Remember that tuna salad picture that you uploaded to Instagram during lunch last week? Wouldn’t you want that printed, framed and hung on your dining room wall so you can show it off to all your friends in the near future?
Unfortunately, I can’t help you with that. Printer ink is pretty expensive and I already spent my money on a new set of Furbies for my inner child. Luckily, there is another option.
Instacube is a digital picture frame device that brings your Instagram experience to life. The electronic canvas streams photos directly from your mobile Instagram app. The 6.5 LED screen allows users to “like” photos, toggle through feeds and watch slideshows of over-saturated sunset photos at the touch of a button. Who needs nature when you can see snippets of the world through this little glowing box?
But don’t get too excited. Instacube is a kickstarter project, meaning that the idea will not be approved until the creator reaches a certain number of “pledges” via their online donation site. (Which you can find here…shameless plug.) If the project succeeds, the product should be on the market by March 2013. If the world doesn’t end by December, you could be streaming nail art photos and duck-face self-portraits to your home office in no time!
Your generosity on any given day could even help you land special benefits. Someone who pledges $99 or more to the cause will be granted one “Classic” Instacube before anyone else. $249 or more and you’ll get the Limited Edition Instacube, which includes an eye-popping green cover and your name engraved into the product itself. $2,499 or more and you’ll get 9 Instacubes and an invitation to the VIP Penthouse Party in Las Vegas. $5,000 or more and you’re just showing off. Stop it. No one likes you anymore.
What’s best about Instacube though (besides its simplistic design and sheer awesomeness) is, in fact, the streaming option which automatically pushes photos from your Instagram account to the frame no matter where you are. That means parents can track the activity of their children from the comfort of their bedroom simply by watching the Instacube for any recently uploaded, potentially incriminating photos. Who said parenting was hard??
The creation of this device begs the question, though: Is this where the future of social media is headed? Will we soon have Twitter feeds paneling our kitchen walls on life-sized smartboards or wall maps that track the Foursquare check-ins of your friends so you can know where they are every second of every day? Is it okay to have our mobile lives bleeding through into reality? Do people really want to see your tuna salad picture on a wider scale?
Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
More information about Instacube can be found here.
Thank you so much for your review of Instacube! We love Boston 🙂