There’s a massive question I’m asking myself quite often lately; and after a mail chat with my friend Alberto d’Ottavi (who’s – by the way – a technical journalist form magazines such as Computer Bild) finally convinced me to place my thoughts here on Yellow Line.
Now back to the question. Digital camera market is nowadays massive: it’s reaching cell phones both for dimensions and collateral status-symbol effects on consumers all over the world. The more common (and economic) way to look at digital photos is to place them on a PC; the more used way to share them with friends and relatives is to place them online (on your blog or using services such as Flickr or 23, or both). You NEVER EVER keep them on your camera memory card.
So why are we using memory cards if we use them just as transitional spaces to hold the images?
Well, because since you usually use your camera on the move it’s more comfortable to store them on a 2 square centimeters piece of tech instead that in a 2Kg computer.
True? Well, partly.
Broadband wireless technologies such as UMTS or WI-FI open networks let us bypass the camera physical memory and place the photos DIRECTLY online. You don’t need any (limited) memory when you have literally infinite capacity on the internet.
If you read this blog from more time then just today you probably know that I invented a small piece of software called Mobup which takes care of shooting the photo from your camera phone and uploading it (with tags, bells and whistles) on Flickr.
Well since I installed Mobup on my cameraphone my 1GB of memory is used just for Tom-Tom maps. I could have placed there more then 1000 photos but (let me check) I just have 15 images there (mostly old); why should I use a limited memory space that could be differently used when I have infinite gigabytes of space waiting for me online?
My prediction is that in a few years digital cameras are going to get rid of the physical memory to make space to UMTS cards or similar technologies that can connect them directly to the internet thus bypassing all the unuseful steps of downloading the images on the computer and reuploading them on the web.
My hope is that these cameras will come equipped with Java technology (which is a great environment to develop application where space, computing capabilities and memory are very limited) for the implementation of 3rd part applications.
I hope one day I’ll see this forecasted technology I call the “Flickr camera†that uses Mobup. Nice times are coming.