A few years ago, HP had a great online service called "Instant
Delivery."  If you left your computer and printer on at night, it
would fetch an abbreviated, formatted-for-print copy of any of
hundreds of newspapers, daily tip sheets, etc.  They discontinued it a
while back -- see http://www.instant-delivery.com

I would like to find a free service that does the same thing today.  I
am NOT looking for a way to automatically print the front web page of
newspaper web sites -- I'm looking for a service which will
automatically fetch and print an abbreviated and print-formatted
version of a number of content sources.

For comparison, have a look at www.newsstand.com -- this is close, in
that it provides print-formatted content, but in this case, it's the
full newspaper (I only want abbreviated content), the printing is not
automatic, and it costs money.

Help!  :)

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Clarification of Question by jhabley-ga on 29 Dec 2002 16:19 PST

Here's a link to an archived example of the kind of content and
formatting I'm looking for:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011003194807/www.instant-delivery.com/featured/

I know this doesn't answer your question since you're probably using a
Windows Operating System, but if you had the linux/freebsd Operating
System, you could install KDE Mail, subscribe to a daily newspaper
digest through email, and set the KDE Mail filters to identify the
news summaries to print them on arrival.

If you knew a little scripting, you could avoid the KDE Mail graphical
interface altogether, and you could easily costumize your newspapers
summaries absolutely anyway you wanted.

Steph
PS: I am not a Linux fanatic. I don't think Linux is suited for all
applications, but I just think it might be worth a look if you don't
find anything else.

Instant Delivery was fairly singular even in its time, so finding an
exact match may be impossible. (It does appear that some individual
publications permit you to use it still, even if HP has discontinued
support. Their information, however, may be outdated.)

David Strom, a journalist who reviewed the product in 1999:
http://mappa.mundi.net/inform/archive/inform_0174.html
kept a page of push publishing technologies and services:
http://www.strom.com/places/t4a.html
It was last updated in 2000, though.

The closest thing to a viable business in this area seems to be web
clipping and media monitoring services:
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Corporate_Services/Public_Relations/Clipping_and_Monitoring_Services/
http://directory.google.com/Top/News/Services/Media_Monitoring/?tc=1
and there are some remnants of the push era:
http://directory.google.com/Top/News/Personalized_News/Desktop_Software/

Many publications, also -- such as the New York Times online -- will
deliver to you e-mail notification of stories matching particular
keywords or categories. This or a web clipping service may be your
best bet, combined with an e-mail filter or rule that sends mail from
a particular source to the printer immediately on receipt. Outlook can
do this with the Rule Wizard, for example.