technizzel

Whether you’re at a party, a wedding, a birthday, or just chilling with some friends on a Friday afternoon, a camera has always found itself at the scene as well. With our digital cameras, we forgo the limitations of the 24 film rolls and click away to albums with fifty or more photos. The onset of Facebook^® has only furthered this interest of capturing every moment at every event, as every picture is now shared with all your friends with teasing captions to highlight the emotions.

Now and then, though, there comes that arduous task of showing Grandma what you have been up to in those past months, and oddly enough she is not your Facebook^® friend and cannot see those embarrassing images of you at 2 AM in Cancun. Thus, you are left with the option of printing them out from your computer, slowly sucking the very ink that would fuel your term papers into a one-inch thick album of random innocuous pictures of you.

Imagine, now, an alternative that saves your ink, your time, and is fast and easy to use. Clearly that argument has won you over, and that is exactly what Zink^® claims with its product. Zink^® (Zero INK) is a fully-funded start-up company that grew from the Polaroid^® Company in 2005. Since then, the company has channeled its name throughout the country by sponsoring the ideals of promoting new technology, innovating ideas, and creating a future without ink. The key to Zink^®’s success, having birthed over twenty billion prints in the United States alone in 2007, is the unique paper.

This paper’s special technology enables for the images to print on surface without the messy hassle of wet ink or replacing empty ink cartridges. As zink.com explains, this paper is “an advanced composite material with dye crystals embedded inside and a protective polymer overcoat layer outside”. These crystals are colorless before printing, resembling regular white photo printing paper, however with the use of heat, Zink^®’s printer activates the crystals to render perfect digital images from your camera.

The most enticing aspect of this product is the size of the printer. In this day and age, where the smaller it is, the better it is, Zink^® printers can fit in the palm of your hand, in your pocket, become attached to your cell phone, or just mundanely sit on your desk. Anywhere, anytime you want a picture, just print!

While the paper is water-resistant, resists fading from exposure to light, heat and humidity, affordable, non-toxic and earth-friendly, as well as durable, Zink^® also provides even more incentives to buy its product. With high-resolution colors on paper not sensitive to light these pictures will never lose color with age. Regardless of the size of the picture, the speed is fast, the process is efficient, as there is nothing to throw away. No more ribbons, toner, or ink- it’s Zink^® time!

The future may be a little short of the Space Odyssey’s expectations, but that doesn’t deter Zink^® from experimenting with smaller printers, newer forms of paper, and other unfathomable printing phenomenons. At least at the moment, you can just zink Grandma images- less time, no ink. And that’s right- for the future, zink is the new print; it’s all about the future now.

Video Link: http://www.zink.com/discover/how_ZINK_works/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Chemistry, Materials Science, Gadgets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.