The Instagram Camera Appears to Be a Real Thing

I thought this was just a whim on the part of a product designer, a few months ago: a little digicam built to resemble Instagram’s logo. I did a gag post about it then, then another when the idea gathered a little momentum. And this week Wired is reporting that it’s moved a few steps closer to becoming an actual product. The folks building this thing want to use Zink, the technology (“zero ink”) created at Polaroid in the years surrounding the first bankruptcy, then spun off as an independent company and licensed back to Polaroid’s new owners.  It’s the same method of image-making deployed in the Polaroid GL10 printer and a few other products.

It’s a weird product: the point of Instagram (to me, anyway) is that it’s integrated with your phone, and this isn’t. That said, it is also a pleasant little object, and heaven knows that I believe in the value of a physical printed photograph. Who’s to argue?