The untethered society is becoming more of a reality each and every day, with the latest development being ubiquitous cloud printing from Google.
Google Cloud Print allows those of you on iOS devices to print directly from Google Docs Mobile or Mobile Gmail, over the air to any printer configured to use the service.
Details on how to set it up inside…
While today’s announcement from Google about the rollout is an exciting one, Mac users en-masse will have to wait. That’s because to connect your local printer with Google Cloud Print you will need a Windows machine running Google Chrome.
The good news is that if you are running Windows on a Mac via a virtual machine solution such as Parallels, the cloud printing solution will work if you follow the setup instructions listed here as if you were on a Windows machine.
I was able to connect my Mobile Gmail account using Google Cloud Print with no problem. Just a point of note, after setting it up on my desktop, I did have to log out and log in to the Mobile Gmail account for the ‘Print’ option to show up.
Afterwards I was able to print with no problems, from anywhere to my home printer, even over 3G. Pretty awesome stuff!
The main problem with using this method on a Mac is that Parallels or whatever virtual machine software you use, has to stay running. Not a big deal when you have 16 GB of RAM, but a point of note nonetheless.
Hopefully AirPrint will evolve to the point where we can print anything, from anywhere over Wifi or 3G. That option is more desirable, because it’s baked into iOS. In the meantime, both AirPrint and Google Cloud Print combined is a good start.
Have you tried it out?