The ability to take pictures is one key to our dream mobile device. I think camera phones will be one of the most interesting consumer electronics product over the next year. In anecdotal evidence, a camera phone is the first geek gadget my friend MB has shown interest in (and don't think she doesn't hear breathless recounts of every type of gadget that comes along.)

I think the days of stand alone cameras are numbered. I don't mean for professional photographers - but for everyone else. Still, there are some interesting things going on with digital cameras. Sanyo has a prototype of a WiFi enabled camera. This camera from Concord (who?) is supposedly shipping now, with Bluetooth wireless bulit in. And Ricoh tops them both with the Caplio G3 which can have WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS capabilities added with expansion cards (although it's unclear to me if you can have more than one of these options at the same time.)

I think this sort of product will lose to mobile phones with bulit in cameras, but it is interesting none the less. The urgent need to to collapse the cycle of steps now needed to take pictures, download them to a computer, and then upload them to the internet. The goal is to have one step: from snapping the picture to posting it on the internet. These cameras are not there, but they show that people are thinking about how to do this.

In general, we can no longer think about the taking of pictures as seperate from the sharing of those pictures. These now seperate tasks need to become one action.
- jim 7-14-2003 8:48 pm

Wm Gibson and others posted about an interesting phenomenon in Japan--girls with cell phone cameras taking pictures of new clothing and hairstyles from fashion magazines, on the magazine racks, without buying the mags, and sending the pics to their friends. The retailers and publishers are having fits.
- tom moody 7-14-2003 10:20 pm


Some would say that Japanese school girls are the avant garde of the new millenium.

Because I like to manipulate light, I shall always be interested in having a camera and post-processing software that allow control over the image. But I understand the appeal of the point-shoot-upload capabilities of a camera phone.

Despite it's prevalence in the future (Star Trek, Back to the Future, etc.) I'm still not convinced the video phone will be common place any time soon. People like the detachment that a voice-only medium allows.

- mark 7-15-2003 8:15 am





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