Facebook Now Lets You Fax Your Photos. I Have No Idea Why Anyone Would Want To Do This

by Jason Kincaid on September 10, 2009

Okay, so Facebook Punk’d us. This isn’t really going live for everyone — just for the lucky few members of the TechCrunch network.

Wow, talk about a big day for Facebook. Hours after launching Facebook Lite, open-sourcing part of FriendFeed’s code, and launching @ tagging, the site has one more release in store for today: Fax This Photo, powered by efax.com. Now when you’re looking through photo albums, you’ll have the opportunity to send a photo you like to a friend’s fax machine. For price of $1.50 per photo. That’s one pricey fax.

Maybe I’m missing something here, but I’m not sure why Facebook would do this. For one, faxes aren’t known for offering great quality — if you want to print a photo, you probably aren’t going to rely on your Fax machine. Second, if you have someone’s fax number, there’s a good chance you have their Email address too — why not just send it over Email?

Update: As one of our commenters points out, this could make for a good way to send photos to relatives who may not be comfortable using computers. But $1.50 per photo seems expensive if you’re going to do this with any regularity. Update 2: This is a stupid idea.

Here’s a picture of the fax we received:

Panasonic to launch world’s first fully paperless fax machine

by Serkan Toto on January 2, 2009

Yes, it’s true that people (and especially businesses) still use fax machines, even in Japan. The market seems to be big enough to make Panasonic Japan develop what’s reportedly the world’s first fax machine that enables users to both send and receive messages without having to use paper.

Panasonic will offer several of these devices under the KX-PW 608 series [JP], which will be available in Japan January 23 (there is no announcement regarding sales outside Japan yet). Just like sending emails on a cell phone, users can use the built-in keypad to type messages.

Alternatively, it’s possible to send documents saved in Word or other formats without having to use a PC. All fax messages can be read and forwarded through a built-in screen without having to print them on paper first.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]