How the Camera Phone Changed the World

theodp writes "Ten years after the amazing Philippe Kahn married a cell phone and a digital camera to capture the birth of daughter Sophie, Slate takes a look at the impact of the camera phone, the gadget that perverts, vigilantes, and celebrity stalkers can all agree on. 'With this kind of device,' Kahn told Wired, 'you're going to see the best and the worst of things.'"

Comments

Some Marriage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ten years after the amazing Philippe Kahn married a cell phone and a digital camera

And people say gay marriage is unnatural!

And, I didn't know that Kahn is a minister.

Re:Some Marriage!

[ddvlad]

Well, marrying a cell phone with another cell phone is just silly.

Yes, but marying a cell phone and two cameras is 3G. What is the world coming too?

Re:What?

[Snarfangel]

Camera phones have such poor quality. Why don't you just buy a disposable one for a few bucks and save yourself some pain.

If only they'd put a crappy phone on a high-quality camera, I'd be set.

Camera Phones Suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I do a lot of business with companies who for security reasons will not let you take a camera phone onto their premises. I also have to leave mine at home when I go to parents evening just in case I might possibly take a picture of a school pupil.

Now, have you tried to get a non camera phone lately? Difficult to say the least.

If I want to take a picture then I get my Digital Camera out (Nikon D2x) and do it properly.

Current camera phones have the same quality as CCTV cameras did 10 years ago.

I'm sorry (and will probably get modded down as a troll) this is one invention I could certainly do without.

Re:Camera Phones Suck

[identity0]

Actually, camera phones do have uses beyond taking fuzzy pictures of your drunk friends. Unfortunately they don't seem to be coming over to the states for some reason.

If you've seen any Japanese magazines or websites lately, you'll notice square barcode-type things on some ads or sites. See the bottom left of this site. They allow you to use your phone camera to take a pic, then your camera web browser goes to an address encoded in the pic without having to type in the address. Basically the same thing Cue:Cat did, but on commodity hardware.

Okay, now you're thinking, "So what? I can get ads easier?", but there are other uses for the technology, too. I've heard some European countries have methods of paying for stuff using a cell phone, where you take a pic of a barcode like that, and the price is charged to your cell account.

Basically, don't just think of it as "A crappy camera glued to a cell phone", but as "An optical sensor attached to a pervasivly-networked device". There is a world of possibility in using it as an input device for ubiquitous computing. Where other attempts to make computer interaction seamless in the real world have failed, the camerphone might succeed because it uses technology that is useful for other things (camera + phone, regular printer + ink), and widely adopted by the public already. It's all a matter of software to make it useful, no new harware needed.

Re:Washed out, grainy, bad contrast

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell us more of these "girls" you speak of.

Re:What?

[lukas84]

Megapixels is only half of the quality discussion.

A good camera has optical zoom, a bigger ccd (a bigger ccd at the same megapixel still gives a better picture), autofocus, etc.

Implementing this in a cell phone requires space.

911

[deviceb]

Pertaining to this topic..
911 calls in NYC will activate the camera on mobile phones so people can send video of the emergency as it happens.
CNN usually gets images or video from peoples phones within minutes of the incident happening. The 911 people down in NYC just want the same data feed for emergencys..

Re:What?

[statusbar]

One problem with the disposable camera is that after you take an important picture, the camera can be 'confiscated' and your picture is gone too. With a camera phone, the picture can be emailed to the world before the 'bad guy' can take your phone away....

--jeffk++

Re:Tons of phones without cameras... quit complain

[EinZweiDrei]

(guess what - they sell cell phones that are literally no-frills so that employees can have a cheap company phone)

And about time, mes sieurs! I'm tired of all those literally-frilled phones getting caught on my coatsleeves right in the middle of a rousing bout of lawn-tennis!