Reiter's Camera Phone Report

Evernote beta searches camera phone photo text on computers, Web, phones

Erick Schonfeld in “TechCrunch” writes about the note-keeping program Evernote that has launched a private beta version for searching text in images — such as from camera phones — in Evernote’s client for computers, on a Web version and a Windows Mobile phone.

I have Evernote (not the beta version, though) and it’s especially useful with my Tablet PC for taking notes and storing them in one continuous file that’s easy to search.  You can also highlight information from Web pages and insert it into Evernote.

The beta version greatly expands the functionality for searching within images as well as being able to access the information in almost any situation, whether you’re looking at the notes stored on your desktop or laptop computer, using another computer to search your notes on the Web or searching your notes from a cellular phone.

Evernote has a video in QuickTime as well as in YouTube (see below) that does a good job of highlighting many of the functions.

For example, the video demonstrates searching for key words in a label on a bottle of sake (see below).

The video also shows searching for key words on a photo of a Virgin America ticket to Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Show as well as the word “Venetian” (i.e., Venetian Hotel in Vegas) that’s handwritten on a Post-it note (see below).

Expanding the usefulness of camera phones

Evernote opens all sorts of opportunities for using a camera phone to snap photos of, for example, business cards, train and plane tickets, receipts, signs, etc., storing the information and searching it on computers and phones.  Notes can be geo-tagged, if the cellular phone supports this capability.

By default all of your notes on the Web are private.  But it’s possible to share your notes.

Schonfeld quotes Phil Libin, the CEO of Evernote, saying, “The main idea of Evernote is to create an external brain.”

Changing behavior?

If Evernote’s capabilities to search text in images really works as well and as reliably as in its video, the software certainly will be extremely useful.  I’ve certainly written in this weblog about the value of taking camera phone photos of information you want to remember.

Schonfeld writes, “It is also a new behavior that won’t come naturally to many people.  People might look at you strangely if you insist on taking a picture of every single person in a meeting with your camera phone and their business cards. 

“But I’ve seen people do stranger things in meetings.  I could see Evernote being used incidentally at first and then the habit growing over time.”

How many times have you forgotten a person’s name?  It would be interesting if taking a photo of a person along with his/her business card would become commonplace.  Evernote also is working on the ability to search images based on their type and on facial expressions, such as sad or happy.

Developing mobile phone clients

In addition to its Windows and Windows Mobile clients, Evernote is developing software for the Mac and cellular phones using Java and Google/Open Handset Alliance Android platform and the Apple iPhone, the article notes.  The Evernote video uses an Android emulator on a Mac to demonstrate searching for “auto” and “collision” on a Post-it note with information about an automobile body shop (see left). 

I saw a version of this Android phone during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  The software worked, although neither the handset nor the applications had much of a “wow” factor.  To be fair, they were early versions used to demonstrate hardware and software.

LG Viewty five megapixel camera phone records in DivX format

The LG Viewty (KU990) five megapixel camera phone (see left) — that can record video at an amazing 120 frames per second (four times faster than the “best” camera phones) — is able to record in the DivX format, according to LG.  DivX is a well known codec that can compress video into relatively high quality images using MPEG-4 format.

For years many consumers have been talking and writing about their “crappy camera phone photos.”  But with two megapixel camera phones — and high resolutions — poor quality still photos are becoming less of an issue….assuming the user has one of the better camera phones.

Good video recording quality is more difficult to accomplish than good quality photos.  Most camera phones produce poor videos.

The higher quality camera phones from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and LG, among others, offer video recording at 30 frames per second.  This is enough to produce rather good videos — if the lighting is sufficient and you know what you’re doing!

Unique

As far as I know, the Viewty is the only camera phone that offers recording at 120 fps and now incorporates DivX capabilities.  Just as camera phone photos are improving, so are videos.

But it will still take a few years until the typical camera phone produces good quality videos, let alone anything that comes close to the Viewty’s now-unique capabilities.  I certainly would like to be able to test the Viewty’s 120 fps video recording capabilities!

Kurweil, National Federation of the Blind debut Nokia N82 text reading software

Kurzweil Technologies and the National Federation of the Blind have teamed up to develop software that enables Nokia’s new N82 five megapixel camera phone to “read” printed materials that are photographed (see left), the press release says.  The two organizations have created a new venture, K-NFB Reading Technology, that today announced the product that’s part of its text-to-speech Reader Mobile devices that read different types of text ranging from books to currency to address labels.

The release says, “Blind users hear the contents of the document read in clear synthetic speech, while users who can see the screen and those with learning disabilities can enlarge, read, track, and highlight printed materials using the phone’s large and easy-to-read display. 

“The combination of text-to-speech and tracking features makes interpreting text much easier for individuals with learning disabilities.”

Capabilities

According to K-NFB Reading Technology’s Web site, the Reader Mobile line of products:

*  Reads most printed documents, from letters and memos to pages in a book 
*  Reads address labels and package information and instructions
*  Easily recognizes U.S. currency 
*  Displays each sentence visually and highlights each word as it is read
*  Stores thousands of pages using easily obtainable flash memory
*  Transfers text files to and from computers or Braille note takers 
*  Adjusts reading speed to suit user’s preference

Ray Kurzweil has been a pioneer in developing products for the blind for more than 20 years, including optical character recognition and print-to-speech readers (see right).  (He’s involved in a variety of fascinating scientific ventures, such as the integration of the Internet with nanotechnology and the human brain.  I enjoyed the book.)  The Mobile Reader is a great example of benefits of wireless imaging that were never imagined when the first camera phones were introduced in Japan.

Testing FixMyMovie's enhancement software with my Pearl 8120 videos

I wasn’t going to let my technology consulting friend Jim Opfer have all the fun testing MotionDSP’s FixMyMovie’s video enhancement software with his RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8120, as I wrote in the previous article.  So I uploaded my own 8120 videos to see whether there was any or much of a difference.

I uploaded three brief videos.  When a video is uploaded, FixMyMovie enhances the first ten seconds and sends an e-mail informing you.  When you click on the link in the e-mail, you may watch those ten seconds and then click to instruct FixMyMovie to finish enhancing the entire video.

Also, the FixMyMovie Web site says it takes a few minutes to process the first ten seconds and, while it’s doing that, you may view still images of the original and enhanced video as a preview of what’s to come.

Three embedded videos

The first video I uploaded is at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. and across from the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pond in front of it (see below).  There’s a fair amount of movement as I walk to the sculpture of Lincoln, pan 180 degrees or so around the Memorial and walk to get a shot of the Monument.

The second video was around a man-made pond not far from the Lincoln Memorial and near the Washington Monument (see below).

The third video is at the entrance to Sugarloaf Mountain in Dickerson, Maryland, where there is a small pond.  It was in the fall and the leaves were very colorful.  But the Pearl’s video recording capability is so poor that you really can’t get an idea of how nice it was (see below). 

Yes, I know how to take good videos.  I make sure the lighting is sufficient.  I stand with both hands on the camera to keep it as steady as possible, and when I pan I generally swivel from the waist without moving my legs.  So there!

The Pearl 8120’s two megapixel camera for still photos isn’t bad.  If you want to check out photos of the Washington Monument area (see below) and Sugarloaf Mountain (as well as San Francisco) look at my 8120 moblog, one of a couple of dozen for individual camera phones I test.

(The two megapixel image above would look so much better if it were cropped a bit and lightened slightly with more contrast!  But I don’t do that on my moblogs because I want people to see the true quality, or lack thereof, of each phone’s camera with software enhancements.)

FixMyMovie makes a difference

As I wrote in the previously entry, to view both the original and enhanced videos playing simultaneously, click the second (“compare”) icon to the right of the audio icon of those embedded videos above.  That’s really the best way to determine the differences.

There is a definite difference between the original videos and the videos enhanced by software on FixMyMovie’s server.  The enhanced videos typically are lighter and, sometimes, a bit sharper.  There isn’t much additional sharpening, but you can see it if you watch closely. 

Jim Opfer alerted me to several FixMyMovie features, including the ability to view still photos taken from each video and moving an “enhanced block” in the photo to see the image enhancement within that square block (see below).  This feature may be viewed as a moderately sized image or full-screen.

Split screen comparison

Another feature enables you to move a vertical line from left to right across a still photo to see the original image on the left side and the enhanced image on the right (see below).  As with the “enhanced block,” this split screen feature may be viewed as a moderately sized image or in full screen mode.

The enhanced image of the Washington Monument and the pond is definitely lighter, although there’s not much improvement in the sharpness.

MotionDSP's FixMyMovie enhances video quality from RIM's Pearl 8120

My technology consultant friend, Jim Opfer, alerted me to FixMyMovie, the beta video enhancement site (see below) of MotionDSP, and has posted two “raw” and “enhanced” videos taken with his Research in Motion (RIM) BlackBerry Pearl 8120.

I’m a big fan of BlackBerrys, and RIM is nice enough to give me lots of their phones to test.  I love the keyboard and e-mail push, and the two megapixel camera and music playing capabilities are good, too.

Also, the quality of viewing videos on the latest BlackBerrys, such as the 81xx series and the Curve 83xx series, is excellent — when the video is recorded by a good camcorder.  I watch video podcasts, such as CrankyGeeks and CNET TV, and they look great. 

However, as I’ve written, I am not a fan of the quality of the video recordings made with the 8120 (see above left), RIM’s first phone with recording capability.  The quality is mediocre, to be kind and, well, often pretty awful.

Enhancing video quality

MotionDSP’s business is image enhancement software, specifically video enhancements.  CNET News has published a good article on MotionDSP, and the company has a partnership with In-Q-Tel, an investment firm allied with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The ability to enhance videos and still photos from videos is, obviously, valuable to the CIA.  In addition, news organizations and other sites that accept consumer videos could benefit from enhancing images, as MotionDSP noted in a press release. 

Of course, video enhancement also is valuable for just plain folks who want to improve the quality of their images, which is what Jim is testing.

Jim posted the original and the FixMyMovie enhanced video taken at a man-made lake near his house.  Click on the “compare” button that’s the second button to the right of the audio icon to view both versions simultaneously (in the embedded version below).

There is a definite difference between the original on the left and the enhanced on the right.  The enhanced video is noticeably brighter, as is very evident for the grass in a still image I clipped (see below).  However, there is only a very, very small improvement (maybe?) in the overall sharpness, and it doesn’t make a difference, at least to my eyes.

Second video enhancement test

However, Jim posted another raw and enhanced video in the rain of two cars in a carport and the enhanced video is not only brighter but it also looks sharper (see below). 

Processing specifics

Jim says FixMyMovie took about 45 minutes to an hour to process the first video at the man-made lake and about 20 minutes to process the second video of the two cars.  He says FixMyMovie sends an e-mail when the processing is completed.

Of course, the e-mail might not have been sent immediately after the processing occurred, and processing Jim’s videos might have not been immediate if they were in queues.  In other words, I don’t know exactly how long it takes to process a video!

The videos are available for viewing on FixMyMovie’s Web site (in private or public mode) and also may be downloaded from the site in QuickTime and Windows Media formats, Jim says.

Chyron's WAPSTR part of future of news reporting

This isn’t “hot news,” but I’m posting this as much for myself to think about as anything.  “Seeking Alpha” has published an article that’s bullish about the business opportunities for a television graphics company, Chyron, and the company provides camera phone products for newsrooms.

The brief item about Chyron that caught my eye notes, “Other initiatives include WAPSTR [see below], a system of integrating user content flawlessly and immediately into newscasts.  Anyone with a camera phone can send and image directly to a local TV station by phone, and within seconds the station can have the image on air as breaking news.”

I’ve written before in this weblog and, more frequently, in my mobile TV weblog, about the revolutionary aspects of camera phones for journalism.  The future of news is not just journalists transmitting camera phone images and videos, but also — more revolutionary — consumers being able to transmit streaming video live from camera phones.

I discuss this in greater detail in one of my weekly CMP Publications columns, “The Serendipitous Broadcaster Revolution.”

More photos, some videos (ugh) from RIM's Pearl 8120 (not yet in U.S.)

I’ve posted a few dozen photos and a few videos I’ve shot with Research in Motion’s new Pearl 8120 that has video recording capability (a first for the Pearl series), plus a two megapixel camera (an increase from 1.3 megapixels) and WiFi (also new).

The 8120 isn’t available in the United States, yet, but I assume it will be offered this year.  The Pearl 8130, with GPS instead of WiFi, will be available this month from Verizon Wireless and Sprint.

The photos (I posted the first batch of photos a couple of weeks ago) aren’t bad at all for a two megapixel camera phone.  The phone has a 3x and 5x digital zoom, but I never use a digital zoom (if you need to zoom, do it with an image editing program).

Mediocre or worse

The videos, however, are, at best, mediocre.  I say “mediocre” when viewed on the 8120’s screen or in a small QuickTime window. 

However, when viewed on the Web in a larger window, such as on YouTube (see below), the results are quite awful.  (If you’re viewing this video on YouTube’s Web site you’re able to click a box immediately to the right of the little loudspeaker to reduce the size so it looks closer to the size you’d see on the 8120’s display.)

I uploaded three videos I took this weekend of the pretty fall scenery at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland to both YouTube and Vimeo.  YouTube is notorious for compressing videos so they look pretty bad, so I also tried Vimeo.  Unfortunately, the 8120’s videos look bad there, too.

One of the videos I shot was near the entrance to the mountain’s recreational area with a small pond with the leaves on the trees changing colors.  The video is terrible but the photo of the scene where the video was shot looks fine, although I probably would lighten it and improve the contrast (see below).

I’m a fan of RIM’s products (that, as an analyst, I am able to test for extended periods) and welcome the company’s inclusion of video recording capabilities.  I hope, though, that software updates will improve the quality of the videos because they sure could use it.

More about 8120, RIM wireless imaging

If you want to read more information about the 8120, the first part of a two-part article I wrote about the phone and RIM’s wireless imaging strategy was posted today on the mobile video/mobile TV site “Mobi-lize.”

By the way, I wrote in the Mobi-lize article that RIM will offer a software upgrade for Curve 83xx owners so that handset also be able to record video.  The upgrade is scheduled for early next year.

Camera phone photographer Henry Reichhold to exhibit panoramas in London

If you’re interested in camera phone artwork and are in London at the end of October or early November you might want to see an exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall.  Camera phone photographer Henry Reichhold is exhibiting at the “Nokia N95 Connected Worlds” exhibition from October 24 to November 6, 2007 as well as in Nokia’s island in the Second Life virtual reality Web site (see below).

As the advertising materials say, the photos represent nine cities on five continents.

Photographer Reichhold has been taking camera phone images for years and has done a variety of work for Nokia.  An article in PhotoReview says the Nokia N95 images are “huge panoramic pictures each created from a collage of many files,” according to Reichhold.

N95’s options

He integrates up to 20 different photos with Realviz Stitcher Unlimited to create a single image up to eight meters long, the article notes.  Reichhold typically doesn’t use a tripod for daylight shots and uses the N95’s burst mode to automatically take six images in succession, he says.

When Reichhold’s shooting this way he’ll often overlap each image by one-third.  He notes that the N95, that takes five megapixel images, offers manual white balance. 

Also, the N95 can lock in the focus by pressing the shutter half-way so he’ll pan along a scene until he see the exposure he likes and then shoot in burst mode.

“Ghost City” techniques

Describing Reichhold’s “Ghost City” photo of Hong Kong (see above), PhotoReview says “a series of shots was first taken to capture all the mid-tones (approximately 15 shots).  This is then repeated twice to shoot the shadow and highlight areas, making for a total of about 45 shots.

“The best images are then combined in Stitcher Unlimited to create the final picture.  Stitcher Unlimited is excellent at blending the tones, and any other problems can be resolved by using Photoshop to tackle issues such as colour noise and those occasions where manual stitching is the only solution.”

More N95 photos

I like the N95 and have used it for months as part of Nokia’s blogger program.  You really can take excellent photos, although I do miss not having an optical zoom as well as more advanced manual controls.

I have established a moblog of N95 photos I’ve taken (that can’t hold a candle to the quality of Reichhold’s images) as well as creating a musical slide show of photos I took around the Vietnam Veterans Memorial during Memorial Day 2007.

Apple's new iLife '08 + .Mac Web Gallery integrates with iPhone

When Steve Jobs on August 7 presented Apple’s new iMacs and revised software packages (see above), he discussed iLife ‘08 and .Mac integration with the iPhone.

iLife’s iPhoto module can easily upload photos and videos to the “Web Gallery” (see above) on Apple’s online storage/application service .Mac.  Photos and videos uploaded from a computer to .Mac can be downloaded by the iPhone as well as the iPhone being able to easily retrieve a list of the user’s Web Gallery albums. 

The iPhone can easily upload a photo to the Web Gallery and Apple has added a fourth navigation bar — Send to Web Gallery — to the iPhone’s camera/photo screen in addition to the existing “Use as Wallpaper,” “Email Photo” and “Assign To Contact” (see left).

(Grammatical note to Apple:  The “t” in Send to Web Gallery is lower case; the “t” in Assign To Contact” is upper case.  Considering Apple’s attention to detail, shouldn’t it be one or the other?)

Videos configured for iPhone

One more iPhone feature:  Apple’s dramatically enhanced iMovie, that’s bundled with iLife ‘08, can easily configure a video for viewing on a mobile device, such as the iPhone or an iPod well as for viewing on a computer or via Apple TV (see below).  The “Share” navigational menu (see left) is used to configure a video for iTunes so it can be synched to an iPod or an iPhone.

By the way, Jobs says videos in iMovie can be configured to a higher resolution than a DVD….assuming it was shot in a high resolution, of course.  All the iMovie videos also may be uploaded to the .Mac Web Gallery so there’s no reason to mail a DVD because of the high resolution that may be viewed on the Web, Jobs says.

BlackBerry Curve 8300 versus Pearl 8100 image quality: My analysis

For the past few weeks I've been testing the photo quality of the almost-available BlackBerry 8300 "Curve" with its two megapixel camera, courtesy of Research in Motion (RIM).

For the first couple of weeks or so I was using beta software, but commercial hardware.  I posted photos with this beta code on a BlackBerry 8300 moblog (see below).

As I previously wrote, I was disappointed with the quality of the photos.  I thought the colors sometimes were dull and, in bright sunlight, often overexposed.

Just a few days ago I downloaded the commercially-ready "gold" code for the 8300.  I was told that the photo quality should be better.

Comparing photos using PhotoShow

Well, for the past few days I have wandered around the Washington, D.C. area and the Chevy Chase/Bethesda, Md. suburbs taking lots of photos.  During the past couple of days I've carried the 8300 as well as the BlackBerry 8100 "Pearl" with its 1.3 megapixel camera that I've had for many months (again, courtesy of RIM).

I took more the 30 35 photos each with the 8300 and the 8100, just seconds apart.  I have posted those 60 70-plus photos in a "musical" slide show on Simple Star's PhotoShow Web site, a very nice way to quickly develop slide shows, as well as embedding it here, obviously.

(The music should be off by default, but it can be turned on.  Also, if you've got a broadband connection you might want to click the "View full size" link and, when the page opens, click "View Large" to see, duh, larger images.  I don't think the image quality suffers when viewed in the largest size.)

** Note:  When I posted this very early Monday morning, the photo captions displayed just fine in Firefox and Internet Explorer.  However, I now see that the captions aren't displaying in Firefox!  I don't know why, but I have sent a customer support request to Simple Star/PhotoShow.  Customer support doesn't start until 9:00 a.m. PDT -- wake up!

In the meantime, I have two suggestions:  Open this weblog or the PhotoShow link in IE (yeah, I, too, almost never use IE) or just remember that the first photo is from the Curve 8300 followed by the same photo taken with the Pearl 8100, followed by another photo from the Curve, etc.  Sorry for the inconvenience; it was working fine when I posted it.

Never mind.  It's working fine now.  I can see the captions.

Thanks Robert!

Thank you Robert Scoble of Podtech for recording interviews here and here (see left) with Simple Star that sparked me to look at the site.  I watched the interviews late this evening at exactly the time I was wondering how I could easily post comparisons of those dozens of photos from the two BlackBerrys without lots of work. 

PhotoShow didn't eliminate all the work, but it sure made it easy to create a way for all of you to see in succession first the 8300 photo and then the same one taken with the 8100.  I wish PhotoShow had a bit more flexibility, such as allowing me to specify slide transitions rather than accepting the standard template that uses a multitude (too many!) of transitions within the show.  I'd much prefer to use only one or two transition formats.

But overall, PhotoShow is very nicely done and I intend to spend more time playing around with it.  And, it even has a fair number of classical music selections to accompany slide shows; thanks Simple Star for offering more than the typical current musical slop.

Pearl vs. Curve:  Verdict

So how do the two stack up?

I've always thought the Pearl's camera produced better than average 1.3 megapixel camera phone photos -- certainly at the time it debuted last fall.  So I hoped the Curve's somewhat higher resolution would produce even better images.

With the Curve's "gold" code, the images do indeed appear better....sometimes.  The colors seem a bit more vibrant than the Pearl's and they aren't as completely washed out in bright sunlight as with the beta imaging code.

To stay with the "gold" image, the Curve's colors are warmer than the Pearl's.  Pearl images are soften less vibrant and have somewhat of a blue tinge.

However, there's sometimes too much Curve gold!  As with the beta code -- in sunlight images sometimes are much too yellow and the detail is "yellowed out."  The Pearl's images are never (that I've found, at least) overexposed like the Curve's and, as a result, sometimes produce more realistic color.

Too much like popcorn butter!

Look at this example taken with the Curve with its gold code:

"Gold" is right!

Now look at the photo taken a few seconds later with the Pearl:

Yep, there's a big difference.  The Pearl's image is much better exposed, although the Curve's colors are more vibrant.  (And I think I'm not even using the most current Pearl operating system, although I don't know if the current OS offer better image quality.)

Fair is fair

But except for bright sunlight, the Curve's photos typically are better than the Pearl's.  Look at this photo, that I shot in downtown Washington, D.C. when I was using the Curve with its beta code.

The SunTrust bank building in the background might be a bit too yellow, but the building really is bright yellow!

Look at this photo taken with the Curve, using gold code, of a small creek underneath a major street in Chevy Chase, Md.

Now look at the same scene taken with a Pearl.

The Curve's colors are obviously warmer and the green leaves are more vibrant.  I prefer the Curve photo.  However, the yellow color on the Curve's image probably should be toned down slightly.

Establishing a happy medium

I'd like to see a happy medium between the Pearl and the Curve, maintaining the Curve's more vibrant colors but modifying the white balance so it isn't as yellow and detail-destroying in bright sunlight.

But take a look for yourself and view the PhotoShow I produced.  A few of the photos seem too blurry, either because I moved or because it was quite windy for much of the time I was taking the comparison photos.

As I've written previously, overall I like the Curve and I think it will be a big seller.  But its imaging software still needs some tweaking.

Just two more features

Both the Pearl and the Curve certainly would benefit from manual exposure settings, -2 to +2 or -3 to +3.  This can make a big difference.

And, I still want some sort of lens cover!  Without a way to protect the lens, the Pearl and Curve lenses are accidents waiting to happen.

LCDs in bright light

Since I don't want to end on a sour note about the Curve, I should note that its LCD is excellent for viewing images in bright sunlight.  Many other phone screens almost completely wash out in bright light, making it almost impossible to see what what you're photographing

The Curve's screen is one of the best; it's significantly better than the Pearl's.

Also, the Curve's LCD can be set to "full screen" when taking photos so the entire real estate is used to display the image rather than showing a row of parameters (flash, photo storage space, white balance) on the bottom.

Stop the flash!

Update:  Very early Tuesday morning (around 12:30 a.m.), I took more than a dozen photos around my neighborhood with both phones.  I wanted to take photos at night.

I found, however, that I couldn't turn off the Curve's flash.  I set it to "off" but the %^@#$! flash still fired!  I especially wanted to take images without the flash, such as close-up photos of lighted shop windows.

The Pearl's flash did turn off.

I have added about a dozen of these night photos at the end of my PhotoShow slide show above, although I didn't include the images with flash.  The Curve's images generally were better than the Pearl's.

Time to contact RIM's technical experts about the flash situation.