Mobile bar code scanning up 700% since January

A Scanbuy study found that mobile bar code scanning is up 700 percent from the beginning of the year, with more people performing scans in a single month than all of 2009 combined. Mobile Marketer reports.

Users are scanning both 1D and 2D codes equally, showing that people are less concerned with format and more interested in getting information quickly. People are scanning a wide variety of product UPC codes, not only from the consumer electronics category.

Read full article.

Dramatic cell phone footage of emergency landing

Cell phone cameras capture the scene on video aboard Delta Flight 4951 as passengers are told to "brace for impact " for an emergency landing at New York's JFK International Airport.

[via Yahoo News]

Though the following is irrelevant to the incident mentioned above, because the video was taken safely from a passenger seat, this blog post from 2005 raises interesting issues:

The rise of the citizen-journalist is a global phenomenon - witness the Toronto plane crash this week, in which escaping passengers took the time to photograph the scene. It does raise issues of concern: About safety - Are victims putting themselves and others at risk by pausing to snap pictures? About privacy - if you're a victim do you want your picture plastered over the front pages?

Related:

-- Disaster Photos: Newsworthy or irresponsible?

-- Mobile video shot by Thai air crash victim

After print and billboards, Bar Codes pop up in TV Ads

Bar codes, the tiny black and white boxes that have been popping up in magazines, on posters and on some billboards, are arriving on television. The New York Times reports.

The 45-second commercials by the online fashion retailer Bluefly show snippets of its Closet Confessions interviews with designers and celebrities like Bethenny Frankel, who appeared on “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and the Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir.

When the cellphone is pointed at the on-screen bar code, the user is linked to a complete closet-baring episode, which can run as long as five minutes, and offered a $30 discount on a $150 purchase at bluefly.com, which sells designer and other branded clothing and accessories.

Read full article.

Apple Goes After The Camera Market Too

As the iPhone’s camera quality has improved, a new series of patents that have emerged from the company shows that the Apple could completely replace the traditional camera for many reports Bits Blog.

Among the new features discussed in the patent, the company is exploring new technologies that could adjust the camera flash based on the scene of the photo and the angle the camera is to an object.

Another example of this flash would let the camera operator highlight a dimly lit area and focus the flash exclusively there. That means no more photos of people who look like cardboard cutouts when you use your camera flash.

Read full article.

Is Video Killing the Concert Vibe?

Lighters held aloft at rock shows have given way to camera phones. Meet the backlash. The Wall Street Journal reports.

At most concerts these days, when the houselights go down, the tiny glowing screens go up. As more fans mark the moments with smartphones, cameras and pocket-sized video recorders, a new kind of digital divide is emerging. Music lovers who try to document and share the essence of concerts are squaring off against those who think that just defeats the purpose. The debate is drawing participants from both sides of the stage.

Read full article.

Related:

-- Stealing the show? Cellphones capture concerts

-- Bootleg video tapes of concert shows flourish

-- Camphone shots at gigs is illegal

Dubai's QR Code Hotel concept

Spotted on Popwuping a QR Code hotel concept in Dubai's Studio City.

Analyst: Cameras need networking--pronto

Camera makers must wake up to the competitive threat of mobile phones by embracing networking technology or face unpleasant consequences as photography habits shift profoundly.

That was the warning from Ed Lee, an InfoTrends analyst speaking to a photo industry audience at this week's Photokina imaging show in Cologne..

The digital camera vendors need to be much more aggressive about getting their cameras connected," Lee said. "Otherwise, I can see a world where the mobile phone will be king and the digital camera will be relegated to just taking pictures. I don't think that's a world the camera vendors want to see happen."

Read full article.

FaceTime images disappear from Middle Eastern iPhone promos

According to macnn, Apple has subtly modified some promotional material for the iPhone 4 to remove references to FaceTime.

In Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Yemen, as well as Egypt and Jordan, official pages for the iPhone 4 no longer show a woman and man having a video conversation. Instead, Apple has substituted content promoting the device's Retina Display.

Read full article.

Camera phones are a sensitive issue in the Middle East and have been opposed by religious police in conservative Saudi Arabia. See related articles.

Pocketbooth iPhone app

The Pocketbooth iPhone app renders your pictures retro style like a real phone booth.

Customer reviews so far are full of praise: "... the photo strips that 'come out' of the photobooth have a great vintage feel. I love the built-in sharing features that make it simple to post to Facebook, Twitter, etc., and everyone instantly recognizes the familiar strips, which make them so much fun to share."

[via LaughingSquid]

Camera phones seen as answer to image storage problem

As consumers take more and more photographs, the problem of retrieving, identifying and storing images may be solved by the new breed of smart phones rather than cameras, writes Photo & Imaging News.

In preparation for the upcoming 6Sight Future of Imaging conference in California next month, co-host Future Image has released a special report titled ‘Location-Aware Images - Using Smart-Phone Capabilities To Automate Rich Metadata’, the latest in a series of research studies examining technology developments that will change how imaging products are made, marketed and used.

The report examines the prospects for technology that will allow people to search for and find photographs and videos much more easily, by having them contain information about the location where they were taken.

Read full article.

Plane Finder AR app lets you identify planes in the sky

Is it a bird..., is it a plane...? Well now you can find out for sure. iPhone app Plane Finder AR lets you "point the camera at a plane and you'll see the flight number, aircraft registration, speed, altitude and how far away it is!" Recombu reports.

It's based on an existing service called Plane Finder, which tracks planes using something called ADS-B - the signals transmitted by commercial airliners with all this data.

Caveat emptor - check if your area is covered before purchasing.

High End QR Code Promotion on Fifth Avenue

Michael C. Fina the family-run Fifth Avenue NY retailer of jewelry and giftware has dedicated its storefront windows (image below) to a special promotion of A. Jaffe platinum rings. Each of the windows features a different QR code resolving to a mobile website with facts about the platinum jewelry designs being showcased.

[via @waynesutton]

American Civil Liberties Union Settles Student Cell Phone Search Lawsuit

The ACLU of Pennsylvania has settled a lawsuit alleging that the Tunkhannock Area School District (Wyoming County) illegally searched a student's cell phone, punished her for storing semi-nude pictures of herself on the device, and then referred her case for criminal prosecution to the district attorney's office. Cellular News reports.

Under the settlement, the school district denied any liability or wrongdoing but agreed to pay the student and her lawyers US$33,000 to resolve the dispute. The student's claims against the District Attorney's Office were not settled and will proceed through litigation.

The case began in January 2009 when a teacher confiscated the cell phone of the 17-year-old pupil, for using the phone after homeroom began, a violation of school policy. Later that morning, the principal informed N.N. that he had found "explicit" photos stored on her cell phone, which he turned over to law enforcement. He then gave her a three day out-of-school suspension, which she served.

The photographs, which were not visible on the screen and required multiple steps to locate, were taken on the device's built-in camera and were never circulated to other students in the school. N.N. appeared fully covered in most of the photographs, although several showed her naked breasts and one indistinct image showed her standing upright while fully naked. The photographs were intended to be seen only by N.N.'s long-time boyfriend and herself.

The ACLU-PA hoped to use this case to help alert school officials across Pennsylvania to students' privacy rights in their cell phones.

Read full article and ACLU press release.

iPhone 4 Skin Makes It Look Like A Leica Camera

Spotted on Laughing Squid, PetaPixel's iPhone 4 skin that makes it look like a Leica camera.

Pigeon beats broadband in great data race

Is your broadband faster than a pigeon? That was the question being posed by business broadband ISP, Timico, in a race between arcane communications and the UK's data network. PCPro reports.

In an event that was part publicity stunt, part campaign for rural broadband, the race organisers planned to see which method could transfer a 200MB video file more quickly - a pigeon flying about 70 miles from Beverley to Skegness or the supposed broadband connection of a friendly Beverley farmer uploading the file to YouTube.

The result? A little bird tells us the pigeon triumphed, completing the journey in an hour and 15 minutes.

The upload, which had to be restarted once after it hung, was 24% complete when the pigeon arrived in his loft.

Read full article.

Previously:

-- SA pigeon 'faster than broadband' - In 2004, A Durban IT company pitted an 11-month-old bird armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country's biggest web firm, Telkom. Winston the pigeon took two hours to carry the data 60 miles - in the same time the ADSL had sent 4% of the data.

Yuri Suzuki Barcode Book...

Spotted on Core77, Yuri Suzuki's Barcode Book and Other Magnificent Sound-Producing Object.

The book tells a story with the illustrations made with barcodes and the sound played using the barcodes with the barcode reader.

[via @MobileBehavior. Image for Yur Suzuki's Flickr page]

Camphone citizens reports on animal road kills

Projects in California and Maine ask people to photograph and locate dead animals to understand the impact of roads on the environment. The New York Times reports.

Begun a year ago, the Web site — www.wildlifecrossing.net/california — is the first statewide effort to map roadkill using citizen observers. Volunteers comb the state’s highways and country roads for dead animals, collecting GPS coordinates, photographs and species information and uploading it to a database and Google map populated with dots representing the kills.

Read full article.

Nokia launches mobile TV

Nokia has just launched a TV receiver for your mobile device.

The Nokia Mobile TV Headset, DVB-H, is all you need to turn your mobile device into a portable television. Anywhere there’s mobile DVB-H (Digital Video Broadband – Handset) coverage, you can tune into sports events or TV shows and watch them without worrying about an Internet connection. DVB-H is also kinder to your battery life than Web TV solutions.

The headset handles call reception and volume in a similar way to other mobile headsets, so you won’t miss calls while you’re watching the game. It also features keys for changing channels and music controls for the player on your handset. There’s an app called Mobile TV available for compatible handsets. It’s either pre-installed on compatible devices or it can be downloaded from the Ovi Store or www.nokia.com/support.

[via Nokia Conversations]

Caught on Video: Fans Supplement Action on Court

Hooliganism is rare in tennis, on the courts or in the stands. So when a heated argument turned into a brief melee Thursday night in the upper reaches of Arthur Ashe Stadium — and two men tumbled down a few rows of $45 seats — it was captured by fans with camera phones, not ESPN. The New York Times reports.

The rapid spread of the United States Open brawl video is another example of the power of citizen-shot footage, regardless of its quality. Network cameras do not routinely cut to fans fighting or trespassing on the field of play unless they disturb the action or do something newsworthy.

But thanks to mobile devices, fans can record the action from a separate universe of violent and embarrassing behavior that does not make it on network broadcasts.

“The technology of the video cellphone gives you maybe 30,000 deputized people at a sporting event covering what’s going on in the stands,” said Robert J. Thompson, the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University.

Read full article.

Radiohead Releases Concert Film Recorded Solely On Camera Phones

Radiohead has released a concert film, recorded in Prague… solely by fans’ cell phone videos.

According to BeatCrave:

The audio for the concert film is taken directly from the soundboard (so it’s pristine), the video has been painstakingly edited and cleaned over a period of months, and –this might help—it’s totally free and available for download on Radiohead’s website.

Read more.

First 'intelligent' stamp put on sale by Royal Mail

The Royal Mail has launched the world's first "intelligent" stamp, the first to work with image recognition technology. The BBC reports.

The stamp, part of the Royal Mail's latest Great British Railways edition, will launch online content via an iPhone or Android smartphone.

Users place the camera over the stamp, which then launches the online content.

The Royal Mail said intelligent stamps "mark the next step in the evolution of our stamps, bringing them firmly into the 21st Century."

People can use the stamps via the Junaio application, which contains a Royal Mail channel which activates the phone's camera.

Read full article.

Nine West uses text messages to highlight its fall collection

Nine West has launched a mobile marketing campaign to promote the retailer’s Fall 2010 Vintage America Collection, which is endorsed by singer Joss Stone. The campaign aims to allow any consumer with a camera phone to receive multimedia content via text message. Internet Retailer reports.

The retailer worked with mobile marketing firm JagTag to incorporate 2-D bar codes on in-store signage, as well as on the collection’s product packaging.

When a consumer takes a picture of a 2D bar code and sends the image either via text message or e-mail to a designated phone number, she is entered into a contest to win apparel, as well as text and video messages of Stone’s performances, behind-the-scenes videos and how-to style tips.

Read full article.

Puppy-throwing girl and the Internet's Power to Track and Shame

An interesting read from Chris Matyszczyk for CNet about the video of a girl in a red hoodie throwing live puppies into a river, and the video of apology (now removed) purporting to be from the same girl - following a man hunt online to identify the girl.

What's most disturbing writes Chris Matyszczyk and I agree:

People online have so much power in threatening the lives of those who might be guilty--or just might not be. The Web makes it so easy to accuse and so hard to retract. And the definition of a crime becomes "anything of which I don't approve."

This post on Reddit (NSFW), for example, asks people to think about that power. It offers that "Internet lynch mob s***" can harness an extreme negative force, one that might be entirely misplaced.

What's the chance now of Puschnik (who is reported to live in Germany) or--if it isn't, in fact, her--the real perpetrator, suffering physical harm because a resourceful group on the Web has tracked her down?

The parallel with the lady who threw a cat in the bin happened just recently, but this reminds of the story in 2005 of a young woman who refused to clean up the mess after her dog pooped on the floor of a subway in South Korea. Someone on the train took a video on their camera phone and posted it on the Internet which started a nationwide witchhunt.

Within hours, she was labeled gae-ttong-nyue (dog-shit-girl) and her pictures and parodies were everywhere. Humiliated in public and indelibly marked, the woman reportedly quit her university.

According to The Washington Post which reported on the subject at the time: the case was “a remarkable show of Internet force and a peek into an unsettling corner of the future.”