Printing from your Android device (tablet or phone)

I know someone who recently purchased an Asus Transformer TF300T from MicroCenter in the store for a cool $350, which means that after tax it was still cheaper than it was selling for at Amazon ($384). Strangely, I can find no mention of the TF300T on MicroCenter's website (maybe local store was just clearing inventory and they don't plan on selling them in the long term?). Anyway, this is the first Android tablet this person has ever used, and they were interested in getting the ability to print from it to the printers in their home. Here's how I responded (text copied from an e-mail and then marked up a bit).

    Here are some tablet printing options that I've tried that appear to still be popular. I've put some footnotes at the bottom of this message that are tangential topics that may still be interesting to you. For example, the first footnote [*] is about a way to pick printers in the future that allow for cloud printing without the aid of a PC being on.

    The first two apps I currently have installed on my phone and am happy with. You would probably only need one of them. The third app is one I tried, but I gave up on because I thought the first two apps were just as good or better. I have not used the fourth app, but you should know it exists as it would be handy if on the go and you need a hard copy of something.

1. First, here's "Cloud Print," which is a free app with no limitations but will display ads unless you donate to it:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pauloslf.cloudprint
   
   To give it the ability to print, you have to also install Google Chrome (Google's web browser) on one or all of your machines. You can get Google Chrome web browser [**] from:
   
   https://www.google.com/chrome/
   
   After you install it, complete these steps to connect your PC's printers to the web where "Cloud Print" can access them:
   
   http://support.google.com/cloudprint/bin/answer.py?answer=1686197
   
   Note that if Chrome is already installed on another computer in the house, and if that person has shared her printers with you, you should already be able to print to printers connected to her computer even if your computer isn't on (but hers has to be on). Once printers are connected to your Google account's Cloud Print, then you can use the "Share" button (it looks a little like a tree with two branches, typically) from any app to export whatever you're looking at to the "Cloud Print" app. That document will then get printed to the Cloud Print printer you choose. Note that "Print to PDF" is always available (and it will store that PDF on your Google Drive, I think, which you can access using the "Google Drive" app I just e-mailed you about). There are competing Android apps to Cloud Print, like "Easy Print:"
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.flipdog.easyprint
   
   but I don't think they're as well developed as Cloud Print.
   
   
2. Next, there's "PrinterShare," which has limited printing for free, but unlimited printing if you're willing to buy their premium key for a pricey $12.95:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dynamixsoftware.printershare
   
   PrinterShare's features largely overlap with Cloud Print. That is, Cloud Print does a couple of things PrinterShare doesn't, and PrinterShare does a couple of things that Cloud Print doesn't. For example, you can use Google Cloud Print with PrinterShare, and so any printer that you can use with Cloud Print, you can also use with PrinterShare. One major difference is that PrinterShare also supports WiFi printing to network-enabled printers (e.g., the HP LaserJet 2055dn) and some print servers. Initially, the support was spotty. However, I'm noticing more and more printers start to pop up on my WiFi list when I check. It's a solid app, but it's a little annoying that if you switch printers frequently, it has to re-download print drivers nearly every time. Downloading print drivers is very fast, and it's not much of an annoyance, but it's a little confusing why it can't keep these installed. Otherwise, it's a solid application that's a tough competitor, which is why it maintains such a high price for it's premium key.
   
   
3. I have also used the "PrintBot" app, which allows for 3 printouts a month unless you pay $4.50 for the full version (which is unlimited). It supports printing directly to a print server (no Google Cloud Print required), but it is not as easy to setup as PrinterShare. So unless they've improved things a bit since I used it last, I don't recommend it. In theory, it may be the only tool that can print to the print server connected to the HP LaserJet 5 upstairs without using Google Cloud Print; however, PrinterShare may have improved to be able to do that natively anyway:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.jsecurity.printbot
   
   
4. Alternatively, HP and others(?) have apps like this one:
   
   https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.eprint.ppl.client
   
   that allow you to print to public printing locations, like FedEx Office stores, UPS Office stores, Walmart photo kiosks, hotels, and others. This is a neat idea if you're on the go and need a paper copy of something. The downside is that although the app is free, the place that prints your document may charge you per page.
   
   

    In summary, if you're OK with having a computer on and connecting your legacy printers to the Google "cloud print" service, then give the first free app ("Cloud Print") a shot. If you want the ability to print over WiFi directly without computers being on, then consider the second app ("PrinterShare", which is pretty expensive for an app if you want to print more than 3 things a month). Note that the WiFi option only works if you're on the same network as the printer. You cannot print from remote with PrinterShare unless you're using Google's cloud print service (and thus have a PC turned on).

    --Ted


Footnotes:

[*]: If you find yourself buying a new printer in the near future (not likely), you can choose a "Cloud Ready" printer:

http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/printers.html

These printers connect to servers at HP, Kodak, Epson, or Canon that allow access to them from remote provided the correct username and password. Google Cloud print can print directly to these without the aid of a computer being on.

In general, any network-enabled printer will probably have good Android support even if it's not "cloud ready." In fact, some vendors release their own apps to make it simpler to print to them from Android, like Lexmark (but I think generic network printer apps will connect to these too, in most cases):

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lexmark.print


[**]: If you like Google Chrome as a web browser, you can use it instead of Firefox. If you have Firefox bookmarks, Chrome will import them. Also (and this might be interesting to you), you can share your Chrome bookmarks and tabs to your tablet and so you can easily go from one to the other. If you don't like Chrome but like the idea of getting your same bookmarks and tabs on your tablet as is on your Desktop, that's possible with Firefox too. Either way, we should probably install the "Chrome to Phone" app

Duplex Printing from the Command Line to an HP LaserJet Printer

My department has several HP LaserJet printers available to access within the department via LPR and SMB. However, if you are working from a personal laptop connected to the university wireless, those servers will not be available to you. Instead, you must print by piping your documents through SSH to a department server that does have access.

Unfortunately, doing duplex printing (i.e., two-sided printing) to an HP LaserJet printer from the command line is not trivial. So, using the GSview documentation as a guide, I put together a small bash script (available for download as hplj_duplex_print) that does the trick.

#!/bin/bash

declare -a input_file
if test $# -eq 0; then
    input_file=("-")
else
    input_file=("$@")
fi

( echo -e "\e%-12345X@PJL JOB"
  echo "@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = POSTSCRIPT"
  echo "<< /Duplex true /Tumble false >> setpagedevice"
  gs -sDEVICE=psmono -sPAPERSIZE=letter -q -sOutputFile=- \
    -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH "${input_file[@]}"
  echo -e "\e%-12345X@PJL EOJ"
  echo -e "\e%12345X"
  ) | lp -d your_HP_printer_spool_name

You should replace the your_HP_printer_spool_name with your printer's spool name. You might want to tweak some of the options (details below), but the general structure will remain the same. The opening and closing escape sequences communicate to the HP LaserJet printer that a PostScript file is coming. Then the setpagedevice PostScript directive instructs the printer to use its duplex module.

Regarding tweaking:

• Again, make sure to change your_HP_printer_spool_name to your spool name. You may also want to change lp to lpr, but you will likely have to change -d to -P then.
• You may want to change the gs (GhostScript) options to suit your purposes. For example, you can change the psmono device to one of the other GhostScript devices like psgray or psrgb.
• The Tumble switch determines whether to do short-edge (true) or long-edge (false) duplex printing, and so this script defaults to the latter case. If you prefer vertical flipping, change the /Tumble false to /Tumble true. You might also make this a configurable command-line switch on the script.

Converting an EMF (MetaFile) on Linux using unoconv

When I needed to convert a graphic from an EMF (Windows Enhanced MetaFile) on my Linux machine today, all of my Google searchers were turning up with conversion utilities for Windows or wine at best.

Fortunately, it appears as though unoconv converts from EMF and is available in the standard Fedora repositories. I issued:

unoconv MYMETAFILE.emf

and it spit out a MYMETAFILE.pdf, and I was happy.

Google School: Synonyms and Info

From Google School:

Google School: Rank Wikipedia articles in your results

If you want to get general background on something with Google, append the word "info" or "information" to your search term.

If your words appear in the title of a Wikipedia page, Google will list that article at the top of your results, for a convenient way to search both Google and the Wikipedia at once. --Gina Trapani

Also, from Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day, by Gina Trapani:

Synonyms (Chapter 9, p. 223)

Search for synonyms using the tilde (~) next to keywords. This comes in handy when you are searching for a concept rather than for a specific word or sequence. For example:

• ~nutrition ~information muffins returns exact matches as well as matches on Muffins Food Facts and Muffins Vitamin Information.
• ~car turns up information on trucks and vehicles.
• A search for ~pen yields pencils, graphite, and sketch.

Desktop Manager for OS X

This is not anything new, but there is a very nice freeware (open source) Desktop Manager for OS X. That is, this implements virtual desktops (i.e., multiple desktops that you can switch between; this lets you spread your apps across different screens).

It has a lot of cool features.