"Mobile phones with built-in digital cameras are taking Japan by storm and, amid a proliferation of new uses, bolstering Japan's reputation as the most advanced and creative cell-phone market in the world. It is a phenomenon likely to be repeated in the United States, where picture phones are just starting to appear in advertisements....
Finding new uses for the pictures has become something of a treasure hunt here. Buyers at Tokyo's world famous Tsukiji fish market's auction beam shots of $15,000 frozen tuna to sushi chefs across Japan before placing their bids. The Osaka police now get dozens of cell-phone photos a month from concerned citizens of crime scenes, stolen cars and suspects. And video microscope firm Scalar Corp. offers free attachments so customers can send skin and scalp photographs to beauty centers for an automated analysis.
Perhaps inevitably, the new technology has been tapped for matters of the heart. People are using the pictures as digital alibis, sending previously taken shots of themselves at work to a husband or wife back home, when in reality they're off having an affair.
'One problem is making sure you're wearing the same clothes when you get home that you wore in the picture,' says Atsushi Baba, a systems engineer.
Matchmakers have embraced the technology as 'ingles wanted' Web sites proliferate, allowing people to study cell-phone photos online before deciding to take the next step. Magazine articles help the self-conscious with tips on how to look your best in a thumbnail frame....
Men and women tend to use phone-equipped cameras differently, some say. Men take more shots of scenery, their cars, their girlfriends, with a particular emphasis on external objects, says Naoki Nakayama, editor of "J-Phone Sha-mail Hearts" magazine. Women, meanwhile, tend to take more pictures of themselves, their hairstyles, how they look in new clothes, with emphasis on the internal and the psychological, he adds." [LA Times, via Smart Mobs]
[
