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Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

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Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#71

My first encounter with a camera on a phone was when I was a kid in Japan in 2004. These girls had taken a video of me being bad at bowling (Amusingly the alley was called "Exciting Boring") and showed me on the bus, I was just completely aghast at the fact that this technology existed. It felt really invasive at the time, to be honest, but out in another culture you just have to roll with things like that.

> Exciting Boring Ha, thanks for sharing, that is amusing! On the one hand it seems like it almost could be the way people humorously transcribe Japanese accented English, of “Exciting Bowling,” and on the other hand in a purely English context that really does strike me as a quite good description of bowling when you think about it.

This actually does make sense with the traditional difficulty of the L sounds for Japanese speakers due to the way L and R are kind of merged into one sound in Japanese.

My father went to Japan a lot in the 80s and always remarked at how the L in our last name got pronounced as an R in Japan making the name sound totally different.

Exciting Bowling would easily get pronounced as Exciting Boring and then someone could have had a laugh and come up with the name.

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#72
post #55

In the early 2000's, I remember in art school I did a project that involved driving around the country, leaving tiny sculptures wherever I went. To keep people updated where I was, I made a Perl script that accepted messages and photos sent to it that I authored on my fancy Sony Ericson picture phone. The script would update a website showing the photos and messages in reverse chronological order. Took maybe about 3…

But note how you invented only the better half of Instagram. The other half is all the "social" shit: "Tell us your email to see more John's photos", "Have you seen recent posts from Kate, Mike and Cristiano Ronaldo", etc.

Oh that lack of features was incredibly deliberate.

All kidding aside, I personally had a revelation on how much of my attention has been getting stolen away from me, tiny bit by tiny bit. I'm going to make an honest attempt to gain some of that back. More reading out of physical books, less doomscrolling. More taking people out to coffee, less overdosing on puppy videos.

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#74
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup looks similar to the one I had. I bought it at Car Toys because there weren't even T-Mobile stores yet. It took like 2 hours to transfer my number from another carrier (a new ability at the time!) and activate the account - what a process! I remember the keypad was kinda small for my giant hands, but it would connect via this thing called "Bluetooth" to my Mac. Every time you got a text, it would show up on my Ma…

> I realized you can copy and paste between a Mac and an iPhone you had on the same Apple ID whoa Although I didn't realize that compromised phone can steal data from my laptop :|

Universal Clipboard is something you'll need to enable.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT209460

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

example of country specific niche devices for the curious?

I'm not sure about specifics but when I was looking for android devices with small screens (like 3") last time, I found some indian smartphones. They were ultra-budget and I wanted something premium so I didn't pursue it further, but it was definitely something I never saw in the public market. Another specific niche might be babushkaphones. It's a cell phone made for babushkas. Basically huge buttons, screen with hu…

There was a company called Jitterbug that old those huge button phones in the USA in the 2000s.

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#76

"Phonemakers never expected it to takeoff, it was teenagers who decided that this was the way to keep in touch" Makes me wonder what new trends dinosaurs like us don't see coming. VR?

VR seems to be the opposite. Every company was pushing for it, but the consumer demand just wasn't there.

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#77
Not a phone but in 1999 I bought a JVC CyberCam camcorder but it also had a feature of a digital camera. It was only 640x480 on a small MMC card. But it was pretty amazing for the time. I think the camera came out maybe 1997?

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#78
post #6

I just watched this video on a plane, going nearly 600mph at 33K ft above northern Canada. The pace of technological evolution I have experienced in my lifetime is absolutely miraculous.

I often think about this. My grandmother was born at the end of the 1800s (yes, I'm old) and remembered electricity and the first car coming to her rural village in Wales. By the end of her life she'd lived through two world wars, seen men on the moon, could talk to her relatives in Australia on the phone, and been on holiday to America on a 747. And what always amazed me was that she grew up with people (mainly farm…

Many years ago, my father bought a house and one day when he was talking a neighbour about time and age, and the neighbour told him that he'd had an uncle that had been born in the 1700s...

This isn't as remarkable as it sounds when I say this was in 1960, and the neighbour was 80 something, and his uncle had been born in 1798, and had lived well into his 90s. But is still seems such a large span to be able to reach back.

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about specifics but when I was looking for android devices with small screens (like 3") last time, I found some indian smartphones. They were ultra-budget and I wanted something premium so I didn't pursue it further, but it was definitely something I never saw in the public market. Another specific niche might be babushkaphones. It's a cell phone made for babushkas. Basically huge buttons, screen with hu…

There was a company called Jitterbug that old those huge button phones in the USA in the 2000s.

The brand still exists under a new parent company name:

https://www.lively.com/phones/jitterbug-smart3/

Re: Cameras on phones? (2001) [video]

#80
post #52

"Phonemakers never expected it to takeoff, it was teenagers who decided that this was the way to keep in touch" Makes me wonder what new trends dinosaurs like us don't see coming. VR?

VR isn't something average teenager can afford yet. I can see something that's a mix of VR chat and some creation tools a'la Dreams would be a hit. User generated content for VR Chat is already popular and making it possible to make the game in the game is natural next step

Yeah, back in the day, camera phones were very expensive. Not to mention internet connection, data rates, call rates, etc.

It was very expensive to maintain a phone without a camera. Definitely prohibitively expensive for teens to have a camera phone and use sharing / MMS.

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