A Blog About Making Culture
Six Apart buys a fax machine
February 16, 2003
It seems like the next big piece of weblog news is going to be about Six Apart buying a fax machine. Though I guess they're to be commended for their brave step into legacy technology integration, I'm fairly sure that this isn't a very important development for the weblog realm. The big news is where it might lead.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in the future. Aggregating posts from all the disparate Movable Type installs and distributing them via fax, outputting individual posts to paper, TrackBack via Caller ID, the possibilities are endless.
Our household recently acquired a similar output technology, the HP PSC 750. Though it's impossible to anticipate where this technology is going to evolve to, it seems like there is a great potential if individual authors are treated as "editors" It might be possible to integrate this print technology in a way that aggregates the most important stories, as chosen by editors, into a news-paper comprised of individual stories that are collated and output into one print edition, perhaps created daily.
The eventual direction that this print-to-weblog integration could reach, if one considers the direction that tools like Tablet PCs and increasingly ubiquitous PDAs are leading us, is a simple system that uses handwriting input for daily entries that are entered on, and stored in, paper-based weblogs. These "diaries" could take the weblog to its next natural progression, a secure, individualized personal record of events and ideas, controlled with an intuitive, organic input system that's as unique as your own handwriting.
The natural medium for such a diary would be a pocket-sized or portable form factor tablet of writing paper, perhaps bound in a durable cover. Storage for such a portable record could be accomplished by throwing the diary into a desk drawer or simply tucking it under a mattress. Being disconnected from even wireless networks provides a level of physical security that could perhaps only be improved by fastening the written journal with a small padlock.
Congratulations to Six Apart for leading the way to "hand-written diaries" as the future of weblogs. Though the fax machine might seem to be the hapless victim in this acquisition, it's my hope that the long-term benefits of this deal far outweigh any initial misgivings.
Previously: google's first mistake
Next: daily links stats
JayAllen - The Daily Journey
Everyone's acquiring these days: Google acquires Blogger. Six Apart acquires a fax machine Anil and his visitors acquire my vote for best post of read more »woolgathering...
from the archives: Legacy technology integration has been much on our minds recently, now that Mena and Ben have shown us the way. read more »jayblog
Wow, PAPER Blogs!!: What a concept this is!... read more »woolgathering...
from the archives: Legacy technology integration has been much on our minds recently, now that Mena and Ben have shown us the way. Somehow I foresaw this excitement and got on the bandwagon twenty years ago. A piece first typed on my KayPro... read more »david
I don’t really know anything, but my guess is that HP got a bargain. How much cash are Mena & Ben sitting on?
Six Apart can write it off as an R&D purchase. They can use their 100% (I’m assuming) access to incoming faxes and back-end to beta test news, micropublishing, and comment highlighting/editing. (No comment from sharpie/3M … yet). When these tools are mature, they can roll them out publicly.
If nothing else, Faxing is the last frontier for blogging. We do it on the phone, via email, in our browsers, etc, but no one’s ever blogged me via fax. I am sad, though, about this comment on the amazon page linked to from sixapart.com:
When printing from the internet, the printer will jam. Also the printer will restart the computer on it’s own. The fax and copy parts work great. I am using windows XP.
Does this mean only Windows users will be able to fax the moveable type office? Will the lack of ability to print from the ability delay the ultime blogdiaryfax convergence?
Steve
While this seems like a good move for those using faxes for moblogging — or, as I like to refer to it, “Xerographicoteleblogging” — doesn’t a significant portion of the Xerographicoteleblogger community use tools like slow-scan TV or telex?
Anil
Good point, Steve. That naturally leads to the big question mark: Wither TTD-to-metaweblogAPI posting? Kind of the inverseof audblogging.
Su
David, I vote someone ping Lazyweb requesting a program that will receive a fax at your desktop PC, OCR the thing, and then automatically post the information to your MT blog via XML-RPC.
Dave S.
I don’t buy it. Moving from an on-screen system to the portability of paper will lead readers to believe they can take their weblogs with them, ‘to go’ as it were. Clearly any system designed to sever ties from the desk & swivel chair paradigm is doomed from the start.
Ian
I’m interested in doing something similar - moving towards a non-silicon based communication medium. I am a little confused by some of the technology though. I tried ‘faxing’ this morning, but no matter how many times I tried feeding my words into the machine, the sheet of paper just kept on coming back out the other side. I must be doing something wrong.
marrije
I know for a fact that André Torrez is sitting on a stack of those fancy Moleskine notebooks, still trying to find a good project for them. Perhaps you two could get together and work out the business side of this groundbreaking plan?
Craniac
If you wrote in your paper blog with one of them new Logitech pens, you could actually email each entry to your bloggity blog.
roe
So…like…I can fax my blog entry to my Palm? Right?
Um…right?
Like? Um?
Um?!
Post a comment