Grant Baldwin Lists ScanMyPhotos.com

Grant Baldwin’s Blog "In Case You’re Bored This Weekend…Episode 9" mentions ScanMyPhotos.com:

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Review: ScanMyPhotos.com (via Toblerhaus Blog)

Customer Review - Click here to read entire blog posting and sample photo scans.

EXCERPT:

Apr. 3rd, 2009 at 8:39 PM
Recently, I was sitting in the waiting room at the chiropractor, thumbing through the latest issue of Money magazine. A small advertisement caught my eye...ScanMyPhotos.com. The idea is simple. You send them your printed photos, they scan them, and return your original photos, plus a DVD with digital copies of the same photos. Cool!I came home and started reading up on the company. I liked what I read.

They are getting a lot of positive press, plus plenty of positive consumer reviews. So, I decided to give them a try. I sent a shoe box full of 4x6 pictures as a "test run." Man, it felt creepy to send off my honeymoon photos, college photos, and many more that only exist in ONE copy, as the negatives are long gone. I sent 903 photos, which weighted about 7.5 pounds.

Even thought the company is here in California, it still ran close to $20 for shipping, as I chose certified Priority Mail. It could have been as cheap as $13, though. Anyway, ScanMyPhotos.com has these super cool mega scanners (that cost $40,000 each!) that scan super fast. They scanned all of my photos within 1 day of receiving them, and they were back on the road to me, also via Priority Mail. I am *so happy* with the results. The paper photos were well packed, and look just as they did when I sent them off. I quickly copied the DVD onto my hard drive, and viola! I've got digital shots at my fingertips

. These pictures have been stashed away in boxes and photo albums for years, and they're finally getting the "face time" that they deserve!I've already in the process of pulling together my next order of photos, and hope to convince my Mom to join in on a "fill the box" deal. I love the idea of having our entire family history in digital format. The only pics we can't send in are those that are smaller than 3x3, larger than 10x12, ones that have been cut into funky shapes, and copyrighted photos (duh). Otherwise, I'm getting it all scanned! Just to share a few newly scanned, favorite oldies...

[Source: Toblerhaus Blog]

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What's Your Favorite Photo?

SHARE YOUR PHOTO WITH THE QUEEN

President Barack Obama presented Queen Elizabeth II with an iPod during his European visit. This got us to thinking: if you could add one picture to Her Majesty The Queen's iPod gift what would it be? The scene on January 20th during the inauguration on the mall in Washington D.C.? A photo of your family from decades ago gathered at the gates in front of Buckingham Palace that was digitized at ScanMyPhotos.com?

Having scanned tens of millions of photos since 1990, ScanMyPhotos.com can think of many special pictures to share. Follow us on Twitter and post the picture you want to share with Her Majesty The Queen. With technology today, who knows, perhaps she will be surfing the Net and come across your photo to add to her iPod. After all, The 82-year-old Queen is known to present visiting dignitary with a signed photo of herself and Prince Philip in a silver frame.

For more info on ScanMyPhotos.com, click here.

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What People Are Saying About ScanMyPhotos.com

This is from blogger, "Rose The Gypsy"

Vindication for non-scrappers

Don't you hate all those scrap book makers! Well, here is the vindication for all of us who just put our pictures in shoe boxes. You can have all your photos scanned, but they have to be loose and organized by size. You send the pre-ordered box with the photos and a DVD of the images (along with the photos) are shipped back within 24 hours. It was written up in our local paper.

The writer is halfway through sorting her photos to ship. Check it out at http://www.scanmyphotos.com/ .I need to "count" my photos and see how many I have. It would be nice to move with just a few CD's or flash drives of photos rather than all those shoe boxes. Wonder how long it would take for me to go through my boxes? Another project.

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Face.com Brings Facial Recognition To Facebook Photos

Photo Finder facial recognition app for Facebook

One of the more common questions regularly asked by ScanMyPhotos.com customers is about how to organize your generations of family photos after it has been digitized. While it is super easy to batch and categorize the photos in groups and rename the files to better identify the subjects in each photo, here is another recommendation. Facebook.com provides a new application tool for recognizing the subject within a photo; this means that, for example, the pictures of your relatives can be identified and sorted electronically. As we digitize millions of phortos, this is an importabnt tool for helping to unclutter and better orgainze your photo images.

Click here for additional media coverage.

Here is more info from a recent TechCrunch.com article:

If there is one feature on Facebook which delivers “social utility” magic even to the most average of users, it’s Photos. In fact the feature is so popular that by Facebook’s own account 1 billion photos are uploaded every month—a staggering number that makes it the largest photo site on the Web. However, as with all good things, there are also drawbacks, and in this case discovery is high on the list. While Facebook makes it super easy to discover photos in which you were tagged, there is no chance that every one of those billion photos are tagged each month. And that leaves a big opportunity.

Let me put it another way: How many photos of you are there on Facebook that you’re completely unaware of? Israeli-based Face.com will help you find them with ‘Photo Finder,’ a Facebook app that uses facial recognition to help members locate untagged photos of themselves and their friends. We have 200 special access invites available to TechCrunch readers who will be granted first access to the app, as well as preference on the waiting list.

Get your invite here.

Once installed, the app will begin scanning you and your friends’ photo albums, a process that requires a bit of time to complete, but the welcome screen will immediately display photos that were ‘Auto Tagged’. Users can either accept, decline or identify the correct individual themselves. The only users
that have veto power to alter or decline a tag are the person who uploaded the photo and the person tagged.

Facial recognition technology is taking off. Competing technology can be found in both Apple’s iPhoto and Google’s Picasa, but those are limited to searching only your personal collection of photos (although iPhoto lets you upload them with the tags to Facebook). With Photo Finder, you are not limited to your own photo collection. Users can search manually for photos of friends or browse for recently tagged ones. Users can also track specific users by flagging them for the “Watch List”. Photo Finder will prompt hits via Facebook’s ‘Notification’ window.

The facial recognition technology was developed from scratch by the Face.com team over a year and half. It was designed from the ground up as a low-cost platform to meet two specific requirements: The first is recognition of “Faces in the Wild”. This applies to everyday photos that suffer from such issues as low resolution or bad lighting, or where faces are obscured with sunglasses, for example. The second requirement is to have the technology be scalable. In this respect Face.com claims to be able to perform facial recognition on all one billion photos currently uploaded into Facebook every single month using only a few machines.

Photo Finder scans the photos of users and all their friends, along with “other albums in your wider network where there’s a high likelihood of your (or friends’) appearances.” To understand the sheer volume of backend work required, consider the following statistics: The first 150 users in Face.com’s system required 20 million photos to be scanned, resulting in 30,000 identified faces. My personal installation of the app required it to scan 79,449 photos which resulted in 11,933 tags of myself and my friends. Photo Finder will then go back and re-scan the albums after its initial scan to identify newly added photos.

The social tagging feature within Facebook Photos gives Face.com a major boost because it can use those tags to train its system. It is important to note that Photo Finder does not add or alter acebook’s own photo tags. Tagging that occurs through the app is stored in metadata accessible through the Photo Finder app alone. Also noteworthy is the fact that from a privacy perspective Photo Finder piggy-backs on the users’ Facebook settings and does not alter them in any way. Also, none of the photos are stored on Face.com’s servers. These only perform the heavy lifting required for the facial recognition and the storing of tags added through the app.

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Two U.S. Photo Mags Up for Sale, incl Popular Photo

According to PhotographyBlog.com, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. is set to sell Popular Photography and American Photo, among other titles. Hachette is looking to sell a whole group of enthusiast magazines, and the two photography periodicals are part of this group, Advertising Age reports.

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Dealerscope Magazine Profile on ScanMyPhotos.com

click here to view article


Dealerscope - Mitch Goldstone, President and CEO of ScanMyPhotos.com (Irvine, CA)

By, Audrey Gray

Ever heard of "National Photo Preservation Month"? Don't worry if you missed it this January, it's still a new concept, but proof of a rare form of retail audacity: make-it-up-as-you-go-along marketing.

National Photo Preservation Month was just the latest brainchild of Mitch Goldstone, president and CEO of a photo specialty store in Irvine, California, that has evolved, in recent years, to become the celebrated brand Scanmyphotos.com.

Goldstone wants Americans especially to send him their shoe boxes of old photographs so he can first convert the pix to digital files and then covert those files into high-margin photo books, posters, calendars, collages and Kodak Picture DVDs. And he's come up with a remarkable variety of marketing ploys to get them to do just that, even in the tumultuous last six months.

"The economy has no relevance to what's going on with this business," said Goldstone, a native New Yorker whose ballsy business attitude has earned him a reputation as a doer in industry organizations like the International Photo Marketing Association. "Sales are exponentially increasing day-to-day, week to week... we have tripled our staff in the last year. I just hired someone else yesterday, even in this economy."

Goldstone's niche success is based on a simple ideas: specialty retailers must change with the times, finding a new niche service for every age, and then use every modern means of communication out there to publicize the niche. When Goldstone and business partner Carl Berman opened their Orange County store, 30 Minute Photos Etc., back in 1990, their niche was to be a quick turn-around photo lab for the thousands of Californians who passed by daily on the freeways. It worked for a while, until the turn of the century hit and with it, the demise of film processing.

"Back then, business was exponentially plunging off the cliff," remembers Goldstone. "It was the perfect storm where after 9-11, people stopped travelling, stopped spending money, stopped film-based picture taking. We were all set for digital, even setting up online ordering, but no one ordered!

"It was time for a reinvention, something Goldstone says they later decided to make a habit. They set about to turn their store into a social gathering place, offering customers a creative space to learn about getting images off of memory cards. Partnering with Kodak, they set up comfortable digital work spaces, put up compelling examples of the latest picture products and created a website with a blog that offers a constant supply of ideas and photography tips. They turned their customers' e-mail addresses into a direct marketing resource, regularly sending out newsletters that included special promotions and coupons.

"Mitch's online presence is phenomenal," said Megan Schneider, Worldwide partnership Marketing Manager for Kodak. "He really has a way with marketing in-store too. He's put up big screens in his store where customers can view Picture Movie DVDs as they are made. Everyone is just swept away. He runs loops on new products too."

Goldstone's most successful reinvention, however, has nothing to do with brick and mortar. In 2006, he launched scanmyphotos.com, an online service which allows customers worldwide to safely ship their old photo prints to Irvine, where they are scanned and digitized for a flat rate (typically, $64 for 1,000 pictures), and then returned right away.

The service tapped into an enormous need (Goldstone says there are 3.5 trillion analog pictures out there, sometimes as many as 5,000 per household) and, after a couple of ramp up years, was featured in David Pogue's popular New York Times technology column.

"We rethink, reinvent, restyle, and return to profitability," said Goldstone, who isn't resting on his success. A few months ago, he converted his printing technology to Kodak's APEX system, a fast, chemical-free dry lab that allows him to produce 2200 prints an hour. "All eco-friendly," he added.

His marketing campaign is progressing as well. In addition to creating and promoting National Photo Preservation Month, Goldstone has been experimenting with online social networking. "We've made an occasional offer where we do free scanning--you pay $19.95 for the shipping--but the only requirement is that you post a review on your Facebook page or blog," he said. "I think that kind of thing makes customers feel like they've latched on to the new high-tech company."

About Dealerscope: The publication gives retail readers the knowledge they need to make the right decisions in the fast-moving consumer technology market. It helps retail- ers to more profitably market and sell consumer technology. Most importantly, Dealerscope assists manufacturers and distributors in communicating best practices to retail.

[source: Dealerscope]

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Feedback: What Customers Are Writing About ScanMyPhotos.com

Dear Sir,

Several months ago I sent (3) boxes of photos to your company. Many of the old photos had no surviving negatives. I also sent about 8 years of photos taken of my kids in their younger years that were shot with a Instamatic 110 camera. Those negatives were curled and had turned to a bluish hue. All photos were scanned and returned within one week. They came out magnificent. I had copies made and they looked as good as the original.

I always feared something would happen to my photos. Property can be replaced but photos of family and my children are priceless. I have a duplicate copy now stored at my brothers home.

I can now rest peacefully knowing that the family history is preserved thanks to your invaluable service.

You are all the greatest people.

Sincerely,
Eric E. Huntoon

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Photo Op: President Obama Orange County Visit

How to instantly save 50% off all Kodak photo kiosk orders at ScanMyPhotos.com [30 Minute Photos Etc.] from your photos with President Obama.

Click here to learn more.


With much of Orange County buzzing about today's visit by President Barack Obama, many local businesses are also getting involved.

At ScanMyPhotos.com you will save 50% on all Kodak photo kiosk orders. Every person lucky enough to hold a golden ticket to attend the town hall meeting in Costa Mesa with the President has something in common. They all will have a digital camera with them.

Click here to view these how-to videos to learn about the Kodak photo kiosks.

To help commemorate this historic presidential visit, ScanMyPhotos.com is opening up their Irvine retail photo center to all those attending the event, or have pictures of the president, his motorcade or Air Force One. Whether the photos are from during the campaign, the inauguration or other events, bring it in.





Through March 28th, bring your pictures from the presidential visit to ScanMyPhotos.com and instantly save 50% off all our in-store Kodak photo kiosk orders, including photo collages (see above sample), Kodak Picture Movie DVDs, custom DIY photo albums, photo announcement cards and much more. Some restrictions apply. See this link for more info on the Kodak Photo Kiosks. To redeem this 50% discount, at least one picture must include President Obama or be related to his March 18th visit. In-store discount only for Kodak photo kiosk orders, cannot be applied to online orders or custom services.

Reach the ScanMyPhotos.com 24/7 Live Support help desk with any questions, or call 949-474-7654, or email: info@ScanMyPhotos.com


Follow us on Twitter : www.Twitter.com/ScanMyPhotos

Website: ScanMyPhotos.com

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How to Meet President Obama in Orange County on March 18th

President Barack Obama's first official visit to Orange County will be this Wednesday, March 18th at 4pm.

Here are the details:

Town Hall Meeting on Wednesday, March 18
Doors open at 1:30 pm
OC Fair - Building 1288 Fair Drive, Costa CA 92626

Ticket Distribution Information. This event is FREE and open to the public. Tickets are required and will be available at the following ticket distribution location beginning at 10:00 AM on Tuesday, March 17. Tickets will be limited and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. OC Fair and Event Center (Enter at Gate 1 and Gate 10; Park in Lot A) 88 Fair Drive Costa Mesa, CA.

Anyone over the age of 16 can have 2 tickets; anyone under the age of 16 can have 1 ticket.

ScanMyPhotos.com has been using Twitter to invite the President to our Irvine, CA company during his visit, read more here.

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U.S. President Barack Obama Invited to Tour ScanMyPhotos.com

How to Meet President Obama in Orange County on March 18th

While Twitter is gaining momentum as an innovative tool for managing corporate communications, it can even be used to reach out to the President of the United States.



Here is how: On Wednesday, March 18th, President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Southern California, with a planned stop in Orange County. Through the power of Twitter, a local entrepreneur is hoping that his invitation gets noticed.

Mitch Goldstone, president and CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based ScanMyPhotos.com is using 140 characters and Twitter to invite the president to stop by his retail and ecommerce photo imaging company, long known for its entrepreneurial inventiveness. Founded in 1990, Mr. Goldstone’s company is regularly recognized for its grassroots, pro-consumer advocacy campaigns and constant reinventing of its business to improve the economy, create jobs and support the community. [See “In the News” at ScanMyPhotos.com for more background].

Last fall, ScanMyPhotos.com formed “Entrepreneurs Support Barack Obama,” and more recently, hosted a community-wide Inauguration Day party that was widely provided by the media, including ABC World News and CBS News.




TWITTER MESSAGE [www.Twitter.com/ScanMyPhotos]:






@ScanMyPhotos How Twitter can invite President Obama to visit your company. Follow along and see if the White House responds.








Recent News Links:





CBS and KCAL9 Story on ScanMyPhotos.com - CBS/KCAL



Tears and cheers at inauguration parties - ABC World News



Strangers watch the inauguration together at ScanMyPhotos.com - CBS



At a photo shop, picture-perfect memories of inauguration - Irvine World News



Swearing off work on Inauguration Day - LA Times



Many employers say inauguration now, work later - USA Today



Interview with Mitch Goldstone at #PMA09 & the Kodak blogger meetup at his store Kodak.com



"Don't Give Up on California," Cautions ScanMyPhotos.com Entrepreneur, Mitch Goldstone



5,000 Americans travel to NY City to support commerce and The Big Apple - EPICCUSA.com

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What People Are Saying About ScanMyPhotos.com

Click here to review customer testimonials about ScanMyPhotos.com

Here is a special email we just received today:

I believe a quick note of gratitude is in order! I am a recent customer of ScanMyPhotos.com and I couldn't be happier. I was excited about the Facebook discount; however, with many of my photos not fitting into the 4X6 range, I couldn't go with the free offer...................and yet, I have been telling everyone I know about your stellar service and I just finished a review / link for all my friends and (hopefully) their friends to check out.

I didn't need free service to declare what is an absolute truth! Your service rocks! With a toddler and newborn, I desperately needed to get my photos in order before we added the (surely) thousands of more to come. Needless to say, though we own a scanner, I simply did not have the time to scan each one of my photos. It was a bit daunting to send my life's entire photo collection off to places unknown. It was a silly fear. Not only did your staff respond to my inquiry of receipt in record time, they did so in a kind and professional manner. The disc and photos were returned wonderfully packaged and lightening fast. To understate, the results are brilliant and very much worth every penny!

Thank you so much for helping me preserve the images of my family's history.

Best!

Ti W. - Seattle, WA

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