This is the blurb on the FREE new iPhone App called Shoebox.

“Shoebox, the iPhone App, makes it easy to scan old paper photos and share them with family and friends. It helps you bring albums, scrapbooks, and photo-filled “shoeboxes” out of the closet and into an online, shareable space where they can be organized and shared with family and friends.

The quality of camera phones has increased so much that your handy iPhone is now as good as the clunky piece of hardware you have next to your computer, and with none of the wires or drivers. The new iPhone 4S offers a 8 megapixel camera that takes images at 2448×3264 resolution. Using Shoebox to scan a typical 4″x6″ photo produces a DPI of 550 – the same high quality recommended by scanning experts like ScanCafe.

Your photos are saved on your iPhone and on 1000memories where they can be shared for free with friends and family. You can also share via Facebook and Twitter. All photos on 1000memories are backed up and preserved forever through our partnership with the Internet Archive.”

 

I found this on Swiss Miss one of my favourite all time design blogs. And here are two comments about Shoebox…

Interested until I read:

“you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with 1000memories”

Don’t mean to be a conspiracy person, but isn’t this a little much in terms of anti-privacy and anti-IP… The business of acquiring the rights to vintage photos is big business, and this service get’s you to give the rights to your images up… They could sell a picture of you, or any of your family members without asking / telling you or giving you any revenue.

Then again, who reads a Terms of Service… Oh, that’s right. Me.

The above is from someone who signed off as “B” and the following comment is from Helena Price from Shoebox.

Hi B, we appreciate your feedback. To clarify things a bit, we don’t intend on selling anyone’s photos. We have adopted a privacy policy in line with the other leading photography sites on the Internet (e.g., Facebook and Flickr). We’re constantly investigating if there are other best practices for privacy policies that we can adopt. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to reach out to us at Questions@1000memories.com should you like to discuss this topic with us in greater depth.