In early February, Polaroid Corp., the Massachusetts Company that gave the world instant film photography, announced they would be shutting down its film manufacturing lines in the state and abandoning the technology that made it famous and popular for the past 60 years. The company will retain about 150 employees and will now focus on flat-panel TVs and digital photography gear.

Among the new upcoming innovations, is the Polaroid PoGo™ Instant Mobile Printer – a small portable printer, which will let people print on the go. This printer is the first of its kind, using Zink - the zero-ink technology. No more need of printer cartridges! And because there is no ink, the Zink printer has the unique benefits of being small, simple, elegant, and mostly eco-friendly.

The secret is in the paper; the PoGo’s thermal print head activates dye crystals in the glossy photo paper. Sheets of the 2-by-3-inch printer are thinner than the old Polaroid print paper and contain three layers of primary colors suspended in the paper itself. The print is ready usually within 60 seconds.

The PoGo is designed to mostly print snapshots from a digital camera or a camera phone. It connects to cell phones via Bluetooth, and Polaroid says that the printer is compatible with over 80 percent of the cell phone models on the market that are equipped with Bluetooth and a camera. The PoGo also connects to PictBridge-enabled cameras via USB and to your PC.

As with the original Polaroid cameras, the main attraction of the printer is to obtain instant gratification, while it also offers mobility. The printer sells for $150 and holds 10 pieces of paper at a time. The paper conveniently comes in packages of 10 sheets for $4.

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So I am sitting here, typing away on a very typical, albeit quite uninspiring PC computer keypad, musing on just how much time I really do spend clobbering away on this input device. The answer is quite a lot. I began to wonder, would typing on a more intriguing device allow my creativity level to increase? This set me on a path to find some of the more intriguing keyboards invented in recent years, that I know will boost my productivity level as well as creativity level. The following keyboards are all going on my Christmas list!

Traditional Japanese Style Keyboards

One of the most beautifully patterned keyboards I have ever seen. I am sure these keyboards will bring tranquility and zen into my daily work flow. These keyboards are handmade, so be sure to place your order early over here. Via InventorSpot and AkihabaraNews.

Tablecloth Keyboard

Tonia Welter has a solution for those of us who want to keep their keyboard tidy. This fully functional keyboard has its electronics woven directly into the fabric which lay in between layers of water resistant felt. Now I can cuddle with my keyboard while I type and eat.

Colorful LED keyboard

So cool! Christmas came early this year, and is fully customizable. This colorful keyboard is designed by Korean company Luxeed, and comes with a program that can help you customize the blinking lights whichever way you want. You can make the keys glow only when your hit them, create your own patterns, or simply set it to glow in one single color of your choice. Via Geekalert and Luxeed.

Steampunk Workshop

Homemade keyboard. You can make one for yourself as well if you follow the instruction here. Reminds me of the roaring ’20s.

Optimus Maximus Keyboard

One of the most highly desired keyboard out there. However with price tag of $1500, most of us will probably only have a chance to play with this keyboard in our dreams at night. Optimus’s customizable layout allows convenient use of any language,as well as of any other character set: notes, numerals, special symbols, HTML codes, math functions and so on to infinity. Designed by Art Lebedev.

Macintosh

Sexy, zexy, and completely affordable. Available at Apple Stores everywhere!

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In case you haven’t been bombarded enough by the unveiling of the iPhone 3G, you may just have to hear about it one more time, because, we, the creative minds behind the Office Supply Blog, are of that religion. We understand that the majority of you guys are still under the monopolistic hold of Microsoft Windows, however that is about to change.

Let me reinterpret some of the more important features of iPhone 3G to all you latent Apple fans:

1. Support for Microsoft Exchange: Fortune 500 companies everywhere will drop the Blackberry as the main mobile device so fast, you won’t know where it disappeared to.
2. Better, faster: 3G technology allows iPhone fast access to internet and email, will make it easier for office workers everywhere to mix work and play.
3. $199 price tag: it was $599 merely a year ago, 2/3 price drop means the new iPhone will be ubiquitous.
4. Enterprise applications: Apple recently opened the iPhone to outside development programs, as in there will be so many fun business applications to help your daily office tasks simpler, easier, and funner.

Here is what we predict will happen in post iPhone 3G world:

1. Microsoft looses 80% of market share because corporations worldwide eventually switch to Macintosh operating system because of the iPhone 3G. Will become such a rare commodity that they become hip again, establish their own cult following, and still manages to make boatload of money auctioning “antique” Windows operating systems on Ebay.
2. Research in Motion and Palm merge, produce a baby that’s so ugly they both have to file for bankruptcy.
3. Steve Jobs is declared National Treasure, and is the only human being granted the right to clone himself due to his importance to “National Security Issues”.

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The votes are in. Thank you guys for voting. For a complete description of the dads we identified, please see the post on Which Dad is he? It looks like overwhelming amount of people have dads from the past, followed by ties between the tree-hugging dad and the trophy dad. The dad who never was came in a close third, and the mom among dads came in last. Now that you guys all have identified your dads according to his work habitats, it’s now time to get that gift that will make his day. For the following dads, we recommend:

Dad From the Past

Conclusion: he missed the lesson on the information economy, and the burden and speed of the 21st century is really catching up with him, anything to help him minimize, digitize and organize would be a great gift.

New laptop: with the recent advance in technology, computers are practically approaching negative pricing. Laptops are great because they are powerful, portable, and they don’t take up much space. Your dad sure could use more computing power and more space in his office. This particular laptop is the award winning Lenovo Thinkpad, which is currently priced at only $516 at our store.

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To set the tone for the relaunch of our blog, we wanted to post something that will hopefully define the style of our future posts to come. We wanted this post to incorporate a little bit of beauty, a little bit of function, a little bit of humor, a little bit of sustainability, a little bit of destructive inventiveness, and a lot of plain old fun! Something that truly caught our eye were these spectacular reuse of a workplace essential- the bic pen. Now they are just as useful off the clock, as on the clock.

Din-ink

All I can say is, for all those times during school and childhood, having being disciplined for the nervous habit of chewing up my pens, this wonderful concoction of pen caps and eating utensils can finally be the reason I can proudly return to my favorite childhood pastime. Now if there is only some gourmet lunch meal I can terrorize with these wonderful cutleries. Din-ink is designed by 3 Italian designers for DesignBoom’s Dining in 2015 competition. Not only are these utensils futuristic in concept, they are futuristic and environmentally friendly in material fabrication as well. Din-ink is made of natural starch and is heat-resistant, and is completely biodegradable in 180 days.

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