Consider today the end of an era for one of the most iconic brands in the imaging industry. While their bankruptcy protection filing from last month signaled the need for some drastic action, it’s still a bit of a shock to see Kodak announce that they are putting all of their digital cameras, camcorders, and picture frames out to pasture.

When all is said and done, Kodak expects annual operating savings of around $100 million, but the bigger loss is going to be that of a cultural icon. Kodak will still exist, sure, but primarily as a purveyor of desktop printers as well as online and retail photo printing services.

The company is also looking to expand its brand licensing program in order to bring in some much-needed revenue, but their consumer imaging division is shaping up to be a shell of its former self.

The phase out process is set to begin during the first half of this year, and Kodak has reached out to their retail partners in order to make sure their last remaining customers aren’t left in the lurch when it comes to support and warranties.

Kodak CMO Pradeep Jotwani notes that the company has been scaling back their efforts in the digital imaging space in order to focus on more lucrative aspects of their business. It’s a understandable move for Kodak to make — the company has been on the ropes for quite some time now, with slumping camera sales and some high profile departures only adding fuel to the fire. Even so, the loss of a once-dominant player in the industry stands as a reminder to competitors that staying nimble and innovative is the key to survival.

Consider the blurring lines between cell phones and cameras. Kodak dipped their toes into the water by lending their name and optics to the Motorola MOTOZINE, but never really pursued the space further. Now, a study from the NPD Group points at smartphone camera use supplanting the need for a standalone camera, and a timely gamble back then could have made for smoother seas these past few years.

Poor Kodak. At this point, they’re just along for the ride. The last few years have been rough on them, and they’ve made a few big decisions that haven’t panned out. I must admit that while my unsolicited advice to them was sound, it probably would have to have been put in place a decade ago for them to have avoided the current state of things. As it is, the WSJ has word that they are planning to file Chapter 11 and do a court-supervised auction of their many digital imaging patents.

It’s sad, but the truth is that while Kodak is very much still a valuable company, it’s simply not a viable business any more. Their efforts to change the business they’re in came too late — and now they’re in the business of going under.

In some ways, it’s a good call (not that I’m a big bankruptcy expert), but it’s also risky. Kodak has been trying to offload more than a thousand patents in order to gain the cash it needs to keep operating. It’s not clear what exactly they’d be doing after they sold off the most valuable part of the company, but they might have noted that “a living dog is better than a dead lion,” and opted for solvency and a lease on life.

Whatever their intentions, the patents haven’t sold. They sold their sensor business related assets, but the patents are still on the shelf. Why? Kodak practically invented the digital camera, and some of their IP must surely be useful to the likes of Sony or Samsung.

The problem, I’m guessing, is this: why pay full price when you know the store’s going out of business? If Sony and Samsung both wanted a set of patents, Kodak would keep them both informed if the other bid something, so they run little risk of having their targets slipped out from under their noses. And in the meantime, Kodak swirls endlessly towards bankruptcy, at which point the whole patent portfolio will be on the block for public bidding and unbeatable prices.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely unlikely that Kodak will bounce back from this. The only way they can live is by selling their core assets and taking a fortune in loans, and after that there’s nothing to do but sell the brand and find work as a badge for other people’s products. Oh fate most ignominious! But it is their own doing.

[image source]

Kodak, which has been struggling to make enough money to keep the lights on next year, has sold its image sensor business. The buyer is holdings firm Platinum Equity, which is also picking up a large R&D and manufacturing facility in Rochester. Kodak will continue to have access to (and presumably operate) the facility and staff, but who will ultimately end up with this piece isn’t clear.

The price was not disclosed, but I would guess it’s probably somewhere around $100-$200 million, based on the scale of the purchase and the company’s year end estimates and necessities. The details of the deal are also obscure, and will likely come out in a press release during the next week.

The question one asks, naturally, is if it’s worth this much today, that must be a cost the buyer hopes to recoup with some time and investment — and so why doesn’t Kodak make the time and investment itself? It simply doesn’t have the money. To compete with the likes of Sony and Canon in the sensor area, they’d need to be investing as much per year as they just sold the whole thing for.

I wrote a while back that it was time for Kodak to go invisible, focusing on IP and giving up the privilege of being a household name. Without their sensor business that’s probably not a viable option. On the other hand, as we don’t know the details of the purchase, it could be that they do have that in mind, but had to surrender ownership in order to fund the R&D necessary to take that position over the next few years. In that case Platinum would be more of a partner than a purchaser.

Kodak, let us admit, is doomed. Founded over a century ago, it has dominated film for as long as film has existed, but now that film is on the verge of ceasing to exist, they have very little to dominate. They’re short on cash and while they deny plans to file for bankruptcy, many question whether they will have the luxury of choice a few years from now.

My first preference for the preservation of this company would be for them to sell off their patents and focus on film until they’re buried by progress. That’d be Kodak going out with its boots on, so to speak. But I doubt that’s going to happen.

What needs to happen instead is Kodak needs to abandon any pretense of being a household word. They’ve had a good run — for an entire century their name has been synonymous with film. But it will never be as recognizable again. So why throw money away on an entire division creating low-margin, unoriginal devices that are going to be obsolete in a few months and duplicated by pirate OEMs anyway? No, Kodak needs to go invisible.

For a long time Kodak was the leader in photographic innovation. They even invented their own destroyer, a la Oedipus Rex: they were among the first producing digital cameras. Why aren’t they now? Why is the sensor inside the iPhone 4S a Sony instead of a Kodak?

Listen, Kodak. I like a couple of your cameras. That’s not the issue. The issue is that you’re selling a product that everyone gets for free when they buy a smartphone, digital picture frames are a joke, and printing is becoming more and more something that happens in a ShutterFly facility, not at home — if it happens at all. Producing products is for companies like Apple and Canon. You don’t want to compete with them.

And you don’t have to. You’ve got top-notch research facilities churning out patents and inventions all over the place. Pick a few niches and become indispensible. I’m not quite saying be a patent troll. I’m saying you should be the ones HTC goes to when they want to get an edge over the rest in the camera department. What will you make? Low-noise sensors? Image compression algorithms? Lens coatings? High-speed imaging interfaces? I don’t know. Just pick something other than a heap of consumer products in the process of being eliminated by the march of progress. You don’t see IBM trying to compete with Dell.

One thing: in order to keep the Kodak brand alive, you should always be in the business of making real things. But make the printer head, not the printer. Make the sensor, not the camera. Make it clear that if it’s not powered by Kodak, it’s a piece of junk. You’ve already been half-forced to this position, so just go all the way. You don’t need the trappings of a consumer tech company weighing you down. You’re Kodak, for god’s sake. Act like it.

If all goes well, you’ll emerge from these hard times a leaner, more focused company, with a sack full of amazing patents and a stable of clients who wouldn’t be able to compete without your technology. Is it a fantasy? Sure. But it’s better than the dreary, prosaic reality you’re living in now. At least strike out swinging.

Summer is here, and there’s a good chance some of you are thinking of picking up something to document your vacations with. iPhones and point-and-shoots are all well and good, but if you want to take it to the pool or the beach, it’s nice to feel sure that an errant splash isn’t going to disable your camera permanently. We’ve got a few water-hardened Flip-esque pocket cams here for you to choose from, but which deserves your hard-earned cash?

I’m not including image samples because to be honest, all these cameras have tiny sensors and small, weak lenses, which combine to produce noisy images with poor sharpness and so on. But they’re cheap and vacation-proof (i.e. immune to trips in shallow water, sand and dirt, and short drops). You can’t have everything.

Here they are, in no particular order:

Kodak Playsport – $160

Pros:

• Nice hand-feel
• Wide angle lens
• Extra video options

Cons:

• Sluggish menu
• Small LCD screen
• Easy to accidentally open port doors

I liked the old Playsport, and the new one seems to be an incremental improvement. It’s more compact, and has an ostensibly ergonomic layout — for right-handers, at least. There’s less of a plastic-y feel than the other devices and personally I think it looks the best. It’s much heavier than Samsung’s similarly sized BW10, but the shape is better.

There are several extra video options: in addition to 1080p/30, there’s 720p at 30 and 60 fps, and a WVGA (640×360) mode for more manageable file sizes and SD playback. Navigating the menu is an exercise in patience, however; the d-pad is stiff and moving between selections is slow. The LCD, while small, is easily the sharpest of the cameras.

I found it was a bit too easy to open up the areas where the device’s ports are. A simple slip of the hand (or a could pop open your SD door and in goes the sand. The other cameras have significantly more security in this area.

Samsung W200 – $160

Pros:

• Image stabilization
• Spring-loaded port doors feel secure
• Biggest LCD of the bunch
• Multi-take, single-file recording

Cons:

• Somewhat large
• Ugly, if I’m honest
• Only two video modes
• Built-in USB plug questionably convenient

The W200 is easily the biggest of these devices. It’s still fairly small, of course, but it feels more bulky. It also feels nice and solid, and that feeling extends to its port doors, which are too easily opened on the Playsport and too fiddly on the BW10. The W200′s doors are spring-loaded and open only with effort — but the good kind of effort. They open when you want them to.

The screen is the biggest of the lineup here, not by much, but it’s worth mentioning. The extra space is used to display info in black bands above and below the picture. The menus are attractive and quick to navigate. The d-pad feels stiff but actually responds very well. Unfortunately the middle button is very deep, as it is used in photo mode to set focus, and you have to press it in quite a ways to make a selection. Not a truly substantial issue, but it bothered me. There’s a flip-out USB plug at the bottom, which is handy if it works for your setup, and a pain if you’d just rather have a port to plug a cable into.

There are only two video modes, 1080p/30 and 720p/30, which is too bad. It has the admirable ability to “pause” the recording without creating a new file, which will be welcomed by many who don’t feel like editing after the fact. It felt better taking still pictures than the others, the camera-shaped Easyshare Sport included.

Also it just about gave me a heart attack suddenly making a droplet noise for its auto-off procedure. You can turn that off.

Toshiba Camileo BW10 – $130

Pros:

• Compact
• Nice clicky controls
• Straightforward to use

Cons:

• What’s with the field of view?
• Extremely slow aperture response
• Must use fingernail to open port door

The BW10 is the simplest to operate of these devices, all of which are pretty simple to operate. But the BW10 is ready to take a picture or video at any moment, and you can take pictures while you’re taking video. The LCD has two modes, one showing just what you record and one showing the whole picture with guidelines showing what the camera will actually record.

Wait, what?

Yes, apparently Toshiba felt that instead of recording everything it can see through the wide-angle lens, the BW10 should cut off the edges and only record the middle. Anything outside the boundary of the box won’t be recorded – even though it’s there. What the hell? I’m pretty sure I’m not mistaken about this, and it’s just a really dumb limitation.

The BW10 also takes a long time to recover from lighting changes. Going from outdoors to indoors, the shot will be dark for several seconds while the camera ratches open the aperture. It takes a long time and actually also affects the cast of the image, going from warm to cool as the aperture opens.

The port doors are very secure — too secure, I might say, since the tiny switch you need to hit can’t be done easily with a finger. Not a big deal really, but it’s annoying that opening the door should be a precision action.

Kodak Easyshare Sport – $80

Pros:

• Shaped like a camera, if you like that

Cons:

• Always starts up in still shot mode
• No video options
• Poorly placed USB port

The Easyshare Sport is more of a budget point and shoot that happens to be waterproof, but it seems to fit in with these guys more than other point and shoots. The trouble is it’s just not very good. There’s a big grip in which fit the AA batteries that power it, but the shutter button isn’t on top of it, where you’d expect it to be. The control layout is a bit arbitrary overall. Why aren’t the zoom buttons mapped to the D-pad, for instance? Why is the D-pad so small, and the center button so hard to hit, that I end up hitting every direction at once when I try to select a menu option? Why isn’t video next to “auto” in the mode select? The whole thing gives an impression of being thrown together with no design at all.

The quality isn’t impressive, either. It looks like it has a real lens but it’s more or less a pinhole, like the rest of these cameras (which also go to some length to make it look like they have real, round lenses), and its slowness shows in the choppiness of the image on the LCD. Even in a well-lit room the image was dim and jumpy. There is only one video mode (two if you count underwater, but I don’t) and I don’t trust it.

To get at the USB port you have to open the bottom panel where the batteries and SD card go, and it’s a pain in the first place. No grip and having to press in two directions at once means if your hands are wet, forget about it. Not really user-friendly.

Our pick

The Toshiba makes too many compromises, and I wouldn’t pay a dollar for the Easyshare Sport. So it’s between the W200 and the Playsport. Here’s how it breaks down in my opinion:

Playsport

• Sharper, more accurate LCD
• More video modes (60fps can be used as slow-mo)
• Wider lens

W200

• Bigger LCD
• Superior video quality (though it’s still not that good)
• Handy features like image stabiliztion and record-pause

I can’t tell you which is the best choice for you. If I absolutely had to choose, I’d go with the W200 simply because the end product is better — none of these cameras produces good images, but the Playsport was significantly less sharp in images and video. They have the same MSRP, so think hard about what part of the camera is important to you and make a choice based on that.

• 10 megapixels
• 2.4″ 320×240 LCD
• 3x optical zoom (29–87mm equivalent)
• Compact design
• MSRP: $100

Pros:

• Very tiny indeed
• Pictures are comparable to other cheap cameras
• Convenient after bothersome initial setup

Cons:

• Setup is a pain
• Tiny buttons and d-pad no fun for navigation, typing
• Kodak software required for sharing options

Full review:

I’ll keep this quick. There isn’t a lot new about the Easyshare Mini except that it’s smaller than most of the other options on the market. It’s bigger than a mobile phone, of course, but it has a big-boy lens with real 3x zoom and real buttons for shutter release and so on.

In fact, buttons seem to be the main feature of this thing. For its size, it sure has a lot. I suppose that’s because they’re proportional. That is to say they’re very small. Do you have big fingers? You will have trouble with this camera.

But of course it isn’t designed with big fingers in mind. Are you thinking of giving your kid or tween a camera? This could be it. It’s cheap, it’s cute, it’s got a flash and a mirror for self-shots (essential).

Your daughter will like it, and will probably be better at setting it up than you. Navigating this keyboard using the Mini’s microscopic, square d-pad is slow work. It’s much easier to set up your accounts in the app, which is simple enough. It’s handy to be able to tag things and forget about them, then just plug in and have your best shots upload themselves. It’s a common feature to all Easyshare cameras, but it’s a real draw for a socially-orientated purse-cam like this one.

The LCD screen is necessarily small and low-resolution, but it’s bright enough and responsive. The on-screen interface is ugly but functional. The camera’s so simple that there’s very little to navigate to.

Photo quality is what you’d expect from a cheap point-and shoot. Here are a couple sample shots.

Fine details are muddy, but focus was accurate and could get surprisingly close, as you can see on that knob. I know, not the most exciting pics, but it’s not really an exciting camera!

I mean, you know what you’re getting here. It’s not bad in day-to-day medium and bright lighting, though low light performance is, of course, terrible. Better and more responsive than a phone camera, and it has a decently wide lens, but don’t expect much in the way of clarity or color. Flash photography pops just fine.

Video is 640×480 and again, just what you expect.

Conclusion

At a hundred bucks, this thing is a no-brainer for your kids if you were considering something else. They’re they only ones who can operate these little buttons anyway. An alternative would be a rugged camera (kids don’t take good care of things), but most of those are significantly more expensive. The Easyshare Mini is a decent little device for someone who can’t stand using their phone as a camera, but doesn’t want the cost or quality of “real” point and shoots.

Product page: Kodak Easyshare Mini M200

The big brand camera companies are committing seppuku in front of our eyes. It’s fascinating.

Last week, I bought a brand new Canon S95 camera. It’s a great point & shoot. Maybe the best out there right now. It captures beautiful 10-megapixel images. It’s great in low-light. It’s fast. And it shoots HD video. I anticipate I’ll take about 5 percent of my pictures with it in the coming year. The other 95 percent will be taken with my iPhone. How do I know? Because I had the S90 last year and that was my exact usage pattern.

Obviously, the 10-megapixel, $400 S95 is the superior camera when compared to the 5-megapixel, $200 (with subsidy) iPhone 4. But the fact that I always have my phone on me easily trumps the specs. But to me, there’s actually something other than just the portability factor that leads to my usage being so heavily skewed towards the iPhone: connectivity.

Smartphones are always connected. Point & shoots never are. When I take a cool picture, I often want to share it right away. With my smartphone, it takes 20 seconds. With my point & shoot, it’s impossible. I have to wait until I get home, upload it to my computer, then upload it to the web.

It shouldn’t be surprising at all that smartphones are eating point & shoots’ lunch when it comes to percentage of pictures uploaded to sites like Flickr. Currently, the most popular camera in the Flickr community is the iPhone 3G. Below that are several prosumer-level DSLRs. There are no point & shoots on the top list.

And if you look at the popular point & shoot list, you’ll see that all of them are trending downward. Fast. Meanwhile, cameraphones are going the opposite way. Soon, I imagine that several Android phones will join the iPhones at the top of the popular list.

It’s a little dumbfounding that point & shoots have been so slow to hop on the connectivity and social bandwagon. The iPhone is now three and a half years old, and plenty of people were taking picture with their crappy RAZR phones and uploading them to the web years before that. The writing has been on the wall for a long time.

It stands to reason that as smartphone cameras continue to improve, they were going to squeeze out point & shoots anyway. We’re heading towards a world where the smartphone is the everyday camera and the DSLR is the special occassion camera. But we’re not there yet. I still have some need for a good point & shoot. And so do plenty of other people — the S95 is currently the 19th best-selling electronic on Amazon heading into the holiday shopping season.

But the big camera companies like Canon almost seem like they want to speed the process of killing point & shoot camera along. They just don’t seem to get it.

“Point and shoot has become point and shoot and share,” Twitter’s Josh Elman tweeted earlier. “It’s sad that cameras haven’t evolved to be networked and make sharing easier. I’m shopping for a new camera now and very disappointed,” he continued.

Elman must be going through the same process I went through a couple weeks ago. With no better solution, I ultimately settled on a sort hacked-together one: the S95 with an SD card from Eye-Fi that will add WiFi capabilities to your device. It’s okay. It does allow you to share photos when you take them — provided you’re connected to WiFi. WiFi which you have to configure on your card via your computer beforehand. In other words, unless you’re at home, it’s not much of a solution.

Further, given that everything else in the world is hopping on the geolocation bandwagon, you would have thought that the point & shoot makers would at least go there with GPS chips. Nope. Again, the only solution for most of these cameras is the Eye-Fi card. And again, it’s a pretty lame solution. Instead of using a combination of GPS and WiFi to get your location and pin it to a picture like most smartphones do, the EyeFi card simply records the nearest WiFi router address and it will only tag it to your photo if you run it through their (rather lame) software when you get home.

Ugh.

And don’t get me wrong, what Eye-Fi is doing is rather amazing given what they’re working with. They’ve essentially hacked the memory card input to make these cameras somewhat connected. But there really needs to be some sort of native hardware/software solution.

I know that there are some “social” point & shoots out there, like Kodak’s EasyShare products. But the reviews of those things range from mixed to poor. If I’m going to spend the extra money, I want it to be on the best point & shoot. Like the S95. Sadly, I can’t have the best of both worlds. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to until after the smartphones have already killed the genre.

In the smartphone world right now, we’re already evolving to the next phase. We’re seeing an explosion of interest is social apps built solely around the camera. Instagram, Hipstamatic, Picplz, Path, DailyBooth, CameraBag, Treehouse, IncrediBooth, Diptic, Burstn, etc. There are hundreds of apps with new ones launching each day. The point & shoot hasn’t even entered phase one yet. It’s really pretty pathetic.

Bottom line: printers are “loss leaders” for most companies. They make most of their money on the toner and ink which, in the end, can sometimes cost more than the printer is worth. Your goal, then is, to find a printer with inexpensive ink. Kodak has made great strides in this and Espson is a close second. You don’t really need to worry about pages per minute – most of these printers are fast enough to pump out a few pages between classes.

Low-End:

Kodak ESP 5250 All-in-one – $129 – Although it got bad reviews on the Kodak website, this cheap all-in-one got a fairly high score from Computer Shopper which is why I added it. I’m a fan of Kodak generally and it’s a good investment, especially if you’re not printing evey day. [Product Page]

Canon Pixma MP560 – $79 – Trying to find a sub-$99 printer worth considering is hard, but the Pixma MP560 seems to fit the bill. This all-in-one printer got good ratings and is now selling for $79 on Amazon. I chose this one over other models because Canon printers offer a bit more quality, even on the low-end. [Product Page]

Mid:

Kodak 7250 All-in-One – $199 – This all-in-one features wireless printing and the ink is cheap. My review noted that the UI was a little bit weird and the LCD screen was slightly fuzzy, but, on the whole, it was a good printer. [Product Page]

Epson WorkForce 520 – $129 – This Epson workhorse has a full scanner and a number of cool features like scan-to-memory card. Ink is fairly inexpensive and you can run a long time before changing the cartridges. [Product Page]

High End:
Samsung CLP-315 – $199 – Laser printer prices have fallen so far that it’s almost silly not to consider something like the CLP-315. I’ve used this model for two years now after writing a review and I think the real value comes in the speed and print quality. One caveat: toner for these babies can cost almost as much as the printer, which is why I’ve placed this in the high-end category. [Product Page]

Press releases after the jump as well as a pic of the PlayTouch.

In 1999, I was into photography, but not seriously. I’d had the obligatory Kodak Instamatic, a couple of cheap 35mm pocket cameras, and I had fun taking snapshots. I never really took it seriously, though, until I saw some pictures that a co-worker had taken of a sunset. Then I just had to have a digital camera.

But back in ’99, your options for digital cameras were somewhat limited. You could pay $6,000 for a Nikon D1, but I had no intentions of doing that. Based on what a co-worker had, I ended up purchasing a Kodak DC-50. The DC-50 was quite advanced for its time. The sensor was a 0.38 megapixel CCD and took pictures at a 756×508 resolution. This was unusual, since most cameras at that point took pictures at a maximum of 640×480.

Most cameras were limited to internal memory back in those days, and while the DC-50 did have internal memory available, you were much better off using a compact flash card with a PCMCIA adapter. The lens was a 3x optical zoom, which covered a relatively wide range considering that it was physically contained inside the camera. You also didn’t have any way to view the pictures until you pulled them out of the camera. There was only a basic LCD on the back, which showed a few details to keep you informed of what is going on. There was no way to control the ISO, or the shutter speed, and the focus was completely automatic. But for the money, it was the most advanced digital camera you could get without spending more then you would for a car. I’ve still got some pictures from back in those days; you can check them out at the bottom of the page.

I fondly remember that camera, but I was certainly glad when I upgraded to something better. I wince when I see the image quality from back then, but it was a great starting point. I vaguely remember spending in the neighborhood of $150 for the DC-50 off of eBay — you can find them now for about $35. Of course, I shoot with a Nikon D300 now, which is in a whole different class.

Short Version: Kodak knows how to make low-cost printers with plenty of great features. The 7250 is no exception.

Features:

• 802.11n wireless and Ethernet
• LCD display
• 32ppm black and wite, 30ppm color
• Wireless printing from iPhone, Blackberry
• MSRP: $199

Pros:

• Great networking features
• Compact
• Duplexing

Cons:

• UI a bit hard to follow
• Low-resolution LCD
• Small paper trays

There are few things are boring as printers. Perhaps you could think of a few things – maybe C-SPAN or modern dance – but if you’re looking for a printer you’re probably going to go to the store, pick the cheapest thing you see, and plug it in, and start printing. The less attention paid the better.

Well, not all all-in-one printers are created equal. While most of them work just fine out of the box, it’s the little differences that make a big difference. The 7250 has a few of those little features.

First, it has 802.11n networking. Not amazing in itself, but it’s nice to have. You also have an Ethernet port as well as a PictBridge support. Most important, however, is iPhone and Blackberry wireless printing, a surprising addition that is actually quite useful.

The cost of ink is also excellent for this printer. At $9.99 for black and white and $17.99 for color is pretty great. The print outs weren’t absolutely stellar but they were sufficiently sharp and crisp with a fresh ink cartridge.

Duplexing is also included, which is a great addition. The scanner/copier is also quite intelligent, splitting separate scanned documents into separate files even during the same scan job.

A few little extras I liked? Built-in templates for to-do lists, graph paper, and the like as well as quick color and black and white copies.

Bottom Line

Kodak tried stuff a lot of power into a small package. It’s an impressive printer but they did cut corners on the resolution of the 2.4-inch LCD. As I mentioned before, I’ve seen sharper prints from other, more expensive printers, but if you’re looking for something that’s inexpensive, you’re going to do just fine with this thing.

Product Page

Kodak Slice
Kodak PlaySport
Kodak M530
Kodak M580
Kodak Pulse digital frame

I’ve played with the PlaySport and the Slice before but the Pulse was quite cool – it grabs your Facebook pictures and you can email photos directly to the frame – and it’s completely touchscreen controlled.

I’ll dig into this mess and put up reviews over the next week.

The International Trade Commission must have a pile of Apple-related complaints so high it can… reach some high place. A few months ago Nokia accused Apple of patent infringement, and now there’s word that Kodak and Research in Motion, or RIM as the cool kids say, have also filed a complaint. Kodak says parts of the iPhone’s interface infringe on Kodak patents relating to previewing images.

Being the ITC, we can expect a full ruling—you’re right, he’s wrong—fairly soon, like within one year.

Patents are weird. Anybody, even you!, can go to the patent office and say, “I’d like to patent this idea,” and they’re like, “Sure, fill out these forms.” You don’t have to demonstrate that your idea works. As a result, big companies like Apple and Kodak and RIM can have zillions of patents on file for this thing or that thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple has a flying car patent in there somewhere.

Exaggerated for effect.

The complaint, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission, claims that Apple’s iPhone devices and all RIM’s camera-enabled BlackBerry phones infringe a patent that covers technology related to a method for previewing images.

Separately, Kodak filed two suits today against Apple that claim the infringement of patents related to digital cameras and certain computer processes.

In a statement, Kodak says it remains open to negotiating an agreement with both Apple and RIM, which it claims to have tried reaching for years.

Kodak says it has licensed digital imaging technology to some 30 companies, including major players like Nokia, Samsung, LG and Motorola, and that all those companies currently pay royalties to Kodak over use of its patented technology.

Said Laura G. Quatela, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, and Vice President, Eastman Kodak Company:

“Kodak has a long history of digital imaging innovation and we have invested hundreds of millions of dollars creating our industry-leading patent portfolio. In the case of Apple and RIM, we’ve had discussions for years with both companies in an attempt to resolve this issue amicably, and we have not been able to reach a satisfactory agreement. In light of that, we are taking this action to ensure that we protect the interests of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology.

Our primary interest is not to disrupt the availability of any product but to obtain fair compensation for the use of our technology. There’s a basic issue of fairness that needs to be addressed. Those devices use Kodak technology, and we are merely seeking compensation for the use of our technology in their products.”

On Dec. 17, in an action involving Samsung and Kodak, an ITC Administrative Law Judge issued a ruling declaring that the Kodak patent covering color image preview (No. 6,292,218) was valid and enforceable, and that Samsung’s camera-enabled mobile devices infringed upon that Kodak patent. Samsung and Kodak have since settled.

Kodak is now seeking from the ITC a limited exclusion order preventing the importation of infringing devices marketed by Apple and RIM.

In both U.S. District Court actions against Apple, Kodak is seeking to permanently enjoin Apple from further infringement as well as unspecified damages.

In the first suit against the Cupertino tech giant in District Court, Kodak alleges infringement of two patents generally covering image preview and the processing of images of different resolutions. In the second suit, Kodak alleges infringement of patents that describe a method by which a computer program can “ask for help” from another application to carry out certain computer-oriented functions.

The patent at issue in that suit, Kodak notes, was also the subject of litigation with Sun Microsystems, in which a federal jury in 2004 found Sun’s Java software infringed; that case was settled by Sun paying Kodak for a license for the patents.

The Slice has a large rear screen with touch controls. You slide through photos with your fingers and then tap little icons to set sharing. Dave wrote up the main specs:

The cutely named Slice is a seemingly typical P&S camera, albeit with a 14MP sensor and the previously mentioned touchscreen interface. It’ll shoot 720p 30 FPS video, features image stabilization and a lithium ion battery, just like the other cameras in this market segment. Kodak really isn’t doing anything new with the Slice, however I will have to admit I do like the look of the little guy. The price may be a bit of a problem though, it’s going to MSRP for $350 which might be a bit steep for the casual purchaser. Expect to see the Kodak Slice at your favorite electronics retailer sometime in April 2010.

Video after the jump.


The Playsport shoots at 1080p and has an HDMI out along with an SD card slot for expansion. It is rubberized and the slots are kept safe and dry with little flaps. It will cost $140 Both will be available in April.

It shoots at 1080p, which is nice, but to be honest they were already pushing it with 720p. These little cams just don’t have the lenses for it. Still, you can always resize, and it’s all going to be on YouTube in the end, anyway. They should be available in April for $150.

The cutely named Slice is a seemingly typical P&S camera, albeit with a 14MP sensor and the previously mentioned touchscreen interface. It’ll shoot 720p 30 FPS video, features image stabilization and a lithium ion battery, just like the other cameras in this market segment. Kodak really isn’t doing anything new with the Slice, however I will have to admit I do like the look of the little guy. The price may be a bit of a problem though, it’s going to MSRP for $350 which might be a bit steep for the casual purchaser. Expect to see the Kodak Slice at your favorite electronics retailer sometime in April 2010.

From the press release:

KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera Lets You Share and Relive Moments Instantly

New Digital Camera Boasts Sleek Exterior with Thousands of KODAK Moments Inside

Rochester, NY, January 7, 2010 – Eastman Kodak Company today announced the latest addition to its consumer digital product portfolio, designed to make it easier than ever for people to share pictures with family and friends anytime, anywhere. The KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera lets consumers carry a personal photo album worth sharing and reliving at all times. With a sleek and intuitive 3.5-inch touchscreen, and the KODAK SLICE Search Feature, consumers can find the pictures they want from up to 5,000 that can be stored on internal memory. Then, they can easily share those pictures right from the back of the camera.

“Kodak knows that consumers want the ability to share life’s memories at a moment’s notice, whether it’s pictures that evoke a tear or just the funny everyday moments,” said John Blake, General Manager, Digital Capture and Devices and Vice President, Kodak. “The power of sharing and reliving life’s moments drove the development of our new SLICE Camera. It provides instant access to all of your KODAK Moments, and it’s right at your fingertips.”

Store, Sort and Share with the SLICE Camera
With the ability to store up to 5,000 pictures in HD resolution, the SLICE Camera’s onboard KODAK SLICE Search Feature and Face Recognition allow consumers to sort through thousands of pictures by person, place, date, or occasion in order to locate and share a collection of treasured moments.

The touchscreen and Share Button allow consumers to tag pictures directly on the camera for effortless uploading to popular sharing sites including Facebook, KODAK Gallery, Flickr, and YouTube. Pictures can also be tagged to email or to send directly to the new KODAK PULSE Digital Frame.

KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera features include:
• Intuitive 3.5-inch, 16:9 LCD touchscreen with anti-reflective coating
• KODAK SLICE Search Feature and Face Recognition to easily sort, locate and share pictures
• Share Button for easy upload to Facebook, KODAK Gallery, Flickr, YouTube sites and e-mail
• Store up to 5,000 pictures in HD resolution
• Stunning image quality with a 14MP CCD sensor and 5X SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH Lens
• Built-in optical image stabilization
• 720p/30fps HD video capture
• Kodak’s exclusive Smart Capture feature, which analyzes scenes and automatically adjusts camera settings to deliver beautiful pictures more often
• Compatible with PC or APPLE iLife Software
• Li-Ion rechargeable battery included
The KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera will be available in black, nickel and radish for US $349.95 MSRP beginning in April 2010. Best Buy will initially be the exclusive retailer for in-store sales. The KODAK SLICE Touchscreen Camera will also be sold online at Amazon.com and Kodak.com.
Kodak is also introducing a case for the SLICE Camera, which was designed in a competition among accessories students at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. The final case design was chosen by celebrated designer Steve Madden and FIT faculty.
*Colors and availability may vary by region

The fact that it doesn’t own the @Kodak handle on Twitter hasn’t stopped them from being active on the popular micro-sharing service either, where marketers of the company and several employees from its international office locations share all sorts of Kodak related stuff with their followers.

Of course, it’s only natural for a company like Kodak to share pictures with the community, and if you look closely you’ll see most of the Kodak accounts on Twitter use TweetPhoto to do so (e.g. @JeffreyHayzlett, CMO of Kodak). That’s not a coincidence.

First launched back in April 2009, TweetPhoto has been steadily building out its service with multiple useful features and that has worked out well for the startup. According to Compete, TwitPic is still the leader of the pack, but the graph below shows TweetPhoto (blue line) is close to overtaking ImageShack’s Yfrog while TwitPic’s traffic appears to be in a downward trend for the past few months.

TweetPhoto is now the default photo sharing app on TweetDeck for iPhone, one of the most popular Twitter clients for the platform, and it is also integrated with many other mobile applications, including for Blackberry devices (already on Ubertwitter and coming later this week on SocialScope).

The service may look like a dog – a redesign is in the works – but they must clearly be doing something right.

Now the fledgling company is announcing that it has struck a partnership agreement with Kodak, under which the two companies intend to collaborate on initiatives focused around real-time photography and photo sharing on the web. Basically, that means they will be co-developing, testing and launching new products and services together, centered around the nature of the realtime web and image sharing.

The first lovechild of the two companies has already been born: meet the real-time Event Photo Stream, which essentially functions as an aggregator for both photos and tweets around a conversation using a given hashtag. The photo stream was originally released at the 140 Conference last month and will be demoed this week in Los Angeles at the Underground @ PDC event.

TweetPhoto has also let us know it has engaged in initial talks with angel and institutional investor about a potential seed funding round – the startup has been completely been bootstrapped to date.

Keep an eye on this one.

Hewlett-Packard: NUH-UH! You’re a big fat liar, Kodak! We’re the cheapest cost-per-page.

Kodak: Pfffft!

Hewlett-Packard: Stop it! I’m telling! Hey CrunchGear! Kodak is being mean!!

CrunchGear: What? Huh? Don’t make me stop this car!

Full disclosure: Hewlett Packard’s PR team asked us to compare the HP C6380 against the Kodak ESP 7 with the intent of showing HP’s superior quality, in addition to evaluating the cost-per-page comparison. No gifts or money were given to me. I didn’t get to keep the printers, only the photos I printed out.

I’ve long been a fan of HP printers, and when I was a lowly sales clerk at an office supply store all those years ago I would almost always recommend the HP DeskJet 600C over the competing Epson and Canon printers (I told you it was years ago!).

My personal preferences aside, I am a rational adult, and able to read the fine print on marketing websites. So let’s take a look at the claims made by both parties, and see what caveats and exceptions exist. Then we’ll dig into the subjective aspects of both printers.

Kodak throws down the gauntlet
Kodak has a fancy website, www.printandprosper.com, at which they will calculate for you how much money you’re wasting with your non-Kodak printer. According to this site, the HP C6380 costs $221.20 extra per year over the Kodak offering.

There’s a big ol’ asterisk after that number, and the fine print links to www.kodak.com/go/inkdata, which allows us to drill down to the U.S. detail report.

HP pushes back
The Truth About Printing is HP’s response to the Kodak advertising campaign. It’s a marketing effort, too, so don’t expect to see a lot of nitty-gritty numerical analysis without some clicking.

Instead of trying to fight on the cost-per-page issue, which they’ll pretty clearly lose, HP instead claims that their product is superior. Some of the features that HP touts will be pretty compelling to most users. Individual color ink tanks, for example, mean less waste. Some HP features, like Bluetooth printing from iPhones direct to HP printers, are of interest to only limited subsets of users.

Devil in the details
Way back when I was selling HP DeskJet 600C printers, the leading contender was the Canon BJC-600. The HP printer used a tri-color ink tank, while the Canon used separate tanks for each color. At the time, I let my passion for HP products influence my salesmanship, and I steered many a customer toward the tried-and-true DeskJet, even though the Canon afforded a more economical long-term outlook. If you use a lot of blue ink — because your company logo is solid blue, perhaps, — the separate ink tank design will allow you to replace just the blue ink when it runs out. When you run out of blue in a tri-color tank, you end up throwing out perfectly good ink just so you can insert a new tri-color cartridge to replenish your supply of blue.

The HP C6380 uses five separate ink tanks: cyan, magenta, yellow, photo black, and regular black. When you run out of one, you only need to replace that one. The Kodak ESP 7 uses two ink tanks: a five color tank and a black tank. If you exhaust all of one color, you’ll need to replace all five colors, regardless of how much may be left of those other colors. It may well be cheaper to replace the five color tank every time, but is that the kind of wasteful behavior you want to encourage, let alone participate in?

The other major difference between Kodak and HP is the kind of ink they use. Kodak uses pigment based inks, while HP uses dye based inks. Both produce great results most of the time, and ink type alone probably shouldn’t be a determining factor when selecting a photo printer, but there are some differences that are worth exploring.

Objective tests
Did you know that the ISO — the International Standards Organization — actually has tests for photo printers? ISO standard DIS 18935 is “Determination of indoor water resistance of printed colour images”. The test basically involves submerging a photograph in water for 60 minutes and seeing what happens.

So what happens? The Kodak pigment based printer ink is susceptible to water. A single drop of water on the photo is enough to remove substantial amounts of pigment, effectively ruining the photo. The HP ink, which is dye based, is not affected by the drop of water at all. No amount of smudging or scrubbing resulted in any blemishes.

The Kodak print is on top, and you can clearly see the blemish left from smudging a single drop of water. The HP print, below, shows a slight streak, but that faded as the water dried.

Submerging both photos in water for even a minute is enough to see the damage that can occur. The Kodak paper curls pretty badly. And the pigment suffers from water as just described. The HP paper retains its form, and resists the adverse effects of water.

The Kodak print, at the top, curls pretty badly after only a minute in the water. The HP paper stays firm, and holds its shape.

Subjective tests
I printed a lot of photos from both of these printers. The truth is that the output quality of each is superb. There are modest differences that result from pigment versus dye based inks. To my eye, the pigment based inks generally produce deeper blacks, but as a result they tend to lose some details in the dark portions of photos. For example, the photo in the top of this post: the Kodak printer is black, and when printed on the Kodak printer it looks sharply black. The same photo printed on the HP doesn’t look quite as black, but I can see more reflection on the surface of the printer — a detail which is lost in the Kodak print.

I actually like the HP print better. I like seeing the details in the photo. As an amateur photographer, I like knowing that some of the nuance I see in the lens will be reproduced in the print out. My lovely wife prefers the Kodak print, claiming that the colors are sharper. Who am I to argue with my wife?

I found the Kodak Windows driver to be much better than the HP, though. This has nothing at all to do with cost per page or output quality, but should be a concern when selecting a printer. I hate printer drivers that take over your computer, and ruin your life with popup reminders about your printer. The Kodak driver had a much smaller footprint, and was much less invasive.

For the average user, both printers include software to touch up photos before printing them. For the sake of completeness, I polluted my system with these applications, so that I could include their utility in my discussion. Both did a perfectly fine job — basically just auto adjusting the color levels, which you can do yourself in Photoshop or the GIMP. The Kodak touch-up process was remarkably faster, though. It brightened up the photos and sent them off to the printer in no time at all. The HP software churned and churned, finally showing a slightly enhanced version of the photo, which I was prompted to save as a copy before sending to the printer.

A word of advice: please show your family members how to use some dedicated photo editing software — Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Acorn, heck even Picnik — so that they can adjust colors and crop photos on their own, without using the half-baked software usually included with the printers.

The Bottom Line
As I’ve said several times, I like HP printers. I buy HP printers myself. It’s just something I do, the way my dad only buys Ford automobiles. My preference for HP does not prevent me from recognizing good stuff from other vendors, though. The Kodak ESP 7 — and presumably most of the other Kodak printers on the market today — is a perfectly acceptable printer. Were I to receive one as a gift, or if it were the only printer available for me to buy, I’d be completely satisfied with it. Output quality is good, print speeds are impressive, and the overall featureset is noteworthy.

I’m as leery of Kodak’s marketing claims as I am of HP’s rebuttal claims. Cost-per-page is an important consideration when buying a printer, but it’s not the only consideration. If cost-per-page were the only thing that mattered, we’d all print our photos at the nearest drug store, or Wal-Mart.

Pocket video cameras might eventually be killed off by the iPod horde, but that doesn’t mean that the current crop aren’t worth your time. The Kodak Zi6 HD is a nice little camera and Woot has a nice deal one ‘em today.

Amazon sells the pocket cam for $122, but if you can deal with a refurb, Woot has one for only $69.99. You even get your choice of black, pink, or red. The little camera can capture 720p video at 60 fps with 16:9 aspect ratio. All that media gets stored on a SD/SDHC card and you can get about 40 minutes to fit on a 2GB card. Don’t expect production quality video out of it, but we use these cameras all the time and they get the job done.