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?"

Comments

/. phones?

[jpetts]

Surely it'll be pretty damn' easy to /. a mobile phone? Multiprocessor Nokias, anybody???

Text entry?

[guido1]

So do they have a workaround for the tiny "keyboards" that cell phones have? Seems like this would only work for an image-only blog.

Re:Text entry?

[KDan]

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

Re:Text entry?

[filth grinder]

It's already out there. Check out Hiptop Nation. It's a blogging from camera phones site. It's for use with the T Mobile Sidekick but looks prety interesting.

Could be pretty cool.

Re:Text entry?

[knuurius]

Ericsson released the Chatboard for their mobile phones if you prefer a QUERTY Keyboard.

All mobile phones I bought the last 3 years came with T9 Text Input. Don't know about phones in the USA, but here in Europe, most people I know use this system on their phones. They come with a built in dictionary, so you only have to press one button per character and it knows, which word you want to type. If there are several possibilities, you can choose the right one. It's much faster than the "normal" way to type text messages and you can even add new (swear)words to the dictionary ;)

-------- Create your your personal color combination and see if people like it or not: colorcell.org

Re:Text entry?

[jaavaaguru]

Predictive text with a T9 dictionary on my Nokia works fine for me. My website's guestbook is accessible via the web or WAP on a mobile phone. You can sign or browse my guestbook on a mobile phone. One key for each letter in a word, with a smaller area for your fingers to cover isn't that bad really - unless you have larger fingers than Nokia considers to be 'normal'.

My blog goes like this...

[stephenisu]

Monday see the 3 gray walls around me... Tuesday see the 3 gray walls around me... Wednsday see the 3 gray walls around me... Thursday see the 3 gray walls around me... Friday see the 3 gray walls around me... Saturday see 4 white walls around me... Sunday see 4 white walls around me...

Will the Camera Phones have Keyboards?

[uptownguy]

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?

Expensive

[krow]

Have you ever looked at the per-meg charge for cell phones? This would become very expensive, very quickly.

Re:Expensive

[mph]

Like $10/unlimited for Sprint PCS Vision?

Re:Expensive

[krow]

I had not seen an unlimited plan for data yet. That is pretty cool though if it costs only that much.

Re:Expensive

[mph]

Technically, the terms of service for $10/unlimited Vision only allow you to send/receive data on the phone itself, not to use it with your laptop, PDA, etc. However, many people are reporting that this limitation is not being enforced, and that they'll probably only be looking for the egregious offenders who consistently use their cell phone in place of a dialup or broadband connection. In any case, this article was talking about a service accessed on the phone itself, so that would definitely fall under the $10/unlimited plan.

Re:Expensive

[jaavaaguru]

Ah, someone with very similar interests to me: "Punk rock, web development, computer building, Unreal Tournament.", and only at the other end of the M8 ;-)

I use orange GRPS too - it's great. I've had WAP on an Orange phone since they introduced the Nokia 7110. I'm now on a Nokia 6310.

Camera phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Will camera phones become another source of revenue, like SMS? The only incentive that ever existed for telcos to launch camera phones was that they can make more revenue.

Yuck

[crumbz]

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.

Re:Yuck

[Jester99]

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 SMS text messages just result in slowly-entered, oft-mistyped messages that could have been communicated more accurately in about 1/3 the total time, if only some sort of speech telecommunication device were available to the user (heh), but for whatever reason, SMS's sell like hotcakes.

To a computer nerd (I take the liberty of assuming) like yourself, phone blogging sounds a) impractical, b) a step backwards, and/or c) utterly useless. But to a 16 year old girl, it merely sounds "cool."

And cool makes the phone companies money, cuz there's many more 16 year old girls with cell phones than there are people such as yourself.

Incredible!

[goldspider]

"...is to offer software to mobile operators that will enable mobile phone users to create and maintain Weblogs or 'blogs' using only their phones."

What's next? Being able to create and maintain Weblogs from computers?? What an incredible age we live in!

Imagine Slashdot on a camera phone...

[gpinzone]

Now the CowboyNeil option will come with a picture. The HORROR! THE HORROR!

Killer App?

[Giant Ape Skeleton]

Perhaps this is the convergence of three trends:
The camgirl/guy, IM, and the Blog.
Mmmm....mobile camgirl diaries..... :-P

-----------

If only somebody can invent ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If only somebody can invent software that would make the random writings/thoughts of millions of nitwits worth reading.

THAT would be a blog revolution, my friends.

Ewwww Numeric Keypad Input?

[t0qer]

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.

I'm sure this will be a hot seller...

[Hayzeus]

I'll bet all 7 people in the target demographic snap this one up like hotcakes...

Blog? Blah!

[core plexus]

Is anyone else getting tired of these "blogs"? Why the need to post the minutiae of every little brain fart? Don't believe that's what it is? Check this out.

Admittedly, there may be 10 or less that are worthy of a visit, or can justify their reason to be, but far more often than not, I don't see the point. "Everyone Can Be A Publisher", but I question, Should They?

Over-exposed schoolgirl victim of high-tech bullying

Re:Blog? Blah!

[PD]

I have a blog (down right now because my DirectTV DSL is fubar, and the new one isn't hooked up yet). I write it for ME, not YOU.

If you read it, fine, but I don't care. Basically it's written by me, for me, for my own use. Besides the stupid details of my life, I also sometimes put programming notes that I don't want to forget or lose, but always want access to. The web is perfect for that.

Even better, my grandkids will have absolute proof that their granddad was a boring old fuck. And in 50 years I'll be able to read about all the crap I did to waste 50 years of my life.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[thatguywhoiam]

The name of the author escapes me at the moment, but I remember a good quote: "Most of us are born with at least one novel in us. Most of us, fortunately, are also kind enough to keep it locked up under skull arrest."

Yeah, some blogs are tiresome, but I will defend to the death the right for blogs to exist. We need these things, man. Its part of that whole Internet thing. Just because you're tired of the word 'blog', or have read the wrong blogs, doesn't mean the entire concept is without merit. Besides, look where you are.

I've seen numerous instances of blogs from war-torn countries providing the only legitimate news to relatives and friends living far away.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[core plexus]

You both have valid, and excellent points. They basically support what I was saying: Have a 'blog', and enjoy yourself. But please, seek quality over quantity. I also did not say all blogs are bad, in fact I said there are 10 (at least) that are exemplary. There may be many more, and many of them, as you both have pointed out, serve a function that is important to a narrow readership. So, if I don't care to stop by and read it, don't get pissed at me. But I'd point out this: If people begin to transmit every little momentary "Ah-Ha!" to a 'blog', then where are we going? Remember when you had to ruminate on a thought, and it grew and expanded in your head? And then finally, like relieving yourself after a long holding, it flowed so nice and freely? At least that is how it is with me. Even then, if it is important, I'll wallow in it for a day or two, or put it aside ahile and review it days later.

At least it is a clever marketing ploy on the cell phone companys' part to sell more airtime to subscribers.

I did not intend for my post to sound negative.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[JimDabell]

The same applies the the web as a whole. When you think about it, there's a hell of a lot of crap on here. But you aren't looking at the whole lot, you only care about your specific bits of it.

Likewise with blogs. Nobody reads them all. People read the ones that are interesting to them.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[thatguywhoiam]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound pissed. I agree, and it is a clever ploy.

Your thought:

Remember when you had to ruminate on a thought, and it grew and expanded in your head? And then finally, like relieving yourself after a long holding, it flowed so nice and freely?

... is a very interesting point. One the one hand, I could easily see how this might 'stunt' and idea, because there is a sort of cathartic release when you transmute your thoughts into a written medium. On the other hand, I've often been inspired by long-lost thoughts I had while keeping a journal ?thoughts that would have vanished otherwise.

Of course, cell phone companies could give a damn, you're right about that. Cheers.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[zmooc]

So you're complaining on slashdot that you get tired of blogs? Slashdot is just about that and you read that, obviously. I've read many interesting weblogs; I just don't read the bad ones. What you are doing is like searching for my-first-homepage frontpage-creations without any usefull content and then complaining that you get tired of homepages. Check this out. Or do you also question "Everyone Can Ignore Other People's Publications"? An incredible amount of crap can be found in any medium. It's called having a choice.

Re:Blog? Blah!

[NDPTAL85]

Come on, she was hot in a trailer trash kinda way.

Forget the blogging...

[llamalicious]

I only use my sanyo-5300 so I can remember hot women the next day... since I tend to drink a bit on the heavy side whilst I'm out about town. :)

The lesson of customer-owned networks

[Wesley Felter]

I don't know whether "moblogging" will take off or not, but I'm sure telcos will make no money from it, because blogging does not require any help from the network. Blogging is like wi-fi: it's a product, not a service, so people aren't going to pay service fees for it.

Not that scores of people are doing this...

[TheKodiak]

Not that scores of people are doing this already using the Danger Sidekick, or anything.

Privacy Issues and White Noise ?

[HealYourChurchWebSit]

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 ... bandwidth consumed to web phone pix of cats ...

Bloggin

[Amsterdam Vallon]

Anyone else feel that there's probably a direct relation between the growing popularity of blogging and the growing number of unemployed IT workers?

Blogs?

[Quaoar]

What's the deal with these? I mean Christ, people are acting like it's the first time that people are keeping a journal of their daily activities on the Internet. I don't quite understand why this has become the "new hotness."

Already done it

[Uhh_Duh]

I wrote a quick perl script to do this for a friend who has a camera phone.

It picks up the incoming mail via a sendmail pipe (in /etc/aliases) which routes it to a perl script which parses out the email content and attachments (pictures from the phone) and posts them to a MySQL database. The front-end of the project involved CGI scripts that would talk to the MySQL database and display the data to the web.

Result? Real-time blogging from the camera with pictures and text! Total lines of code? Less than 100.

Two sides to every coin....

[Boss, Pointy Haired]

It is estimated that over 500,000 have been created over the past 18 months and are now starting up at the rate of about 5,000 daily.

And are receiving their last post ever at the rate of about 7,000 daily.

I don't know

[CaptainZapp]

SMS was one revenue source for mobile providers, will camera phones become another?

...if camera phones will become the next direly awaited revenue source for the carriers, but there's one significant difference in those "products":

GSM was really, really smart engineering, which took off because the various stakeholders (wireless carriers, handset manufacturers, network equipment providers) pooled their resources and ideas and achieved a great standard which served everybody (even, if not most the users).

SMS was actually a byproduct of that standard and nobody had an idea how much it would take off. It's immensly successful and a nice source of additional revenue for the carriers.

Camera phones however seems more to be a product of marketing cree^H^H^H^Hexperts in the sense that they try to create a need, which otherwise doesn't exist.

Of course every industry player is very interested in multimedia messaging to succeed. The manufacturers like to sell new, snazzy and expensive phones, carriers charge an arm and a leg and have a huge interest in mms taking off and network equipment providers can sell nice upgrades to the wireless infrastructure.

Now if the consumers play nice, or if this is another wap fiasko in the making only time will tell.

I set up something like this..

[rasjani]

Friend of my from workplace bought nokia phone with digicam stuff. It seems that this phone can send those images as email to someone.. Well, i set his (hosted) unix box in a way that when ever it receives email from the phone, all attached jpg's will get saved to a web folder..

That folder has some php gallery code and everything runs smoothly.

I didnt really need anything fancy to acomplish this.. ripmime, procmail and and that phpslideshow i downloaded from freshmeat.

I guess i could set him up with "blogging" options too so that he can send email containing just text too so that his blog would get updated too.

Not *that* big deal you know ...

Sure you can blog with your phone...

[thatguywhoiam]

... but not the way they say to do it.

Here's what you do:

- get a Bluetooth phone
- get a Bluetooth-capable computer or adapter
- write blog on computer
- take pictures with fancy, real digital camera
- upload
- uh, profit?

Prediction:

[WPIDalamar]

In a couple years we'll be seeing the same this with video portable devices.

SmartPhone

[core plexus]

I can see it now.

You: "Hey, where's those hot babes I met last night when I was drunk?"

Your Phone: "I deleted them, trust me, you don't want to see what you did last night."

The new-tek version of "Chewing your arm off".

Another use for picture-cell phones: Over-exposed schoolgirl victim of high-tech bullying

Blogging?

[Wind_Walker]

How about, instead of blogging with it, you make like the Japanese and bully schoolmates with it!. Apparently some ticked-off classmate took a picture of a (rather attractive) girl in his class and forwarded it to his friends, along with some rather nasty information including her name and her... promiscuous behavior.

And don't forget this gem regarding voyeurism with cell phones. My favorite quote?

The girl was alerted to his presence by the noise emitted by the phone camera's shutter. She turned around to catch Hamano with his hands between her legs

bad+bad=good?

[muyuubyou]

bad input system + bad camera + bad connection + expensive phone = good?

Somebody tell me who's making the decisions at the telecom industry. Do they read slashdot?

Next fiasco. This one is easy.

Re:bad+bad=good?

[Xerithane]

bad input system + bad camera + bad connection + expensive phone = good?

T9 isn't a bad input system. I use it often, and it works just fine. Sure, it's not as fast as a full keyboard, but it's not a hard system to learn.

If the cameras are anything like what they have in Japan, they won't be bad cameras. The pictures are a bit small (320x200 I think) but they look pretty crisp. Connections aren't that bad, in the US I have an ATT GSM phone and it's bandwidth rates are not that horrible. 19.2kbps at the moment, so uploading a couple pictures and some text will take what.. 10 seconds at most?

Somebody tell me who's making the decisions at the telecom industry. Do they read slashdot?
Sorry to tell you this, but the telecom industry doesn't care about a handful of geeks that think they know what the revolution in mobile communication is. I'd say it's pretty safe that they know much more about the market than anyone else here.

I did this already

[e1en0r]

I wrote my own skinnable website package which includes multi-blog functionality with all the usual features. A few months ago I added a wireless skin (WML) and can now post to my blog and change my mood from my cell phone. While I don't often post to my blog via the phone, I do have a private blog section that I post to sometimes. It's basically a "note to self" type thing and it's very handy typing a quick idea here and there via my cell phone. It saves carrying around a PDA a lot of the time.

And yeah, blogs are lame and boring and all that, but they're damn handy to remember what on earth I did yesterday.

PDA and Cell Phone Blogging

[pickity]

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.

Blogging-the next generation

[Gizzmonic]

This actually could have some practical use as well...imagine being stuck inside a building during a collapse. With a camera phone, the rescue worker could take pictures of herself masturbating, and upload them to the Internet. You'd be saved!

Phone Cam = Mobile Pr0n

[grantdh]

Most of the people I know with phone-camera thingo's are using them most to send pictures of their various dangly bits. Like the telephone, 8mm film, video, broadband Internet, DVD and so on, new tech is likely to be boosted significantly by those seeking/sending pr0n.

"Yo, I'm texting with one hand, baby!!!! See!??!!" :)

They're not the first to do this..

[popeydotcom]

I setup a website to play with this idea Clunky.net but I don't have the time to maintain it at the moment. May resurrect it if it becomes popular..

Danger Hiptop

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

More can be found out about the Danger Hiptop at;
http://www.danger.com/products.php

or;
http://www.t-mobile.com/products/overview.a sp?phon eid=165302

and a photoblog may be found at;
http://www.hiptop.bedope.com

sharing perspectives

[mike_e_d]

I don't understand the hatred of blogs that seems so widespread here. Some are good, some are bad, but none of them force you to read them. A good blogger writing about a trip to the grocery store can be really entertaining or enlightening. It's all about the quality of the work and how well it resonates with you. I think it's really amazing that people are willing to offer up there perspective and experience to the world for free. And the camera idea is a really great way to very literally let someone "see the world through your eyes." --mike d

Hiptop Nation

[jimmcq]

To see this concept already in action visit Hiptop Nation.

this device was in the book "The Truth Machine"

[slashkitty]

And it seems we'll have the full blown version of it very soon. The book describes people who live "a recorded life" where every action they do is recorded via wireless camera on their watch...

zeger.nl phlog

[hanwen]

A colleague of mine has been running a photo-blog (Phlog?) for a couple of years now, driving everyone in the department crazy with his photo obsession.

I don't see what cell-phones have to do with this. He has a fuji FinePix camera that he takes everywhere. Once a day, the entire camera is synced onto his image-server, which serves them to the internet. The photos are viewable over here. Every viewer can add comments to any image.

Blogger.com inferface available

[leighklotz]

I wrote an email-to-blogger interface for my Hiptop.

It could easily be extended to use LiveJournal or any other XML-RPC based weblog because the Perl libraries already support it.

See http://hipme.com/software/blogrouter.

Yes, they have

[EvilStein]

And I'm surprised that it hasn't been a /. feature yet.

http://www.iptel-now.de/HOWTO/CHATBOARD/chatboar d. html

Operating CellCam Blog link

[TheSync]

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.

Forecasting telecoms

[jpatokal]

Sorry to tell you this, but the telecom industry doesn't care about a handful of geeks that think they know what the revolution in mobile communication is. I'd say it's pretty safe that they know much more about the market than anyone else here.

Which would be why telecoms companies have been doing so well recently, right...?

Telecom companies have no clue what is going to be the next hit. GSM, SMS and i-mode were surprise successes; IDSN, WAP and 3G have been disastrous failures. The companies are to some degree aware of this, and they hire legions of geeks to help them forecast the future, but often greed takes over -- and sometimes the geeks are just wrong. (For instance, I guessed right on the failure of 3G and WAP, and I'm pretty sure GPRS and MMS will take off, but if you'd followed my advice and dumped Nokia stock for SonyEricsson you would have regretted it.)

Cheers,
-j. (a geek in telecoms)

Re:Forecasting telecoms

[Xerithane]

Which would be why telecoms companies have been doing so well recently, right...?

Sorry to inform you, but the wireless carriers are doing good. Or did you think they can hire Jamie Lee Curtis and Katherine Zeta Jones and not do good?

Telecom companies have no clue what is going to be the next hit. GSM, SMS and i-mode were surprise successes; IDSN, WAP and 3G have been disastrous failures. The companies are to some degree aware of this, and they hire legions of geeks to help them forecast the future, but often greed takes over -- and sometimes the geeks are just wrong. (For instance, I guessed right on the failure of 3G and WAP, and I'm pretty sure GPRS and MMS will take off, but if you'd followed my advice and dumped Nokia stock for SonyEricsson you would have regretted it.)

Sorry, but you just completely and totally discredited yourself. First, name one full 3G network in the US. Second, WAP sucks, outside of the US And inside. Third, Only the US is having any problems getting their networks up. This is because there is too much competition.

Do you even know what 3G is? How can you say GPRS and MMS will take off but 3G is a failure? My guess is you don't have a flying fuck of a clue. No offense, but your entire post sounds like you are a janitor trying to speak on behalf of the tech department. I'm not in the wireless world, but I know that most of what you said is wrong.

Already a hit in Japan

[jpatokal]

Of course every industry player is very interested in multimedia messaging to succeed. The manufacturers like to sell new, snazzy and expensive phones, carriers charge an arm and a leg and have a huge interest in mms taking off and network equipment providers can sell nice upgrades to the wireless infrastructure.

Now if the consumers play nice, or if this is another wap fiasko in the making only time will tell.

Picture messages have been a huge hit in Japan, J-Phone alone has picked up over 5 million subscribers for its Sha-Mail service in the last year and doubled its data ARPU in the process (translation: the service is actually used and the operator is making a killing in per-byte fees).

The business model is clearly viable. It remains to be seen if GSM operators kill the golden goose by overcharging for messages, but rates seem to be becoming more reasonable and things are looking pretty good.

Cheers,
-j.

it's legal in most states

[sirshannon]

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.

Self-Referential

[Zagadka]

So will cellphone weblogs spend all of their time talking about the wonders of cellphone weblogs? Or are discussions about weblogs in general fair game?