ShoZu is ace: it was one of the first mobile applications to make it easy to upload your mobile snaps (and later videos) to the web. And it’s stayed relevant due to gathering a bunch of services in one place - I use it to upload to Facebook, Flickr and YouTube for example. Anyway, ShoZu has just announced that it’s added eight new destinations, taking its total to 36. Twitter is the most high-profile new addition, allowing you to check your timelines and post new tweets from within the ShoZu application. Other popular additions include Dailymotion, Photobucket and Friendster. The other four are more niche: Twitpic, Cellfish, Seesmic and Ipernity, but it’s good news if you’re a user of any of them. ShoZu says it plans to add more services in the coming weeks, too.
Archive for the 'Photography' Category
Having posted already today on the ongoing contest between cameraphones and digital cameras, LG is hammering the point home with a new mobile photography competition based around its Viewty handset, in partnership with Yahoo and National Geographic magazine.
It’s all about uploading your best shots to the Viewtyful World community (ouch!) for other users to vote on. Every week, three Viewty handsets will be given away - two to people chosen by the community, and one awarded by National Geographic’s top snappers.
That’s not all. Eventually, eight finallists will be chosen, with the ultimate winner getting their shots featured in a Viewty advertorial in the National Geographic itself, as well as a $10,000 copyright fee (i.e. prize). Competition promises to be pretty stiff, so don’t assume that blurry snaps of your cat licking its bum will see you quids in. This is the National Geographic: they’ve got more class than that.
A lion licking its bum, mind? Now you’re talking…
Last week I went to a blogger event hosted by Panasonic, to show off and talk about its new range of digital cameras and camcorders. As you’d expect, they had plenty to say about new features, and how they’re linking these devices with online media sharing services - for example, direct video uploading to YouTube.
But I wanted to ask if they feel threatened by the popularity of cameraphones. With five-megapixel models becoming increasingly common, handset makers openly talk about usurping standalone digital cameras, particularly at the low end of the market. As you might expect, Panasonic doesn’t agree.
“They’re definitely not a threat,” said Mark Robinson, who looks after the company’s Lumix range in the UK. “They’re anything but. In fact, they can only be positive for digital imaging as a whole. They’re bringing people into the market, so we see them as an enabler, because as people get older, their needs develop.”
Continue reading ‘Panasonic says mobile phones “not a threat” to digital camera sales’
While Flickr users are getting their knickers in a twist over its launch of videos, mobile backup firm Mobyko has snuck up with its own multimedia sharing service. It lets people upload photos and videos direct from their phones to Mobyko’s gallery, which can then be shared with mates online.
It even lets you store texts, which Mobyko says is ideal if you need to keep an important text from a business associate. Does that ever happen in the real world? I assume there’s also a feature that stops your important texts being shared with the world alongside your photos and videos, mind. You can organise all this stuff into albums, and add descriptions to individual photos and videos.”We wanted to give every mobile user the tools to ensure that they would never again lose a mobile moment,” says Mobyko CEO Julian Saunders.
It’s a logical extension to the company’s existing contacts backup service, but it remains to be seen whether it’ll attract new users, given the competition from individual sites like Flickr and YouTube, established mobile startups like ShoZu, and handset apps like Nokia’s Lifeblog.
I know what you’re thinking: isn’t Flickr the Flickr of mobile photography? After all, there are numerous ways to get your camphone snaps onto Yahoo’s photo-sharing site. However, that hasn’t stopped US firm Mobicious from launching its own mobile-centric service, called SnapMyLife.
The idea: you take a shot on your phone, and immediately send it to SnapMyLife using MMS or email, where it’s published for the world to see. There’s also some good social networking features, allowing you to invite friends from your phone, and get alerts when they publish new pics. Oh, and there’s no filth involved, since the company is using filters to identify and remove risque snaps. CEO George Grey is certainly bullish:
“Internet-based social networks and photo-sharing sites have recently introduced mobile uploading features, but have only scratched the surface. Many of SnapMyLife’s early users prefer to use the mobile-focused SnapMyLife site over services that provide their ‘full-experience’ on desktop interfaces.”
Although it launched today, the site’s had more than 90 days of pre-launch testing, and claims to have signed up more than 1,000 people a day, attracting over 500,000 unique visitors last month alone. Oh, and it’s apparently one of the ten most popular social networking web apps on the iPhone already. It’s well worth a look.
Panoramic photos can look great, but unless you are using a ‘proper’ camera that can take an expensive panoramic lens, you need to look at a software solution. Although some phones like the Sony-Ericsson K800i come with nifty auto-stitching features, other phone snappers have had to make do with a copy of photoshop and a lot of tedious cutting and pasting.
If you use a S60 3rd Edition phone - and have 9.90 Euros to spare - PanoMan v3.0 will do all the hard work for you - just hold your phone cam steady, push the D-Pad and slowly turn around. The app will take a series of frames, and stitch them together to make a single wide (or tall) image
This new version supports automatic colour, exposure and perspective correction and can create images with resolution equivalent to 32 Megapixels on supported phones.
If you fancy yourself as a bit of a photo guru then it might interest you to know that LG is looking for people like you. The company is currently running a competition called CityClickers to select ten Europeans to be official photographers for the company. To enter all you need to do is take a portrait photo of the city you live in to try and get across the essential essence and atmosphere of where you live.
So what does this have to do with mobiles? Well a couple of things, first of all the LG site set up for the competition features a clever embedded moblog section where all the entrants are posted, that means that you can submit an entry directly by MMS. The other thing is that the winners will receive a sexy LG Viewty phone complete with paid monthly bills which is pretty decent.
Utilizing a moblog as part of a competition in this way is a pretty neat idea and one that we would wager will become much more popular before long. More details about the rules etc can be found on the site but don’t hang about, entries have to be in by the 25th.
(Via CityCickers)
Fashion & lifestyle glossy Wallpaper has teamed up with Sony Ericsson to run a competition to find ‘inspiring’ pictures taken with a mobile phone. Darlings, inspire us! To enter and have the chance to win a K850 Cyber-shot, read on…
All you have to do is take a picture on your cameraphone of something that inspires you or your work. Submit to Wallpaper* via e-mail (sonyericsson@wallpaper.com) or attach your picture and text WALLPAPER followed by a space and your name to +44 (0)771 388 8008 (MMS cost 50p plus standard network charge). Remember to include your full contact details when sending images to Wallpaper*.
To read more about it head over to the Wallpaper* site. Entry deadline is 9th November. Oh, there’s also a feature in the new issue where they’ve asked four designers to take shots with SE’s K810 Cyber-shot phone.
(Via JAMPB)
UK telecoms regulator Ofcom recently issued a statement reminding the 3G network holders (3, Orange, O2, T-Mobile and Vodafone) of their obligation to meet their target of 80% 3G network coverage by the end of 2007.
The 80%-coverage target, which is measured against population numbers not land area, was set as part of the 3G spectrum auction back in 2000 (which added £22b to the UK government’s coffers), is to be reviewed through this year and will use 2001 UK census as its basis. Thinking back, we never guessed that filling in all those census forms would help ensure we could watch 3G video in Penrith.
Channel 4 has teamed up with Sony to offer podcasts and TV shows to PSP owners. It starts today with audio updates on the Celebrity Big Brother House, but will eventually include full TV broadcasts too.
You’ll need to be within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot to receive them, though – when you enter one run by Wi-Fi provider The Cloud, your PSP’s internet browser will be automatically directed to the Channel 4 site.
If I’m honest, the service only makes sense if you’re able to download programmes to your PSP and then watch them when you’re not within Wi-Fi range. Still, it’s an interesting development.
(via Mobile Entertainment)
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