COMPUTING OUT OF THE BOX
MICHAEL C. BARNES
Today, almost all phones have an integrated camera. I often see tourists taking pictures using their camera phones and cringe. I imagine that these tourists have spent a fortune to get to Bangkok and are now recording their memories at VGA or XGA resolution. Just because a phone's camera isn't up to the task of archiving those "Kodak moments", doesn't mean that camera phones are not completely useless.
If you have a 2MP camera or better, a great application is Scanr (at http://www.scanr.com). Scanr is a service that will convert documents, business cards and white boards into PDF files that are then emailed out automatically. Scanr has a premium service that will send these documents as faxes. I find the Scanr service particularly useful for recording receipts as I travel. I use my webcam to capture receipts as soon as I get them and email them from my phone to their service. I now don't have to worry about loosing my receipts as I travel.
If your phone has GPS you can automatically transfer your photos to Locr. The images will be stored and the coordinates of the image will be attached to the photo. It is possible to quickly capture images as landmarks and create a record of useful locations that can be retrieved later.
Locr integrates with Google Maps so when you go to Locr's web site and click on your photos or other public photos, Google Maps will give you an exact location. Now, imagine you wanted to send a map to a particular location, take a photo, upload it to Locr, then forward the link on Locr and your recipient will have a photo of the location as well as a Google Map showing directions.
I use the Nokia E-Series phones. I believe these are the best business phones on the market. I like to show off some of the tools that are exclusive to this series of phones. One program that really amazed people is Qik (at http://www.qik.com). Imagine that you have a special event such as your child's graduation or even a marriage.
There are people who you want to watch the event "live". How would you do this? You could record the event and send it on CD or DVD. You could post the image on You Tube but this would take a lot of effort to upload the video and then wait for the conversion. Then you would have to send out invitations.
What if you could just run a program, point your phone and you were live. You would be broadcasting everything as it happened to the whole world or to a private list of viewers. This is what Qik allows you to do. You actually broadcast live from your phone. You can record anything, lectures, demonstrations, parties or just take notes with your phone to archive for later. I have have a demo of me demonstrating Qik at qik.com/video/103996.
While Qik runs on a limited number of phones, another program, called Comvu (at http://www.comvu.com), runs on a larger number or phones. Both Qik and Comvu allow you to post your videos on YouTube or create a permalink that you can embedded into your web site.
Comvu allows you stream live without storing to its sever, storing the video feed on the server and simply recording the video to copy to the server later when there is an Internet connection available. The cameras in phones are getting better and there are many creative ways to use them for fun or business.
Michael C. Barnes is the President NorhTec.
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