A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives

Law enforcement officials and educators are struggling with how to confront minors who “sext.” In this 5 page article, The New York Times tells the story of how a naked photo taken by a teenager girl and forwarded to her boyfriend, turns into a nightmare.

In short order, students would be handcuffed and humiliated, parents mortified and lessons learned at a harsh cost. Only then would the community try to turn the fiasco into an opportunity to educate.

Read full article.

Why glasses-free 3D is going to be a small-screen hit

The latest generation of 3D technology has seen mixed success at the cinema, and 3D TVs are yet to establish themselves in the living room. Perhaps the true home of 3D is on mobile devices, where you don't even need special glasses. New Scientist takes a look at the future of 3D on the move.

Color app for iPhone lets others peek at your photos, video

Color, launched for iPhones and Android phones, allows people to shoot photos for the app and share instantly with others geographically around you and running the same app - including strangers. Built-in SMS and text messaging keeps the conversation going.

[via USA Today]

Mobile Video Reaches Few Users, Puts Huge Strain on Network

One out of ten mobile users are watching video content on their devices. But the video they consume accounts for a staggering 38% of all data volume on mobile networks. Mashable reports.

These stats and more were released Monday in mobile services company Bytemobile‘s Mobile Minute Metrics report. The company also found that by the end of this year, video content will jump to 60% of all network data volume.

And as one might expect, much of this volume comes from a core of power users; the report states that 10% of mobile data users generate 87% of total traffic.

Read full article.

Woman Who Photographed Cops Got Beatdown, Files $24 Million Lawsuit

Gothamist reports that a Harlem woman recently filed a lawsuit against the city of New York for $24 million regarding events occurring in October of 2009 in which she was allegedly beat up and arrested by police officers after they realized she was photographing an arrest with her camera-phone.

[via PopPhoto]

Related and contradictory:

-- Citizens should no longer get arrested for using their cameras to record police actions in public - at least in New Haven, according to a new policy.

-- Recording a Police Officer Could Get You 15 Years in Jail in Illinois.

-- The Huffington Post looks back on several case between police officers and civilians who record them.

CamTranslator app for Android

CamTranslator is a universal translator, which lets you point your phone’s camera at printed text in one language and translate words into more than 50 different languages ranging from English, French, Spanish and German to Korean, Russian, Afrikaans, and Persian.

[via Mobiputing]

Taliban Texts Terror to Afghan Phones

Wired reports that the Taliban in Afghanistan are sending unsuspecting Afghans videos on their cell phones, warning them they will be targeted for death unless they change their infidel-loving ways and glorifying suicide bombers.

Australia. Law proposed against uploading violent images on the internet

The South Australian government wants to make it an offence to post violent or other degrading images on the internet. The Sydney Morning Herald reports.

Attorney-General John Rau said the state's proposed legislation, to be introduced this year, would be the first of its kind in Australia.

It will make it an offence to knowingly take or publish humiliating, demeaning or degrading images of another person without their consent.

Mr Rau said it was designed to tackle thugs who filmed assaults and then posted them on the internet.

Read more.

Google Said to Plan Payment Test in New York, San Francisco

Google plans to start testing a mobile-payment service at stores in New York and San Francisco within four months, letting shoppers use their phones to ring up purchases, two people familiar with the project said. Bloomberg reports.

The company will pay for installation of thousands of special cash-register systems from VeriFone Systems Inc. at merchant locations, said one of the people, who requested anonymity because Google’s plans haven’t been made public. The registers would accept payments from mobile phones equipped with so-called near-field-communication technology.

Read full article.

Slow blogging this week from Istanbul

Slow blogging this week. I'm visiting Istanbul.

Image from Taraz.

Can Facebook photos be used commercially?

You can tag photos of your friends on Facebook, but critics have voiced concerns over where they will end up.

The Guardian reports from SXSW Music and Media Conference where Facebook's photos product manager, Sam Odio answered questions.

Japan Captures Tsunami, Quake Footage with Camera Phones

TIME's Techland has rounded up Photo sharing websites where pictures of the earthquake and tsunami are being uploaded.

Photo sharing service Flickr has images pouring in. You can use the "Japan" tag to see the most recent photos that have been uploaded.

Popular Twitter photo sharing service TwitPic has been experiencing an influx of images as well, though the site's stability has been a bit shaky.

Google's Picasa has over 200,000 Japan-related images which, if ordered by most recent, contain some images of the recent events.

You can follow trending topics #japan and #tsunami directly on Twitter for a mix of text, images and videos.

Read more. Image from Rasjomanny Puntorg on PicasaWeb: Women wait on the street after evacuating a building following an earthquake in Tokyo March 11, 2011.

Cell phone QR Code tickets for Taiwan High Speed Rail

To increase passenger convenience, Taiwan High Speed Rail is planning to roll out a ticketing system that allows travelers to swipe their cell phones in lieu of a ticket or pass. The China Post reports.

Soon, passengers will be able to use their cell phones to book seats on the THSR system, after which the booking system will send a QR code to the cell phone. Passengers can then use their phones and scan the QR code to enter the station.

Read full article.

Cell Phone video of gang rape shakes Texas town

Authorities in the small town of Cleveland, Texas have arrested 18 young men and teenage boys on charges of participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in a trailer—a crime that first came to light when one of the victim’s classmates showed a cell-phone video of the assault to her teacher.

[The New York Times via The Daily Beast]

Links to other horrific rape and cell phone recording stories from around the world.

The Photograph That Became an Unintentional Cultural Icon

Noam Galai took a few photos of himself in 2006 and uploaded them to his Flickr account. A few people liked those photos, but he didn't think of it. Over time, he began to see his photos popping up all over magazines, the internet and as street art. Then it began appearing on commodities (clothes, books, etc.). Now, it's being used as a symbol of protest in Iran. The crazy part is that nobody asked his permission. Gizmodo reports.

Fstoppers are responsible for this great video narrative, titled The Stolen Scream, which details Galai's story, and the process of watching himself become an anonymous global icon with no control over how his image is used (in one case, the photo was attributed to someone else entirely). He even mentions that when he tried to register the photo with sites like Getty Images, they told him the image would never sell.

Read more.

Turn Your Phone Into an Interactive “Hello My Name Is” Badge

Turn your phone into an interactive name badge. Instead of giving your new friend your printed business card, text them your virtual one. This action automatically places them in your online contact list and if they have a profile on contxts.com you both are connected.

The mobile badge displays a user’s name alongside a QR code that when scanned will pass along contact details. The badge also cycles through a user’s latest tweets and checkins, highlights fun facts and puts other social data on dynamic display using information from a user’s profile.

[via Mashable]

Adobe Unveils Wallaby: Flash to HTML 5 Converter

Adobe introduced a new experimental tool on Tuesday called Wallaby that converts Flash content into HTML 5.

Right now Wallaby can handle a limited selection of Flash components, but it does offer a way to get at least some of the content developers are creating with Adobe’s multimedia tools onto devices like Apple’s iPhone and iPad.

Wallaby is available as a free download at the Adobe Labs Web site and requires Creative Suite 5.

[The Mac Observer]

TED 2011: Trash Tracker Follows Refuse Around Country

How far does your cell phone, printer cartridge or battery travel after you throw it out? Wired reports on the video of an MIT project presented last week at TED.

In 2009 MIT’s Senseable City Lab invited 500 people in Seattle, Washington, to tag their trash with smart tags in order to track where it traveled once it left their garbage bins. The researchers tracked 3,000 pieces of refuse from bagels to banana peels to shoes and cell phones over a two-month period as the items logged miles across the United States.

Read more.

14-year old child pornographers? Sexting lawsuits get serious

If a 14-year old boy coerces a 14-year old girl into making a sex video on a cellphone, then releases that video on the Internet, can he be charged as a child pornographer? A federal case in Kentucky may set key precedent. arstechnica reports.

The case began late in 2005, when an eighth grade girl at the Montessori Middle School of Kentucky developed a crush on a boy.

The two would attend the same Lexington Catholic High School in the fall of 2006 as freshmen. According to the complaint, the boy soon “made several telephone calls to the Plaintiff telling her that he wanted her to create a video with her telephone showing herself pleasuring herself, a video which Defendant [name redacted] said he would use when he masturbated."

The girl at first refused, but the boy allegedly told her that "he would not be her friend at Lexington Catholic High School" without the video.

This continued for some time, with the boy allegedly sending text messages to the girl in June 2006 in which he promised to “keep the sexually explicit video secret.” The girl gave in. According to the complaint, she was “finally coerced, enticed, and persuaded” to produce an 8 to 10 second video clip of herself masturbating, which she sent to the boy using her cell phone.

Fast-forward to September, when both the boy and the girl entered ninth grade at Lexington Catholic. Only a few weeks into the school year, the boy was allegedly convinced by one of his friends to transfer the cell phone video to his computer. From there, it was a small step to uploading the short clip onto the Internet, with predictable results. (An alleged attempt to upload the clip to YouTube, where it might have received even wider dissemination, was “unsuccessful because of the sexually explicit nature of the content.”)

Read more.

Related:

-- Bill would let 'sexting' NJ teens avoid charges - New Jersey teenagers caught texting or posting sexually explicit photos online could avoid prosecution under a measure that would give first-time offenders the chance to complete a diversionary program.

-- Court Says Parents Can Block ‘Sexting’ Cases - In the first federal appeals court opinion dealing with “sexting” — the transmission of sexually explicit photographs by cellphone — a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in March 2010, that parents could block the prosecution of their children on child pornography charges for appearing in photographs found on some classmates’ cellphones.

New App Provides a 360-Degree View

Bits writes up Bubbli, a stealth Silicon Valley start-up that is inventing a new type of photographic experience it calls “bubbles”, demonstrated at the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif.

The “bubbles” are 360-degree images that take advantage of the location, accelerometer and camera capabilities of mobile phones. They can also be embedded in Web pages.

The effect is somewhat akin to being able to manipulate Google Streetview through tilting and moving the mobile device around, instead of using a mouse.

Read more.

Cops Roll Out Citizen Video Order

Citizens should no longer get arrested for using their cameras to record police actions in public according to a new official New Haven policy released Thursday. New Haven Independent reports.

“It is the policy of the New Haven Department of Police Service to permit video recording of police activity as long as such recording does not interfere with ongoing police activity or jeopardize the safety of the general public or the police,” the order reads.

“The video recording of police activity in and of itself does not constitute a crime, offense, or violation. If a person video recording police activity is arrested, the officer must articulate clearly the factual basis for any arrest in his or her case and arrest reports.

Read full article.

How citizen journalism has changed since George Holliday’s Rodney King video

From Poynter.org

Twenty years ago tonight, George Holliday was awakened in his LA-area apartment by sirens and a police helicopter. He saw the commotion between police officers and a motorist on the street below, grabbed his brand-new Sony Handycam, and captured a scene that put a city in flames.

A lot has changed, and a lot remains the same, since Holliday committed that act of citizen journalism by chronicling Rodney King’s beating. Here are some thoughts on the tools, the distribution and the economics of citizen journalism, then and now.

Read full article.

Related: Rodney King and the Rise of the Citizen by Dan Gillmore.

Citizen captures police act of racism on camera phone - The first "Rodney King", or blatant act of racism, filmed by a citizen reporter with a camera phone, in November 2003.

The Army Is Now Training Patriot Missile Crews Via iPhone App

According to Business Insider, the United States Army is now using smartphones to train missile crews.

New Patriot Missile crew members, as part of their training, will hone their skills in a specialized iPhone application suite when not engaging in standard in-classroom and in-field operations.

Virginia's C2 Technologies has been commissioned to produce seven Patriot Missile iPhone training applications.

The first application, which handles launch station march order and emplacement (pictured), is now available to troops. The other six applications are scheduled to be completed this summer.

Read full article and press release.

US Lawmaker seeks ban on cell phone photos of accidents - while driving

Pantagraph reports that a Belleville lawmaker wants to prevent people from taking cell phone photographs or videos of accidents while driving.

State Rep. Thomas Holbrook, a Democrat, is sponsoring legislation that would prohibit people from using cell phones to snap photos or shoot video within 500 feet of emergency scenes.

Holbrook said this behavior interferes with emergency personnel.

The House Transportation Committee approved the measure without opposition Wednesday, and now it will go to the House floor.

The legislation is House Bill 1984:

Amends the Illinois Vehicle Code. Provides that no person may use a wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle within 500 feet of an emergency scene except for specified purposes. Adds digital photographs and video to the definition of "electronic message" in provisions prohibiting the use of electronic communication devices while operating a motor vehicle. Effective immediately.

Cell Phone Photo Class Is Not Just For Taking Pics

A new cell phone photography class at a Immaculata, suburban Philadelphia university, focuses on both the quality of the images and the ethical responsibilities that come with taking and publishing them. Issues such as voyeurism, citizen journalism and the difference between public and private spaces are part of the curriculum.

[via the npr]