Good Reputation Sleeping

Camjos Across Africa

Link: AfricaNews - Mobile reporters in Africa.

"The ultimate goal is to select, in each African country, a number of skilful (young) men and women (with the help of a local coordinator) and to equip these people with high-technology mobile phones (with a small foldable keyboard) where a special piece of software is installed to permit direct uploads of photos, texts and videos to the Skoeps server, from where they are transferred to the Africa Interactive website for publication. Once online, those stories and images are meant to trigger reactions from users and community members. The project's selection policy gives a bigger chance to skilful women in an effort not only to have diversified contents but above all to contribute to their emancipation efforts through media.

The Africans who take part in this project are known as ‘camjos’, a short combination of ‘camera’ and ‘journalist’. A camjo writes, takes photos and makes videos about daily life in Africa, on subjects that s/he finds newsworthy. Each camjo receives a training on the use of the phone and is coached during the first six months. With this initiative, Africans, whether in cities or in the countryside, will have the opportunity to have their voice heard all over the world.If the camjos perform well, they will generate incomes for themselves as they will be paid based on the number of visitors viewing or reading their contributions."

Hacking My Reality

The first time the power of the net hit me was way back in 1997 when I posted my first gallery of photography, some pics of trips to Cuba, on my website. A day or so after they went up, I got an email from Japan, someone who had seen the photographs and wanted to say hi. My photographs had just gone global in an instant.

The light bulb went on, the ground shifted, hell froze over - I got it.

A few days ago I finally made good on an invite I received a couple of weeks ago from a netizen named Mike Lee. We came to each other's attention through a website called hiptop Nation where we both started posting photos from our Sidekicks way back in 2003. I soon left for the greener pastures of better voice communication and bigger phonecam pics, but we kept reading each other's blogs and soon met up again on the uber-photo site Flickr.

We had lunch near The Post and chatted about life on and off line for almost 2 hours. A main topic of conversation was our admiration for the work of John Maeda at MIT. Turns out that Mike, through his gig at AARP has spent a good deal of time in the Maeda-sphere and clearly saw my eyes light up every time he recounted some of the things he saw and did while there.

Mike, who looks innocent enough, has hacked my reality - I got an email from the good Dr.'s office yesterday and I will enter the sphere in a couple of days. Life hack, via hiptop, Flickr and the web, courtesy Mike Lee.

N.Y. Times Reader

N.Y. Times Reader
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

So, I am about 10 minutes into my beta-testing of the new New York Times Reader. It downloads the Times to your computer, giving you full access, in a print-metaphor interface, to the full paper - pictures, ads and all. Its search-able, save-able, markup-able, email-able, and depending on the size of your Windows machine, very, very portable.

Once downloaded, you no longer need an internet connection to read it; when you connect again, it updates. So far, I love the screens; navigation is very intuitive and resolution is great. If you are a competing dead-tree media company, be afraid, be very afraid. More info to come....

River on the Metro.

River on the Metro.
Originally uploaded by Burnt Pixel.

Dave Winer is brilliant!
He has a winning way, not because of his stellar personality or because of his movie star good looks, but because, unlike soooo many of his contemporaries in the tech world, he understands the concept of "simple".

He is the father of the "simple" web site (blog); the "simple" push technology (RSS); and now the "simple" mobile information terminal, a cell phone transformed by River of News.

While many of us in the news business keep building more and more complex ways for people to get our content (mobile.nytimes.com), Dave has figured out how to get the people what they want, painlessly.

Brilliant!

Christmas Future, Christmas Now

Animal Crossing DS movie (Quicktime Required)

My two rug rats are spending Christmas day wirelessly connected together in the new game from Nintendo, Animal Crossing DS. If you haven't seen this game (or Mario Kart DS for that matter), you are missing the future of gaming.

With all the hype about the XBox 360 and the next gen consoles, its easy to forget just how revolutionary the Nintendo DS and the Playstation Portable are. One look at my kids, however, reminds me that the future is already in hand!

The New Reality of TV

NBC Universal, ITunes Team On Downloads of TV Shows.

"Hit TV shows from NBC Universal Inc. will be available for purchase and download from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes online media store, the companies announced yesterday as Apple continues to increase its roster of video downloads.

Already, Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has sold 3 million videos since it launched its popular iPod video player in October with music videos and shows from ABC. The new NBC lineup will allow users to download 11 new shows such as "Law & Order," "The Office," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" for $1.99 a show. Shows from Sci-Fi Network and USA Network, both affiliated with NBC, also will be available." - Yuke Noguchi, TWP

Puny Humans

I am in love with the warped, twisted mind of Warren Ellis. He is the mastermind behind Transmetroplitan and his latest, Global Frequency - a sexy cell phone-centered Mission Impossible for today's connected world - has been optioned for television. Ellis also has a great grip on what the web is truly about and World Wide Wednesday was another wonderful example. "Because the Internet is made out of people."

Spring Fashion, Part 1

Yesterday my moblog, burnt pixels, shot past the 1000 page view mark when I posted some pics from our spring fashion shoot with photographer Cedric Angeles. We are now at 1572 and counting! Should I be surprised?

Networked Cameras

NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 900i series mobile phones are displayed at a presentation in Tokyo, Dec. 18, 2003. The 900i series boasts the first 3G phones equipped with a Macromedia Flash browser, HTML e-mail and avatar-capable videophone, Japan's biggest mobile phone operator said. (Photograph by Toshiyuki Aizawa/Reuters)

I have been sinking deep into the world of camera phones for the last few months - I picked up a T-Mobile Sidekick over a year ago and became a photographer again. The Sidekick has been retired in favor of first, a Sanyo 8100 (it works on my longtime cell carrier, Sprint, and the camera is integrated into the phone, not a clip-on like the Sidekick) and now both a Sanyo VM4500 and a Nokia 3650(on the flaky ATTwireless net). Both phones can do video and respectable stills (of the 640 x 480 variety).
These devices, for me, mark the first real change that digital technology is bringing to the world of photography. All the numbers say that the tipping point has been reached - especially the one that says sometime next year, camera phones will out-sell all other types of cameras combined!
Each photographic generation has seen both the hardware and its use change how we take pictures; tripod to handheld, 4x5 to 120mm roll film to the Leica. So far, our digital tools have taken the form of their parents - they look and work like 35mm cameras, just replacing film with digital guts. Camera phones, on the other hand, are a totally new beast and bring with them new capabilities as well as a new form factor.
Earlier this year Nikon announced an 802.11b add-on to one of its classic format digital cameras. Many of the camera phones already on the market come with networking built-in (3G and often bluetooth) and connect easily to that big network in the sky, the internet. Is it time for the professional leaders, Canon and Nikon, to switch gears and think differently? Or are they already behind the curve and out of the game?

Life Imitates Art

Do any of you remember the film "Until the End of the World" by Wim Wenders? In it the heroine 'videofaxes' her lover from her cell phone in China a short clip of her cross-country travels. The movie, from the early '90's, is full of cute future computer stuff, some of which is upon us now.
To see the videofax in action, check out DiePunyHumans, the site by graphic novel hero Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency). He has got people with video enabled cells sending him their clips which he is posting (along with links to Apple's Quicktime site so you can get the plugin). The future is here!