Category: mobile-technology

Japan's Digital Shoplifting Plague – Fantastic use of camera phones, I love it!

It's becoming increasingly clear that we live in a world where the majority of people simply don't understand “digital”. Over in Japan, the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association is on the warpath trying to stop browsers in bookstores from taking camera-phone photos of their magazines, calling it “digital shoplifting”.
As an example, they say that a woman may flip through a magazine and see a new dress or hairstyle, and snap a photo to send to their friends to ask what they think. The magazine publishers are angry that this is (they believe) taking money out of their pockets. Of course, that assumes (probably incorrectly) that the person would have bought the magazine in the first place or that they wouldn't then go and buy the magazine anyway.
Meanwhile, bookshop employees say they'll have trouble stopping this activity, since they can't tell whether someone is just sending a text message or if they're using the camera phone.

Based on this idea, shouldn't we be forced to claw our own eyes out? Or, at the very least, have all magazines and books wrapped in black shrink wrap to prevent someone from (gasp!) actually seeing any part of it before buying. Perhaps it really is time for someone to invent the DRM helmet and make sure that anytime you see anything, you get charged for it.

I've just attended a show about mobile life, it was your usual come look at my new phones style thing. Pretty boring but I found a couple of things which make me think. All from Nokia too

First thing I saw was the Nokia obsavation camera. Ok its basicly a camera-phone but in the shape of a camera. It is like those Axis network cameras but this one has no network socket only a 9pin serial socket and a SIM slot.
So how do you control it? Well once its got AC power, it acts like a phone waiting for a phone call (more on this later) or text message. Once it recieves a text message it will reply with a MMS message, included in the body of the message will be a photo of what the camera currently saw.
But it gets better, you can adjust its internal settings to send you a MMS when it detects movement over a user specified livel or over a set period of time. You can even get it to stop sending depending on howm any you specify.

Its a first of its kind and we are interested in getting some on the cheap and setting them up in college as a useful way of connecting new students to there courses and the college as a whole.
We could offer new students the ability to get pictures of the college before they come in on the first day. Just by giving out the mobile number of the camera.
I believe its also possible to have a access list, so if the number becomes widely known, we can block all except for those who we put in the access list?
If they sort out reverse billing for this, we could open it to all no problem.

Another neat little feature is that if you phone it, you can hear what the camera hears! Now thats clever stuff. Specially if you get the reverse billing working…
Anyway I'm thinking if I can grab a nice VGA quality copy for the website over serial and let students at the number for MMS. Maybe setup 5 cams, one for each area in college and one for reception? Pricing seems ok, about 150 pounds online with contract. Shame theres no ip to gsm bridge though… oh nokia reckon within a month we can buy it. Just in time for next college year I would say… could be a interesting project for this summer?

Ok the next very very interesting thing from Nokia. I'm not actually ment to talk about too much because its not be shown in the uk yet. So they say…
When they explained what this device does, I was blown away. My legs turned to jelly and I collapsed. In my mind of course…

So what does Nokia SU2 do? Yes I got the model number when they let me look at it. Well its basiclly allows anyone to send a picture to it over a bluetooth connection and display it on a device which accepts composite.
Yes its that simple. Unfortually I never got a demo of it because they were not allowed too, but I'm gonna do some searching when I get home this weekend for sure.

How would this work for Ravensbourne? Well any student can do a presentation from there bluetooth enabled laptop without plugg-in a vga cable. Doesnt sound like anything amazing except when you imagine a small group of around 5-10 students who can each send there photos to the large screen. You can imagine them sending concepts and talking about it, while someone else grabs that image and adds there own take on it, while there talking. I'm guessing the SU2 does allow uploading and downloading over bluetooth?

Anyway I was thinking, we could do the same with the bluetooth hub and a computer. The hub is the bluetooth to network bridge and if you place a image in a certain folder it would pick that up and display it through a vga card which supports svideo or composite. Its kinda wasteful but it does allow you to deal with not only images but video and audio.
But then again, we have wireless, why use bluetooth when all there laptops have wireless anyway? The advantage of the SU2 is that it works with mobile devices not laptops, stupid Me.
So maybe its not so good for ravensbourne, specially if we sort out webdav access and shared folders. Oh well it was a good thought wasted on us.
Now if the camera was bluetooth…

So I've been seriously thinking about my net holiday idea again.
The main problem is the power of laptops, there battery are pretty crap, even my tabletpc lasts around about 3.5 hours with wireless on. Never tried it with just the Lan connection on, or thinking about it now, with just bluetooth on.

Anyway once you put the brightness of the screen up, your 3hours becomes a very sickly 2hrs and if you want to read the screen outside in the sun your gonna need all the brightness your laptop can deliver.
Even while I write this post on the coach ride from Bristol to London, the sun is giving me grief, so much that I had to draw the make shift curtains.
Anyhow, if you plug in power your fine. You can drain all the power you like and still have the brightness on maximum. However, on a net holiday would you want to be confined to one area in which you can have power? Not really, no.

The solutions

Why not have extra thick power packs which will increase the life of the laptops? Yes I guess it would work, but no one wants to carry around a brick of a laptop on holiday? And lets not forget most people will bring there own laptops rather than rent one.

Why not have power blocks everywhere, so people can plugin everywhere? It would kind of work except we would have to once again supply mains power for every type of laptop. We could tell people before hand to take extra power blocks?
Another issue with always on mains power is if one falls in the swimming pool, everyone dies of a nasty electric shock, where if just the laptop everyone gets stunk no one dies. I'm guessing because obvioulsy I've never tried it myself.

Why not use solar power? Ah you hit the nail on the head. If we use solar power in a hot sunny place like south spain, we could easily get the charge of a main supply. But its safer and can be moved around alot more than mains adapters.
So ok theres two ways to do this. Some kind of large one which will power a set of laptops or little mini ones which you put on the outer side of the laptop. Maybe theres some kind of mounting like you get on those usb laptop cameras?
Once you got that sorted and powering the laptop, there should be enough sunshine to power the laptop thought-out the day. because if I'm right in saying, it only really requires daylight not bright and hot sunshine. Maybe it generates charge quicker if its brighter?

This kinda makes me think why cant the hotel be solar powered? And indeed, why not?
What self confessing geek wouldnt want to come on a net holiday? I'm sorry but I wouldnt beable to resist it.

Good-Bye 3G – Hello Wi-Fi Frappuccino

SanDisk Introduces World's First Cards Combining Flash Memory and Wireless Communications
Every time I see this it drives me nuts. When, when, when????????????? So damm frustrating…

If i got one of these's the ipaq would beable to communicate over bluetooth, wifi and gprs. While able to store applications and data on something larger than the 32meg of internal memory I currently have. It would be a HP ipaq 5400 without the processor speed and fingerprint recongination. Sandisk get your ass in gear and sell the damm things.

Cant remember the character name in Donnie darko, but his comments were Beer and pussy, that is all i need. Beer and pussy.
Well for me right now sitting outside in my garden, wireless and sunshine is it. I'm still really tempted to buy some ikea garden chairs and table just so I can get very comfitable. who could turn down wireless and sunshine?

My idea keeps coming into my head. I'm unsure about disclosing the information on the net, but I dont know if I'll ever have the time let alone the capital to set it up. So I think letting someone else use it would be the best idea.

I name the idea net holidays which is its catchy title. But I prefer connected holidays. Anyhow I cant decide if its a gooer or not. But everytime i'm outside it makes me think again that it could be really good, even a small money maker? Who knows I need to do tons of research or just try it out and see how it goes for that trial run.

But Ian what is the idea? i can hear you asking… Well i've reached the end of my bus ride. So I'll detail more on the way home or maybe when I have lunch. Till then, think about it…sunshine, wireless = connected holidays…Humm.

Very interesting view about picture messaging and professional photography. I remember when the first and second generation of digital cameras came out and there was such a bad feeling about them in the professional field of photography. What are they going to make of this?
Why will wireless camera phones revolutionize the photography industry?