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A Car Navigation System That Takes Pictures
Brandon Miniman writes "Navman has brought to market the first in-car navigation system with a built in camera, the iCN 750. The camera lets you take pictures of places you've been. Geographical coordinates are then assigned to each picture, so that you can bring up a gallery, and choose your destination by clicking on a picture." Add to this an always-on, all-sides video camera to document that it was the minivan that strayed into your lane, and it'll be even better.
We could use this to take pictures of women and associate the women with their locations - a kind of new-age black book! ...now, if only us /.ers could get women.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
what about my rights to privacy? where i live we still have at least the illusion of privacy >:)
what about restricted areas (numbers sadly increasing again nowadays), where photos are not allowed?
what about my medication battling my paranoia?
If you're wondering how I can be so anti-police, I recently got assaulted because some nutcase thought that I cut in line in front of him (I didn't - in fact I offered to let him go ahead of me). When the cops arrived, I explained what happened and the cop's reply was "Well, if you fuck somebody, you're gonna get fucked". American police are incredibly unprofessional, rude, racist, sexist, and of course there's the occasional beating too - the more cameras we have pointing at them (not us!) the better off we'll be.
And for cool factor, I can find my house.
Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
Seriously.
Could you imagine an insurance company giving you a discount?
I can see it already.... Idiots are going to be seen with one of these things backing up and turning their car a little bit, moving forward a few feet again, etc. etc. - trying to make sure they've got exactly what they want in the camera's view to snap a "perfect" photo for the location they're at.
I agree with the other person who posted a complaint that too many devices are adding useless "fluff", trying too hard to be "unique" instead of incorporating truly useful featurea in their products. Sure, it may not be as "sexy" to sell durability or reliability, but frankly, I'd much rather pay for an appliance that'll last 5-10 more years, or a laptop computer that won't die the first time I accidently drop it on a concrete floor than for some gee-whiz, unneeded gadget merged into it.
With all the cameras being put in cellphones, you'd think practically everyone would be able to capture a photo of anyplace they happen to go already. Does a GPS system need to do it too??
Could this finally be the gadget through which I find True Happiness?
All of the others have been disappointments in that regard...
...It's not that the camera won't have enough pixels. It's not that you need an Ansel Adams-quality photograph.
It's that to get a nice, clear, useful, _recognizable_ thumbnail-sized picture of your destination requires a lot of intelligent thought, good framing of the picture, thirty seconds to walk around and pick a good angle, and a time of day when the light is reasonable.
Three-quarters of the pictures people take with this thing will be
a) unrecognizable due to reflections on the car window they're trying to shoot through, or
b) unrecognizable because of lighting issues (dark, muddy, illegible storefront against a nice bright sky), or
c) unrecognizable because the camera was pointed at the wrong thing, or
d) unrecognizable because a lot of buildings look pretty much like each other, or
e) unrecognizable because the store name is too small to read in the finished picture when displayed thumbnail size on the navigation screen, or
f) unrecognizable because important recognition features were hidden behind a parked car, or
g) unrecognizable because you don't have a view of the front of the building from the only place where you could stop the car, which happens to be the parking lot in back of the building, or
h) unrecognizable because it's night-time and the camera isn't sensitive enough to make a good picture by streetlight (and the streetlighting isn't even enough even if it were, and the flash isn't bright enough to light up a building thirty feet away, and even if it were all you'd get are the flash reflections off the windows...
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Until everyone got it.. then imagine the penalties for not having it.
Yes, yes, and again, yes.
It turns out that taking quality pictures - and I don't even mean "hang them in an art gallery" quality, just "easily recognizable and/or pleasant to look at" - is a non-trivial task. Trying to do it with an inferior device (mostly due to crappy lenses) only makes the job harder. Trying to do it quickly or, worse, while moving is yet another difficulty.
Add to all the technical difficulties you've already covered the fact that most people only have the vaguest notion how to effectively frame a shot, and this gadget only gets more useless.
(Note that when I say "useless," I don't mean "incapable of being used," I mean "making it easy for the user to perform uselessly")
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I call BS.
"If I want to get back to a place, I'll use scratchings in dirt. That's what it's designed for.
I use a GPS all of the time. I don't know about "smooth wombat" but I find myself in places I don't know well all of the time, trying to get to other places I don't know well. Plugging the address into my GPS and getting turn-by-turn directions gets me where I need to be quickly, effortlessly, and safely.
Furthermore I often find I'm not sure where I am at all, and in Massachusetts it's customary to label only side-streets, not the big street you're driving down for miles trying to figure out what it's name is. Oh, and lets not forget after dark, when finding much less reading a street name signs is almost impossible. Maps are great if you know where you are on them, not if you don't.
Then lets consider what what my GPS also offers. Nearby services, want a restaurant, there's a list a sorted by distance. Need a gas-station? Last evening when I was running late I could see on my GPS display the gas station 'so helpfully' listed on the highway sign was in truth several miles off the exit, while at the exit after that one there were two much closer. Later I needed a book to bring a friend suddenly in the ER - Look, there's a Barnes & Nobles a half mile away, never had any idea it was there. Need directions to Beth Israel Hospital? 49.5 miles, and even though I used to contract there I was well away from any route I would have thought to use.
Sneer and say how in the old days you'd pull out maps & flashlights & ask strangers by the roadside who don't even know what road they're _on_ much less how to get to Main Street for directions, I'll be buzzing by listening to "Next Left in 600 yards" and changing lanes well in advance.
TomTom's "Jane" voice is my muse, and call her the "bitch in a box" if you will she gets me where I'm going with no huhu. Sure she often prefers the direct route over the better route, insists that I can use the emergency-vehicles-exit off of the Mass. Turnpike, and that Weybosset St. in Providence RI is 2-way, but with a bit of common sense she's a great companion. Oh, and the conference last year with the highway accident in front? Everyone else was in traffic for up to 4 hours, I sat for 5 minutes in it, tapped out a request for an alternate route, and after going through the back of an industrial park, through a very nice neighborhood, and over (what appeared in the dark to be) a mountain, I pulled up to the back door of my hotel 20 minutes later. Way to go Jane TomTom!
Oh, and cellphone? How do you think I found out my best friend was in the ER, and what he needed?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.