Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Lady Gaga and Polaroid partner on Camera Sunglasses




Polaroid asked for Lady GaGa’s help on some product designs and developed a pair of picture taking sunglasses.  Oh sure, there were the average run of the mill items like a special thermal color printer and a digital camera that prints pictures, but the sunglass camera is the ultimate in unique fashion/photo wear.

Lady GaGa was named Polaroid’s Creative Director a year ago.  Since then, she designed a series of products called the Grey Label line which includes the GL20 Camera Sunglasses, GL10 Instant Mobile Printer and GL30 Instant Digital Camera.  The most intriguing of the three is of course, the GL20 Camera Sunglasses.

The GL20 will allow you to take pictures and videos with a camera embedded in the frame in the nose piece.  Each lens over an eye contains an LCD screen so that you can display your pictures and videos instantly to those around you.

The arm of the sunglasses is also a USB drive.  You can plug the arm into your computer, digital photo screen or other device to download and display them at a later date.  You can also send the pictures via Bluetooth to a Bluetooth enabled printer like the GL10 Instant Mobile Printer.  The GL10 will print up to 40 pictures per charge and 10 pictures per film cartridge.

The printer uses special ZINK technology and ZINK Photo Paper that has a gazillion tiny tiny ink dots that are activated by heat by the printer.  This modern thermal paper uses many of the same principles as the old thermal printers but the color images last much longer.
"The ZINK Paper® is an advanced composite material with cyan, yellow, and magenta dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside. Before printing, ZINK Paper looks like regular white photo paper. 

Through an advanced manufacturing process, the ZINK® color forming layers are coated as a colorless thin multi-layer "stack" onto a base layer. The total thickness of all the layers combined is about the thickness of a single human hair. The cyan, magenta, and yellow crystal layers are colorless at room temperature and are activated by heat during the printing process to create color."
The amazing thing about all of this is that you can walk around taking pictures everywhere you go simply by wearing sunglasses that function as both eye protection and a camera.  Depending on who you are with, or what you plan to do with the pictures, you can either save them until you get back to a computer, download them to a phone or tablet that you have with you or pull the printer out of your pocket and print a few to hand around for your next drink.

The GL20 Camera Sunglasses are futuristic in appearance and function.  Can you imagine people walking around in sunglasses who are also displaying pictures and movies on the lenses?  Just imagine Mr. Smith in the movie Matrix with a pair.

Oh no, tell me it isn’t true. Will Price and Reid split? Will Reid’s celebrity status deflate – just like popping a pin in an inflated bazooka. How does it feel to walk around with two massive soccer balls on your chest? Will all be revealed? Clear the diary! I wait with baited breath for this announcement.

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