Printing out your smartphone photos can be a pain. Thanks to our innovative amigos at the Kickstarter project there’s a very cool app called Flag (via Gizmodo) that will make you passionate shooters as happy as pigs in poo-poo, because it’s free. Really? Free? Well, there is a wee catch, but all you’re required to do is look at some advertisements, offer up some information and 20 physical photographs per month can be yours, for sweet, sweet nothing, with a dollop of raspberry ripple ice cream, whipped cream and a cherry on top.

Now, I have to admit that I’m always a bit ambivalent vis-a-vis giving up personal information, but I’m here offering up information not philosophy, so you figure out the rest! Me no coercer: Bagg is goo-ood!

Here’s how it works: Flag is an app that promises to send you 20 high-quality, 4×6 prints from your smartphone each month for no charge. The Flag app makes its connection to your smartphone camera roll (and other social media photo feeds), organizing them for you on a screen. Pick and choose your favorite 20. You can then have all kinds of fun cropping, editing and adding or subtractions borderline space. Done? Easy! Just press ‘print.’ Better yet, maybe a week later, your custom-made photos will arrive in the mail, printed on durable, laser-cut photo stock.

All right, but… there’s that catch thing again. Each photo comes with advertising on the back. Put it in a frame and you won’t see the ad. Or, own duct tape in different colors like I do and a torn-off piece the size of a band-aid will cover up the capitalist dog! The advertiser pays for your photo. Seems a fair exchange.

Again, no one is attempting to hustle you, or pull the wool over your eyes. The ad on the back of the photo owns QR Code, which you can choose to log within Apple’s Passbook. That QR Code uses your zip code to offer discounted deals in your area. Is this a fair exchange? Again, you decide.  This is what Flag does and this sort of goods-for-information-type barter sounds like an alternative worth consideration.

“Advertisers will not be able to see users’ photos, or know their personal information. No names, no addresses. All the targeting will be on aggregated data. You’ll be able to advertise to people in a zip code, you won’t be able to advertise to John Smith of 123 Main St,” Flag’s founder Sam Agboola told The Daily Express.

I did some comparison shopping at Wal-Mart and Walgreen’s for the same service. Ordering pretty much the identical service: An advertizing-free set of 20 4×6 prints off their websites would cost an approximate US$6. Though you wouldn’t get the same quality paper. And they’ll take your information and pass it on to other advertisers without saying please or thank you. Additionally, unless you’re organized, you’ve got separate photo folders for different cameras and various bits of bites and doodads buried on Facebook, and on your laptop and desktop. This way you can gather all of it in one app for good.

Better yet, if you’re already invested in the Kickstarter project, like yours truly, you’ll gain your reward as a virgin. You can gain immediate access to play with the beta version of the app. Any funds you’ve invested go toward paying deluxe extra features you’d like to add to your photo prints, like smooth, rounded edges, giant prints or postcards.

FYI! Don’t know about Kickstarter? It’s a not-for-profit company where Project creators set a funding goal and deadline. If investors like you and I like a project, we can pledge money to make it happen. Such funding is on a sensible all-or-nothing basis. Projects simply have to reach their set funding goals in order to receive any sponsorship money. Such funding is a gamble, as with anything else you invest in, but it has been mightily successful at creating momentum. To date, an impressive 44% of projects have reached their funding goals. This beats the hell out of the stock market alternative where you ultimately have to trust a broker to negotiate a river full of thousands of unknowns. Check it out at https://www.kickstarter.com/