You just bought a plane ticket sitting in Mumbai online using your iPad so that your mother can join you from Calcutta. Sending the ticket by courier would take too long. Your mom is old, and she cannot operate a computer. She just knows the two switches that turn on your computer and printer. Only if you could print the ticket…

Or imagine this scenario. You are at your Calcutta home and you need to urgently send a seven-page document to your son at his office in London. The files are too large to be emailed. There are several ways you can send him the files, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could just print them to his office laser printer.

Guess what? You actually can print remotely so that your mother receives the air ticket and your son the important documents in no time at all.

All this seemed impossible even a year ago, but thanks to cloud computing even the impossible has become so easy.

You do not have to buy any costly Apps from Apple’s iTunes Store or the Android market to achieve this printing feat. It is free, made possible by Google Cloud Print. Although it is still in its beta stage and cannot print each and every file format, it gets the work done.

I tried out printing to a printer in London sitting at my home in Calcutta and even to my friend’s office networked printer (which he had shared with me) from my iPhone. It worked seamlessly.

Let me share the trick with you. I will give you a step-by-step process so that if you follow it properly you will have no problem at all.

If you have a cloud-ready printer you will face no problem because it connects directly to the web and doesn’t require a personal computer to set up. You can connect one to your Google Cloud Print account in seconds, and immediately start printing to it.

In case you have a classic or old printer, you will need Google Chrome to be installed on the computer your printers are connected to. If you are using Windows XP, make sure you also have the Microsoft XML paper specification pack installed. Get it from www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8dcffdd-e3a5-44cc-8021-7649fd37ffee&displaylang=en. Then restart your computer.

Once Google Chrome is installed, follow the steps below to enable the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome. You must have a Gmail account or a Google account. Everybody has Gmail; so I am assuming you, too, have one.

Open Google Chrome and go to www.google. com/ig and log in. Click the wrench icon on the browser’s toolbar. Select “options” (or “preferences” on a Mac). Click the “Under the Hood” tab on the left pane. Scroll down to the “Google Cloud Print” section. If you have already signed in earlier, click on “Enable Google Cloud Print”. If you have not signed in, click “Sign in to Google Cloud Print”. In the window that appears, sign in with your Google account to enable the Google Cloud Print connector.

A printer confirmation message appears. Click to “finish” registration of the printer. You will see a confirmation that Google Cloud Print has been enabled. Click Manage your printers. Select your printer and share it with whomever you want to. Just type in their Gmail address. Your friends can then print to your shared printer directly.

The printer is now associated with your Google account and connected to Google Cloud Print. You can print to this printer whenever you are signed in with your Google account on any device. It could be your Android phone or tablet or iPad’s or iPhone’s Gmail or Google Mobile Apps. Make sure you use the apps print command instead of the device’s print option. You could be sitting far away working on your laptop, but as long as your computer on which you enabled Google Cloud Print is turned on, you can print to the printers connected to it.

I have tried several cloud printing apps, but I found this to be the best method of printing remotely. It works best with Google Mobile Apps installed on your iPad or iPhone for free.

If you want more versatility, for Android mobile devices there are several apps such as Cloud Print Beta, PrinterShare Mobile Print, which can print pictures, web pages, calendar events, contacts, text messages, emails, Google Docs, and other files.

For iOS devices, I would suggest PrintCentral Pro, which prints almost everything, but costs around $9.

App Corner: You will find exciting freaky games’ apps at www.telegraphindia.com/know how/ bitsnbytes/appcorner.

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