Reiter's Camera Phone Report

Using Treo 700w camera phone with OneNote Mobile for home inventory

James Kendrick, who co-writes the great technology weblog jkOnTheRun, is moving to another house and has used his Verizon Wireless Treo 700w to take camera photos of the interior of his old house, transferred the photos to Microsoft OneNote on his HP TC 1100 Tablet PC and then wrote notations about the rooms and their belongings.

James headlines his post, "Home inventory made simple with a camera phone."  He writes:

"The first thing I am doing is taking pictures of each room to show not only what was in the room at the old house but also where it was placed.  Not that we want to duplicate every room but it is helpful to see how it was before when deciding on the new arrangement. 

"I take these pictures using the Palm Treo from within OneNote Mobile, and they get synced into my Tablet OneNote 2007 notebook when I connect the Treo wirelessly.

"Once the photos are in OneNote I am using ink notes on the Tablet to note anything I think will be helpful, like outlet requirements for some equipment.  I can note that a lamp has a particularly short power cord so we can consider that for the placement in the new house. 

"This has been working great so far and it’s so simple to do, and much easier than creating an entire inventory by hand."

OneNote Mobile

OneNote is a superb, full-featured note-taking program that's especially useful on Tablet PCs.  I use OneNote on my IBM/Lenovo X41 Tablet PC and especially like the ability to record presentations that are synched to the notes I'm typing.

OneNote Mobile, that won't be commercially available until Office 12, installs on a Windows Mobile cellular phone.  You can take notes, record audio and take photos that are integrated in the phone and then synched (if you want) to OneNote on your computer, says Chris Pratley, Microsoft's group program manager for Office "Authoring Services" (that includes OneNote). 

(OneNote shines on a Tablet PC, but it's also useful on a non-Tablet.)

Pratley wrote on November 21, 2005) that the killer application for OneNote Mobile is "photo note-taking."

Search photo's text

Pratley says:

"Now you can take pictures of business cards, printed PowerPoint handouts, whiteboards, receipts, name tags, product spec sheets, etc. and all these photos flow into OneNote on your PC, where any text content gets OCR'd so that you can search for these pictures by the text that appears in them.

"Imagine snapping a photo of every business card you get handed and then tossing the card.  All the images flow into your OneNote notebook and you can pull them up just by searching for a person's name or town or business name!...

"Of course, image resolution plays a factor here.  Those 640x480 (0.3MPx) cameras are not quite there.

"You need at least 1MPx and ideally 2MPx to get good OCR results.  There is a lot to be careful about too -- good focus is quite important although we have technology to try to deal with fuzziness, and text size has to be large if you have a low-res camera."

I wonder if OneNote Mobile will be a major factor for some people when deciding whether to purchase a Windows Mobile phone.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 touches on camera phones

The launch yesterday of Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 might make it easier to code camera phone applications on 5.0 devices, although I can't swear to it because I'm not a programmer.  (I was taught programming using 0s and 1s and punch cards a very, very long time ago, and that was only in one rudimentary high school course.)

Making it easier to incorporate camera phone functions is what I gathered from watching a long video on Microsoft's site where Bill Gates and others discussed the advantages of the revised platform.  One Microsoft employee demonstrated how to build a 5.0 application, including incorporating a camera phone "module."

If you want to listen to the entire video to hear a bit about camera phones, check out the links I posted in the brief article I wrote for my CTIA Wireless Internet Caucus weblog.  If you want to good layperson's introduction to 5.0, the Microsoft video and information on the site are good places to start.

Microsoft working with Flextronics to develop mass market camera phone

From picturephoning.com I learned that Microsoft is working with the huge contract electronics manufacturerFlextronics to develop a mass market GSM GPRS camera phone that's a new, slimmed down version of its current SPV cellular phone using the Windows Mobile Smartphone operating system, according to an article in The Guardian and also a Flextronics' press release.

The phone, code-named Peabody, will include a camera (no details about the resolution or features) and Bluetooth.  It will be sold to Original Equipment Manufacturers.

The Guardian notes that handsets with Microsoft's OS are sold by 67 networks in 48 countries " but its share of the market has been limited by its high prices.  It hopes the new phone will be more attractive to operators and is now looking for a major handset name that wants its brand on the phone."

Going for mass appeal

Flextronics' press release says the Peabody is a "low-cost, feature-rich Original Design and Manufacture platform" developed by Flextronics and Microsoft.

Flextronics says, "Peabody can be brought to market quickly, cost-effectively and at high volumes."

As Peter Rojas of engadget just wrote, "Having the platform already set out makes the phones easier and cheaper to build, and you can already tell that Microsoft is itching to do for cellphones what they’ve already done for PCs."

Flextronics also is developing cellular phones based upon "next generation Windows Mobile Software" for GSM EDGE networks.

Microsoft's cellular history

I have been following Microsoft's entry into the wireless business since the company first began looking at the market.  Many people in the company greatly underestimated the difficulty of creating an operating system for cellular.

Indeed, many top officials considered wireless "just another" transport mechanism" and really didn't understand that creating a graphical interface for a wireless devices was not simply a matter of porting Windows to a handset.

The original Microsoft code for cellular phones was bloated, buggy, inefficient and battery-hungry.

If at first you don't succeed...

But as is well known, Microsoft is nothing if not persistent in entering markets it considers important.  Microsoft has made dramatic improvements in its Smartphone platform.

It has been able to get its OS into a variety of cellular phones, first into handsets from third-tier manufacturers and now into top-tier vendors.

From the standpoint of camera phones, Microsoft has a great deal to offer.  Putting on my wireless data (and camera phone) consultant's hat...

Microsoft's strengths

Look, for example, as Microsoft's entry into the blogging sphere.  Its MSN Spaces (see below) might not be the most well known or feature-rich, but it has 1.5 million or more users (at least that number has signed up), according to a report in Blogcount.

Think of how MSN Spaces could encourage camera phone use.

(The Six Apart blogging empire, by the way, has about 6.5 million subscribers, of which 3.5 are active, notes another entry in Blogcount.  TypePad has a very nice photo albums features.)

Business applications

Consider Microsoft's power in the business market and then consider what a terrible job the wireless industry has done in marketing -- or not marketing -- camera phone applications to businesses.

Think about the vertical markets where camera phones are being used now:  Journalism, real estate, construction, field sales and service, healthcare, politics, entertainment, etc.

When you begin adding up Microsoft's interests and the current and potential applications for camera phones, you can see how wireless imaging cuts across a great deal of Microsoft's ventures.

At Microsoft: MSN Search and camera phones

I'm one of the so-called "Search Champs" here at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash. to discuss the company's plans for improving its MSN search engine (see below). A new version of MSN Search was just released.

Lots of high powered tech journalists and bloggers are here, including David Weinberger, Chris Pirillo, David Winer, Robert Scoble, Liz Lawley and Buzz Bruggeman.

We're all under NDAs and the bloggers I've just named have written a bit -- but not much -- about the meeting (that ends tomorrow afternoon -- actually this afternoon since it's already "tomorrow").

Search engines and camera phones

But I can post what I've been saying to Microsoft search experts. The meeting is dealing with interesting concepts. What type of information and services would be useful from a search engine?

I'm interested in how search engines deal with wireless and offer value specifically for mobile devices. It seems as if Google (its great search engine notwithstanding) doesn't offer much in the way of exciting or innovative services for wireless-based searching. Or have I missed something?

Perhaps this is an area where MSN Search could take the lead.

Also, with hundreds of millions of camera phones being sold over the next few years it will be useful for Microsoft's search engine (or any search engine) to find videos posted from camera phones. Sure, lots of the videos will be useless, but some of them will have valuable information or be just plain entertaining.

Microsoft groups talking to each other

Microsoft has many resources. It has its search engine team, smartphone team and imaging team. All three groups should get together to explore ways to offer innovative services for wireless users.

Bill Gates uses camera phones as example of converged devices

Thanks to Vanilla Gorilla I found a Microsoft Monitor Weblog from Jupiter Research that reports on Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting that's occurring today (right now) at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash.

Joe Wilcox writes in the "Microsoft Monitor Weblog": "This morning, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates kicked off the company's annual financial analyst meeting by talking, not surprisingly, about software innovation.

"Bill made predictions about how cable operators, telcos and wireless providers will transform how TV is delivered into the home and emphasized the convergence of devices. His example: Cameras in cell phones.

"He said the great opportunity for Microsoft: Consumer markets, like the PC, where hardware changes as a rapid pace. Not surprisingly, he identified cell phones and game consoles as an opportunity.

"In the business market, which is the more-important focus area for Microsoft, he noted that the software pace is more modest."

Vodafone's Vodablog .NET demonstration Weblog launched in U.K.

From picturephoning.com I learned that Vodablog, a new demonstration blog highlighting Microsoft's .NET platform has been launched for Vodafone in the U.K. Entries may be posted via SMS (code 2385) for text and via MMS (mms@vodablog.com) for photos.

Also, you may post videos. It will be possible to forward text, photos and videos from Vodablog as an MMS to cellular phones, but not currently with this demonstration effort.

Here's what Vodablog says about itself:

"* The underlying software architecture is developed in 14 months.

"* It is the most innovative and the only mobile blogging service that is built on Microsoft .NET Technologies.

"* It embodies a state-of-the art scalable software platform that leverages "Static-File-Creation-Technology", that is, blogs are re-generated as static html files each time blog is updated.

"* This scalable methodology is only used in Vodablog and Blogger (Google's desktop blooging company) in the world.

"* Vodablog developed the first/only innovative features such as blog notifications, converting any content to MMS format and sending application-to-mobile MMS Messages.

"* Vodablog is the only blogging service solution that leverages XML Web Services.

"* Vodablog is the only blogging service that supports OMA Digital Rights Management Specifications (Under Development)."

Sprint doesn't work

I set up a test moblog and sent a photo from my Treo 600 over Sprint PCS. No surprise -- it didn't work. Sprint uses Lightsurf Technologies for its back office camera phone software and LightSurf doesn't send the jpeg file, just a link to view the photos.

As a result of sending only a link, unless a moblog/Weblog company specifically configures its system to work with LightSurf, photos won'tbe posted. Many moblog hosting companies in the United States have figured out how to accept Sprint PCS photos.

LightSurf is very willing to work with companies to ensure compatibility. (Disclosure: Previously, I did some consulting for LightSurf. I don't consult for them now, but I would be glad to put moblog companies who need help accepting Sprint photos in touch with the right person at LightSurf.)

Microsoft pushes back moblog service two months

In November 2003 I wrote that Microsoft's Windows Mobile Communities Web section said to stay tuned for information about moblogs in December. Well, December has passed. Where's the information?

The two sentences about the service are the same as before, except now it says to check back in February.

Microsoft getting involved in moblogs

Microsoft is getting involved in moblogs. How's that for detailed information?!

From Robert Scoble's Scobleizer Weblog I was pointed to Robert Levy, managing editor of Smartphone Thoughts, who posted an entry in the forums section that pointed me to Microsoft's Windows Mobile Communities Web site (whew!) that says in the home page:

"Get Ready for Moblogs: Turn an ordinary blog into a moblog by including pictures from your Pocket PC or Smartphone. Check back here in December to learn how to create yours."

I know something about this but I absolutely will not discuss it.