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Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera
JeroenH writes: "Sept. 2, 2002, Sony announced the DSC-FX77. It's a 4 megapixel, fixed lens digital camera with a special feature: Bluetooth. When the camera takes a picture, it will be sent directly through the Bluetooth link to a nearby computer, giving you nearly unlimited space for your photos (well, at least as much as fits on your hard disk). At this stage the camera can only send photos to a computer, but in the future it should be possible to control the camera remotely.
Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell..."
With a 47 second transfer time for a full resolution picture I'd say the device is practically useless. Time between pictures is, IMO, one of the most important aspects of a digital camera, as longer timeframes means many missed perfect shots...
This is another step in the direction of fragmented hardware. Instead of a mobile phone that can take pictures and browse the web, you'll have a camera, a screen, an earplug and microphone, and a screen, all connected via Bluetooth (or some other standard).
This will make it easier for upgrading parts of your system, and only buying what you need (you start with the mobile phone, then buy a camera of low quality, a year later you upgrade that camera, but you can keep using your mobile phone). Expect more of this to come.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
In reality, Bluetooth is not designed for large data transfers like this. 1Mbps is the marketing speed. In reality, Bluetooth devices have a fairly hefty overhead that cuts into their transmit rate significantly.
Bluetooth was designed around supporting low bandwidth cellular links between your phone and whatever device you have, trading business cards, doing voice (the protocol stack actually has a "bypass" for voice data built right into the spec), and synchronization type tasks. In reality, this camera should be using something like 802.11 if it wants to make that data link useful. (shoot 20 pictures and you're waiting more than 15 minutes for the pictures to transfer. For that kind of speed you could just hook up the USB link cable and have it done in a fraction of the time).
I read the internet for the articles.
is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it. :)
The thing ships with a 16mb memory stick, and can take larger sticks. It also has USB and a cradle for faster transfers. 47 seconds is also for the largest format picture. It can also send video at several frames per second, or a VGA resolution snapshot in under two seconds.
Backing up, the point of Bluetooth isn't Raw Speed. The point of including Bluetooth in a device like this is automation: As soon as you come near the proper PC, this and the PC will detect each other and begin the exchange. You might not have taken the camera out of your pocket or done more than set it down on walking in the door before it finishes the transfer.
If you need the pictures more quickly, simply set it in the USB cradle, or pop out the memory stick and stick it in one of those PC drive bay memory stick adapters.
Later on, you'll be able to configure your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone as a conduit, so pictures can automatically ride a secure tunnel back to your machine wherever you are, giving you an effectively infinite amount of space for your pictures. That's what Bluetooth is for.
More details here for Japanese speakers.
Says the RIAA: When you EQ, you're stealing bass!
It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews and bribes, junkets and payola -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?
The item above is identical to the DSC-FX77 digital camera press release from Sony Europe's site. Could the reason for posting a press release as news be more payola from Sony?
Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.
If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills for product manufacturers.
Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking.
Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.
Let's say I'm out touring a city and I'm snapping shots for the requisite post-tour photo album. Of course, I'm nowhere near a desktop PC or even a laptop. But lets say I have a Bluetooth-enabled hard drive in my backpack. It's built like these 20GB MP3 players, but it's just a Bluetooth file server nothing more. Now I can wander around the city shooting forever, or until the batteries die, whichever comes first :). Camera tosses every photo into the drive in my backpack (or on my belt, or whereever). If the camera can cache at least a handful of pictures, I'll never notice that transfers take a minute.
[offtopic]
While we're inventing stuff, let's say I have Bluetooth-enabled headphones with an MP3/OV decoder built in. (Heh, and make em solar powered, since they're sitting on top of my head.) They're pulling MP3s off the same file server in my backpack. I guess I'll lose the music stream while my camera stores a picture. I won't mind very much if the player is at least a little bit graceful in it's handling of the bottleneck.