NEW YORK-Streaming multimedia via portable devices may be down the road a bit, but the image of a handheld computer or cellular phone as a photograph viewer already is moving sharply into focus.
With a newly announced Secure Digital plug-in “people can take digital pictures, plug into their Palm and view and transfer them to a PC,” said Alan Kessler, chief operating officer of platform and products for Palm Inc.
Kessler spoke last week at “ImageScape 2000-Imaging Beyond the PC,” sponsored by InfoTrends Research Group Inc., Boston.
“We see imaging beyond the PC and wireless digital imaging as the killer apps … and we will show you a few things in the wireless world, even with today’s slower networks, that will surprise you.”
Eastman Kodak Co., for example, has developed the PalmPix Camera application, which appears as an icon on Palm III and IV handhelds and allows them to become viewfinders.
Surveyor Corp. has developed an application usable on the Palm VII that allows download of still views of areas filmed by public Web video cameras. Thus, a person using mapping information and directories also can call up an actual and current image of the destination.
ActiveSky and FunMail.com have developed an application usable in the Palm IIIC that allows people to link animated cartoons to an e-mail message.
“There is convergence around important new standards, and a number of players like Palm and Handspring are pushing the technology, which is moving beyond the PC and beyond physical wires into wireless,” Kessler said.
In North America, a key impediment is that wireless data lacks “a coherent platform to support cohesive digital imaging, although the pieces are coming together,” said Stephen D. Saylor, president of FlashPoint Technology Inc.
Research and development is key to the priorities many players have set, according to Kristy M. Holch, a principal of InfoTrends.
Intel Corp., for example, is embarking on avenues of R&D that are new for the company, said Lorie Wigle, its general manager of Internet imaging services.
“We are making a large-scale effort in the area of wireless communications and have established `wireless competency centers’ in Sweden, China and Japan because the markets are evolving very differently in each country,” she said.
“Also nontraditional for us, we are looking into how to combine a simple usage metaphor and service deliveries solution into multiple devices, especially with the idea of connecting them, as in the home.”
Likewise, FlashPoint’s Saylor said his company is exploring “mobile intelligence within devices and synchronization among mobile clients so the sharing environment opens up.”
Developing and enhancing video imaging for mobile phones is a high priority for Motorola Inc. The company sees this technology as offering a good way for carriers to recoup the high prices they are paying for third-generation spectrum licenses, said Jonathan Ruff, director of commercial products and technologies.
“The average customer doesn’t care about the underlying technology of a cell phone, and the same thing will apply to digital wireless photography. It is the simplicity of the application that matters most,” he said.
