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CES: Gadget of the day

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Polaroid has rediscovered its mojo.

The company that defined photographic instant gratification introduced a new inkless printer for pictures taken on a cellphone or with a digital camera. Transfer the image to the Polaroid Digital Instant Mobile Photo Printer via Bluetooth wireless technology on the phone or a USB cable on the camera. The portable printer spits out an image on a 2-inch-by-3-inch sticky-backed paper. In demonstrations, the whole thing happened in about a minute.

But what’s really magic about the printer is its zero ink technology -- or Zink, for short. It uses special paper that is embedded with 100 billion yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals. The colors appear when the printer applies 200 million heat pulses, in 30 seconds, in a single pass. The paper costs about 30 cents a print, and the printer sells for $150.

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Unlike Polaroid photos of old, this image is resistant to fading and can be dunked in water without running (we watched).

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: Polaroid

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