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Unlimited Digital Photo memory | |||||||||||||||||
Regardless how many digital photo memory cards you buy, you always end up filling them at the wrong moment... Portable disk drives are useful emptying memory cards when they are full, but could do much more...A "fake" memory card (with no memory) would communicate wireless with such a hard disk, that you can leave in your backpack, in your car... Communication could be Bluetooth, Wi-fi, AirPort, whichever... The memory card simply tells the camera that it is a 160 GB SD card, and pretends that all images are actually inside it. So you can simply use your camera's screen to view images stored on the hard disk, delete them, etc... as with your flash card, just 1000 times bigger. It would be possible to link several cards (and cameras) to the same hard disk (possibly limited to a more high-end/expensive product). The hard disk would have wire connectivity with computers, as existing units do. There should be some access control, by programming each card to allow it to access your hard disk (by inserting it into the drive, or with a computer, a card reader and a dedicated software). These cards could also be linked directly to computers, and allow many applications, like real-time web publishing. As communication times may be noticeable, the cards could actually contain memory, but only as a temporary storage while images are transmitted. Each time a new photo is taken, the oldest image(s) are deleted to save space for the new one (if have been saved to disk already). Hybrid cards with memory and a transmitter could work out of the drive's range for a while, until all memory is filled with unsaved images. If/when wireless communication protocols used by these cards are/become standard, possibilities explode... A variant of this system could use cell phones... Take your photograph (with your high-quality digital camera equipped with a card, or with your lower quality camera embedded into the phone), and it is immediately e-mailed to you, or made available to your account at your phone operator. Of course, for high quality images, communication times and fees would rise accordingly.
lacouture, Nov 27 2004
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Excellent idea. I suggest you get an RSS feed from Engaget and watch for cameras like this soon. Note, however,that you can get a 10 Gig mp3 player that fits on your belt and has a USB port. So some people will go for this low tech, dual use solution, especially nature lovers.
Doesn't sound very good for security.
This sounds like it could have incredible use in the journalism trade, with several reporters taking video or images and all the pictures being sent straight to a central unit where they can be reviewed before the journalists even get back!
What a wonderful new technology for criminals to usurp for illegal use, tapping into your photo files as quickly as you make them..."Wireless" links aren't "direct" connections, they are radio transmissions that can be received by anyone within the effective range of the transmitter. They may be encoded, but limited bandwidth prevents really secure encoding for wireless devices. I use them seldom and don't transmit sensitive information over them.From the terrorist's point of view, what a wonderful and nearly effortless way to obtain many photos of target buildings and/or installations from different angles, and in a very short period of time- just tap into tourists' wireless photo networks...
Of course, there may be sufficient crypto on the link to allow reasonable privacy (unless you're afraid the NSA might be interested in your holiday photos). I work in a company that designs security devices, and I can tell strong data encryption can be embedded into devices smaller than one's nail, and almost as cheap!
Regarding the alledged tremendous benefits to terrorists, I really can't figure out why those terrorists wouldn't just take their own pictures by themselves, if they are in range (which would be quite short for this type of device, anyway)... By the way, they too have free access to Google Earth, now ;-)
I guess we should all be aware of the terrorism threat (how could we not?) and try not to help them, but well, IMHO this argument was a bit hairy! I'm definitely not ready to become so paranoid! Otherwise, I would soon advise this Website being closed ASAP to prevent harmful usage of all the clever ideas in it for terrorist purposes. When we're at it, let's just declare Internet illegal, because it's a great communication tool within terrorist communities... C'mon!
(This was just my one cent)
By the way, encryption does not necessarily impact bandwith. Good cryptosystems usually translate a plaintext into a ciphertext of same length (approximately).
Of course computing power is necessary, but can be kept very reasonable and "hidden" in the data flow (even for rather strong cryptosystems).