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Wifi Camera Uploads without Computer
* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us NewsDay is reporting that Kodak has released the first "computer-free wireless camera." The new widget can connect directly to the Internet wherever there's Wi-Fi available to download and e-mail pictures. Users can even use the camera to view photos stored in Internet photo albums via Kodak's Easyshare Gallery service.
But I thought cell phones with cameras and a service area could already do this?
My cell phone already does that.
Apple made a product that seemlessly connects users to their online service, and iTunes as I understand it, and I'm guessing as a result, has a 90% marketshare of online music sales. Though the ability to "view photos stored in Internet photo albums via Kodak's Easyshare Gallery service" without a computer involved is an untapped market, you can expect other companies to follow Kodak's lead. But, in addition to having a great brand, Kodak will dominate this new market largely because they got there first. From the article: "Cameras, I believe, are moving from the wired world towards the wireless world," said Lee, director of consumer services at InfoTrends. "It's not going to happen this year but, starting next year, you're going to definitely see some more cameras coming that incorporate wireless-transfer capabilities."
The provided URLs don't say whether it allows FTP upload, so I'd say no.
Ahh, businesses always thinking about the users, by leaving out obvious features so that they can sell services that provide those missing features.
..to cut the marketing bs, its a PDA, with a wireless card, stuck to a digital camera.
Of course all this misses the real point that all anyone really wants is a phone with cheap net access where-ever you are, and bluetooth etc so you can connect your nice digital camera to it.
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and e-mail pictures
When will people understand that SMTP isn't a file transport medium?
bash$
Does it support WPA? WEP? If it doesn't it's not even worth it.
That it only connects to Kodak's own shitty gallery service?
Just putting the logic into the camera doesnt make it "computer free"
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I'm waiting for showing in the public of "habit" of downloading ohers pictures out of thier cameras...
One that hath name thou can not otter
Coming from a country where major riots and civil disturbances have flared up several times in a decade, and where the electoral process in certain areas is inflected with violence, this may be a very positive development.
:)
Visual documentation of violence, including street violence, is something that is very powerful in these circumstances. A network of WiFi cameras that connects to a battery-powered wireless switch(es) could turn this into an extremely powerful journalistic tool.
Journalists, especially some very courageous ones, have had their (expensive) equipment seized and smashed - even by the police. In effect, the very act of powerfull and provocative reportage causes the reportage to be fuitless. A couple of cheap wireless cameras clipped onto someone's lapel or mounted in places where there is a clear field of view could provide (highly incriminating?) video data even upto the moment the cameras were destroyed.
And think of the possibilities for exposing corruption. If you were to go to, say, a police station where you knew a bribe would be demanded of you, with the intent of secretly filming the proceedings, you'd be banking on the camera remaining undetected and being able to take the recording away with you. With a WiFi camera broadcasting to an Internet-connected laptop(s) across the street, things change quickly
Cheers,
Aniruddha "Karim" Shankar
I've got a Sony SNC-RZ30 at work since two years and it has got wireless, smtp, ftp, web and alarm capabilities... See it here
So does this mean we can download other people's pictures from the internet? Isn't that like, stealing or something? Where are the lawyers?!
I don't think any Kodak innovations are going to take at this point. Kodak has carved out a niche as a major player in the digital camera market... But it's at the low end. They make a great $89 digital camera that does exactly what it says it does. But if you're willing to pay more, you're going to buy a Canon, Nikon or Sony.
Also... I don't see why so many printers, and now cameras are working so hard to bypass the computer. The beauty of digital photos is that you can store and edit them on your PC. And it's not like there's a household left that doesn't have a PC...
If I could synch a decent camera (3+ megapixels min) with flickr, I'd be sold.
Is there such a camera capable of this?
swanker than you
Front page /.
"A hack firmware hack has been published that enables a person with a kodak wireless camera to specify the photo uploads to multiple websites, not just the Kodak easyshare gallery. Streaming video features have also been enabled."
The living room of an unspecified porn star:
"Wow! This is the seventh camera I've recieved today!"
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
One problem at demonstrations is that the cops attempt to seize and destroy images (video/cameras) made by people there attempting to document abuses by the cops.
This would solve that problem -- realtime uploading of the images to a location where the cops can't get them.
This doesn't apply to America, where cops are all lawful and good (/sarc) -- but rather, to countries that have repressive governments and no free exchange of information.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Wouldn't a camera that could upload pictures be more useful? Sorry to be pedantic but this is Slashdot we're talking about.
Just more insecure firmware full of vulnerabilities for hackers to compromise. Humbug!
Well, we know how well wireless cameras work
I like this :)
;) Check it out, it makes interesting reading:
s tructure-kid
...[I]f you're looking for "Web Services Infrastructure" for exposing processes and information, you're probably looking to hard.
I think that this camera would have two 'partitions' (not literally, but you can think of it as such) one for its photos and another for read-only firmware. Aside from the software for image rendering, the software on the client need only do http GET and/or POST. I'd think probably POST for entering the user's Kodak account credentials, GET for grabbing the data for display but, of course, the two can be interchangeable. My point is that the camera need not require a full-fledged browser. Just an implementation of something like 'httplib' - the server knows what data to give it on account of the collected 'User Agent'. For browsing online collections, the server can give these User Agents a list of URIs (file names) and the camera can use up/down buttons to make a selection or select an appropriate form action (e.g. 'upload', 'download and save', 'delete'). This is the REST way to do it.
I think this is sensible and simple enough. Many agree that REST is as far as services need go. Sure, XML interchange is a good idea in this problem domain, I was reading something at lesscode.org about the Kid XSLT templating engine and how it actually came about because the developer was reasoning about web services. Sorry - Web Services
http://lesscode.org/2005/09/24/web-services-infra
What I'm getting at with this is that with those simple REST actions (POST, GET) are enough for a server to identify the camera's User Agent, prepare XSLT transformations on the content that the camera will understand and interchange with one another a suitable XML vocabulary for the problem domain. Straightforward, right?
This I think is where comments such as those in that lesscode.org article find justification. SOAP adds layer after layer when we should be simplifying, simplifying. My favourite quote from lesscode:
To claim that this one is the first "computer-free" camera is bogus. First of, it still uploads to a computer so technicly it's not independent of computers. Secon, almost all network cameras can upload by it self. Axis have been doing this for close to a decade now. http://www.axis.com/products/cam_206w/index.htm/
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Users can even use the camera to view photos stored in Internet photo albums via Kodak's Easyshare Gallery service.
Wow man that's really great(tm). Notice the marketing speech. Nice advertorial.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
Enjoy those annual endless photo-album recaps of your neighbor's summer vacation? Good news... now they're going real-time...
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
I'd be very surprised if Apple doesn't take advantage of Wi-Fi in digital cameras and create some really compelling community-building tools for the homepage section of their .Mac service.
First step might be co-opting Flickr's user-assignable keywords. That's a killer feature that encourages casual browsing and random connections between people.
I've used .Mac for years now and (although I reckon they'd prefer you use iPhoto as the gateway to the service) I'd love to just connect my camera to a network when on the road and access a secure, .Mac-hosted interface for upload/download to iDisk or even to publish.
Hmmm ... what do we think? New .Mac feature?
I think that the qualifier missing here is "still" This seems to be the first network still camera.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
...not after the way they behaved - http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/04/10/03/1352252.shtml ?tid=123&tid=108&tid=155&tid=102&tid=98
I don't see any of their products finding a way onto my shopping list.
With a camera that can email or post photos to a website, its just another reason not to get a PC (for some people).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Do you have any recent example?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
The parent poster had already said: infiltrate the cameras and some battery-operated hotspots. The cameras, policeman can see and seize and smash. The hotspots will be connected to the Net (via GPRS for instance) and will be invisible to the Man.... and even if found and seized the damage would have been done already.
It's not "simpler" not "equally effective" to have "runners" getting memory cards. Supposedly a wi-fi camera has the option to upload immediately each foto after taken.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Considering I can take ~3 (1-2 MB) shots a second with my Canon 350D, any wireless system for remotely storing my shots is going to have to have some pretty good bandwidth. 802.11g might be 54mb in theory but it never gets near that in the real world. Kodak suck. Kudos to them for at least trying to innovate a bit in the consumer sector, but it's crap.
Am I the only one that thinks an access point that fakes an Easyshare connection could be fun? It would not only give you the pictures currently uploaded but also access to the rest of the user's Easyshare galleries. Who would have thought sharing would be *that* easy?
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
Dlink has had WIFI equiped video cameras with built in FTP to send stills to an Internet server for over a year now.
actually it's not even intersting.
wow a camera that uploads via wifi..ehh.. not like what was reported here or here.
I swear there were three other stories about the 'first wi-fi camera" but I can only find two. Maybe because I work in WolfCamera but this is old news. Kodak has the EasyShare One, Nikon has the P2, and those are just the consumer level cameras.
I know the EasyShare One has been out since april. We've never had one until last week but we've had a sign for it in our display case. always wanted to see what it looks like but they don't pay me enough to look up cameras on the clock much less off.
This may be the first WiFi camera but it's not the first camera that can upload images without a computer.
Sony has had bluetooth enabled cameras that can connect to the net and upload images if you have a bluetooth cell phone for 2-3 years now. (no computer needed)
And of course all the cellphones with camears built in do it just fine without a computer including the 7 megapixel samsung.
Imagine how useful this camera would be if Kodak would put an X server in it. The camera would become a wireless graphical X display terminal. I'd buy one immediately.
Similar to many bluetooth devices, new and old. One such example is the Sony Ericsson S710a. This is a cellular phone with integrated 1.3 megapixel camera, 2.3" screen, mp3 playing abilities and of course the ability to upload directly to the web or email. (Obviously this assumes you've got a bluetooth enabled router) My brother's got this phone, it's just plain amazing. The only bummer is the service he gets with cingular is rather sub-par in his area.
I'm really glad I didn't buy a subscription to Slashdot this year, or I'd feel really ripped off. This "article" looks like nothing more than an ad. Mod me as a "troll" if you will, but I think I'm seeing more and more of these "slashvertisements" in the last few months. I hope Kodak paid for this ad.
The display is a touchscreen, so that's correct, you could directly interact with any program running anywhere the network reaches. And the remote programs wouldn't have to have any awareness that they were being manipulated by a touchscreen user. There would be no local load on the camera for the number crunching or data i/o. That would be done by the remote hardware, whether it's a PC or a supercomputing cluster. That could work.
This is a closed system. Notice that besides wireless, there is another way to get the pictures off the camera: take the card to a Kodak kiosk. Again, closed.
Who benefits by having this system "computer-free"? Kodak, of course.
Every photo upload, download, and printout will be ringing Kodak's cash register. This is not progress.
I agree that the "computer-free" term is a little bogus. It seems that they are differentiating between "computer-free" and "microprocessor-free", which I'm sure it isn't. Of course, a real "computer" has many more things glommed onto the microprocessor ...
I was waiting for an answer of the kind "oh, my cousin's neighbour guaranteed me that the photo at page 32 of the July 3rd edition of Newsweek was doctored to show more people at such-and-such concert". So I could get to the photo, analyze it, etc. But no, it was only a troll, and a bad one.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
It's a data transport medium, and by the well-known MIME protocol to wrap any data, you can transport any file.
Axis did this ages ago. It even runs Linux for extra bonus points.
http://www.axis.com/products/cam_206w/
Deleted
I can't wait for Paris Hilton to get this!
Woooooo whoooooo! A Canon vs. Nikon flamewar on Slashdot!
According to this and other articles I've read about the camera, it's restricted to T-Mobile (subscription-based) hotspots: "subscribers to other Wi-Fi services will not be able to connect an EasyShare-One to those wireless accounts." The T-Mobile subscription price is $4.99/month. The article linked in the original post does not get this point across very well.
When are they going to make a wireless appliance that takes security seriously and uploads via SCP with a private key for authentication? With the free availability of OpenSSH, there's no excuse for this ignorance.
There are quite a few cameras that can do this already. The first publicly available camera that could connect to a public wireless LAN and transmit photos by email or FTP was Ricoh's RCD-i700.
Kodak are FAR from the first to do this - Ricoh's camera was announced on September 10th, 2000 and began shipping shortly thereafter.
Imagine living in a WiFi City and being able to INSTANTLY publicize evidence of Crimes caught in the Act - or Political Dramas ocurring in Real-time. Or being able to communicate with a Loved one - after a tragedy. Soon VIDEOS and AUDIO will be added to this technology - it will change Real-Time Communication Globaly!
http://george-harrison.info/
I want a wireless card that emulates CompactFlash. Something with on-board memory to hold the pictures while they transmit, or while the camera is out of range.
When it gets in range, establishes connection, uploads. Would have to be remotely configured the first time, after that it just FTPs the pictures wherever you want them. Could even auto-upload to website or photo service. No more cables, funky camera software, etc.
OTOH, battery life would undoubtably suffer.
truly a revolution among revolutions. Thank you Kodak, may your imagination be limitless for many years to come.
Surprised to see some dismissing this camera, but then again, they're kicking themselves for not doing it first. If they'd take the time to dig a little bit online, they could answer a lot of their own supposed issues.
* It not only connects to TMobile spots, but also to non-paid free spots. Get over the issue -- pay if you want guaranteed access, don't pay if you you want to hunt down a broadband signal yourself.
* WEP is standard -- 64 and 128 bit.
* It definitely offers wifi transfer to a PC or Mac.
* System is as open as possible. Sure, connects to the Kodak gallery, but you can also pull down pics off that site. You can also transfer anything you shoot off the SD card to any computer, and the same goes for pics sent to a PC. What's the issue? Do you think that Flickr (Yahoo), Snapfish and other online sites would even think to give Kodak access, when Kodak is a competitor? Maybe someday, but for now, this camera is the best there is (I'm not seeing HP even attempt to use Snapfish in this pretty cool way).