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Can Fotobar Make Polaroid Relevant Again?
The years have not been kind to Polaroid. The company has gone through a couple of bankruptcies, and has tried to reinvent itself with a number of less-than-popular products including: an Android powered "smart camera," and a digital camera that incorporates instant printing. They hope to reverse their fortunes now by partnering with a startup called Fotobar and plan "to open a chain of retail stores where customers can come in and print out their favorite pictures from their mobile phones." The first is scheduled to open in February in Delray Beach, Florida, and the goal is to open 10 locations across the country before the year is out."
check subject.
Oh yeah, Walmart...
Cause I cant already to that at any drug store, wallmart, 2 places in the mall, and the grocery store
My mom occasionally prints photos. I have not printed a photo in years, since computer monitors are now more than good enough. My kids have never printed one. I don't think "printing photos" is a growth business.
Wow, absolutely clueless. Did no one tell Polaroid personal printers are commonplace nowadays?
I don't see the point of printing photos these days. All our old prints sit gathering dust in boxes in a closet. The only time anyone uses them is when I get them out as I gradually scan them all into a computer, hopefully before they all fade.
Now we look at our old photos more than we ever used to, blown up to a nice size on our TV in the living room. Added bonus: offsite backup copies in case of fire/tornado/whatever.
Another dead idea. Quite unfortunate really.
I'm honestly surprised that an idea this stupid managed to get enough funding for a startup, let alone enough to drape Polaroid's necrotic brand across the venture...
There are, already, about a zillion retail photo-printing options available, if you actually need such a thing. Most of the chain pharmacies that used to(possibly still do) offer cheap 35mm processing have a kiosk or two for printing from digital media. They always look a trifle shabby; but the infrastructure is there already, and should retail printing take off in a given market, it'd be cheap and quick for any such location to swap in a slightly nicer kiosk. Office supply places, Fedex/Kinkos, and various other outfits also offer retail printing services(again, while currently rather business-drab, it'd be little more than a firmware update and some new posters if they want to make the process more 'hip'.)
And, for those who don't need instant gratification, pictures on mobile phones are, what, 1-3 seconds away from the internet and its cut-price photo printing services? I'd assume that at least some of them have already released 'apps' to make it easier to order directly from your phone's internal photo storage. If not, they certainly could, and fairly quickly. The various online services onto which photos are commonly uploaded are similarly well placed.
I'm just not seeing where these guys are supposed to fit in a market whose saturation is masked only by customer disinterest...
So people have a convenient, in-store way to share these new-fangled "physical" photos with others. And by share, I mean you go down to the store with your phone, they print the photo and hang it on the wall, and give the customer a stack of cards they can FedEx to their friends. The cards will contain the address of the store, so the friends can come visit and see their photo on the wall.
The company has gone through a couple of bankruptcies, and has tried to reinvent itself with a number of less-than-popular products including: an Android powered "smart camera"
Was this referring to the Polaroid sc1630 that was a rebranded Altek Leo / Aigo A8 device, or the upcoming IM1836 camera?
It would be better to develop an online community around this and offer same day delivery from local printing centers. Think of it like an E-bay of photo related services where people can request certain things such as color correction, red eye removal, clean up, photo manipulation, etc.
Will your digital pictures still be as accessible to your grandchildren as your grandmother's photographs are to you?
This is one of those recurring "ask Slashdot" questions. How do I preserve the digital images or recordings so that my grandchildren can see them or hear them?
Physical copies of pictures is still the best solution when you're talking about 50 years later.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
Can we get past this lousy clickbait slashdot? Do we need a new metamoderation system?
Silence is a state of mime.
... are doomed to repeat it:
Zapmail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapmail
My Mum's photo-mad. She (and my Father and brother) collectively have about $25,000 worth of high-end amateur gear, regularly take classes, and go on photo safaris. Prior to the digital revolution, she had albums upon albums of print photos.
She hasn't printed one now for over 10 years. None of us in my family have. We still get physical photos, but nowadays they're always either large canvas prints for hanging on a wall, or photobooks (like those produced by albumworks and others). The traditional single print? Haven't seen one for a decade. I don't think this is a winning proposition.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
This thinkng is what doomed them in the first place.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
If my experience with my 19-year-old granddaughter is any indication, nobody prints photos from cell phones. They get sent to friends or posted to Facebook and that's the end of the line.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
The Kodak photo kiosks already accept a Bluetooth connection from my smartphone. These guys need to get out more. Either that, or they could save themselves development costs and just buy the Kodak kiosks out of bankruptcy.
Sorry but Walmart and a few stationary stores already do that.
They can't be serious about this?
Over 7 years ago I created a database of places in the US where you could get instant prints (UPS, Fedex/Kinkos, Walmart, CVS, Safeway, pretty much every friggin retail store on every single street). This database was for a photosharing service and we found that, surprise, even 7 years ago, people weren't that interested in printing once they had moved to digital photos. It only gets worse with cell phones.
Most stores even have apps for printing, not just photos, but any documents, from your phone. You can even forward email attachments of file formats that your phone may not have an app for.
Not to mention all of the photo printing and mailing services for phones. Snap a photo, go into the app, choose a print/card/calendar/mug/shirt/poster, select the contact from your address book, and boom...from anywhere, anytime.
The only solution I can think of that this good for is potentially raising "investment money" from people completely out of touch with things. In other words, this idea sounds so bad, it sounds like a scam.
Most drug store printing include online printing. Just look for it. Using Wallgreens for an example because it was mentioned as a typical drugstore offering photo printing. See the upload tab?
http://photo.walgreens.com/walgreens/welcome
The truth shall set you free!
Physical copies of pictures from 50 years ago stored in common household conditions are barely legible.
Let's say you are right.
Digital copies of pictures stored on cheap CD-R or floppy disks from 1990 will be barely readable in 2040, even if you have a working drive and software to interpret the half-century-old data format. Why? The consumer-grade media that existed at the time wasn't archival quality.
What's that you say, you migrate your data every decade or more to avoid that? How many people do that? About as many as who re-photograph their family albums every 20-30 years to prevent photo decay.
By the way, I disagree with old photos being "barely legible" when stored under common household conditions. As long as they are in "living room cabinet" conditions and not in the attic or basement where they might get too hot/cold/damp/dry or out on display where they might get too much light exposure, most black-and-white prints, slides, and negatives, most color prints made since the 1970s, Kodachrome slides, and some more recent E6 slides will last decades with only minor degradation. Note: Many color prints from before the 1970s turn pink with age. Other than Kodachrome, I wouldn't bet that color slide or negative films would be in good condition if stored in "living room cabinet" conditions after 50 years. They might be viewable but I would expect at least some noticeable degradation.
If you do archive your work digitally, make sure you truly archive it. This means using materials and formats that will still be available when you do your next "refresh" AND doing that refresh on schedule, OR if you prefer, using truly archival materials and making sure you keep a device around to read it, along with a backup archive and a backup reading device in an offsite location. Very-long-life mineral-based DVDs (no organic dyes) are available for under $3 each. Not all DVD-burners can write to these DVDs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
As an American traveling through Russia on a motorcycle 6 or 7 years ago I took a Polaroid and quite a bit of film. I cannot tell you how great it was at times to take a photo with the locals and hand them a print. End of an era.
No.
"The years have not been kind to Polaroid." No kidding since the company that he's talking about no longer exists. Someone bought the name. End of story. It's not Polaroid, it's a new company having nothing to do with Polaroid that uses the brand they purchased from Polaroid's demise.
The consumer-grade media that existed at the time wasn't archival quality.
So says piles of Luddite nay-sayers. Though, years after the dates of initial failure have passed, I haven't heard of anyone that lost a single CDR that was cared for (I know more than one that lost professional CD or consumer CD for having left it in a car in the sun).
Learn to love Alaska
Physical photos are a thing of the past. The very few people that still print them just go to walmart or someplace like that where they get help from someone to crop and change photos to their desire and then print them for pennies each. Even home photo printing is more expensive because you need the printer, ink is not cheap and you need photo quality paper. And for all the less than tech savvy people its still easier to go a walmart and print them there than doing it at home because at home you dont have a idiot proof system and a person standing there who can help you when you need it.
I dont print pictures. The ones I do want to keep I just store in a folder on my computer that I occasionally back up. If I want to show them to someone I can show them digitally a dozen different ways including on a big ass tv set using my phone or just handing them my phone or emailing them.
I doubt Ill ever print another picture again honestly. In the past decade Ive only owned one new physical photo, and that was on a ski lift in gatlingburg tn that I was on with my girlfriend and she wanted a picture of us together.
Leave it to the current zombified incarnation of Polaroid to simultaneously misspell FUBAR and fail at copying Apple's Genius Bar concept.
Not every one lets computers control their lives and every time I'm at Walmart or London Drugs the print stations are full of people printing photos.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
wait... they're serious?
These companies are apparently just old, like Kodak, still hanging on to film way past the point it was obvious film was dying. As many have said here today, screens are good and ubiquitous, tabs are going to be $50. No need to print images anymore Polaroid. It sucks anyway, we use too much paper already. Can I print out my emails there too?
I hope that the images they are hoping to print are going to last longer than the hundreds of pics I took with the then Super-High-Tech SX-70. The images are barely visible now, and they were stored under proper conditions. Polaroid had a good run at it, but they have run out of ideas.
It's dead, that's what's wrong with it. Polaroid's passed on! This manufacturer is no more! It has ceased to be! 'Polaroid's expired and gone to meet it's maker! It''s a stiff! Bereft of life, Polaroid rests in peace! Michael Land's Polaroid company was auctioned off, and the tradename was purchased by someone in Taipei, I think, or licensed to them. And RCA Victrola too. I don't mind an article about what the Taiwanese tradename owners or licensees are up to, but really it's no more interesting than if Acer, Asus, or Foxconn was doing it, there's none of the continuity implied.
Gently reply
> Digital copies of pictures stored on cheap CD-R or floppy disks from 1990 will be barely readable in 2040
Anything I had of value in 1990 has already been taken off of it's original media. It's already replicated into several copies. Old data is pretty much by definition SMALL data so it can easily be replicated to the empty spaces of EVERY device you own (mobile or otherwise).
If anything, the problem is not "preservation". If anything, the problem is now that your data might live forever and also be out of your control.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
It's called almost every Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens and CVS in the United States. They have little kiosks where you can print from your phone or Facebook or Flickr or SD card or whatever.
And they don't have to support the infrastructure of a whole store by themselves. In fact they don't even have to be particularly profitable since part of the deal is you'll wander the rest of the store and buy stuff while waiting for your prints.
Pop into a Costco and see how much people are printing. When they do an 8 cent/print deal, that machine is cranking out pictures all day long. People print so many, the old pictures envelopes are no longer enough. They have boxes that hold 200 prints, and you see them stacked up behind the counter.It's not unusual to see customers loading between 500 and 1000 prints from a memory stick.
Costco seems to train their people properly on calibrating and running machines. Quality has invariable been excellent. I can't say the same about WalMart or one of the drug store chains I've used.
But good luck to Polaroid competing with that.
Interesting how so many thing brand names are still individually synonymous with being a corporation.
Almost all of the oldest brand names we know and loved have been bought by larger corporate holding companies and other entities that now own them as intellectual property.
I've had bad spots develop on both floppies and CD-Rs that I've stored indoors for 10+ years under "normal household" storage conditions. I'm not talking museum-quality archival conditions, but I'm not talking baking-hot-attic conditions either.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I read it as "Can Foobar Make Polaroid Relevant Again? and was about to complain about using sample source code on Slashdot.
Table-ized A.I.
Every single 1-stop photographic shop here has the same services. You can do anything from single prints from memory cards and digital cameras to large scale photo prints in just about any size you can imagine. There are even kiosks available in most of our larger chain stores where you can print photos from all your digital devices. Really does not seem like Polaroid are re-inventing themselves here...
I can send a special email to Wal-Mart and print photos from my phone. I can also send photos to Wal-Mart directly from Lightroom 4 via a plugin. I can easily print 4x6 photos at Sam's Club for about $0.13/ea. So, I can take photos while mobile, send them to a convenient Wal-Mart or Sam's Club and pick them up within the hour. That's pretty convenient for cheap and high quality photos!
I don't work Wal-Mart corp; I just appreciate the convenience of tech. They do need to work on a proper Android app for printing photos, though. Their current process is a little rough as I have to send an email to submit the photos to their system instead of being able to submit them directly from their Android shopping app.
Apple needs to buy Polaroid's useful assets. It seems like they have the same niche artsy hip audience. I could see Apple stores containing a photolab like this with special expensive licensed filters only available in-store for printing.
They hope to reverse their fortunes now by partnering with a startup called Fotobar and plan "to open a chain of retail stores where customers can come in and print out their favorite pictures from their mobile phones.
Oh, you mean like Fred Meyer, Costco, Walmart, some Rite Aids, etc. have been doing for years.
If anything, the problem is now that your data might live forever and also be out of your control.
Not if the hard disk AND its twin backup both crash when you're trying to transfer the data somewhere else. I lost 80,000 of my dead mother's photographs. I can hear her screaming at me now, lamenting "Only pixels! My life's work is only a bunch of fucking pixels!"
How right she was, it turns out. Oops. I fucked up and lost your life's work, Mom. My bad. I wish I had printed more of them.