[theoh]

Note that "their cloud" (what they called Berg Cloud) was actually primarily a local wireless access solution, not a cloud in the cloud computing sense. It was supposed to make configuration and connection of the Little Printer and other future Berg devices easier. As other commenters have pointed out, you can have an LP-type device that connects directly to a normal wifi network (e.g. Adafruit's) and the content doesn't in principle need to come from a remote web service either: it could be provided by a script running on a local machine.

The quality of presentation and the user experience provided by Berg (not just this product but other things the same guys have worked on) is great, but they show their roots in the design school. The products feel to me more like the product of brainstorming at an ad agency than a mature response to necessity. London's design scene is full of this kind of "creative" activity, and it's super enjoyable to watch but probably a form of decline or decadence in terms of real manufacturing and craft. The pace of change is so great now in tech that designers tend to get left behind or reinvent the wheel.

Imagine Twitter redesigned by someone both technically knowledgeable _and_ UX aware. (No race conditions, URL shortening, or crippled API functions.) the reason we don't have this is a cultural gap between the hip designers and the technically informed.

[jkestner]

Agreed - I think a lot of the activity there is a result of the RCA design program, and it's much needed to inject inspiration into the design-tech-culture space. But they're a distance from viable products, and (godblessem) more enamored with their own journey with craft than in getting costs down.

We just need some more intermingling and we'll get to where this is all pointing.

[deutronium]

Ah sorry I misunderstood then, what they meant by cloud.

[theoh]

No need to apologize... There is a remote element to the Little Printer service as I understand it, but they created their own concept when they invented to Berg Cloud.