Net service will cater to camera phone users

Digital photo company OurPictures plans to soon introduce a new service for camera phones, a move that hints at the day when cameras in handsets could represent the mainstream way of snapping photos.

OurPictures' competitors, including Shutterfly and Kodak's Ofoto, may respond with their own cell phones services, say sources knowledgeable about the two companies. All three companies have Web sites that offer digital-photo organization, storage, editing and printing. In May, OurPictures also launched a service for sharing digital photos on the Web.

Starting in October, the $2-a-month OurPictures Mobile will let users of camera phones that run the Microsoft and Symbian operating systems send videos and photos to an Internet site, where they will be viewable via any Net-connected PC, cell phone and computer in the United Kingdom and North America, and by some televisions in those regions, according to OurPictures.

Available to any OurPictures member, the mobile service will cater to the one in 10 cell phones that have embedded cameras. Those devices will capture 29 billion photos and videos this year, according to market analysis company InfoTrends. Cell phone cameras and photo-related services are expected to grow in popularity; by 2008, InfoTrends projects, there will be 656 million camera phones in use.

"Camera phones are fundamentally changing the world of digital photography," OurPictures Chief Executive John Paul said in a statement.

But, for now, most camera phone owners have a limited audience for sharing their tiny masterpieces because only camera phones using the same cell phone service provider can swap photo messages. The bottleneck results from cell phone service providers' eagerness to launch a hot new service, each building a slightly different version of photo- and video-messaging services, instead of waiting for an industrywide standard.

Such bottlenecks have also given rise to the use of "moblogs," which are personal Web logs made up of videos and photos shot with a cell phone, to get photos posted online when services are unavailable.

Making Mobile Pictures Simple and Easy to Share

All these mobile image services listed in the article create expensive, unnecessary and complicated actions. On top of that they are all very difficult if not impossible to use if you have pictures that were not taken with your picture phone. Check out this service, its called Make Your Own Mobile Wallpaper. (You can test the service out and learn more about it at www.myomw.com) It can take any image that provides its address to the public and enable the user to create the desired image and send it directly to thier mobile phone. You can also do the same thing with images directly on your pc, that means all those family pictures you have can now rotate on your phone as a screensaver. While other services support a few dozen phones, this application works on over 180 phones and enables friends and relatives all over the world, not just on your carrier, to get customized images on thier mobile phone without subscribing to a service and downloading special software. A number of photo sharing and storage sites already use this service - you can find it on zorpia.com, albumsnaps.com, jerseyevents.com. All these sites allow for the download of approved pictures so their customers can share images with family and friends and not require everyone to be on the same carrier, have the same phone, subscribe for some service and/or download special viewing software. The age of things to come.