Pictures, Camera Phones, Picture Editing and that Internet
Posted on October 15, 2006, by Conor O'Neill, under Gadgets, Technology.
At this stage a huge number of people have camera phones and actually use the camera to take those impromptu pictures. I remember asking why anyone would want a camera phone three years ago. What the hell would you take pictures of? Well, it turns out I had no imagination and I now take pictures of everything and anything.
Now most people take the picture and either send it by MMS to friends n family or just show it on the phone to people later. But there is a lot more you can do with them and most of those things are free. The main thing you need to do is to get the pictures off the phone and onto a PC or a web-site. Whilst the network operators here still think it makes sense to gouge us on mobile data charges, the option of sending directly to the web doesn’t really make sense here.
But if you are loaded, then you can do things like:
- Install Shozu on your phone and send all your pictures to the photo sharing site Flickr
- O2 customers can sign up for foneblog.ie and send pictures to that site
- If you have a Wordpress blog, install Postie and send pictures from your phone via email to your blog
If you aren’t so flush, then there are a lot of fun free things you can do. First tho, you need either a data cable for your phone or a bluetooth adapter for your PC (if your phone has bluetooth). I recommend the cable as bluetooth is the most unreliable slow piece of rubbish ever to leave Scandinavia since the Volvo 480. For most modern Nokias that is the DKU-5 or CA-53 cable. If your phone didn’t come with one, they are on ebay.ie for €4 incl P&P. You’ll pay a fortune for one in a mobile phone shop so don’t bother.
Then you need the Nokia PC Suite software. Another unreliable Scandinavian but has lots of nice things like phone backup which you should really use in case your phone is nicked. This is free and there is a link to it on Nokia.ie
I also really like the Nokia Lifeblog software. This grabs all the pictures, videos and text messages from your phone and shows them to you as a timeline. Looks really cool. In theory you can then publish what you want to your blog but for some nutso reason, it only supports Movable Type blogs and not Blogger or Wordpress. I just use it as an easy way of grabbing all the piccies off the phone and uploading the ones I want onto Flickr.
So you’ve got the cable and software installed and managed to download your pictures to your PC. Now what? Well you can put them up on a photo-sharing site like Flickr or Zooomr or Photobucket to spread the love. You can set the privacy on pictures on most of these sites so only those you invite can see them. I use Flickr and the free account is pretty good. I pay a few bob for a Pro account which allows me to upload as much as I like. There you can discover simple but powerful ideas like tagging where you add some labels to your photos like “cork” or “hurling” and then click on “hurling” to find all the other pictures on the site with the same label.
You’ve got your Flickr account and you’ve uploaded some pictures and you’re sharing them with your friends but you think “damn, I wish I could cut the edge of that picture and remove the red-eye on that other one”. The solution comes winging its way to you from Ballincollig in Cork in the shape of PXN8 from Sxoop Technologies. This brilliant piece of software allows you to edit pictures on your PC or your Flickr account inside a web-browser! You really have to check it out. It’s one of those “why the hell didn’t I think of that?” sites. No need for special photo editing software on your PC. You could edit the pictures in an internet cafe in Vietnam if you want. And it is easy to use too, check it out. And I’m not just saying that cos I know Walter, this is an awesome bit of software. It’ll soon let you add text to the pictures too so you can do wee postcards or posters for people.
And all this from taking a piccie on your camera phone whilst out having a walk. Isn’t that internet just the bees knees?
Technorati Tags: PXN8, Sxoop, Flickr, Nokia, PC+Suite, Lifeblog, Zooomr, Photobucket, Shozu, Postie, Foneblog
10 Replies to "Pictures, Camera Phones, Picture Editing and that Internet "
conor on October 15, 2006
Neat idea with the SIMs, I must check that out.
I’ve noticed the patchiness of MMS handling on the different networks.
It’s amazing that they could all have such huge success by having a common standard in SMS and then make such a pigs ear out of compatibility with MMS.
walter on October 15, 2006
Thanks for the mention Conor.
Fiona on October 16, 2006
Really helpful post Conor, thanks. I’ve just bought a cable on ebay.
On a slightly unrelated topic, am I better off (price-wise) getting a memory stick on ebay?
conor on October 16, 2006
I find that the decision boils down to P&P rather than the basic price.
I got my last 1 GB USB stick on Ebay from Hong Kong but I got good value in RS-MMC cards for the N70 from both elara.ie (Dublin) and Shop4Memory.com (Celbridge)
gemma lvz manu on February 4, 2007
WANT PICCIES FOR PHONES SENT BY BLUETOOTH LEAD HOW DO I DO IT?
conor on February 4, 2007
Hi Gemma,
Not 100% sure what you are asking. Do you have pictures on a phone and you want to get them onto a PC?
If so you have two options. First you can get a cable which plugs into your phone at one end and a USB port on you PC at the other end. This is the cheapest, fastest, easiest way of doing it. The phone will probably appear like a disk drive you can browse in windows depending on the software that comes with it.
The other way is to get a wireless Bluetooth adapter for you PC which then communicates over the air with your phone. Obviously you phone needs to have Bluetooth capability. If you are not computer-savvy, I would avoid Bluetooth like the plague. I have non-stop problems with it and I know how it works under the hood.
If you tell me your phone type I can probably point you in the direction of a cable instead.
margaret on August 29, 2007
either my old phone is broken somehow or it just wont bluetooth my photos from my phone plzzz help!!! belfast gal. its an old sharp gx30 taaaaa.
conor on August 29, 2007
I’ve found the easiest way is to use the Microsoft Windows XP SP2 built-in bluetooth software with nothing else.
Make sure to turn on Bluetooth on phone, it is disabled on most by default to save power.
Pair the PC to the phone and hopefully the bluetooth symbol will appear in the system bar in the bottom right of your desktop
Then right click that icon and select “receive file”. On phone, open up the image and there should be an option to send via bluetooth (or there is on Nokias anyway). It should let you pick the PC as the destination and the file will be transferred.
conor on August 29, 2007
Actually Margaret, I did a quick bit of Googling and it sounds like the bluetooth is hamstrung on the GX30 so that it can only be used for bluetooth headsets and not file transfer. Sorry.
You could get a data cable tho.
Only £1.99 plus P&P on eBay - http://tinyurl.com/295up7
Des on October 15, 2006
Very interesting post.
I was like you up to last year and didn’t understand why someone would use a camera phone. I am now using a K750i which gives great pics and I email them to flickr (and the blog). Sending them as picture messages on Vodafone isn’t all that expensive - it’s not my main number so I buy cheap phones and use the registration credit and chuck the sims after the 80 euro runs out (can take a while).
O2, Meteor & 3 are poor for being able to send MMS whilst roaming whereas Vodafone allow MMS to be sent on all their partner networks which can make a difference in France (for example). Roaming MMS is dear though..