Why not camera/video phones for hospitals with "no visitor" rule

As the no-visitor rule came into effect in Singapore hospitals, their adminstrators are looking into issuing mobile or cordless phones to SARS patients, and providing video-conferencing equipment to help them keep in touch with their loved ones, per an article in the Straits Times.

According to an article in Forbes, Japan's Sharp Corp, a pioneer of the country's ubiquitous camera-equipped cellphones, said on Wednesday it will start selling camera-phones in China, expanding its reach beyond established markets in Japan and Europe. It would be a nice gesture for Sharp and other handset manufacturers to provide the Singapore hospitals and the patients familes with some camera and video phones.

After posting this last entry, I fell on an article in Cellular News suggesting that very same thing - though for cell phones, not camera or video/phones: "Singapore's SingTel is providing US$11,000 worth of mobile phones and mobile phone services to the Communicable Disease Centre managed byTan Tock Seng Hospital which is currently treating SARS patients. Sixty mobile phones and 60 pre-paid cards have been given to the CDC for use by SARS patients and those who are quarantined at the Centre". Nice.

Hutchison's 3G in Italy

In an interesting article in the IHT, Eric Sylvers, examines Italy's love affair with cell phones, a country with the third-highest penetration rate in the world at 93 percent, surpassing such wireless meccas as Finland and Sweden in the number of cell phones per capita. Italy's mobile mania is what drew Hutchison's 3G into this market a month ago, with its new "third generation" technology that allows for video phone calls, Internet access and interactive gaming.

"Italians have a phone culture and love all the new technology connected to cell phones," Fuller said. "If you make a video phone call in a restaurant in Italy, in a few seconds you have a crowd of people around watching you and getting involved."

H3G, whose parent company also started 3G service in Britain last month, says so far, so good. It said it already had 50,000 customers in Italy, five times more than its British counterpart managed to sign up in its first month. Hutchison targets an ambitious 2 million subscribers in the two countries combined by the end of the year.

Nokia Slips behind rivals in Rollout Of 3G Mobile-Phone Services

Nokia has slipped behind rivals in rolling out equipment to support commercial third-generation mobile-phone services. Some operators say the company has missed supply deadlines for the equipment, according to an article in the WSJ.

Hardcore Child Porn Peddled by Camera Phones

Picture messaging phones with images of children being abused have been found by the police in a raid in Central Scotland. The Scottish police were participating in «Operation Ore inquiry», an investigation into 7000 suspected paedophiles in the UK.

According to the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), and reported by the Sunday Mail, "Paedophiles use the phones to download child porn from the internet which they then send to each other. The phones also enable them to take pictures secretly of children in the nude which they also send to each other."

Unlike photos transferred by computer, there are no records left of images transmitted by camera-phones, making it more difficult for police to trap paedophiles. The telephone watchdog ICSTIS has also expressed concern and some of the mobile phone companies are already talking about a filtering system which would stop indecent images being accepted or transmitted, according to the Sunday Mail.

Sprint PCS offers a camera phone for under $100

Sprint PCS has announced the availability of a new camera phone, the Sanyo 810. With a retail price under $ 100.- ($99.99) it is the cheapest camera phone on the U.S. market.

The phone allows users to add 10-second voice clip and fun frames to any picture mail, and a selectable shutter sound that says "Say Cheese!," as reported by News.com and Reuters.

The ringtone market remains a surprise to many

In an interesting article entitled «Remixing Ringtones» dated April 23 in TheFeature.com, Steve Wallage writes about the ringtone market and how difficult it is to measure as it is so fragmented by a multitude of small suppliers. And though it is still very much dominated by the music charts, new applications are emerging.

In the US, Moviso TruTones offers ringtones with the voices of more than 70 celebrities of current and legendary stars of movie, television, sports, music and comedy. And Moviso's FXTones, offers more than 60,000 different sound effects for downloading on cell phones.

Innovative idea have emerged, such as karaoke applications offered by Japanese ringtone providers, allowing subscribers to 'practice' songs. This service has been widened to include images, and users can send up to four photos which can be 'watched' while the audio clip is playing.

The ringtone market will also be helped by new distribution opportunities such as mobile prepaid cards for ringtones to be sold in the US by Moviso, through more than 6,000 stores including 7-Eleven, Wherehouse Music, and other regional retailers and leading wireless operators.

Fined for taking a picture in court

A man was arrested and fined £250.- for taking a picture of a defendant in court (at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court, south Wales), using a mobile phone. According to Ananova, the man had pointed the phone towards the dock when a defendant was in it.

Financial video service streamed to mobile phones

Italians are now to be able to receive video clips of financial news over their mobile phones offered by TV channel CFN/CNBC. The new service offers video clips currently published on the Milano Finanza internet site, according to Europemedia.

A new application enables access to webcams through cellphones

Wireless Intellect Labs, a cellular technology R&D company based in Singapore, has developped an MMS camera application, called "Permodia" (for Personal Mobile Multimedia). It's a patent-pending, award winning system that enables anyone equipped with an Internet connection and a "webcam" to access the webcam using an MMS cell phone. Unlike regular webcams that transmit a continuous stream of data and use up a tremendous amount of bandwidth, Permodia takes pictures only when requested.

Anyone with an MMS-equipped phone, anywhere in the world, can access any number of public cameras connected to their server or by downloading their application, use it to connect their webcam/s to the server, and set up these cameras for private access (such as home monitoring) or public access.

Cell phone firms in resolution race

NTT DoCoMo plans to launch new cell phone models equipped with digital cameras capable of picture resolution of 1.3 megapixels (1.3 million pixels).

The new models to be launched in May, are expected to record images that are four times clearer than those currently provided by camera-equipped cell phones, of which highest resolution is 0.3 megapixels.

If the technology keeps developing at this pace, camera-equipped cell phones may someday offer the same level of image quality as regular digital cameras, according to an article in The Daily Yumiuri

Picture Phones mark a change in social record-keeping

According to Daniel Palmer, a photography historian, picture phones will mark as big a change as did the introduction of the first affordable Box Brownie camera for social record-keeping in 1888. Until now, popular interest in photography was more centered on the long-term preservation of memories in family albums. But with camera phones, the focus is more on sharing than storing, as reported by smh.com [photo from Photography Collections online]

02 offers free video service on a trial basis

Biritish mobile operator 02 will be offering its wireless video service to 350 mobile phone customers (who own either a Nokia 7650, Nokia 3650 or xda handsets) on a free trial basis at the end of April.

They will be able to download streaming video, and send video messages to each other. The operator will also be offering short video clips from BSkyB of Arsenal football matches as well as of the England rugby team, according to an article in Europemedia.

Limited selection of mobile videos quickly bores users

According to research reported in 3G Portal, there are basically two kinds of situations in which the use of a mobile video phone seems meaningful: 1) When users entertain themselves in boring situations (on a bus trip or waiting on line). Or 2), Sharing experiences, such as watching a karaoke video or children's animated cartoons. The research report is available for download.

Apparently quite soon, enthusiasm turns into boredom largely due to the limited content of the video selection.

Nokia camera sends MMS

A wall-mounted surveillance camera, the Nokia Observation Camera, that can send images directly to a cell phone will be available in the United States this summer. The device is among the first to use so-called machine-to-machine (M2M) technology, which lets machines use cellular telephone networks to communicate with computer systems or other machines, according to News.com.

The Nokia camera can be pointed at any area that needs to be monitored and set to send images automatically to an MMS-enabled handset or e-mail address at pre-determined intervals, when motion is detected, when a change in temperature is noted or when an SMS query is sent directly to the device. And it can also open a voice channel for live audio monitoring.

Watch TV on your cell phone

At the NAB show in Las Vegas, Radioscape demonstrated a new use for Digital Audio Broadcasting: transmitting video signals to mobile phones, according to mobitopia.

MMS interoperability in Denmark

Telia and Sonofon have established a technical connection linking their mobile networks, enabling MMS users with the two companies to send MMS messages to each other. They are the first two telecommunications companies do so in Denmark, according to Cellular News.

Australia gets 3G network

18 months after Japan, it's Australia's turn to launch Hutchison's 3G network, allowing for video calling, as reported in 3GPortal.

MMS interoperability in the UK

Vodafone has signed an interoperability agreement with T-Mobile, O2 and Orange that will finally allow customers to exchange picture messages with users of all the major mobile networks.

Effective from today, the service enables Vodafone Live! users with MMS-enabled handsets to forward messages containing pictures, sound and text to other network users, according to Netimperative.

Camera phones, the 'next big thing' for paedophiles?

Mobile camera phones have sparked such privacy fears in Britain and other countries that bans on their use at swimming pools, fitness centres and night clubs have been enforced. In Italy, the country's Data Protection Commission has published strict rules governing the use of picture messaging and video cell phones.

But what British officials really fear, is that camera phones could be the 'next big thing' for paedophiles

"This technology is the next big thing for paedophiles, and it's only a matter of time before it's abused on a massive scale," Ray Wyre, a British child sex offences expert, told The Observer earlier this year, according to an article in Canada.com

NTT DoCoMo to launch high-resolution camera phones.

Japan's top cellphone operator, NTT DoCoMo Inc, said on Tuesday it would launch the world's first camera phones with a resolution of more than a million pixels in the latest of its recent wave of new product offerings, according to a posting on Smart Mobs.

Which picture phone is for you?

To know which camera phone is best for you, Ashley Norris of The Guardian casts an eye over the options on offer in Great-Britain.

SingTel offers Video MMS

SingTel's mobile customers will be able to send and receive Video Multimedia Messages (MMS). “With Video MMS, customers will be able to download video clips, such as movie trailers, attach a quick message and send these off to their friends. They can even record a quick personal video." SingTel currently has more than 40,000 MMS subscribers, according to an article in Cellular News

Picture Phones Give Tech Sector a Boost

Memory card sales in Japan are expected to grow by 40.6% to reach 40.20 million units this year, thanks to expanding markets for camera phones and digital still cameras, according to the Japan Recording-Media Industries Association(JRIA), as reported by DigiTimes.

The videophone-enabled war

In an interesting article retracing war correspondants use of technology since 1846, from the telegraph to videophones, Bob Sullivan for MSNBC explains how technology got new life late in the 1990s when satellite phones, married to a laptop computer and a small video camera, enabled war correspondents for the first time, to beam live video from anywhere.

In this war, there appear to be cameras everywhere, even some behind the lines in Baghdad. Hundreds of reporters are filing stories and airing live reports while traveling with U.S. troops on the move. "For many observers of war correspondent technology, the videophone is the holy grail, finally allowing journalists to bring viewers as close as possible to the front lines, letting people see for themselves the war as it unfolds".

Picture phones banned at strip clubs

Edinburgh's newest lap-dancing club has banned state-of-the-art mobile phones to protect the identity of dancers... and male customers, per an article in the Edinburgh News

Irak Bans Satellite Phones

The Government of Irak has ordered all citizens to hand in their satellite phones, saying that they have been used as targets by the coalition forces and helped guide missiles to Badghad. A $ 2'500 reward is being offered for information on the whereabouts and owners of satellite phones, according to an article read on Radio Canada

Cost may hinder 3 G

In a study from The Work Foundation's iSociety project — which looks at how technologies such as broadband and mobile usage impact people's everyday lives — how real people interact with their mobiles, reveals that third generation phones might not take off as the operators hope. "Our research suggests that the mobile industry must remember how important cost is to most people who buy and use mobile phones," Max Nathan, co-author of the MobileUK report added to the BBC.

Leave your picture phone outside the movie theater

Because of the ease and proliferation of digital duplication, serious new anti-piracy measures are being taken by Hollywood, according to an article in Sunspot net.

Before screenings, media members and their guests are told to leave cell phones, pagers and other electronic devices outside the theater and are then scanned with an electronic wand to ensure compliance.

Queried about the cell phone ban, experts said "it was difficult to see how film images could be stolen with the current generation of picture transmission phones". Maybe they should use their imagination... if not on the screen, someone in the audience could be newsworthy. Snapping a shot of a bored or sleeping critic at a preview could be worth something to someone.

The fun of video phones

In an insightful and entertaining article entitled "... and this is me on the bus", Charles Arthur for the Independent.co.uk, claims that making video calls is easily the best fun you can have with a phone -- if you ignore how much it cost and have a low anxiety level over your batteries wearing down at breaking pace.

Thanks to cameras mounted in the front and outside of the handset, you can either show the person you're talking to what's around you, or let them look at your face. Hey, if the novelty wears off and you bore your friends, your mother will always be grateful.

New mobile technologies outspeed military control

An interesting entry on Smart Mobs, regarding the usage and speed of new mobile technologies, allowing for the transmission of news and images, beyond government control or censorship.

"Journalists covering the current war are able to use mobile technologies to speedily and inexpensively absorb, compile, and transmit information. This might lead to outspeeding military authorities, or outflanking their information control.

For example, a reporter from the Orange County Register snapped a picture of wounded US Marine Brent Gross, then beamed the image back home, where the Gross family pulled it from a fax... all before the Pentagon got to it."