ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

When you think of Polaroid the first thing that comes to mind was the Polaroid Land Camera that provided us with instantly developed pictures. Last year I became aware that Polaroid was working on a portable Bluetooth printer that would be ideal to print pictures from your cell phone or digital camera using Zink (Zero Ink Technology) technology. The secret to the small format printer is that the photgraphic paper is has embedded in it crystals that when heated unveil the color. Last week I saw that RadioShack had the Polaroid PoGo on sale for $29.95 and knew that I had to purchase and try it out with my Blackberry Curve.

The Polaroid PoGo printer arrived today and once it was charged I paired it with my Blackberry Curve and I was ready to go. The Bluetooth pairing was very quick and within seconds I was up and running. I simply opened a picture on Blackberry Curve and using the Blackberry Curve key I selected Send Using Bluetooth and within seconds the photograph was sent to the Polaroid PoGo pronter. The photographs are printed on 2 x 3 inch photographic paper and have a adhesive backing if you want to use it as a sticker. A pack of Zink Photo Paper costs $9.95 as is good for 30 prints. I also tried the printer with my Olympus digital camera and connected it via the USB cable. As soon as the digital camera was connected I was able to select the Print button on the camera and within seconds the camera downloaded the picture to the printer. All in all it was a real positive introduction to the Paloroid PoGo printer. Its portable size is really nice and the fact that you can print from your cell phone via Bluetooth is a great feature. I can think of lots of educational applications for this printer. Considering the price now is the time to buy one to have around!

I had posted earlier about the release of Eye-Fi, which is a 2 Gigabyte SD card with built-in WiFi. I recently purchased the Eye-Fi Card from Amazon and had the opportunity to use it the last couple of days with my Canon Powershot SD500 digital camera. To start off the packaging of the Eye-Fi is very appealing and clever. The Eye-Fi comes in a sliding box that includes a very simple installation guide, the Eye-Fi SD Card, and a USB SD Card Reader. To install the Eye-Fi Manager on my Mac Book, I simply plugged the Eye-Fi SD Card into the USB SD Card Reader and installed the software. Once installed, I opened the Eye-Fi Manager and configured my Eye-Fi Card to recognize my home WiFi network and was able to choose Phanfare as the service which I wanted to upload my pictures to. Eye-Fi gives you a host of services that you can choose from to upload your pictures. ie. Picassa, Flickr, etc. Once this step was complete, I
unmounted the Eye-Fi SD Card and plugged it into my Canon Powershot SD500 digital camera. I needed to adjust the Power Settings so that the camera would not turn off after a specified time which might disrupt Eye-Fi from uploading my pictures. Now I started to snap some pictures and watched as the pictures were uploaded to my computer and to Phanfare. What joy watching my pictures arrive on my computer and on Phanfare without the need to use a USB cable! Eye-Fi worked as advertised and is a very cool technogadget for the holidays.

About a year ago I read about a company that was working on a SD Memory Card which would also include WiFi support. Having a SD Card with WiFi support would allow you to upload your digital pictures from your camera as long as you were in earshot of your WiFi network. It would be as simple as configuring the SD Card and then have your digital camera upload the pictures to your favorite website through your wireless network. Well today I was reading Steve Hargodon's blog as he recounted his experience with Eye-Fi the new 2GB SD Card with built-in WiFi. Steve had a great experience with Eye-Fi out of the box and it looks like this could be a great gift for the holidays. I for one know that one of the stumbling blocks of using a digital camera is uploading my pictures to my Phanfare account. With the Eye-Fi the problem could be easily solved. I hope to get an Eye-Fi SD Card to review shortly.