Marriage of Internet and Print

An interesting article at Tenebris about patent suits over print on demand (POD) technology got me thinking about the Internet Bookmobile. The concept of the Internet Book mobile is very cool. The bookmobile will download a public domain book from the Internet, print it and bind it and give it free to people in poor and inner city areas. It costs the bookmobile only about US$1.00 to do this, while the cost to most libraries just to loan a single book is $2.00. While this will never replace a library it is profoundly important to give a child a book that they can own.

The effects are even greater in the Third World which are also launching their own Internet Bookmobiles.