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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.
The article specifically mentions printing on different media like metal, paper, wood, clothes and such. So maybe they are on to something!
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.
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?
Another dead idea. Quite unfortunate really.
The buggy whip people found a new lease on life in pr0n and related activities. The camera people need to do the same.
Get rid of the plastic and the electronics, make it look like a '60s pentax spotmatic or violate some design patents and make it look like a vintage hasselblad, and above all else make it liquid proof. That might actually sell.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Turn your instagram "artsy" photo into a tattoo in 45 minutes or less at the mall ! This might work !
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
"The buggy whip people found a new lease on life in pr0n and related activities. The camera people need to do the same."
Um... I think the camera people already dominate that market. After all, porn without cameras is just called sex.
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.
no no no I mean use a antique analog camera as a prop or toy for a theme, more or less. Using a iphone to document fun time is kind of been there done that. Consider 1860 theme night using a civil war era camera (which despite my low /. UID is still way before my time)
Just like using your buggy whip to drive the horses pulling your covered wagon doesn't count (see hot coffee mod for Oregon Trail)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Wow, absolutely clueless.
Fotobar?
s/t//
Enough said.
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
Why would you go to a cafe to do that, though? Even if it turns out to be a popular idea, they're going to get undercut by pure-play online vendors who need to hire a fraction of the staff, and can rent smaller, lower-upkeep offices in less expensive areas.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The buggy whip people found a new lease on life in pr0n and related activities. The camera people need to do the same.
Get rid of the plastic and the electronics, make it look like a '60s pentax spotmatic or violate some design patents and make it look like a vintage hasselblad, and above all else make it liquid proof. That might actually sell.
Part of the appeal of Polaroid photos was the privacy they gave. You could take intimate photos knowing that (a) the photo store clerk wouldn't see the pictures, and (b) there was no negative that later could be abused. If someone was handed the freshly taken photo, the one with the camera didn't have a copy.
Digital cameras with a home printer solves (a), but not (b). This pathetic attempt from the new Polaroid trade mark owners is a step in the wrong direction, as it removes (a) too.
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
Darn, wish I had mod points right now.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
Yea but they have to order it and it takes a few days to arrive. You can do that online in a bunch of places as well. Now if they were an actual bar, serving alcohol and offered instant tattooing of your photos they might be onto something.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Even Walmart offers options such as that. This is basically one-hour photo wrapped to look like an Apple store. The overhead will be hilarious, and they will go under inside a year.
hookers and grits.
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.
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.
Um... I think the camera people already dominate that market. After all, porn without cameras is just called sex.
I think it's called "strip club."
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.
Except that I can go in to my local branch of Jessops or Happy Snaps to do that already.
I wonder how difficult automated tattooing would be. If human skin were a well-behaved medium(which it isn't) it would be pretty trivial, you'd basically just need a pen plotter with slightly better vibration damping. Given the tendency to unpredictable elastic deformation and other nuisances, though, you might need a fairly sophisticated machine vision and possibly some pressure sensitive manipulator appendages to track, and where necessary modify, the target skin surface's configuration relative to the tattoo head....
"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
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?
Long before Betteridge came along, I was taught in journalism school that question marks in headlines are the hallmarks of journalists who lack integrity or proper writing skills.
A properly-constructed article makes every effort to present a balanced, unbiased story and allow the reader to form their own opinions. By using a question mark in the headline, the writer (or editor) is announcing that he has an opinion he wants you to hear and is making a provocation very similar to what we now call trolling. It's polarizing and pushes the reader to close his mind to defend his already-held opinions, regardless of whether the reader wants the answer to the question to be yes or no. Good journalism should open the reader's mind to new ideas and new perspectives. A poor journalist writes articles like opinion pieces, and doesn't even know he's doing it.
For writers, if you find yourself using a question mark in your headline, stop, go get some air, step out of your shoes, come back and re-read what you wrote from someone else's perspective to evaluate whether you are a journalist or an opinionated loudmouth.
For readers, when you see a publication that uses question marks in headlines, take it as a sign that the publication is poorly written, poorly edited, or significantly biased. And if you decide to continue reading it, read it with that information in mind. In this case, this is Slashdot, so you have to apply the "Watermelon Principle." When you eat watermelon, you don't eat the seeds. But you don't throw out the whole watermelon just because you're not going to eat the seeds. You eat the fruit and spit the seeds. Slashdot is kind of like that. So are a lot of things.
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?
A different ring altogether...
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.
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.
Actually this isn't a bad idea. You would need a print head that shot small amounts of ink at high velocity (like the airgun inoculation devices) causing the ink to penetrate the top layers of the epidermis (this would also be tremendously less painful than standard tatoos.) Also you could use inks that could be easily decomposed by laser light for later removal as desired by the wearer. You would need to stabilize the print head with respect to the skin, some kind of robotic assembly that you wear on the area getting the tattoo perhaps.
You could also make UV tattoos popular, Tattoos that would only be visible under UV light, because a tattoo artist needs to see what he's doing, but a printer has no such limitation. Even exotic tattoos that change color according to skin temperature, blood chemistry. I had a passing thought about epaper for skin, but that's a completely different subject all together.
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.
You would need to stabilize the print head with respect to the skin, some kind of robotic assembly that you wear on the area getting the tattoo perhaps.
Just use machine vision. Supposedly the laser eye surgery blasters won't blast unless the embedded camera sees everything is lined up properly. Unsure if that's unusual, merely common, or required by medical regulation and also unsure about how its changed over time. Or it could all be BS that the doc told my coworker so he wouldn't freak out.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
AC is begging for a link to goatse, isn't he?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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.