This week our very own Mitch Goldstone, CEO and President of ScanMyPhotos, spoke with Technology Guru, Patric Welch, also known as “Mr. Noobie”, on his podcast Tech Talk. Tech Talk provides the latest news and trends about software and technology in plain English, for techies and their admirers. Patric Welch has a distinguished background as a technology educator and professional. Before he founded Noobie, Inc., the technology coaching firm, he was a software development manager for RealMed and former Computer Programming professor at Ivy Technical Institute. This week Mitch Goldstone had the opportunity to educate Mr. Noobie about the innovative photo scanning services at ScanMyPhotos.com.
The interview has also been transcribed below:
Mr. Noobie: Hello Mitch, thank you for joining us today on Tech Talk.
Mitch Goldstone: Patric, my pleasure.
Mr. Noobie: I see you’ve got a pretty cool service here for people who probably have a pile of old printed photos sitting around, so tell us the name of your service and what you offer.
Mitch Goldstone: ScanMyPhotos.com, you know everyone has generations of old photos, snapshots and slides that are analogue that need to be digitized in today’s all digital world. So people go online at ScanMyPhotos.com, place an order for a prepaid box, we mail it out the same day, you fill it up with all your photos, we scan it, make photo albums; a whole bunch of extra products, so you can enjoy those pictures.
Mr. Noobie: Now, do you do any kind of enhancing with the photos, or retouching, or is it just a one-to-one scan with the photo.
Mitch Goldstone: I do and it’s really important because a lot of these old photos, especially those old polaroids, snapshots, and all of those, are faded over time. So people can select the add feature for photo-enhancement where we actually enhance and bring out all of those vibrant colors from the pictures. We even have a photo restoration service where you can order online and actually send an image that is torn, destroyed; you know, all of that stuff, and we actually restore those images too.
Mr. Noobie: That’s excellent. I know I’ve done some of the retouching; you know software nowadays lets you retouch a photo and I know a lot of people probably think they can do that themselves but I learned two things in my own experience. A – I’m not a professional at it, and B – retouching one photo is one thing, retouching 500 photos is exhausting. (laughs) A service like this I definitely see being a benefit. Let me ask you one other question: if I think of my parents, I think of this giant box of photos they have everywhere that, you know, the only thing they really have is the prints, but if you go back even further sometimes people only have the negatives, or they only have slides. I mean, can you transfer those as well?
Mitch Goldstone: ScanMyPhotos.com does it all. Your parents are so in-line with everyone; the average household has about 5,500 photos in those shoeboxes kept in closets, or under the bed. You know, with all of the new applications, like Instagram, and Facebook, and iPad; all of those just call attention to wanting to share those pictures digitally.
Mr. Noobie: Yeah, that’s a great point. Let me ask you a question that I know is going to be a big fear that some people will have, and let’s see if you can address that fear. I’ve got, you know, 500 photos sitting in a box, but what if I ship them away and somebody loses them, and I never get them back?
Mitch Goldstone: The worst thing is if you don’t do anything because if you leave them in that shoebox the kids are going to get them and turn them into arts and crafts, it’s going to be thrown away by mistake; all types of things. The safest thing is to send it to us. Also important, the post office now has a commercial with ScanMyPhotos; you can go to the website, you can see it; it’s so well done. What the post office loves is that the people trust the United States Post Office with delivering all of their most precious memories to us.
Mr. Noobie: So that’s good. So it’s a box that you send, it’s safe. So what do you get back? So you scan the photos, what kind of product to get back?
Mitch Goldstone: You can receive all types of products. The easiest one is where you place the order, you get the prepaid box, fill it up with your pictures, send it to ScanMyPhotos.com, and we send you back a DVD data disk with all the images on it, and then you can order extra disks, and photos albums, and other products too; so it makes it really easy. Because the last thing people want to do is scan 5,500 pictures; it would take forever, and this way it literally takes about a minute to place the order online, and then you just fill up the box with all of your pictures, and then you go out to the mail a little while later, and the box is there with your DVDs and all of those images. I really recommend that everyone always make extra copies and make sure those extra DVDs are off-site, away from the house, at relatives’, friends’, safety deposit box; just to make it extra safe so you don’t have to worry about losing the originals.
Mr. Noobie: And I think I just want to say again what you said and emphasize it, because one of the most important things I heard you say and I am in 100% agreement with it is it’s about time. It’s not that people couldn’t do this themselves, and well, they couldn’t do all of the retouching; it’s just a matter of, if you think how long it takes to do all those photos. I once scanned some pictures for my parents, it was for an anniversary, and we scanned some old photos (laughs), I can’t tell you how much time it took for me to do; I would have loved to have a service like this. So if people listening want to use your service, where do they go?
Mitch Goldstone: They just go to ScanMyPhotos.com and all the information is there. Within a couple of clicks the order is placed. The best thing though is right now, with the holidays upon us, you can order gift certificates where you can send those to all of your friends and relatives; makes shopping so easy because then they have at their convenience to place orders from their online e-gift certificates.
Mr. Noobie: What a great idea for people listening to get something for their parents. I love that. Well thank you Mitch for sharing your service with our listeners today, it’s been a pleasure having you on the show.
Mitch Goldstone: My pleasure, and congratulations on all your success; really great job.
