Cellular phone surveillance camera

Nov. 19th, 2005|08:28 am: Cellular phone designers need to make surveillance camera software for your cell phone. Most cell phones already have a camera and plenty of storage. So why can’t they keep an eye on things while you’re away? It’d be a simple piece of software. All it needs to do it snap a picture at an interval that you decide on, based on how much memory is available in your phone. Or if you have a lot of memory (mine is capable of taking a 1 gig mini SD card) it could take video. Or if you don’t have a lot of storage, the phone could automatically upload the pictures to the internet. They could even make the software detect motion and instruct it only to snap pictures when motion is detected. This could be used for all kinds of things, such as…

• When you’re stay at a hotel and leave your room for the day, you could set the phone inconspicuously someplace to keep an eye on the maid to make sure she isn’t stealing everything in sight. Which would work great as long as she didn’t steal the phone.

• Nannycam! Watch the babysitter beat your kids while you’re out.

• Attention whores could wear their cell phone on a lanyard around their neck and have it take pictures of what they’re doing all day. One picture per minute could show up in their Livejournals. This could be the newest blogging fad! Even if you didn’t broadcast the pictures, it might be interesting to have nonstop photographic archives of your entire days. Especially if you’re actually doing anything interesting.

• Party Phonecast! You’re a hip teenager throwing a party. You invite everyone on your Buddy List to the party and everyone is having a great time, discoing and drinking Kool-aid. You should show all the losers who couldn’t make it what they’re missing out on by broadcasting the party to a website. They will be envious and they’ll eventually break down and come to your party too. And in the end you’ll be the most popular guy in school and a cheerleader will be your girlfriend! Plus you’ve got a nice little archive of this historic party to keep forever. Sure, you could do the same thing with Yahoo and a webcam. But that’s tethered to a desk somewhere. A cell phone broadcast can be done from anywhere, indoors or out.

I think that even if the cellular companies have already thought of this, they worry that using a cell phone as a surveillance camera would mean that the cell phone is left behind too often, meaning that it won’t be used for things that they can charge you for. If it’s sitting in your hotel room snapping pictures, then you’re not using up all your minutes. Unless they could charge for it. Like 1 cent per picture, 1 picture per minute, that’s 60 cents an hour to keep an eye on something while you’re away. Except Verizon Wireless would charge more like a gazillion dollars for it.