Breakfast Unveils Instagram Gadget

Going to SXSW? Miss taking Polaroids? The latest gadget from the inventors at hardware-software marketing shop Breakfast may be able to provide some relief.
 
On Tuesday, Breakfast is rolling out the prototype for Instaprint, a device rigged up to print, in real time, photographs snapped with the popular iPhone app Instagram. The unit, which will be featured at a series of SXSW-related events in Austin, Texas, later this week, cranks out pictures—using inkless paper, of course—that Instagram users have given specific tags. Partygoers can pick up copies of their snapshots at a nearby machine or revisit them catalogued online.
 
Breakfast, one of Adweek’s 2010 Insurgents of the Year, isn’t new to blurring the line between the physical world and digital media. Its previous work includes the Team Coco Foursquare blimp for TBS.
 
There’s no client for this project, but when Instagram announced it’d be generating a feed for developers, the agency couldn’t wait to start playing with it on its own.
 
“We’re Instagram addicts, so when we heard about the API coming out, we decided we had to do something with it,” said Andrew Zolty, Breakfast’s creative director. “We started building it all out even before Instagram released any API keys—which first started showing up last week.”
 
Instagram first appeared in the wake of Polaroid’s decision to stop manufacturing its instant film and the resulting outcry from its fans. The app allows users to apply a series of visual treatments and add comments to the pictures taken with iPhones. Last February, the startup touted more than 1.75 million users and a new $7 million round of venture capital.
 
Instaprint’s SXSW debut is at the Good Capitalist Party on March 12. While Breakfast isn’t charging for the device at SXSW parties, they are hoping to rent out the final version of the gadget—due March 18—for other events.