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Digital Camera Wristwatch
MikeyMars writes "Casio has released a new watch that, aside from telling time, can take 80 full color pictures. " The watch itself only displays in grey, but the camera takes color pictures. Its not like its doing 2 mega pixels or anything, but its still pretty nifty.
Didn't this come out a LONG time ago?
THis will be banned in the work-place. Talk about industrial espionage! "No watches allowed!"
It is by caffiene alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of java that thoughts acquire speed, hands acquire
Now just add wireless, and the ability to do H.323 and you can call me Dick T.
Seriously, this is cool. Just bought my 2 year old a $20 dollar digital camera to let her play with, not a mega pixel camera either, but good enough for her to play with and it is cheaper than film.
Isn't technology fun
the article says mid-October...so where is the thing? I want my spy pictures damn-it!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Sheesh, this is old!
;-)
Sean Connery was using it in the old 60s James Bond movies!
And to beat the trolls to is "Suck it Trebek! Suck it long, and suck it hard!"
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A wristwatch camera is small, unobtrusive and lightweight. Now only if we can work on the resolution, we'd have an interesting surveillance tool.
I heard on the news the other day that Paul McCartney took the pic for the cover of his newest album using a watch camera? Maybe he got a preview of this thing? Article here.
Oh BTW... the pic he took was of him standing at a urinal taking a leak. Pic in the article.
The article says that it can store up to 80 images. It doesn't mention that you'll have to recharge the battery four times to take 80 pictures.
Just my assumption, but as the LCD is also a viewfinder, I'll bet it you can't frame and shoot 80 pics on a watch battery.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
How much memory is on those things? --25K pixels isn't that much, but it's still decent, and 80 pictures!
It's not going to replace cameras people take while on vacation, but I could see uses for engineers or architects who don't necessarily need the best image, but good enough to spot any obvious errors.
And of course, as the picture on Casio's page shows, parents of young kids who want to capture every moment of their kid's life will love this.
You know that people will be wearing this to the strip club. 80 pictures should be enough to get a pic of every girl there. :)
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
I hope the watch is more reliable than their website (from netcraft.com: The site www.casio.com is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4/Windows 98). Seriously, this should be fun to hack (Try and allow the red, green, and blue to be viewed seperately so the greyscale isn't too innaccurate)
I can see the teenagers now... Schools had to ban pagers, now they're going to have to ban watches too, either that or ban the girls wearing skirts (which is bad for everybody). I'm gonna get one and rig it with a remote control, so I can drop it on the floor at the mall so I can fund my website!!
Just because I AM paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get me.
This is what me, and others like me, have needed FOREVER!!! I am constantly thinking "Ok, I know this person... but who is it? From where..???" This is a godsend, I'm placing my order now!
Not only will the authorities will be able to observe me easily, that asshole who follows my girl friend around will have a watch tied to his shoe instead of a mirror .
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Error Diagnostic Information
/. becoming a DDOS hub?
Server busy or unable to fulfill request. The server is unable to fulfill your request due to extremely high traffic or an unexpected internal error. Please attempt your request again (if you are repeatedly unsuccessful you should notify the site administrator). (Location Code: 25)
Casio's site slashdotted already?
What's up with
The article looks a little like this [slashdot.org] one.
/. and all that blah blah blah blah blah [add rant]....
Don't editors read
I guess you can log them or save the packages sent through the infrared port.
It's kinda tricky, but it involves several highly reflective mirrors. The best part? No batteries are required.
WTF, somebody lost it's memory go buy some, it's very cheap :-)
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
There have been quite a few articles about watches that are mp3 players, can take pictures, run linux, etc... But they always had the traditional shape of a watch, which limits the size of the battery you can use. Perhaps if you changed the general shape (wider and longer, and using a wide wrist strap that would be able to contain more batteries or something like it), maybe you can get something more interesting, that can last a lot longer. Of course, materials that would not cause too much sweating would have to be chosen.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
hot damn!
too bad I hate wearing a watch.
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
Pothead fockers?!
I know i'm going to get slammed for this, but how can a post thats like 4th in the topic be modded as redundant.
Yes, my girlfriend is a BitchX
EdgeReview did an article on this watch, (it has a nice picture on it, too), here: http://www.edgereview.com/ataglance.cfm?category=i maging&ID=246
The metal-banded WQV3D-8 costs $269, while its companion costs $249.
Is this thing waterproof? Can it take pictures underwater? (I doubt that one).
void women (int money, time_t time);
Another fun watch is the linux watch:
o op watch1cropped.jpg
http://www.research.ibm.com/people/c/chandras/l
You're Just Jealous Because The Voices Are Talking To Me.
...how do I get someone to sneak this into the ladies' lockerroom... >
;-)
80 postage stamp sized pictures... whoopee.
I'd rather have a cellphone with built-in 640x480 or better resolution camera, so I can take pictures, view them on the display, and save or send them immediately to my personal computer or virtual drive via a packet-switched phone network and the internet. Voila - essentially infinite image storage. Throw in a GPS system that automatically tags the images with coordinates and direction and you have an amazing tool for instantaneous documentation.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Now we'll have CmdrTaco running around going ...
... CmdrTaco ...
...
I'm Taco
Swell
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
Read This! Far much more important than a watch that takes crappy low resolution pictures.
Try 3rd. But I agree.
How big are those pictures??? The square root of 25,344 is about 159... That means that the pictures will be 159x159 in size... pretty small don't you think??? This also means that the thing has about 2 megabyes of memory on board... which also isn't too impressive...
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Apparently, stupid moderators think the definition of redundant is "You think you're funny, but you're not".
Casio has had thing thing for awhile from what I've heard... and I've personally seen a watch that could take pictures in a store in NYC (sometime in April or March). As for "color" whats the point if you can still only see the pictures in black&white. Seems like a waste of space to me, especially with the fact that this thing cost more than a digital camera. Although I'll admit that its cool technology.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Aol perv comment = = FUNNY!
I want a cellphone, Pager, PalmPilot PDA, mp3 playing, linux running, wristwatch. I wont buy any of them until they are all incorporated into one device. It will happen soon.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Now all we need is a flash, 802.11 capabilities, and a self destruct feature (that wouldn't blow your arm off).
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
can I have your phone number? one second, let me boot up my watch...
----------
while (alive) { Work(); PayTaxes(); Eat(); Sleep(); }
Bool
Does it show the time ?
I posted aomething similar to this in the IBM linux watch arcticle a few days ago, and I'm repeating this here for one single reason:
A WRIST WATCH IS NOT THE PLACE TO PUT ALL THIS CRAP!!!.
a wrist watch is suposed to tell you USEFULL information (like time) in a quick, convenient and direct way.
It's not supposed to take pictures or to double as a Linux PDA.
Let me tell you the origins of wrist watch. I late 1890's a young brasilian from a rich familly moved to Paris. He was a briliant inventor and liked to experiment new things.
One day he rented a hot air baloon and went for a ride. He found that a marvelous thing, except for the fact that the ballon was too big and clumsy.
Then he started to work on hot air ballons which were small, light anc convenient enough to be carried in a car's trunk.
he succeeded at this, but that was not enough. after he almost died in one of his ballons becouse the wind sent him to the ocean, he decided it was time to have control of the thing.
the result was the very first drovable baloon, or blimp.
What all this have to do with wrist watches ??? try to take a big clumsy watch from your pocket to see time while strugling with a primitive blimp...
to solve this problem he designed the wrist watch and asked Cartier to build it for him.
The device was small, light and wrist mounted. This means you can simply turn quickly your wrist to see the time, which is extremely convenient. no hands on pockets, no anoying covers, no buttons to press. flip the wrist and see the time. done.
The name of this guy was Alberto Santos Dumont. He never patented his inventions. he left everything in public domain for the benefit of mankind.
Now IBM and Cassio comes with these montrosities ??? give me a break.
What ? Me, worry ?
It's a wrist camera that permits the wearer to take thumbnail sized blurry jpegs on surveillance camera type microlens. Other than ten minutes of 'Hey cute' play factor, what possible use could this have? Even in casual social situations where photo quality is of no concern, the apparent image resolution precludes the recorded pictures from being used for much more than instant messenger icons. It seems that the imager has less pixels than a damn palmpilot display, and that's almost certainly before the color filter. So the actual color detail resolution is probably closer to 80x80 pixels, which is roughly equivalent to my Vic 20 from 1980. Amazing new technology eh?
JPEG (176 x 144 pixels)
80 pictures
1MB flash memory
So I can take 80 pictures that are 12.8KB each at 176x144 pixels... That's not even enough to be able to read the text off a picture that I took of a page from a book.
Doesn't seem very useful to me, I'd much rather drop the $200 on a ultrathin camera of some sort that gives me megapixel images.
If God gave us curiosity
In an attempt to "scoop" Casio, This device was just released by a competitor!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Once individual estimated you couldn't take 80 pictures before the battery died. Casio estimates 6 months before it'll die. Here the full press release with a spec sheet.
2 &pr=4974
http://www.casio.com/corporate/pressroom.cfm?act=
Now here's something useful for a change... just imagine the potential this thing has to change your dating life.
Let's set the scene: You're at the park with your new girl, watching the moon rise over the horizon, and things start gettin' a bit steamy. You're past first base, rounding second, and sure you're gonna get to slide into home.
Only trouble is, you misread the situation, and your girl decides you've had enough for the time being. What's a guy to do?
No worries, mate... you've got that watch! Unbeknowst to her, you were snapping photos faster than a Microsoft web server being compromised. Later that night, you kick back at the PC, and enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Yep, it's useful all right...
The Class Book says it best, "The more a watch does, the less classy it is."
a good under-cover camera to catch husbands getting lap-dances when they say they're off working :-(
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
CALIFORNIA (AP) - Casio announced its release of their new campaign to advertise their digital watch technology.
"We will have pop-up ads on every major website, with supporting banner ad's built into applications supporting this" says Jack Jacobson, a spokesperson for Casio, Inc.
With the new advent of using pop-up internet advertisements on major websites, Casio has chosen not to miss out on what they consider a 'breakthrough oppurtunity'. The public should expect to see our new campaign hitting major websites the beggining of November.
at first I thought this was just another stupid abuse of technology another device that has no real purpose. but after thinking about it this is like havign a hidden camera, the guy who bangs yoru car, the cop who pushes you around, your boss and the secretary getting busy. click click, perfectly handy evidence. throw in a voice recorder and we are good to go.
OK, so your watch is hooked up to the network, and it has a camera. Blam! Pictures of you appear on the web: you picking your nose, you wiping your butt in the bathroom, etc, etc.
half the highschool girls wear *fashionably* short skirts.
:-(
I know, I have daughters
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
I've known about wrist-watch cameras for over two years. I first read about them on /. if I'm not mistaken. I keep seeing these stories posted regarding topics that have been discuess before, with no mention to the previous story. Is the database broken, or is there a glitch in the matrix? ;)
- A.C.
Every now and than we see such a "cool" tech. offering from numerous companies. While they keep us amused and at the cutting edge, to me they are nothing but a short term PR to keep the companies' name visible.
Once we see REAL application coming out of those development, I won't get much excited. But don't get me wrong, I applause such effort as they promote further expansion. However, for the short term, they are noting but PR. So keep that in mind.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
this makes no sense....
But game one on the TV. Inferior part of ninth, two outs. Here Ã. the wind in on and here Ã. the step... You have known the aluminum connection you can dramatically increase the value of your center? You never obtain that one sensibilitÃ. not cosÃ. fresh? I must say that from when I have rinunciato to smoke, I have wished one cigarette. The foot of other part hour, not Ã.Â? My nozzles explode with pleasure. And still I am not carrying some pants!
Tip for the propellerheads: give me something I can use and I really need! I really don't want to wear a camera in my wrist. How about you engineers go and concentrate on making the existing but pretty expensive (digital) cameras cheaper, more durable and improve the image quality.
As Andy Rooney put it:
"Computers make it easy to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done."
Focus.
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
I stopped wearing a watch when I was still in high school. None of my friends wear watches. I stop people on the street to ask them the time, and about 7 times out of 10, they waggle naked wrists at me and shrug apologetically.
I find jewelry and such against my skin endlessly irritating, plus I find if I am constantly aware of the time, my stress level goes up and I lose all kinds of 'slack points' (Cheap-ass Games rule!).
It seems many people have come to the same conclusion. Watches suck. --Problem is, most of the public-access time keeping devices set up around my city have been allowed to rot into useless 'Back to the Future' clocks that don't work anymore. --Public clocks seem to have all been replaced by those annoying solid state banner ads which hang over subway platforms and make people stare at them while they wait for the fucking time to be flashed between LED-based commercials. (When the heck did time become 'content'?) Bah. I'd rather be late
The weird thing I find, though, is that I am actually very rarely late for stuff. And the occasions I am late are always predicated by a conscious choice on my part to dick around and not show up when expected. --I'm never late because I don't know what time of day it is.
A lot of the people I talk to also report this phenomenon. Knowing what time it is seems to fall into that category of stuff which the Human Autopilot seems more than capable of taking care of.
Of course, if I want to play Dick Tracy or whatever Casio is selling, I'd have to buy their stupid watch.
Like that's going to happen.
-Fantastic Lad
Did anyone else get a really odd mental picture of pluggin in a 25pin serial cable to the side of the watch, and then remember we have infrared these days?
Must've been the coffee this mornin.
Casio has said about these (and I thought they had released a version, but it might have been black and white only) about 2 or more years ago... around the same time they came out with their watch + mp3 player that you plugged your headphones into (they had one other watch in the series, but it didn't do anything really neat)
... or roughly the same resolution as a Palm device. Think: it's a square picture, so just plug 25,344 (pixels) into your calculator, press the Square Root button, voila.
Assuming through Moore's law, any desktop size computer of today can be shrunk to thumbnail size in few years, then the question becomes what is the most convenient human interface to use it? The answer might be in jewelry-like accessories. These would include wristwatches, rings, eyeglasses, medallians, necklaces, belts, headbands, etc. The MIT Media lab has addressed this in their "wearable computing" devices. But those bulking device are like the Osborne portable computer, compared to palmtops.
How about a ring camera?
How much longer until we start getting annoying Casio pop-ads for:
"The Amazing Casio-10 WristCam!"
Anyway, the point is that watches should evolve to become interfaces, not applications and service provider technologies.
Yeah, saw that watch at a store. Casio also has a limited PDA watch and a 32Meg storage MP3 player watch.
why is that person pointing their wrist at me
use kinetic energy to recharge the battery, like that Seiko watch? Seems to me like a $20 camera in a $200 watch. No thanks.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
I can handle only being able to snap, say, 36 pictures, but they need to be closer to 640x480. When they come up with a version of this watch that's waterproof and has some real resolution, post another story. :P
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
like this
Seriously, who cares about the lame camera. The CPU and display are what's cool here.
*wipes a tear from his eye*
Open source Watch?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
Was running through the hardware section at ToysR'Us and saw a Nickalodeon (sp?) branded camera. The box has stuff from Mattel.
This was an impulse purchase, I mean why bother to research a $20 dollar purchase
Not the greatest camera 120x160 pixel resolution, and you need a lot (and I mean A LOT) of light to get a good image. But the software is fun for a 2 year old, all though I am guessing I have a couple of years before she can do it on her own.
Translation: Apple discovered a warehouse full of unsold Newton Messagepads they have to unload.
I just love marketing weasels.
--
Spaz!
Rather than relying on the PR, rely on the specs.
1 6&product=4102&display=10&cid=5107
http://www.casio.com/watches/product.cfm?section=
At the bottom, in small print, it specifically says:
** Batter life is shortened by using imaging functions and data communication functions
How much it shortens battery life, who knows. But you can be sure it takes a whole lot more juice to power the imaging and comm functions of that watch than it does to power the clock.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
hell, i read about this same shit in popular mechanics weeks ago, slashdot is ghey.
give an arm and leg for this....
no wait...
Feel free to concat me with all your troubles...
The casio wristwatch camera sure has a nice profile, but does not do well for taking pictures to view on a monitor.
Here's a tiny Sony prototype that has 640x480 resolution...
Heavy and dorky, but very cool. http://www.casio.com/gps/top.html
He makes up a number, provides no source for his dubious information and someone mods it informative?
convergence is stupid. i am reminded of a good article i recently read about why this sort of thing (it actually used a digital camera wristwatch as a hypothetical example!) is stupid:
the myth of convergence
i want a good digital camera, and a good watch, so that if i want a better of each, i just get a new or somehow improved one; if they're all binded together, i get a mediocre version of whatever's in there and when i want a new camera i gotta throw away my watch.
fuhget about it.
Digital Camera Watch
or is that wrist porn?
even at such low res, it would be nifty for pda/cell phone photos!
I don't go out shopping much, but as far as I recall, this Casio wristwatch camera has been available in my local home/catalog retail outlet (Argos, UK) since the autumn (fall) release of their shopping catalog, which has been around for a good few weeks. I didn't realize it was as expensive as $200 though. I'm not going to check since I'm lazy, but I seem to remember someone talking about a wristwatch camera that could send photos to Nokia phones to be used as operator/caller-group logos too. The guy that mentioned it had a Nokia 9xxx series phone, so maybe it wasn't .NOL (or any other) nokia-specific file type.
Hmmm... if watches now have the ability of different tones and pictures, all they need is GSM (or the US-equivalent) to become the best thing since cell phones!
Follow me
Is there a mode where you can take pictures and have the camera still show the time?
I don't want the girl seeing a picture of herself on the watch as she is bending over to pick up the tip.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Yeah, cool... But that's not the watch I want. I want the watch I lost a few years ago, which had a scientific calculator in it, complete with trig and log functions, exponents, and a "binary" mode with base conversions and logical operations.
Casio quit making it, and nobody else makes one either. (Yeah, I've tried Ebay. Whoever has one isn't selling it.)
So that begs the question, how long before those swiss folk come up with a mechanical version of this dohickey?
Don't laugh! They already have a watch with a mechanical adding machine in the works. All they need to do is to get some of that Logie Baird mechano-analogue TV system implemented.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I take pics with the watch, I then beam them to my Palm and they are downloaded to my computer when I hotsync.
I could use a pen however, something pen shaped would be much easier to use unobtrusively.
It also really needs to have a much better resolution. 180x160 really does not cut it. 480x360 is a heck of a lot better.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
I want the computer watch that Inspector Gadget's niece (the animated series, not the crappy movie) had. Not only could it control every mechanical device on earth, it must of sad some kinda whacky chording system to let her to do all that stuff with three buttons :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Watches are slave bands.
Here in obsessively annal Japan everone wears their slave band AND public clocks stare out from every corner. When the train is late 30 seconds, everyone's head start spazzing out looking at the platform clocks and their watch like the Borg Collective on a bad hair day.
--Hitachi Taro
I'll plug my article here. It's titled "The myth of convergence" and is about the uselessness of convergence devices, such as this watch. As it happens, I've used the same product as an example of products that are doomed.
You can read it on my weblog at: http://madman.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$104
Just think, if you could click the take picture button 24 times a second, you can get 3.33... seconds worth of video! Wow, who needs a camcorder!
"Daddy has a telephoto lens on his camera"
:)
(no flamebait intended
You might be into that kind of thing, but...
Oh, you didn't mean that sort of ring.
Casio have done a black-and-white camera watch for aaaaages now (I've had one for over a year). I'm not sure how long ago IBM started selling the Linux watch[1], but I'm pretty sure that the previous version of this was out first.
[1] What d'you mean, they don't sell it yet? Bah.
(Score:-1, Nickpicking)
hey now, no need to disparage us potheads!
I'm a responsible moderator, and I even fight the dirty moderator bastards with metamod!
But don't crack on kindbud!
'cause everything sllort says is redundant