StockPhotoTalk | Special Interest Blog

War Moblogging: First US-Coffins, now Humiliated Iraqian Captives

Since 1991 the policy of the U.S. government was to prohibit the press from photographing returning military dead.

This, as we all meanwhile know, changed rapidly as a contract worker* of Seattle - stationed in Kuwait - snapped photos (while on the job) of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane. Shortly after that a website presented hundreds of photographs of flag-draped caskets. This story has made headlines around America and the World.

The New York Times therefore stated: "Pentagon Ban on Pictures of Dead Troops Is Broken."

What's this got to do with online journalism and new media? Plenty.

"This episode demonstrates, everybody's a reporter these days. With digital cameras, photo cell-phones, and nearly ubiquitous Internet access, constraints on "the press" only apply to professional journalists; they often don't apply -- cannot apply -- to device-carrying members of the public who happen to witness, say, a planeload of caskets returning from Iraq. Government efforts to limit what the public sees are increasingly futile." (PoynterOnline, E-Media Tidbits ).

Obviously this story continues. New photos at The Memory Hole are online showing US soldiers abusing and humiliating Iraqis. Even pictures of Iraqis beaten to death.

Former CIA Bureau Chief Bob Baer said: "We went into Iraq to stop things like this from happening, and indeed, here they are happening under our tutela." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director of coalition operations in Iraq, admitted that this was not an isolated series of incidents.

Anything else you have to disclose before we discover it by our own?

_______________________________________________
*The release of the photographs [by the Pentagon] came one day after a contractor working for the Pentagon fired a woman who had taken photographs of coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait. Her husband, a co-worker, was also fired after the pictures appeared in The Seattle Times on Sunday. The contractor, Maytag Aircraft, said the woman, Tami Silicio of Seattle, and her husband, David Landry, had violated Department of Defense and company policies. (The New York Times)

Mirror pages for TheMemoryHole.org: 1; 2; 3
© for the photos: United States Air Force; TheMemoryHole.org/Russ Kick; Unknown

Lomography, New Topographers and Moblogs: The Ultimate Reality Program

Jogn Jerney of The Daily Yomiuri On-Line writes excellent about "Moblogs drive the adoption of camera phones" and Lomography:

"Lomography is naturally a film-based endeavor. But a digital version of the practice of shooting from the hip is fast becoming a worldwide phenomenon, enabled by a new generation of digital camera-equipped mobile phones...as with Lomo photographs, quality is not the prime consideration. Instead, the style and personality of the photographer and subject is what really generates interest. When looking through moblogs, you find yourself constantly looking for the unexpected but often enjoying the ordinary."

Editor´s Choice: Photoblog/Moblog of the Week

[2nd week]

The choice of this week may seem strange to you:

< < < Pan-O-Rama > > >

From what we understand this site is of german origin. We have no indication if the people behind Pan-O-Rama are using the Noblex or Linhhof/Fuji or "only" additional software programs (like PanoramaFactory which is mentioned) to create their panaroma images. It is however open to every photographer (you have to register with their blog provider Antville) and up and running since June 2003. Some images are very traditional in using the panorama feature (outdoor, landscape), but others rise above mere mediocrity.

Some of our favorite photos:

1
2
3
4
5

________________________________________________________________
[1st week: Blog of the Photo]

BlogWalk 2.0: Holy Christ, the Germans are coming!

Remember that thing with the Internet ten or twelve years ago? The Germans were late as always, but the moment they discover something it sounds like "hey, we invented it!".

We had the BloggerCon II. Soon the BlogTalk 2.0 in Vienna.

And now the BlogWalk 2.0 (1; 2) in Nuremberg May 28th: "The role of personal Webpublishing for self-organized and informal learning."

"Participation requires an invitation. However, if you feel the theme of BlogWalk 2.0 makes a perfect fit with your professional work and interests, get in contact and start a conversation."

As of today, already "9 participants" are confirmed to participate. "This makes up a nice core group." Holy Christ. Good Luck.

The C | summit Cameraphones 2004:Announcing the OneWorld/OneDay Project

A little shy as we are we´ve proposed stuff like this earlier (last paragraph) but this is not the place for the We-told-you-so-speech. This project of C | summit Cameraphones 2004 is great:

"A presentation about a proposed non-profit project is based on the goal of documenting the beauty and passion of all human life for one 24 hour period on Valentines Day of the year 2005 by 100,000 cameraphones, photographers and videographers throughout the world. The project will coordinate access to celebrities for student film makers and photographers. We believe that this would become the most valuable reference for anthropologists in five hundred years, while driving adoption and U.S. uptake. We intend for this project to be bigger than Hands Across America, more artistically impactful than Burning Man, and more fun than the Macarena. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to charities benefitting the vision impaired. This will lead to an open group brainstorming about ways to tip the market for mobile imaging."

The C | summit Cameraphones 2004: The Next Big Thing

If you want to know how they like us to use what they had invented and what we have to pay for it: the C | summit Cameraphones 2004, April 27-30, in Maui, Hawai, has gathered them all together, the Mr. Important and Mrs. Next Big Thing in marketing, finance, business development and technology of the moblogging world.

Stockphoto Discussion: "RF - Dare you say no?" [Stock Artists Alliance]

If you are a subscriber to the the STOCKPHOTO Discussion Group/listserv - now in it's ninth year - there´s ongoing discussion about: "RF - Dare you say no?"
Your starting point should be: [STOCKPHOTO] Digest Number 1938 of Apr 27 and the following digests.

One photographer resigned his Stock Artists Alliance - now in its third year - membership "because [to his believe] they embrace photographers who supply RF along with RM licensed images". He complained that "I am not reading/responding to any personal emails on matters relating to this, having been misquoted, verbally insulted and even threatened with physical violence."

Answer of another photographer: "I remind you the Getty's statistics for the last quarter: Its revenue are 51% coming from RM and 32% from RF (the rest of it comes from footage etc..) while their sales are 62% coming from RF images and 38% from RM ones."

To visit the Stockphoto email message group on the web, go to the Stockphoto.net-Yahoogroup.

Getty Images: "No Shots of a Cheap Shot, and Some Wonder Why"

Bill Werde of the The New York Times recently published an article dealing about "Getty Images' deal for exclusive marketing rights with National Hockey League is called into question when Getty wire service fails to offer photo of Todd Bertuzzi punching Steve Moore at Vancouver Canucks-Colorado Avalanche game in March" (1; 2):

"When Todd Bertuzzi of the Vancouver Canucks sucker-punched Steve Moore of
the Colorado Avalanche last month and drove him face-first into the ice, he
ended two seasons - Mr. Moore's with two broken vertebrae and his own with
an indefinite suspension. He also inadvertently fueled a controversy about
ethics in the rink of photojournalism.
Getty Images markets itself as an unbiased source of news photos with
ethical standards that compare favorably to competitors like Reuters or The
Associated Press. But even though a Getty photographer was at the game, no
photos of Mr. Bertuzzi's cheap shot made it to Getty's wire service, raising
questions about whether Getty's deal for exclusive marketing rights with the
National Hockey League had anything to do with the image blackout.
The photographer at the game, Jeff Vinnick, said the absence of photos was
because he was shooting for the Vancouver Canucks that evening, not Getty.
"If I was working for Getty that night and had a great picture, I would have
sent it to them in a second," Mr. Vinnick said. Canucks management declined
comment, but a spokesman told Photo District News that Getty did not contact
the Canucks to ask about distributing the photos. For its part, the team
determined the photos too sensitive to release on its own.
The N.H.L. is not the only professional sports league that Getty pays
handsomely for exclusive commercial marketing rights for images; it also has
contracts with the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball
and other sports organizations, giving Getty special access to prime events
like the N.H.L. finals.
Michael Sargent, vice president for news, sports and entertainment at Getty
Images, said that when he inherited the sports operation about a year ago,
he sought an end to "official photographer status" with the sports leagues.
"We have an editorial statement of principle with a keen focus on
integrity," Mr. Sargent said.
Competitors and photo editors alike were quick to dispute Mr. Sargent's
assessment. Nancy Andrews, director of photography for The Detroit Free
Press, said she valued Getty Images' news service, but stopped using its
sports images because of its professional relationships. "We don't enter
into a business relationship with the news," she said. "It's as simple as
that."

Some pros are complaining that "the implications - for editorial (and all other) photographers is pretty scary."

Some Minor Changes Here

Some minor changes to the site today:

Starting this Friday the new category

"Photoblog/Moblog of the Week" (Editor´s Choice)

will be introduced.

istockphoto.com: "Bringing the price down to a level where everybody can afford to buy a stock photo"

There are still predictions of some people - even from inside the Stock Photo Industry - that what happened to the Music (Napster et.al.) and Film Industry (P2P) somehow finally will occur in the Stock Photo Industry (see the last paragraphs of this posting). From our POV this is obviously pure nonsense as you can not compare - finally, those old buzzwords - B2C to B2B.
In late 2001 there had been a San Francisco-based startup (sorry, no link, they´re gone) on our radar dealing with images in the P2P-area entering the business hemisphere with this idea; they even got VC for it. History.
In addition to it - and besides the two Super G - there is a strong good old boys network in the background with the deeply felt desire: "Don´t change anything! Don´t break up our consensual atmosphere! The wind of change? Yes, only in our pockets! Thumbs up!"
But from time to time new heroes - some wannabes, some real - arise.
Contentbiz - a marketingsherpa publication - has published a long article "How istockphoto.com Sells $4,000,000 Photo Downloads Per Year at $1 Each" that deals with a new company: istockphoto.com. Wannabe or real hero? Discover it yourself.
Basic facts: Founded in 2000 by some "Colorado-based photography nuts", photographers can upload their images to the istockphoto database for free. If a pix is sold, the photographer gets 10 cents (don´t blame me). And photobuyers can buy their high-resolution stock photography for just $1.50 each. They call their company the "designer´s dirty litte secret".
Executive VP Patrick Lor declares istockphoto wiped out two flaws: for the photographer the inventory growth barrier and for the photobuyer the pricing barrier. "The goal was to democratize both ends of the business". To maintain the quality of their stock pool, istockphoto has a three-step quality-assurance system (please see the original article).
The company has an in-house team plus 20 volunteer "image inspectors" reviewing an average of 3,000 new photos per week; about 1,500 are accepted. Right now the database is hosting about 110,000 images.
VP Lor states that istockphoto.com is selling $20,000 of photos per day currently: "We sold 44.52 gigabytes yesterday and the average download ranges from 100k to eight meg. You do the math. Our growth numbers are something like 25-45% month on month growth. It's something like 600% per year. We have a bunch of A-list clients, big Fortune 500 companies have accounts with us. Art directors set up accounts and give their designers all access to it."
This would in fact yield a yearly revenue stream of a least $4,000,000. There are some well-known stock agencies who would love to see these numbers at the end of the year. 
The next target is a deeper penetration of the (photobuyer) designer market. And afterwards - hello Corbis -  the self-publishing consumer marketplace: "This is a business model with almost zero limitations."
If you think with this business model the quality of the images can be only be crap - take a look at the istockphoto.com website. Amongst a lot of everyday stuff there are some stylish cutting edge images - of course not the Getty/Taxi style of being hip, but this is not the only way to see things.
istockphoto.com has a sister company, istockpro.com - also located in Calgary, CA, sharing the same telephone line - with a nifty colorsearch™ image search technology. Yeah, that "pro" at the end: the price structur is totally different in terms of money (mainly starting at  $69.99 up to about $249.99), so are the contributors (f.e. ImageSource, ThinkStock, Brand X and obviously some self-produced material) and therefore the overall photographic image quality. Whereas istockphoto.com is a bit like pearl fishery. But to be honestly true, after a little research and some queries in both databases with the same keywords: there are some pearls at istockpro.com. At incredibile low prices.

To get a first impression what participating photographers are saying, I´m quoting from a posting with the topic "Current Status of Stock Business" written by Monique Harris at Photo.net:

"Before I offer my feedback, let me first say that I consider myself an amateur at photography. I'm still working with a 2 megapixel camera that I got for Christmas two years ago.
Regardless, I started posting my decent photos on IStockphoto.com back in early November. (Istockphoto is a site that sells stock photographs from various photographers.) More than financial gain, my goal was to see if I could get my daughters lovely face featured on a few web sites or advertisements.
Istockphoto pays you a pittance (I could probably find more change just walking down the street!) but that's besides the point. In the 4 months my 18 measly photos have been posted there, I've earned over $1,000.
Not from people downloading my pictures on Istockphoto (where I've not even earned $20). But because I've had companies who have wanted to license my pictures for advertisements. Just this month an ad agency in Canada used one of my photos in an ad for drug manufacturer Glaxo Smith Kline. The ad was featured in 3 different newspapers, with possibly more to come.
Yeah... one of my 2 megapixel pictures that they originally saw on Istockphoto. They came to me, and asked me for my rates. And this isn't one of those 'few and far between' opportunities. I get at least one of these every month.
I think I'm doing pretty well considering the fact that I've got an okay camera, no web site, and only 18 pictures that I'm promoting.
My point is this, if you want to sell stock, be willing to explore EVERY avenue on the web.
Get you own site, promote the heck out of it. Try Google AdWords, if you want immediate exposure on Google. Submit your work to clearinghouse sites like Istockphoto. (Once you register, you can post a link to your web site within your profile.) If you've got the skills, try the more professional sites like Istockpro.com or Corbis.
If you've got a presence in several locations, you'll be hard to miss. This is especially true if you specialize. (My niche is young people of color.)
Anyway, that's my take on the situation. I welcome feedback and questions.
Monique"

But keep mind, that none of "istockphoto.com's participating photographers are making a full-time living from the site." I still wonder that there is no discussion at Editorialphoto.com regarding the business model istockphoto.com is pursuing and the threat it definetely can become in the future for some pros. We´re watching another east-european agency with a similiar business model; we´ll be back in a few days with a comparison and an overview "What are the consequences for the rest of us?"

PS:
This article@contentbiz finally comes up with a related link - to Phototalk. Shortly after mentioning Gettyimages. We´re online since two weeks, we´re doing this for the fun of it. Big thank you! We have however to disclose that this website is *NOT* related to any company in terms of money, interests etc. in any way.

Addendum to last posting (Gates/Corbis)

It is also mentioned that "Corbis has stepped up enforcing its own intellectual property rights. Corbis helped create a digital watermark process to track where each of its images appears on the Internet, and it sues people who intentionally use them without permission. The program searches the Web and compiles a list of infringements. Corbis senior corporate counsel Dave Green found 124 Web sites using the company's images without permission in February. Last year, Corbis collected $1.6 million from legal action against infringers."
It would be interesting to see if this "program" is only able to pick up images provided with that Corbis watermark or not. Otherwise they would be competitors of LTU (yesterday, the FBI selected LTU technologies for image-based investigation) and of course of PicScout.

Billie Gates of Corbis: "Intellectual property rights are the lifeblood of our business"

Kristi Heim has published a report at the Mercury News: "Image Control".
It´s about Getty and Corbis again: "Getty Images' market share is three or four times that of Corbis, and the company is profitable. Corbis has never made a profit but said its sales reached $140 million in 2003. It aims to grow at least 20 percent a year."
And: "Corbis' rights clearance business is growing much faster than its basic business of image licensing and earns a higher profit, Shenk [Corbis] said...the rights clearance service was a major reason Reuters chose to expand its deal with Corbis, said Reuters Senior Vice President Monique Villa."
The report is great although kind of servilely. Rumors has it that Gates who founded Corbis in 1989 will - in terms of money - never get the money back that he had invested in Corbis.
You have to register to read the full article.

[See also this story by Carol Tice: "Corbis moves may signal preparation for stock sale": "J.P. Morgan's Paul Coster, who is based in New York, issued a report which sizes Corbis up as a credible rival to Getty, though with revenue roughly one-fourth of Getty's $463 million in 2002 sales. He estimates Corbis' market share at 10 percent, with Getty having more than 40 percent. He speculated that both Corbis and Getty are gaining market share at the expense of the many small stock agencies that make up 60 percent of the market. One potential obstacle to a future IPO for Corbis is its long record of unprofitability."]

Alamy: More than a Million of Pix and Worldwide Expansion

Alamy, the UK-based image portal, recently announced to offer more than one million images from over 175 agencies and 2.500 photographers around the world. According to Alamy this represents a 330% growth in content since last year.

Alamy plans to open an office in the US this month (April 2004). Interesting for photographers: 92% of all Alamy customers are using Royalty Free images.

Alamy has added the following RF providers to its collection: Imageshop Zefa (UK); Bananastock (UK); Epcot Images (UK); Organics (UK); Goodshoot (France); Dex Images (Japan); Pixland (France); Inmagine (Asian); Medioimages (Hispanic); Comstock (US) and Thinkstock (US).

Looking at the beginnings of Alamy (we noticed them in December 1999) it is obvious that only the combination of acting like an agency for photographers and acting like a portal/agency carrier for the meanwhile great number of participating agencies could Alamy help to stay alive in the past. It would be interesting to learn which party - the 2.500 photographers or the 175 agencies - are the main contributors to the revenues of Alamy. We estimate this could be - minimum - a 30/70 split.

However Alamy has an office in “Asia Pacific” (that´s India in this case). This could indicate that Alamy has received a third round of venture capital (see bottom lines). Although there are positive rumors regarding the revenues of Alamy (another source has a somehow accurate estimation which we can not disclose) we disbelieve that Alamy is able to finance the worldwide expansion to India and the US only by self-created revenues and without external financial support. Looking at the jobs Alamy offers in India (12 jobs at the time of writing, overall headcount in India said to be in the range of 30 people), it just sounds like the classical third-round financing for business expansion.

Alamy claims that “65% or 75% of the sale goes to the photographer, with no upfront costs”. This is however not the complete story. Photographers can participate choosing the so called “Red”, “Green” or “Blue” distribution scheme of their pictures. Depending on what model you choose, it can go down at the end to 45% (Alamy “Blue” model with all zones distribution). Alamy still charges a storage fee of 10c per image per month in the “Green” model. Meanwhile the old (and original) “Red” model - with image submission fees of 2$ per image per month -is not available anymore. Initially Alamy tried to keep only 10 percent of the revenues.

OT: It´s that dip. That glimpse in the eye: “All I wanted was... .”

The guys contributing to this weblog are mainly coming from the photographer side of the journalistic table. Today some are writers. Means they have to travel a lot. Trade fairs, events, congresses, trade exhibitions, meetings - all that stuff no one is really interested in if you happen to be older than thirtysomething. You meet serious people looking important. You meet important people looking serious. You meet ridiculous people being on the top. But you have to do your job... . The only weapon left in your hand is the keyboard of your notebook. Then you remember where you´re coming from. You take your digicam.

Do you remember that story of the ancient roman conqueror? That man had been on the road for decades travelling the world from the south to the north and from the west to the east. He was asked “What about your dreams? Is this what you really expected to be your life?” The conqueror replied: “All I wanted was a one family house, a wife and four children.”

This picture - taken at a recent very important trade fair with very serious people looking real wholeheartedly - is dedicated to all that people travelling to the next trade fair being on the road all over the world. It´s that dip. That glimpse in the eye: “All I wanted was... .”

PS: Dear reader, we admit that we personally do not have the time for extensive moblogging. This might change and we might add a moblogging section to Phototalk. Anyway, we encourage the moblogging society - amateur, semipro and pro - to tell more stories in their pictures: discover the human being, be vulnerable. Most mobloggs we´ve seen are solitary witnesses of the loneliness of their owner. - And to Olympus: the shutter release time delay using the 5060 (great cam though) with an external flash is ridiculous!

© 2004 Photo by HS

Beyond Megapixels: learn to love sensor size and image noise

Usually we don´t examine new hardware like DSLR or digital prosumer cameras. There are many other sites doing this (please see the left column at the bottom: "HardwareStuff: Recommended Reading").
But looking at recent ads you might thing that hardware for digital photography is only about the next generation of megapixel cameras with 8 or 11 or 16 or 22 megapixels. Instead there are only a few real innovations (E-System by Olympus, Sigma´s Foveon and Fuji´s SuperCCD sensor) waiting for further development. Joe Marney is publishing a three-part-report about the “The Megapixel Myth” at The Tech Lounge: “My contention on this issue is that the average photographer does not need more megapixels, they need better megapixels. I would much, much rather own a 5 megapixel digicam with good resolution at high ISO sensitivities and tough shooting situations than an 8 megapixel camera with great resolution only in ideal situations.”
These are not groundbreaking news driving us to tears, but it´s true. Read more in part two and three at The Tech Lounge soon.

Getty Images: Financial Report for the First Quarter 2004

Getty has released the results for the first quarter 2004 on April 22 2004. Some of the quarterly highlights:
-Revenue grow 20 percent over the first quarter 2003
-Operating margin improved to more than 27 percent compared to 18 percent in the year-ago period
-Earnings per diluted share increased 87 percent to $0.43 from $0.23 in the first quarter of 2003

The revenue of the Q1 2004 was about 156.5 million, “a record revenue”, as Getty-Cofounder and CEO Jonathan Klein stated, with an operating margin of more than 27 percent. Getty Images also raised its forecast for 2004 and projects a profit of $1.55 to $1.65 per share on revenue of between $600 million and $610 million.

It was however not disclosed, if and how photographers from all over the world contributing to the Getty image pool are experiencing substantial growth of their own revenues.

Getty reports it was looking at making new acquisitions with its cash. “We're definitely looking at acquisitions again," Klein said. Who might the lucky one? Sure, there are some candidates ready for a friendly takeover.

We will come up with a more detailed report on “photographers choice” (a model Getty introduced in autumn 2002; London-based rumors has it this happened due to the competition with some portals for excellent photographers) and the “media management services” (a piece of Getty other sources obviously haven´t discovered yet).

The Getty Stock Quote (Symbol GYI@NYSE) on Apr 23 2004, 4:04 PM ET, was about $ 57.38 compared to $ 0.45 (Apr 23) of the A21Group (OTCBB: ATWO). The A21Group has just filed on April 20 2004 the SEC form 10KSB/A (1; 2) with very interesting details. More on this later.

Idee Inc.: Canadian e-Content Award for Visual Search Technology

Idee Inc. of Toronto, Canada, has recently received the Canadian e-Content Award in the Best Innovative Application Category.

Idée Inc is the developer of Espion, a visual search application that allows users to search for images based on image similarity provided by the image attributes (color, shape, texture, luminosity, complexity, objects, regions etc). Espion provides the capability to search quickly and intuitively through very large image collections for visually similar images.

Regarding Espion Idee partners with the content management systems Cumulus by Canto, Fotoware and - since last autumn - with Wonderfile, where is serves a the first commercial implementation of visual search (called “SimSearch “) for a stock photography website. The word is out on the street that there will new implementations at other stock photography sites this year.

After the long and sometimes painful history of visual search (last paragraphs of the text) and different companies in the last five years one might cautiously predict that the technology provided by Idee might become the industrial standard for the stock photography business, both in Royalty Free and Rights Managed/Protected.

One thing is of course missing: a serious scientific study (published “publicly”) how photo agencies and portals really benefit from visual search technology in terms of money. There is however a study by Forrester Research/Paul Sonderegger (“Grading Search Platform Hopefuls”), December 2002). A newer study by Forrester Research is out, only a few weeks old, but it´s not yet on my desk so I can´t say a word.

It is expected that in two or three years this technology will be a built-in feature of most image database applications. The technology can also serve for video web sites, trademark management and consumer photo sites (the latter is FMPOV where the real money comes in).

Idee has presented the visual search technology at the 2003 8th International Conference of the Picture Archive Council of America (PACA) and soon at the 2004 Meeting of the Coordination of European Picture Agencies (CEPIC).

OT: Differences between only-text-bloggers and mainly-pictures-mobloggers

This final 10-point-test of being a blog nut YES or NO by Mark is adapted to only-text-bloggers:

You know you're a blog nut when...

You go to BloggerCon dressed up like Joi Ito

At BloggerCon, you liveblog the blog entries that you get from the backchannel

You attend a panel session on which all of the panelists are simultaneously liveblogging their presentations, rather than actually giving their presentations.

You plot your position on a large wall chart of Clay Shirky's Power Law graph

You actually care about the political implications of Atom vs. RSS version 2.0 - and have taken a side.

You actually know who Belle de Jour is... In real life... without having been a client.

You think Cory Doctorow should be awarded the the Nobel Prize in Literature, not for anything he's written , but for releasing it under Creative Commons

You have been to more conferences on social networking (blogging), emergent technologies (blogging), political use of the Internet (blogging), educational applications of Internet technology (blogging) and the role of Heidegger in the epistimology of non-corporeal presence (blogging) than David Weinberger .

You drive ten hours on the hope of meeting someone with whom you've never actually corresponded directly, but you really, really know them because of the outering of their mind into publicy .

You wish they would get around to inventing spoken hyperlinks already.

To get the full links, visit his site. We´re working on the 10-point-test for mainly-pictures-mobloggers.

Phil J. Kaplan:Founder of FuckedCompany.com creates anonymous moblog

Phil does it again! Lance Ulanoff of PC Magazine met Phil J. Kaplan, the founder of FuckedCompany.com, the famous unofficial DOTCOM-newssite: "A Better Use for Camera Phones".

Wait - does this title sound portentously to you or entertaining? The Next Bad Thing?

Kaplan of course describes himself as an entrepreneur.

"His newest enterprise, Mobog, which is more or less a traveling Web cam site. Once again Kaplan seems poised to tap into the seemingly ephemeral zeitgeist of the Web and new technology.
...
The genius of Mobog is that it allows anyone with a camera phone to take pictures wherever they are or whatever they're doing, mail them to pics@mobog.com using their phone, and have them appear on the Mobog home page minutes later. Visitors to the site can comment on these pictures and if the user registers with the site, the comments are delivered immediately to the cell phone where the picture originated. The registered cell phone owner can then reply to those messages.
....
Kaplan believes that Mobog is an answer to the question about what folks can do with their camera phones.
...
What [it] doesn't do, though, is filter out profanity or even pornography. During our interview, one user mailed a photo of his girlfriend's naked behind where he had written a message.
....
During our meeting, Kaplan demonstrated Mobog for me. He had me take a photo of him with his camera phone. He held up his middle finger (purposely making the image provocative so other users would respond). Within a couple of minutes the photo appeared on the site, and a minute or so after that Kaplan began receiving responses on his phone. He responded to those messages—again using his phone—and those responses appeared under the other notes a minute or two later. It was a real-time conversation about his photo with a half dozen people scattered around the world."

[Get the full article "A Better Use for Camera Phones"]

Can´t believe it. The moment I went to look at Moblog there´s another photo of another lady, um, from behind. Is this going to be a second PudTV which belongs to Kaplan showing girlies in various stages of undress ? Instead of taking revenge upon your boss by writing in FuckedCompany.com now by picture phoning him/his wife in somehow private situations and transfering the results to Moblog? "Revenge is mine"? Silicon Alley Reporter and founder of Venture Reporter and Weblogs Inc. Jason Calacanis comments: "Be prepared for some adult snapshots if you visit the site… anonymity has it’s downside (or upside depending on what you’re into I guess)." Jeff Jarvis calls it "anonymous instant photophone moblogging".

However, this time Kaplan is facing competition of: Joi Ito, said to be the first moblogger of the world, Webshots and Moblog.nl.

Camera phones and Moblogs: Vive la Sousveillance!

OK, I´m a bit late on this. But the chance to get an invitation is outrageously small; in fact it doesn´t exist. For one thing it´s in the past; for the other only 25 people were allowed to attend, "a small intimate discussion group ".

And that is, besides BloggerCon and BlogTalk 2.0, the IWIS 2004, the International Workshop on Inverse Surveillance, which took place April 12th 2004 at the Bahen Centre for Information Technology, University of Toronto.

The workshop was organized by a program commitee consisting of world luminaries such as Joi Ito, the world's first moblogger, and Professor Steve Mann, the world's first cyborg.

The headline of this meeting has been: "Cameraphones, Cyborglogs, and Computational seeing aids; exploring and defining a research agenda." Topics were f.e Camera phones and pocket organizers with sensors; Weblogs ('blogs), Moblogs, Cyborglogs ('glogs); Wearable camera phones and personal imaging systems; etc.

Daniel Chen of the IWIS ("a ground-breaking event")-Program Committee believes that sousveillance will become a major cultural force: "In oppposite to 'surveillance' (something that looks at people or things that surround us and look at us) the word 'sousveillance' implies people looking at something, something being the things around us; sousveillance empowers people to capture the world around us, anytime, anywhere. In fact, sousveillance is inverse surveillance." This April 2004 Workshop, IWIS, will also serve as a planning forum for next year's Symposium ISIS.

To get deeper into this,

Surveillance is about
Sur-veiller is French for "to watch from above"
God's eye view from above (Authority watching from on-high.)
Cameras usually mounted on high poles, up on ceiling, etc.
Recordings made by authorities, emote security staff, etc.
Architecture-centered (e.g. cameras usually mounted on or in structures)
Recordings are usually kept in secret.
etc. (see the full table "summary of surveillance versus inverse surveillance")

Sousveillance is about
Sous-veiller is French for "to watch from below"
Human's eye view ("Down-to-earth.")
Cameras down-to-earth (at (ground level), e.g. at human eye-level
Recordings of an activity made by a participant in the activity
Human-centered (e.g. cameras carried or worn by, or on, people)
Recordings are often made public e.g., on the World Wide Web
etc. (see the full table "summary of surveillance versus inverse surveillance")

or take a lock at the Wikipedia: "Even today's personal sousveillance technologies like cameraphones and weblogs tend to build a sense of community, on contrast to surveillance that some have said is corrosive to community."

Naturally there are other opinions out there, esp. because of the self-perfoming of Mr. Mann. The term "Sousveillance" is on the Wikipedia list for deletion.

To me it seems to be a very interesting background theory, esp. regarding the consequences; obviously it´s tied to the theories of Howard Rheingold (the event was also announced at SmartMobs).

Lifeblog by Nokia: No publishing to the Web and not for Mac

Nokia introduces a new digital multimedia diary software called "Lifeblog" (1; 2) for simultaneous installation on the PC and the mobile phone this summer. Lifeblog sorts all kind of images, videos and text of Nokia 60 series camera phones and transfers them via one-button synchronization and USB to the PC.

Initially Lifeblog will be shipped with the Nokia 7610 (the company's first megapixel camera phone), but it can also be downloaded at the lifeblog website. You have to buy a license for the PC-version of Lifeblog (€30 for the full version, which will be activated online), but not for the mobile phone-version. And if you are a lucky Macie, you don´t have to pay at all - it is PC-only, although Lifeblog definetely has an iPhoto-touch.

The Guardian met Christian Lindholm, Director, Multimedia Applications, Nokia Ventures Organization: "The third bit of news from our chat, apart from v1.0 of Lifeblog, and the phones, is that Nokia has been experimenting with Typepad , the weblogging app. There's nothing going to happen between Nokia and Six Apart just yet, it seems, but Lindholm has a Typepad weblog and is experimenting away. He sees publishing your memories as being very important, and I suspect Typepad is the best bet to do that - unless Nokia decides to do its own thing. Blogging, finally, for the mainstream?"

There had been rumors around that Lifeblog publishes your daily diary to the web making it available for anyone. I had to learn that this at the present development stage is not true. But "that, hints Lindholm, may change in future versions of the software...weblogging tools are not mature enough, he says, we're talking about taking blogging to a mass market, which is not going to put up with the complexity that exists today." This is a bit confusing because another source - the Handelsblatt - reported this week that Lifeblog will be shipped with this feature: "Every user can document his life and publish it to the web - available for every Internet user."

For the geeks: read the Lindholm weblog entry "Convergence lessons from Cebit 2004" and the first paragraph "It is getting possible to build the life recorder".

Moblogging functionality now for Typepad Basis Users

TypePad announced today that "Moblogging functionality is now available to Basic users. Basic users now have access to the "Control Panel > Mobile Settings" screen in the Control Panel and have the ability to configure their mobile devices and email clients to post to TypePad."

The procedure of "Insert Image/File into weblog posts" is now easier: "The "Weblog > Post > Upload File" functionality has been replaced with easier-to-use, and more dynamic, "Insert Image" and "Insert File" buttons for easily inserting images and files into posts. These changes allow you to insert an image or file directly into a post, rather than having to copy HTML into the post. The new interface also gives you additional options for the alignment of images, whether images are opened in popup windows, etc."

That´s the reality of moblogging

The german Handelsblatt estimates that about 10,000 german blogs are online (acc. to data provided by blogg.de) with 80 new weblogs daily. Just to give you the number from the other side of the table: 2,5 million blogs in the US.
If about 2,5% of all bloggers are real and only mobloggers, this would end up in a number of 250 people moblogging in a country of 80,000,000 people. Estimated mobloggers in the US at the 2,5% rate: 62,500.

250 people. Wow. Quite impressive.

This is naturally not the complete story.

All over the world (except Japan) there are only a few people who are real mobloggers using the phone-built-in-camera-lens to publish from their mobile phone directly to their weblog (and if you are not in deep love with lomography and a tiny resolution, this makes sense). Even more people use their 3 or 4 or 5 MP digicam or their PDA-built-in-lens to record the reality and then bluetooth for transfering their images via the mobile phone to their blog. But in fact to my guess more than 95% do it the classical way: take a shot with a digicam, USBit to the PC and DSLit to the blog. That´s the reality of moblogging. Yet.
How do you do it? Comments please!

Photo Positioning with Photo Recognition Software: better than GPS

"You are lost in a foreign city, you don't speak the language and you are late for your meeting. What do you do? Take out your cellphone, photograph the nearest building and press send.

For a small fee, photo recognition software on a remote server works out precisely where you are, and sends back directions that will get you to your destination. That, at least, is what two researchers, Roberto Cipolla and Duncan Robertso, at the University of Cambridge in the UK hope their software will one day be used for." [The New Scientist: Photo recognition software gives location]

Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project

"The World-Wide Media eXchange (WWMX) is a centralized index of digital photos, where photos are tagged by the geographic location where they were shot. It's an experimental research project run by the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research.

The project explores possibilities with digital photographs and geographic location. The location where a photo was taken provides clues about its semantic context and offers an intuitive way to index it, even in a very large collection. The combination is powerful, but still not supported well by either the photo-software or camera-hardware industries. We're trying to establish a strong case for these features, and you can help us -- try the downloads, and tell us about your experience."

Read more about the technical aspects.
A web demo is available and a download page for the client. OF COURSE ONLY FOR WINSTUPID. NO WAY TO MAKE IT WITH LINUX OR MAC.

The two other projects of The Interactive Visual Media group are Image Based Realities and Graphical Modeling.

Read the Reviews: Slashdot, Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project; ExtremeTech, Inside Microsoft's New Digital Photo Project; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Microsoft Notebook: Research team blends digital images and GPS.