The Colbert Report iPhone app. Yay!

The Colbert Report Comes to iPhone. Yay!

In the words of Colbert Nation:

When Stephen Colbert delivers The WØRD, it comes from his gut. Isn't it time it also came from your iPhone?

You'll have every WØRD at your fingertips -- anywhere, anytime -- listed either by date or alphabetically. There's even a "Surprise me!" function. And you can watch a different clip every day -- new clips are posted and featured every week.

So if you've ever dreamed about having Stephen in your pocket (and who hasn't?), you can stop dreaming and start downloading The WØRD iPhone App! It's on sale now at $0.99!

[via Intomobile]

The Guardian on TMZ reporting

A very interesting read in The Guardian on TMZ and Harvey Levin.

This part of cameraphone contributors:

... The site is updated constantly, feeding its readers tips and stories almost as quickly as they come in. One story last Friday on an American reality TV star boasted it had been posted just 30 minutes after TMZ staff learned about it. The site is full of vidoes, taking advantage of its staff, freelancers, tourists and just about anyone with a camera phone who happens to spot a famous face. TMZ is the main beneficiary of a technological culture which makes doing anything private almost impossible.

TMZ has pushed the boundaries of what journalism means, not only breaking old-fashioned scoops, but also relying on video content sent in by a vast network of staff, contacts and ordinary people.

Read full article

New camera promises to capture your whole life

A camera by SenseCam (not camera phone) you can wear as a pendant to record every moment of your life will soon be launched by a UK-based firm, reports New Scientist via Switched.

Originally invented to help jog the memories of people with Alzheimer's disease, it might one day be used by consumers to create "lifelogs" that archive their entire lives.

Worn on a cord around the neck, the camera takes pictures automatically as often as once every 30 seconds. It also uses an accelerometer and light sensors to snap an image when a person enters a new environment, and an infrared sensor to take one when it detects the body heat of a person in front of the wearer. It can fit 30,000 images onto its 1-gigabyte memory.

Read full article.

Camera phones offer snapshot of an era

The Guardian on how cameraphones have become almost a vital extension of our lives.

... There is an unprecedented record of what is going on in the world being stored for posterity in a digital museum. If, 100 years hence, researchers could call up archives for a single hour of what was being recorded today, they would have an extraordinary chronicle of what we were like.

Prince stunned by polite French Fans

According to Contact Music, Pop superstar Prince was left stunned during a recent concert in Paris, France - when fans agreed to honour his request not to use camera phones to record his show.

The Purple Rain hitmaker insists on restricting the use of cameras at his gigs because he hates seeing poor quality footage of his performances online - but he never expected French fans to honour his request.

Frankencamera

It's big. It's ugly. And it's made from recycled parts, at least for now. It's called the "Frankencamera" — and it might someday change the way you take pictures.

Computer scientists at Stanford University say the new camera prototype works something like an iPhone: It can be altered in nearly infinite ways, depending on the applications downloaded to it.

[Read full article in NPR]

Photoshop launches an iPhone app

Adobe just released a free iPhone version of its popular Photoshop application, allowing you to do lightweight photo editing on your phone. Venture Beat gives a review.

Like the free website Photoshop.com, Photoshop.com Mobile is meant for casual users, not the artists who do heavy-duty image manipulation on the desktop version of Photoshop. There’s a simple interface for doing things like cropping the photo, making it black-and-white, and adding effects like soft focus and a “sketch” mode that makes your photo look more like a drawing.

There are plenty of other photo manipulation apps for the iPhone, but Adobe has the advantage of the well-known Photoshop brand. Users can also upload and store photos at Photoshop.com, so the iPhone app should help promote the website, and vice versa.

Camera Phone Officially Kills Film Camera

Ontela, Inc., provider of award-winning imaging services for wireless carriers, released survey results today that indicate the imminent death of the traditional film camera amongst U.S. consumers.

The last three years of data have shown a steady decline in people who report owning a traditional film camera, decreasing from 67% in 2007, to 61% in 2008, and dropping all the way to 48% in 2009.

Conversely, camera phones continue to grow in ubiquity, going from just 70% reporting that they owned a phone with a camera in 2007, to 78% in 2008 and 87% in 2009.

[Read full news release from Business Wire. Image from Switched]

Cellphone pictures of rape in Guinea corroborate horrific events

Cellphone snapshots, ugly and hard to refute, are circulating in Guinea and feeding rage: they show that women were the particular targets of the Guinean soldiers who suppressed a political demonstration at a stadium here last week, with victims and witnesses describing rapes, beatings and acts of intentional humiliation.

The cellphone pictures are circulating anonymously, but multiple witnesses corroborated the events depicted.

[via The New York Times]

Twin Towers seen once more via Augmented Reality iPhone app

A newly released iPhone app, out today (iTunes in the US only) enables anyone in New York, using an AR enabled mobile phone, to see a virtual World Trade Center through the phone’s display.

[via TechCrunch]

Adobe pushes Flash video on mobile devices

Adobe Systems has garnered the support of mobile heavy hitters such as Google, Motorola, Nvidia, Palm, RIM, and Qualcomm for its new Flash Player 10.1 software for smartphones, Netbooks, and other mobile devices. The company plans to announce the support Monday at its developer conference in Los Angeles.

[via CNet]

iPhone Camera View of the World

Two new apps for viewing Wikipedia entries about physical locations you look at through your iPhone camera are now available in the iTunes store. ReadWriteWeb reports.

Wikitude and Cyclopedia are the names of the apps and both require the new iPhone 3GS. That's because the 3GS is the first iPhone with an internal compass - Augmented Reality (AR) apps use your phone's GPS to know where you are and the compass to know which direction you're looking at. Then these two apps can tell you what you're looking at that's written up in Wikipedia. Read how the two different apps compare.

[via The New York Times]

Cameraphones and Nursery Staff

Plymouth nursery worker Vanessa George and two other people she met online have admitted a series of charges after abuse was recorded on mobile phones. The BBC reports.

As a result, one of the parents with children at the nursery where George worked is campaigning for tighter controls on staff's camera phones.

Cheryl Higgs has set up a website, nocameraphones.org, calling for staff to have to deposit their devices in a secure room while at work.