice.

But, I fear they won’t like a jpg squirted out of Photoshop, or a PSD direct printed.

And, the laser printer allows me to do colors!

I’ll probably stick a bunch more stickies on printer paper in my lifetime.

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It’s not clear to me that you need an echo, though. The “setup technology” box says “For setup, Smart Sticky Note Printer must be paired to, and within 30 feet of, a compatible Echo device (sold separately) or using the Alexa App”, which seems to imply you could use an echo or use the app on your phone. It’s too ambiguous for me to preorder, though.

I run an academic research lab, and we would use the shit out of this.

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Man, this would bring my sticky notes to the level of professionalism I expect to see in sticky note communication. In most cases, I really need a shot of confidence booster every time I set one of my handwritten of-how-cute sticky notes onto a set of contract documents.

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Might be hackable to be used normally?

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At least it won’t ever need ink refills.

And just $89.99 for a new roll of the thermal paper only we can supply!

Also, thermal printing doesn’t age well…

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tbf sticky notes are ephemeral. They’re not supposed to be archival quality

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It looks like it’s not so much a printer as it is an Alexa output device. It seems like you can only ask Alexa to print Amazon Alexa stuff on it, like shopping lists, not whatever you want to print from your computer or phone.

To me, that would be really annoying.

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Sounds like an easy way to spend lots of money on overpriced thermal paper stickers.

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“Alexa, print me a note to order thermal paper”

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If your notes are already in digital form why not put them on your phone?

I think going the other way, from sticky note to your computer, would be more widely appreciated.

For me the power of sticky notes is speed and ubiquity. I have them in a half dozen places including my wallet so they are always around when an idea strikes. Scribbling a few words is always going to be faster than robo-dictating, error correcting, printing, going to the printer, tearing.

I fail to see the utility of this at all.

If I want a sticky note, it’s faster to get a pen and put it on real sticky note to stick somewhere.

If I want a note in my phone or whatever, then take the note in my phone or whatever (Evernote, Google Keep, etc.)

It’s just thermal compatible printer paper and a small thermal printer.

It may be somewhat amusing to tell Alexa "Alexa, print me a sticky note that says “Call mom @ 10AM”

But it’s more novelty than actual use.

Gotta love the irony of a post there mentioning that the alternative was to use sticky notes.

Just in case you need one more point source in your house for Amazon to eavesdrop on every word you say or print, bundle up the info and sell it to the highest bidder.

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Here’s the thing… I have really shitty handwriting on stickies, they are too small and I end up writing a book that extends onto a second note, some word is too long, but I try to jam it in there anyway, or I add a P.S. etc, and they generally look sloppy as hell. It would be really nice to have a simple, non-Alexa OEM 3M standard size sticky note printer.

Why does it need to be thermal? Make it a pen on etch-a-sketch pulleys… It would add an inch to each side, maybe. You plop it down over a stack of stickies, and it writes it out for you. Doesn’t have to be instantaneous. Someone can do this, I know it.

So what you want is a PLOTTER, not a printer.

Okay, a very tiny sticky note plotter in the $40 range…

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