July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

OK, we get it, Nokia. Your Lumia cameras are pretty darned great for low-light shooting.

Nokia has just released a video showing just how well the camera on its new Lumia 928 Windows Phone performs at night compared to the iPhone 5 and Galaxy S III (I guess even Nokia is waiting in line for a Galaxy S4).

Not surprisingly, the Lumia 928′s 8.7 megapixel PureView shooter smokes the competition with sharper images, better colors, and less blur (the Lumia’s optical stabilization is a big help with that). It’s based on technology from Nokia’s 808 PureView phone, which was notable for its astounding 41 MP camera. Unfortunately, we still don’t know how much different the 928′s camera is from the Lumia 920, which had an 8MP PureView camera.

Nokia seems to have learned its lesson from its controversial faked Lumia 920 promotional video, which ended up overshadowing much of that phone’s great camera tech. It looks like the company shot this latest video right on the Lumia 928 at the Adventureland theme park in New York.

Nokia will officially unveil the Lumia 928 next week in London. Judging from a premature print ad, it’ll eventually land on Verizon Wireless in the U.S.

We are working with UK Trade & Investment to showcase the United Kingdom's thriving start-up and investment scene through a series of posts and video interviews at SXSW. Check out all of the coverage here. As always, VentureBeat is adamant about maintaining editorial objectivity.

When it comes to 3D imaging cameras, such as those used in video games and for 3D printers, your options are kind of limited unless you want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on multiple pieces of equipment. This fact alone makes the $1,800-$2,800 Lynx A Camera from Austin-based startup Lynx Laboratories all the more impressive.

“Really, it’s kind of stupid that nobody is making highly sophisticated cameras that can do more than one thing at a time, like with (camera-specific) apps,” Lynx Labs co-creator and CEO Chris Slaughter told me during last night’s startup crawl at SXSW. “We’re looking for the low-hanging fruit for people who want 3D imaging data and offering them a way to actually do something with it.”

The camera records all angles of a non-moving object and then displays it on screen. As you can see in the videos below, the team recorded a guy dressed in an iPhone costume who was sitting on a giant bean bag. Once the image was processed, you could see the dimensions of the costume and bean bag as if you were changing the viewing angle on a video game. In addition to object modeling, the Lynx Camera can also do motion capture (for use in games and animation) and scene modeling and can record for green screens.

The startup, run by six current students at UT Austin, already has a $150,000 funding grant from the university and a patent on the technology. Additionally, the team has raised $82,000 from a Kickstarter campaign that still has another nine days left before closing.

“The market opportunity here is just incredible,” Slaughter said. He explained that the 3D imaging tech alone would be useful for many industries, including healthcare, national defense, game development, shipping, and more.

Slaughter said the cameras can be produced in about two hours. The team currently has about 40 orders from the Kickstarter campaign.

Photo by Tom Cheredar

Goldy Bardin is a creative director at Organic, Inc.

CES 2013 was full of innovators—all the big names in technology you would expect, plus a host of surprising startups. Their bright minds and smart designs didn’t disappoint, for the most part.

But as I walked the floors, two brands stood out to me: Fujifilm and Polaroid. Both are once-great analog brands that have have had to make the leap to digital. Over the years, both have expanded their core product lines with various consumer electronics, but both brands have declined substantially since their glory days.

So I took a closer look to see how these tried and true brands are keeping pace with the amazing innovation that’s happening in 2013.

Polaroid

I started with Polaroid. As a marketer, I was curious about how they were differentiating themselves from innovative brands like Sony and LG. As I explored their booth, I was intrigued by the archival displays from their past. They truly are a nostalgia brand. I still remember my first Polaroid camera and how fun it was to instantly see the photo I had taken. Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder and inventor of the instant camera, really understood the value of instant gratification.

At first I was impressed by their new iM1836 Interchangeable Lens connected camera with Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean.” A great idea. But as soon as I picked up the camera it felt, well, cheap. It took a while to start up and getting from screen to screen was glitchy and slow. There was no “instant” anything. And it wasn’t gratifying.

Granted, this was a display model that had been handled by thousands of attendees, but it was a far cry from the Samsung Galaxy Android-enabled camera, which was pleasing to the eye, incredibly fast, and also featured great apps like Best Face. That said, why would I pay for an extra data plan for any connected camera when I could just deck out my phone with the sleek i.am.plus foto.socho?

I also checked out another new device—the Polaroid Kids Tablet. I used to market Leapfrog products, which are really kid-friendly and intuitive, so I was excited to check it out. The design was cute, but definitely skewed toward younger pre-school aged children. It runs on Android Ice Cream Sandwich, so the interface is somewhat intuitive, with icons that kids who can’t read yet can most likely interpret. However, the navigation buttons were small and butted up next to the beveled chassis, so they were hard to reach, even for smaller fingers.  The main features seemed to be indestructability and parental controls. A pretty good idea, but the overall design was a disappointment.

Polaroid has been making quite a few announcements lately, including a new retail strategy that includes Fotobar storefronts where you can print your digital photos. However, as a Creative Director, and someone with affinity for their brand, I wish they would innovate products and develop a marketing strategy that embraced the notion of instant gratification. The iM1836 camera and Kids Tablet seemed like attempts to fill perceived gaps in the market, but didn’t really deliver on the strength of the brand heritage. Success of the Fotobar storefronts remains to be seen.

Fujifilm

As I wandered in the Fujifilm booth, I immediately raised an eyebrow at their Instax line of instant cameras. Super cute, Hello Kitty-like cameras that print instant photos in multi-colored Polaroid-esque frames. I would love to have seen a product like this from Polaroid, but they’ve only recently (and timidly) re-embraced instant cameras with prompting from enthusiasts like The Impossible Project.

I was really interested in how Fujifilm was faring in the transition from film to digital, especially given the recent demise of Kodak. I thought back to my first digital camera—the Fujifilm FinePix 6800Zoom, designed by F.A. Porsche. It’s gorgeous. In fact, although it stopped working many years ago, I’ve still held onto it as a piece of art.

What I found was that Fujifilm really understands their customer and is savvy enough to deliver innovative products that satisfy photography enthusiasts and brand loyalists. Their X100S camera design is reminiscent of a 1960s-era Pentax and when I picked it up, it had some heft to it. But within the retro exterior is some really cool innovation in digital photography, including settings that allow the user to simulate the color of their favorite traditional Fujifilm (e.g., Velvia, Astia, Monochrome, etc.).

Fujifilm knows their customers love the quality of color they get from using their traditional film, so year after year they innovate to capture that Fujifilm-like color in their digital products.

(Random sidenote: Even though I don’t use traditional film cameras anymore, I still save the canisters. Fujifilm canisters are the best for making Alkaseltzer rockets.)

To quote Peter Drucker, “Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.” Polaroid is doing some interesting marketing, but is falling short on innovation. Fujifilm, meanwhile, is quietly innovating but hasn’t done anything noteworthy in terms of consumer marketing (at least in the US).

It will be interesting to follow these two iconic brands in 2013 and see how they navigate the waters of the digital era.

Goldy Bardin is a Creative Director specializing in consumer goods and technology at Organic, Inc.

If you can’t get enough of Instagram and retro-style photography, Fujifilm clearly wants to lure you with the new Instax Mini 8 camera with rainbow-colored instant film.

The new film has 10 exposures with rainbow frames and sized at 2-by-3 inches, with a blank strip at the bottom for writing messages. And because rainbow-colored instant film isn’t cheesy enough, the Instax Mini 8 will come in new pink, blue, and yellow colors on top of the previously available black and white options on older Instax Mini models. We’re sure this camera and film would be a hit at a wedding. It will be available in “early 2013.”

Fujifilm announced the Instax Mini 8 today at CES 2013 in Las Vegas, along with many other products including the slick and powerful X100S and X20 cameras. The X100S is the successor to the well-regarded X100, which has sold 130,000 units worldwide since its launch.

The X100S promises the crazy-fast autofocus speed of .08 seconds, a pretty impressive spec. It features a 16.3-megapixel APS-C X-Trans CMOS II sensor and a faster EXR Processor II, both of which should ensure better noise reduction and all-around crisper photos.

On top of the X100S, Fujifilm talked about the X20, the successor to the X10. The X20 has a 12-megapixel 2/3-inch X-Trans CMOS II sensor. The X20 claims an autofocus speed of up to 0.06 seconds.

The X100S and X20 will be available in stores in late March. The X100S will run $1,300, while the X20 will cost $600.

Photo illustration via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat
Photos via Fujifilm

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Another big blow for Nokia: Damian Dinning, the company’s head of camera technology, is leaving the company at the end of the month.

First reported by Amateur Photographer, the departure is a big one for Nokia, which has consistently managed to push phone camera technology forward over the past decade. Dinning joined the company in 2004, and most recently he helped Nokia achieve a massive milestone with the 41-megapixel PureView 808 smartphone.

Nokia ended up bringing some of the PureView’s camera smarts into its new Lumia 920 and 820 Windows Phone 8 devices. They don’t feature the same crazy high resolution as the 808, but they utilize similar technology for image stabilization and impressive low-light shooting.

Nokia needs as many innovative minds as it can get right now as it struggles to regain profitability, so this loss is a particularly painful one. It’s unclear who will be replacing Dinning, but Nokia definitely needs someone to keep pushing its renowned camera technology.

Here’s Nokia’s statement on Dinning’s departure:

Following the relocation of key strategic roles to Finland, and with great reluctance, Damian Dinning has made a personal decision to leave the company effective November 30, 2012. During the past nine years, Damian has made many innovative and valuable contributions to Nokia, most recently as a lead program manager in our Smart Devices business. We thank him for his service to the company and certainly wish him the best.

But it doesn’t sound like Dinning is going to be lounging for too long, according to a recent tweet:

I'm incredibly excited about the 10th Dec, can't say more than that right now other than to say it's nothing to do with Nokia directly…—
Damian Dinning (@PhoneDaz) November 21, 2012

The investment will allow the two companies to work together on medical imaging (Olympus’s bread and butter) and, eventually, consumer cameras.

For Olympus, attracting Sony means securing something that it desperately needs: money. The company was hit with a major scandal last year when news broke that executives had cooked its books for over 20 years. The fallout ate away at over 70 percent of the company’s market cap and cost investors $1.3 billion.

Fast forward, and now Olympus has the life line it desperately needs. And Sony, too, has something: Another investment that will help improve its stake not only in the medical imaging industry but in the consumer camera industry as well.

Sony has been making a lot of major investments in consumer cameras, the largest of which was the $997 million investment in camera sensor production it announced in June.

The camera segment is a central component of the company’s “One Sony” strategy, and is joined by games and mobile. While its ongoing restructuring has shown to be a pricey one, Sony has shown it isn’t shy about making big investments in key areas.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s certainly keeping in line with its ability to pay attention to the smaller details in its new iPhone 5, and this is absolutely true for the device’s camera.

Despite being smaller, the camera features a number of improvements, including an 8 megapixel sensor, 3,264 by 2,448 photos, backside illumination, hybrid IR filter, a five-element lens, and way more. The camera snaps photos 40 percent faster, features a dynamic low-light mode (so pictures you take in dimly lit areas don’t suck) and enhanced spatial noise reduction, as well. This might all sound like mostly gobbledygook to those who can’t take a picture to save their lives (myself included), but that’s exactly who this camera is for.

Additionally, Apple is including some new features along with the camera, like a panorama mode that takes 28 megapixel shots. The company displayed a panorama shot of the Golden Gate bridge at today’s iPhone 5 event (shown above), which looked rather impressive. The company also added a new Photo stream sharing feature. So when you want to share photos with friends and family during events, it’s much less of a hassle to upload and point links.

As for the video side of things, the iPhone 5 camera records in 1080p with improved video stabilization, face detection software, and the ability to take photos while you’re shooting a video. These are pretty awesome enhancements — especially for journalists with shaky hands after drinking several cups of coffee.

Photo by Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The smartphone and point-and-shoot are about to kiss and make up.

Samsung today announced the Galaxy Camera, a Frankensteinian combination of an Android smartphone and point-and-shoot camera.

The device, which runs Android Jelly Bean, features a 4.8-inch HD display, 16-megapixel sensor, and a 21x optical zoom.

Connectivity options include Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G, which means that you are likely going to hear a lot about it from the likes of Verizon and AT&T this fall. But here’s the question: Are consumers really going to buy something like this on-contract?

As for storage, while the device does come with 8GB of on-board memory, Samsung isn’t furnishing it with SD card support. Instead, users are going to have to invest in microSD cards if they want to upgrade.

In all, the Galaxy Camera is an interesting product, and one that few companies would be crazy enough to even attempt.

Samsung, however, isn’t the first to jump into the camera-smartphone market. Last week, Nikon announced the Coolpix S800c, a similar hybrid that the Galaxy Camera has already out-shined.

The big question mark about the device, of course, is price, which Samsung has yet to announce.

Sony, which is dealing with billions of dollars in losses and its worst fiscal year yet, is considering taking a $623 million stake in flailing camera company Olympus.

The Japanese camera company has been in a dark place ever since it announced it had been hiding losses from investors for nearly two decades. The scandal came to light soon after then-chief executive Michael Woodford was fired after asking questions about curious $1.5 billion dollar payments being made to investment fund advisors. Since then, the company has replaced much of its executive staff and plans to cut 2,700 jobs.

To keep its head above water, Olympus offered a 10 percent stake in the company, which Sony now appears to be snapping up. Reuters reports, however, that the deal is not finalized, and Olympus has nothing to announce yet, according to Olympus spokesperson Tsuyoshi Oshima.

Sony, however, hasn’t been in its best form either. The company sustained a $5.7 billion loss for 2011, completing its worst year to date. It blamed its struggling television department and natural disasters near some of its plants among other issues.

In an effort to jump-start its own business, however, the company announced yesterday that it will invest $997 million dollars into developing CMOS sensors, camera sensors that are thin and doesn’t take up valuable space within the camera. As VentureBeat contributor Ricardo Bilton pointed out, that investment is nearly half of Sony’s projected revenue for 2012 — a big risk.

via Reuters; Broken camera image via Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nokia’s killer new camera phone is finally coming to America, but unless you’ve got $700 to burn, we recommend holding off.

Nokia announced today that the 808 PureView, which is now infamous for its 41-megapixel camera, will soon be available for $699 on Amazon for U.S. customers. You’re paying a pretty penny, since you’re buying the phone off-contract, and you’ll have to provide your own AT&T or T-Mobile SIM card (Update: T-Mobile has confirmed the phone will work fine on its 3G and HSPA+ network).

We’ve covered extensively why the 808 PureView’s camera is so remarkable. It packs an astounding number of pixels into a tiny sensor, allowing you to zoom into photos in extreme ways. But the phone also runs Nokia’s aging Symbian Belle OS, which is nowhere near a worthy competitor to the iPhone and Android.

Is it really worth suffering through a clunky OS and app ecosystem just to get your hands on a cool cellphone camera? I would say no — unless you just love being the only person in the room with a quirky gadget (breaking: the 808 PureView is now the perfect hipster phone). For everyone else, you’re better off nabbing one of the latest Android phones (the HTC One series, or Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S III), the iPhone 4S, or just holding out for Apple’s upcoming iPhone.

Nokia has previously mentioned that the PureView camera technology will eventually make its way to the company’s Windows Phones. Wait a year or so, and you’ll be able to get this crazy camera tech on a platform that won’t make your hate yourself.

Design is determining the winners in everything mobile. The most successful players are focusing on one thing: How to make products, services, and devices as compelling and delightful as possible – visually, and experientially. MobileBeat 2012, July 10-11 in San Francisco , is assembling the most elite minds to debate how UI/UX is transforming every aspect of the mobile economy, and where the opportunities lie. Register here.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

A new competitor has entered the action camera arena, and it just may dethrone the king of that market, GoPro’s Hero2 camera.

Ion Worldwide is today launching the Ion Air Pro, a camera for adrenaline junkies that’s lighter than the Hero2, waterproof without the need for a clunky external case, and capable of synchronizing media over Wi-Fi. The Ion Air Pro  can even output a livestream of video to other Ion Air users.

The camera is the brainchild of Giovanni Tomaselli, an industry veteran with decades of experience in the consumer camera market. After helping other companies launch cameras in the last few years, he told me that he was compelled to jump into the action camera business because he simply thought he could do it better.

The Ion Air Pro is also upgradeable with “Podz,” circular expansion modules that plug into the rear of the device and offer things like better battery life , an improved microphone, and more. With this expansion functionality, Ion can add even more upgrades to the camera down the line.

The camera comes in three bundles: the bare Ion Air Pro for $230, the Ion Air Pro Plus for $290 (which comes with CamLock bike and helmet attachments), and the Ion Air Pro Wi-Fi, which includes a Wi-Fi Podz. The Wi-Fi version of the camera can synchronize with Ion Air’s iOS app — Tomaselli showed it to me synching live with speeds around 3 megabits per second.

In addition to being lighter than the GoPro cameras, the Ion Air Pro is also more versatile: It can work up to 30 feet underwater without any additional case, sports a waterproof microphone, can be rotated into different orientations, and it’s even smart enough to flip the video if it ends up shooting upside down.

I’m not an experienced user with action cameras, but it’s clear that Tomaselli is on to something with the Ion Air Pro. I’ll be testing out one of the cameras this week, and will report back with more detailed impressions soon.

You can catch a glimpse of the Ion Air Pro in action below:

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

You read that right. Nokia just announced the 808 PureView here at the Mobile World Congress, and it sports an astoundingly large 41 megapixel camera.

Nokia is well aware that such large resolution pictures will be difficult to share, so the phone will oversample pictures to a size roughly around a 5 megapixel picture. That means better picture quality without scary file sizes. And if you do dare to take a picture at the full resolution (which is actually 38 MP), you’ll be able to zoom into the picture after the fact without losing much detail.

The 808 PureView runs Nokia’s Belle OS, which could be a disappointment to those expecting yet another new Windows Phone from the company. Jo Harlow, Nokia’s head of smartphones, said that the company will eventually bring its PureView technology to future phones. We can consider the 808 PureView a practice run for the tech, and a new lustworthy device for Nokia fanatics.

The phone features a 4-inch display and a 1.3 gigahertz processor. We expect to hear more about how this phone’s magical camera works in the future. In comparison, the iPhone 4S, and most other high-end smartphones, feature 8-megapixel cameras. The 808 is interesting, but I’m far more curious what PureView will look like once it hits future phones.

The Nokia 808 PureView is expected to ship in May for €450. No word on a U.S. release yet.

Top Photo/Devindra Hardawar

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just how much does your smartphone’s camera matter to you? With its latest flagship Android line, dubbed HTC One, the Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC is hoping that a killer camera is just enough to sway you over to its phones.

Those killer features include the ability to take video and photos without switching modes (something that wastes precious seconds), as well as near-instant camera app launching and autofocus. HTC is calling its combined new photo technology ImageSense, which CEO Peter Chou describes as “the power of a true digital camera on your phone.”

Chou unveiled the One series of devices, which includes the HTC One X, One S, and One V, at the Mobile World Congress today to a packed room. He said that taking photos was the second-most common thing consumers did with their phones, so the company saw a huge market reason to focus on helping people take better photos.

Thanks to ImageSense — which is an all-encompassing term to describe tweaks HTC has made to the camera lens, sensor, user interface and software — Chou says that HTC One phones can launch their camera app in 0.7 seconds, and they can autofocus in just 0.2 seconds. Other tweaks are sure to appeal to camera fanatics. For example, the phones can take a burst of photos simply by holding down the shutter button, and they can automatically adjust the flash level to keep subjects from looking washed out.

Perhaps best of all, the HTC One phones will let you easily take a picture while recording a video.

The new camera capabilities will be included in HTC Sense 4, the latest version of the company’s custom Android software. In addition to photos, the new phones will offer Beats integration with music from any source, be it on your device or streamed from the web. The One series will also include 25 gigabytes of free Dropbox storage for two years, and thanks to Sense 4, they will be able to automatically sync music wirelessly from your computer.

The HTC One X is the flagship device in the new series, with a 4.7-inch screen, 720p HD resolution, and quad-core Tegra 3 processor. HTC will also offer an LTE variant of the One X that will run Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 platform. The One X features a unibody polycarbonate design — a necessary upgrade for HTC, as its past phones weren’t the most durable devices.

Not surprisingly, the One S and One V are meant to serve mid-range and low-range customers. The One S is smaller than the X and features an anodized aluminum case. HTC didn’t hype up the One V much at its press conference, but we expect it to eschew the fancy case designs and large screens in exchange for a more affordable price.

HTC is also taking a different strategy this time around when it comes to bringing these phones to the public. Instead of slowly rolling them out across different regions, the One series of phones will launch globally in April. Chou said that 144 carriers around the world have already signed on to offer the phones.

VentureBeat is holding its second annual Mobile Summit this April 2-3 in Sausalito, Calif. The invitation-only event will debate the five key business and technology challenges facing the mobile industry today, and participants — 180 mobile executives, investors, and policymakers — will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. You can find out more at our Mobile Summit site.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

For geeks, small head-mounted cameras streaming to iPhones seem like cool, sci-fi inspired gadgetry. For cops, they may be the best way to record incidents, avoid lawsuits, and stay one step ahead of disastrous PR and public outrage.

The Axon Flex camera on a pair of Oakley sunglasses.

On Tuesday, police-tech company Taser, maker of the eponymous electroshock guns, announced its latest on-officer camera system for law enforcement. The cameras mount on Oakley sunglasses and have companion Android and iOS mobile apps. The first people to get the new technology are none other than the 150 patrol officers on the troubled Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) force.

On-dashboard car cameras were considered advanced when they first came out. But the technology has evolved and shrunk over the years, and while law enforcement isn’t known for being ahead of the technological curve (the San Francisco Police Department still takes statements on carbon paper), Taser thinks the time for on-officer cameras and digital video has arrived.

The new wearable-camera system, Axon Flex, is Taser’s second try at wearable cameras and will work with the company’s companion cloud storage system for managing the resulting videos, Evidence.com.

Changing course, quickly

The people at Taser are fast learners. After rolling out its first foray into the wearable-camera market just last year (an earlier on-Taser camera didn’t take off), the 19-year-old company quickly realized drastic changes were needed to how it was designing and producing the still-new gear.

“Everyone we talk to gets it, that we want the camera on the officer,” Taser CEO Patrick Smith told VentureBeat. “People can see it coming, and we think we’re at the inflection point right now.”

Taser's first, bulky camera system.

The first iteration, called the Taser Axon, was bulky, uncomfortable, a bit dorky looking, and made almost entirely by Taser. To a generation of iPhone users, the large handheld viewer immediately jumped out as unnecessary and dated. “It was too clunky, too early,” said Smith.

The company went back to the drawing board and decided to focus on only the things it did best, and to outsource the rest to partners that were already the best in their fields. (Smith said the book “Good to Great” by Tim Collins was his inspiration.)

First there was the cool factor. “Our headgear was slightly more comfortable than braces,” admitted Smith. Officers were unhappy with the way Taser’s custom head-mount looked and felt, so Taser surveyed various members of law-enforcement to find out what brands they really wanted. Ninety percent of officers said they liked sunglasses-maker Oakley. The new system Flex camera mounts via magnet directly onto a custom pair of Oakley Flack Jacket glasses.

For the camera, Taser went to a company called Looxcie that was already making compact, wearable cameras with Bluetooth streaming technology. A few custom modifications were made, including maximizing the cameras for low-light shooting. The cameras shoot 30 frames per second of video at 640-by-480 resolution.

The hulking custom viewer is out, and instead the company has created mobile apps for Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. The video files are stored on the camera itself (up to 8GB) and can only be downloaded using a special mount at the station for chain-of-custody reason. However, the officer can use the Flex Mobile app preview, name, and add notes to the video on any compatible mobile device. The app can also show the camera’s battery and memory status, and Smith says GPS is coming soon.

Taser is working on another Android and iOS mobile app, called Evidence Mobile, that collects digital evidence from a crime scene, including photos, audio notes, and GPS tags.

Cloud storage for the Evidence.com system is now run by Amazon Web Services. Evidence.com is Taser’s ambitious online management solution for all the videos police record. Unlike the DVDs or VHS tapes many precincts still use, digital video stored on a remote server is available to multiple people at any given time.

In the beginning, Taser tried building its own web servers for Evidence.com, but Amazon had already jumped through the hoops and invested time and money to make its service FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) compliant. The act outlines tricky government-required procedures for handling electronic surveillance.

Finally, Taser adjusted how it priced and sold the system. Each camera system comes out to about $1000 per officer, but a set pricing structure turned out to a hard sell. Some agencies have an annual budget, others just a one-time chunk of money. Some want to lease equipment, other need to buy it outright. Taser is giving its sales force the flexibility to work with each agency and nail down whatever unique payment structure works for them.

The drastic change in direction was something Taser was lucky enough to be able to fund. The public company has taken all of its profits from the last three years and sunk it into the on-officer camera technology and the Evidence.com digital-asset management system. Though almost two decades old, the company has some fresh, startup blood on its board helping it navigate the new, rapidly changing gadget-waters; Hadi Partovi, former Facebook and Dropbox advisor is a board member.

A history of violence

A BART police officer declaring a protest unlawful.

BART officers will start using the new Flex camera systems at the end of the month. The transit system’s police force has had several unfortunate run-ins in recent years. Officers fatally shot the unarmed Oscar Grant in 2009, an event that was thoroughly documented by nearby passengers with camera-phones. In 2011, BART officers shot a man named Charles Hill, whom officers say was armed with a knife.

Both incidents resulted in public outcry and protests, but the Hill drama took an unexpected turn when BART shut down cell phone service along the train lines to prevent protesters from coordinating locations. Impinging on riders’ civil liberties did what a mere shooting and death couldn’t: it led to much larger protests, international condemnation, and the involvement of Hacker-activist group Anonymous.

If police had captured the Hill shooting on video, and if what the video showed exonerated the two officers, would the incident have still snowballed into a public relations nightmare? If the incident wasn’t on the up-and-up, would the officers have even turned on their cameras?

Cynics, loopholes, and the psychology of being watched

There are still open questions about how the system will work in the field, especially from wary city-dwellers who may think some police are corrupt. Each law-enforcement agency will have to develop its own policies and punishments for officers to ensure they use the new equipment properly and responsibly. The recorded video itself is tamper-proof — a user cannot access, delete, or alter the original file in any way — but the camera still requires an officer to hit the big Record button, and to refrain from turning it off if things are getting out of control.

Studies conducted by law-enforcement organizations point to video-evidence having a positive impact on reducing complaints. A U.S. study of over 3000 officers using in-car cameras found that 93 percent of civilian complaints were dropped or immediately resolved when video evidence was available. Another study, this time of a UK pilot program in which 300 officers used on-person cameras, found complaints dropped 14 percent.

It’s unknown if complaints drop because civilians see recorded evidence and realize they can’t get away with a false complaint, or if officers behave differently when they know they are being recorded. That knowledge may be the difference between an event being “caught” on video, like the Oscar Grant shooting, and by-the-book events being willingly filmed by the police.

The company began preparing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the very beginning of 2012; the filing was complete on January 18.

The iconic company will ease production of its cameras, including digital and pocket video cameras, as well as its digital picture frames, before the summer of 2012 is over. Exiting this aspect of its business will cost Kodak an initial $30 million but is expected to result in a $100 million annual savings.

Kodak will continue to honor existing product warranties and will offer support services for the cameras and frames.

After cutting so much of its business away, Kodak will focus on generating revenue from its brand licensing program, online and retail photo-printing services, home printers, enterprise services (including commercial film units), and retail kiosks and photo-printing labs.

A Kodak spokesperson told Reuters the product cuts would result in significant job losses.

During its bankruptcy proceedings, Kodak CEO Antonio Perez said, “Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation. At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003.”

At that time, the company’s stock was trading at just 47 cents per share; today, in spite of massive restructuring efforts, stock ticker EKDKQ still sits at just 44 cents.

Now that we’ve returned from Vegas, pounded enough Emergen-C cocktails to get us back into a semblance of health, and compared notes, we’ve settled on this list of the show’s top products.

Read on to see the most promising hardware that will be hitting store shelves in the coming months.

10. Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Galaxy Note

Less a technological breakthrough than a form-factor experiment, the Galaxy Note is notable primarily because, well, it actually works.

Up to now, phone and tablet manufacturers have been careful to separate their lines: Phones have 4-inch screens or smaller, while tablets have 7-inch screens or larger. The embarrassing failure of Dell’s 5-inch Streak confirmed the wisdom of that approach.

But in truth, there’s little difference between a tablet and a smartphone, other than size, and for those of us who habitually use 3×5 cards or similar-sized pocket notebooks, a 5-inch diagonal screen is actually just about perfect for holding in one hand while jotting notes with the other. By adding a stylus and some note-taking and handwriting recognition software to the Android OS, that’s exactly the use that Samsung has in mind for the Galaxy Note.

And yes, it’s too big for a pants pocket. It might be more attractive to female customers, who can stash it in a purse, or to more stylishly dressed men, who could put it in a jacket pocket. We spent some time with the Note on the CES show floor and came away favorably impressed.

One downside: It’s running a sadly outdated version of Android (2.3, aka Gingerbread).

It will be coming to AT&T Wireless later this year, and should be a strong contender of AT&T and Samsung give it a decent price and find the right audience for their marketing message, which is basically that writing and drawing are still fun. –Dylan Tweney

9. Gear4 Sleep Clock

Gear4 Sleep Clock

If you sometimes wake up feeling drained, the Gear4 Sleep Clock may help you. The clock uses an iPhone app, a dock and Doppler radar to sense your sleep pattern and wake you up at the lightest point in your sleep cycle.

The radar senses your movements and determines exactly when you fall asleep. It also senses if you wake up during the night and detects your breathing so that it can figure out if you are in a deep sleep or not. When you wake up the next day, you can see the results on your iPhone app. It will tell you exactly how many hours and minutes you slept. And it will say how long it took to fall asleep and how many times you woke up. After you use it for a while, it will come up with averages and recommendations so you can get better sleep. You don’t have to wear anything on your wrist, as you do with rival solutions from Basis Science or Jawbone. The Gear4 device will go on sale soon for $199. –Dean Takahashi

8. HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultrabook

HP Envy 14

The distinctive feature of this Ultrabook is its cover. It is made out of black Gorilla Glass, a damage-resistant glass from Corning that is normally used for screens. It certainly makes this laptop design stand out amid a sea of Ultrabooks at CES. The machine carries the Envy brand established by Voodoo PC, which HP acquired. It has a high-definition HP Radiance display (1600 x 900) with 300 Nits of brightness. It has nine hours of battery life and a row of connection slots. It also has an HD webcam and HP’s Beats Audio technology. The Spectre also has an analogy roller control for changing the sound volume and it has a mute button on the side for when you have to stop the music fast. It comes with 128 gigabytes of flash memory and Intel’s Rapid Start technology. The height is 20 millimeters and it weighs 3.79 pounds. It will cost $1,399 and will start selling on Feb. 8. –Dean Takahashi

7. OLPC XO 3.0 tablet

OLPC XO 3.0

This tablet has been in the works for a long time and its true cost remains to be seen. But One Laptop per Child has done a good job of researching what children in developing countries need and then tailoring it for them. It’s not just an iPad with a different label slapped on it. It has a dust and waterproof cover. It has its own Linux operating system (and it can also run Android) and its Sugar user interface has been adapted for touchscreen use. You can charge it with a wall outlet, a solar panel, or a hand crank. And the screws for the cover line up as power pins when you are getting power from the solar panel. And it has an eight-inch display that works inside or outside in bright sunlight. That’s a lot of innovation in a small tablet whose target cost is around the $100 mark. Overall, the OLPC XO 3.0 has an appealing design that promises to reach a wider market than previous OLPC XO laptops. –Dean Takahashi

Click here to see products 6 through 4.

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Camera startup Lytro has won the Last Gadget Standing competition at the Consumer Electronics Show for its “revolutionary” light-field camera.

Lytro debuted its camera in mid-October to considerable buzz, thanks to its engaging technology that changes how you can take pictures. The light field camera lets you take a photo once and go back later to change the focus point. Lytro’s light field tech also lets you display pictures in 3D.

The Last Gadget Standing competition at CES featured other upcoming gadgets including the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga, the PlayStation Vita handheld console and the Samsung Galaxy Note tablet/phone.

Lytro’s cameras can be pre-ordered now and the units are expected to ship in the next few months. The company will sell the 8-gigabyte version of its camera for $399 and the 16-gigabyte version will run for $499.

For more gadget news, be sure to check out VentureBeat’s live coverage from CES 2012.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

After secretly making phone cameras better for the last decade, Swedish software company Scalado announced today that its mobile photo technology is now featured in over 1 billion devices.

Scalado provides advanced solutions for taking, viewing, and editing pictures on your phone. You probably own a Scalado-powered phone right now without knowing it (it’s found in many Android phones, though not in iPhones).

The company is likely counting old and obsolete devices in its figures, but it’s still impressive, especially in the budding mobile software arena. Scalado says it now controls over a third of the mobile imaging market, and its software will be included in at least 500 million devices every year.

The company’s early innovations include Random Access JPEG, a patented technology that made it easy for 2002-era phones to deal with photos; CAPS, a software development kit that made managing multi-megapixel pictures more CPU- and memory-efficient; and SpeedTags, technology that made JPEG optimization on mobile phones near-instant. Many of Scalado’s more recent technologies, including zero shutter lag shooting (pictures get taken as soon as you hit the shutter button), burst shot, and high-definition range shooting, are built upon SpeedTags and are included in the company’s Camera SDK.

While mobile camera hardware has definitely improved over the last decade, innovation on the software end has been just as important. Scalado deserves some credit for paying attention to mobile photo software when few other companies did. Now, with many phone cameras featuring sensors that surpass some point and shoot cameras, Scalado will have even more of a chance to shine.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple’s fast-selling iPhone 4S is now the second-most used cameraphone on the popular photo-sharing service Flickr, according to the site’s Camera Finder page.

The iPhone 4 is actually the most-popular camera of all on Flickr now, but the iPhone 4S has yet to crack the top 5 list of most-used cameras on Flickr, which features traditional cameras like the Nikon D90 and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II in second and third place. But give it a few more months and we fully expect the iPhone 4S to start gaining a lot of ground, mostly because the 8-megapixel shooter on the iPhone 4S is one of the best cameras ever seen on a smartphone.

On the cameraphone-specific list, the iPhone 4S has now beaten out the iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and HTC EVO 4G. The iPhone 4S camera is set apart from its predecessors with an 8-megapixel sensor that captures pictures up to 3264-by-2448-pixels in size, a new IR filter and a redesigned lens. Thanks to new hardware and updated software, Apple claims photos on the 4S have better white balance and greater dynamic range that improves color accuracy than what could be offered with the iPhone 4.

The chart below shows how quickly the iPhone 4S has been adopted by cameraphone users on Flickr.

With Lytro’s new light field camera, you’ll never have to worry about your photos being out of focus — because it’s the first camera ever to let you focus your pictures after taking them.

The company debuted its new cameras at a press event today, which will start at $399 for the 8-gigabyte version, and $499 for the 16GB version.

Lytro made some bold promises when it debuted in June, saying that it would start a “picture revolution.” The company’s technology captures the entire light field in a picture, allowing you to focus on individual elements after the fact. Lytro’s light field tech also lets you display pictures in 3D. You can get a taste of Lytro’s technology with interactive photos on its website.

As you can see, the Lytro cameras don’t look like any other high-end shooters on the market. They resemble a child’s toy more than anything else. But under their boxy exterior is the biggest shift in camera technology since digital cameras. The Lytro units feature a f/2 aperture and 8X optical zoom, while its Light Field Sensor can capture 11 million light rays. (We’re not quite sure what a “light ray” is in this context, or how big it is, but we’ll update this post as we learn more.) The cameras only have two buttons — power on and shutter — and there’s also a small 1.46-inch touchscreen display on the rear that lets you view photos and instantly change their focus.

Lytro says that the cameras also remove the typical lag with taking a picture on a normal camera, since the don’t have to calculate autofocus settings or deal with shutter lag.

The Lytro cameras are available for pre-order today on the company’s website, and they’re due to ship some time in early 2012.

Photos by VentureBeat’s Heather Kelly, except for the stock photo with a pretty girl holding a Lytro camera, which is courtesy Lytro.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

For more than ten years, Swedish phone camera software company Scalado has been spearheading imaging innovations, but few people outside of the mobile industry realize how much of an impact the company has had.

Scalado’s technology, which includes advanced software for taking, viewing, and editing pictures on your phone, has been placed in over 900 million mobile devices so far, the company announced last month. Its software landed on over 350 million devices last year, and is set to be included on 500 million more in 2011. Soon enough, Scalado’s software will be featured on a billion devices, a milestone few software companies can boast.

Scalado is a prime example of how a small international company (it has only around 110 employees) can become a major force in the global app economy.

The company’s early innovations include Random Access JPEG, a patented technology that made it easy for 2002-era phones to deal with photos; CAPS, a software development kit that made managing multi-megapixel pictures more CPU and memory efficient; and SpeedTags, technology that made JPEG optimization on mobile phones near-instant. Many of Scalado’s more recent technologies, including zero shutter lag shooting (pictures get taken as soon as you hit the shutter button), burst shot, and high-definition range shooting, are built upon SpeedTags and are included in the company’s Camera SDK.

Scalado has been able to get its technology on nearly a billion devices because it works across pretty much any platform, including iOS, Android and Symbian. The company’s partners and customers include Motorola, Nokia, Sony/Ericsson, HTC and Qualcomm. And now with tablets on the rise, Scalado’s tech has yet another group of devices to invade. The company recently showed off an iPad demo album for viewing 10,000 photos.

Raj Talluri, Qualcomm’s vice president of product management, praised Scalado during our MobileBeat 2011 conference earlier this month:

We built the hardware inside our developer platform, Snapdragon, to take pictures at high speeds and compress them into the perfect shot. Scalado then built their application to complements our hardware. The app allows the user to choose a face from those high speed-taken photos and layers it smoothly on your end picture. It’s a total solution for mobile picture taking.

The feature Talluri’s referring to is called Rewind, and as you can see in the video below it could be useful for touching up photos without actually retaking them. Scalado also recently showed off Multi-Angle (see video below), a feature that allows you to sweep your phone around an object to create a semi-3D image that’s viewable on 2D screens. Recipients of Multi-Angle photos can pan around the image simply by tilting their phone.

Scalado will continue to play a big part in the future of mobile imaging. Another recent video from the company demonstrates futuristic editing capabilities like the ability to fill in missing elements from a photos (for a full 360 degrees), even more robust 3D capturing, and the ability to take “intelligent pictures,” which are photos that you can explore like a Web page.

Lytro’s breakthrough new camera hinges on a new kind of sensor that captures the entire light field around a picture, rather than only a single light field like current cameras capture. Capturing an entire light field gives photographers a new set of controls and lets them refocus the shot after they’ve taken it. It also allows photographers to show off the pictures in 3D.

The camera works by having many small lenses between the main lens and the image sensor, with the tiny lenses measuring the amount and direction of light coming in.

Lytro has a neat photo gallery on its site that lets a prospective customer see how its refocusing works. When you click on different spots in a Lytro picture, you see a different focus—meaning every picture you take has tons of possibilities.

Not only is Lytro distinguishing itself by making big promises, it’s also taking a major leap by trying to be a hardware company. Instead of licensing out its new technology, it hopes to sell a point-and-shoot camera to consumers later this year.

We fully expect Lytro to raise more buzz as it raises more capital. So far, the company has raised $50 million from the likes of NEA, K9 Ventures, Greylock Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.

Are you intrigued by Lytro’s new camera technology? Will you consider buying a Lytro camera later this year?

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

French researchers have managed to develop glasses-free 3D technology for the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 based entirely on how you’re looking at their screens.

The technology is in its early stages now, judging from the video below, but it shows that both the iPhone 4 and iPad 2 (as well as many other devices) can deliver 3D experiences without the need for glasses, and without specialized screens like those found in Nintendo’s new 3DS portable console.

Jeremie Francone and Laurence Nigay from the Engineering Human-Computer Interaction (EHCI) research group at the Grenoble Informatics Laboratory are the mad geniuses behind the video. They say that their head tracking technique relies only on the front-facing cameras in the devices to create a “glasses-free monocular 3D display.” It doesn’t take advantage of the iPad 2 or iPhone 4′s acccelerometer at all — which means that the technique could conceivably be replicated in any device with a camera facing the user.

The two say they were inspired by the work of Johnny Chung Lee, who showed off a similar glasses-free head tracking demonstration on the Nintendo Wii several years ago.

If it manages to make its way outside of the research phase, the technology could open up the door for glasses-free 3D gaming, 3D model viewing and more on standard device screens. It would also accelerate the push to 3D, which is currently limited by clunky glasses and expensive glasses-free 3D screens.

Via Electronista and Macstories

Calling all mobile executives: This April 25-26, VentureBeat is hosting its inaugural VentureBeat Mobile Summit, where we’ll debate the five key business and policy challenges facing the mobile industry today. Participants will develop concrete, actionable solutions that will shape the future of the mobile industry. The invitation-only event, located at the scenic and relaxing Cavallo Point Resort in Sausalito, Calif., is limited to 180 mobile executives, investors and policymakers. We’ve pretty much finalized the invite list, but have a few spots left. Request an invitation.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Expect to see Apple’s iPad 2 in April — a year after the original iPad hit store shelves — according to a report by Digitimes, which points out that Apple has also added five new printed circuit board (PCB) suppliers for the tablet.

Additionally, there’s a chance that the iPad 2 will sport the same cameras being used in the most recent iPod Touch, 9to5 Mac reports.

Digitimes says that the new PCB suppliers will begin shipping “any-layer HDI” PCBs — a technique that leads to finer circuit patterns, which are ideal for phones and tablets — in small amounts between late February and early March, with mass shipments set to begin in April. The news fits in with a previous Digitimes report that said Apple would begin shipping iPad 2s in February and have the device available for sale in April.

As for the camera news, all signs are pointing to the iPad 2 having front and rear cameras, the real question now is what their resolution will be. If 9to5Mac’s information — which was dug up from an Apple developer kit — is to be believed, the iPad 2 will sport a VGA quality front-facing camera and a 1 megapixel rear camera. Those specs are about the same as what the current iPod Touch supports.

News of a front-facing VGA camera isn’t a huge surprise, but it’s disappointing. The iPhone 4 features a similar VGA-quality front camera, but other tablets like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab feature higher quality 1 megapixel shooter. A rear 1 megapixel camera definitely seems too low — the Galaxy Tab offers a 3 megapixel rear camera.

I wouldn’t get too upset yet, though, as there’s a very good chance the information 9to5Mac pulled hasn’t yet been updated with correct specifications for the iPad 2.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Just when you thought cellphone cameras couldn’t squeeze in any more megapixels, Sony announces a new cellphone camera sensor that supports 16MP photos and 1080p high-definition video.

Sony will begin offering the sensor to manufacturers in January, which means we’ll probably see some cellphones taking advantage of it next year. Most likely, it will show up in Sony Ericsson cellphones first. Sony also announced “the industry’s smallest and thinnest” sensor that will support 8MP pictures in very thin phones. Both sensors are back-illuminated, which increases light sensitivity and reduces picture noise.

With this announcement, Sony is now the megapixel king for cellphone cameras. But does that title really mean anything?

It’s long been argued that megapixels don’t matter as much as other technical aspects of a camera like lens quality. When it comes to cellphone cameras, manufacturers are even more limited by their diminutive size. Apple seems to have found a sweet spot with its 5MP iPhone 4 cameras, which best the Droid X and Evo 4G’s 8MP cameras. Perhaps a jump to 16MP will offer some improvement over the iPhone 4′s camera, but will it be enough to justify the increased storage costs? Current iPhone 4 pictures come in at around 2MB — 16MP pics would eat up even more space.

It’s also worth questioning the usefulness of 1080p video on a cellphone. On the iPhone 4, 10 minutes of a 720p recording takes up around 1GB of space. With 1080p video, that number may hover around 3GB depending on the compression used. Regardless of the specific file size, 1080p video is going to take up a big chunk of space on cellphones for very little benefit. The difference between 1080p and 720p video isn’t easy to tell in televisions under 50-inches, and it’s certainly overkill for video meant to be watched on the web. The large file size will also make it unfeasible for cellphones with less than 32GB of storage.

Instead of pushing to higher megapixel lengths, Sony may be better off figuring out other ways to increase cellphone picture quality. For example, it could make mechanical shutters standard with its cameras, which would avoid the rolling shutter effect many users are seeing with cellphone cameras (even the iPhone 4′s).

via Gizmodo

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Contour

The ContourGPS video camera has global positioning system (GPS) navigation built into it. The camera, which comes with goggles attached, is targeted at outdoor enthusiasts who like to take video while they’re on hikes, skydiving, or otherwise doing something that requires they have both of their hands free. Users can share videos online with a community of like-minded adventurers and can share stories about their videos. The site combines video playback with an online map.

The product is a cool gadget that foretells how video and location technology are going to spread in the future. Marc Barros (right), chief executive of Contour, formerly known as VHoldR, said that GPS allows explorers to map their own adventures and discover new places posted by other users. It’s like combining a Flip video camera, the YouTube user-generated video site, and Google Maps together into a single easy-to-use product, Barros said.

Contour GPS captures location once per second with high accuracy. It comes with Contour Storyteller, an application for the Mac or PC that lets you edit and organize your videos. The Seattle company’s web site, Contour.com, will let users watch a ski run down a mountain while tracking its progress, speed and elevation on a map.

“We call this new form of storytelling “Video Mapping” said Barros. “The inclusion of GPS brings a whole new level of context to any video, making location, speed, time, and conditions as important as what you recorded.”

The company is targeting the estimated 100 million outdoor enthusiasts around the world. It’s new camera costs $349 and will be shipping worldwide in the coming days on web sites such as Amazon.com, Helmet Camera Central, and POV Cameras.

Contour started out as VholdR, making cameras for outdoor enthusiasts. It was founded by Barros and another colleague in 2004 as part of an entry into a University of Washington business plan competition. The company won third place and $20,000. It has 35 employees. Rivals include hands-free camera maker GoPro. Barros said the company is profitable and has had a string of successful outdoor cameras. The company raised $1 million at the end of 2007 from angel investors and made it onto the Inc. 500 list this year, at No. 183, by growing revenues 1,500 percent over three years.