A month ago I covered the launch of MagCloud, an HP Labs research project that is that is evaluating the use of a Web-enabled print production workflow to streamline the publishing of magazines so small independent magazine publishers and content owners can publish custom publications without all the print and distribution overhead associated with traditional magazine publishing.

Do you view MagCloud as a publisher, printer or distributor?

If I had to pick one of the three, MagCloud would have to be a distributor, because we partner with printers, and our goal is to enable our members to become publishers themselves. But, really, MagCloud is is a connector. We connect publishers to their audiences, printers with magazines, readers with magazines, etc. We see an enormous opportunity to breathe new life into the magazine biz, if only publishing was as easy and accessible as the web.

Will technology help print and add more printed products to the marketplace or technology will replace print?

I think that we’re still figuring out what kind of stuff belongs in print, and what doesn’t. Remember that, for years, if you wanted to find out what the weather was like in a certain place, you bought a book. A Farmer’s Almanac. Putting that kind of variable data on paper seems crazy now, because we have a better way to do it.

So, yes, technology will drive some print products to their grave. Personally, I would not want to be running a traditional news weekly right now.

But I we both know that print is not dead. There’s content that really belongs in print. Look at the success of Make Magazine, photography journals, recipe books. We just need to figure out how print and web can stop competing and start collaborating.

So is MagCould the future of magazine publishing? Maybe. I think its safe to say that may future print applications will be driven by Web-enabled Print Systems.

Last week I was invited to beta test MagCloud. I will report my impressions of the system soon.