The Going Visual Blog

“Into Tomorrow” Reveals the Future Of Imaging From the 6Sight & Mobile Imaging Summit Conferences

This fall listeners who tune into the award-winning “Into Tomorrow with Dave Graveline” radio show will hear firsthand how the leading innovators and experts in the field envision the future of imaging and user-generated visual content, as the show broadcasts from the 6Sight™ Future of Imaging conference. The 6Sight Future of Imaging Conference will be held jointly with the 6^th edition of the Mobile Imaging Summit conference, on October 24 and 25 in Monterey (CA).

“We have been following the dramatic changes in the imaging industry for some time now,” says Dave Graveline, host of the Into Tomorrow technology talk show. “To explore further the future of imaging, we went to the experts on imaging trends, Future Image, to learn more. Their 6Sight conference will bring together some of the foremost imaging thinkers and doers, and we will be there to convey their glimpses into the future to our listeners.”

6Sight brings together technologists, marketers, futurists, artists, educators, high-volume users and members of the media for a program emphasizing innovative use cases, breakthrough technologies, and creativity. The focus of the inaugural edition is the “Connected Imaging Revolution” and the changing role of imaging in human affairs. Gone are the days of taking pictures only on vacations and major events. A new generation of imaging products — connected through always-on access to a global network — are enabling people to connect more effectively with each other by routinely using user-generated visual content to communicate in all aspects of their daily lives – personal, work, and community.

PMA: CAMERA VS. CAMCORDER SALES IN US

The Photo Marketing Association reports that 15 percent of U.S. households purchased a new camera or camcorder in 2005. Eighty-four percent of the units purchased were still cameras [most of which these days also capture video]. Also: 7.4 percent of digital still cameras sold were SLRs.

NOKIA'S CHANGING CDMA STRATEGY

By Tony Henning

Nokia is the world leader in mobile handsets by a wide margin, finishing Q1
2006 with a surprisingly strong report of double-digit growth in net profit
and sales, and global mobile-phone sales of more than 75 million units,
increasing its market share to 35 percent from 32 percent the previous
quarter. But virtually all of that market-leading strength comes from its
GSM sales - its market share for CDMA handsets drops precipitously to just
10 percent, far behind market leaders LG Electronics, Samsung, and Motorola.

Nokia's approach to the CDMA market - and to leading CDMA technology vendor
Qualcomm - has been schizophrenic at best. Unlike rival Sony Ericsson,
however, which abandoned the CDMA market three years ago, Nokia has
continued to plug away, looking for a strategy to increase its CDMA share,
particularly in the lucrative U.S. market. Recent product introductions and
particularly the joint venture with Sanyo announced just four months ago to
develop CDMA handsets suggested the Finnish giant would continue trying to
grow its worldwide CDMA presence. Today, however, Nokia reversed its
strategy, all but abandoning the CDMA market.

DoCoMo Launches Credit Card Phones

By Tony Henning

DoCoMo announced in April its intention to launch DCMX consumer credit services via iD, DoCoMo’s brand and platform for mobile credit cards, and this week the carrier delivered on its promise by releasing three handsets with DCMX. Users of Osaifu-Keitai (mobile wallet) phones in the 902iS series will be able to choose from two plans to make highly secure purchases from small to large amounts using their phones as DoCoMo-issued credit cards. Making a purchase is as simple as waving one’s phone in front of a dedicated iD reader/writer in a store, with no signature required. Payments will be billed together with the user’s monthly DoCoMo phone charges. There will be no membership fee to use the service. DCMX mini service offers a monthly credit line of ¥10,000 ($88), while credit lines from ¥200,000 ($1,765), as well as cash advances, will be available under the full DCMX service. Purchases over ¥10,000 will require the customer to enter a four-digit password.

Users under age 20 will require a guardian’s consent, and must apply at a DoCoMo Shop, accompanied by a guardian. Customers will be able to use their mobile phones to confirm remaining credit balances. For security, DoCoMo Osaifu-Keitai phones can be locked remotely if misplaced or stolen. The user will merely need to call their misplaced/stolen phone from a registered phone number. Or, using the Omakase Lock service, the user will be able to call DoCoMo to request their phone be locked. Users can also set their phones to require a password each time before the DCMX service is used.

The three new DCMX phones are the D902iS from Mitsubishi, the N902iS from NEC, and the P902iS from Panasonic. In addition to the new credit card and now-familiar mobile wallet functions (there are more than three million Osaifu-Keitai in Japan), the handsets offer the usual rich smorgasbord of features found in Japanese phones.

New Scale Debuts ‘World’s Smallest Motor’

By Tony Henning

The latest Squiggle motor from New Scale Technologies, Inc. is the smallest linear motor on the market, the company announced last week. At 1.5 x 1.5 x 6 mm, New Scale says the new SQL-1.5 piezoelectric motor is half the size of competing micro-motors. It also offers a 20 gram push force and sub-micron position resolution, performing ten times better than its closest competitor on both counts. The company says the SQL-1.5 is easier to manufacture and draws lower power than the liquid lens approach. It is also much further down the road to commercialization — having already been designed into next-generation auto-focus and optical zoom assemblies by leading camera module developers, who support the top tier handset manufacturers.

“The SQL-1.5 opens a whole new range of performance for miniature electronic systems such as phone cameras and medical devices,” said New Scale president David Henderson. “Designers of leading edge mobile devices finally have a precise, reliable linear motor that fits within their size and power budgets.   They can add motion — and hence new capabilities — where they were unable to do so before.”

 

WHY 6SIGHT

By Alexis Gerard

Launching a new event does indeed beg that question. I'll begin by answering
it with two questions of my own.

First: Has the general public truly understood and taken advantage of the
revolutionary potential of today's imaging tools to improve their lives?

Second: Are the companies who develop and sell those imaging tools enjoying
appropriate financial rewards for the value they are delivering?

The answer to the first question is "no" and, as a direct consequence, the
answer to the second question is also "no."

The combined effects of an unprecedented surge in sales of image capture
devices, the Internet, and wireless telecommunications, are empowering
average people - for the first time in history - to communicate with each
other using images [still and moving] as readily as they do using words.
Given that we humans are primarily visual creatures (not for nothing do we
all intuitively know that "a picture is worth a thousand words," or that
"seeing is believing") the potential benefits are momentous. The ability to
"converse visually" in our everyday interactions with others means we can
convey and receive information more efficiently, more completely and more
convincingly than ever before.

Yet as I write this, a prominent venture capitalist is emailing me to
discuss whether there's value in building cameras into cell phones. He's not
misinformed or behind the times. His doubts reflect the fact that imaging
tools - including, but by no means limited to camera-phones - are
dramatically underutilized in the mainstream market due to force of habit,
lack of imagination, and worst of all, lack of information about the
breakthroughs achieved by early adopters. And when value is not realized by
and for customers, it is not returned to vendors either. We all lose.

But we can do something about it. And that is "why 6Sight." [TM]

Future Image's executive events, starting with our Visual Communication
Summit in 2002 followed by our Mobile Imaging Summits the past three years,
have always been about enabling connections. Connections between executives
from heretofore separate industries, now converging. Connections between
startups and established companies, between entrepreneurs and VCs. 6Sight
goes to the next level by connecting members of the industry with four
additional - and crucial - constituencies: media; analysts; customers; and
"out of the box" thinkers whose points of view can shed new light on our
business, provide new insights on how to convey value and generate profits.

6Sight is about hot new technology, and the myriad ways it improves people's
lives -work, personal, and community. It brings together technologists,
marketers, futurists, artists, educators, high-volume users and members of
the media for a program emphasizing innovative use cases, breakthrough
technologies, and creativity.

The inaugural conference, scheduled for October 25 in Monterey CA, and
co-hosted by the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A) will focus
on the theme of "The Connected Imaging Revolution,": How imaging products
and services, partly by virtue of being themselves connected through a
global network, connect people to each other in new and important ways.

We are building an event that is new and different in tone and content. We
welcome your contributions, and we look forward to seeing you there.

Alexis Gerard
President, Future Image
Author, "Going Visual"

MICROSOFT TO DELIVER NEW PHOTO FILE FORMAT

By Paul Worthington

Most consumers are happy enough with the JPEG format for photo capture and
storage. Professionals and enthusiasts are turning to RAW as faster
processors and cheaper storage make it a more practical format. Nonetheless, Microsoft sees an opportunity -- if not a need -- for another file format, one that it claims delivers better picture quality and data compression than the ancient-by-technology-standards JPEG scheme.

The Windows Media Photo format was publicized this week at the Windows
Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle, WA.

News coverage this week pointed out the obvious problem any new attempt at a
standard has: gaining support from significant software makers such as
Adobe, Corel, and Apple, and getting hardware makers to switch as well. News
articles quoted hardware makers as saying they could not implement a new
capture format until 2008 -- as if this was the first they heard of WMP.

However, the file format was shown to developers three years ago [if not
earlier], when it was dubbed Photon -- back when Windows Vista was still
called Longhorn, and still expected to ship long before XP had its fifth
birthday.

Microsoft says WMP "employs a new, state-of-the-art compression algorithm
optimized for the digital photography market," and offers image quality
comparable to JPEG-2000 with computational and memory performance more
closely comparable to JPEG.

The new format "delivers a lossy compressed image of better perceptive
quality than JPEG at less than half the file size. The same compression
algorithm can also deliver mathematically lossless compressed images that
are typically 2.5 times smaller than the original uncompressed data."

Windows Media Photo will deliver leading lossy and lossless compression
technology, the company claims, "excellent performance," and support for the
widest variety of image formats, including high dynamic range photography
and printer-specific color formats. Microsoft says it "is the only format
that ... enables practical in-device implementation."

We were impressed with the Photon demonstration we saw in June 2003 -- but
we can't at this time see major camera makers shifting from JPEG to WMP
image capture. However, there may be a place for a format that offer significant
compression while maintaining better image quality: RAW shooters who want to
save good-looking copies that are better suited to Web pages or email.

Fluid Lens Startup Gets CIA Funding

By Tony Henning

Rhevision Technology, Inc., a San Diego developer of miniature tunable optical systems, announced the completion of its first venture financing, led by EDF Ventures and joined by In-Q-Tel, the independent investment fund that identifies innovative technologies to support the mission of the Central Intelligence Community (CIA) and the larger Intelligence Community. The funding announcement brought the company to our attention and put them squarely on our radar screen.

“Soon, camera-phones will have image sensors comparable to the quality of digital still cameras. What’s lacking is the optical zoom and auto-focus functions due to size, weight and cost limitations,” says Rhevision’s CEO, Tim Rueth. “Our optical zoom lenses will meet these market demands and offer auto-focus and 3x optical zoom while fitting in the small form factors of new cell phone designs. Our unique and proprietary approach will prove superior to competing approaches.”

Although the company is still essentially in stealth mode, we were able to ferret out a bit of information about Rhevision’s tunable lens systems “that will revolutionize the world of mobile imaging.” (You know that phrase caught our attention.) Developed by Professor Yuhwa Lo’s group at the University of California at San Diego and then spun out into a separate company, the Rhevision approach tunes the focal length of each lens in its system by simply adjusting the fluidic pressure. The body of the lens consists of two back-to-back fluidic adaptive lens chambers that sit either side of a glass substrate. To control the pressure, the researchers use a battery-powered miniature pump coupled to fluid inlet and outlet valves integrated within the chamber. In the design, where the lens can be changed between convex and concave in shape, the team has demonstrated the integration of a telephoto system and a wide-angle system using the same set of liquid lenses.

Changing lens shape enables optical zoom by adjusting focal point ratios for magnification. This approach doesn’t require mechanical motion and is implemented as a very compact module. Key innovations include a piezoelectric microfluidic device to pump fluid through micro channels into a spherical membrane. Resulting pressure deforms the membrane to change lens shape and focal point. Specialized membrane and fluid materials are incorporated within a simple design to ensure long product life and excellent lens characteristics. The miniature camera lens is capable of up to 5x optical zoom (without changing lens distance), focal distance tuning (f#: 0.7 to >100), wide range field-of-view tuning (7 – 65 degrees), and auto-focusing.

Nokia Unveils 3.2MP, 3x Optical Zoom N93

By Tony Henning

Nokia last week took the wraps off the latest round of Nseries handsets, and the flagship N93 is loaded with multimedia goodness. The Nokia N93 features a 3.2-megapixel (2,048 x 1,536 pixels) camera with a Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens, as well as up to 20x digital zoom, auto-focus and close-up mode. The N93 also offers DVD-like video capture — MPEG4 at 30 fps with stereo audio recording and digital stabilization. You can connect the N93 directly to your TV or upload your images and video to online albums or blogs. Nokia has made a deal with Yahoo so its new camera-phones can directly upload full-size photos to the Flickr photo-sharing site. Moreover, you can create high-quality home movies and burn them to DVD with the included Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0 software (for Windows XP only, alas).

The Nokia N93 has an active camera toolbar that displays all available capture features, from exposure value to color tones and white balance. There are dedicated keys for shutter, zoom and flash and also a camera mode key that enables you to switch quickly between image and video capture. On the typical camera-phone, nearly all camera adjustments and controls are buried deep in nested menus and therefore rarely used, so we applaud these much-needed features. The phone features internal memory of up to 50 MB, which can be further expanded with a hot swappable miniSD card of up to 2 GB (a 128 MB card is included), allowing users to capture up to 90 minutes of high-quality video or close to 2,500 full resolution photos. The Nokia N93 includes a stereo FM radio and a digital music player as well as Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) and UPnP (Universal Plug and Play), Bluetooth 2.0, and USB 2.0 via Pop-Port interface and mass storage class support to support drag and drop functionality.

The handset echoes the Rubik’s cube design of the N92, but with a couple of refinements. The camera is still mounted in the hinge, which allows plenty of room for those lovely Zeiss optics, and the big 2.4-inch, QVGA, 262,144-color, 160°-viewing angle screen still rotates in multiple directions so you can use the phone like a regular clamshell, operate the camera pistol-style like a camcorder, or set it flat on a table with the screen in landscape orientation for browsing the web, watching video like a PMP or making hands-free video calls with the CIF (352 x 288) sub-camera, but the post around which it swivels is now at the other end of the hinge — near the zoom and shutter controls instead of the camera lens. There’s also a small 1.1-inch, 128 x 36-pixel, 65,536-color sub-display. All this functionality and versatility comes at a price, of course — an estimated, unsubsidized sales price of approximately €550 euros [almost $700 at today’s exchange rates] and, in this era of ever-slimmer phones, a rather bulky 118.2 x 55.5 x 28.2-mm, 180-gram package (twice as thick and twice as heavy as the Moto Razr V3c, for example). The N93 will be commercially available in July 2006.

CONNECTED IMAGING REVOLUTION --

Thanks to the combined effects of an unprecedented surge in sales of image
capture devices, the Internet, and wireless telecommunications, average
people are being empowered for the first time in history to communicate with
each other using images as readily and easily as they do using words.

This "Connected Imaging Revolution" is the theme for Future Image's
inaugural 6Sight conference, scheduled for October 25 in Monterey CA, and
co-hosted by the International Imaging Industry Association (I3A). The
annual event will bring together technologists, marketers, futurists,
artists, educators, high-volume users and members of the media for a program
emphasizing innovative use cases, breakthrough technologies, and creativity.

Connected Imaging is among the key trends to emerge in recent years at the
intersection of technology development and social evolution, as reported in
the ground-breaking book Going Visual  -- co-authored by Future Image
founder Alexis Gerard, and AVA Mobile founder Bob Goldstein.

"Industry conferences are typically all about features, specifications, and
market statistics. Instead, 6Sight focuses primarily on impact to people's
everyday lives," said Gerard. "The term Connected Imaging communicates value
to users. It's about the myriad ways we can be enriched by imaging tools
that help people connect more effectively with each other - whether for
work, personal, or community purposes. It's about being more informed, more
productive and more in touch. And the 6Sight conference is also about first
looks at exciting new imaging technologies that will expand our horizons."

For more information please visit www.6Sight.com.