Dick suggested that there will be an iPhone gadget to bend the light around to the camera in #227. Was that a joke? That is completely ridiculous.
Nobody cares about video calling. Here in the Netherlands it worked technically, it didn't have any extra costs (other than, at the time, a relatively expensive phone), and I had one, and so did a few of my friends. We never video called. They never video called. There was some research that asked everyone with a video phone if they even cared. Nobody did (had the phone for the nice big display, not for the video calling feature). This makes sense: We're all used to the concept of a phone call. We don't need video because it is far too restrictive (have to LOOK at it, which, even if everyone walked around with a headset or the quality of speakerphones was -phenomenally good-, is still annoying. People call while walking, etcetera) for the meager benefits (attempt to see emotion through pixellated grainy laggy video, joy!). In particular, the main thing it tries to solve (convey emotion) is already done quite adequately by voice. We already subconsciously exaggerate our voice-based emotional cues when we make a phone call - we (modern man) has interned the ability completely already. A video conference call is somewhat different - you're really sitting down for that one, and you are prepared. Therein lies the key: With notebooks and subnotebooks already near ubiquitous, and the notebook data revolution coming any day now (for you iPhone owners that did the right thing and you jailbroke it - welcome to the revolution! Just download pdanet and you're on your way!) - that's the future of video calling. Mark my words: Video calling using mobile phones is a solution in search of a problem. It'll never become popular. I'm not sure if apple has consciously decided that video calling is a crock when they designed the iPhone, or if they went for the slightly less definitive 'meh, we'll wait until someone else makes this work'. Note also how absolutely nobody is complaining that iPhones have no front cam. Either way, using glass or plastic to warp the camera around would require a giant and very expensive widget, whereas your average simple webcam costs maybe 5 bucks. Assuming you can pump the video data into the iPod connector and the restrictive iPhone SDK allows you to get at this data, a cheap dongle that contains its own camera would be far more likely. That's presuming that people care about video calling - which they don't. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
