Kodak touts Imagelink, Everplay at PMA
Not every announcement made around PMA is about new products -- though most of the interesting ones are. Two that caught our eye today come from groups of camera makers that are pledging support for new standards. The first announcement must be good news for Kodak: Nikon, Olympus and Pentax have all announced new cameras that support Imagelink, a system that makes it easier for their cameras to interact with Kodak's EasyShare printer docks. Never mind that virtually all digicams made in the past few years are PictBridge-capable, which makes them plug-and-play compatible with just about any photo printer out there; Imagelink helps promote Kodak's printers as being easier to use and more compatible than others -- which might explain why Canon, HP and Epson are conspicuously absent from the announcement of this new "standard." The second announcement also has Kodak's name on it, this time with backing from Fuji and Konika Minolta, and concerns a new standard called EverPlay, which the companies hope the industry will adopt in order to keep image data accessible as new technologies emerge. The idea is that EverPlay's XML-based metadata will supplant existing standards like EXIF and IPTC to serve as the standard header info in JPEG and video files for years to come. The three founding companies have a long road ahead of them, and they might want to start by inviting some more companies and industry groups in to share ideas (that and they should change their branding to something that looks a little less like the the logo of 70s art-rock group ELP).
Read - Imagelink
Read - Everplay
