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scancafe

My so-called paperless life

I expected problems from my attempt to rid myself of the paper in my life. What I didn't expect was this complication from my wailing 4-year-old son, Levi:

"Daddy, why did you recycle all my pictures?"

Even though he raised that question in a half-asleep moment in the middle of the night last week, Levi's anxiety illustrated one big complication about the idea of going paperless.

In short, some physical objects have value that doesn't easily transfer to the bits of their electronic representation. There's a great divide between the physical and the virtual. … Read more

ScanCafe now digitizes black-and-white negatives

LAS VEGAS--ScanCafe, a start-up that digitizes film images using relatively cheap labor in Bangalore, India, announced a new service on Tuesday to scan black-and-white negatives.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based company already scanned color slides and negatives as well as prints, but film scanners have trouble with black-and-white negatives. ScanCafe uses a "wet mount" process for which the company has applied for a patent, said Wade Lagrone, vice president of marketing, in an interview at the Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show here.

The process is more expensive but still competitive, Lagrone said. Color negatives cost 24 cents each, color slides 29 cents, prints 27 cents, and black-and-white negatives 69 cents apiece. The cost includes retouching and color correction. … Read more