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Kaika has been SmartMobbed

Screen capture of Smart Mobs web page featuring moblog and Kaika

Stuart Mudie of Blethers.com was nice enough to write me and let me know that my moblog had made an appearance over at Smart Mobs, the site about “mobile communication, pervasive computing, wireless networks, [and] collective action” that accompanies the book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold.

As you can see from the above screen grab, Kaika also made it up on the site. I called Naoko over to the computer to show her, and after explaining a bit about the site and who Howard was, she remarked, “boy, Kaika-kun is already becoming famous.” (Hmmn, I can see a headline: “5 WEEK OLD TYKE IN TOKYO ‘MOBBED’ BY FANS AFTER GETTING SMARTMOBBED”. Do they make shades for 5-week olds?)

The mention was occassioned by something Stuart had written a month and a half ago that I stumbled upon while compiling a list of “what is moblogging” article links for the moblog:

It won’t be long before new fathers, instead of handing out cigars, send pictures of their new-born children live to their moblogs from the birthing room. This is also news, of a kind – news that is of interest to a restricted group of people, admittedly, but worthy of record nonetheless.

I wish I had read this when he had published it, it would have hastened the purchase of the new phone, and indeed it would have been great to have moblogged pictures from the hospital.

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A San Francisco storefront, post September 11

San Francisco's Clement Street, October 23, 2001: click for larger image

Clement Street storefront, San Francisco, October 23, 2001. I was contacted the other day by a professor at a medium-sized university in the midwestern United States, who was interested in purchasing the above photo from me. (I believe this is the first time anyone has ever offered to pay for a photo of mine). He wanted to display the photo at his office at the university. As he wrote,

You see, things here are a bit jingoistic, and your photo captures quite clearly that there is diversity within patriotism– A fact which seems to be escaping many these days.

I was a bit taken aback that someone is actually looking at these photos from days gone by, and a bit embarrased that they apparently are. But I do have to say I’ve always enjoyed this particular photo, in part because it seems to capture San Francisco for me, the reflection of Green Apple bookstore can be seen, where I spent many an hour (and dollar!), although I actually despised that store and its obnoxious staff; the archetypal bay windows; the Chinese produce stores; even the light of the photo, and the color of the sky, oozes San Francisco for me. Hmmn, I feel a San Francisco photo series coming on….

(Just for the record, I sent a printable Photoshop file of the photo to the professor, gratis).

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I can’t shut up about my new camera, er, I mean mobile phone

mydesktopS.jpg

Excuse me if this comes across as gloating, but I continue to marvel at my new mobile phone. I just discovered tonight that in addition to the decent-enough 120 x 160 pixel images it takes that I have been uploading to my new “moblog” sidebar on the right (see “Wandering Muses” — I’m not completely happy with the title but I can’t remember my original better title!), the phone also takes 640 x 480 pixel images. The above image is an example of one I just took now, of my actual desktop (some of you I’m sure will recognize which application is up on the computer screen). I did crop it a bit, as it was a little dark on the edges (the camera doesn’t have a flash, although it does emit a beam of “light” if I turn that setting on), and I’ve shrunk it down for inclusion here.

I will try to take a few more of these larger photos tomorrow outside to better assess the quality, but I may have to re-think my original sidebar idea because of it. At any rate, for now I’m holding off on going crazy with it (or some of my phone’s other features, like GPS), until I get my next phone bill so I can assess just how much all this is going to cost me. Naoko has made it clear that she’s only paying for basic service and that the rest will have to come out of my monthly allowance.

This photo comes at you via 300,000 pixels, or 0.3 megapixels, a far cry from my 3.3 megapixel Olympus digital camera, to say nothing of the newer 4.0 and 5.0 megapixel digital cameras on the market. And next month, DoCoMo will start selling their 1.3 megapixel camera phones. However, as this Yomiuri article points out, it’s only a matter of time before 2 and 3 megapixel phones are released. I have to tell you, only 2 days removed from receiving my new phone, I’m already looking forward to 10 months from now when I can change my phone yet again, most probably for a 1.3 or thereabouts megapixel camera phone. And as long as handset prices remain relatively low, it seems silly not to. (According to that article I previously mentioned, more than 50% of mobile phones sales in Japan in 2002 were due to customers replacing older model phones.)

Another thing I relized tonight, despite the fact I call it a mobile phone, I have yet to actually use the phone part of it; I have no idea how it sounds, or the reception, or anything connected to that aspect of this gadget. That’s probably more telling than anything as to how I view this new toy.