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How often have you sent a postcard on holiday, only to arrive back home before the card reached its destination? Well, such irritations can now be avoided thanks to digital camera and email technology. Now it is perfectly possible to take a holiday snap on the beach and for it to be zooming into your friend’s inbox within minutes. Although, of course, this does mean that you will need to take your laptop on holiday, or alternatively hook your camera up to a PC in an internet café. However, the far easier and more sensible solution is to take a photo on your phone and then to send it direct to your friend’s handset or email account.
Until very recently, sending a photo taken with your phone hasn’t really been worth considering. The first generation of camera phones took such low-resolution snaps that they were barely worth viewing. These days, however, such companies as Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Sharp and others have produced phones with high-quality cameras and many photos are not only good enough to send but also to print out. Such models as the three-megapixel Sharp 903 camera phone produce superb quality images. Camera phones capable of taking higher resolution images are on the cards too with Samsung in Korea even parading a model capable of eight-megapixel snaps.
It is still, however, early days for people sending images back from their holidays via phones for a number of reasons.
Firstly the easiest way to send an image from one handset to another is via a system called Multimedia Messaging (MMS). This has been designed specifically for users sending images from phone to phone, rather than from phone to computer via email. Hence most MMS systems have a maximum image size you can send, so while they might look fine on your friend’s phone they’re not going to be quite up to printing out as souvenirs. Although prices are being reduced across Europe, Multimedia Messages have traditionally been quite pricey to send, not making them the best option for sending virtual postcards.
A growing number of handsets now have email on board and this is clearly a better way of sending images. The images stay their original size and resolution and oddly most European networks charge less to send data
(i.e. the image) than they do to send Multimedia Messages.
What if you fancy taking lots of images? Surely there has to be a better way of sharing your album with your friends? There is. It’s called moblogging, a phenomenon that has been growing steadily over the past few years. Basically it enables the user to set up his or her own online storage space for photos, which can be viewed or downloaded by anyone. Users simply email the images from their phone, add a comment if they wish and then the image is displayed on the site.
By far the most popular moblogging solution is a site called Flickr (www.flickr. com). This has traditionally been used by people for storing images online that they have transferred from their PC using broadband. A growing number are now taking advantage of its moblogging facility and emailing images from their mobiles.
A good alternative is Moblog (www..moblog.co.uk), which is a worldwide service despite its British-based name. It’s an independent site that works in a similar way to Flickr, but has a more developed community feel. New users are often surprised when they join Moblog as friendly fellow mobloggers often say hello and comment on their images. It is a lot less intimidating than it sounds, plus it’s free and very simple to use. The only downside is that the site limits the size of the images you can post. If you want to upload bigger pictures, large enough to print out, you’ll have to pay for a subscription.
While emailing pictures is all well and good, what if your phone doesn’t have an email facility? Well, there is now software for your phone that not only lets you upload images without email, but also gives you the option of automatically sending a picture to a site the second you have taken it. The software is called Shozu (www.shozu. com) and it’s free to use, though you obviously have to pay the data charges for sending the images.
Having holiday snaps online is a fantastic way of sharing your exploits with your friends and family, but for most photographers – whether they’re using a camera or a phone – traditional paper prints are still the best way of saving memories. This is where sites like Snapfish (www.snapfish.com) come in. A huge US site, Snapfish enables users to upload and store their images and offers cheap and easy printing of the photos. In fact, as you’d expect for a US site, it offers services way beyond traditional prints offering images on everything from coffee mugs to underpants.
Finally, if you still like the idea of a postcard being physically sent, there are now companies offering something called MMS postcards. The service, which is available in some European countries but not all, enables users to email an image and text that are then turned into a postcard and sent to any address in the user’s home country.
It might sound a little old fashioned but it has one massive advantage over traditional postcards – it is posted the next day in the home country, pretty much guaranteeing that the person you are sending it to will receive the bespoke postcard long before you arrive home.
Sony Ericsson K800i
The first Sony Ericsson phone to feature Cyber-shot branding. That means it has some of the extras you’d expect on digital cameras rather than mobiles. It takes three-megapixel images and comes with image-stabilising systems and red-eye reduction. Around €400 |
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Nokia N93
This model should be in stores by July. It is Nokia’s camcorder-style phone and takes top-quality moving images as well as 3.2-megapixel snaps. It looks a lot smaller and easier to use too than Nokia’s previous topend camera phone the N90. Around €400 |
Sharp 903
A little long in the tooth now, as it was launched last year, but this Vodafone handset takes fantastic quality three-megapixel images. Well worth investing in. Around €200 |
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