Holiday gift ideas: Getting Digi With It

PhotoLink one-touch scanner, by Pandigital

Let's say that an old friend from high school has suddenly found some old photos of you and have posted them to FacebookFacebook. It's time for some revenge! Alles zu Facebook auf CIO.de

But then you discover that you have a huge box of photos sitting somewhere, or tucked away in some photo album. You'd like to digitize them and share or reprint them, but using a flatbed scanner just seems like a ton of time and hassle. Most likely, the photos will sit just where they are.

The Pandigital PhotoLink one-touch scanner aims to help improve this process. Without needing a computer connection, you can scan older photo prints and save them directly to a memory card. The system includes a plastic sheet feeder that you put your photo in, and then you feed it into the unit like one of those dollar bill feeders on a vending machine. Unlike your dollar bill, the photo comes out the other end, but then the image is saved to the SD card connected to the device. Images are scanned at 1800 x 1200 JPEG format. Memory card support includes xD, MMC, Memory Stick and Memory Stick Pro in addition to SD.

After your box of photos are scanned (or if you've filled up the SD card), you can then plug the card into a computer for editing / posting / sharing. The unit also connects directly to a computer if you want to skip the SD card part.The photo-scanning process is definitely sped up versus using a flatbed scanner. You still have to go through the uploading and editing process, but at least you can quickly get through a bunch of photos faster on the beginning side.