Realtors are always looking for ways to save money while growing their business. At the National Association of Realtors Conference, held in San Diego CA, 11/13-16, Kodak had an opportunity to share just how using our solutions can do both. Over 20,000 real estate professionals descended upon our fair city and it was an amazing time. The Kodak booth was decked out with messaging and demos on how Kodak solutions can be used to cut printing costs with the ESP series of All-in-One printers, improve efficiency with our high-powered ScanMate or differentiate successful Realtors from the competition with digital cameras, frames and of course, the Kodak Zi-8 video camera.

The Kodak Booth at the NAR show

The Belles of the Ball were the Kodak ESP 9 All-in-One and the Zi-8. With its print, scan, copy and fax capability and built-in WI-FI and Ethernet, the ESP 9 was a huge hit. Many of the Realtors that came by our booth print a LOT! Some said they print in excess of 25 reams per year. With the ESP 9, realtors can save an average of $230 on ink for every 10 reams they print*. If you print 25 reams, that's a savings of $575! Now what could you do with that kind of cash? When you combine the savings with Kodak's leadership in water resistance, fade resistance, and output image handling, the ESP 9 was a hands-down winner for Realtors at the show.

The Zi-8 demo had people waiting 4 deep to see and learn about the product. With its HD video capture, image stabilization and 2.5 inch LCD, Realtors were very excited about the possibilities - create virtual tours, capture testimonials from satisfied clients to post on their websites, take photos of aspects of the homes that their clients like...the list is only limited by the Realtor's imagination. One of the conference speakers, Max Pigman, Vice President and National speaker for Realtor.com, is very impressed by the Zi-8. While speaking at the conference on Mobile Technology, he featured the Zi-8 as a "must-have" for the effective Realtor.

The Kodak booth at the National Association of Realtors was definitely the place to be for technology tools. By the end of the conference, we conducted over 3000 demos, completed over 100 online surveys, met with numerous real estate thought leaders, sold thousands of dollars in Kodak product and helped Realtors know that there is a way to save money and grow their business when they choose Kodak as their technology partner.

* Results based on average ink costs of leading productivity class inkjet printers utilizing print volumes of 3150 black text pages and 1850 mixed color graphic pages using standard cartridges available in single quantity pricing.  MSRP pricing as of October 1, 2009.  Actual results may vary.  For more information and a list of all printers tested, go to Kodak.com/go/inkdata for details.

photo from GETTY

Check out Jessica Alba using a Kodak M381 to snap pictures of photorapher Mark Liddell at Monday night's Los Angeles launch of Mark's book, Exposed: 10 Years in Hollywood. Proceeds from the book will go directly to two fantastic charities  - the Jenesse Center and the Trevor Project.

The event was hosted by Jessica Alba at the famed Sowden House designed by Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, and Kodak was a part of the book launch event. Kodak S730 Digital Frames were pre-loaded with Mark's famous images and placed in each room in the house while other Kodak products were available for guests to try out.

Last week we added more things to Kodak Gallery you folks have been asking for. 

Big Beautiful Full Screen Slideshow -  You can view and share your Kodak moments in a glorious full screen view. It's amazing how good your pics look and what you notice in them when you see them in our new slideshow. Your friends will be blown away. A tech writer even said to me "wow, that's mac like"



Facebook Sharing - yep, we finally did it. Upload your pics to the Gallery and share via Facebook.  You use our photo tray to pick the pics you like and then simply select share to Facebook and your pics are posted as a link to a gallery slideshow on Facebook. Here is what's super cool- No more little Facebook pics. Now its big beautiful pics from Facebook. (see big beautiful slide show above). If you want to share lots of pictures no problem, you don't clog your friends news feed with a hundred photos. And all your pics are now in one place, Kodak Gallery.



New books and a new way to make them - we added three new books a small 5x7 autofill book, a paperback 8x10 book and a large 12 x 14 printed cover book. With the autofill book you select your pics with the photo tray and either just blast them into the book or arrange the sequence. You can also now arrange pages and drag and drop pictures form page to page. Super easy to be creative or just simply make a great book without any hassle. We also added a bunch more layouts

What's next?  We are working making the new Kodak Gallery even easier and faster and a few new cool things as well.

Thank you for helping us make the Kodak Gallery better and check out this 1000 Words blog post to see how to get your free $15 gift!

I have always been a big fan of National Geographic Magazine, so it was a big thrill for me when I was invited to speak last Tuesday week at an event commemorating the release of their latest book, National Geographic Image Collection.  This book is a magnificent collection of famous and never-before-released photos from the extensive photo archives of the National Geographic Society, which dates back over 100 years. This speaking event was billed as the "insider's look" at the making of the book.  I, of course, had nothing to do with the making of this book, but the other people also speaking certainly were.  They included the insightful Maura Mulvihill, who is the director of the Image Collection and helped select the images for the book from over 11 million possible images, plus a set of world famous photographers whose work appears in in its pages.  David Doubilet, Maria Stenzel, Chris Johns and William Allard all spoke about their work and what it means to them.  To top it off, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez started the evening off by sharing some of the common history that National Geographics and Kodak have together. He even held up a copy of the first advertisement that Kodak had in the magazine from the year 1909.



    The event was attended by several hundred photographers in their auditorium at the National Geographic's building on M street in Washington DC.  I was scheduled to be the last speaker of the evening and you might expect that I would have spent the evening nervously waiting my turn.  That was not the case however because all of the speakers before me had such interesting and compelling narratives about their photographs that I lost all sense of anticipation and got lost in their stories.  What wonderful photos of the mysterious polar ice cap, elephants sleeping on a moonlit African plain, and elusive snow leopards on rocky cliffs. There were stories of how to get a white shark to "pose" for that perfect shot (secret: don't get too close!) and the capturing of desert landscape scenes at dusk.



    My small part in all this was to talk about the invention of how I invented the digital camera here at Kodak and the contribution that digital imaging has made to photography. The real testimony, of course, is found in the pages of this book and the amazing images made possible by digital.

Common to all of the photographers who spoke was their passion for the medium and its power to express the wonders of our world.  It was a magical evening and I will not soon forget the stories I heard or the people I met. It was a great reminder that photography is really at its best when the art and science of the discipline come together in the hands of passionate storytellers. I hope everyone gets a chance to experience this wonderful collection of photos from National Geographic.

Why keep buying more expensive ink when you can replace the printer instead? Just in time for the ho-ho-ho-lidays, we're launching a new wave of advertising this weekend as part of our Inkjet Print and Prosper campaign. So far the campaign has been a huge success at driving awareness (and sales!) of our inkjet printer solution to Big Ink's trickery. We'll be online & on-air through the holidays, but check out a couple of new TV spots now.



This ad aims to get people to think ink, and switch to a Kodak printer.



This one calls out Big Ink's naughty practice of charging high prices for ink.

'Tis the season to stop overpaying for inkjet printer ink!  See how much you can save by visiting printandprosper.com.