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Is printing documents from your mobile device somewhat of an adventure? You have to get to a meeting and your doc is sitting on your handheld. The copies weren't printed and sent over by your Secretary - What do you do? There are plenty of work-a-rounds and hacks but nothing definitive to allow you Mr. Mobile to print directly from your mobile device to ANY printer ANYWHERE. Well I guess not any printer... OH and I guess its not Anywhere either.

Hmm so what is so revolutionary about it? It seems HP hosts your documents and will send you a SMS code that allows them to be printed to "Local Printers"? Does that seem strange? Will that be Kinkos and Staples or Misses Johnson down the hall with the neat-o color printer? HP is claiming Web 2.0 but this seems like an idea that would have wowed them 5 years ago.

We have a bluetooth printer in the car and wait here is a shocker - My windows Mobile device has BLUETOOTH also! And whats that... The sound of a document printing from my phone to the printer without the intervention of a outside source to touch my vital confidential documents (porn) and secret confidential financials (porn)... So why is the industry eating it up? See the following from a few tech sources...

CNet News:

Hoping to alleviate a frustration of mobile computing, Hewlett-Packard has quietly introduced a free service designed to make it possible to print documents on any printer almost anywhere in the world.

Via Tech.co.uk

Hewlett-Packard (HP) says the "world is going to flip" over the company's latest invention - a service that enables you to print documents anywhere in the world using your mobile phone.
The service, named Cloudprint, works very simply. All you have to do is save a PDF of your document on to HP's servers to retrieve a unique code that is sent by text message to your mobile phone.

You can then retrieve the PDF by accessing the message code, then print the document off at a locally-available printer - a Google Maps directory of which is included in the Cloudprint service.
Cloudprint was inspired by Apple's iPhone, says Patrick Scaglia, HP's director for internet and computer platform technologies at HP Labs. Scaglia says he wanted to see how the launch of the iPhone could benefit HP, according to the New York Times. The idea is to unhook printing from the computer and make it accessible anywhere.

Cloudprint is free and is currently available for all Microsoft Windows users. A Mac-friendly version of the service will launch later this year.

And from directly from The New York Times:

The strategy is an extension of a broader, and all-important, HP strategy of indirectly creating a business that will foster the sale of Hewlett-Packard ink and supplies. The strategy has been working well. On Thursday, the company said operating profits from its printing division, most of it from ink and supplies, rose 11 percent in its third quarter from a year earlier.

The service is the first of a series of initiatives the company will take in the coming months to increasingly unhook printing from desktop computers, Scaglia said. Later this month HP plans to announce a partnership with a major retailer that will offer a variety of Internet-connected printing services at hundreds of locations around the country.