One of the Benefits of Camera Phones
Seldom do I miss my camera phone for the camera part. The pictures really weren't that good and I never had a great use for it. Strange, because as an employee of one of the world's largest mobile phone service providers I can send or receive all the images I wanted for free. But the recent tragedy in London makes me want to dust off the little bugger and use it for a while rather than my trusty, always reliable Nokia. Consider ...
BBC News reports that "Mobile phones provided some of the more immediate and vivid images of the bomb attacks in London" and became prime sources for plethora of blogs and other Web sites filled with information. Here's an image from that story:
Does anyone else feel a cultural change rumbling along the horizon? If so, you are too late; it's already here. Cable News Network (CNN) started using pre-cursors of today's technology a decade ago in the first Gulf War.
Yahoo! News has a good story along the same lines: "Independent Television (ITV) sent out a mobile phone text message request to hundreds of subscribers to its service seeking any video footage of the events, some of which wound up broadcast, but most of which was of too poor a quality or too graphic to be shown. 'Two years ago, the only place you got home video from was air show disasters and weddings,' said Stuart Thomas, editor of ITV London News. 'But now a large proportion of people in this country are carrying a camera with them all the time, which is just incredible."
MSNBC has a story reminding us that London probably has the most surveillance cameras per capita than any other city. This closed-circuit system may be more valuable with the forensic work than the designers had planned.
Of course, what good is all this technology if it can't be used? SkyNews reports that "Rumours circulated in London on Thursday afternoon that the police or mobile phone companies had brought the network down to prevent the possibility of more bombs being detonated. But London's police chief, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, told a press conference that was not the case. He said the network was kept running so people could find out about loves. 'We did consider it. We do have that ability,' he said."
