Cameraphone makers address user issues

At the Cameraphone Summit 2004 in Maui, a handful of vendors banned together to address the interoperability glitches between cameraphones and printers, reports Commsdesign.

Other issues were raised by two keynoters at the show (Juha Putkirant-Nokia and Gregg Patterson-Hewlett Packard):

Excerpts:

-- Cameraphone pictures take too long and costs too much to upload and they are too difficult to print and store. (Putkiranta)

-- "Cameraphones are good enough for mass adoption but there are some real performance gaps. "Image quality is not there and we have problems with different light conditions that are easily handled by digital still cameras. And the capture and manipulation speed just are not there today". (Putkiranta)

-- The bottlenecks in the networking infrastructure loom among the largest issues. Today's networks can take 15 to 30 minutes to upload an image from 1 Megapixel cameras at a cost ranging from $6 to $60 or more for roaming users. The nets may not be able to keep up with phone makers who have road maps for shipping 2 Mpixel phones early next year and 5 Mpixel versions after them. (Putkiranta)

-- As many as 312 billion digital images a year will be captured, stored or shared in 2008. (Patterson)

DoCoMo unveils phone with integrated bar code scanner

NTT DoCoMo, Inc. unveiled the new Mova 506i series i-mode mobile phones, reports I4U News.

"The 06i phone can read JAN Code and QR Code, enabling easy retrieval of data from printed materials, copying information to the phone's address book and saving text as well as pictures and melodies".

Norway's First Photo-Phone Reporter

E-Media Tidbits comments on Øyvind Woie's experience of updating live from CeBIT 2004 for the Norwegian newspaper Vårt Land.

"Woie brought nothing but his Nokia 6600 photo phone, and sent in his reports every time he spotted something worth a mention. All in all, he submitted 32 small stories, consisting of a 400 x 300 pixel photo and no more than 160 characters of text. The end result was a small slide show with all the latest gear and trends".

Moblogging Futuresonic04

Two Spanish reporters armed with smartphones are moblogging live from The Futuresonic04 conference in Manchester on www.we-make-money-not-art.com.

What is novel is that they are asking for direction. Anyone attending or more to the point anyone who didn't get a chance to go, are to tell them what/where they have to shoot, by sending an SMS to +44(0)7814813889.

"We are entering an age where the multitude will be able to document everything that happens to them and around them and publish it on the fly. So we are having a go using expensive smart phones at ridiculously expensive gprs rates". cool.

More on our amiable mobloggers, in their own words:

1st one - Elenco Estelar - is an amateur moblogger who will report the event in a totally subjective way.

2nd one - - Max Paccagnella - a nearly pro journalist, will be (not too) tediously objective.

The Futuresonic04 conference explores how geographical, cultural and perceptual space are being redesigned by wireless and mobile media, and looks at the diverse ways in which artists and diy technologists are pushing the limits, and soliciting unexpected or unforeseen results from communication media past and present.

The Cameraphone Summit in Maui

Don't miss out on Alan Reiter blogging live this week from the Cameraphone Summit, held, get this, in Maui.

Phone makers team with printers

InfoSync World reports that Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens have teamed up with The Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium (MIPC) to ensure that printing from mobile phones becomes as easy as desktop printing.

"According to research firm InfoTrends, camera phone users will print over five billion images in 2004. That number is expected to grow to 37.2 billion printed pictures in 2008, when, InfoTrend predicts, 85% of all mobile phones sold will include an embedded camera".

For more on camera phones and printers, check out this category in Picturephoning.com.

World Economic Forum weblog

Loic Lemeur - who's in Warsaw has just launched with the Forum's team, the World Economic Forum Weblog. [Via Joi Ito].

MMS Related Domain Names

Picturephoning's new weekly listing of MMS related domain names that have come up for sale and are available to the public again.

- extramms.com
- footballmms.com
- mms-box.com
- mms-centre.com
- mms-marketing.com
- mms-mobil.com
- mms-publischer.com
- mms-tones.com
- mms2win.com
- mmshotline.com
- mmstones.com

The above names are available for registration now if anyone is interested. Source of information: Netcollateral.com.

Buzznet in French

Buzznet launches a French version.

You shoot what you love

Namrata Sharma Zakaria for Indian Ahmedabad News Online has written a wonderfully positive article on camera phones, giving examples of how how they are being used how these "trend moments are defining the history of human technology".

-- Members at almost every Pakistani stadium had nattily dressed socialites pull out their cellphones and snap their favourite cricketers

-- Spanish football team Real Madrid may have lost to Monaco, but the cam-phones went frenetic every time pin-up boy David Beckham was around the fence

-- Upcoming fashion designer Rustom Mehta, 23, says his Nokia 6600 is really useful. ‘‘I can shoot a tree, if I like its texture and want to replicate it on fabric,'' he drawls. ‘‘But it's really a fun phone,'' he laughingly adds.

But what do photographers feel about their newly lost status? inquired Zakaria. ‘‘Camera phones are a fabulous invention,'' says fashion photographer Darren Centofanti, adding both he and his (model) wife carry a Nokia 8210 each.

‘‘I can't wait until they bring out a phone with a flash camera. After all, it isn't possible to carry a camera everywhere—even for a photographer like me.

And life presents you with some wonderful spontaneous opportunities that you can capture immediately,'' he adds".

The only hitch so far is that cam-phones don't present you with the finesse of a regular camera or a digi-cam, but like any new invention, the best is yet to come. ‘‘It's a great start,'' adds Centofanti.

Until then shoot what you love".

«Silly Bills»

On the Opinion page of Press Telegram, someone has a discerning mind (the article is not signed), referring to "silly bills" trying to squeak by legislature. And yesterday's post on Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes's bill that would require cell phone companies to make the camera feature audible made the list!

"Legislature has too much time on its hands. And it's not just foie gras they're wasting time on. It's silly legislation like a bill proposing to incorporate the principles of feng shui in state building codes. Or whether keeping ferrets should be legal. Or whether cell phones with built-in cameras should broadcast a warning beep when their owner is taking a picture. Or whether it should be a crime to declaw wild cats".

Printing Photos on the Go

Walt Mossberg for the WSJ reviews two tiny photo printers, $199 each, that can churn out snapshot-size prints directly from a camera or a memory card, without involving a computer or software.

-- The Epson PictureMate

-- The Olympus P-10

"Even though they are clumsy to use, both printers produce good-quality photos that look like they just came back from a photo lab".

For more on cell phone printers, check out this category in Picturephoning.com

Louder Camera Phones?

Obviously not all lawmakers abide by Edward R. Murrow's wonderful saying: "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason", as "US Assemblywoman Sarah Reyes has introduced a bill that would require cell phone companies to make the camera feature audible, so those nearby would know a picture was being taken. The proposal will go through its first legislative test next week in the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee", reports ABC Action News.

As mentioned before, as cameraphones become more prevelant, people will become more familiar with these handsets and how people use them - and are likely not be caught off guard so easily.

After all, you don't hold your cameraphone the same way to take a picture than you do when talking or texting. An interesting post in Keitai Log last September, describes how in Japan people now recognize someone taking a picture with a cameraphone, based simply on their posture. And why the double standard with digital cameras?. They come as small as a credit cards. cf Do phone cameras have to make a sound when digital cameras can be silent?

Camera phone paranoia can only be caused by it's dual function, taking a picture and being able to send it with immediacy. These two technologies combined obviously continue to fuel lawmakers imagination of worst case scenarios.

Sprint Turns To Samsung For Camcorder Phone

Lights, camera, 15 seconds of action. Sprint is hoping to help its PCS Vision customers bring out the hidden movie director in all of them with the introduction of a new camera phone that features a camcorder. [Wireless Week].

"The handset features a movie light, audio and brightness controls, zoom and personalization options to enable users to create 15-second video clips. Using Sprint's Picture Mail service, users can send their pictures to family and friends who have a Sprint PCS Vision Video Phone or store them online."

A life pictured online

Nothing really new to anyone who reads Picturephoning, but it's a favorite news source - the BBC - writing about a favorite subject; cameraphones and moblogs.

"Moblogging was originally event-driven, as a kind of grassroots, on-the-scene reportage that provided different pictorial perspectives on demonstrations, flash mobs and the like. But now it has broadened out.

Just as blogging started to take off when sites and software which made it easier to write and update sites started to appear, the same thing is happening with moblogs".

Versaly is creating a line of mobile phone products for UltraStar

Entertainment content producer Versaly is creating a line of mobile phone products for UltraStar, an Internet services and online marketing company for the music industry, according to the Seattle Times.

"As part of the agreement, Versaly is offering a service to allow attendees at Sting concerts to take pictures with their camera phones and create a personal slide show on the phone..

Versaly works with all the major carriers in the U.S. — or at forfones.com.

Saudi Arabia and phonecams

Mobile camera phones were a hot sellers in Saudi Arabia despite a Kingdomwide ban. But in March, the Saudi government began searching outlets and students and confiscating phones when found.

Today boingboing has an interesting quote from a fellow Saudi blogger, Alhamedi Alanezi:

"When the Saudi people finally rise up in revolt and throw out the House of Saud," he says, " it won't be for democratic reform, and it won't be for an islamic republic. It'll be about mobile phones."

Lomography

Joi Ito recently discovered lomography and writes "I think it fits very naturally with the spirit of moblogging". cf related post last week Moblogs drive the adoption of camera phones.

And click here for The 10 Golden Rules of Lomography.

Snap unhappy - digital photography's dirty little secret

To Joanna Wane writing for New Zealand stuff, "the digital revolution is creating a gaping hole in our heritage. While the public and the professionals have embraced this magical technology that allows pictures to be viewed in an instant and transmitted around the globe, concern is being raised that our pictorial history is at risk".

[...] Imagine, for example, the exhilarated couple who snap off some shots on their mobile phone to announce the arrival of their newborn baby to the world within minutes of his birth. Later, when they're looking for pictures to frame or save in an album, they'll be caught short if that low-resolution mobile-phone image is all they have."

How digital cameras and camera phones will affect our heritage is an interesting subject and has been written up before. cf related articles:

-- Picture Phones mark a change in social record-keeping - 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.

-- The future of digital cameras - The rise of digital signifies a paradigm shift in the use of cameras away from being image capturing devices and towards data gathering devices.

-- Digital era 'a threat to memories' - Australians are taking more photos than ever before - but few of them are being printed. Historical records as well as family albums may suffer, with less than 20 per cent of pictures making it into print, says the Photographic Imaging Council of Australia.

-- How camera phones will affect print and digital cameras - Camera-phones might also hasten the decline of printed photos. As handsets improve, viewing images on-screen could become the norm, whether on phones, PCs, televisions, or even by beaming photos to a wireless-enabled picture frame next to Grandma's chair.

I'm not sure about this last point as the Economist does not take into account the many Cell Phone Printer projects by company greats such as Kodak and HP, allowing to print directly from a handset, not over the Internet but in physical locations such as shopping malls or selected outlets. But I do go along with the the author of this article when he says that no one knows where this is going. That's for sure.

Playboy appears on 3

Australian IT via Moco News reports that Mobile service 3, best known for its video phone network, now offers interested subscribers a range of Playboy material, including "Girl of the day" pictures and "Director's Cut" videos.

"3 began offering Playboy images in Britain and Italy in late last year, after the two companies signed a worldwide partnership in January 2003. Australia was slower off the mark, introducing Playboy April 16 with little fanfare, along with new links to rugby league, union and Australian football information."

Clinic employee caught taking picture of Maradona with camphone

An employee of the Swiss-Argentine clinic where former football star Maradona is being treated, was caught taking his picture in the intensive care unit with a camera phone in order to sell it to an American magazine. The employee was dismissed, according to Clarin (in Spanish). Thanks Julián!

Julián Gallo teaches New Media in the joint master degree program of journalism of Universidad de San Andres, the School of Journalism of the University of Columbia and the news group Clarin.

cf other related article (in Spanish).

Military Casket-Photo Restrictions Are Doomed to Fail

This story has made headlines around America, whereby the Pentagon eased up on their ban forbidding news organizations to showing the homecomings of the war dead at military bases - as hundreds of photographs of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base were released on the Internet by a Web site (thememoryhole.org) dedicated to combating government secrecy.

Steve Outing's commentary in E-Media Tidbits, on the Seattle contract worker stationed in Kuwait, who snapped the photo while on the job and was fired for it is interesting and relates to camera phones:

"The U.S. government since 1991 has made it policy to prohibit the press from photographing returning military dead. But as this episode demonstrates, everybody's a reporter these days. With digital cameras, photo cell-phones, and nearly ubiquitous Internet access, constraints on "the press" only apply to professional journalists; they often don't apply -- cannot apply -- to device-carrying members of the public who happen to witness, say, a planeload of caskets returning from Iraq. Government efforts to limit what the public sees are increasingly futile".

New moblog on the block: Yafro.com

James Hong, founder of the year 2000's hottest webiste, Am I hot or not? - anyone old enough will recall it allowed the world to rate - on a scale of 1 to 10 - people's pictures according to their looks - has launched a community moblog called Yafro. Good reading, Alan Reiter's analyis and rave review in Camera Phone Report.

Golf fans out of line

On the PGA Tour, player conflicts with fans and photographers are virtually a weekly occurrence, according to the Pasadena Star News.

"An ill-timed click of the camera or the ring of a cell phone can drive a player to distraction. The tour forbids cell phones and cameras during tournament play, and there could be more fan restrictions to come, such as moving back the ropes to give players more space if fans persist on injecting themselves into the action".

Almost 90% of cellphones sold in Japan are cameraphones

Japan Today via Engadget reports that "cell phones with built-in cameras accounted for 44,730,000 units, or 89.3% of the total shipments in the year ended March 31, according to the Multimedia Research Institute".

Lecture covers camera's effect on world culture

North Texas Daily has an interesting article on guest lecturer Thomas Levin, Princeton University professor, who spoke Wednesday to students on the progression of surveillance and its influence on pop culture.

Excerpts

"He talked about the proliferation of "personal surveillance devices," or camera phones, and how they are affecting the world. Pictures taken with a soldier's camera phone of Saddam Hussein being captured were shown to illustrate the point.

"It's the fantasy of immediate access to any spot on the globe," Levin said.

He talked about "panopticism," the idea that someone will not do something because of the fear of being watched. He related this to cameras on top of traffic lights, which, according to Levin, may not be functioning half the time, but keep drivers from running red lights.

He then discussed how surveillance has been used in art, a practice he called a "brilliant re-functioning of surveillance."

Levin showed one artist that took his family to an automatic teller machine, got a printout of the ATM surveillance picture and used it as a family portrait. Another artist used a surveillance photo as a wedding picture.

As the presentation ended, Levin took questions from the audience. One student asked, "What will surveillance be in the future?"

Levin responded ended with, "At the degree to which public space is being colonized by surveillance, we can not afford to be unaware of the information that is being taken from us and how to control it."

«Drive by Porn»

According to Stateline.org, some US States are taking aim at driving under the influence of TV.

"What's becoming known as “drive-by porn”, i.e. watching porn videos in your car, is titillating the interest of a few state lawmakers in Tennessee and Louisiana who seek to ban it. But so far, no state has regulated what can be watched inside vehicles -- only who can watch."

It shouldn't be long this becomes an issue with camera and video phones while driving.

Covert operators use camera phones

In Textually, I have often posted articles related to cellphones having been used successfully by terror groups, triggering bomb explosions through cellular signals. Today, a well written article by The Edmonton Journal describes in detail "how cell phones have emerged as a pre-eminent terror and counter-terrorism tool" (by jamming cellphone frequency bands, preventing them from ringing and detonating an explosive) and how experts are now saying "one application that's hugely popular with consumers -- the camera-phone -- will be one of the most important cellphone features in the arsenal of covert operators for years to come. Again, the ability to look innocent while concealing covert activity is key".

"It's not uncommon to have CSIS agents standing around with camera phones," snapping shots of suspects while they're still on the plane then feeding those to customs agents on the ground", said Atkinson.

Or, if you're the bad guy, "you can have someone waiting at the airport take a picture of a target who's just stepped off a plane, and send it to his buddy who's at a hotel," said Juneau-Katsuya - a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service agent ,"So he's now got the exact picture of the way the mark is dressed and just has to wait for the guy to arrive to make the hit."

Related articles:

-- IRA involved in cell phone bombs

-- Terror's Latest Trigger: Cellphones

-- Cell phone detonated bombs in Madrid

-- Marriott bomb 'set off by mobile phone'

-- Cell phones trigger bombs

-- Bomb oustide Jakarta Hotel was detonated by a mobile phone

-- Cell Phones Triggered Bombs in Saudi Arabia

-- IRA involved in cell phone bombs

-- Attack is inevitable, say the (London) police. So how can we stop it?

In Australia, 100,000 get the picture

More than 100,000 Australians make videophone calls since the nation's first videophone call on April 15 last year, reports the Herald Sun.

"Despite those early high hopes and excitement, the past year has been far from smooth sailing.

Phone calls dropping out, a disappointing first generation of handsets and a lack of network coverage have conspired to make the arrival of 3G phones more a baptism of fire.

But new generation of handsets, such as the recently arrived NEC e313, and software improvements have reduced the drop-out rate to three per cent.

Videophone coverage, at first restricted to Melbourne and Sydney, now includes most parts of Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Adelaide and Perth".

Vodafone launches MMS with Japan

Vodafone Spain has announced the launch of the first MMS with Japan, enabling customers to exchange MMSs with Vodafone KK customers in Japan for the first time, according to ewireless news.

"This service is available to all customers of Vodafone Spain and Vodafone KK regardless of whether they are in their home countries or roaming abroad."