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."

Re:Huh, who'd have thought of that?

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep a copy of goatse on my phone, so I can reupload it and post to slashdot on the go. I went to walmart to get prints of my family reunion and the machine was down, so the kid had to start it up and insisted on helping me. As luck would have it, our friend Goatse was at the top. Long story short, he called the manager and I was asked to leave.

Fuck walmart.

They Should Also Partner with FedEx

[guttentag]

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.

Re:Huh, who'd have thought of that?

[vlm]

I sincerely hope you poker faced it and tried to convince the clerk that's just how family reunions roll after a couple beers...

Re:But why?

[cervesaebraciator]

If you have a decent camera and actually know what you're doing with it you can print some outstanding photos to hang on your walls or stand on shelves and such. It makes the house a whole lot warmer and more personal than buying those generic shit pictures at Hobby Lobby and hanging them all around your house.

Helpful hint: I don't think the items you've been buying are for what you think they're for. Those generic shit pictures are just placeholders. To hang up your own warm and personal pictures, you're supposed to take the generic pictures out and use the frames.

Re:Think grandchildren.

[ShanghaiBill]

It is a lot of effort.

It should be ZERO additional effort. If you even have to think about it, then you are doing it wrong. I just copy the photos from my camera to my laptop, and then do nothing else. Within an hour they are automatically copied to a backup server in my closet. Within 24 hours, they are automatically copied to a git repository on a raid-based cloud server located a thousand miles away. None of this requires any additional effort because it is using mechanisms that are already in place to back up all my email, source code, business documents, etc. When I buy a new computer, I just copy all my data, and the photos are just copied along with everything else. No additional effort is required.