Most people are annoyed by the header and footer information most browsers include on the paper when a page is printed. That information normally includes the page, title and the date printed.

It’s not often necessary to keep that info on the page — the source can almost always be more easily found by using a search engine than typing out the entire URL.

Here’s how you can turn off those headers and footers, as explained by Lifehacker:

• In Firefox: Go to File -> Page Setup, then click the Margins & Header/Footer tab. Set every header and footer to –blank– and click OK.
• In Internet Explorer: Go to File -> Page Setup, then set every drop-down in the Headers and Footers section to -Empty-. Click OK.
• In Opera: Go to Menu -> Print -> Print Options and untick the Print headers and footers checkbox.

However, the solution isn’t exactly ideal:

Montreal-based Domtar, one of the world’s largest paper sellers, is beginning a new campaign called Put It On Paper to tell people it’s OK to print.

One of the main goals of the push is to counter the prevalence of e-mail tags that urge people to “think responsibly” before printing the message.

“We have to do some work to have them believe and feel that printing isn’t a sort of environmental negative,” Domtar CEO John Williams was quoted as saying in the Montreal Gazette. “We really believe quite strongly that with FSC certification — getting our lumber from forests that are well managed and carefully managed — that people don’t have to feel guilty about using paper to print.”

The campaign is aimed particularly at young people, who likely have little use for printing pages. Domtar’s focusing on Facebook and YouTube to reach that audience.

But something tells us that no matter how hard Domtar tries, printing reams of paper isn’t going to become a hot new trend among young folks.

Hewlett-Packard is stepping into that gap with a new cloud-based software/service called ePrint. It works like this: A user of a mobile device can search to find the closest public ePrint-enabled printer, send the job, enter a security code and pick up the job. The notion is that someone (including FedEx Office) will make such printers easily available in places like hotel lobbies, airports, conference centers, and other locations where travelers can be found.

Another version of the program is for use within the enterprise. It is a way for road warriors to print at any corporate HP printer on the network.

The concept was demonstrated recently, with HP working with FedEx Office, Hilton Worldwide and RIM (the BlackBerry maker).

Eventually HP plans to have the driver on every smart mobile device, and it plans to have the printers generally available worldwide. Where it would have immediate use would be in allowing travelers to print out airline boarding passes, itineraries, maps with directions, email and lists of all kinds. The app allows you print a wide variety of formats: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDFs, image files and more.

The big catches? You have to print to specially connected HP printers. You will be charged per page printed. For now, at least, there are few locations and you can only use BlackBerrys. (No word yet from Apple, which competes with HP, soon in the tablet category.)

Nevertheless, this does sound like an interesting possibility and meets a real need. For more info, and a demo download, look here.

PCMag.com recently reviewed printing apps developed for iPad so far. The conclusion: Some work, but none are perfect.

Here’s what the site has to say about some of the apps out there:

1. Canon’s Easy-PhotoPrint for iPhone — An iPhone app re-purposed for the iPad that prints (image files only) to WiFi-enabled printers.
2. Air Sharing HD — Searches your WiFi network for Macs with shared printers. It can print multiple file types, though, the reviewer notes, Office docs seem to come out with formatting issues.
3. ePrint — Though it looked promising because it connects directly to WiFi printers and can print from the clipboard, the app froze often.

Have you tried printing from the iPad? What apps have worked for you?

Change the default font of your e-mail system.

That’s what Diane Blohowiak, director of computing at the University of Wisconsin Green-Bay, recommends.

To save money when students print e-mails, the school announced it was changing the default font in students’ e-mails from Arial to Century Gothic.

That font uses 30% less toner than Arial, Blohowiak says.

The Post Office, in carrying out green business mandates set by the government, has already seen some very measurable results.

Here’s some of what the USPS did, which can be emulated by a business of any size:

• They changed network printer default settings to a double-sided printing, saving $49,000 a month in supply costs.
• They changed default settings on color printers to black and white, so that users had to deliberately choose to print in color. That meant 700,000 fewer color pages per month and savings of $37,000 per month.
• Webinars and online communications are used as a substitute for some live training and face-to-face meetings to cut down on travel costs.
• Technology is used to reduce the amount of time employees’ computers stayed turned on.
• A new stress on recycling has led to around a million tons of wastepaper, cardboard, plastics, and cans over the course of a year. They generated about $7.5 million in revenue from that recycling.

Other green moves the organization has made:

• The USPS is a major supplier of half a billion envelopes and other mailing containers. These are now 100% recycled matter and free to users.
• The service is encouraging users to buy stamps and send mail from offices (and home), saving extra trips.
• It’s working with both tech companies like HP and Dell to expedite returns of toner cartridges and electronic devices including PCs and printers.

The boring old post office is taking a lead in both going green and generating savings and new revenue. Maybe your company can follow suit.

Over the years, Adobe moved to Level 2 (1991) and finally PostScript 3 (1997). The clone makers hustled to catch up. But the stability of PostScript 3 since 1997 has meant that they’ve had a long time to fix bugs.

Generally speaking now, we don’t see any real difference between real PostScript clones and genuine Adobe PostScript, especially when we are talking about normal office printing. It’s been years since we’ve heard of any office users complaining about problems caused by using, say, Brother’s, Lexmark’s, or Konica Minolta’s clones.

One area where it may make a difference is in high-end printing, and there comes up in two issues. One is in color calibration, where vendors like EFI, say that the Adobe version has better built-in tools for color control.

This isn’t a particular issue for most office printing, where color need only be good enough. The second area in which some problems come up with users of Adobe’s In Design software, which makes use of some PostScript features that other programs hadn’t, and thus test a feature which may not be implemented in some printers. There are also reported problems with an Adobe product called Multiple Master fonts that sometimes don’t work correctly with some clones.

These are issues likely to be found by high-level designers, usually proofing files to be sent to the printing press.

Our view: don’t worry about PostScript for everyday office use; do get true Adobe PostScript for printers used by professional designers.