Polaroid is abandoning instant film, but if you’re going to miss the feel of getting a small print in your hand a minute after snapping a picture, the company has a solution: A battery-powered printer that fits in your pocket. I got a chance to test out the new pocket printer and I am not disappointed.

Called the PoGo, the printer spits out 2-by-3-inch color photos that can be peeled apart to reveal a sticky back. It can receive photos wirelessly from some cell phones, or via a cable from a digital camera. However, I will warn you now: Do not expect great picture quality from the $149 PoGo. The colors are strange at times, which is especially noticeable in the skin tones. There are faint lines across the print; artifacts from the printing process.

That is besides the point. Sometimes you have to scrafice something to get something else better, right? So why not sacrifice a little picture quality to make it as portable as possible. And to be honest, none of the Polaroid portable printer I have tried have been up to pare. If you have seen the “instant” prints from the Polaroid portable printer family, then you know a little about the technology about the prints. However, the PoGo prints a little differently. The printer uses paper with billions of embedded dye crystals. It selectively heats them up to produce different colors. There is no ink, toner, or liquid chemical in the process. The prints come out dry. That explains the accuracy of colors.

With no ink to buy, the only cost of using the printer is the paper, which it eats in packs of 10. They have to make up the money somehow so these paper packs cost $3.99 each, or $9.99 for three. That’s a little steep compared to regular photo printers, but cheap compared to instant film, which costs around $15 for a 10-pack.

For a cell phone to connect to the PoGo, it needs, first of all, a Bluetooth chip. However, not all Bluetooth-equipped cell phones work with the PoGo. My iPhone didn’t work unfortunately, however, and old Blackberry that I had did the job perfectly. Compatibility is probably going to be an issue and if you are buying it to print strictly from your phone, I suggest you make sure it is compatible.

Another thing I did not like is the fact that the printer has no LCD screen or memory card slot. Most printers have these features, and I am sure again, they had to sacrifice portability for a LCD and a memory card slot, but that would have been oh-so-convenient. Both way, I enjoyed it and if you are looking to print on the fly for fun (not professionally of course) then I recommend this printer. If I were in high school or middle school, this would be the perfect gift. I think middle or high schoolers would love being able to pull out their cellphones (that most teens have these days), take a picture, peel off the back and put it on their lockers or something.

Last year, I reviewed a few backup solutions that, like most, allowed you to backup important files to a central server so you would never be in the predicament I was in a few years ago where I lost gigabytes worth of data. T.W. Garrett informed us about the useful Byteswap that allows you to upload files in addition to other important files.

Now, you can feast your eyes upon SugarSync (formerly known as Hummingbird). For as long as I can remember, I have been using another cool service by Sharpcast that allows you to backup, share, and sync (in real time) all your pictures. It is a simple as anything: You download the program, install it, and specify where your pictures are located, and the software instantly starts syncing your files. I say “syncing” rather than backing up, because that is exactly what is does. If you have another computer in the home, you are able to instantly see you pictures on that computer. If you are at work and want to show off your kids, there are there. If you are bored and want to look at pictures while you are waiting, but there is not a computer in the area, fear not. Just whip out your cell phone and they are there also! Any changes made from any location are instantly synchronized everywhere.

“Sharpcast’s real-time “push” sync eliminates the daily frustrations of manual backups, tediously uploading and downloading files; and using email, cables, storage cards and other peripherals to shuttle files back and forth.”

Using this same idea, the smart people over at Sharpcast have created SugarSync. What looks to be a replacement for the current photo software, they are now offering, SugarSync synchronizes all files in addition to photos. SugarSync  allows you to sync and backup your files and media across all of your computers, the web and mobile phone. Best of all, SugarSync takes care of everything automatically in the background so you never have to make backups or email files to yourself.

“COMING SOON: SugarSync!

SugarSync (formerly known as Hummingbird) is a service from Sharpcast that allows you to sync and access your files and media from anywhere – on different computers, on the web, even on your mobile phone. SugarSync securely backs up all your computers online and synchronizes them automatically so you always have access to your files. Best of all, SugarSync takes care of everything automatically in the background, so you never have to make backups or email files to yourself. Say goodbye to CD burning and emailing files to yourself; say hello to SugarSync.”

A small client is required on your Windows PC. The application client runs in the background to monitor and synchronizes a copy on a secure central server. Files can then be available and accessible via web browser directed to http://sugarsync.com  or from a mobile phone browser athttp://m.sugarsync.com . It even has a nice iPhone optimized site to view your pictures! I am hoping the ability to backup your pictures on the iPhone will be implemented soon.

The software, I noticed, is a little slow right now and steels bandwidth as if five people were playing WOW simultaneously on the same network. I am hoping this will also be fixed in an update. I normally would leave it running (as suggested) but it just eats away my internet connection, which is relatively fast. I thought that perhaps, it was my internet provider, but after closing the program, I see a significant difference. However, like most beta programs, not all problems are subject to all users, but different problems (if any) can arise with any user, so I would say, try it. In general, you will love it.

Now, when SugarSync comes online in spring, user will get 2 GB free but for now, Beta users get 11 GB of online storage space for saving synchronized files. Of course, there will be premium prices of which have yet to be announced. Yes, it is currently in private beta so do not think you can rush over to Sharpcast and download the product today. There is a waiting list with a few users added every-so-often. I am a nice person though, and I have nothing else to do with my invitations, so the first five people to request an invitation in comments will get an email invitation from me.  

Plaxo has been testing a feature called Plaxo Pulse that allows users to match Facebook contacts to Pulse contacts, and then import contact data about the matches into Pulse.

Unfortunately, that broke the rules and those that were testing the new feature were banned (Robert Scoble among the few) from Facebook despite the risk: “We don’t know whether Facebook will try to shut us down (despite their increasing verbal support for the concepts of open-ness), so we want to let a few key folks have access to the functionality before we make it available to everyone.“

Although similar, a cool feature exist for us Facebook and Outlook users that probably won’t get you banned from Facebook.

OutSync is a little windows application that does just one thing – it grabs the photos from your Facebook contacts and synchronizes them with your contacts in Outlook. In their own words: “It allows you to select which contacts are updated. So you can update all contacts at once or just a few at a time.The main benefit of OutSync is for Windows Mobile users. Updated contacts are automatically synced with Windows Mobile devices by Exchange server or ActiveSync. Thus new and fun photos appear during calls and other places where contacts are used.“

It’s not perfect – Facebook’s terms of use deny access to peoples actual contact details for privacy reasons, and you can get stuck with the ‘?’ icon for some of your contacts, but it is completely free and if you are sick of the default contact image then this is worth a look.

OutSync was written by Mel Sampat of the Windows Mobile developer team and you can see a short video of him demonstrating his neat program here.

Cons: The algorithm does not let you examine the Facebook and Outlook records side-by-side to make sure the matches are all correct, nor does it let you manually match records when it doesn’t pick up a correspondence. In addition to that, it is not a live sync — it won’t pick up new Facebook/Outlook matches until you run it again.

I like how everyone is trying to probe into Facebook to see just how far they are able to get without breaking terms, but this gives you a glimpse at how social networks should work together to make life so much easier. I am hoping that one day, Facebook will lift their terms just a little to allow my contacts to be automatically synced between my computer, Gmail, and my iPhone. Wishful thinking…

OutSync is compatible with Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003. It requires Outlook 2003 or 2007.

Social Networking has really taken off. Just to name a few, we have Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, etc… All of them are unique and pretty cool in their own way which is why there are so many people that are with more than one social network. Faces might be a good social network if you want a feature-packed site that integrates many of the social networks into one.A new site has entered the social networking family and, like the others, brings you something unique and cool. Kincafe is a social network that not only connects a person to their loved ones, but also shows a nice family tree. A person can create a family tree that ties friends and loved ones in one easy to use interface. Never forget birthdays, anniversaries or family reunions again!

Of course, you are going to want to make blogs, share them, post your photo album, share those, and you can even create scrapbooks and family news and – you guessed it – share those with the people you care for the most. Kincafe can do it! The family tree visual is really cool and easy to use. Their “Family tree based technology” saves you the hassle of having to remember all that family information. As soon as you log in, you will be instantly notified of all updates within your tree. Pretty cool, eh?Creating an account is pretty simple. I went ahead and made myself an account and was adding family and friends in no time! Uploading pictures was a bit slow, but that was probably my iffy Northland cable connection. Go ahead and create yourself an account. This growing social network will be the best thing that has ever happened to you and your loved ones.

How on earth can you jam this many features into a phone this size? No matter, Nokia have managed to cram a 5-megapixel camera which is capable of recording VGA-quality video, a solid little media player with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dual-slider design, and integrated GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth into a phone that is less than 4 inches long and weighs only 4.2 ounces.

It’s not a bad looking phone, but it’s a little clunky compared to some of the competition, and $750 is an awful lot of money for a phone.

Price aside, the N95’s camera is one of the best phone cameras around at the moment, and the rest of the design is reasonably well put together. The GPS receiver comes with built in mapping, but if you want detailed directions, you can expect to pay another $12 a month or $92 a year.

All in all an expensive package. Well designed, well built, but, I feel, let down by the battery life and the operating speed. Something has to give when you try and jam this much into a package this size and these are the weak spots. According to Nokia, the N95 is rated for nine days of standby time, but all those features just suck the life right out of it, so don’t expect more than a day or two. Full specs can be seen here, and here is an interesting video of the GPS in operation.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y42aF0zxRc[/youtube]