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Hardware

Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera 160

Posted by timothy from the soon-webcams-will-be-mandatory dept.
JeroenH writes: "Sept. 2, 2002, Sony announced the DSC-FX77. It's a 4 megapixel, fixed lens digital camera with a special feature: Bluetooth. When the camera takes a picture, it will be sent directly through the Bluetooth link to a nearby computer, giving you nearly unlimited space for your photos (well, at least as much as fits on your hard disk). At this stage the camera can only send photos to a computer, but in the future it should be possible to control the camera remotely. Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell..."
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Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera More

Sony Presents Bluetooth Digital Camera

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  • I thought bluetooth's range was incredibly small? Doesn't this make it useless besides as a webcam or taking pictures OF the computer?
    • IIRC app'x 10 metres
    • I wouldn't say incredibly small, as it is on the order of meters. Also, you could put up an access point, like Axis 9010 [axis.com] which has a quite reasonable range. Actually, I think this is a good idea.
      • Well, I'd rather the camera manufactures just put in a Type II CF slot and support 802.x CF cards. With a 32MB buffer and the faster transfer, it would rock in a studio enviroment...
    • Says in the article 10m. I thought the same thing, so I read the article thinking I'd see something about internal storage. But there is no mention of it.

      Talks a lot about using the camera with a laptop. There are mentions of a cradle and USB. So it has to be able to store images, right?

      Oh, Bluetooth is also slow. 47 seconds to transfer a full 4 megapixel image.
    • I guess there is still a possibility to store the pics on a Memory Stick... the bluetooth capability must be aimed at other specific uses, like photo-sharing with people who have neither USB nor a MS-reader (like the ones that are included in Vaios or Clies)...
      Maybe Tom Cruise could also use this if he plans a remake of MI2 (especially the moment when they're at the races and they need to collect some memory-card data).
    • Two things. Firstly, the article actually mentions that Bluetooth range is 10m (and it certainly works fine between my PDA and phone, when the PDA is downstairs, and my phone is upstairs). Secondly, if the pictures can be sent to your phone (or PDA) by bluetooth, then you can email them to people.
    • According to the article the range is about 10 meters.

      As far as I can read from the article the camera will contain some kind of memory system (probably MemoryStick), but that isn't clear.

      What would be really cool would be to have something like a harddisk based mp3 player that "bluetoothed" to the camera and sucked it dry once in a while. Something small enough to have in your bag or at your belt.

      As for controling the camera from a PC - that has already been done, with a by firewire on the Nikon D1x DSLR [dpreview.com].

      Bluetooth is nice, but I would rather use firewire to pull a gb of data of a microdrive...

      (bluetooth max datarate is 723Kbit/s, which means that it takes about a day to transfere a gigabyte).
    • I think the poster, and subsequently everyone who has replied, has missed the point of this camera.

      It is not bluetooth enable so you take a picture, send to BT device, take another one.

      You use it like a normal camera, but you can ALSO transmit your pictures to other BT devices, like sync with your computer etc..

    • what would be cool ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gabec ( 538140 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @08:44AM (#4199647)
      is to let you transfer from one camera to another. For example last week I was at Dragon*Con [dragoncon.org] and there were plenty of times when I would miss a photo op where it would have been kick-ass to have been able to just go up to someone and say "hey, I see you got a pic of that crazy costume, mind if i get a copy?" and voila! I'd have it. :)
    • I did some informal testing at work with a Bluetooth-enabled iPAQ and a Bluetooth printer adapter -- I was able to communicate with the printer from a lot farther than 10m (probably about 100 feet) with the iPAQ set to minimum power. Plus there were 3 or 4 walls between me and the printer.

      (Thankfully the RF testing guys down the hall haven't yelled at us yet!)

  • "Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures?"

    It already does . . . [noderunner.com]

  • 47 Second Transfer Time (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fwr ( 69372 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @08:00AM (#4199437)
    With a 47 second transfer time for a full resolution picture I'd say the device is practically useless. Time between pictures is, IMO, one of the most important aspects of a digital camera, as longer timeframes means many missed perfect shots...
    • Seriously. Who wants to stand there for 47 seconds waiting for the camera to transfer its images between shots. There's only so many times a baby takes its first steps. Who knows if you'll be waiting for the camera to catch up.
      • Seriously. Who wants to stand there for 47 seconds waiting for the camera to transfer its images between shots. There's only so many times a baby takes its first steps. Who knows if you'll be waiting for the camera to catch up.

        <G>

        Is a little bit of imagination too much to ask for? Why can't it have some 30 pics immediate storage (128megs?), and transfer the pictures in background. It's not that you're always near PC either, so the camera should be stand-alone anyways.
        • Is a little bit of imagination too much to ask for? Why can't it have some 30 pics immediate storage (128megs?), and transfer the pictures in background. It's not that you're always near PC either, so the camera should be stand-alone anyways.

          It's Sony, remember? MemorySticks are very cool litte items, that are pretty cost effective. I don't know of any recent Sony device that didn't use them.
    • First off, full resolution on a 4Mp camera is a big picture, so most people won't be shooting at that res all the time anyway. Second, if they can implement a local cache for the images, so that they are transferred in the background, then it really shouldn't be a problem.

      Come on, admit it - this is cool technology. So what if it has some kinks that need to be ironed out?

      • First off, full resolution on a 4Mp camera is a big picture, so most people won't be shooting at that res all the time anyway.

        You tell me what the camera default resolution is, and I'll tell you what resolution most people will be shooting at most of the time.

      • Well, I have a 3Mp camera and I shoot at 3 Mp all the time....because I spent the extra money for 128 MB flash cards so I can take lots of good pictures without having to worry about it.

        Having said that, when I go to download pics over USB I get a little agitated over the 2-3 seconds per pictures since it takes a few minutes to download the entire card's worth. If I had to wait 47 seconds *per picture* something would be bouncing off the wall. (Or I could cut down on the caffeine :) )

        Speaking as someone who worked on Bluetooth for a while at least 3 years ago this strikes me as typical of most Bluetooth demos/concepts I've seen - sounds really cool, not incredibly practical in real usage and not anything I'd spend extra to get....but that's just my opinion.

        • If I had to wait 47 seconds *per picture* something would be bouncing off the wall.

          That "something" would probably be the grenade launcher rounds in Quake III Arena, which you move to the foreground while the camera uploads your last 20 pictures in the background.

      • Why the heck (other than the megahertz phenomenom) would you buy a 4MP camera and not use that resolution? Since you need about 12MP to equal the pixel density of even 35mm film I use everything my camera offers. The only time I have ever used a lower resolution was when I was shooting some collectibles for my inlaws to post to ebay.
        • I have a 4MP camera and love it. Don't shoot anything other than 4MP highest-quality-jpeg.

          However...

          What pixel range you need is not a function of "equivalent to" but is instead a function of "used for".

          If all you want are 4"x6" prints, 300dpi for prints is about the same as what you get from your standard cheap 35mm film developer/printer. Think Walmart photofinishing here. 300dpi at 4"x6" == 300 x 300 x 24 == 2.2MP. Most photographers and magazines (I believe) will talk about 240dpi, though. That's 240x240x4x6=1.4MP.

          I've done 4"x6" prints from my 4MP camera. It looks *good*. I am more than satisfied, for that use. (It does nice 5"x7"s too.)

          I wouldn't really want to use a 4MP camera for an 8"x10" print, though it would look okay. For that, I'll wait for a 20MP camera. 8"x10" x 300dpi = 7.2MP. Not enough of a change from what I have now. So instead... Doing an 11"x17" print is 11x17x300x300=16.8MP So assuming I don't break this one, my next digital camera will be in the 20MP range.

          For showing on a screen? 1600x1200 is enough, and for a lot of people 1024x768 is actually what they run. Both of those are noticably under 2MP. Good reason to use less than the max resolution.

          For showing on a web site? Unless it is a page background, you probably don't want anything bigger than 800x600, and maybe only half that size.

          Yes, you'll probably get better results by taking the 4MP picture and downsampling in Photoshop or whatever, but that's an awful lot of effort for something where the camera can do almost as good a job itself, using less storage space, taking less time to transfer results, and less of your time in on-computer editing afterwards.

          Figure out what your use is, and make selections based on that.

          For my use? As I said up top, I never shoot at anything except the max resolution the camera supports.
    • This would not be a limiting factor if the camera also has a flash storage, and would transfer images in the background, letting you shoot more images while it is transferring images. Ofcourse it will stop while it is full. But the camera should be available as soon as there is space for one image.
    • According to an article currently running on Wired [wired.com]:

      Bluetooth is a radio frequency technology that lets gadgets within 30 feet of each other interact wirelessly. It is more powerful than infrared and can transport data at 1 megabit per second.

      A one megabyte pic should therefore transfer in 8 seconds. 47 seconds should make the picture just under 6MB in size -- that's pretty huge for a single jpeg!

      • Re:Range and speed (Score:3, Insightful)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        In reality, Bluetooth is not designed for large data transfers like this. 1Mbps is the marketing speed. In reality, Bluetooth devices have a fairly hefty overhead that cuts into their transmit rate significantly.

        Bluetooth was designed around supporting low bandwidth cellular links between your phone and whatever device you have, trading business cards, doing voice (the protocol stack actually has a "bypass" for voice data built right into the spec), and synchronization type tasks. In reality, this camera should be using something like 802.11 if it wants to make that data link useful. (shoot 20 pictures and you're waiting more than 15 minutes for the pictures to transfer. For that kind of speed you could just hook up the USB link cable and have it done in a fraction of the time).
      • Well, my 4Mpixel camera stores 120 jpegs at high quality on a 256MB CF card, making them 2MB each. Bear in mind that's a 1600x1200 full colour jpeg. If I switch to the highest quality setting (I think it's TIFF or something), I get significantly less; I can't remember the exact number, but I think it's either 12 or 20. That makes the images 14MB-20MB in size. I can't figure out how, as a 1600x1200x32bpp image should be less than 8MB.

        Of course, I could be wrong on the image sizes/colour depth & number of images.

        • I think your numbers are off a little, since my 3.2 megapixel camera can do 2048x1536. My brother's 4 megapixel camera does 2272x1704. I think that would make the rest of your calculations make a little more sense.
          • You're right, I've checked my camera now (I was at work earlier) and it does up to 2272x1704 pixels. At 24-bit colour, that's 11.5MB per picture. 32-bit colour gives 15MB per picture.
          • From the resolution of your brother's camera, I'd guess it's a Canon G2...

            Anyways, that guy was probably talking about maximum quality JPGs... It's still much larger than a 1600x1200 should be (2mb) but JPEG compression takes time and some cameras skimp on it. I could see 2mb if they were used to shooting complex scenes and had everything cranked.

            My Canon G2 averages about 1.1MB per picture at large, and one step away from maximum compression.

            But with the Canon's, you don't ever really need to go higher than that. If you're considering going to a higher compression you switch to shooting in RAW and get all the benefits. Other cameras with TIFFs don't compress the image, but they adjust the white-balance and everything, which is lossy. And TIFFs are huge.
    • The good thing with bluetooth support in a digital camera is NOT being able to transfer images wirelessly. The pro's are:

      * Ability to remotecontrol your camera
      * Sending smaller pictures to your PDA, for say use in presentations
      * Being able to send smaller pictures to the many new mobile phones (like the Sony Ericsson T68i))
      * Bluetooth chips are getting cheap and massproduction gives Sony even cheaper chips for use in other devices
      * Using an open standard that many operating systems and hardware will understand (at least sending images)

      Bluetooth is the future. Apple has excellent support for it. Linux has good support with Bluez and Nokia's Linux bluetooth stack (Affix). Soon even Microsoft will support it. :-P

      Ciryon
  • let's hope Sony has the good sense to release enough information for someone to be able to write a Linux driver for this one. i'm still hoping for a driver for my CMR-PC2 [webcam-production.com].
  • I have to wonder if this doesn't hint at upcoming Vaios with Bluetooth. Rumor has it that the next PowerBooks will have it (Octoberish?) Looks to me like Bluetooth is about ready to go mainstream.
    • this could start a new trend in the graphics market, as for powerbooks they might be even sooner: Macworld Paris is 10-13 Sept, Powerbook 'runout sale' ends on the 25 Sept. Very good chance we're going to see more than a speed bump between these two dates.(apple intend to put bluetooth inside all their pc's hence why they never developed the external bluetooth adapter.)

    • Re:Bluetooth Vaios Next? (Score:2, Informative)

      by BJH ( 11355 )
      Some Vaios in Japan have had Bluetooth for a year now.
    • I was in a high street store in London (UK) a couple of months back, and they had the latest Vaios which had bluetooth built-in (and 802.11), IIRC.

      They were very new though.

      Tim
    • bluetooth and wi-fi on the same laptop from Sony have been out for months and months.

      My mate bought his on Tottenham Court Road in the spring.

    • How about adding bluetooth to any portable MP3 players? They already are mostly comprised of storage. If you add bluetooth, you have all the storage space you need until you get back to your PC.

    • Fujitsu-Siemens' Lifebook E [fujitsu-siemens.com] has had it as an option for a while. I think that one is pretty neat, and AFAIK it's certified by the manufacturer to work with Red Hat and SuSE. An off the record, they also say getting Debian on it is unproblematic.
  • For example, a BIP compatible laptop computer can be used to store images, with a full 4 Megapixel picture taking around 47 seconds


    So i have to wait 47 seconds after i take the picture for it to be written? I don't see any mention of on-camera cache, which means you'd have to wait 47 seconds in-between shots. My Canon G1 has about a 1.5 second delay between shots, and i thought that was bad, but 47 seconds is insane! the article goes on further to state that you have to wait 6.5 seconds for a THUMBNAIL!? No prosumer photographer is going to take this seriously, and it'll be too much stuff carrying around for laptops...

    • Ho there cowboy (Score:2, Informative)

      by cheezycrust ( 138235 )
      the article goes on further to state that you have to wait 6.5 seconds for a THUMBNAIL!?

      Actually, the article says:

      This feature creates a "real-time digital camera" with a thumbnail picture transmitted from the camera to the remote device at a data rate of 6.5 frames per second.

      This gives a transfer time of 0.15 seconds.

    • Transfer rate of full 4 Megapixel picture = 47 seconds per picture

      Transfer rate of vga resolution image = 1.5 seconds per picture

      Transfer rate of Thumbnail pictures = 6.5 frame per second

      Also, zdnet [zdnet.co.jp]:
      Starting time = 0.9 seconds

      shutter time lag = 0.35 seconds

      Time between shots = 1.7 seconds

      It supports memory stick.

  • What idiots. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures? Time will tell...

    This is one of the stupidest things I have read all day. What a moron.

  • This is a normal evolution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cheezycrust ( 138235 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @08:07AM (#4199473)
    This is another step in the direction of fragmented hardware. Instead of a mobile phone that can take pictures and browse the web, you'll have a camera, a screen, an earplug and microphone, and a screen, all connected via Bluetooth (or some other standard).

    This will make it easier for upgrading parts of your system, and only buying what you need (you start with the mobile phone, then buy a camera of low quality, a year later you upgrade that camera, but you can keep using your mobile phone). Expect more of this to come.
    • Somehow, this seems worse to me, not better. A single unit with upgradable parts seems much better to me. Having it in five different pieces just means I have to work out how to juggle all of them. up until the point where I realise I've lost one of them.

      Also, can you imagine having to find multiple parts of your phone when it rings!

  • People are snooping now (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you have an X10 camera reciever you can "wardrive" for pictures now. You can join the Citizens Auxillary Police and take a peek around with Jay Santos.
  • Now I don't need to hide a stupid cable when taking those pr0n pictures... ;)
  • I think its a great idea - I have been wishing for something like this - hope it goes cheap quick! as for the transfer time - can't the camera take the pictures and store them locally (say, on CF/SM) and transfer the pics to the computer in the background, allowing the user to take more pics?

    I just think in a portable market, having a laptop open whilst taking pics is silly - esp. with the range of BlueTooth. I reckon a Bluetooth adapter on an iPod will be better, so you can upload pics in between shoots, clearing the local camera's storage.

  • I want a digital camera that will also handle video and sound. 802.11b would be nice too.

    Are there any inexpensive digital cameras that handle video and sound? I haven't seen any for under $300USD.

    Something other than MPEG-1 video too. The Panasonic AV/10 does MPEG-4, but runs $350+. The Panasonic site doesn't say how much video per MB can be stored, but I would guess about 7MB per minute.
    • Sony already has a digitial vidcam (can't remember the model offhand) that supports Bluetooth and records directly to MPEG-2 using the MicroDV tape format. The price (last I looked) was somewhere around $3500 CDN. They have a similar MicroDV vidcam without Bluetooth as well.
  • 1. transmit data in distance of up to 10 m without any cable connection.


    So that gives you a really small radius around your PC to take pictures, if you're transmitting to a desktop PC. Although with a Laptop it should be fairly easy, but still, that's a lot of hardware to carry around. Not practical at all. The bluetooth technology really gets on my nerves. The range is horrible, and should be replaced by something better. It's not a God's gift to consumers. It's vapor.

    2. As more and more peripheral devices develop BIP Bluetooth interfaces...


    Ok, lets say I have a Ericsson mobile phone, and it can intercept and store blootooth signals. I doubt there is a phone out there which will store massive uncompressed image data on a tiny memory block. Totally useless. I can see no further applications within the next couple of years. The technology isn't widespread enough, and the storage on BT modules are either a) tiny b) non-existant c) inpractical

    3. This state-of-the-art wireless connectivity allows the camera to interface to various peripheral devices without cables.


    Vapor.

    4. BIP compatible laptop computer can be used to store images, with a full 4 Mega picture taking around 47 seconds to transfer whilst a VGA resolution image takes just 1.5.


    Is that even a feature? I can transfer 32 Megs of high quality image data from my DSC F505 under 30 seconds, give or take a few.

    5. The DSC-FX77 will be available from November 2002.


    Good. Someone should tell Sony that 1999 called. They want the digital camera back.

    The only thing that's worth raving about with this digicam is the 4.0 megapixel spec (which is not much by today's standards). I just feel sorry for the people who will be paying lots of money for this overpriced POS.
    • Vapor-ware is software or features that are used as marketing gimmicks but do not exist in a real format yet.

      Those features you're calling vapor exist, they're just pretty much useless.

      Just being a pedant. Have a nice day.

    • Re:Lets dissect this digicam (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1. Bluetooth is a cable replacement, not a wireless network. How many cable are connected to your computer and how many are above 10m? You can take a picture somewhere over the world and then get to a PC and transfer the data with Bluetooth, no need to jack in your USB cable.

      2. What is the purpose of a mobile phone? Communcation. Not storage. To store data I suggest to use the Toshiba Pocket Server (1.8 inch HD, 5Gb, ¥50,000).

      3. Well, it is state of the art. There is no other universal modern wireless cable replacement protocol. And it lets you connect the camera to other Bluetooth devices. What point about it is vapour?

      4. The point is, to transfer the Image, you have to connect it with a cable.
      Now imagine, you have your notebook in a backpack, while tacking some pictures. You walk around and later, when you want to have a look at the pictures, they are already there. Pipelining at work.
      Of course, when takeing lot of pictures, you'll have to revert to the cable.
    • Oooh, dissection! Scalpel, please....

      So that gives you a really small radius around your PC to take pictures, if you're transmitting to a desktop PC

      Yeah. Still a bit better than a cable. Plus you don't need line of sight - shove your camera in your bag and have it automatically upload the pictures when you get home.

      The bluetooth technology really gets on my nerves. The range is horrible, and should be replaced by something better

      Which shows how little of the technology you know. Certain devices can hit 100m and over with their range (and interoperate at that distance with the 10m class devices).

      It's vapor

      I'll bite my tongue, but you should really know that vapour-ware is typically understood to be non-existant technology. Bluetooth isn't. There are shipping mobile phones that are Bluetooth enabled, laptops as well. I work with Bluetooth everyday, and would be pretty pissed off to find it din't actually exist.

      Ok, lets say I have a Ericsson mobile phone, and it can intercept and store blootooth signals. I doubt there is a phone out there which will store massive uncompressed image data on a tiny memory block. Totally useless. I can see no further applications within the next couple of years.

      Oh, you better call Nokia, Sony and a bunch of others then to deliver your grand vision into their hands. They'll be ever so grateful. Phones do exist that can store images at *medium* quality, although certainly not lossless 1024*768 images in any quantity. But the point of the phone is to *forward* images, say to friends.

      Henry



      • Certain devices can hit 100m and over with their range (and interoperate at that distance with the 10m class devices).


        Does this seem to violate certain physics maxims to anyone else? Perhaps I need to know how the return signal from the weaker device somehow makes it the 100 meters out to the stronger device... it seems like if it could only go 10 meters before, there's no way it could go any further just because one device is stronger.

        But please, if I am way wrong, let me know.
    • So that gives you a really small radius around your PC to take pictures, if you're transmitting to a desktop PC. Although with a Laptop it should be fairly easy, but still, that's a lot of hardware to carry around. Not practical at all.

      Think outside the box. Or at least open the box up a bit. Who says you even need a laptop? What a PDA device with bluetooth and CF card? Instead of using a CF card in your camera, and another in your PDA, you can just have your PDA in your pocket with the CF card, and share the CF card between the two pieces of hardware. And you know they're going to come out with a version of the camera with local CF card abilities as well.

      The bluetooth technology really gets on my nerves. The range is horrible, and should be replaced by something better. It's not a God's gift to consumers. It's vapor.

      This is such a lame comment. Bluetooth was specifically designed to provide short-range wireless communication that doesn't require line-of-sight like infrared, but a protocol specifically designed and standardized for data transfer in this short range. Therefore it can use less power and be cheaper than things like 802.11b. It's like wireless USB. It's perfect for what it's designed for.

      Ok, lets say I have a Ericsson mobile phone, and it can intercept and store blootooth signals. I doubt there is a phone out there which will store massive uncompressed image data on a tiny memory block. Totally useless.

      And yesterday there wasn't a camera available that could transmit it's images via Bluetooth. You do understand the concept of technological progress, right?

      I can see no further applications within the next couple of years.

      Based on your other comments, this hardly surprises me.
  • > Will the wardriving of the future include scooping up pictures?

    Probably not.
    1. This seems like a very gimmicky feature, and hence won't be used much in the future.
    2. Most people want to take their cameras away from the computer, and hence need some sort of on-camera storage.
    3. Bluetooth's range is very short - only a few metres.
    4. Bluetooth isn't particularly fast, so things like dumping the contents of a memory card across it is likely to be painful.

    • Sony released a Digital Camera 18 months ago that had a 3" CD-ROM built into it. It used the same rechargables as their video cameras.

      People hated it "Only 2 Megapixels" they whined. "CD-ROM isn't as whizzy as CF" they said.

      They missed the point. There are two problems with a digital camera when used on vacations (a) You won't have a PC with you for 2 weeks (b) The battery life either has to be measured in thousands of pictures or be easily rechargable.

      Well the Sony solved these two problems. It had 150M of storage space on cheap ($1) media. You moved it to your PC by moving the CD-ROM. Plus, the sony had enough space that the JPG compression used was light. I love these cameras that advertise 6 megapixels, and then they compress the images so much that it might as well be 1.5 megapixels. Plus, the camera's battery would last 150 pictures and be rechargeable in under an hour.

      It was and is a great idea.
  • That's great. I look forward to having to lug around both. Unless you're bound to a wheelchair and have ample cargo capacity, this is truly dumb.

    Plus, is it really that hard to plug a wire into your camera to download the pictures?

  • Damn shame it's made by a jackbooted DMCA wielding, Jack Valenti loving, GPL violating, peer-to-peer network threatening evil conglomerate.
  • There's no "war", which usually involves military conflict, or at least two diametrically opposed agendas. It's just a geek or two running around with wireless stuff, delighting in the poor security of wireless networks.

    It should be called "virgindriving" or "patheticgeeksdriving".

    What don't I understand here?
    • AFAIK, the name is derived from the term "wardialing" which refers to the old-school hacker trick of getting a compuer with a modem to dial up every number in your area code looking for other modems, which at the time were probably unsecured computer systems.

      No idea where war figures into "wardialing" either, though, except that it probably sounded cool at the time.

      Jon Acheson

      • ... from the film WarGames
      • No idea where war figures into "wardialing" either, though, except that it probably sounded cool at the time.

        It was coined in homage to the movie WAR GAMES [imdb.com] in the early 80s. Mathew Broderick's character (David Lightman) used a program to auto-dial numbers and identify open computer systems.

        Before the movie, it was a little-known exploit. After the movie, every wannabe cracker script kiddie was running wardialers downloaded from a BBS. The first couple of months after the movie released, I don't think I went a day without being wardialed. Very annoying.

        I.V.

    • There's no "war", which usually involves military conflict, or at least two diametrically opposed agendas. It's just a geek or two running around with wireless stuff, delighting in the poor security of wireless networks.

      I take it you are a non-geek who accidently stumbled onto /. ;)

      It's an extension of the term "war dialing" (dialing numbers and logging those where a modem answers) which comes from the 1983 movie WarGames [imdb.com] where the geek protagonist uses the method to modem into NORAD.

      The movie by the way is perhaps STILL one of the best hacker movie out there. All the hacking is realistic, the hacker has no magic powers over computers (as most hackers in movies do) - he wardials to find computers, he finds or makes educated guesses for passwords, etc.
  • Now granted I am late to the party, but with a range of 10M and a very slow transfer rate -- what make Bluetooth a viable technology? (Granted my only experience with wireless is 802.11B -- I can use the wireless NIC in my laptop to cruise around the Internet and transfer files on my LAN at pretty good speeds and from a distance of around 300-400 Feet.)
    • Only class 3 (I think) radios are limited to 10m. Class 1 devices (such as the access point sitting on my desk right now) have 100m range - and can therefore be contacted by class 3 devices.

      (plus my 7650 can actually deal with ranges of about 25m).

      Henry


  • This product is not targeted at techies nor for photographers...

    This is targeted at PHBs [dilbert.com] who need to show off their "cool" gear to other PHBs and to make a talking point at the next company party.

    Move along people.... Nothing here...
  • My Nokia 7650 has Bluetooth and a camera and will happily send pictures to my PC or a Pocket PC or even a Palm Pilot. Mostly I use it to send pictures to my HP printer, which also has Bluetooth, it took no setting up or drivers, just unpacked the phone, took a photo, pressed "send" and out it comes.

    Bluetooth is a truely wonderful thing.

    Lots Of Love

    Bill Ray
    • My Nokia 7650 has Bluetooth and a camera and will happily send pictures to my PC or a Pocket PC or even a Palm Pilot. Mostly I use it to send pictures to my HP printer, which also has Bluetooth, it took no setting up or drivers, just unpacked the phone, took a photo, pressed "send" and out it comes.

      But imagine that Bluetooth becomes ubiquitous, and you have multiple printers within range. Where does it print? Say you and I have adjacent offices. How do I prevent your nifty Bluetooth-enabled phone from printing on my printer?

      Bluetooth is a truely wonderful thing.

      Bluetooth is a wonderful solution to a very limited problem set. And that set, unfortunately, is not congruent with the problem set of "what happens when these things are everywhere?"

    • I brought my laptop with me on my last trip to store pictures. It was great, no wires, no drivers. I didn't lug a printer along and I doubt I'll bother to print any of the pictures when it's so much cheaper and better to ftp and burn them to CDs.

      Throughput was great too. PCMCIA does 8 Mbyte/second. Woops, who needs wireless when you have something simple like compact flash? I

  • ...that if it's not one thing, it's another. Just when I had solved the problem of redeye in my digital photographs, now I have to deal with blue teeth?

    Forget this. I'm going back to 35mm photography.

  • Flash is so cheap, what's the point? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I bought 256MB of Compact Flash for my digital camera for only $90.
    I take everything at 3 megapixels (2048x1536) and
    the average size of 118 images was 801KB. That means
    I can store 334 pictures. If you really need to take more
    than 334 pictures then you probably have $90 for
    some more flash memory.

  • Microsoft Bluetooth Mice and Keyboards (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This will go with the recent Microsoft rumor that it's new mice and keyboards will be Bluetooth devices. This would certainly explain why all the local stores here are not getting any more microsoft natural keyboard pro's when they sell out so i can't get another one :(

    I believe the story was on News.com a few days ago.

    BTW, this is an old story. they'd announced this a looong time ago. i think we've read about it here on /.
    • unfortunately, this product (http://www.microsoft.com/catalog/display.asp?subi d=22&site=11315), uses a dongle, hence the usb/ps2 compatability. i would rather have a cable than a bunch of junk floating around the desktop. a bluetooth mouse and keyboard would be cool however. my bet is that apple is out with it first--it's nice to control the hardware.
  • Don't know what's new about this. It is not Sony's first [sonystyle.com] Bluetooth camera. I believe DCR-IP7BT was their first Bluetooth enabled model.
  • I don't want the camera to send the picture to a nearby computer, but to my cell phone. The cell phone should then upload it to my computer at home. Then the 10 meter range would be plenty, and I would have a digital camera with essentially unlimited memory. As well as a reason to invest in an UTMS connection for my cell phone.
  • You're missing the point. This is not for WLAN parties. This is for lying on the beach with a Sony Ericsson T68 Bluetooth enabled GPRS phone in your pocket, a pina colada in one hand and a camera in the other and snapping pictures and send them to your friends in real time.

  • It might be useful to develop a Bluetooth-capable device in a Compact Flash form factor that acts like a memory card, but really stores its data on a remote device (like a laptop). Such a card could be inserted into any existing CF camera and used in the same way as the Sony.

    An on-card cache could help it get past transfer time issues for the purposes of compatibility with existing cameras.

  • Also rendering this kind of useless. Who wants to have to be that close to a laptop/desktop at all times? Something tells me that you'd better stay within 7meters if you don't want pictures to be lost.

    Bluetooth has some nifty applications, but it's lowbandwith short range limits it. Why not a camera with built in 802.11b?
  • A friend of mine and I were /just/ talking about this sort of thing this past weekend. (Without any prior knowledge of Sony's work).

    The way figured it is that cameras can get smaller if the storage was moved off the device. I didn't really think about lugging a laptop around (though that is a good idea) but more a portable device like the iPod. Have your camera transfer pictures to the same device that's storing and playing your mp3s. I mean, with 20 GB of space, you could leave 3 GB free for pics for an afternoon. The iPod-type device is already on your person so range isn't an issue.
    • Cameras are plenty small with onboard storage. Look at the ultra-thin cameras out there, they have fairly standard storage options, CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MMC/SD, or memory sticks. Space for storage isn't that big a concern, really, when you can fit 1GB on a standard CompactFlash card (either a ibm microdrive, or 1GB of flash memory).

      The issue is really batteries. Those ultra-thin cameras get about 30 pictures on a charge.

      Driving the LCD display takes a lot of juice. Putting in batteries that can drive the display for a reasonable amount of time takes more space than you want it to.

      My Canon S40 can take about 70 pictures with the LCD on (low brightness level) and a mix of flash and non-flash. About 80 pictures with the LCD on, and no flash use at all.

      Turn the LCD off and that jumps to about 150 pictures on a battery charge.

      My Olympus Stylus point-n-shoot 35mm camera gets about 20 rolls of film on a disposable lithium battery 1/3 the size of the rechargable lithium the S40 uses.

      You want smaller digital cameras, don't worry about the storage medium... Make a battery with 10 times the energy density. Or get the OLEDs working, they are supposed to be very low energy usage, aren't they?

      Though otherwise, I tend to agree... a wireless link to a bluetooth harddrive you stuck in your backpack would give you effectively unlimited storage. But with my 1GB microdrive... I switch batteries 8 times before I fill up my storage media, so that really doesn't help me all that much.
  • I have a PowerMac with OS 10.2 and I know that it has support for bluetooth built in but was wondering what kind of hardware it would require to actually get the computer working with it?

    Any comments / suggestions would be appriciated.

    Nick Powers

  • Not Bluetooth Only! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by inkfox ( 580440 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @09:53AM (#4200099) Homepage
    People keep responding to the transfer speed as if you have to hover within 30 feet of the computer and wait almost a minute between shots.

    The thing ships with a 16mb memory stick, and can take larger sticks. It also has USB and a cradle for faster transfers. 47 seconds is also for the largest format picture. It can also send video at several frames per second, or a VGA resolution snapshot in under two seconds.

    Backing up, the point of Bluetooth isn't Raw Speed. The point of including Bluetooth in a device like this is automation: As soon as you come near the proper PC, this and the PC will detect each other and begin the exchange. You might not have taken the camera out of your pocket or done more than set it down on walking in the door before it finishes the transfer.

    If you need the pictures more quickly, simply set it in the USB cradle, or pop out the memory stick and stick it in one of those PC drive bay memory stick adapters.

    Later on, you'll be able to configure your Bluetooth-enabled cell phone as a conduit, so pictures can automatically ride a secure tunnel back to your machine wherever you are, giving you an effectively infinite amount of space for your pictures. That's what Bluetooth is for.

    More details here [www.sony.jp] for Japanese speakers.

  • What I would like to see would be the ability for the camera to add metadata to the pictures via input from the Bluetooth connection. For example, getting the current Lon/Lat from a Bluetooth enabled GPS [emtac.com] and embedding it in the picture's metadata ("Where the heck did we take THIS picture?"). I could then do some interesting GIS applications, such as a photoalbum on a map using Mapserver [umn.edu] (a great Open Source GIS program)
  • 1) Show add for camera to that neighbor with the gorgeous wife.
    2) buy WarDriving equipment

  • The Future of Slashdot = Press releases? (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by securitas ( 411694 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @10:56AM (#4200417) Homepage Journal


    It's bad enough that most so-called technology news and reviews sites don't amount to much more than a collection of regurgitated press releases and graft-driven prose -- most rampant in the games industry as discussed previously on Slashdot in two threads on fraudulent reviews [slashdot.org] and bribes, junkets and payola [slashdot.org] -- but does Slashdot have to promote them?

    The item above is identical to the DSC-FX77 digital camera press release from Sony Europe's [sony-europe.com] site. Could the reason for posting a press release as news be more payola from Sony?

    Everyone whines and complains about the problem but they keep helping and promoting sites lacking any integrity by providing them with traffic. The question I have is why do Slashdot's editors participate and add to the problem by directing traffic to them? I'm sure that the editors are concerned by the brochure-style content of more and more sites, although that wouldn't be apparent from posting this 'story'. I've found that Tim generally does a pretty good job of separating the signal and substance from the noise and fluff, but this one got past you.

    If you want to see quality Web content, vote with your clicks and posts and discourage blatant product promotion by shills [letsgodigital.nl] for product manufacturers.

    Frankly, these problems are what made us decide to start Geartest.com [geartest.com]. We figured that there should be some place on the Internet where people can find unbiased technology product reviews [geartest.com] that can be understood by the layperson. It's been difficult getting manufacturers to loan evaluation units because we specifically tell them that they will not necessarily receive positive coverage by virtue of sending their products -- but a few seem to be coming around to our way of thinking [slashdot.org].

    Hopefully average technology users and Slashdotters will too.

  • tourist dream (Score:5, Interesting)

    by evocate ( 209951 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @11:48AM (#4200728)
    Let's say I'm out touring a city and I'm snapping shots for the requisite post-tour photo album. Of course, I'm nowhere near a desktop PC or even a laptop. But lets say I have a Bluetooth-enabled hard drive in my backpack. It's built like these 20GB MP3 players, but it's just a Bluetooth file server nothing more. Now I can wander around the city shooting forever, or until the batteries die, whichever comes first :). Camera tosses every photo into the drive in my backpack (or on my belt, or whereever). If the camera can cache at least a handful of pictures, I'll never notice that transfers take a minute.

    [offtopic]
    While we're inventing stuff, let's say I have Bluetooth-enabled headphones with an MP3/OV decoder built in. (Heh, and make em solar powered, since they're sitting on top of my head.) They're pulling MP3s off the same file server in my backpack. I guess I'll lose the music stream while my camera stores a picture. I won't mind very much if the player is at least a little bit graceful in it's handling of the bottleneck.
  • I didn't want to know what my dad did with that digital camera in his bedroom. Now he's going to have to ask me to secure it. Eeeeuuugh.

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