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Blogging With Camera Phones
Zastrossi writes "The Register reports that NewBay Software, "is to offer software to mobile operators that will enable mobile phone users to create and maintain Weblogs or 'blogs' using only their phones." Sounds like a pretty sound idea, particularly in that they're selling to the telcos
as opposed to consumers. SMS was one revenue source for mobile providers, will camera phones become another?"
One of the things that I love about my Palm and has made it into something I couldn't live without it my fold-up stowaway keyboard. Fast text entry is very important. I don't want to have to press the numeric keypad to enter text. Period.
Will these phones have a keyboard attachment?
I would have to say that explosives are the most abused technology in all of history.
Sounds like a waste of time. Blogging with your phone will only result in mis-typed entries with poorly lit, poorly framed and blurry photos of famous landmarks that you can't quite make out and the result looks kind of like New Jersey or unrecognizable people who aren't particularly attractive or even remotely intersting even if drugs and/or alcohol were involved at 3:22AM when they were filmed on the way to yet another bar or club overcharging due to the lateness of the hour or the so called exclusivity of the place. Eck.
At first I thought, "Phoneblogs, what a stupid idea because those phone keypads are a bitch to type on!" Then I thought, "What if they're using a speech to text engine?"
After reading through the site and finding out there is no voice to text, I verified my original thought, "Phoneblogs, what a stupid idea"
Maybe I shouldn't crap on it too much though, it's still in it's infancy and *could* be cool, But how many journalist do you know that crank out stories on a 12 key keyboard? Didn't think so.
The law may have changed, but when I lived in NYC, people had to get permission to use your image if they were shooting film or taking photos for publication. I wonder how blogging one's picture phone will play into such privacy issues?
That said, I could see how this would be useful, or at least interesting when a news story breaks, e.g. train derailment, so we can all glare at the dead bodys instead of waiting until we get home to watch the cable news.
My worst fear
--- have you healed your church website?
That would be a really cool idea actually... A sort of multimedia blog.
Imagine you go on holiday, you have your mobile phone with you. Every time you see something cool (let's hope you have good taste), you use your camera phone to take a picture of it and speak in a short message to attach to the picture. With some sort of text-to-speech package that would be very cool. Then instead of sending a post card back, you send the url of the blog which is automatically created from this, and your friends can follow your holidays and feel a bit sunny in sympathy.
That's actually something which people might pay for. The holiday use is only one, what about integrating this idea into a sort of community... everyone in the community (say of friends from univ) keeps a sort of multimedia blog from their phone, sharing things that they're doing to maintain the group bonding, etc... I know I would pay good money to keep in touch like that with my friends from uni.
Damn, the uses are practically infinite... Anyone else feel that this could be a killer app for 3G phones?
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Seems like a cool idea, but my method is so much easier. I own a Sony Ericsson T68i and a Sony Clie NX70V. Together they make a great pair. I use the Clie to write messages, email, take pictures, and then use the T68i to send them to friends, or to a website. I haven't really done much blogging with the devices, but it would be relatively easy with the built in keyboard on the Clie.
Hopefully sometime soon Sony will get off their butt and release the Bluetooth Memory Stick for my Clie here in the US so I don't have to use IR to send with my T68i.
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word to your moms... I came to drop bombs...
The Danger Hiptop aka T-Mobile Sidekick has a built in camera and qwerty style keyboard. Even before the phone hit the streets, people had 'photo blogs' set up. Typically, the user takes a picture, attaches it to an email with the blog entry in the body of the email and sends it to a special email address that is site specific.
a sp?phon eid=165302
More can be found out about the Danger Hiptop at;
http://www.danger.com/products.php
or;
http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.
and a photoblog may be found at;
http://www.hiptop.bedope.com
As mobile phone cameras are exclusively digital, there is no "shutter" to be heard.
At least the Nokia 7650 has an option that when enabled will play a sound sample that sounds like a traditional shutter/film camera taking a picture.
When playing Peeping Tom, you'll have to be really stupid to leave that sound option enabled!
in most states, you can broadcast video of anything in public and usually in the privacy of your home. When you add sound to the mix, it often becomes illegal (the laws were written for phone taps and 'bugs' that record only sound).
Making a law that requires permission from anyone in a video in public would kill news broadcasts "from the street" because you could not get permission from everyone walking or driving behind the newscaster.
There was a lawsuit recently by a man who was told by his friends that nude video of him was for sale on a gay porn site. The man had been a wrestler in college and during a meet in Michigan (I think), someone had set up hidden cameras in the locker room and filmed the guys getting dressed and undressed. Not only did the law permit this and prevent the unsuspecting men from stopping the sales of the tape, it did not require those making money from it to give any royalties to the 'stars', either.
The truth doesn't care what I think.