if connected

Yesterday, I was distracted by a toddler falling off a low wall onto concrete… and my new’ish Canon 500D followed the child, dropping about 0.75m from my camera shoulder bag. The lens cap flew off on impact.

Astonishingly, the camera seems to work fine. The 500D isn’t IP-rated, to my knowledge. The only mark is a little scratching on the edge of the (cheap kit) lens by the word ‘Canon’. (Incidentally this photo was taken with the iPhone 3GS, which is a big improvement on earlier iPhones for close-ups).

I wish all gadgets were this robust. Full review of the 500D (Rebel T1i or Kiss X3) is here on dpreview.

A valued uberreader spotted that a photo of a London bus in a previous post had been distorted by the iPhone camera.

The bus was moving right to left. It appears that by the time the iPhone camera recorded the bottom of the bus, the bus had moved to the left. So, the bus in the photo has an extremely slanted front, rather than the sheer vertical of the original.

The uberreader reader tested this theory by taking a photo of an office fan. The actual fan only has five blades, but in this photo the fan appears to have many more, due to the scan effect. This photo was taken with the iPhone held vertically and the fan must be spinning clockwise to create this visual illusion.

This is yet more evidence that cameraphones can’t be judged on megapixels alone. The lens, sensor, software, aperture control, type of flash and numerous other things are every bit as important.

Earlier, I wanted to take a photo of an electrically-powered UPS delivery van. The vehicle was stationary while waiting to turn.

Even so, my phone camera was nearly fast enough… But still missed the shot.

The iPhone asked me whether I wanted to allow the camera to use my GPS location yes/no. The seconds delay from that extra dialog meant a bus obscured the van, and then the van turned and was gone.

The phone wasn’t fast enough.

As I tweeted earlier, at 4am this morning I caught someone getting into my car in front of the house. I knocked on the window of our front room and he ran. I bet he was extremely surprised someone was awake.

I thought about taking a photo. But the camera phone I had on me — an iPhone — was no good in the dark and my good camera was upstairs and I didn’t have to the time to find it: I’d have missed the opportunity. Late last year, someone hit my car coming out of a sideroad. I reached for my iPhone to take a photo of the other car and its number plate, but by the time I was ready the car had driven off.

“Make the most of now” is Vodafone’s smart slogan for mobile. It hits the rationale for mobile perfectly: Doing virtually anything costs more using a mobile, from making calls to sending emails, but the immediacy of now makes that higher cost worthwhile.

The speed of now is equally important. Mobile devices need to be really quick to use to make them usable “in the moment.” Mobile phones have a tremendous speed advantage over virtually any other device as they are often already in someone’s hand. If not, they’re placed in an easily accessible pocket, rather than in a bag, or left behind at home.

Good enough speed is rarely enough in those tight moments. And, this is one of those rare situations where subjective speed isn’t sufficient.

It’s actual sheer utility that’s essential. Mobile phones need to be fast as well as feeling fast.

Catching up with blogging….

Almost two weeks ago we were driving back into London on the A40 — three lane urban motorway with no hard shoulder to stop safely — and we suddenly lost all power. I made it into the slow lane, just, and we sat on the grass verge.

Camera fail: I had a real camera with me in my bag, which I left the car with. But the shots below were taken using the cameraphone I had even closer to hand. In the moment, I simply didn’t think to reach for the good camera.

Mobile phones are great. I didn’t need to walk down the carriageway and GPS + Google Maps gave me the name of the road of the turning we’d just passed… which helped the highway patrol people to find us.

The AA were poor to begin with: I started the call saying we were stopped in a dangerous position and had a baby with us. But *after* taking all of our details, only then did they say they couldn’t help and we should call 999 to get the police to tow us somewhere safe!

More car tech fail: When the AA did show they were good, and ended up towing me home. But the AA man’s computer completely refused to talk to the car’s computer. So, the AA could tell one or more coils had blown, as had a fuse, but couldn’t be sure there wasn’t more damage.

Car politics: Apparently we were on the Met’s turf, not Highway. So, there was a delay while we waited for the police to give the OK for the Highway people — who actually turned up — to tow us:-

This year I learnt a pile of new things:

At least one hospital cares little about mobile phone use. As my son was being born, a phone rang in the corner of the operating theatre. My other half started blaming me, but the consultant answered her phone so ending the argument.

Hospital walls are too thick for good 3g reception. I spent many a night browsing online with my laptop in a hospital room on mobile broadband, but it kept falling back to 2G.

Some cameraphones really do have good enough cameras. On an increasing number of occasions I have left my real camera at home, instead taking a mobile. I even went to a wedding with just my cameraphone.

Working for a company that is bought by a larger competitor has plus sides. Can’t talk in detail here.

Flash/SSD drives for laptops transform the convenience of using laptops. It’s their quietness as much as their speed that makes them a pleasure to use. Hopefully in 2009 I’ll be saying how much better their reliability is as well. It’s too soon to say now.

TV set-top boxes are becoming louder than PCs. Plus, they crash about as often, based on my experience with a UK pay TV DVR supported by a little Google searching.

Babies can be distracted from using your laptop with a fake keyboard. But only a real mobile phone will satisfy them.

WiFi works better for location finding in cities than GPS. Mobile handset GPS’ have particularly poor reception indoors. Even dedicated GPS units struggle.

Dell’s next day on-site repair is less convenient than a drop off service. Having to wait at home for several days in succession during a repeated failure to repair a PC is a much greater waste of time than using a repair centre.

Everything you need to stay connected requires power. Having to keep things charged is a major pain. There’s the annoyance and worry of having to keep an eye on the power meter. There’s the hassle of carrying chargers, and, of course, every different phone, mp3 player, laptop, camera, whatever, needs a different and incompatible charger. So, that means carrying a different charger for each gadget. It’s a mess.

This is the holy grail: “No idea. I can’t remember when I charged it, was days ago…” which was a friend’s reply to me earlier today about his latest toy. Guess the gadget.