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I hook up my 11 megapixel Canon EOS 1Ds to a laptiop with slott-in GPRS / GSM card. That gives me an 11 Mpx (nearly-)mobile phone.

Yes, but you can't carry it in your pocket.

I think most people are missing out on the real uses for cellular phone cams. It is the form factor that is the win. Most people take snapshots, they don't care too much about the quality of the shot if they can easilly have the camera with them at all times, as they currently do with their cellphones.

BTW, for an example cellphone cam blog, see CarlaZone.

My wife uses her Sanyo 5300 and SprintPCS for a cellular camera-enabled blog.

We've found the Sanyo 5300 to be worthless for general Web surfing under SprintPCS. But it makes a very handy camera, and I set up a system so she can email pictures to her blog for immediate display. The camera doesn't do well in low light, but the form-factor is just too cool. She lugged around a very small tablet computer webcam for a while, but now she just carries the cellphone.

I've been kind of amazed at the battery life of the Sanyo SCP5300. My wife takes all kinds of pictures, uploads them, and talks on it a lot, but has not yet run down the battery.

CarlaZone bllog has uploads of live images from a cell phone with a web cam...

Check out CarlaZone which is a blog with cell-phone camera image updates. She used to carry around a tablet computer with CDPD, but the Sanyo 5300 has better battery life and a form-factor you can't beat (especially if you already carry a cellphone).

In Korea they already have full-motion video cameras, check out the story on CellCamZone.

I thought battery time on a cellcam phone would be low as well.

But I was pleasantly suprised by the Sanyo SCP-5300. My wife has been taking as many as 20 pictures per day and uploading them to her webcam site, and the phone has yet to run out of battery...this usually includes flash pictures as well.

I believe the imaging element is CMOS, not CCD, which means it can run at very low power, but really looks bad/banded in low-light.

My wife uses Sprint PCS Vision to upload images for her webcam site. The "killer app" part of this is the form factor of a webcam in a cellphone, which you would carry anyway, and actually has a lot of battery time. Check out the images in her gallery to imagine how this might be used, especially by teenagers at parties!

She used to carry around a stylus-based computer in a purse-like fashion using CDPD, which was easier to use (just turn on and it snapped pictures every few minutes), but suffered from low battery time (a few hours) and was just too heavy and bulky.

Of course, using Web browsers on Sprint PCS Vision phones sucks. I haven't checked out a Treo on the network yet, but I know that my Palm V with AT&T CDPD (Omnisky) had much better web browsers that could handle frames and such.

We went Sprint PCS Vision because we needed a cellphone anyway, and paying for unlimited Verizon 1xRTT $100/month was just too much. With Sprint we pay the same we would just for voice service, and possibly $10/month more once the introductory period is over.

My wife uses Sprint PCS Vision to upload images for her webcam site. The "killer app" part of this is the form factor of a webcam in a cellphone, which you would carry anyway, and actually has a lot of battery time. Check out the images in her gallery to imagine how this might be used, especially by teenagers at parties!

She used to carry around a stylus-based computer in a purse-like fashion using CDPD, which was easier to use (just turn on and it snapped pictures every few minutes), but suffered from low battery time (a few hours) and was just too heavy and bulky.

Of course, using Web browsers on Sprint PCS Vision phones sucks. I haven't checked out a Treo on the network yet, but I know that my Palm V with AT&T CDPD (Omnisky) had much better web browsers that could handle frames and such.

We went Sprint PCS Vision because we needed a cellphone anyway, and paying for unlimited Verizon 1xRTT $100/month was just too much. With Sprint we pay the same we would just for voice service, and possibly $10/month more once the introductory period is over.

"Show her you'll love her for the next millennium." "How else can 3 months salary last an eternity?" I'm so fed up with all the millennium diamond ring commercials on TV. I'm one of the few women who doesn't understand the big deal about diamonds. I certainly wouldn't want someone to propose to me with a generic token on a generic day like New Years! Some people think that diamonds are females' way of testing their mates to see how far they will go for them (if you buy the theory that women are constantly seeking the perfect father for their children and men are constantly seeking ways of spreading their sperm). I think diamond rings exist primarily to impress others.

Ricochet was great if you stayed put, but in a moving vehicle it had great trouble microcell-hopping. I find CDPD, as implemented as a virtual NIC by the Sierra Aircard 300, to be much more useful in mobile environments. It is even usable on most of the Amtrak trip between Washington, DC and NYC.

I've used CDPD to build a portable webcam.

OmniSky and Ricochet are not in the same category - OmniSky uses the existing CDPD network of AT&T, cranking along at a good 10kbps Internet throughput on a good day. Yes, I have OmniSky for my Palm Vx, but I really could use another 20-30 kbps!!!

Ricochet, on the other hand, has built out its own network. They sneaked into the consumer market by first selling remote monitoring services to power companies, who in turn let them mount the units on the light poles (where the repeaters can get power from as well). I used Ricochet's first service, that delivered ~20 kbps Internet throughput. I abandoned it for the slower Verizon CDPD because it was available in a NIC version as a PC card instead of a separate modem that seemed to disconnect every micro cell hop as I drove. (Actually, the separate modem part is cool in that you have an extra battery, and can mount it farther from your PC without cable loss. OmniSky's Minstrel modem has its own battery, but form-fits around the Palm.)

I've been waiting to try out Ricochet's "128kbps" service, that does seem to provide 50-100kbps of Internet throughput from what I've heard. However, it hasn't made it to the Washington, DC metro area yet. There are PCMCIA cards for the new Ricochet now, and I believe there is a NIC version as well.

Probably the best use for Ricochet is not with a laptop, but with a WinCE/Linux PDA running a reasonable Web browser, email client, etc. At the Ricochet 128kbps level, you can imagine sourcing/receiving streaming video, webcams, streamed MP3s, etc., going well beyond the world of Palms. Also, there is the concept of "Social ASPs", instant messaging and other mechanism to help organize groups of people for both recreational and business reasons in the mobile (club-going, bar-hopping, sales show) environment.

I don't buy that any homebuilt 802.11b networks will be able to compete with a network that is built out as large as Ricochet. There are a bunch of issues - for one, it isn't enough just to have repeaters, you need connection to the Internet. The question of who gets billed for this is the major problem.

However, there is something to be said for local Ricochet gateways. I know in the olden days, Ricochet would work with a University to set up a micro-cell campus network. I think that those deals have to be put aside for now until the major Metro area buildouts are done, but in the future companies and Universities should be sold local Ricochet gateways.

BTW, check out the CarlaZone, my fiance who has a Webcam powered by Verizon CDPD. We take it along in the car sometimes.