28/5 PENCK in Metal, Milk and BitterBeautiful AU Design by Makoto Saito:
PENCK
Design Principles (M. Saito):
- Keeping it simple
- Making it unlike a normal mobile phone.
- Giving it a presence that was attractive even when it is not being used.
- Giving it a futuristic feel while keeping design aspects to a minimum.
- Making it something people won't get tired of.
Via Moco Tokyo (February 17th)19/5 QR Codes soon in Switzerland too?Visual Code Recognition for Camera-Equipped Mobile Phones
In this ETH project we evaluate the feasibility of using the CCD cameras built into off-the-shelf mobile phones to act as sensors for 2-dimensional visual codes. The codes can be attached to physical objects and act as a key to access object-related information and functionality. The use of mobile phones is interesting in this scenario, because mobile phones are ubiquitously available devices providing constant wireless connectivity, and models with integrated cameras are getting more and more popular. Using the integrated camera as a sensor thus offers a natural way of detecting objects in the user's immediate surroundings.
See also:
German non-technical introduction (PDF):
Foto-Handys als mobile Interaktionsgeräte im Alltag – Klicken in der realen Welt
Durch Anvisieren eines aufgedruckten Visual Codes kann Zusatzinformation zum Papieraushang angezeigt werden. Foto-Handys lassen sich auf eine neuartige, interessante Weise als Geräte zur Interaktion mit Gegenständen einer „smarten“ Umgebung nutzen. Indem die Mobiltelefone beispielswiese spezielle „Visual Codes“ erkennen, die auf Produkten oder Plakaten angebracht sind, können sie zugehörige Informationen unmittelbar via Mobilkommunikation aus dem Internet holen und dem Nutzer anzeigen – Dinge „kommunizieren“ so mit dem Menschen. Ferner lassen sich durch den Vergleich schnell hintereinander aufgenommener Bilder die Bewegungen des Handys in rein optischer Weise ermitteln. Das Mobiltelefon agiert damit als persönlicher Mediator zwischen Objekten in der Umgebung und mobilen Informationsdiensten – es wird zu einer Art „Computermaus“, mit der man in der realen Welt surfen und klicken kann. Die hierfür erforderlichen Techniken wurden am Institut für Pervasive Computing der ETH Zürich entwickelt und werden derzeit in Zusammenarbeit mit verschiedenen Firmen in der Praxis erprobt.
Via Emily 19/5 Camera Phones as Storytelling Devices by HPStoryCast: simple, digital storytelling with photos and narration
StoryCast is an experimental digital storytelling service that lets people use their camera phones and other mobile devices to easily create and instantly share stories with friends and family. Each story consists of a sort of narrated slide show of photos accompanied by the storyteller's voice.
Plog -- Unlocking the Revolutionary Power of Cameraphones as Storytelling Devices
Plog seizes and extends this exciting new opportunity in a couple key ways:
- Plog makes it easy and effortless to capture and share photos with rich metadata
- Plog automates and enriches the organization and presentation of photos by turning them into stories
Plog is not a photoblog. It is not about publishing a list of pictures on a web page. Plog is about telling stories that are easy to create, fun to watch, and interactive.
Via Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere 15/5 Risto Sarvas's Research on Cameraphone Behavior12/5 Swisscom SMS usage: 14% less than last yearTages-Anzeiger asks:
Ist der Handy-Boom vorbei?
Die Swisscom leidet nicht nur unter dem Preiszerfall im Telefonie-Geschäft. Es wird auch weniger telefoniert. Um vier Minuten ist die Gesprächsdauer je Kunde im Vergleich zum Vorjahr zurück gegangen. Die Zahl der verschickten SMS schrumpfte sogar um 14 Prozent.
Is the Handy Boom over?
Swisscom Mobile customers were 4 minutes less on the phone than the year before. And they sent 14% less SMS. Maybe that's one of the reasons for Swisscom's SMS Group.
For sure the mobile boom is not over. But instead of milking the SMS cash cow till it's too much, wouldn't it be better to make the mobile internet more attractive? 30/4 Nokia N90 with Carl Zeiss opticsTechdigest reports about the latest Nokia N90:
After seeing rivals Sony and Ericsson and Sharp steal a march in the camera phone market the N90 is Nokia's attempt to grab the high-end back. Its headline facility has to be its integrated two mega pixel camera which features apparently Carl Zeiss optics – a first for a Nokia phone.
The handset itself is clamshell style with a rotating head like other Nokia and Sharp phones. Nokia has stacked the phone out with many photographic features so the N90 boasts a macro option, an autofocus, flash and a 20x digital zoom. The phone also grabs video too in MPEG4 and 3GP formats and has an 8x digital zoom. There’s a second camera too so the phone can be used for person to person video calling.
The 3G/Edge handset also features MP3 and AAC music players and has good quality speakers. It runs on Nokia's Series 60 platform and boasts a whole host of ‘prosumer’ facilities including email with attachments and a full HTML web browser. Battery life is up to 10 days in standby and 4.5hours talk time. It goes on sale in the summer.
This looks very enticing. I hope Nokia can finally offer a picture quality comparable to Sharp camera phones. I would be the first to buy it;).
Via Emily 15/3 KDDI 2002 meets SIEMENS 200410/3 Mobile Weblogs, Camera Phones and face-to-face storytellingToday M. and I were eating out and during our conversation (and having both newer types of camera phones: Samsung and Sharp) we both used the mobile version of our weblogs to illustrate a purpose. Naturally some people in the restaurant looked at us quite strangely, but I believe this will become quite common in a few months;).
After some experience with my mobile weblog, the scenarios in which I use my mobile weblog most often are:
a) showing a picture or a quoting a post in a face-to-face discussion
b) reading one of my posts published via internet in detail and more thoroughfully (that's why I quote so extensively) later when on a tram or bus ride.
c) checking the latest posts in the mobile KAYWA universe.
So when I found Howard Rheingold's article Cameraphones as Personal Storytelling Media, I was quite amazed to see that Daisuke Okabe has come to similar conclusions in his paper (PDF) ( L.C.).
And although camera phones transmit images through the Internet, they are also turning out, rather unexpectedly, to be face-to-face media. It looks like this newly ubiquitous device could be more about flows of moments than stocks of images, more about sharing presence than transporting messages, and ultimately, more about personal narrative than factual communication.
[...] The cameraphone study extends this framework by revealing how people's choices of images to share enables intimate social networks to share ambient information; but, "on the other hand, we are finding that users tend not to e-mail messages to one another, and prefer to share images by showing pictures on a handset screen." Hence, the communication device that used to transmit messages across distances is now also used to capture a flow of experience in order to add a visual element to face-to-face storytelling. (Hmmm... What do McLuhan's "Laws of Media" tell us here?)
[...] Okabe noted a number of different uses included "personal archiving" (saving images for one's own use, as a memory of a day or special moment, a "self-authoring practice"), "intimate sharing" (showing a mini-slideshow of one's day or one's hour in person to a friend), peer-to-peer news and online picture sharing.
[...] Okabe also noticed an additional use to the capture of mundane images: material for conversation. In Japanese, the material people collect to share conversationally with friends is called "neta": "a new store seen on the way to work; a cousin who just dropped out of high school...an odd statue sited in town." Cameraphones "provide a new tool for making these everyday neta not just verbally but also visually shareable."
See also:
Breaking Out of Default Thinking
"Another strong and under-appreciated aspect of mobile phone use is the personalization people do to their phones. This is usually in the form of snap on covers, ring-tones or wallpaper. [...] People are turning their phones into a stand-in for themselves. Some provocative ideas come from examining this need and 'Web-izing' it, expanding it into cyberspace. 07/3 Samsung SCH-S260: handwritten text superimposed on MMS
This is an amusing concept to send personalised email or MMS messages.
The new phone is the first in the Samsung line to feature the Macromedia Flash Lite Player. The technology is being used to display the user interface for the phone.
Via Akihabara News
See also:
Ubergizmo16/2 Communication ubiquity - imaging by the general populationExperts chime in on future of camera phones
[...] "Every year we have a new higher projection for the camera phones market," said panel moderator Jed Hurwitz of STMicroelectronics. "In 2004, mobile phone vendors introduced the first handsets with image sensors that had 3.2 million pixels. And Samsung promises 10 million pixels by the end of the year. But will consumers care?"
[...] Citing what he called "communication ubiquity" and "imaging by the general population" could result in the next big set of mobile phone applications, said Etoh.
[...] "Video telephony is known to be a killer application for 3G," added Jinsung Choi of LG Electronics. "However, it turns out that other relatively simple multimedia applications such as MMS are more popular in reality. The way end users accept new applications are different from what we think," said Choi.
[...] Consumers are accustomed to carrying mobile phones, fueling the used of phone cameras. "The human desire to be able to store memories and share means the camera phone is set to be the preferred consumer imaging solution (vs digital cameras)," said Nokia's Janne Haavisto.
Picturephoning | |
