That's what I'm actually hoping will happen to services - that they will actually become function calls.

For instance, why can't I install a local print shop as a system printer? I do some graphics work, then I click File->Print..., pick the "Printing Company XYZ", alter preconfigured defaults if needed, OK, and the next day a courier brings me my print job, all payments and address information transfer being handled in the background.

Let me order pizza by RPC (we could streamline ordering in our local Hackerspace by voting on toppings on IRC and using a bot to make the order ;)). Let me do shopping by a POST request.

The end result would be that the use of aby service that doesn't require your physical presence could be streamlined, a lot of time wasted on boring paper/legwork could be optimized away, and the system would work smoothly in the background as long as you top up your credit card regularly.

> For instance, why can't I install a local print shop as a system printer?

I'm pretty sure that FedEx Office (formerly FedEx/Kinkos) has supported doing that for many years. I suspect they aren't alone.

dragonwriter, btgeekboy, mindcrime - thanks, I never heard of that (I live outside US).

A few minutes of Googling didn't turn out what I was looking for though. I can see an "upload and print" feature on FedEx website, I can see a dedicated mobile app that apparently can print files via FedEx...

... but what I was looking for is something that pretends to be a normal printer, so when i do File->Print in Word or Photoshop, I can choose it as a destination, much like we used to do with "PDF printers", which were programs that installed as printers but outputed PDF files, back in times when MS Office couldn't do PDF export.

So if I'm missing an obvious hyperlink to that, could you please help me out here and post it? ;).

In general, I don't want print shops to start making mobile apps or (even worse) desktop apps to "streamline the process" (i.e. scare the shit out of the living with crappy UI and "upselling opportunities"). My dream is for them to integrate into the system, like every self-respecting piece of consumer hardware does. In the end, I might even not care at all which print shop is doing the job (much like I don't care where I order Asian cousine - those restaurants are all commoditized - I only care about it to be hot, tasty and delivered on time). In a perfect world, I'd love to have it reduced to a single argument, a drop-down in printer settings dialog (but I'd happily accept a system printer per printing shop for now).

Thanks!

Cloud print from Google Chrome integrates with FedEx kinkos

Your print shop dream is basically a reality already - you can install the Fedex Office Printer, click print, and it prints out there. I believe if you get enough printed, they will deliver as well.

I'm pretty sure Fedex Office does pretty much that, and has for quite some time now.

The business model sounds a lot less 'new economy cloud magic' when you just call it what it is: Business to Business.

Right, but the "new economy" twist is that Amazon likely doesn't know most of these companies exist outside of them being in a database somewhere. It's providing services in a self-service, one-size-fits-all kind of way.

Yeah; the talk was to a technical crowd, so I think he was trying to make an analogy as to how a developer should think about them. But Amazon's culture very technical, so it wouldn't surprise me if this actually was the way they think about them.