How To: Print Memorable Photos of Your Digital Life Online Using the Polaroid Cacher

Polaroid photographs have a charming old-fashioned feel to them, evoking nostalgic memories of past days. My younger sister used to carry her Polaroid camera everywhere she went, transforming even the most trite moments into something wonderful.

After watching her snap shot after shot, I became a fan and eventually invested in a Polaroid camera of my own. This is the first picture I took with my camera—my Siberian Husky pup Haley.

I keep the picture in my car's sun visor, for quick access to show off her picture to friends and family (but mostly girls, they're a sucker for cute dogs).

Adrià Navarro is now looking to extend the reach of the Polaroid with his new invention—an analog camera for your digital life.

Inspired by traditional Polaroid cameras, Adria Navarro created a new device called the Polaroid Cacher, which takes a Polaroid-style snapshot of what's in your browser on your computer.

The project was inspired by the online interactions we have with other people online, which are usually fleeting and lost under mounds of other information—the opposite of what photographs are intended for.

The camera, a vintage Polaroid Land Camera combined with and a custom laser cut enclosure, uses a browser plugin in order to frame the shot. For this project, he used a Chrome extension (built in Javascript and CSS), based on Google Screen Capture.

The Chrome extension then saves the image file onto the computer, which is then "developed" and sent to a wireless printer, with the help of this code and Bluetooth.

This is a great hack if you've got an old Polaroid camera and a mini wireless printer lying around.